‘Have a good look, and give me a ring afterwards, whether anything’s been moved or not. We need to know one way or the other, and a woman knows the contents of her own cupboards best.’
For once, Mr Palfreyman said nothing, maintaining his faraway look, apparently unaware of his surroundings or anything that was going on in them.
‘If I haven’t heard anything, I’ll get in touch with you when we know more, and we’ll speak again,’ Falconer assured them.
‘You just get whoever done this, and lock them away forever.’ (Mrs Palfreyman)
‘You’d better find who’s responsible before I do, or I’ll do for them myself.’ (Mr Palfreyman)
Once out of the drawing room, Falconer gave the vicar an old-fashioned look, and he held up his hands in surrender. ‘Sorry, Inspector: there was no way I could warn you, but that’s how they always speak. No wonder Vanessa was a quiet child. I should think it was impossible for her to get a word in edgeways. I should have told Olivia to warn you if she got to you first.’
‘Well, at least we know now. I shall have to have two note-takers with me if I have to speak to them again. It was like having two radios tuned to different channels, but both on at the same time. What do you think, Carmichael?’
‘I think I’m getting a bit of a headache, sir.’
‘I’m not surprised!’
IV
‘What say you, we go to The Leathern Bottle, have a morning coffee, and see where we’re going next?’ suggested Falconer.
‘Good idea, sir, but I think I’ll probably just have an orange juice. I’ve gone right off tea and coffee.’
‘Since when? You’ve never said no, when we’ve been interviewing people in their own homes.’
‘Since I got home last night. I expect it’s just a temporary thing, but the very thought of them makes me feel sick.’
They entered The Leathern Bottle together, and Falconer went to the bar to order a latte and an orange juice, the barman asking him if he wanted ice in the juice, but when he turned round, he found himself alone. Of Carmichael, there was no sign. ‘You’d better put a couple of cubes in, then if he doesn’t want ice, he can always hoik them out with his fingers,’ decided Falconer, on his partner’s behalf.
Having paid for the drinks, he put them on a tray and went outside to see where his sergeant had got to, and found him seated at one of the outside tables, looking mournful.
‘Whatever’s the matter with you? You look as miserable as a bloodhound that has lost its sense of smell,’ Falconer declared, putting the tray down on the table.
‘I wish I could lose my sense of smell, sir. As soon as we walked through the door, and I smelled the stale beer, my stomach turned a somersault. I knew, right away, that if I didn’t get away from it, I was going to be as sick as a dog,’ answered Carmichael, still looking woebegone.
‘Look, I’ve got you an orange juice with ice. If you don’t fancy the ice, you can just pull it out with your fingers, and throw it away.’
‘I don’t even feel like an orange juice, now. The thought of all that acid – ugh!’
‘I know you’ve got a dicky tummy, but I can’t say that we’ve seen anything to set it off today. Maybe you’ve got a bug, or something,’ offered Falconer, examining his sergeant’s face, and finding it pale, pasty, and beaded with sweat. ‘Look, why don’t you get along home and spend the afternoon in bed: see if you can’t sweat it out, or starve it, or whatever it is you need to do.
‘I’ve got plenty of paperwork, back at the office, which I can be getting on with, and we’ll see how you are tomorrow, and if you’re not better then, you’ll have to go to the quack, and I’ll have to see about getting in a replacement, but I’d rather not do that if I don’t have to.’
‘Thanks, sir,’ muttered Carmichael and, covering his mouth with his hand, just to be on the safe side, made his way to his car and shot straight off as if all the hounds of hell were after him.
‘Well, I wonder what’s up with him?’ asked Falconer of no one. ‘Maybe it was just that trickle of vomit from the victim’s mouth. He’s not very good with vomit, so that must be it,’ and then he shut up as a couple approached the door of the pub, and he realised he was doing a grand job of appearing like some nutter, who was sitting talking to an invisible friend.
Chapter Seventeen
Tuesday 20th July
I
Carmichael was back in the office, and only slightly late the next morning, claiming to have found a sickness remedy at home, and stopped off at a pharmacy on the way to get some more. He declared himself to feel much better, and, in fact, he certainly looked healthier than he had the day before when he had fled the car park of The Leathern Bottle.
‘Any idea what it was?’ Falconer asked him, assessing his appearance and finding it improved.
‘Not a clue, sir, but if I take this jollop, and it’s no better in a couple of days, I’ll take your advice, and go and see the quack,’ he replied.
‘Good thinking. It may just blow over, but if it doesn’t, it’s best to be on the safe side,’ counselled Falconer, who was never ill himself, but liked people on whom he relied to look after themselves, with regard to their health. That way, he was never inconvenienced.
When they took a break for coffee – bottled water in Carmichael’s case – Falconer raised the subject of the identity of yesterday’s victim, again. ‘Why her? Why do you think she of all the band members was killed, Carmichael?’
‘I really can’t think of a motive, sir. It would seem that she kept herself to herself and, basically, wouldn’t say ‘boo’ to a goose.’
‘And can you blame her?’ Falconer asked with a smile. ‘My God, those parents of hers! They really took the biscuit, didn’t they? However did you manage with your notes?’
‘Don’t ask. I did my best to catch up with what they’d said when you were asking questions, but I think it’s all a bit muddly. I wasn’t feeling particularly chipper, either, but I don’t think they said anything we didn’t already know from our other interviews, did they?’
At that moment, the telephone shrieked its urgent summons, and Falconer answered it, to find Philip Christmas on the line, and the doctor rushed straight into the information he had to impart, as if he was so excited, he didn’t have time to waste, on any of the usual social niceties.
‘There was a right old minestrone of ingredients in the dregs we found in that cup, yesterday. You wouldn’t believe the mixture of things – all plant extracts – that went to make up that concoction, whatever it was supposed to be.
‘I’ve already opened her up, and there’s a direct match with the stomach contents, apart from the odd biscuit or two, and the remains of a light meal, about six hours before she died.’
Falconer was glad that he was taking the call and not Carmichael. This would be likely to send him off once more, to his sick bed. ‘What have you got, then?’ he asked, pen at the ready. This was one call that certainly wasn’t going on speaker, to be shared with his sergeant.
‘Everything which could be picked up in a country garden, or in the nearby countryside – and one exotic extra, but I’ll tell you about that in a minute. For now, whoever made up that witch’s brew, needed access to valerian, foxgloves, deadly nightshade, and laburnum.
‘Those are the easy bits to get hold of, although I expect you’d have to know what you were doing.’
‘So what’s the wild card, then, Doc?’
‘Ricin! Very deadly, and there’s no known antidote. I think that girl was lucky, really. The valerian knocked her out, and her stomach obviously rebelled against what had just been introduced to it, and tried to get rid of it. It was a much more peaceful death, choking on her own vomit, than what that lot could have done to her. Merciful, in its way.’
‘And what about the ricin? What plant does that come from, and why is it the exotic ingredient?’ asked Falconer, starting to doodle on his pad, as he waited for an answer.
‘It’s extracted fro
m the seeds of the castor oil plant, but it’s not something that is grown in this country as a rule. It requires more tropical climes than ours. Mind you, I’m not discounting someone being able to grow one, if they used a greenhouse, or a very favourable spot. They’re normally kept as houseplants in this country, if they’re kept at all, and don’t usually produce seeds, if kept indoors.’
‘Wasn’t that what was used on some agent, or spy, a few years ago? He was pricked with the end of an umbrella containing it, I seem to remember.’
‘That’s right, and it was curtains for him. There’s absolutely nothing that could be done for him, even in this day and age, and that still stands today.’
‘What! No antidote at all?’
‘None, whatsoever!’
‘Very nasty,’ commented Falconer, turning his pen to the sketching of a skull and crossbones. ‘Well, if we’re talking gardens here, I think I’ve got someone in line for that, although I can’t perceive a motive, at the moment. He had a humdinger, though, for murdering that other chap. Thanks, Philip. I owe you one, for getting the information to me so swiftly.’
‘I’ll be in touch if anything else turns up. Good luck!’ and the doctor was gone, back to his grisly task.
Having explained the nature of the poison to Carmichael, he put forward the suggestion that they ought to have a word with Edmund Alexander. Not only had he been severely treated by Dashwood and, with his nature of not embracing change, had adequate motive for his murder, he also had a garden full of lovely old cottage flowers, and a wild garden – the perfect place to gather the ingredients for such a deadly brew as the doc had just described.
‘But what about the ricin, sir?’ asked Carmichael. ‘And a motive for killing Vanessa Palfreyman?’
‘Mere details at the moment. He’ll probably have a greenhouse or something, somewhere, in a part of the garden that we haven’t seen yet. But there’s something we don’t understand, yet, about this case. There’s something we don’t know, that will make all the difference to the way we investigate it. I’m willing to bet that we’ll get that ‘unknown something’ from Edmund Alexander, and I’m going to arrest him on suspicion, and bring him in for a recorded interview.’
‘As you like, sir. I know there’s a vital piece missing from the jigsaw, too, but I don’t know if Alexander is the right-shaped piece. We still don’t have anyone with a viable motive for getting rid of Miss Palfreyman, do we?’
‘The answer is out there, Carmichael, and we might just be about to find it. Come on! Let’s not waste time jawing about it: let’s get it done.’
II
When they arrived at Dunspendin, Grace Alexander greeted them with the news that Edmund had just popped into the village for some shopping for her, but would be back in ten or fifteen minutes.
Falconer took this opportunity to ask if she would be good enough to give them a tour of the garden, and educate them a little about what they were growing. Edmund’s absence was a piece of serendipitous luck, and they might have already located the suspect plants before his return; something that would give them even more reason for asking him to come in for formal questioning.
Grace was a little more mobile today, and escorted them, at rather more than a tottering snail’s pace, around her and Edmund’s pride and joy. She pointed out plants as she went, and indeed, there were the offending items, all growing on their patch of ground – all except the castor oil plant.
‘Do you also love your house-plants, Mrs Alexander?’ asked Falconer, guilelessly, an expression of complete innocence on his face.
‘Not at all, Inspector. In fact, I loathe them. I feel about them, rather as I do about caged birds. Plants should be outside, in their natural environment, not cooped up in pots, inside people’s homes, no matter how decorative they are.’ She was adamant. Not one houseplant had ever crossed her threshold. Any plants she had been given, over the years, had been decently planted outside, to live a natural life, and if they hadn’t thrived, that was what nature had intended.
‘Unlike her son,’ thought Falconer, calling to mind the cage she seemed to have kept him in since childhood. ‘Do you have any other children, other than Edmund?’ he asked, again with a perfectly innocent face.
‘It just wasn’t God’s will,’ was her answer. ‘Edmund is our only blessing, and he has been such a blessing, since old age caught up with me and my husband. I don’t know how we should be able to manage without him.’
God, that made Falconer feel like a genuine, twenty-four carat rat: here he was, in this garden, under false pretence, just waiting to take their carer in for questioning as a suspected murderer. Being a detective could be a right bummer, at times.
Edmund returned, as they reached the front of the property again, and greeted them politely, asking if they’d made any progress with Dashwood’s murder, and saying how awful it was, that Vanessa Palfreyman had seen fit to take her own life.
‘We’re not treating it as suicide, Mr Alexander. As far as the authorities are concerned, it is a suspicious death, and must be investigated as such,’ explained Falconer, wondering what it could be, that he might learn from this man, that had, so far, eluded him.
‘You mean it’s another murder? No!’ Alexander exclaimed, scandalised. ‘Not in Swinbury Abbot: it can’t be! This is such a quiet village. We never have any problems here, except when The Clocky Hen gets a bit rowdy, and a patrol car usually sorts that out and clears the bars without any trouble.’
‘Knowing how much you know about life in this village, I wonder if you would mind accompanying us to the police station in Market Darley, so that we can pick your brains?’ requested the inspector and, totally unsuspecting, Edmund accepted, perhaps even a little proud, that he had been chosen as an expert on the village he loved so much.
There was no way Falconer could tell him he was being taken in as a murder suspect; not with his mother present. That would be too cruel to even contemplate. If he was guilty, she’d have to face up to it sooner or later, but on the outside chance that he was wrong about her son, he needed to handle this situation with dignity and diplomacy. There was no point upsetting the old lady, either unnecessarily or prematurely.
‘I’m just going off to help the police with their enquiries,’ he chirruped to his mother, with a grin, ‘but only as an expert witness. Ha ha!’
III
Back at the station, they escorted Edmund into an interview room, and explained the real reason they had brought him in. As they went through the caution and the official arrest procedure, on suspicion of the murder of Campbell Dashwood, his face drained of colour, and he swayed on his feet, as if he were about to faint. ‘I don’t understand why you picked on me,’ he stated, looking both confused and frightened.
‘We shall, of course, obtain a warrant to search the property, and you will be held here, pending the outcome of this interview, and the subsequent search,’ Falconer informed him.
‘But I wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone a fellow human being,’ Edmund blustered, devastated by what was happening to him. It was a nightmare scenario for him, and his first thoughts were for his parents, but Falconer assured him that, in the event of him being detained overnight, he would get in touch with Rev. Church, and ask him to go round to the house to make sure they had everything they needed. ‘Beyond that, I cannot comment at the moment, Mr Alexander,’ the inspector concluded.
The recording of the interview was underway, and Falconer began to explain the chain of logic that had come up with him, Edmund Alexander, in the frame. ‘We realised how much Dashwood’s high-handed snatching of your positions – both as band accompanist, and as church organist – really meant to you. You did a good job of covering it up, but it was just possible to see the seething anger, bubbling just below the surface. It was your eyes that gave you away.
‘It must have been a devastating double-blow to you, considering how long you have held these positions. On top of that, the way you talked about village events from your child
hood, convinced us that you were very resistant to change, wanting things to stay as you had always known them, and resenting anything that interfered with what you considered the right and proper life of the village.
‘I know that everyone in the village band had some bone to pick with Mr Dashwood, but yours seemed particularly important to you, and must have left an enormous hole in your life, and a seething mass of resentment and hatred.
‘With regard to the death of Miss Palfreyman, she was poisoned with a cocktail of natural ingredients, the majority of which I discovered this morning could easily have been gathered from your garden. There was only one ingredient missing, but I’m sure you could have laid your hands on some, if you had asked around.’
‘This is all complete and utter rubbish. You’ve got no proof of anything. Everything you’ve said is circumstantial, and means nothing. And what about this mystery ingredient that you think I pursued and acquired, before murdering a very shy and quiet girl, who never did me any wrong?’
‘Ricin, Mr Alexander,’ Falconer informed him.
‘What? I’ve never even heard of the stuff, let alone hunted it down to kill someone with. What on earth is it?’
‘It’s from the castor oil plant, sir.’
‘But they don’t grow in this country – at least, not outside. I know some people have them as houseplants, but that’s as far as my knowledge goes. And, no, I don’t know anyone who has such a plant in their home, if that was going to be your next question.
‘As for Dashwood, he would have worn out his welcome sooner or later. He was slowly killing the enthusiasm of the band, and his pompous, know-it-all manner would soon have led to conflict between him and the vicar.
‘Angry and resentful I might have been, but, when I examined the situation logically, I realised that it would only be a matter of time before everyone tired of his bullying and pedantic manner, he would find himself out on his ear, and things could just go back to how they were before he turned up in Swinbury Abbot.’
Music to Die For (The Falconer Files Book 6) Page 20