Heberden's Seat

by Douglas Clark

  Masters began from the beginning.

  “After we discovered Belton’s body in the well, and we were waiting for arrangements to be made between the local police and the Yard for us to take over the investigation, Mr Webb told us that not only had he reports of three men missing, but that he’d also had five mysterious fires which seemed to show there was an arsonist at large.”

  “I’d read about that in the local rag,” said Watling.

  “That was a coincidence that my team found hard to accept. Mr Webb being so closely involved just accepted that his normal peaceful area had suffered a rash—not necessarily of crime, because at the time there was nothing to cause him to think that the three grown men who had disappeared had all died violent deaths—but of unaccustomed events that needed his attention. As I said, he was closely involved. We were the newcomers who saw most of the game. At least we saw there might be a connection between the various events and, as a result of our discussing the possibility, we decided it would be unwise to ignore the fires.”

  “I suppose,” said Watling, “that if you investigated them and found no connection, nothing would be lost; whereas if you ignored them and it later turned out they were important, you would have been left with egg on your faces.”

  “That’s it. DCI Green undertook that particular job. He made some interesting discoveries. The five fires made a sandwich. The bread and butter on each side was nothing more than four useless old barns and tumbledown haystacks. Damage and loss were minimal. But the meat in the sandwich was a vet’s surgery, and there the damage was total and considerable. Mr Green soon realised that the four minor fires were simply camouflage for the fifth.”

  “How could he possibly decide that?”

  “He very cleverly discovered that the four fires were started by means of using spectacle lenses as burning glasses. But, and this is important, all the fires were started at the same time of day—in the early evening to be precise. Burning glasses can be used at any time of the day as long as the sun is shining, so why early evening? The DCI discovered that only on one day in a week could it be guaranteed that the vet’s premises would be vacant, and that was in the evening. So the fire had to be started in the early evening, before the sun went down. In theory, that is. Mr Green came to the conclusion that a burning glass was not used at the surgery. The place was broken into and a fire started under the gas bottles to cause a tremendous explosion. Why? The answer that came to the DCI was that something was to be removed from the surgery and the explosion was to camouflage the theft. We were meant to believe the explosion was the unintentional outcome of the fire.

  “So, my sergeants made exhaustive enquiries as to what the surgery had contained, down to the last pill and medical substance the vet could remember. Including the contents of his dangerous substances cupboard.

  “The first body found was that of Belton. Though he had been down a well for several days he had not drowned. You, doctor, diagnosed that he had died from respiratory depression, but were unable to find the cause of the condition. The second body found was that of Melada, and there you were able to tell us that he had died as a result of a blow on the head.

  “We have confirmed this. Mrs Belton has told us that her husband and Melada, fought in the churchyard and that Melada, who was getting the better of the battle, stumbled and struck his head on a tombstone.”

  “And Belton buried him?”

  “In a fit of panic. As an agricultural implements salesman he was accustomed to carrying samples of small tools in his car. He hurriedly buried Melada and then, with the help of his wife, disposed of Melada’s car in a flooded brick pit.”

  “That’d be at Walmby,” suggested Webb.

  “Quite right. But now we come to the reason for the fight between Melada and Belton. The church of St John the Divine was redundant and up for sale. Melada decided to buy it. His wife didn’t wish him to do so on several counts. First she believed they couldn’t afford it; second, she disliked the building and the churchyard; and third she feared the uses she thought Melada intended to make of the premises. Belton was her husband’s great friend and, secretly, although she herself knew it, an admirer of Happy. Happy asked Belton to help her persuade Melada not to buy the church.

  “Normal pressure wouldn’t do the trick, but when Belton learned that St John’s had strong family connections with the Heberdens, Belton thought he saw a way of pleasing Happy. He knew Heberden—as a business customer—and so approached him with a story. Melada was getting the church very cheaply and intended to turn it into a vice-den. Heberden, a public-spirited man, was keen to stop this. Belton suggested that the easiest way was for Heberden to outbid Melada for the church. As the amount needed would be only five thousand pounds, Heberden agreed and Belton offered to work as his agent.

  “Melada was told he had been outbid, and by a bit of clever thinking, came to the conclusion that it was his pal, Belton, who had been instrumental in doing him down. So Melada followed Belton to the church—where he had gone to collect a bit of loot he had stashed away there—and an argument and the subsequent fight took place.

  “So Melada died and was buried. But Happy is a clever little thing. When Melada disappeared, she sought Belton’s advice and help. But neither was forthcoming. This roused Happy’s suspicions and when she tried to beard Mrs Belton in Lincoln, she discovered that lady buying medicaments for bruises and sprains. As she has no children, Mrs B must have been buying the ointments for her husband. So, reasoned Happy, Mr B had been in a fight and was keeping hidden and wouldn’t speak to her on the phone. Which meant that the fight had been with Melada. But Melada would have made mincemeat of Belton in a scrap. Yet Melada was missing. Happy came to the conclusion that somehow Belton had bested Melada, and the non-appearance of the latter could mean only one thing.”

  “That he was dead?”

  Masters nodded. “And she was right, wasn’t she?”

  “Obviously.”

  “I told you she was a clever little thing. She has a good degree in zoology and conservation. That would mean she would know something about animals. She decided to put that knowledge to use to gain revenge for Melada’s death.”

  “Happy did?” asked Reed in a shocked voice. “How, Chief, how?”

  “You should know. You’ve done a lot of the spadework and been in on the research. She wears glasses. They become her because she has an endearing little habit of letting them slip down her nose and then pushing them up again. She wears them all the time, so we assumed that she would have to have them changed fairly regularly. It was no great difficulty to find the optician who tests her eyes and supplies her spectacles. The lenses and even parts of lenses discovered at the fires were capable of being measured—something Happy probably did not realise. . . .”

  “Or she thought they would be destroyed in the fire,” said Green. “Or lost, or not noticed. Maybe she thought nobody would even look for anything at fires in old ricks and barns.”

  “So she didn’t use that method at the vet’s surgery?”

  “No. She broke in and pinched what she wanted, then lit a fire under the gas bottles. You see, Doc, in a way she was clever. She was going round starting fires, but she didn’t even have to carry matches let alone combustible material for four of them. She could have been stopped and searched, even, and the game wouldn’t have been given away, because lots of people carry two pairs of spectacles.”

  Masters continued.

  “The focal lengths of the lenses found at the sites of the fires were measured, and in each case they were found to conform to prescriptions which had been made up for Happy in the past. And, incidentally, the lenses in women’s spectacles are usually smaller than those men wear. Those found by Mr Green were of the smaller size and of a shape usually associated with women’s spectacles.

  “So we are fairly sure that Happy was the fire-raiser. She has a Chopper cycle. This would enable her to get around the country-side unobtrusively, and at the moment we are asking
questions in the countryside to discover whether a girl on a Chopper was seen anywhere near the sites of any of the fires or, indeed, anywhere around the area. This last because the SCO has already established that such a cycle has been transported in two motor cars found in the city pound. One belonging to Belton and one to Heberden.”

  “She left them there?” asked Watling.

  “No. She left them where she knew they would cause an obstruction and would be impounded by the police.”

  “I see.”

  “Now, we have said that to the best of our belief, Happy stole what she wanted from the vet and then set the place on fire to disguise her theft. We have no direct evidence for this claim, but Sergeant Reed, in his list of what the vet kept on the premises, mentioned etorphine.”

  “Ah!” breathed Watling. “Etorphine hydrochloride.”

  “Quite. I went through the list, and I found, in my vade mecum, that there was very little about etorphine except that it was described as ‘unmanageably strong for humans’.”

  “I should just think so,” said Watling. “It is at least a thousand times stronger than morphine. I mean, when one starts talking about etorphine, one is talking about micrograms of active substance, and you may not all appreciate that a microgram is one millionth of a gram.”

  “A millionth?” asked Berger. “But that’s . . . that’s not measurable. Is it?”

  “Decide for yourself. The average aspirin tablet weighs about five hundred milligrams. So you’d have to divide one of those into five hundred to get one milligram. Then you’d have to divide that one grain into a thousand. Of course, it’s easier to do in a fluid. You put a tiny drop of active ingredient into a drum of liquid, and then draw off a minute amount of the mixture.” He turned to Masters. “I don’t know much about etorphine. I’ve never used it nor encountered it. Officially it is a highly potent analgesic and narcotic for the control of animals—particularly large and fierce ones. What its effects are in man, I wouldn’t know from practical experience. But I expect you’re going to tell me that, being morphine-like in its action, they will be bradycardia, dizziness, nausea, coma and—dare I say it?—severe respiratory depression?”

  “Quite right. Except that in animals you can expect tachycardia and raised blood pressure.”

  Watling nodded. “I wish I’d listened a little more carefully to you when you suggested that if I were to be given a hint of what I was looking for. . . .”

  “It would have made no difference.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Why not?” asked Green.

  Masters turned over his papers. “The answer to that is quite long and complicated, but I think I should go into it in full for everybody’s sake.”

  “Including mine,” said Watling.

  “Let me read a little from Martindale. I’ll paraphrase, to save time, but it starts: ‘The accidental injection of some or all of the contents of a two mil syringe containing etorphine . . . produced coma in a forty-one year old man. The man was treated with various reversing injections and other supportive measures and he was out of danger in six hours’.” Masters paused and looked around him. “But this is the bit to note: ‘It was found later that the syringe contained one mil both before and after the accident. The effects were due to solution present on the needle’.”

  Green pursed his lips and ‘hummed’. “A weak solution, too, I expect.”

  “Yes.”

  “So one sniff of the stuff can knock a bloke out for six hours even when he gets medical attention. So if he doesn’t get medical attention, what happens?”

  Again Masters turned to his papers. “I’ve got a couple of published articles from the American National Institute on Drug Abuse. They were using small doses in human guinea pigs—to discover not only its subjective effects but to see what its abuse potential is and to see how well they would detect it in the body. The first paper says it is at least five hundred times as potent as morphine and—please remember this—has a very rapid onset of action. So rapid, in fact, that a number of the subjects reported effects before the completion of the injection. The paper then goes on to say, in its discussion section, that some researchers had estimated that etorphine is eighty thousand times as potent as morphine. Eighty thousand.”

  “No wonder it acts rapidly,” said Green.

  “That was with subcutaneous injection?” asked Watling.

  Masters nodded. “So it appears—indeed it is stated in the literature—that spillage on the skin can be dangerous. My information also is that if the skin is broken, a touch by a needle—not a hypodermic needle, but a sewing needle—that has been dipped in etorphine can be fatal if it is laid against broken skin. Now both our bodies had small skin blemishes, I think you said, Doctor, about the arms and hands. Scratches from rose bushes and gardening, wasn’t it?”

  “Quite right. No hypodermic marks, but plenty of places where an infinitesimal amount of etorphine could have been absorbed.”

  “But how would she . . . could she have got it there?” asked Berger.

  “Easy,” said Green. “Oh, Mr Heberden, what a nasty scratch that is on your arm. Let me look. It seems very angry. Touch with needle. Finish of Heberden. Don’t forget neither chap had a jacket on.”

  “Certainly she wouldn’t have to worry about any retaliation, whatever she did,” said Masters. “If she actually did as Mr Green said and her victim had objected there would be nothing he could do against a lithe young woman. Don’t forget how rapid the onset of action is.”

  “It gives me the creeps,” said Berger.

  “Never mind that, lad,” said Green. “What I want to know is why the Doc didn’t find this stuff in the bodies?”

  “I’ll deal with that now,” replied Masters. “The onset of action is so rapid that vets who propose to use etorphine have to follow a definite safety drill. It goes without saying that they have to use disposable needles and syringes which have to be rinsed thoroughly after use and then stored in a metal box until they can be incinerated. But before loading the etorphine syringe, they must load the syringe of antidote, because there wouldn’t be time to do so after an accident. The antidote syringe has to be kept within reach. Now, listen to this. In case there might be a slip or some difficulty in getting the needle into an animal, thereby giving even a remote chance of spillage, vets have first to insert a needle into an animal. Then they fill their syringe with etorphine. Then they disconnect the syringe from the needle in the vial and just screw it on to the one sticking in the animal.”

  “So they know they won’t snap a needle?”

  “That’s it. I’ve told you this, so that you will appreciate how powerful etorphine is and how quickly it acts and how quickly help must be given if a man who gets any of it is to be saved. So it follows that if no antidote is used or other help given, a man who takes in etorphine through the skin may be dead—of respiratory depression—in so short a time.”

  “Wait a minute, Chief,” protested Webb. “I’ll take everything you’ve said so far as gospel. But you’re asking us to believe these two men died from doses of etorphine, yet forensic—Dr Watling and his colleague, that is—couldn’t find any traces of it in the bodies. So how are you going to prove they had it if the pathologists can’t swear it was there?”

  “Good point, lad,” said Green. “Shows you’re keeping up with events. Have a fag for being a bright boy.”

  Webb accepted the cigarette, but eyed Green with a certain amount of mistrust. He suspected his leg was being pulled and in this company he wasn’t too sure of himself to begin with. However, his doubts were resolved by Masters who said: “That is a vital and pertinent question, Mr Webb. We shall have to produce a satisfactory answer. I hinted at that when we first arrived, when I said to the Doctor that the fact that he had been unable to trace any drug in the bodies was, in itself, encouraging. These are the points.

  “Etorphine acts so rapidly that the bodily functions slow down or even stop before the substance even has time t
o invade all the organs—liver, kidneys, heart, stomach and so on. Because we mustn’t forget that death switches off the mechanisms which transport fluids round the body. That is the first point. The second is that so little etorphine is needed that there is literally not enough to discover in a body—certainly not by normal tests.

  “You will recall that I said one of my papers was concerned with the detectability of etorphine by the common screening methods. Perhaps, Dr Watling, you would tell us what urine screening methods you did use.”

  “Between us, my colleague and I, we used radioimmunoassay, and homogeneous enzyme immunoassy which is known in the trade as EMIT. Then we did analysis by thin-layer chromotography—known as TLC—followed by gas-liquid chromonography, or GLC. I won’t go into all the chemistry that accompanies these, but I can say that no sample gave a positive opiate—any kind of opiate, that is—no positive opiate result in either of the two immunoassays, and no etorphine was detected in the TLC and GLC analyses of any urine sample from either of the two men.”

  “Thank you, doctor. Now I’ll give you the gist of the final paragraph of this paper. This is it. ‘A dose of one hundred micrograms of etorphine, roughly equivalent to fifty milligrams of morphine, was administered to each of seven subjects.’ Now that is some dose, ‘and yet etorphine was not detectable in any urine sample by the routine screening procedures of RIA, EMIT, GLC or TLC. Thus it is unlikely that the abuse of etorphine could be detected by commonly used urine screening methods’.” Masters put the paper down and looked across at Watling. “So you see, Doctor, the fact that all your tests failed to show etorphine is, in itself, a positive result. And far from being unhelpful, your work has been of great value.”

  “Thank heaven for that. There is just one snag.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What if the defence can produce information that there is some other obscure drug, somewhere in the world, that is equally undetectable by those methods. We have no case unless we can say etorphine is unique.”

  “Again a very good point,” said Masters. “But there is very little we can do about that except to point out that any obscure drug they dredge up was unlikely to have been available to kill those two men, whereas the etorphine was known to be at hand. Circumstantial, no doubt, but circumstantial evidence is often very powerful in court, as we all know.”