Deadly Anniversaries

by Marcia Muller

  “What’s your reaction?” Tysoe asked when he returned with two pints of lager. The Grapes was crowded as usual with journalists.

  “I didn’t know the old boy had turned up his toes.”

  “He hasn’t. He’s still about. Cheers.”

  Mark had been about to take his first sip. The glass stopped midway to his mouth.

  Tysoe said, “Didn’t I tell you they put me on the obits desk last month?”

  “Ah. Makes sense now.” Mark sank some of the lager. “Is that, like, a promotion?”

  “Some chance. I’m confined to barracks for my sins, but I’m enjoying it. I’ve been on the road chasing stories for too long. I’m still busy. People are dying all the time.”

  “Not Mr. Perrin.”

  “He’s old. He hasn’t got long.”

  “Is that inside information?”

  Tysoe laughed again. Not a pleasant laugh. “Be prepared, I say.”

  “I’m guessing you know something. Your job would depress me.”

  “Come on, Mark. Everyone who’s anyone has an obituary waiting. You know that. I have getting on for two thousand of the undead on file. The point is, you’re more clued up about famous trials than any of the staffers at the Post. What do you think of this one?”

  “Want an honest answer? Not much.”

  Tysoe wasn’t offended. He nodded and waited for more.

  “Did you write it yourself?” Mark asked. “No? Then I can be frank. It strikes me as bland. Perrin deserves a better send-off. I mean, there’s sod-all here about his work for the Tobacco Products Directive. I believe I’m quoting him right when he said something like, ‘When you get sent rotting guts every day of your life you start to care what humanity is doing to its insides.’”

  “Nice one. Exactly the kind of quote I need to inject some life into the thing. Obituaries shouldn’t be dull. They should reflect the vitality of their subjects. You could give this some pizzazz.”

  Giving pizzazz to an obituary was a tough call, but as a freelancer, Mark didn’t turn work down. “What’s your best offer?”

  “I could run to five hundred plus expenses. You might want to visit him.”

  “I can’t do it for less than eight. What do you mean ‘visit him’? Tell him I’m writing his obituary? That could bring on a seizure before I get a word out of him.”

  “Obviously you won’t tell him why you’re there. You can say you’re doing a piece about the trial. We’ll send a staff photographer with you to get some pictures.”

  “You did say you’ll pay eight hundred plus expenses?”

  “Did I?”

  “It’s still peanuts, but I’d like an excuse to meet him.” Already Mark was thinking he could get a feature article out of this as well and sell it to a color magazine for thousands, not hundreds. The fortieth anniversary of the Burke-Miller trial was coming up later in the year—a convenient peg to hang the piece on. “Are you sure you don’t want a medical man for this?”

  “No, it can’t be too technical. Leave that to the Lancet. You’re the ideal choice, or I wouldn’t have asked. Get the personal angle, preferably with plenty of quotes and any gossip that’s going. Our readers love a bit of goss.”

  “How long have I got?”

  The gallows humor kicked in again. “Longer than Perrin, I hope. End of the month, say, about 1500 words? Oh, and for Christ’s sake don’t tell him what you’re up to, or he’ll want a preview. Even Winston Churchill wasn’t allowed a sight of his when he asked. You will regard this as strictly entre nous?”

  Mark tapped the side of his nose and winked. He could get to enjoy this assignment.

  That evening, he phoned all the contacts he knew who were likely to have inside information. He told them he would be interviewing Perrin to mark the anniversary of the much-publicized trial, which seemed to have been a life changer but was all most people knew about the toxicologist. He said he was hoping to discover how the old man’s life had panned out in the years since. The facts about his career, the qualifications and the honors, were easily found online and in Who’s Who. The human side was more elusive.

  And this was the bit he really enjoyed—rooting out the little-known personal details.

  Piecing together hints from several sources, Mark found the juicy morsel he needed. Perrin was rumored to have used his fame to start an affair with the wife of a senior government minister. The story would need more digging, but, if true, might explain why the high-achieving professor had never received a higher honor than the OBE.

  He called a retired journo friend who had once been the mainstay of the political pages of the Herald. “Every word is true, Mark. She was the wife of Solly Waterfield, the Home Secretary at the time. Solly would leave his penthouse flat in Chelsea to make a statement in Parliament, and Perrin would be waiting outside like a tomcat. Before the minister’s car arrived at the House, Perrin and Portia would be at it, banging like the proverbial shithouse door in a gale.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “The woman who lived underneath listened to Iron Maiden at full volume to drown out the sounds.”

  “Did they separate?”

  “You mean Solly and Portia? No, they soldiered on. She was twenty years his junior and came into a small fortune. He was no better in bed than he was in government, but the Waterfield millions were her consolation after he died.”

  “Plus her toxicologist lover?”

  “Perrin wasn’t around by then. The affair didn’t last that long. I expect she met other men.”

  “Was this widely known?”

  “Only to a few. Mainly me and the long-suffering neighbor. I could have had an exclusive, but my paper wasn’t a scandal sheet in those days.”

  “Don’t you want to use it now?”

  “Not really. This has no news value. No one’s interested in what ministers got up to in the eighties.”

  “Solly didn’t get up to much by the sound of it. All the action came from his wife and Judson Perrin.”

  “Couldn’t put it better myself.”

  * * *

  Since his retirement, Perrin had lived with his second wife, Jane, in a flat in the Barbican. His voice sounded lively enough when Mark called him the same day. He took the bait. Yes, he answered over the phone, he wouldn’t object to being interviewed for a feature if it was going into one of the quality magazines. He hadn’t realized that forty years had passed since Burke-Miller was convicted, but he agreed that the anniversary was a good reason for a look back at how the trial had unfolded.

  The meeting was arranged for late Friday afternoon. Mark asked if he could bring a photographer with him. “No problem at all. I have a room set up as a lab here,” Perrin said. “He can get some pictures of me holding up a test tube or whatever.”

  “You’ve obviously done this before,” Mark said.

  “There was a ridiculous amount of interest at the time. I got used to posing behind a flask of fluid with my face distorted. Nobody wants a toxicologist looking normal.”

  By Friday, Mark had done his homework. He was feeling confident after a couple of drinks at lunchtime. Dale, the photographer, would drive them both there, so there was no need to watch his alcohol level.

  It was apparent from the moment they met that Dr. Perrin would be a good interviewee, delighted to be back in the spotlight. Tall, with watery blue eyes and a florid skin tone, the old man had dressed for the photo session in pinstripes and waistcoat, with a rosebud in his buttonhole. It was hard to picture this dignified old guy as the tomcat Tysoe had described. He introduced his wife, Jane, a sweet-smiling lady in her seventies who offered coffee, but they decided to do the photography first. Just as Perrin had predicted, Dale wanted shots of the toxicologist in his home lab, peering into a microscope and then holding a test tube close to his face so that light was refracted onto his features.


  “Is this ghoulish enough for you?” Perrin asked, entering into the spirit of the occasion.

  “You terrify me,” Dale said.

  “You could try a knowing smile,” Mark suggested, thinking of the revelation to come in the obituary. “That’s nice. Get that, Dale.”

  “Anything else?” Perrin asked.

  Dale looked around the room. “Would you have a picture anywhere of the ladybird seeds?”

  “I can do better than that. I can show you some of the little beauties. I still have a few in my poisons cabinet.”

  “Brilliant. It would be wonderful to get a close-up of them in your open hand.”

  Perrin unlocked the wall cabinet and reached for a box at the back. He gave it a shake and it rattled. “The shells are so hard that they’re sometimes used inside maracas.” When he opened the box, the abrin seeds really did look like ladybirds, shiny red, each with a jet-black spot at one end. He gave a mischievous look. “Hold out your hand.”

  Mark was cautious. “Are they safe to touch? They look innocent enough.”

  “They’re not alive.” Perrin poured some into his own palm. “In this state, they can’t hurt you. The outer shell is a protection, but I wouldn’t advise breaking into one.”

  Mark held out his hand and allowed Perrin to pass the seeds over.

  “Are they still potent after so long?”

  “They will be. Variations in temperature don’t affect them. The people who string them together as rosary beads run a risk by drilling into the casing. There are stories of pricked fingers and nasty consequences.”

  “You’d better take them back for the picture.”

  Dale used a fish-eye lens that would exaggerate the size of Perrin’s hand. When he’d finished, he asked, “Are the seeds really so dangerous?”

  “Have you heard of ricin? Thirty times more toxic.” Perrin returned them carefully to the box and used a wipe to clean his hands.

  “Immediate death, then?”

  “I was talking about the degree of toxicity, not the speed. The uptake in the body isn’t rapid. Anything from eight hours to three days, and then the symptoms can be confused with a severe stomach upset. Vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration. That’s the beauty of it for a poisoner. For the victim, it’s all downhill from there. The effects are unstoppable. There’s no antidote.”

  “Nasty.”

  “It is when your liver, spleen, and kidneys stop working. Would you like one of me in profile looking over my shoulder? I’m told that’s quite sinister.”

  With the photography over, Dale retired to the kitchen to chat with Jane Perrin while Mark invited the toxicologist to share his memories of the Burke-Miller trial.

  Perrin’s powers of recall were excellent, and the quotes would have fueled a lead story in any paper. “The judge is dead now and I haven’t got much longer, so I’ll say whatever I please. I didn’t rate him at all. I wouldn’t have let him judge the pumpkin competition at the garden club. As for the rest of the lawyers, they were pig-ignorant, as well as unpleasant. The prosecution chap kept me in the witness box for two days thinking he could trip me up. By the end, he’d chewed his fingernails to the quick. You asked about Burke-Miller. Funnily enough, I felt some pity for him. Fellow doctor and all that. They decided not to put him on the stand. He was a loose cannon, you see. His greed was the finish of him. He should have stopped when he was ahead. No one is going to question one elderly widow dying from multiorgan failure, but five—to misquote Oscar Wilde—sounds like carelessness.”

  Mark was making rapid shorthand notes. “The families must have been grateful to you. Plus any other old ladies who had a lucky escape.”

  “Not at all. I had a nasty letter from one old duck who missed the point altogether. She’d arranged to leave him a few thousand. She said he was a lovely man, worth six of me, and she wouldn’t be changing her will just because I’d put him in prison. He needed something to look forward to when he came out. People’s stupidity never ceases to amaze me.”

  “But even if you didn’t get much thanks, you had the satisfaction that the law had been upheld and a guilty man got his comeuppance.”

  “Didn’t get me a wealthy widow, did it?”

  Mark laughed. “Can I quote that?”

  “Why not? It’s the truth.”

  Perrin was so full of himself that Mark decided this was his opportunity. “I read somewhere that you met plenty of people in high places.”

  He watched the body language, the puffing up of the chest and the hands meeting across it, fingers touching, making a steeple. “A few. Who are you thinking of?”

  “Wasn’t there an invitation to the Home Office?”

  “Not exactly. A few drinks at a private address in Chelsea.”

  “But you knew the Home Secretary, Solly Waterfield?”

  “True.”

  “And his wife, Portia?”

  Perrin’s show of swank stalled suddenly. He was frowning. “They were there, yes. Speaking of drinks, you’re a lager man, aren’t you? I smelt it on your breath when you came in. Help yourself to a can from the fridge. I won’t join you. I’m on medication.” A blatant change of subject.

  “Thanks,” Mark said, as he crossed the room to the small fridge under the window. It was stacked with chemicals in glass containers of various sizes, but several cans of a familiar brand of lager were stored behind the door. “You became good friends with the Waterfields, I heard.”

  “Lager is safer than beer,” Perrin went on as if Mark hadn’t spoken. “Did you know beer once contained unhealthy amounts of arsenic? A royal commission was set up in 1903 to investigate a spate of poisonings in Manchester. They used glucose in their brewing, you see. And now you’re wondering how glucose can be tainted with arsenic. This glucose was. It was made from contaminated sulphuric acid. And there was arsenic getting into the beer from another source. They liked their drink to have a smoky flavor, so they dried the malted barley over a fire. Coke and coal contain appreciable amounts of arsenic.”

  To show confidence, Mark removed the ring pull from the can and drank deeply. “You were telling me about the Waterfields.”

  “No I wasn’t.” The mood had changed dramatically. “You asked me, and I confirmed that I met them. There’s no more to be said.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me about your affair with Portia?”

  Perrin’s face reddened and his free flow of words changed in a heartbeat to abuse. “You’re a muckraker. That’s why you’re here. You’re not a serious journalist.”

  “It’s a simple question.”

  “And I’m not answering it.”

  Mark was stung into saying, “It can’t be ducked, you know. You might as well confirm it for the record. The truth is so much better than innuendo.”

  “What do you mean—‘for the record’?” Perrin’s eyes widened. “Ha, I see it now. All that stuff about the magazine feature is bollocks. You’re writing my obituary, and you want to juice it up with scandal, you shit.”

  “Your obituary?” Mark said as if it was a foreign word. “How could I, when you’re still alive?” An evasion, if not an outright lie. Mark hoped it carried conviction.

  “Barely alive. I’ve been given three to four weeks. A tumor as big as my fist.”

  What could he say to that? Tysoe, damn him, must have known about the tumor. Mark remembered the ugly smile when inside information had been mentioned.

  Working for the press toughens anyone. He was there to do a job, but in good conscience he couldn’t trade insults with a cancer patient.

  “Who put you up to this?” Perrin demanded. “The Telegraph or the Post?”

  “I’m freelance. I didn’t know about your tumor, or I wouldn’t have troubled you. Like I said, I’m here mainly to do a piece to mark the anniversary of the trial.” The truth still sounded insincere and was
.

  “My private life has fuck all to do with the trial. You mean to smear my reputation—a lifetime of high achievement—by skewing my obituary to make me into some kind of stud.”

  “Mr. Perrin, we wouldn’t have taken all those pictures for an obituary. One mugshot would have been enough.”

  “Mugshot. You couldn’t put it more clearly. I’m the mug. I’ve been set up.”

  “Okay,” Mark said as the weight of his conscience bore down, “I’ll admit it. I was asked to prepare an obituary, but believe me, Mr. Perrin, that’s a minor task compared to the magazine feature I want to write.”

  “Go to hell, you prick.”

  There was a limit to the flak Mark would take from most people, but he simply wanted to extricate himself from this mess. Any chance of more useful quotes had ended.

  Perrin was clearly of the same mind. “You can leave right now. I haven’t any more to say to you except if you insist on shaming me after I’ve gone, my wife will be heartbroken.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “No? You hacks call it collateral damage.”

  “Fine, I’m out of here if that’s what you want. But before I go, I’ll clean my hands. I noticed when you’d finished with the seeds you wiped your own hands, but you didn’t offer a wipe to me.”

  “Is this symbolic, washing away your guilt?”

  “No, it’s being careful.”

  Perrin picked up the pack of wipes and pulled out a handful. “Dry. I’ll moisten them.” He reached for a bottle and dampened the wipes before handing them to Mark.