Injury Time: Collected Mysteries by Catherine Aird | eBook

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Injury Time

Collected Mysteries

By Catherine Aird

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

CHAPTER 1

STEADY AS SHE GOES

'The facts of the matter,' declared Superintendent Leeyes, 'are quite simple.'

Detective Inspector Sloan waited without saying anything. In fact, had there happened to have been a salt-cellar handy in the Superintendent's office in Berebury Police Station he might very well have taken a pinch from it. In his experience, open-and-shut cases seldom came his way anyway and never if the Superintendent had had a hand in matters to date.

'The deceased,' said Leeyes, 'died from poisoning by antimony.' He grunted and added, 'According to Dr Dabbe, that is.'

Sloan made a note. In his book, if not in the Superintendent's, that constituted a solid fact. Dr Dabbe was the Consultant Pathologist for their half of the County of Calleshire and not a man to say antimony when he meant arsenic.

'The doctor,' swept on Leeyes, who was inclined to treat medical pronouncements as the starting point for discussion rather than the end of it, 'says in his report that the Reinsch test was positive for antimony.'

Detective Inspector Sloan made another note. By rights it was Detective Constable Crosby sitting by his side who should have been taking the notes but unfortunately as it happened the detective constable actually was a man to write alimony when he meant antimony and Sloan thought in a case of poisoning it was better to be on the safe side and do it himself.

'The deceased's sister,' growled the Superintendent, 'alleges that the poison was administered by the husband ...'

'Most murderers are widowers,' remarked Detective Inspector Sloan, that most happily married of men. 'And certainly almost all male murderers are.'

The Superintendent rose effortlessly above the Home Office's statistics. 'And,' he continued with heavy irony, 'the husband is insisting that the sister did it.'

'Hasn't that got a funny name, sir?' Detective Constable Crosby's wayward attention seemed to have been engaged at last.

'Funny!' barked the Superintendent. 'Since when, may I ask, has there been anything funny about murder?'

'Not murder itself, sir,' responded Crosby earnestly. 'I meant that I thought that the word for that sort of murder was a funny one.'

'Murder is always murder,' Leeyes was at his most majestic, 'whatever Defence Counsel chooses to call it at the trial.'

Detective Inspector Sloan's hobby was growing roses and he was just thinking about the parallel where they smelt as sweet by any other name when Crosby put his oar in again.

'They said so, sir,' persisted the Detective Constable with all the innocence of youth, 'at the Training College.'

'Fratricide,' managed Leeyes between clenched teeth. Older and wiser men than Crosby knew better than to mention Police Training College to the Superintendent. Not only was the very concept an anathema to him but there was nothing in his view better than the time-honoured walking the beat with a sergeant or 'sitting next to Nellie' way of learning.

'But that's when you kill your brother, isn't it, sir?' persisted Crosby. 'Shouldn't it be "sorocide" if it's your sister? Or is that satricide?'

'The word "homicide" will do, Crosby,' interposed Detective Inspector Sloan swiftly before either of the other two thought about the killing of satyrs—or kings, come to that. He enquired if such a thing as a motive for the poisoning existed.

'According to the sister, yes. According to the husband, no.'

'Gain?' suggested Sloan, veteran of many a domestic murder. So far the case hadn't struck him as 'open-and-shut' in any way at all.

'The love of money is the root of all evil,' quoted the Superintendent sententiously.

This seemed to be the view, too, of Miss Kirsty McCormack, sister of the late Mrs Anna Macmillan.

She was a thin, rather dowdy woman, with thick glasses, living in a modest bungalow set in a very large garden on the outskirts of Berebury. Miss McCormack seemed only too anxious to talk to the two policemen.

'We came here about twelve years ago, Inspector, Mother and I,' she said, ushering them into a preternaturally neat and tidy sitting-room. 'Won't you sit over there, Constable? On the settee. Inspector, I think you'd be more comfortable in Mother's old chair by the fire.'

'Thank you, miss.' Sloan could not think at first what it was that was so odd about the room and then it came to him. All the walls were bare. There was a not a picture or a photograph to be seen.

'It was after her first heart attack that we moved. We thought she would be better not having to climb the stairs.'

'You've got rather a lot of land, though,' observed Sloan, no mean gardener.

'Indeed, yes, although as you can see I had to let it go.' She sighed. 'The garden is part of the trouble.'

'Upkeep?' suggested Sloan, not unsympathetically. 'It would be considerable.'

'Oh, no, Inspector. It's much too big even to try to keep it up without help. Besides, I was too busy looking after Mother, especially towards the end.'

'Quite so, miss.' He waited. 'And ...'

'And then Mother died,' she said flatly.

Sloan coughed. 'She can't have been young.'

'She wasn't. I decided to move—there was a dear little flat on the market in Calleford and I'd always wanted to live over there.'

'A very pretty city,' said Sloan, who would have found it stifling himself.

'That's when the trouble started.'

'Trouble?' Sloan's head came up like that of an old war-horse and even Crosby looked faintly interested.

'We found that this dreadful old garden was just what the developers had been looking for.'

'I see, miss.' Detective Inspector Sloan, husband and father, who had to think carefully each autumn how many new roses he could afford to add to his collection, wasn't sure that he did.

'Anna and I suddenly became rather well off,' she said.

This time Sloan thought he was beginning to understand. 'You and your sister were coheirs, I take it?'

'That's right, Inspector.' She looked him squarely in the eye. 'So Paul had quite a lot to gain from killing Anna.'

'Her share of your mother's estate,' hazarded Sloan, 'would come to him in the ordinary way should his wife die?'

'Exactly,' said Miss McCormack. A glint of amusement crossed her flinty features.

'Unless she had willed it to you,' pointed out Sloan.

'She hadn't,' said Miss McCormack. 'If Paul outlived her it was to go to him.'

There was a small movement from the direction of the settee. 'And if he didn't?' asked Detective Constable Crosby.

'It came to me.' There was no mistaking the sardonic amusement in Miss McCormack's expression now. 'There are no children, you see.' She gave a wintry smile and said, 'Paul, of course, insists that the same argument about gain applies to me.'

'And does it?' enquired Sloan.

'Either Paul would have to be found guilty of Anna's murder or I would have had to kill them both to inherit.'

On the settee Detective Constable Crosby stirred. 'And did you try?'

All trace of amusement vanished from Miss McCormack's face and she looked merely sad and weary. 'No, Constable, I didn't. And I don't know either how Paul killed Anna but I can tell you one thing. He did it before my very eyes and I can't for the life of me think how.'

'Perhaps,' said Detective Inspector Sloan, falling back on formality, 'you would tell us about the day in question ...?'

'I'd gone over to their house after tea—not that they were tea drinkers—at about a quarter past five. Paul was there but Anna hadn't come home from the hairdressers'—she was a bit later back than she expected. The traffic's always pretty bad then, you know.'

'We know,' said Sloan moderately.

'Paul said he'd only just got back from the office and he hadn't been home in the middle of the day because he'd had a business luncheon.'

'So there was no way that he could have given his wife any poison before you came?' said Crosby. 'Is that what you mean?'

They hadn't, apparently, taught the Detective Constable at the Police Training College anything about not accepting statements by interested parties at face value but Sloan let that pass for the time being.

'Exactly,' said Miss McCormack as if to a promising pupil. 'Anyway, Anna came in just then, very smart from the hairdressers' and with loads of shopping, and said she was dying for a drink.'

'And die she did,' said Crosby incorrigibly.

Sloan decided that there was perhaps something to be said for the 'sitting next to Nellie' school of learning after all. No self-respecting mentor would have let him get away with that.

'Paul asked me what I would have and I asked for a dry ginger ale ...'

'You were driving, miss?' said Sloan. He would deal with Crosby in the privacy of the police car later.

'No, Inspector, I don't drive. I'm teetotal but,' again the steely glint of amusement, 'I think you could say that Paul and Anna weren't.'

'I see, miss. And then?'

'Paul asked Anna what she would like and she asked for a Black Cat.'

'A black cat?' Sloan wrote that down rather doubtfully.

'Paul said she wasn't to call it that. Its proper name was pousse-café. Naturally I asked what it was and Anna said it was a cocktail that Paul had been practising.'

Even the soi-disant detective sitting on the settee pricked up his ears at that.

'Paul,' continued Miss McCormack, 'said that he'd found the recipe in an old book of drinks and Anna and he rather liked it. In fact he said he'd have one too and was I sure I wouldn't change my mind about the ginger ale.'

'And did you, miss?'

'Certainly not, Inspector. I never touch alcohol and it's just as well I didn't because I'm sure that's how he killed her.'

'With the Black Cat?' Sloan sat back and thought hard. In his file were statements from the Scenes of Crimes Officer and the Forensic Science people that none of the bottles in the Macmillans' drinks cabinet contained antimony.

'With the pousse-café. Anna said she liked the Rainbow one best.' Miss McCormack pursed her lips and said, 'What I can't get over is that he must have poisoned her while I was watching him. He even told me what he was putting in it as he made it.'

'And can you remember, miss?'

'He started with grenadine syrup which is red and then maraschino ... white.'

Sloan made a note. 'Then ...'

'Crème de menthe.'

'That's green,' said Sloan confidently. 'After that ...'

'Yellow Chartreuse. I remember that particularly because Paul couldn't find it to begin with and Anna said she was sure there was a full bottle of Chartreuse somewhere.'

'And was there?' Sloan had a list but he wasn't going to consult it. Not here and now. Nor his notes on the very high solubility of potassium antimony tartrate crystals.

'Yes, but it was green Chartreuse and that wouldn't have done because of the crème de menthe, you see.'

'No, miss. I don't see. You'll have to tell me why it wouldn't have done.'

'The Rainbow pousse-café is made up of drinks of all different colours,' said Miss McCormack. 'They're in the glass together but in layers.'

'Neapolitan,' said the over-grown school boy on the settee decisively.

'All you need is a steady hand,' she said. 'And you get a striped drink.'

'Did your brother-in-law find the yellow Chartreuse?' asked Sloan.

'Oh, yes, in the end,' said Miss McCormack. 'And the orange curaçao and the cognac.'

'What colour is cognac?' enquired Crosby.

'Amber. That was last.' She looked up. 'I must say the two glasses looked quite pretty standing there.'

'Forever Amber,' said Crosby.

'And then?' said Sloan, taking no notice.

'And then they drank them.'

'Both of them?'

'That is the interesting thing,' agreed Miss McCormack. 'Yes, Paul drank his, too.'

'Like the dog that didn't bark in the night,' said Crosby.

He was ignored.

'And you are quite sure, miss, that exactly the same—er—ingredients went into each drink?'

'Quite sure,' said Miss McCormack firmly. 'I tell you, I saw them made and the same amount came out of each bottle. Anyway, Paul let Anna choose the one she wanted herself.'

'Then what happened?' asked Sloan.

'We sat chatting while they drank their pousse-cafés. You obviously have to do it very slowly or the rainbow effect is spoilt.'

'Yes, miss.'

'We must have been sitting there for—oh, the best part of half an hour, Inspector, when the phone went. Paul went to answer it—he hoped it would be the garage to say that his car was ready after servicing. He came back presently to say that it was and he was just slipping out to collect it before the garage closed at six.'

'And then?'

For the first time Miss McCormack's composure crumpled. 'Anna got up and took the empty glasses out to the kitchen and then I heard her start vomiting—just ordinarily at first and then really violently.'

Detective Inspector Sloan had all the information he needed about the lethal effects of antimony in his file too but he still listened to the woman in front of him.

'By the time Paul came back poor Anna was in a pretty bad way with stomach cramps. He rang the doctor and they got her into hospital but she died that night in terrible pain.'

Sloan listened even more attentively to the distressed woman before him and then, policeman first and policeman second, said, 'What happened to the empty glasses?'

'They were found on the draining board in the kitchen afterwards, washed and upside-down. I think Anna must have done that before she started being ill.'

Sloan nodded. The police had gone to the house before Paul Macmillan had left the hospital and found no antimony anywhere but he did not say so to the woman in front of him.

'And neither you nor your brother-in-law was taken ill as well?' asked Sloan, although he knew already that antimony wasn't one of those poisons to which you build up a tolerance with low doses.

'Right as ninepence, both of us,' responded Miss McCormack. 'I understand,' she went on spiritedly, 'that Paul is alleging that I poisoned Anna after he had left to pick up his car.'

'I haven't spoken to him yet,' said Sloan diplomatically. 'We're on our way there now ...'

Once back in the police car, though, Sloan told Crosby to drive only as far as the nearest lay-by. The two policemen sat there for some time while Detective Inspector Sloan sat and thought and Detective Constable Crosby to all intents and purposes just sat.

Eventually Detective Inspector Sloan pulled out the list of the contents of the drinks cabinet chez Macmillan and studied it carefully.

'What was it you said about the dog that didn't bark in the night, Crosby?'

'That it was interesting,' said the Constable. 'It's a quotation.'

'Would you say a bottle of grenadine that wasn't there was interesting, too?'

'Sir?'

'Never mind. Let's go and arrest Paul Macmillan for the murder of his wife, Anna.'

'How did he do it, then, sir?' Crosby let the clutch in at speed. If there was one thing in the world that he really liked it was driving fast cars fast.

'He put the antimony in the grenadine syrup beforehand and waited until his sister-in-law or some equally good witness came at drinks time. She was the best bet because she was both teetotal and short-sighted. Admirable characteristics, Crosby, if you propose murdering your wife by cocktail.'

'But Miss McCormack doesn't drink, sir.'

'Exactly. He knew she wouldn't accept a pousse-café or any other barbarically named alcoholic concoction. He could count on it.'

'What about the short sight?'

'I'm coming to that. He makes the cocktail up before her very eyes as the conjurors say and lets his wife choose hers. It doesn't matter which glass she chooses because they've both got antimony in ...'

'But, sir ...'

'But remember he knows there's antimony in his and his wife doesn't know that there's antimony in hers.'

'So ...'

'So she drinks hers to the very last drop.'

'And he doesn't?'

'You can bet your life he doesn't, Crosby. He leaves the bottom layer.'

'The grenadine syrup?'

'Exactly. Put in first according to the recipe because it has got the highest specific gravity of all the constituents and thus stays at the bottom of the glass.'

'Where he leaves it?'

'Exactly. That was made much easier for him by the telephone ringing when it did—I dare say we shall find out when we ask that he arranged for the call from the garage as late in the day before they closed as possible. It gave him the excuse to leave the last of his drink untouched.'

'But what about the rest of the grenadine syrup?' asked Crosby, taking the corner at a speed that took insufficient account of centrifugal force.

'I think we shall find that went into his pocket while his back was to the two women and that it got lost on the way to or from the garage.'

'Like the Superintendent said, sir,' said Crosby going through the gears, 'it was an "open-and-shut" case then after all.'

'Well,' said Sloan modestly, 'I think you might say it was really more a matter of knowing exactly where the rainbow ends.'

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Injury Time by Catherine Aird. Copyright © 1996 Catherine Aird. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Injury Time: Collected Mysteries

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Collected Mysteries

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Injury Time: Collected Mysteries

eBook

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Injury Time

Collected Mysteries

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Table of Contents

Contents

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