The Wimbledon Poisoner

by Nigel Williams

  There could be only one reason why Rush wanted Henry to accompany him, of course. He wanted Henry to see how close he was getting, to join in at every stage of the game, to watch each clue unroll, to stand helplessly by as the trail that led to Henry and only to Henry was uncovered. But he had no choice in the matter.

  The first thing Rush did was to track down those suspected poisoner victims who had been buried and start digging them up as fast as he could. There was, everyone agreed, not much time. The editorial in the New Statesman announced that poison was ‘well and truly ensconced in the bloodstream of our national life’, blamed the low wages paid to employees of supermarkets and demanded swift action. The Sun (‘give him a dose of his own medicine’) led the call for a new, possibly chemically based method of execution for dealing with this kind of pervert. An enterprising youth set up a stall in the High Street, selling Poisoner Products (T-shirts, plastic syringes and Poisoner Peppermints – ‘Suck them and you do feel queer!’) before he was moved on by a policeman who had somehow got left out of the house-to-house search.

  At first, Rush did not have great success with his autopsies. Patricia Leigh Smith who collapsed and died five hours after eating a tuna fish salad at a whist drive in Merton in 1986 had her bones ground up and sifted, but nothing was revealed. But then Hugh Padworth, who collapsed and died six hours after consuming a Bakewell tart at a fête in Putney, was found to contain traces of arsenic (‘HE’S A POISONER VICTIM – IT’S OFFICIAL!’ Wimbledon News). But Rush, like many dedicated detectives, had nothing but an ever-increasing list of suspects to offer an increasingly disturbed public, and his investigations, apart from worrying everyone a good deal more than they were already, did not seem to be leading anywhere.

  Maisie was very excited by the poisoner. She had proposed a project at school on Poisons and Poisoning. She had composed a short song, which she sang constantly, the chorus of which went, ‘It’s good for you! Take it down! Take it down!’ Elinor, too, developed a passionate interest in the case. It eclipsed feminism, Nicaragua; even whales, it appeared, were a poor second to the poisoner. She announced that she was starting work on a monograph, provisionally entitled ‘The Politics of Poisoning’, which, she told Henry, would deal with everything, from prussic acid to salmonella in eggs. ‘It is,’ she told him, embracing an issue that seemed to give a new dimension to his hobby, ‘an additive issue. It’s a statement about us because we are defined by what we eat.’ But, while all around him were united by their fear of the person who, according to which newspaper you read, stalked or lurked or smouldered through the quiet borough of Wimbledon, Henry grew more and more isolated, more and more frightened by each knock at the door, each ring at the bell. It wouldn’t be long now, he told himself, before Rush tired of his game. With each new piece of hard evidence Rush’s smile grew wider, until, thought Henry, he was almost nudging and winking at him.

  When he finally came to call, one afternoon in late November, when all the leaves had gone from the trees and cyclists and pedestrians walked hunched against the cold east wind that people said would blow till Christmas, it came as a relief. Henry knew, he thought, as he saw him walk up to the house, that he was in the last phase of the game he was playing. He was steady-eyed as he pressed the bell and when Henry answered it he didn’t speak or move to come in, just stood on the threshold, the street behind him, his eyes full of enigmatic mockery. Henry took him into the kitchen and offered him a drink.

  ‘Why do you think he does it?’ he said, when the silence was becoming unbearable.

  ‘Who knows?’ said Rush. ‘Resentment against society?’

  ‘It’s funny,’ said Henry, ‘I’ve got a lot of . . . resentments. Against society.’

  ‘Really,’ said Rush, ‘and you such a quiet chap.’

  It was curiously easy to talk about all this to Rush. Perhaps this, thought Henry, was what it was like talking to a psychiatrist. His words seemed to fall like coins down a well, into a silence that went on and on, waiting for a distant impact.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Henry, ‘I mean Gordon Macrae . . . for example . . .’

  Jungian Analyst with Winebox! That’s what you called him, you callous bastard, didn’t you? Eh? Eh?

  ‘And who are these . . . resentments . . . directed against?’ said Rush.

  He seemed to be speaking very, very gently, his voice no more than breath on a pane of glass. It disturbed Henry’s train of thought no more than a small animal might disturb the undergrowth on one of its tracks.

  ‘Oh . . . everyone . . .’ said Henry. ‘I think . . . people have got it in for me. I think they’re out to get me. I think they’re all doing better than me.’

  Rush’s face was not the pinched mask it usually seemed. His skin seemed paper thin, the way Henry’s father’s had before his heart attack; he had that dried-out vulnerability you sometimes see in old men.

  ‘I mean,’ said Henry, ‘I might be . . . I might . . .’

  Rush leaned forward. ‘Might be what?’

  ‘I might be the bloody poisoner! You know!’

  Rush nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes.’

  Was this it? Was this the beginning of the long journey to the Old Bailey, the endless dashing in and out of police stations with a blanket over one’s head? Could he go the whole way now? And confess? He wanted, suddenly, to confess. He wanted to own up to those ghastly thoughts that floated into his head, that, in some awful way, sustained him, the things he didn’t speak about even to himself. Because if he confessed he might be like other people once again. He might end this awful, nightmarish isolation.

  Henry looked back into Rush’s eyes and thought, He understands. He knows about people like me. But could not, for some reason, say the words he wanted to say. He let his head droop and found himself staring at the carpet, at an irregular brown stain to the left of the sofa. Rush was saying something, in that quiet, gentle voice of his.

  ‘I think . . .’ he said softly, ‘we should get hold of Sprott’s ashes. Don’t you?’

  31

  What Henry didn’t understand was why Rush didn’t pull him in. He was by now under considerable pressure. Any large-scale murder investigation, as Sam Baker QC (almost) reminded Henry at dinner, made a star out of a detective. It also brought him into what could be uncomfortable public prominence.

  ‘WHAT ARE THEY DOING ABOUT THE POISONER?’ a story in the local paper asked. Keen-eyed young men in glasses paced the pavement outside the All England Lawn Tennis Club and asked the camera keen-eyed questions to which it did not respond. Rush was interviewed outside Wimbledon police station, where his acting style came in handy. But he was still unable to provide the Great British Public with hard evidence.

  ‘WHEN WILL HE STRIKE AGAIN?’ the newspapers asked. And Henry, quivering in front of the television, wondered when he would.

  Come on Rush! Make it safe to go into the supermarket!

  ‘Of course,’ said Lustgarten, ‘Detective Inspector Rush, that keen-eyed and conscientious policeman, had not yet proof in the one case where he thought he might be able to lay an offence directly at the door of the morally maimed creature who lived at 54 Maple Drive. He bound himself closer and closer to Farr, waiting for the sociopath to let slip a remark that might bring him to the modern equivalent of the gallows. And Farr himself, whose conscious apprehension of his inner, murderous self had only arisen in relation to his wife, the feminist, Elinor, could not but accede to the detective’s wily request to be “in” on the murder investigation! A cruel irony! As his love burgeoned again for Mrs Farr, it burgeoned, as it so often does, too late! He was doomed! But Fate does not deal kindly with those who step into that no man’s land where dwell the lost and hapless souls who bear the Mark of Cain!’

  Lustgarten, like Rush, like everyone, was getting rather hysterical.

  And it was, as Lustgarten said, ironically true that, as the affair of the Wimbledon Poisoner became first local, then national, then international news, Elinor seemed to gr
ow sweeter and more reasonable with each day that passed. Over supper they would discuss the case and feel genuine retrospective sorrow for (say) Loris Kemp, now alleged to have been poisoned after ingesting a lamb korma at a tandoori restaurant in Wimbledon in March 1987. They often had sex after these discussions. Their congress seemed to grow out of the case. In the middle of a sentence (‘But how did he get the stuff into the pickle? If it was the pickle? Did he—?’) they would break off and find themselves eating each other over the ruins of the supper table. They did it in ways that were only hinted at in sex manuals. They whipped each other with towels and leather belts. They did it on the floor, surrounded by Maisie’s crisps and the remains of their evening meal. They pulled off their clothes as they climbed the stairs and copulated on the landing. They enjoyed long sessions in which physical release was preceded by pleasurable verbal abuse (‘You’re fat!’ ‘I know!’ ‘You’re a fat bitch!’ ‘Yes yes yes, I’m a fat bitch.’ ‘I’m going to fuck you because you’re fat!’ ‘Yes, oh yes, yes oh, I’m fat!’ ‘It’s because you’re fat that I’m fucking you!’ ‘Yes yes yes, oh yes, fuck me, I’m fat!’ ‘I’m fat too!’ ‘Yes yes yes, you’re fat!’ ‘I’m fat and I’m fucking you!’ ‘Oh God yes. Oh God yes, you are so fat and you’re fucking me, oh God!’ ‘Oh my darling, we’re both fat and we’re fucking each other and it’s so good!’ ‘Oh yes, we’re both fat and we’re fucking and it’s so good, it’s so fucking good and fat!’ etc., etc.). In the week in which Rush announced that the deaths of an Irish family of eight in Southfields (‘HE KILLS OFF HIS BEAT’) were traceable to a kebab served to them by the proprietor of a Greek restaurant in Raynes Park, Elinor and Henry climaxed, simultaneously, a staggering twelve times.

  Partly, of course, Henry told himself, this was due to the fact that, at long last, people were beginning to take an interest in Wimbledon. ‘Interest’ was putting it mildly. Journalists moved into hotels near the village. They wrote long colour pieces about the fear that stalked the borough, and even, in some cases, went into the history of the place at some length. They got drunk in the Dog and Fox and tried to persuade the barmaid to pose for a saucy snap, holding a cheese roll to her lips. And on 10 December, after a particularly gruelling interview with a man from the Sunday Times, Rush showed Henry the following letter:

  Dear Detective Inspector Rush,

  I am writing to you, at a time when I realize you must be under great pressure, to ask if I could possibly take some minutes of your time. I am engaged in commissioning a book about the Wimbledon Poisoner, to be written by Jonathan Freemantle, who has written several highly praised books about mass murderers. As Jonathan is away in India at the moment, interviewing researchers, I have promised him that I would approach you to see if you would be able to co-operate with us in the planned work.

  I shall be staying in Wimbledon for a few days in the week after next and wondered if I could buy you lunch and discuss the case with you? I would stress that we do not contemplate a sensational piece but a serious study of some of the sociological issues involved in the Wimbledon poisonings.

  Yours sincerely,

  Karim Jackson

  Editorial Director

  Brawl Books, London N1.

  ‘A Pakistani gentleman, I imagine,’ said Rush darkly, ‘with, I have no doubt, negative views of the force!’

  ‘Seems a fairly inoffensive letter to me!’ said Henry.

  ‘I’ll put the word out he’s coming down!’ said Rush. ‘He sounds like a troublemaker to me.’

  Henry smiled weakly. He could no longer feel as angry as he once had about Jackson. The trouble was, once you had started being charitable, it was very hard to stop. Some of Rush’s expressions struck him as grotesquely out of place, until he realized that, once, he had thought and spoken exactly like that. He recognized his old self in Rush and did not much care for it. Involved in all of this was also plain, straightforward fear. He felt about the detective inspector the way snakes are reported to feel about mongooses. As usual with Rush, he was fairly sure that what the man was actually confiding to him was in a kind of code. Was he trying to let Henry know that yes, he knew about Henry’s book, about Henry’s racism, about yet another unhealed sore? Since his first suggestion that they get hold of Sprott’s ashes, he had not mentioned the subject, except very indirectly, and then only as a response to a question of Henry’s. In order to get an autopsy, said Rush, he would have to have an inquest; this would create ‘bad feeling in the street’. Mrs Sprott didn’t want to be bothered with such things.

  Of course, thought Henry, an inquest would only prove that Sprott had an unusually large amount of bleach inside him. And Rush wanted more than that. He wanted the only thing that would get him a conviction – a confession. And Henry knew all about confessions. The police used any and every method of extorting them from suspects. Once the detective inspector had declared his hand, all Henry had to do was deny. He was being cleverer than that. He was making friends with Henry. He was slowly and surely creating an atmosphere in which Henry wanted to tell him things, to confide in him. And what better atmosphere than one in which the two of them became partners in a kind of crime. It was as if Rush was a kind of accessory to Henry’s guilt.

  The policeman’s very panic at the thought of not catching the poisoner (already people were suggesting wild and fantastic suspects, from the star of a current TV soap opera to a member of the royal family) had communicated itself to Henry, so that at times, in the way one finishes a sentence for an old friend, he wanted to see Rush’s uncertainty resolved.

  The other thing that made the advent of Advent more than usually unpleasant was the thought that, somehow or other, Everett Maltby was responsible for all of this. In the days after Gordon Macrae’s death Henry went, two or three times, to The Complete History to refresh his memory about the Maltby case. On one occasion he got as far as looking out his notes on the poisoner; but when he had got within five or six pages of what he now thought of as the danger area, the paper seemed to weigh on his fingers. It was rather like recalling a party at which one had misbehaved or, more nearly, staying away from a dark room in which something (what?) could be heard moving. It woke in Henry all sorts of fears and anxieties that made him set down the manuscript and stare out of the study window at the bald suburban garden for hour after hour.

  It was at such moments that Henry could see himself doing the ghastly things the poisoner was supposed to do. And he found the only company that seemed able to relieve him, the only person with whom he felt able to share anything was Inspector Rush. He was almost getting to like Rush. They spent long hours walking across the common, whole afternoons sitting in Henry’s front room, neither of them speaking. If Henry went to the pub, Rush accompanied him; and sometimes the detective would share information about the latest news on the case.

  What no one had been able to discover was a pattern in the case. The poisoner seemed to murder (where murder was verifiable) in an entirely random manner. His victims were not exclusively male or female (although, Henry was relieved to note, there were no children); the only thing that united them, as far as anyone could see, was that all the crimes occurred in Wimbledon. Rush was of the opinion that there was no pattern, although plenty of people had identified what they described as his ‘target group’. The most popular theory was that he was a man with a grudge against Wimbledon itself, possibly an unsuccessful trader. But no one – to Henry’s relief – had, so far anyway, come any closer than that.

  ‘Of course,’ said Elinor one afternoon, ‘there might be a pattern. But he’ (everyone called the poisoner ‘he’) ‘might be deliberately obscuring it.’

  Rush leaned forward in the armchair that he now designated his. He looked across at Henry, as he said, ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well,’ said Elinor, ‘he might have a real target in mind. And he might not want us to know who that target is.’

  ‘So you mean,’ said Rush, ‘he goes about poisoning people as a blind?’


  ‘It’s possible.’

  Henry coughed. ‘Sounds a bit cumbersome,’ he said. ‘If I wanted to murder someone I’d get right in there and do it. Get my hands dirty.’

  ‘You wouldn’t, Henry,’ said Elinor, with unusual prescience, ‘you’d gibber around with all sorts of schemes and make a complete hash of it. Actually—’ here she gave her booming laugh – ‘it’s such a far-fetched idea of mine it’s the sort of thing you’d go for. You never deal directly with anything.’

  Henry managed a jovial laugh. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘so I’m the suspect, am I? I’m the chappie who goes around tampering with the groceries!’

  Rush, he noticed, wasn’t laughing.

  ‘I’m not saying that!’ said Elinor. ‘All I’m saying is – it’s possible the poisoner isn’t a psychopath who kills at random, but a man who wants to kill someone desperately, so desperately that he deliberately kills an arbitrary selection of people in order to conceal his true target. Maybe even from himself!’

  Henry gulped. ‘How do you mean . . . from himself?’ he said.

  ‘I mean,’ said Elinor, ‘he can’t face up to the fact that he really wants to kill the person he wants to kill, so that he kills, almost unconsciously, not simply to lay a false trail, people that he sees as “in his way”. He might not even know he’s doing it!’

  Henry looked briefly across at Rush to see if the detective was watching him. To his relief, he wasn’t. Henry’s heart was making an eerily amplified noise inside his ribs. He folded his arms judiciously and tried to look as if he was just another wally discussing the poisoner.

  ‘It still sounds a bit . . . complicated to me,’ he said; ‘what gave you the idea?’

  ‘Everett Maltby,’ said Elinor.

  The room had gone very quiet.

  ‘Tell us,’ said Rush, ‘do!’