‘You killed me…’ she wheezed.
Just as she was about to speak again, she let out a sudden gasp of pain and tumbled down the staircase in a shocking tumble of limbs before coming to rest near the bottom step.
‘Everyone stand back,’ Richard announced as Camille went to Lucy’s body and checked the pulse in her neck.
Camille looked back at her boss.
‘There’s no pulse, sir,’ she said. ‘She’s dead.’
‘No!’ Rosie called out and tried to run for Lucy, but Richard held her back.
‘There’s nothing you can do for her. And I have to ask you to step back. All of you. This is now a crime scene. Everyone, please leave the hallway at once.’
As Richard spoke, he held his arms wide and walked the family back a few paces from the foot of the stairs. Camille had pulled out her mobile phone and was already calling for an ambulance.
Richard continued edging the family members back, and while he noticed that Hugh, Tom, Matthew and Rosie were reeling from what had they’d just seen, Sylvie was already weeping fat tears. Richard couldn’t tell whether this was because she’d just lost her adopted daughter or if it was because she’d been so contemptuous of her only moments before she died. All speculation would have to wait for the moment. First they had to work the scene.
Richard told the family to wait in the sitting room for him and went back to the staircase.
‘Okay, sir,’ Camille said, as Richard approached. ‘I’ve just called Dwayne and Fidel. They’re on their way. And the ambulance should be here before them.’
‘Good work. But what the hell happened?’
‘At this stage, sir, there are no obvious wounds to her body as far as I can tell, and yet she was bleeding from her mouth, and clutching at her stomach, wasn’t she? And look at her lips, sir.’
Camille indicated Lucy’s lips, and Richard could see a tinge of greyish blue to them.
‘Poison?’
‘It’s a possibility.’
Neither Police Officer mentioned that Lucy had accused one of her family of killing her just before she died.
Leaving Camille to continue processing the body, Richard went upstairs. There was nothing of note to see on the staircase or main landing, but he could see that the door to Lucy’s room was open. Entering, he saw that a free-standing mirror had been knocked over and lay smashed to the floor. There was also a china cup on the floor by the shattered glass, and a black liquid had spilled from it onto the old rug. Looking at the cup more closely, Richard could see a residue of what looked like coffee grounds at the bottom. Richard bent down and smelled the strong aroma of coffee. Of course. It was a coffee plantation. Lucy had been drinking coffee. And the bitter taste of coffee would have been perfect for masking the taste of poison.
It very much looked as though Lucy had been drinking from this cup when she started to convulse from a poison that was mixed in with the coffee. She then knocked over the mirror, dropped the cup, staggered from the room and then died where she stood at the top of the staircase.
Richard looked over at the coffee-making apparatus at the end of Lucy’s bed and saw that there was a swill of black liquid at the bottom of the cafetiere. Richard knew they’d need to test the whole set-up to find out if any of it contained poison.
But as much as Richard was trying to focus on the cause of Lucy’s death, he couldn’t stop replaying in his mind the moment that she’d stood at the top of the stairs and then, with her last dying breath, pointed down at them all and said, ‘You killed me’.
But who exactly had she been pointing at?
After the ambulance arrived – with Dwayne and Fidel roaring up on the Police bike and sidecar a few minutes later – Richard and Camille went back to the sitting room to talk to the family, and walked in on an atmosphere that was fraught with tension.
‘What happened?’ Sylvie asked, rising from her chair.
‘I’m sorry,’ Camille said.
‘She’s really….?’ Rosie said, unable to finish her question.
‘It looks like she died from poisoning,’ Richard said.
‘She took an overdose?’ Hugh asked.
‘That seems very unlikely,’ Richard said. ‘I’ve looked through Lucy’s room. There’s no suicide note. No obvious source of the poison. And I’m sorry to be indelicate, but we also all saw her point at one of you just before she died and say that you’d killed her. That’s the other clue.’
Looking around the room, Richard could see only shock on the family’s faces.
‘So I’m sorry to ask, but it feels important. With Lucy dead, who’s just inherited the plantation?’
The family were surprised by the question, but Hugh worked it out first.
‘Tom does,’ he said.
‘What?’ Tom said, not understanding.
‘According to the terms of William’s will, the estate was to be held in trust until Freddie died. Then, with his death, his oldest surviving child would inherit it all. Which was Lucy. But if she’s not…?’ Hugh trailed off, unable to complete his sentence.
Richard could see that the other members of the family were still too stunned by the death of Lucy to fully understand what had just happened – and then Richard saw Sylvie slowly put a hand to her mouth in shock. She’d finally worked it out.
Tom had just inherited everything.
And Tom was the only member of the family who had never wanted to sell the plantation.
CHAPTER TEN
By the following morning, a few things had become clear.
Firstly, the only fingerprints that Dwayne and Fidel were able to lift from the cup and coffee apparatus they’d recovered from Lucy’s room belonged to Lucy herself. So, assuming that it had indeed been a substance in her coffee that had killed her, then the killer must have been wearing gloves when he or she had laced Lucy’s coffee-making equipment with poison.
Then, by the afternoon, any doubt about whether Lucy had been poisoned was removed. The autopsy on her body confirmed that she had died from a fatal overdose of a substance called sodium fluoroacetate. The report explained that sodium fluoroacetate was normally used for pest control, and went by the trade name of ‘1080’. When Richard looked up ‘1080’ online, he discovered that the pesticide was strictly controlled, if only because it was a seriously lethal poison that was odourless, tasteless, and highly water-soluble. As far as Richard could tell, it was pretty much the perfect poison with which to commit murder.
The labs also found traces of sodium fluoroacetate in the coffee that Lucy had been drinking, and in the cafetiere that the Police had collected from the end of Lucy’s bed.
Someone had put 1080 pesticide into Lucy’s coffee-making apparatus. She’d drunk the poisoned coffee and died.
As for establishing where the 1080 poison had come from, Dwayne said that there were only two chemists on the whole of Saint-Marie who were registered to sell agricultural poisons, and he knew that they both kept a ‘poison register’ that listed the names of anyone who even enquired about the purchase of poisons.
Richard despatched Dwayne to the two chemists’ shops to check their Poisons Register. Had anyone from the Beaumont family bought any 1080 pesticide recently?
Richard went to inspect the information that was written up on the whiteboard. As he tried to work out which of the names on the board had first killed Freddie, and had now killed Lucy, Camille came over holding an ice-cold bottle of water she’d got from the office fridge.
‘You may want this, sir,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ Richard said, and then rubbed the ice-cold plastic bottle around the back of his neck.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘a brief respite from the furnace.’
‘You really need to stop wearing a suit, sir,’ Camille said.
‘You really need to stop telling me to stop wearing a suit.’
‘But Dwayne and I weren’t joking when we said you looked good on the beach the other day. I mean, you’d maybe want to get a different
pair of shoes, but I thought you looked very handsome in a casual shirt and shorts.’
Richard looked at his partner. Had Camille just said he’d looked ‘handsome’? Before things got any more confusing, Richard knew he had to get away from the conversation as fast as he could.
‘Fidel!’ he barked, heading over to his subordinate’s desk. ‘What are you doing?’
‘What am I doing?’
‘Yes. What are you doing? It shouldn’t be a difficult question to answer.’
‘Well, sir,’ Fidel said, indicating his computer monitor. ‘I’m trying to see if there are any other outlets on the island where it’s possible to buy 1080. Or if sodium fluoroacetate can be bought under different trade names.’
Richard saw Camille return to her desk shaking her head to herself, but he wanted to concentrate on the case.
‘So is it for sale under different names?’
‘No, sir,’ Fidel said.
‘Then what about the black market? Do you think our killer might have got hold of their 1080 illegally?’
‘It’s a possibility. You can generally get hold of anything on the island if you try hard enough.’
Richard wasn’t surprised to hear this. It was like the illegal three-wheeled vans all over again. Did nobody abide by the law on Saint-Marie?
‘Then I know, sir,’ Camille said from her desk, as though a thought had just occurred to her. ‘How about you look at the burnt bits of paper?’
‘What’s that, Camille?’
‘If you’re looking to move the case on, we should see what was written on those burnt pieces of paper we found in Tom Beaumont’s bin.’
‘But the FBI manual says we have to leave the photographic paper undisturbed for two weeks.’
‘Of course it does. And we have to do everything by the rule book, don’t we?’
Richard had a feeling that his partner was still talking about his refusal to wear anything other than his woollen suit.
Richard fixed Camille with a stare that would have made a Gorgon blush.
‘We do, Camille,’ he said. ‘Or I tell you, madness will ensue.’
‘Oh, okay,’ Camille said, apparently unbothered, and then she got on with her work.
Richard couldn’t work out what Camille was up to. Why was she behaving so oddly?
‘Camille’s maybe got a point, sir,’ Fidel said. ‘Maybe we don’t have the luxury of waiting two weeks.’
‘Look,’ Richard said, struggling to keep his temper in check. ‘If the FBI say we have to leave the photographic paper in the dark for two weeks, then that’s how long we have to leave it. Okay? Now, I suggest we try and focus on what we do know. For example, the fact that we’re now dealing with two murders. Firstly, the estranged father Freddie Beaumont. An alcoholic and abusive man. Secondly, his first born, Lucy. A troubled young woman who hated her biological father. Theories?’
‘Well,’ Fidel said, ‘this second murder has to be connected to the first.’
‘I’d agree,’ Richard said, happy to get the conversation back on track. ‘But why did she have to die?’
‘What if it’s connected to her announcement that she was going to cut Hugh and Sylvie out of the profits from the sale of the plantation?’
‘It seems the most natural answer, doesn’t it?’
Fidel picked up on Richard’s sceptical tone.
‘But you don’t think so, sir?’
‘Well, just because that seems the most obvious conclusion, it doesn’t mean it’s the correct one. After all, say you wanted to poison me with 1080 pesticide.’
Fidel and Camille’s faces both lit up with smiles.
‘Do you mind?’ Richard said, tightening the tie at his neck. ‘It’s just a theoretical question.’
‘Don’t worry, sir,’ Camille said, her grin no less dimmed. ‘This is just a theoretical smile.’
‘But what’s the fastest you reckon it would take to put in place a plan to poison me?’
‘Well, sir,’ Camille said, happy to speak for herself and Fidel. ‘First I’d have to get hold of the poison.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Richard corrected. ‘First you’d have to decide that poison would be the best way of despatching me.’
‘Oh I already know that,’ Camille said. ‘Poison’s always the best way. If you can get hold of it. That’s the problem.’
‘I see,’ Richard said a little uneasily. This wasn’t by any means the first time that he’d discovered that one of his team had a rich fantasy life as a murderer. ‘So, you’d have to decide to use poison, and then you’d have to work out what poison would best suit the murder. Whether it should be quick-acting, slow-acting, or whatever. And then you’d have to get hold of that particular poison – which we know isn’t easy in general, and is particularly difficult when it comes to 1080. And even if you had some to hand, you’d have to work out how to get into Lucy’s bedroom and then get the poison into her coffee paraphernalia.’
‘Oh, I see what you mean,’ Fidel said. ‘It takes time.’
‘It takes time. All of which leads me to guess that Lucy’s murder was premeditated before her announcement that Hugh and Sylvie weren’t going to get any money from the sale of the plantation. I don’t think there would have otherwise been time to set it up.’
‘So she was always going to die that morning?’
‘It’s certainly a possibility we can’t rule out.’
‘Or maybe,’ Fidel offered, ‘Lucy’s killer had everything prepared in advance, but only as an insurance policy. So it was premeditated, but it was only to be enacted in a worst case scenario. Which maybe came about when she announced that Hugh and Sylvie wouldn’t get any money.’
‘Yes. That’s also a possibility, I suppose,’ Richard conceded, frustrated that there were still so many ways of interpreting how the killer had managed to strike again. Mind you, it wasn’t a surprise. After all, that’s why poison was such an effective murder weapon. It could be put into place any length of time before it was needed, and the killer could be sure to be far distant when it was ingested.
‘In which case,’ he said, moving the conversation on. ‘Let’s consider our suspects again. So what about Hugh Beaumont? Could he be our killer?’
‘He could easily have killed Freddie,’ Camille said. ‘Especially considering how much he’s lied to us about his contact with him.’
‘I agree,’ Richard said. ‘But I have to confess, I don’t currently see why he’d then kill Lucy. After all, Lucy’s death is the worst possible outcome for Hugh. Because Tom now inherits, and he won’t sell the plantation. So there’s no longer a million dollar cash windfall for Hugh.’
‘And it’s just the same for Sylvie,’ Camille said.
‘Exactly,’ Richard agreed. ‘So she’s just as unlikely to be our killer. Although there was clearly no love lost between Sylvie and Lucy. Of all of them, she’s the most capable of killing her adopted daughter, but I just don’t see how she benefits from her death. Not with Tom inheriting.’
‘And Chief,’ Fidel added, ‘the same goes for Matthew, doesn’t it?’
‘It does. He didn’t make any secret of wanting to sell the plantation to us, did he? Because this is what the case is about, isn’t it? The inheritance of a plantation worth five million dollars. And yet, I can’t see who benefits from Lucy’s death apart from Tom.’
‘So maybe Tom’s our killer?’ Camille asked.
While Richard considered whether this could be true, Fidel said, ‘Can I make a crazy suggestion, sir?’
‘No,’ Richard said.
Fidel looked crestfallen.
‘Oh alright, then,’ Richard said wearily. ‘Go on. What’s your crazy suggestion?’
‘Well, it’s just that there’s one person we’ve not considered yet.’
‘And who would that be?’
‘Nanny Rosie.’
Richard was perplexed. ‘She was on a boat to Montserrat when Freddie was killed.’
‘But was she, sir?
’
‘Yes,’ Richard replied. ‘Her boat left at 11am that morning, ten minutes before Freddie was shot dead in the shower room.’
‘I know, sir,’ Fidel said, ‘but we still don’t know for sure that Rosie was on the 11am sailing to Montserrat. Not exactly. We know she bought a ticket that morning. Our witness sold her a ticket at 9.30am. But Customs here in Honoré don’t check passports when people leave the island, do they? They only check the passports of people who are arriving.’
‘Correct,’ Richard said, already beginning to see where Fidel was maybe going with this.
‘So the next time her alibi actually checks out is at 12.30pm when the Customs shed at Montserrat have a record of her going through passport control there.’
‘Along with all the other passengers from the 11am sailing from Saint-Marie,’ Camille said, also realising the truth of what Fidel was saying.
‘But that’s the point I’m making. I mean, don’t get me wrong sir, I don’t think this is very likely, but just because she went through Customs at the same time as the rest of the passengers, it doesn’t mean that she was on the same boat as them. There’s room in the harbour at Montserrat for more than one boat to arrive at the same time.’
Against his better nature, Richard was intrigued.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘So I was just thinking that it’s maybe possible – in theory at least – that she bought her ticket at 9.30am, as we know. Then she went back up to the plantation. Somehow. Don’t ask me how. But she then killed Freddie at 11.10am, got away real fast, and went straight down to the harbour at Honoré. Then, all she’d have to do is hire a much faster boat, and I reckon she could easily catch up with the ferry and arrive on Montserrat at 12.30pm at the exact same time that ferry docked.’
‘Yes, Fidel,’ Richard said, considering what he’d just heard. ‘I can see the logic of what you’re saying. But why would Rosie want to kill Freddie?’
‘No idea, sir,’ Fidel said, nonetheless beaming at the fact that one of his theories was being taken seriously by his boss.
‘And why would she then kill Lucy?’
‘Still no idea, sir,’ Fidel said, still smiling.
Death Knocks Twice Page 20