Sweet Poison

by Douglas Clark

  Masters said: ‘Couldn’t it have been misadventure? The woman and her two dogs could all have been poisoned from eating the same food—if it were bad.’

  ‘Impossible. No sign of food poisoning. And by that I mean food that had gone bad, not food that had had poison added. She didn’t vomit, get diarrhoea or any of the usual things you get from eating crab paste that’s gone off. But even so, I checked up here—on the off-chance. Mrs Partridge and her dogs were fed from the communal kitchen. For days past neither she nor the dogs had been out to eat anywhere else. And she’d had no special dishes provided. So everything she’d had was eaten by scores of other people, and nobody else has suffered any trouble at all.’

  ‘What did she have for breakfast the day she died?’

  ‘Toast and black coffee. Not much to go bad among that, is there?’

  ‘It provides a double check on eliminating food poisoning,’ Masters said. ‘Food is digested within four hours, and if she’d had anything bad the night before she’d have been ill in the small hours. And certainly not in any condition to eat breakfast and take her dogs to the vet at nine o’clock.’

  Green said: ‘That leaves us with either suicide or murder.’

  Mundy grimaced. ‘Suicide? Possible, but not probable, I think. You see, Fay Partridge was one of them there. She was in the money and intended sticking with it. Besides that, would she poison her dogs as well as herself and then take them to the vet?’

  ‘Fit of remorse, perhaps.’

  ‘In that case, wouldn’t she have called a doctor for herself?’

  ‘Not if she loved the little doggie-woggies better than mumsy herself.’

  Mundy shrugged. ‘O.K. What could she have poisoned herself with that the doctors couldn’t locate in her body and we couldn’t locate in her flat, the dustbins or anywhere else in this camp? Leaving aside the fact that there wasn’t the usual suicide note or anything of that sort and that, in a moment of lucidity at the hospital, she was able to assure the doctors that she hadn’t taken anything.’

  ‘I think you’ve made your point,’ Masters said.

  ‘We had to make sure,’ Green added.

  ‘Murder it is. But why ask for us?’

  ‘Because it stinks. The people who benefit from her death live miles away and haven’t been near here for long enough.’

  ‘The stepdaughters? Don’t they live here?’

  ‘Both married and living away. That’s point one. The second point is fixing the time at which she could have been poisoned. I reckon—in spite of everything—it must have been at breakfast time on the day she died, mustn’t it?’

  ‘Why?’ Green asked. ‘You’ve already exonerated the food.’

  ‘The food as it left the kitchen. But not necessarily in the state it reached Mrs Partridge.’

  ‘Meaning poison was added? To the sugar or something?’

  ‘Yes. It must have been breakfast because, as the Chief Inspector said, if it was dinner the night before or even her bedtime drink, she’d have been ill through the night, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘She certainly would,’ Masters said.

  ‘But we mustn’t forget the dogs were feeling ill by breakfast time,’ Mundy continued, ‘even though their mistress wasn’t. So they must have been got at before breakfast. I mean, even if, by any chance, the dogs did eat breakfast, they wouldn’t have had enough time to develop an illness for their mistress to get herself ready and round to the vet’s by nine o’clock. And if you can visualize a killer getting at two poodles in the middle of the night and their mistress in the morning, I can’t. It just doesn’t make sense. That’s why I asked for you to be called in.’

  Masters said: ‘Right. Let’s forget the murder for a bit, shall we? Let’s have the background. Who Mr Partridge was and how she came to own this place, and so on. That way we’ll get the feel of the case. Get to know the people involved.’

  ‘That at least is easy enough. This place—Throscum House and its grounds—was taken over by the army in the war. The family that owned it—the Stipple-Houndsbys—stayed on in part of the house. The old man died in forty-three and his son was killed in action. There was a daughter, too, but she married some chap with a title, and lives in Berkshire. Anyhow, as far as we’re concerned, the family’s finished and hasn’t been heard of round here for ages.

  ‘But to get back to the war. The army put up quite a lot of wooden huts and laid a drill square and also used quite a lot of tented accommodation.’

  Masters said: ‘How much land is there?’

  ‘In acres? Lord knows. But the property is about three-quarters of a mile deep, running from the road down to the bay, and I’d say four hundred yards wide at least at its narrowest point. But it’s not exactly rectangular, so it’s difficult to tell. Besides which, there’s a couple of sizeable meadows hedged off down on the western side.’

  ‘Quite an estate. Forty or fifty acres.’

  ‘More like seventy or eighty, I reckon. You’ll be able to judge better if you walk round. I’m going by the price paid by Partridge.’

  ‘I interrupted. Sorry.’

  ‘What? Oh, yes. Well, when the Yanks started coming over in millions in the middle of the war, this was one of the camps they took over. They didn’t like the look of the British army huts, so as there was plenty of room to build, they took them over as stores and lecture rooms and put up their own accommodation, using prisoners of war for labour. Their huts were like our pre-war army bungalows. I’ve seen them at permanent army camps like Bulford. Bathrooms and lavatories in separate rooms at one end.’

  ‘Quite lush,’ Green said. ‘I’ve used them.’

  Mundy said: ‘They did it in style. They built a big Officers’ Mess, too, out of concrete blocks, and put hand-basins and fireplaces in every room and so on.’

  ‘Hadn’t the British officers got a Mess?’

  ‘They used part of Throscum House. But the Yanks took that over just for a general and his staff. The ordinary regimental officers used this new block a quarter of a mile away on the eastern slope.’

  Green said: ‘What are those pipes laid on dwarf pillars by the side of the road?’

  ‘That’s the American hot-water system. From a central boiler house. For the sake of speed they laid it above ground and just slapped about three inches of asbestos padding all round it so that it wouldn’t lose heat. And by cripes, it’s efficient. If we British tried to do it you’d get nothing out of it but snow broth—if it worked at all. But that’s been going all these years and from what I hear it’s never really broken down.’

  Masters said: ‘What happened after the war?’

  ‘The Yanks upped and away, leaving everything just as it stood. The British army was making cuts and didn’t want the place back. The Stipple-Houndsbys were dead or gone. The executors of the estate wanted the army to clear the site. The War Office put the huts up for sale on condition that whoever bought them dismantled and removed them at their own expense. They’d a hope! Round here it was a daft thing to try. And who’d have removed the permanent buildings and drill square? If the place had been near London or the Midlands where there was a housing shortage something might have been done. But nothing was. This place looked as if it was going to go the way of the old wartime airfields. Left to go derelict.’

  ‘They could have housed a thousand homeless,’ Green said.

  ‘What was there in Throscum to bring people here? No work. Anyhow, the executors couldn’t sell the house because it was too big for nowadays and the troops hadn’t exactly improved it. And nobody who could have afforded it would want it with huts and petrol pumps just outside the front door.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Well, in those days I was a sergeant, so I probably didn’t get all the ins and outs of it absolutely correct. What I mean is, what I got to know was hearsay. But I do know that Claud Partridge wasn’t much of a mucher. Oh, he did his bit in the war, you know, as lots of his type did. It suited him. He’d married a dom
estic science teacher, a very nice girl—funny how some of the nicest fell for those rake-hellies—and she stayed at home with their two little girls while he was away enjoying himself. And from what I heard he did just that in a big way.’

  Masters said: ‘I’m told his type was not at all uncommon. The sort that helped win the war but couldn’t be bothered to help win the peace.’

  ‘That was Claud to a T. He’d never stuck at any civvy job for long, and he didn’t intend to when he came home, I can tell you. But he wasn’t a fool for all his drinking and womanizing. He saw how matters stood here with Throscum House, and started to do a bit of asking around. As I heard it, the Yanks had pulled out leaving their huts intact. They didn’t want them. But the damned things didn’t belong to the British so they weren’t on Whitehall’s books—didn’t exist, in fact. And there was the War Office, faced with the job of clearing them away. You can imagine what sort of an embarrassment it would be to Whitehall to have to pay for moving something that didn’t exist. Still there were the British huts here, and the executors were demanding their removal and the restoration of the grounds. Not that they were getting anywhere, and weren’t likely to. So when Claud Partridge asked what they wanted for the house, they said twelve thousand and a hundred pounds an acre for the land, just as it stood, not cleared up or anything.’

  Green said: ‘That was dirt cheap.’

  ‘Maybe. Fully cleared it would have fetched twice as much. But even in those days the twenty-odd thousand they were asking was a tidy sum.’

  ‘I agree,’ Masters said. ‘I should have said it was a fair asking price, all things considered.’

  Mundy went on: ‘Claud was pretty fly, as I told you. He approached the War Office with an offer to clear the site for twenty-five thousand if he could keep the material. Well, the War Office had been putting out quite a lot of tenders for site clearance in those days, and compared with some they got for similar jobs, twenty-five thousand was cheap to get the executors off their backs. They agreed.

  ‘Now exactly what financial fiddle Claud pulled to bridge the gap, I don’t know. But he’d been careful to put a hundred pounds down by way of a deposit on the house, so he couldn’t be unseated even if anybody had got wind of what was happening, and had tried to beat him to it.’

  ‘He paid the executors with the War Office’s money,’ Masters said, ‘and he had the house, the grounds and the buildings without raising a finger?’

  ‘That’s about the strength of it.’

  ‘Good for him. And all legal, I suppose?’ Green asked.

  ‘Perfectly. Everybody was satisfied. And Claud had a buckshee five or six thousand into the bargain. Quite a handy sum to help him turn the place, as it stood, into a holiday camp-cum-motel.’

  Masters said: ‘I’ve heard of some con tricks, but this beats the band. What happened?’

  ‘As soon as he got the place, Claud lost interest. It was his wife who did the work. She really put it on its feet. Oh, Claud was useful at buying food in bulk at bargain prices when nobody else could get it—and things like that. He’d turn his hand to anything that smacked of the smart-Alec stuff. Some of his ideas were good, mind you. There were half a dozen of those static water tanks dotted about among the huts. Remember them? About four feet deep and thirty foot square?’

  Green said: ‘At every street corner, they were, in the war.’

  ‘That’s right. Claud had them unbolted and built a swimming pool out of them. He had to dig the hole and provide a bit of paint, but it’s still out there—in use.’

  ‘What did he want a swimming pool for, so close to the shore?’ Masters said.

  ‘Because where his ground runs down to the bay it’s all mud. Not fit for bathing when the tide’s out.’

  ‘I see. So the place became a gold mine?’

  ‘The first Mrs Partridge worked it up into one. And all the time she was doing it, Claud was up to his tricks. But she always told her girls that the money she was making would be theirs one day, because although the place belonged entirely to Claud, she expected to see him out. The way he lived he might have gone at any time.’

  ‘But she died first?’

  ‘Of hard work. With nothing to leave directly to the girls, who were both married by then. I don’t know whether it was the fact that they were away and not here to keep an eye on him, or whether it was just Claud’s natural cussedness that drove him to marry again. A woman nearly thirty years younger than himself and . . . well, you know the type . . . suicide blonde with hair like Instow sands, varnished, long earrings, cigarette holder, two poodles, a voice like the Boys’ Brigade band and a taste in clothes that my missus calls “as tarty as muck”.’

  Green said: ‘Barmaid?’

  ‘No decent barmaid would have looked at her.’

  ‘Like that, eh?’

  ‘We knew Fay Cramphorn—as she was before she married—long before Claud Partridge did.’

  Masters said: ‘When did they get married?’

  ‘Just over three years ago. And nine months later Claud died of a heart attack—in bed.’

  ‘Leaving a wealthy widow?’

  ‘She got the lot.’

  ‘Nothing for the daughters?’

  ‘Ah! Now you come to another of the sore points. Claud would have as little to do with lawyers as he would with policemen. Not that he ever fell foul of us, but I think he was one of those who just hated authority in any form. He made his own will.’

  ‘And as usual I suppose it was badly drawn.’

  ‘That’s it. He got one of those printed forms from a stationer and copied out exactly what he’d had on his previous will—when he left everything to his first wife. That one had been drawn up by a solicitor, because his first wife had seen to that, but it was obviously cancelled by her death, so he thought he could save the fee by copying it word for word, substituting his new wife’s name. That was fair enough in so far as it went. But where, with his first wife, he knew she would make provision for their kids, he wasn’t so sure this second one would. So he added a bit in his own words.’

  ‘And those were not clear as to their exact meaning?’

  ‘The girls said not. They put in an application to the High Court saying that their father’s intention was to provide for his property being divided equally between his widow and themselves. Mrs Partridge pleaded that his intention had been to settle his property—that is, that the income should be paid to her with the capital being ultimately divided between his children at her death. The Court agreed with her because the first clause specifically stated that he gave everything to her, and they thought she was being pretty unselfish in agreeing to settlement. But that wasn’t any use to the girls. They’re as old as their stepmother. That meant they probably wouldn’t outlive her to enjoy any of the money their mother had worked so hard for.’

  Green said: ‘I can see their point.’

  ‘So can I. But now they have outlived her. And she’s died in suspicious circumstances. That makes the stepdaughters prime suspects, but as I say, they haven’t been near Throscum for long enough.’

  ‘You checked up on their whereabouts?’ Masters asked.

  ‘First thing I did. She died on Tuesday. I got the local police in Hull and Norwich to check up on both families—husbands as well—for the whole weekend from Friday to Tuesday.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Not one of them had left their houses for anything more than a local shopping tour or to go to work.’

  Masters said: ‘Have they come down since the death?’

  ‘Both expected tomorrow—with husbands—for the funeral, and expected to stay for the weekend. Bound to, I suppose, as this place now reverts to them.’

  Masters said: ‘Have you got the reports from Hull and Norwich?’

  ‘They were phoned through. They’re in my notes.’

  ‘Thank you. I’d better look at them before I meet the Misses Partridge.’

  ‘As was. The elder one, Lorna, is now Mrs Thoresby.
The other one—two years younger—is Mrs Becky Honingham.’

  ‘So they seem non-starters. But talking about movements, I’ve realized there’s a question I’d like to ask regarding something you said earlier—about Mrs Partridge. You said she hadn’t eaten anything outside Throscum House for days before her death. How long was that and exactly how did you establish it?’

  ‘For four days—Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. That’s why I asked for a check on her stepdaughters for the same period. As for how I established it—well, by questioning the staff. It’s vouched for by the receptionist, the cleaning woman, the waiters and the dancing professional who was, apparently, quite friendly with her.’

  Green said: ‘Hanging round her skirts, was he? Hoping for a few of the pickings from a wealthy young widow? Gigolo style?’

  ‘Maybe. He doesn’t strike me as being too bad a type. But you’ll be able to judge for yourselves.’

  ‘Did they suggest any reason why she hadn’t been out?’ Masters inquired.

  Mundy shrugged his shoulders. ‘I didn’t get that far. No time. With the inquest less than twenty-four hours after she died.’

  ‘Can you tell us whether it was usual for her to stay put for days at a time?’

  ‘I did establish that. It was most unusual.’

  Green said: ‘Bit of a gadabout, was she?’

  ‘Apparently. Definitely Merry Widowish.’

  Masters tapped his dead pipe out on his heel and tried to stand up as much as the cramped space would allow him. Mundy pushed a file across the table. ‘Well, there you are. It’s all yours.’

  ‘Have you booked us in anywhere, Super, or are we expected to sleep in this contraption?’ Green asked.

  Mundy laughed. He seemed relieved that the job was finally off his shoulders. He said: ‘No, no. You’re going to do it in style. There’s a complete bungalow reserved for you, and you’ll eat in Throscum House. You’re summer guests.’

  ‘Bungalow? You mean army hut, don’t you?’

  ‘It used to be. But you’ll find it nicely divided up into bedrooms, and there’s a good sitting-room and private bathroom. The car can be parked on the square and you’ll find there’s a steward and stewardess for each group of huts, so you’ll be well looked after. I’ll leave the van here with one man if you like.’