by H. Y. Hanna
“And his mouth! My mother did always say never trust a man with thin lips.” Florence nodded sagely.
“Well, I think he looks rather ordinary,” said Ethel in her gentle voice. “That’s what makes it even more frightening—that he can look like anyone we know. Only fancy, he was there at the fête, walking around and no one even realised that there was a master criminal in our midst!”
“What are you looking at?” I said, my interest piqued.
“It’s that chap—the one who’s the leader of the gang of thieves that has been causing havoc lately,” said Florence. “They’re calling him the ‘Agri-Crime Boss’. Nate Briggs.”
“Oh?” So this was Devlin’s nemesis. I leaned over for a better look, half expecting to see some kind of cliché of the evil mastermind: a swarthy face, perhaps, with dark demonic eyebrows and a creepy moustache.
Instead, I saw a fresh-faced, very ordinary-looking young man, probably no more than thirty years of age, with sandy hair and a ruddy complexion. The picture had been snapped in a supermarket car park and he was looking off camera, with a vacant, relaxed expression on his face. Ethel was right: he looked like any one of a dozen other young men you might see out and about in Oxfordshire. You’d never look at him twice in the street. It was difficult to believe that this unassuming young man was the leader behind a clever gang of criminals that was keeping the police on their toes.
“They even stole two quad bikes at the fête, from right under the police’s noses!” Mabel gave me an accusing look. “Your Inspector O’Connor ought to be ashamed of himself.”
“Yes, well, Devlin was a bit distracted by Dame Eccleston’s collapse at the cat show—he couldn’t be in two places at once,” I said defensively.
“Hmph.” Mabel sniffed. “Well, at least it seems that he has finally seen sense and is now appealing to the public for their help. I have always said that the police ought to rely more on the local residents’ knowledge—we have eyes and ears on the ground that they can never match!”
“The police have put out an appeal,” Florence explained, pointing to the article beneath the photo. “They’re asking for anyone who might have information about Nate Briggs or who might have seen him—especially at the fête last Saturday—to come forward.”
Cassie came past the counter, muttering to herself: “…hope we’ve got extra supplies of sticky toffee pudding. Can’t believe all three tables wanted the same thing! Maybe I’d better check with Dora and see if—”
“Cassie—” I grabbed my friend as she was about to step into the kitchen. “Remember those pictures your brother took? He was sending you some while we were out house-hunting on Sunday.”
She made a face. “Yeah, wish I could forget them.”
“He’s got more, hasn’t he? Aside from the ones of you—and that one of me in the cat pavilion. You said he was going around the whole fête taking pictures of people.”
She nodded. “Liam’s building up a range of ‘types’ for his portfolio. He said the fête was an excellent place for that—you get all sorts coming and the crowds are so large that people don’t always notice when they’re being photographed, so everyone looks natural.”
“Well, he might have inadvertently photographed this ‘Agri-Crime Boss’!” I said. “I’m sure the police would like to see his pictures. Even if Liam didn’t catch Nate Briggs directly, he might still have got him somewhere in the background.” I thought for a moment, then added, “In fact, if Liam doesn’t want the hassle of going down to the police station, he can give the pictures to me and I’ll show them to Devlin tonight.”
“Okay, I’ll ring him now. I think the pictures might still be on his camera…” Cassie paused. “But wait—he’s probably in Oxford. Do you want to go back into town just to get these photos? Seems a bit of a pain when you would have just gone straight back to Devlin’s place after work.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I was thinking of popping back to my parent’s house before returning to Devlin’s, so I’m heading into North Oxford after work anyway.”
Cassie grinned. “Guilt trip? Because you left in a huff yesterday?”
I squirmed slightly. She was right. Even though I still felt that I had been completely in the right and my mother completely in the wrong, I hadn’t been able to shake off the feeling of guilty remorse all day.
“Yeah, maybe a little,” I said sheepishly. “I thought I’d pop back and… um… maybe apologise.”
Cassie laughed. “You’re so predictable, Gemma. Okay, let me ring Liam…” She put the call through and I could hear an excited babble the other side.
“Yeah, he’s happy to meet you,” said Cassie, chuckling as she ended the call. “And he’s well chuffed to be ‘helping the police with a criminal investigation’. In fact, he was planning to meet a bunch of his friends tonight and I’ll bet you he’s going to be bragging to them no end.” She grinned at me. “I think you’ve made his week.”
“Where does he want me to meet him?”
“He’ll be in school until five and then I think a group of them are going to the 6:15 p.m. movie at the Magdalen Street cinema—so I told him to pop over to your parents’ place around 5:30 and wait for you there. His school is just around the corner. Is that okay?”
“Perfect. I might leave a bit earlier today so I don’t keep him waiting. Do you think—”
I felt a movement at my elbow and turned in surprise to see Edwin Perkins standing next to me. He had left his table and was looking slightly flustered.
“I’m afraid I have to cancel my order,” he said curtly. “I need to get back to Oxford sooner than I thought.”
“Oh, the sandwiches should be ready in a minute—”
“No, no, I have to leave now.” He pushed past me and headed out the door.
Cassie and I looked at each other in bemusement.
“What on earth got into him?” said Cassie.
I shrugged and walked over to the tearoom windows. I was just in time to see Edwin hurrying away down the opposite side of the street. He had a mobile phone pressed to his ear and he was talking into it urgently. Hmm… Maybe he had been telling the truth and he really had forgot an appointment in Oxford—and was now calling his client to apologise… But something about his sudden departure made me uneasy.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The rest of the afternoon passed fairly uneventfully, although I found myself unable to get the subject of Dame Eccleston’s “murder” off my mind. I mulled over things as I took orders and served trays of tea and cakes around the tearoom. I kept returning to the discrepancy about the pills and, in particular, the one that had been found clutched in the dead woman’s hand…
It had been so tempting to think that the pill which had been found in her hand might have been a “fake”—a doctored tablet which had contained poison instead of the real medication. Maybe Dame Eccleston had taken one already and was still holding the second one when she collapsed. She might have thought that she was taking angina pills when instead she was taking a lethal replacement…
And maybe she had asked her daughter to fetch her some pills from her pillbox and Mary had given her mother the poisonous fake pills instead? That would explain why the pills in the pillbox had remained untouched.
But my mind shied away from that thought. Besides, it didn’t make sense. Mary hadn’t seemed at all concerned when I asked to check the pillbox—and if she really had given her mother some fake, poisoned pills, wouldn’t she have taken the trouble to remove the same number of real pills from the box? It would have been easy to do and would have removed the chance of people noticing a discrepancy.
In any case, this was all irrelevant now since Devlin had confirmed that the pill was a genuine angina tablet after all. It was definitely not poisonous. So that scratched that theory out. But that still didn’t explain the discrepancy. The fact that the six tablets in the pillbox had been untouched meant that Dame Eccleston must have got that pill in her hand from somewhere else… or… or…
… Or someone had placed the pill in her hand after she had collapsed!
I felt a surge of excitement. Yes! That was it!
The pill was a decoy, designed to mislead. It gave the suggestion that Dame Eccleston had suffered a heart attack: after all, that was the natural conclusion anyone would come to when she was found dead, with an angina tablet clutched in her hand. It would lead people to assume—as we all did—that the poor woman had been feeling chest pains and had been on her way to take some medication, but had been too late.
So why would anyone want to do that? Why would someone want people to believe that Dame Eccleston had died of a heart attack?
Because they didn’t want to raise suspicion that she might have died of something else.
And in fact, they had almost succeeded. Dr Foster had signed the death certificate, citing natural causes, and if it hadn’t been for my mother’s observation about the pillbox and the Old Biddies’ meddling and habit of seeing “murder” everywhere, no one would have questioned it. Dame Eccleston would have been buried and the murderer would have got away with it.
On a sudden hunch, I picked up my phone during a quiet moment and put a call through to Lincoln Green.
“Hi Gemma,” he said. He sounded pleased to hear from me and I was relieved.
“Hi Lincoln—I haven’t caught you at a bad time, have I?”
“No, I’m just about to start a ward round but I’ve got a moment to spare.” There was a pause, then he added, “My mother and I were sorry not to see you at dinner last night.”
“Oh, yeah… I’m sorry about that,” I said, embarrassed. “I… um… something came up at the last minute…”
Lincoln laughed. “It’s okay, Gemma. To be honest with you, I was a bit relieved when I found out that you wouldn’t be there. It’s been awkward enough… well, you know my mother didn’t take your… um… that is, you know she was very disappointed that things didn’t quite work out between us the way she had hoped.”
My face was flaming and I was glad he couldn’t see me. “Lincoln… I’m… I’m sorry. You know that I—”
“No, no, that’s what I meant. You don’t need to apologise, Gemma. Honestly. There are no hard feelings at my end and I’m very pleased we’re still friends. I was just trying to say that actually your absence last night… er… made things easier for me too.”
I felt a rush of gratitude and affection for him. “Thanks, Lincoln, for being so understanding.”
“So what can I do for you? I’m sure you didn’t ring me up just to tell me how embarrassed you are again,” he teased.
“I was actually hoping to pick your brain,” I said. “Listen, is there a way for someone to fake a heart attack?”
“What you mean? Why would anyone want to fake a heart attack?”
“Well… maybe if… maybe if you wanted to get rid of someone but you didn’t want it to look like murder—”
“You’re thinking of that death on the weekend, aren’t you? At the Meadowford village fête? It’s been in all the papers. She was quite a well-known figure around Oxford, you know, being a senior academic at one of the colleges.”
“Yes,” I said. “There have been one or two things which are a bit… odd about Dame Eccleston’s death. She was taking angina pills—I don’t suppose they could trigger a heart attack?”
“The drugs used to treat angina are nitrates such as nitroglycerine and they can be fatal, in theory, if one uses a large enough dose. But that isn’t the heart medication that one would normally think of in terms of being potentially toxic and dangerous.”
“But there’s another one that is?” I said quickly.
“Well, the most commonly prescribed heart medication is probably digoxin—what’s often called ‘digitalis’ by the general public. It’s prescribed for congestive heart failure and it works on the heart muscles to increase contractions. It’s very effective and beneficial in small doses, but it’s potentially very lethal if the dosage is exceeded. An overdose could cause tachycardia, arterial fibrillation, atrioventricular block—”
“Which could lead to a heart attack?”
“Yes, a large overdose could definitely lead to a sudden heart attack.”
“Is it easy to get hold of these drugs?
“Digoxin is by prescription only and the amounts dispensed are very carefully monitored, as you can imagine. But it’s actually possible to make a large supply of the same drug from the flower itself.”
“From the flower?”
“Yes, you know, the foxglove. You find it in a lot of English gardens. It’s where the drug initially came from. I still remember the lecture we had about it as medical students. It was considered a landmark event in cardiac medicine. An English apothecary-surgeon named William Withering discovered the potency of digitalis and he was the first to use foxglove concoctions to treat people.” Lincoln laughed. “Nowadays, he would probably have got a patent for the drug and become a multi-billionaire… Actually, he sounded like a really decent chap. They said he personally treated two or three thousand poor patients every year, which meant that he only earned about a thousand pounds a year—compared to his colleagues who were all making something like five thousand pounds a year. That was a lot of money in those days.”
“So… if you had the foxglove plant, you could get access to the same drug?”
“Yes, although not in the pure form, of course—but I believe it’s fairly easy to extract the active ingredient.”
I thought back to the day at the cat show. “If someone was poisoned by digitalis, what kinds of symptoms would they show? Would it be similar to a heart attack?”
“Yes, I suppose some of the symptoms could be interpreted that way,” Lincoln mused. “Which would make it a very clever poison to use. The victim would feel nauseous, have an irregular pulse, be confused and uneasy—which are a bit similar to symptoms of a heart attack, such as nausea, sweating, and light-headedness…”
“And would you have to give someone a lot to kill them?”
“No, that’s what makes it so lethal. Digitalis has a very narrow therapeutic index. That means that the difference between a ‘safe’ dose and a ‘toxic’ one is very small. Even a small overdose can be fatal. And it works really quickly too. Death can be immediate, although if the poison is taken with food, it can take a bit longer due to the oral absorption time.” Lincoln’s voice was concerned. “This sounds serious, Gemma. Have you spoken to Devlin about it?”
“Yes, but he’s not convinced that there are any grounds for suspicion in Dame Eccleston’s death,” I said.
“I’m surprised—Devlin is normally so astute,” said Lincoln with grudging respect.
I sighed. “The problem is that, this time, the woman’s doctor was there and he certified that death was due to natural causes.”
“Really? Who did that?”
“Dr Foster from the village. You know him?”
“Yes, though not very well. I’ve seen his name on some of my patient charts as he is their usual GP.” Lincoln gave a polite cough. “He’s… uh… coming up for retirement, I believe.”
“Would you trust his judgement?”
“Well…” Clearly Lincoln didn’t like criticising a colleague. “Let’s just say that many of us feel that he probably should have retired well before now.”
I gave a frustrated sigh. “That’s what I’ve been hearing from my mother and other village residents. They don’t think much of his abilities at all and they don’t trust his verdict. I wish I could get a second opinion on Dame Eccleston’s death.”
“Well, post-mortem would be a sort of second opinion, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, I know, and I’ve been trying to persuade Devlin to ask for one but so far he’s refused. He says I have to provide him with a compelling reason to request one and what I’ve got so far isn’t enough.” I gave another frustrated sigh. “I’m almost tempted to contact the forensic pathologist myself and try to persuade him—except that I’v
e seen him a couple of times before at crime scenes and he’s a bit of a grumpy old man. I don’t really fancy my chances—”
“Actually, Dr Maxwell has gone on long service leave,” said Lincoln. “There’s a locum pathologist in his place who is very good and who might be very willing to listen to you, I think.”
“I don’t know,” I said doubtfully. “I mean, I haven’t even met him; I can’t just—”
A loud clatter came from the kitchen, followed by raised voices. I looked around in consternation. What is happening in there?
“Sorry, Lincoln, I’ve got to go,” I said hurriedly.
“Okay, well, if there’s anything else I can do to help, just give me a call.”
“Thanks,” I said gratefully.
I hung up and dashed into the kitchen, where I found Dora and Mabel standing back from the central wooden table, both of them surveying the mess in the middle with wary dismay. It looked like a small volcano had erupted there, with bits of flour, dough, and liquid splattered everywhere and a cracked glass bowl lying on its side.
“It’s all your fault!” Dora burst out, looking at Mabel accusingly. “If you hadn’t come in, trying to meddle as usual—”
“I did not touch a thing!” said Mabel indignantly. “It was you! You poured that lemon mixture into the batter and the minute you tried to fold things over, everything just exploded!”
“Oh my goodness, was anyone hurt?” I said, rushing forwards.
“Not this time, but that doesn’t mean we might be so fortunate next time,” said Mabel, giving Dora a dark look. “What if the bowl had shattered and glass shards had flown everywhere? And it is not the first time this sort of thing has happened. Don’t glower at me so, Dora—you know it’s true. Cassie has been telling me about your ‘accidents’. You need to do something about it.”
“What accidents?” I said, looking from one to the other. I vaguely remembered now that Cassie had mentioned something last week about being worried about Dora… and earlier this week too… but I had been so busy at the time, I hadn’t paid much attention.