Cyanide With Compliments

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  The relief in her face was unmistakable.

  ‘Yes,’ she said almost eagerly. ‘What a shocking thing … why, you’d never think…’ She broke off, and stared at him. ‘You can’t mean … surely…?’

  ‘I see that you’ve got there, Mrs Willis. It’s exactly what I do mean. The poisoned chocolates arrived in a Honeydew box, and Scotland Yard wants to find out if they were made by this firm. No one is suggesting that they were sent from here, of course.’

  ‘Nothing’s sent from here. All the post orders go off from the factory.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Pollard soothingly. ‘That’s what we expected to hear. But we’ve brought some of the chocolates, and the box they arrived in, and want you to look at them, and see if they are a Honeydew make.’

  As he talked, he realized that Mrs Willis was darting anxious glances at the door from the hall.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t take the responsibility,’ she said in agitation. ‘It isn’t my place. I’m only employed here… I really couldn’t, not really. You must see the lady who owns the business. She’s Mrs Morse. She —’ She broke off hastily as the door opened.

  ‘Who’s asking for me?’ demanded a loud feminine voice. ‘Here I am. Zoe Morse.’

  A tall, big-built woman came in, shutting the door noisily behind her. About fifty, Pollard thought, registering heavy make-up, an assertive bust, and expensive, rather outre clothes. He got to his feet. ‘Good morning,’ he said, and introduced Toye and himself. ‘You are the owner of Honeydew, Mrs Morse?’

  ‘Jointly with my partner,’ she replied, staring at him. ‘What the hell’s up? Chaps of your rank wouldn’t come round if someone reported Mrs Willis was fiddling the till.’

  A nervous protest came from behind the counter.

  ‘Murder is up,’ Pollard replied briefly. ‘We’re working on the Redbay poisoning case, which you may have read about in the press. The cyanide which killed Mrs Audrey Vickers was contained in chocolates purporting to be made by this firm. I want them identified, if this is the case.’

  ‘My — Gawd!’ Zoe Morse exclaimed. ‘What a perfectly bloody thing to happen! Or is it? I’m not so sure, come to that. Publicity — here, come into the store, will you,’ she said hurriedly, as voices were heard outside the door. ‘Not exactly a sales boost, is it?’

  The store-room was lined with shelves, carrying what struck Pollard as surprisingly little stock. A business-like desk had a telephone and a typewriter. The barred window overlooked a yard at the back of the house.

  Zoe Morse sat down heavily behind the desk, still staring at Pollard who took the only other chair. Toye quietly occupied the vantage point of the window-sill.

  ‘Well, you’d better let me look at the things, hadn’t you?’ she said.

  Pollard glanced over his shoulder, and Toye came forward with a case which he put on the desk, and proceeded to unlock. Pollard took out a flat transparent plastic box containing half a dozen chocolates. It was sealed with adhesive tape, and marked ‘poison’.

  ‘Don’t touch this, please, Mrs Morse,’ he said authoritatively, putting the box on the blotter in front of her. ‘Look carefully at the top of the chocolates, please and then I’ll turn it over, so that you can see what they’re like underneath.’

  The chocolates were about an inch square, and half an inch thick. Each was surmounted by the letter M in a flowing script.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Zoe Morse said, after a brief inspection.

  Pollard turned the box over, and handed her a lens.

  ‘Look at them through this please,’ he requested.

  ‘They’re our Marchpane Magic,’ she said without hesitation. ‘There’s no doubt whatever. We dry our chocolates on patterned foil with a design of tiny skeps. See? It’s our trademark, so to speak. The break in the pattern’s where the stuff was put in, I suppose? How on earth was it done?’

  ‘Our experts report that a tiny shaft was drilled, possibly with the stem of a small funnel used in scientific work. A little column of the filling was lifted out, the cyanide put in, and the chocolate put on very gentle heat, again on foil, so that there would be slight melting, and the hole could be smeared over. Only the foil was the plain variety, instead of the kind you use.’

  ‘Whoever did it was nifty with his or her fingers,’ Zoe Morse commented, peering through the lens. ‘The stuff must be pretty lethal.’

  ‘It certainly is,’ Pollard replied, picking up the box, and returning it to the case. ‘One of these would be more than enough to put paid to anybody.’

  She laughed shortly. ‘Handy little things to have around. I could do with a few myself.’

  Pollard realized that she was eyeing him with an interest unconnected with his professional activities. As her foot pressed his under the desk he moved his chair back with an abstracted air. ‘Now we want you to look at the box the chocolates were sent in, and the packaging material inside it,’ he said. ‘You can handle it all freely. Our experts have made their examination.’

  The colour and design of the box was exactly the same as that of the display box in the shop window. Zoe Morse slid off the cover, and took out a sheet of semi-transparent waxed paper which had originally covered the chocolates. She held it up to the light. ‘Ours, all right,’ she said. ‘It’s got our perforated date stamp. See?’

  ‘You mean,’ Pollard asked, sharply alerted, ‘that every box of your products carries a record of the date when they were made?’

  ‘The date when they were packaged, actually.’ She leant back, her dress straining provocatively across her breasts. ‘There could be an overnight interval. Our goods are luxury class, Mr Superintendent Pollard, and pricey to match. So they have to be freshly made for our type of client. Surely you’ve noticed that we don’t carry a big stock?’

  ‘When were the chocolates we’re discussing made?’ he asked brusquely, ignoring her mocking expression.

  ‘If they left our factory with this waxed paper, they were made early on Monday, April the thirtieth, and packaged that same afternoon. A week ago yesterday, that is. So glad to be helping the police with their enquiries.’

  ‘It’s much too early to say whether the information you’re giving will be of any value or not. Assuming that the chocolates were sent here from the factory, when would they have been delivered?’ Pollard tried to keep the interest he felt out of his voice.

  ‘God, I don’t know to the minute,’ Zoe Morse replied irritably. ‘They’d have come the next day, sometime in the morning. Mrs Willis might remember.’

  Pollard glanced round at Toye. ‘Ask Mrs Willis to come in here for a moment, Sergeant.’

  Mrs Willis came in, darting anxious looks from one person to another.

  ‘Perhaps you can help us over a matter of timing, Mrs Willis,’ Pollard said. ‘Just put your mind back to a week ago today. That would be Tuesday, May the first, wouldn’t it? Can you remember when the delivery from the factory arrived?’

  The colour drained out of her face, and she stared at him like a small frightened animal.

  ‘What on earth are you looking like a stuck pig for?’ Zoe Morse demanded impatiently. ‘Can’t you answer a perfectly simple question?’

  ‘I’m conducting this interview, Mrs Morse,’ Pollard interposed sharply. ‘Take your time, Mrs Willis. I expect one delivery from the factory is very like another, isn’t it?’

  She looked at him gratefully. ‘I can remember the time, sir, as it happens. The van was very late, and didn’t get here till close on a quarter to one. Usually it’s soon after twelve. Driver said the traffic jams were worse than ever that day.’

  ‘Been in somewhere for a quick one,’ interjected Zoe Morse.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Willis,’ Pollard said. ‘Now there’s just one other thing. Would you take these photographs, and see if you can remember any of the people coming in and buying Marchpane Magic chocolates on that Tuesday afternoon? Just do your best. Take them into the shop, and have a look.’

  To his surprise she almost sn
atched them from his hand, and hurried out of the room.

  ‘My God, what a fool that woman is,’ Zoe Morse remarked. ‘Mercifully she’s honest, or I wouldn’t keep her for five minutes. You have to take what you can get these days.’

  Without comment Pollard embarked on a brisk enquiry into the organization of Honeydew. He learnt that there was a small factory in Hackney, and that the manufacturing side of; the business was run by Zoe Morse’s male partner, while she was responsible for sales. Post orders went out direct from the factory. Mrs Willis was merely in charge of shop sales on a salaried basis. The mere possibility of any of the factory staff being involved in the murder of Audrey Vickers was scoffed at.

  ‘Better come down and grill ’em yourself,’ Zoe Morse suggested. ‘Then you can see what post orders went off,’ she added persuasively. ‘I’ll run you down. Just give me ten minutes to square things up here.’

  Avoiding Toye’s eye, Pollard replied that a visit to the factory was next on their list.

  ‘Could my sergeant use that typewriter?’ he asked. ‘If we can make out a summary of the information you’ve given us now for your signature, it will save everyone’s time.’

  ‘Make yourselves at home by all means,’ she replied, vacating the desk and proceeding to file some letters.

  Pollard found Mrs Willis handing a customer some purchases in a smart carrier bag patterned with Honeydew straw skeps. The photographs were neatly stacked on the counter. As soon as they were alone she picked them up and returned them. Rather to his surprise she volunteered a statement at once.

  ‘I’m quite sure none of these young ladies came in that Tuesday afternoon, sir,’ she said.

  ‘How about a young man who looked like this?’ he asked, and embarked on a detailed description of Keith Lang.

  Her characteristic worried expression returned.

  ‘I don’t recollect anyone like that, either,’ she said, ‘after all, it’s a week ago, and people coming in and out all the time.’

  ‘Of course,’ Pollard said reassuringly, and thanked her for her help. At the same time he had a depressing mental picture of her under cross-examination. Somehow or other they must get hold of a photograph of Keith Lang.

  After some tiresome badinage Zoe Morse signed the statement prepared by Toye, and the trio left together. On the pavement outside Pollard raised his hat politely.

  ‘Many thanks for giving Sergeant Toye a lift, Mrs Morse,’ he said. ‘He’ll be making the enquiries at the factory, as I’m due elsewhere. Goodbye.’

  He turned and made swiftly for West Audley Street, hugging himself, and only regretting the impossibility of being an invisible third in the car, to enjoy the imperturbable Toye’s handling of the situation.

  He sat in the car for a minute or two, assessing the facts gained from the Honeydew interviews. A terminus a quo for getting hold of the chocolates was a useful step forward. Obviously the Langs could have bought them on the Tuesday afternoon, but on the other hand, Mrs Willis’s evidence — for what it was worth — looked like clearing Drusilla, and to some extent her husband. A photograph of Keith Lang must be got hold of somehow… What was wanted now was the sort of information about Donald Vickers which would either bring him into the picture or put him right out of it.

  At Odyssey Tours Pollard assured Mr Hedley, the managing director, that he had not come to go over the ground already covered by Sergeant Longman, and produced the compliments slip sent to Audrey Vickers with the chocolates. He learnt that the slip was enclosed in all tour brochures sent out from the office, not merely with those dealing with Odyssey cruises. Clients who made bookings got a second slip when their tickets were sent to them.

  ‘The only thing of the slightest interest I can tell you about this particular specimen,’ Mr Hedley said, examining it carefully, ‘is that it’s one of our most recent batch. I can tell by the slightly darker colour. That means it came into circulation last autumn — roughly when the programmes for this year were going out. I remember because of a hold-up at the printers: we thought we were going to run out of the old lot.’

  Pollard asked him if there were any records of people who wrote for brochures.

  ‘Oh, yes. We should contact them again the next year, whether they made a booking or not. Any names you’d like looked up?’

  ‘Lang,’ Pollard said. ‘And Vickers, other than the late Mrs Audrey.’

  There was an interval while this information was being sought, during which Mr Hedley showed a natural curiosity about the circumstances of Audrey Vickers’ death, and Pollard tried to gratify this without telling him a great deal. Presently a member of the office staff came in with a paper in his hand.

  ‘There are no Langs on this year’s list, sir,’ he told Mr Hedley, ‘but a Mr D. J. Vickers wrote from Philadelphia last October, and afterwards booked for his wife and himself on the Egyptian tour in March. I’ve made a note of the address.’

  ‘Any use to you?’ the managing director asked, when the man had gone.

  ‘Could be,’ Pollard replied, suppressing his excitement as he carefully put away the address in his wallet.

  ‘I hope I haven’t stuck my neck out,’ Mr Hedley went on, ‘but when the cruise manager rang me about something from Rhodes last night, it seemed a chance to ask if anything in the least relevant to this business had got round to him. From a member of our staff on board, for instance. Nothing whatever, he said.’

  ‘Even an answer of that sort’s useful,’ Pollard told him. ‘At least one knows what not to spend time asking.’

  A few minutes later he was on his way back to the Yard, convinced that news must have come in by now. He felt so certain of this that it was no surprise to be greeted by his secretary with two typewritten reports.

  The first, from the British Embassy in Washington, stated that Donald James Vickers had acquired United States citizenship on 12 May, 1955, and had married Maria Grant Marella on 2 June 1955.

  The second, from the Athens police, informed him that a Mr and Mrs D. J. Vickers, holders of valid US passports, had left Athens by air for Rome on the morning of Saturday, 28 April.

  Pollard read both reports a second time with the sensation of being borne triumphantly aloft.

  8

  Summoned after lunch to report to the Assistant Commissioner, Pollard found him in an irascible mood, suffering from a streaming cold in the head. A copy of the Vickers file was lying on his desk.

  ‘I’ve waded through this,’ he said, pushing it impatiently aside. ‘Looks a straightforward case to me. I can’t see any sound reason for not pulling in the niece and the husband.’

  ‘It’s partly that there doesn’t seem to be a convincing motive, sir, and partly because they both seem far too intelligent to embark on such a very obvious crime,’ Pollard replied, forbearing to add that this information was clearly set out in the file.

  The AC snatched a man-sized tissue from a box, and blew his nose with a couple of resounding blasts, between which Pollard caught a four-letter word.

  ‘Motive! Last thing you want to bother about. Means and opportunity are the things to go for. I should have thought you’d have found that out for yourself, if they forgot to mention it in the training course. As to intelligence — my foot! Everybody knows that however bright the young are, they’ve absolutely no powers of self-criticism. Never occurs to ’em how the things they do strike other people.’

  ‘I absolutely agree, sir,’ Pollard said diplomatically. ‘But the fact is that it’s now a probability that Audrey Vickers and her bigamous husband collided head-on in Athens, and if they did, they could hardly have helped recognizing each other. Some more facts have just come in about Vickers. He’s become a pretty warm chap — owns a motel chain in the States, and another in Canada. He’d have a lot to lose from exposure, even if bigamy isn’t an extraditable offence in his case.’

  An explosive sneeze was the AC’s immediate response. As he blew his nose again he remarked indistinctly that even if it were, the Y
ard had something better to do with its time. He flung a second tissue into a wastepaper basket, and sat staring balefully at his subordinate.

  ‘Look here, Bollard,’ he began, sniffing violently. ‘You’ve had some unusual cases with freak solutions. Fair enough. I don’t say you haven’t handled ’em well, but it’s god you idto the way of shying off the obvious. Dangerous habid. This Vickers fellow. Eben if he did cub on here, where in hell did he ged the cyadide? Tell be thad.’

  All too conscious of being driven on to the defensive, Pollard replied that he had some possible lines of enquiry in mind. The AC countered with a demand to know what arrangements had been made for keeping the Langs under observation. On hearing that Pollard had not thought continuous shadowing necessary, he exploded again.

  ‘If they gib you the slib, it’s your respodsibility,’ he concluded. ‘Ad thad’s all I’ve god to say. I oughdn’t to be here. I’b goig hobe to bed: odly thig to do with a bloody code lige this,’ he added, with the pettishness of a healthy male afflicted by a minor ailment.

  Pollard thankfully escaped. As he went through the outer office, he exchanged raised eyebrows and despairing looks with the AC’s secretary.

  After this depressing encounter Toye’s enthusiasm about the report from Washington was gratifying. A careful worker to the point of over-conscientiousness, Toye was sometimes alarmed by Pollard’s flashes of inspiration, but always full of generous admiration when they came off. They settled down to plan a course of action in the event of news coming through from Rome that the Donald Vickers had flown on to London. Their arrival at Heathrow or Gatwick would have to be verified, and enquiries made at the likely hotels.

  ‘And if they didn’t turn up here after all,’ Pollard said, with rather elaborate casualness, ‘well, that’s that. Now then, how did you get on down at that factory? Enjoy the drive?’

  The lady, Toye told him, had been properly put out. Face like thunder, and took it out on the car. Shocking driving. It was a wonder they hadn’t had a crash the way she’d jumped the lights and overtaken. Never spoke a word till they got there, bar cursing other drivers. Then she’d chucked him at her partner’s head and disappeared.