The Complete Kate Benedict Cozy British Mysteries

by Carrie Bedford

  “I can’t imagine that the security is to stop people getting out,” I joked, clutching the sandwich bag closer to my chest. I’d seen my first dead body a year ago and I wasn’t relishing the thought of seeing any more.

  We entered an autopsy room dominated by two stainless steel operating tables. Steel cabinets lined the walls. The floor and ceiling were covered in white tiles. A strong smell hung in the air, sharp and sweet. My knees began to shake.

  A slim woman in a white coat was lining up scalpels on a stainless steel counter. She appeared to be in her mid-forties and had pixie-cut blonde hair, with striking blue eyes under perfectly groomed eyebrows.

  “Anita, love, how are you doing?” she asked, striding across the room to give her a hug. “I’m sorry about Dr. Reid. I know you two were close.”

  When Anita introduced me, I shook hands with Grace, noticing her perfect French manicure.

  “Did you bring sandwiches?” Grace asked. “I’m starving.”

  When I held up the bag, she smiled. “Great. Let’s eat.”

  “Here?” I asked.

  “Well, we could. The place is spotless. You could eat off the floor and it’d be safer than your average kitchen counter.”

  “No thanks all the same,” I said, eager to get out of the cold, hard room.

  We followed her next door into a cluttered, untidy office, where we sat on uncomfortable straight back chairs grouped around her desk. I handed out the sandwiches and water but didn’t open my own. The morgue had twisted my stomach into knots and killed my appetite. I couldn’t imagine how Grace worked here every day, with dead bodies for company.

  Anita took a bite of her shrimp on rye. “Who’s the coroner on the case?”

  “Margerison,” said Grace. “That’s good. He’s a detail freak. Everyone is really upset about Dr. Reid, and they’re throwing the most senior resources at the investigation. Margerison has tons of experience.”

  “And they gave you the autopsy because you’re the best,” said Anita. “What did you find out?”

  Grace washed her beef sandwich down with a large gulp of water. “Not much yet. I’ve sent all the samples for testing. They’ve been given high priority, but you know toxicology analysis can take a while. We probably won’t know anything for at least a couple of weeks.”

  “But do you have an idea of what happened?” I asked. “How did Dr. Reid die?”

  “My guess is that a lethal cocktail of insulin, digitoxin and midazolam, or substances like them, were delivered by an IV into his left arm. The IV was still attached, the drip bag empty, but forensics can analyze the traces to pinpoint the exact medications. It certainly supports the suicide theory.”

  Grace brushed some crumbs off the desk on to the floor. Obviously, cleanliness wasn’t as important in the office as it was in the autopsy room.

  “And those drugs are lethal?” I asked.

  “In that mix at a sufficient dose, yes. Midazolam knocks you out, which has the additional benefit, if you can call it that, of not allowing you to change your mind. The digitoxin causes arrhythmia and the insulin, in a high dose, induces a hypoglycemic coma. So, you’re unconscious, your heart beats erratically, and the result is a cardiac arrest. You never wake up. It’s not a bad way to go, if you’re intent on going.”

  “Damn.” Anita slumped forward, elbows on the desk.

  “Where would Dr. Reid have got hold of those medications?” I asked.

  Grace and Anita exchanged looks. “It’s not hard,” Anita said. “Doctors write prescriptions for them every day. Cardiac drugs, insulin, sedatives. All of them are common enough treatments for our patients.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time either,” added Grace. “I’ve seen two other cases like this one, both of them doctors and obvious suicides.”

  I twisted off the top of my water bottle but didn’t drink. “Was there a note?” I asked. “Don’t suicides usually leave notes?”

  “I followed up on that this morning,” said Anita. “Pauline spoke to Dr. Reid’s wife briefly and there was no letter at the house. No one has found anything here either.”

  “Inconclusive,” said Grace. “A sudden wave of depression, no time to think about penning a goodbye missive. It’s not unusual.”

  Anita shook her head slowly. “Not Dr. Reid. He wouldn’t kill himself. I’m sure of it. He always said that our goal, as doctors, is to be useful. And you can’t be useful if you’re dead.”

  We sat in silence for a minute. “Are you sure there was nothing else?” Anita asked finally. “No signs of a struggle?”

  Grace shook her head. “Nothing. The body was remarkably clean…” She stopped when she caught sight of the look on Anita’s face. “Sorry, I know Dr. Reid was more than just a body. But other than the puncture for the IV needle, there no other signs of abuse, drug use, nothing.”

  She finished her sandwich and crumpled up her paper napkin. Shaping it into a ball, she lobbed it across the desk. I turned to watch it drop into a wastepaper basket behind me.

  “Played netball at school,” she said with a grin.

  “What was the time of death?” Anita asked.

  “I put it at about eight p.m. Possibly as early as seven-thirty. His body was discovered at eight forty-five.”

  I put my uneaten lunch back into the plastic carrier bag. Grace looked up hopefully. “What kind of sandwich do you have there?”

  “Egg salad.”

  “Great, I’ll have it.”

  I handed it to her. She opened the packet, gave a section of the sandwich to Anita, and took a big bite of the other half.

  “The nurses change shifts at eight,” said Anita. “There would have been a fair amount of coming and going at that time, but the examination rooms wouldn’t normally be in use that late in the evening.”

  “So Dr. Reid found a quiet space where he wouldn’t be disturbed,” said Grace.

  “Why at work?” I asked. “Why not at home?”

  Grace shrugged. “Maybe he’d have even less privacy at home. And at work, he had access to the drugs and the equipment. It makes sense to me.”

  “I still don’t believe it was suicide,” Anita was folding her paper napkin into a tiny triangle. “He wouldn’t do that. I saw him earlier in the afternoon and he was absolutely fine. In fact, he was telling me about his plans for the weekend, going to a niece’s wedding in Oxford with his wife.”

  “I don’t know, Anita,” said Grace. “Suicides can be very good at pretending, at making plans, feigning happiness. Relatives will say afterwards that they had no indication their son, or daughter, or husband was contemplating killing themselves.” She looked sad. “But it happens, more often than you’d think.”

  “I suppose you get plenty of opportunities to investigate causes of death?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “Yes, though it’s not my job, of course. The coroner officially heads the investigations, but he trusts my opinion and I’ve helped him a few times. In my spare time, I read masses of forensic reports, and study different areas of forensic science, like blood spatter patterns, toxicology, ballistics. I love it all.”

  “And then there’s Egypt,” said Anita, somewhat cryptically. I raised an eyebrow at Grace.

  “Well, that’s my real area of interest, my passion really,” said Grace. “I know all about embalming and burial rites. Which isn’t surprising given that I was an Egyptian embalmer in a former life.”

  I laughed, but stopped when her expression remained completely serious.

  “Really,” she said. “I lived in the Twentieth Dynasty during the reign of Rameses III. I was the chief embalmer at the massive funerary complex, Medinet Habu, adjoining the royal palace in Thebes, and I was responsible for the preparation and burial of members of the royal family. That’s what made me go into this business of being a forensic pathologist. I knew when I was about five years old that it was what I wanted to do.”

  She stopped talking and stared at me. “Anita thinks I’m crazy. I expect you
do too.”

  “No, I don’t,” I replied. “Not at all.”

  “Kate can see auras that predict death,” Anita said.

  Grace’s face lit up. “Fascinating.”

  Only two other people had ever greeted that revelation so matter of factly: Sister Chiara, in Tuscany, who had helped me accept my new “gift” and Olivia, my brother’s wonderful wife. Funnily enough, Olivia looked like Cleopatra with her straight black hair and heavily-kohled eyes. She and Grace would probably get on like a house on fire.

  “But the worse thing is that Anita has an aura too,” I said.

  Grace’s eyes widened and she stared at Anita. “I can’t see anything.”

  “No, but it’s there. That’s why we have to work out how Dr. Reid died. If it was foul play, then Anita may be at risk from the killer.”

  “All right,” said Grace, pulling her chair closer to the desk and leaning forward on the fake wood surface. “Let’s assume that this wasn’t suicide. You think he was murdered? By whom and why? More importantly, how? Dr. Reid wouldn’t just lie there waiting for someone to stick an IV in his arm.”

  “I don’t know about the why,” replied Anita. “So let’s start with who and how. We’ve just agreed that there were people about, other doctors, nurses and patients.”

  “What about visitors?” I asked. “Do you have visiting hours?”

  “We encourage visitors to come between ten in the morning and six in the evening,” said Anita. “But many parents are present twenty-four hours a day. They stay overnight, sleeping in chairs next to the kids’ beds. So, yes, there are always people around. But why would a parent want to kill the doctor who’s treating his child? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe someone pretending to be a parent then,” I said.

  “That’s a thought,“ said Grace. “Although I still don’t see how. Dr. Reid wasn’t going to lie there meekly while someone put a needle in his arm.”

  “Maybe he was incapacitated somehow,” I ventured. “Knocked out for long enough to get the IV running?”

  “There was no damage to the head or any other organ, so he wasn’t physically punched, stabbed or assaulted with a weapon of any kind.”

  “Another drug then,” I said.

  “That could be the answer,” said Anita. “What do you think, Grace? Flunitrazepam? A couple of tablets of that would dissolve easily in a cup of coffee and have an almost instantaneous effect.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s best known as Rohypnol,” Grace said. “The date rape drug.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything to say. A cornucopia of terrifying concoctions circulated hospitals, it seemed. Drugs that could save lives, but take them too.

  Grace cupped her chin in her hands, her slender fingers cradling her cheeks. “The Grand Vizier, Aat, was murdered by men who thought he had too much influence with the Pharaoh. He was stabbed to death by five different weapons, but first he was drugged. They put a sleeping potion in his wine. That way he couldn’t resist, or make a noise that his guards would have heard. He was assassinated in complete silence, in his room, with eight bodyguards standing just beyond the curtains. By the time his body was discovered, the murderers had dispersed, making their way to their rooms throughout the palace. None of them was ever caught. Back then, of course, we didn’t have the tools to show that a drug had been used. My master knew, though, how it had happened. His brother was one of the assassins.”

  Images flashed in front of my eyes. Candles casting a flickering light on the gruesome scene. A group of men, each with a sharp blade, bowing over the unconscious man, the arc of the knives, the sound of iron plunging into unresisting flesh, the splatter of hot blood.

  Anita broke the silence, pulling me back into the twenty-first century. “So who would want to murder Dr. Reid?”

  “It would have to be a medical professional,” Grace said. “Someone who knew that particular mix of drugs would cause death very quickly, and who also knew how to set up an IV.”

  I looked at her in surprise. “You mean you think it was another doctor?”

  “A doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist. Or anyone who knows how to google “ways to kill people.”” Grace looked indignant. “You can find anything on the web nowadays, even how to build bombs, for God’s sake.”

  For a moment, my attention was diverted to Simon Scott. A bomb seemed like a highly likely form of threat to him. I hoped that Clarke was working on it.

  “Yes, but you still need access,” Anita said. “Those are all regulated drugs. You can’t pick them up over the counter. Of course, a doctor could get them at the hospital pharmacy.”

  “We should go talk to Ted,” said Grace. She glanced at me. “He’s the head of the hospital pharmacy. I’ve worked with him on a few overdose cases. He’s very knowledgeable.”

  “Right,” said Anita. “But first, I’d like to ask a few more questions up on the fourth floor.”

  Grace stood up. “Let’s get to work then.”

  Up at the Pediatric Unit, I paused to look out of a window. The sky was still grey and overcast but, after the windowless gloom of the basement, the light felt pure and invigorating. I paused for half a minute before following the others towards the nurses’ station, where I recognized Pauline, the nurse who had discovered Dr. Reid’s body. She looked distraught and red-eyed.

  “Pauline, we need to talk to you,” Anita said. “Do you have a minute? Come with us.”

  We all crowded into the small kitchen, where Grace poured herself a cup of coffee. “The coffee’s better up here,” she said. “Downstairs, it’s always treacly and disgusting. Must be something to do with the particles in the air.” She waved the carafe around. “Anyone?”

  My stomach was doing flips at the description of the coffee in the autopsy suite. “No, thanks.”

  “Dr. Margerison has already been up,” Pauline said. “Asking questions and taking notes. A detective too. What’s going on? I thought Dr. Reid committed suicide?”

  “Everyone just wants to be sure of what happened,” said Grace, taking charge. “You were the one the janitor came to when he found Dr. Reid, right?”

  “Yes, I was here at the nurses’ station. Maurice rushed up the hallway in a panic. We called down to Emergency at once.”

  “And you didn’t see anyone else go into that exam room or come out of it?”

  She shook her head. “I was busy supervising the evening medication rounds. And we had an alert in 4C that was a false alarm, but it caused a bit of chaos, happening right then during the shift change.”

  “So who was here before you began the medication rounds?”

  Pauline seemed to think for a minute. “I can check the roster, but there were four nurses. And Dr. Schwartz. Dr. Reid of course. Dr. Marks was just going off duty. A couple of sales reps were still here, hoping to grab one of the doctors before they left for the day. Macintyre from LBP and Eric Hill from PharmAnew. I remember because that Hill chap was complaining we’d run out of coffee. And a half dozen visitors.”

  Pauline dabbed at her eyes. “I wish I could help more. Dr. Reid was a fine man. I’ll miss him. Can I go? We’re very busy today.”

  After she hurried out of the kitchen, Grace finished her coffee. “Off to the pharmacy then,” she said as she tossed the paper cup into the rubbish bin.

  We followed her to the other end of the building where we found a middle-aged pharmacist working at a computer behind a high counter. The only access to his workspace was through a closed door that bore the sign “Strictly No Admittance.”

  “Hey, Grace,” he said. “I didn’t know they let you out during daylight hours.”

  “Haha. Listen, Ted, we need a favor. Could you check your records for prescriptions filled in the last couple of days, for flunitrazepam, midazolam, insulin, and digitoxin or an equivalent, and who they were prescribed by?”

  “It would take a while. Most of those are standard issues. There’ll be dozens of records.”<
br />
  “How long?”

  “I could do it in two days, maybe a little less. I’ll work on it after hours tonight and tomorrow. Will that work?”

  “The faster the better,” Grace said.

  “Can you search by the prescribing doctor?” Anita asked.

  Ted nodded, his bald head catching the light. “Yep.”

  “Can you look up all recent prescriptions requested by Dr. Reid?”

  He frowned. “What’s going on?”

  Grace leaned across the counter. “I have two tickets to the English National Opera’s production of Othello.”

  He grinned. “You’d go with me?”

  “No, I’d give you both the tickets. You can take your girlfriend or boyfriend or anyone you like. You won’t have to put up with me for the evening.”

  “Okay. But you know Dr. Reid was fastidious about medications. He always did everything by the book, writing out proper prescriptions and usually only for a small amount. Just enough to get his patient through the first couple of days. And those drugs you mentioned? Not on his usual list at all.”

  “But you could check.”

  “Sure, anything for opera,” he said, and began typing on his PC keyboard. He clicked away for a minute or two, the frown lines on his forehead deepening into chasms under the overhead lights.

  “Nothing,” he said, looking up at us. “Dr. Reid never requested any of those meds. The last one was just his usual, a three-day supply of vicodin. Notes say it was for Joey Nelson, age sixteen.”

  Anita nodded. “Joey came in with complications from a damaged spleen, after a bad fall. He was discharged two days ago.”

  “Is that all? I should get back to work,” Ted said.

  Grace thanked him, promising to come back with the opera tickets later in the day. The three of us retraced our steps to the lobby where she hugged us goodbye and made me swear I’d come back sometime to talk about auras.