Poison

by Charlot King

  Jonathan looks startled and drops his drink, which smashes on the marble tiles under his feet. Elizabeth continues.

  “Be careful of the glass Godric.” Elizabeth hates it when people leave broken glass. She looks at Jonathan. “You should sweep that up. She poisoned Rebecca’s drink. Did you have any before we came in Rebecca?”

  Rebecca now looks extremely worried and looks at Kara then at the glass that Godric has placed on the table away from Kara; the contents still in the pool.

  “No.” Rebecca shakes her head. “No, I didn’t drink anything.”

  Kara is frozen, her secrets are tumbling out. She leans against the terrace wall, looking down at the floor.

  Elizabeth continues, lightly treading over the broken glass and now with Jonathan and Rebecca in her sights.

  “I have reason to believe that Kara murdered Edward Wiley and Susan Bunt.”

  Rebecca looks at Elizabeth dumbfounded. As this news sinks in with everyone, Rebecca manages a quiet voice to question Elizabeth’s logic.

  “But Susan, it was her who cut up my dress. Remember I told you when you came to see me after Edward had been murdered? I told you, she followed me all the time. If anyone killed Edward, Susan did. Out of jealousy.”

  Elizabeth scratches her head with the flamingo stirrer.

  “Didn’t you say Susan cut up the wrong dress, a dress Jonathan bought you? You were right about the jealousy, but it was Kara who cut up the dress to you from your brother, don’t you see? Kara was jealous of your relationship with Jonathan. You told Godric earlier how close you are. It’s obvious for all to see. Kara is jealous of you, Rebecca. I half suspect she broke up your black velvet shoes. The ones damaged in the burglary to your college flat after Edward’s death. What burglar smashes up a pair of shoes?”

  Kara, rushing to Jonathan, pleads with him for his understanding. “You were always showering her with affection, with presents. Always calling her and checking up to see if she was all right. How do you think that made me feel?”

  Jonathan is in such shock. He just stands rigid, unresponsive to her grabbing at his arms and chest.

  “She’s my sister.”

  Elizabeth continues to press Kara. She knows it is only time and she will have this case wrapped up. What is taking Abley so long?

  “Was that a reason for murder?”

  Kara answers Elizabeth but still focuses her attention on Jonathan, pleading with him to understand.

  “You don’t know what it’s like to be an outsider every day of your life. With you, going on and on about your precious sister. How you can only come up to Cambridgeshire to do things with Rebecca and Edward. All the joint dinners and holidays with Rebecca while Edward is busy. Nothing for just us, nothing left just for me.”

  Jonathan is in a state, unsure what to do with himself, he walks over to the bar and pours himself a large whisky, then swigs it straight down. Elizabeth continues, walking around the front of the pool, aware she has a captive audience for now and must test out her theory, but also that she needs to close this down before Kara does something stupid, especially as she has no back up, and Godric, although handsome, is no fighter.

  “You said you didn’t know Edward well. That day I walked with you from the punts, but that’s not true, is it?”

  Jonathan, in disbelief, asks Kara, “What have you done? Murder? You must be a stranger to me. Otherwise nothing makes sense.”

  Kara pleads, “Don’t say that.”

  Elizabeth hasn’t got time for Jonathan’s emotions. She needs to keep focused. Get a confession.

  “You poisoned Edward because he came back knowing your secret, didn’t he?”

  Kara twists round now and faces Elizabeth, snarling aggressively, “What would you know of it? He’d always come across so kind and nice. But he was so worried about his own reputation. Huh, you’d think Jonathan would have more to worry about than Edward, what with him being in the public eye. But no, Edward was paranoid the university would find out about my family and it would be guilt by association.”

  Elizabeth can’t believe the light in which Kara paints her colleague. Elizabeth puts a hand on Godric’s shoulder as he sits on a lounger near Rebecca.

  “I don’t think he was, Kara. You were worried he’d tell Jonathan though, worried Jonathan would call off the wedding.”

  Kara opens the top of the water bottle in her hands.

  “Yes, well. He’s done that now, so Edward’s won.”

  Rebecca interjects, at the horror of Kara’s words.

  “He’s dead, how can he have won? You killed my husband?”

  Elizabeth leans against the back of the lounger, her hip hurting her from her earlier fall in the greenhouse. Elizabeth’s body is reflected in the pool, however, making her look much taller. Kara stares at Elizabeth, almost hypnotically as she throws the water bottle against the wall in anger.

  “You can’t prove any of it anyway.”

  Elizabeth sinks her head down into her shoulders. She’s tired. This is nearly over.

  “I’m afraid, Kara, we can. We already have enough evidence in the pool to charge you with attempted murder of Rebecca. You poisoned her drink.”

  Jonathan looks at Kara closely and can see she isn’t denying it. He can’t believe his eyes and walks further away from Kara, now almost inside the house, in the hope that it isn’t real.

  “Oh my god. I should call my Whip immediately. We need to close this down. Get her out of the country.”

  Unperturbed by Jonathan’s train of thought, Elizabeth continues to get the confession she needs for Abley, and so Abley can see she can do this again.

  “Edward came back from Africa knowing your secret, didn’t he? Your secret of child slavery you’d hidden so well, your secret which would force you back to Africa, an exile from Britain, back to your poisonous family. Jonathan was your ticket to staying in this country, into respectability was he not, Ms Tips? If you could just marry him you could stay here forever. No need for a visa, no awkward questions from the State. Edward was trying to warn me about you, Ms Tips... that’s what he was saying. Then I thought, how did you do it? And it suddenly occurred to me that I’d been looking in the wrong place. I’d been ignoring something really important.” Elizabeth pauses and looks down, and everyone in the room hangs on her next word. “Rebecca, do you by any chance have a necklace that Edward brought back for you from Africa? One with red and black beads?”

  Rebecca looks surprised.

  “How did you know he bought me -?”

  Elizabeth interrupts.

  “Just a hunch actually. It appears Edward bought you the same presents as Susan on more than one occasion. I saw the photograph of the horse with the gap in his teeth in your drawing room behind the door, near the wellington boots, and then saw the very same painting at Susan’s home hanging up. Then there was the neck scarf you both had, with little Scotty dogs?”

  Rebecca touches her neck, thinking of the scarf, wondering where it was, and how she could have been so wrong about Edward. She can’t believe it all. She gets up to go into the drawing room and comes out with her bag. She opens the clasp and retrieves a necklace, and Godric holds her steady and returns her to her seat. Elizabeth continues talking to Kara.

  “So you took Rebecca’s necklace, Kara.” Elizabeth looks to Godric. “Godric, can you have a look in the kitchen to see if there is anything that will crush one of these beads?”

  “Sure.”

  Godric walks off to the kitchen. Elizabeth walks over to stand at a table near the bar. She continues to look at Kara.

  “Perfect for framing Rebecca. Look, it’s loose. Some of the beads are missing. Hey presto, you made it look like Rebecca has taken some beads off, used the poison in those beads to kill Edward in a piqué of jealousy over leaving her for Susan.”

  Jonathan is trying to follow Elizab
eth. “I don’t understand. Edward was poisoned?”

  Elizabeth explains, matter of factly. “Kara is better at gardening than she will lead you to believe. Quite a whizz with the poisonous plants. Yes, she stole Rebecca’s beads to try to frame her. Poison Edward with some of the beads.”

  Godric comes back with a pestle and mortar for herb crushing.

  “This do?”

  “Thank you.”

  Elizabeth puts the pestle down on the patio table and then separates a bead from the others on the necklace. She then crushes it and shows Rebecca and Jonathan.

  “What is this?”

  Rebecca is upset and confused.

  “What are you doing?”

  She shoves it under Jonathan’s nose.

  “How the hell should I know? Dust?”

  “You don’t know. Why should you? You’re not murderers. But Kara knows. It’s abrus precatorius, and the poison? Abrin. Kara would know, being green fingered, wouldn’t you Kara? You paid someone to make sure Edward brought this necklace back with him from Africa, didn’t you? You got them to offer it to him in his hotel, as a gift with compliments of the hotel management. All wrapped up classy ready for his wife. You got him to bring back his own murder weapon. Don’t deny it. I phoned the Hotel Manager to ask for some more necklaces and he told me Edward had asked about some necklaces after a man gave him a complimentary one.”

  Kara looks agitated and walks backwards to the left of the bar, eyeing a possible getaway through the orchard. She explains her reasoning to Elizabeth, as if to prove her own intelligence. “Rebecca was always whining about Edward. ‘Does he love me?’ ‘I think he’s cheating’. It really got on my nerves. I thought it would be fitting that it came from a present for her.”

  Jonathan and Rebecca are completely stunned, watching Kara squirm like a stranger before their eyes. Elizabeth, used to the final denouement with the guilty, is far more concerned about containing Kara’s anger while also trying to make sure she admits everything while there are witnesses.

  “You saw him earlier, the night he was killed, had drinks with him in The Green Magician. They found your fingerprints on a glass in the dish washer in the kitchens at that establishment.”

  Rebecca tries to process this.

  “But Edward said he was going to the department and then he would eat nearby, Professor Green?”

  Elizabeth looks at her watch and then replies.

  “Oh, he went to the department, but he left early. We know this because we found traces of the poison in The Green Magician, once we knew what we were looking for.”

  “From the beads?”

  “Yes. You see this,” Elizabeth holds up the crushed bead powder, “although it looks fairly innocuous, if ingested it inhibits cell protein synthesis. I’m sorry to have to tell you Rebecca, but it causes multiple organ failure. Usually after perhaps ten hours it makes it impossible to breathe and often causes people to vomit. Finally low blood pressure will do it. But you had to make sure it was quicker than that, didn’t you Kara?” Kara is staring at Elizabeth with hatred in her eyes. Elizabeth continues, “You had to make sure he didn’t tell Rebecca or Jonathan about Africa. So you put it in a line of cocaine, so he’d inhale it, didn’t you? Quite handy being his drug dealer.”

  Kara laughs out loud.

  “He was almost my biggest client, nearly.” Looking at her husband. Jonathan licks over his teeth and looks worried that she could so easily have murdered him the same way. Elizabeth continues.

  “Among the statements the police took of those who had eaten at The Green Magician Monday night, one man, who had been at a table with his dog, made a joke that Edward had gone downhill with his women over the night. I found him and I asked what he meant and he said Edward had met a very glamorous woman earlier in the night and then she was replaced by a rather frumpy woman later on. So I just put two and two together. First he met you, Kara, and then he met Susan Bunt. You had prepared an alibi, to go out with your friends all night after seeing Edward, after poisoning him. Only Edward scuppered your plans, as when he was with you in The Green Magician, after you’d given him cocaine, maybe in such a confident state he revealed all. He told you what he’d found out about you in Africa. He told you that he was going to get away from you and the family for good. He talked to you about his mistress, Susan, and showed you he’d bought a necklace for her.”

  Rebecca asks Elizabeth.

  “So he really was with Susan before he died?”

  Elizabeth nods. Rebecca gets up and walks to the edge of the terrace for some air, now standing in disbelief, with her back to the others. Kara walks behind the bar, she dips down below for a second and then re-emerges and walks out of the bar with some vodka. Elizabeth feels very tired, and her leg is hurting, but she’s also very excited, as she knows she has been right about the murders.

  “It was the same necklace as Rebecca’s. You’d already poisoned Edward so you had to get that necklace from Susan, in order to still frame Rebecca for his death. So it looked like Rebecca’s necklace had poisoned Edward and not Susan’s. We thought it was Susan’s at first. Didn’t we. No wonder you were happy then. I’m not sure who the man was on the bicycle Susan told Inspector Abley about, but I sense because that failed, you took matters into your own hands and followed Susan down an alley to get the beads back from her neck.”

  Jonathan looks up at his fiancée.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Godric believes he understands and so tries to explain.

  “Kara slipped in, in the morning, to Rebecca and Edward’s apartments and took Rebecca’s necklace to use to poison Edward. To frame Rebecca for his death, and take Rebecca out of the equation. It was all going to plan. But after she’d poisoned Edward, she heard him tell her he had another necklace. I guess if there was just one necklace with beads missing and the poison could be traced back to the necklace then all the fingers would point to Rebecca. But with Susan’s in the mix, she could be accused instead. The whole point of killing Edward was to frame Rebecca, to get her out the way to spend more time with Jonathan? Is that right Bunny?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Good God.” Jonathan can’t believe his ears.

  “The police found Susan’s necklace, which Edward grabbed from you as you pushed him into the river. He was trying to stop himself from falling in off the bridge. It was a mistake, you didn’t want him to have Susan’s necklace, you just still had them in your hands from taking them from Susan. This was a nightmare. That’s what was odd for me, when I knew what the poison was, but there were no beads missing from Susan’s neckalce.”

  Rebecca can’t believe what Elizabeth is saying, she screams at Kara “You killed him?!”

  Godric tries to calm Rebecca on the steps of the terrace, putting his arms around her, seeing his nanna needs to get through this.

  Elizabeth continues, talking to Kara “It had all gone wrong, so you thought you’d better make sure the beads you’d stolen from Rebecca were easy to find by the police, to frame her. Only you kept being interrupted to put the beads back as the bedders and porters were constantly keeping an eye on the rooms, to keep the press away. So you engineered a very visible break in. Only Inspector Abley interrupted you, and thought you were clearing up. There was never any man running down the stairs after the so called ‘break in’, was there, Kara? That’s when I realised it was you. You broke some black velvet bow dress shoes Rebecca told the police were from Jonathan. A clue too far, as nothing else seemed to be destroyed in the phoney break in. And Rebecca had her necklace returned.”

  Jonathan is both upset and curious.

  “Tell me it isn’t true. Why did you lie to me about your family? I just found out about your father, but you? Didn’t you love me?”

  “Because you wouldn’t have married me. You, with your political aspirations. Married to me?”

 
Elizabeth can’t let herself stop.

  “Trading in children, in Namibia, in the Congo. Buying them to work in the diamond mines and cocoa fields. Feeding them mud.”

  Rebecca turns around from facing the garden and looks at Kara from under her brow.

  “You are a heartless woman. You have something seriously wrong with you. I thought you were my friend and you do this?”

  Kara shouts at Rebecca.

  “Oh shut up! I’d have been okay if it hadn’t been for your stupid husband!”

  Elizabeth continues.

  “Edward had found out, and your next problem was that he might tell Susan about it. In fact he had written to Susan about it. It was his insurance policy, if something happened. He posted it the night he died. He was worried that you might shut him up before he could tell. Ironically, you had no idea about the letter. But you suspected Edward would have told Susan that night, so you took no chances and poisoned all the drinks in her fridge the next morning while she was out.”

  Jonathan gasps, but Kara spits back at him. “Well you were doing something dodgy with Edward in Africa too. I found the cheque.”

  “We were planning to fly everyone over to Africa as a holiday for part of our wedding celebrations. Edward had taken some money to find locations and book hotels for everyone. He was returning the remaining money he didn’t need.”

  While Jonathan is finishing his reply, quick as a flash Kara grabs Elizabeth and holds a fruit slicing knife to her neck, getting the full attention of Godric, Jonathan and Rebecca.

  “No one come close. I’m not going down for this.”

  “Put that down right now!” Godric shouts at Kara, but Kara just tightens her grip. “If anyone comes close I will cut her throat.”

  Godric is poised to try to get the knife off Kara, but Kara starts to look behind her and move backwards.

  “I’m going to leave and no one must follow. If you do she will get hurt.”

  “Just let her go. Take me.” Godric tries to reason with Kara. “I won’t hold you back. My grandmother is injured, she will be slower.”