Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose

by Peter Lovesey

  I could see that his mind was working over the consequences of this arrangement. He said, “I wouldn’t wish you to feel encumbered by my daughter. It could be embarrassing—you, sir, in the company of a young lady. I could easily arrange for her to join another party.”

  Encumbered? “On the contrary, Dr Stubbs,” I said, “if anyone is to join another party, it is I. Your charming daughter’s place is at your side, encouraging the crew. After all, they have entered for the Ladies’ Plate. To have a lady in attendance is a good omen.”

  He said, as he was bound to say, that my presence was equally indispensable. “I just hope there’s a Ladies’ Plate to win on the day,”

  he added. “At the rate the silver is disappearing from the colleges, I wouldn’t bet on it. There was another burglary last night.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, at Merton. A fine pair of candlesticks was taken. The fellow got in through a pantry window, apparently. He’s deucedly good at squeezing into small spaces.”

  “Is it a youth, do you suppose?” I suggested.

  I could see he was impressed by my acuity. On my way out, by the porter’s lodge, I met Bilbo. He’d seen which door I came from, so I was forced to admit the reason for my visit—the ostensible reason, at any rate.

  “You want to cheer us on?” he piped in disbelief. “I thought you regarded rowing as a silly sport.”

  “I wouldn’t even call it a sport,” I confirmed, “but one likes to support one’s Alma Mater. Who knows? Perhaps I’ll be so captivated by the sight of you fellows that I join the Boat Club myself.”

  He said, “It’s back-breaking for the oarsmen, Bertie.”

  “But a sure way to impress the ladies.”

  “Indeed,” he enthused. “Echo Stubbs treats me like one of the gods since I got into the First Eight.”

  “But you’re only the cox,” I commented with disdain.

  “With respect, Bertie, that shows how little you know about it,” he had the neck to tell me. “The coxswain is the brains of the boat. The rest of them rely on me to steer the best course, and that’s no little achievement at Henley.”

  I could hardly wait for the regatta. Not for one moment did I believe Bilbo’s boast that Echo held a torch for him. It was unthinkable. Apart from everything else, she was several inches taller than he.

  The Ladies’ Plate was decided on the Tuesday, and it started cloudy, but by lunchtime the sun condescended to appear and we had a perfect afternoon for the Aquatic Derby. Glorious Henley. That dimpled span of water with its wooded heights and enamelled banks was occupied by hundreds of floating picnic parties, whilst others promenaded along the river bank. There is no question that rowing brings out the most gaudy attire, and not only among the fair sex. If an invasion of crinoline had transformed the scene, it was matched by the effrontery of the coloured blazers and boaters on view. The scene was exhilarating, even for one without a jot of interest in the contests on the water. I will admit to having a conquest in mind.

  Amid such gaiety I was able to move inconspicuously, scarcely recognized (for in those carefree days my likeness was not in every illustrated newspaper one opened). At leisure, I strolled the length of the course, sniffing the new-mown hay and rehearsing my overtures.

  My thoughts were sharply interrupted at three o’clock, when a gun was fired in the meadows to warn those afloat to clear the course. A few minutes later the celebrated crew of London Watermen came dashing through the bridge, transporting the umpire ceremoniously to the start. What a pity it wasn’t Stubbs.

  The Ladies’ Challenge Plate was the fourth race on the card. No preliminary heat had been necessary. It was to be a straight race between First Trinity and Christ Church, a distance of a mile and a quarter from the starting point above the Temple Island to the winning post opposite the Red Lion, below the town bridge.

  The Oxford boats were sheltered under a large tent erected beside the river on the far side of the bridge. The scene here was in stark contrast to the merriment along Regatta Reach. An air of serious endeavour prevailed, the oarsmen preparing for the ordeal to come, nervously pacing the turf, saying little. The observers here seemed also to be infected with the sense of what was at stake. They stood at a respectful distance. I spotted Echo at once, looking ravishing in the Christ Church colours, standing with her father.

  I doffed my boater and Echo gave a sweet curtsey. “Please,” I said. “No ceremony. Let’s all be family today.”

  Turning to Dr Stubbs, I asked, “Are the crew in fine fettle?”

  “The best I’ve seen, sir,” he told me. “They’ve been here for a week, staying at the Red Lion, getting in hours of practice.”

  “Not at the bar, I trust,” said I, evincing a delightful laugh from Echo. “Shall we offer them our good wishes?”

  “Oh, yes!” said Echo, with a shade more passion than seemed appropriate. She made a beeline for a diminutive figure in blazer and flannels whom I recognized as Bilbo.

  “He’s our cox,” said Dr Stubbs, as if I didn’t know. “He steers a canny course.”

  “Is there some skill involved?” I said.

  “Good Lord, yes. The steering is paramount. He’ll be steering for the church.”

  I didn’t understand. I hadn’t heard that Bilbo had religiousaffinities. “Do you mean Christ Church?”

  “No, sir. You misunderstand me. Henley Church is the object to have in one’s sights until Poplar Point is cleared. We’ve drawn the Berkshire station and that should be to our advantage. He’ll make it tell. You’ll see.”

  Not choosing to add to the adulation, I passed a few words with several of our oarsmen, who would, after all, be putting their bodies on the rack to win the race. But I kept an eye on what was happening and I saw Echo blush deeply more than once. I hoped nothing indiscreet had been said. Finally, Dr Stubbs himself went across to remind Bilbo that it was time to lift the boat off its trestles and take to the water.

  Even I will admit that I was stirred by the sight of eight blades cutting the water in concert as they moved into the stream to row down to the start. But we couldn’t linger. Stubbs had decided to watch the race from Poplar Point, a quarter of a mile from where we stood.

  As we threaded a route through the crowd, with Dr Stubbs leading, I turned to Echo and enquired if she was feeling nervous.

  “Terribly,” she admitted.

  I leaned closer and confided, “If you’d care to hold my hand and give it a squeeze, I wouldn’t object in the least.”

  She blushed and murmured her thanks.

  I said, “Speaking for myself, the main excitement will be standing close to you.”

  She lowered her eyes. I have that effect on the fair sex.

  Stubbs was right: Poplar Point was a fine vantage place, even if we had to stand shoulder to shoulder with others. I took out my binoculars. There were signs of activity from the Umpire. The crews were poised for the off. I saw Bilbo take a hip-flask from his pocket and knock back a swig of whisky to calm his nerves. Dr Stubbs enquired if I had a good view. I put down the glasses, eyed his daughter and said I could see everything I wanted.

  At length the word was given, and the oars dipped in. The Black Prince had the better of the start and for two hundred yards kept a narrow lead. The Christ Church men remained calm, pulling splendidly, their blades scarcely creating a ripple. Bilbo put his megaphone to his mouth to raise the rate.

  “If they can stay in contention, the Berkshire station will be in their favour towards the finish,” I told Echo, exhibiting the expertise I had picked up from her father.

  Some know-it-all turned and said, “They’ll need it with this wind blowing. The Bucks station will be sheltered by the bushes. Christ Church are going to struggle.”

  Beside me, Echo was taking quick, nervous breaths. I felt for her right hand and held it. My own pulse quickened.

  Christ Church came up level as they approached the first real landmark, at Remenham. I thought I heard Echo say, “He can do it!�
��

  She was so involved in the race, poor child, that she ascribed a personality to our boat.

  Steadily, with never more than a canvas between them, the crews approached Poplar Point. Echo was pressing so close to me that I could feel the steel hoops of her dress making ridges in my flesh. It was peculiarly stimulating.

  Then a strange thing happened. Something fell into the water from the Christ Church boat: Bilbo’s megaphone. It floated a moment before disappearing. Bilbo half-turned, and evidently decided he could do nothing about it. They had reached the critical stage of the course and they were definitely in the lead, but he was steering dangerously close to First Trinity’s water.

  The umpire picked up his own megaphone and his voice travelled over the water. “Move over, Christ Church.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “He’s in danger of fouling,” said Dr Stubbs in a strangled tone. “Move over, man!”

  As if he could hear, Bilbo tugged on the rudder, but too powerfully, for our boat lurched to port, and was now in danger of running aground.

  “What’s his game?” cried Dr Stubbs. “He’ll lose it for us.”

  The Black Prince had drawn level. In fact, it was slipping by whilst our erratic steering was causing uncertainty in the boat. The crew were losing their form, bucketing their strokes, uncertain whether to reduce their effort as the boat veered off course.

  “For God’s sake, pull to starboard, man!” Dr Stubbs bawled. Bilbo couldn’t possibly hear.

  Echo let go of my hand and covered her eyes. I put a protective arm around her shoulders. Her Papa was far too occupied to notice. The Christ Church boat was out of control. It glided inexorably towards the bank. People in punts screamed in alarm. Parasols fell into the water. The bows hit one of the punts with such force that the front of the eight rode straight over it. A man tumbled into the water.

  The stern dipped below water level. It started to sink. Several of the crew freed themselves and leapt clear. I looked to see what Bilbo was doing, for his inept steering had caused this catastrophe, but he remained at his post, head lowered, as the water crept up his chest.

  Meanwhile, the Black Prince rounded Poplar Point in fine style and cruised towards the finish, past the band of the Oxford Rifles on their raft and the cheering thousands along the banks and in the stewards’ grandstand. The drama at Poplar Point had been unseen by those at the finish and they must have waited vainly for Christ Church to come into view.

  My pretty companion was in distress. “Oh, Bertie, we must see if he’s all right! We must go at once!”

  We made the best speed we could down to the towing path. But movement was difficult in the throng of people anxious to observe the accident. We couldn’t get close. Someone was being lifted from the water. There were shouts for a doctor.

  “Who is it?” I asked. “What’s happened?”

  “The coxswain. He went down with the boat and almost drowned.”

  “Henry?” cried Echo. She fainted in my arms—some consolation for the lamentable end to my romantic afternoon.

  “Hold on, sir,” said Dr Stubbs. “I’ve got some whisky here.” He felt into his hip pocket. Then tried his other pockets. “Where the devil is my flask? Hell’s teeth, I must have dropped it in all the excitement.”

  * * *

  They took Henry Bilbo to the local cottage hospital. We visited him there and found him in a more serious state than any of us expected, in a coma, in fact. He would not respond to anything that was said. Some of the crew volunteered to remain at the bedside, but I deemed it wise to escort Echo and her father out of that place as soon as possible. I didn’t care for the look of Bilbo, and I was right. He never recovered consciousness. He died the same night.

  It was widely assumed that the wretched fellow had been too overcome with shame over his mistake to free himself from the sinking boat. In college circles, he was being spoken of as a martyr.

  This was the point in the story when the detective in me first began to stir. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why Bilbo had behaved so oddly. The more I thought about it, reviewing the events of that afternoon, the more suspicious I became that there was something rum about his death. I recalled watching him drink from that flask of whisky at the start, beginning the race competently in charge, but later dropping the megaphone over the side and, shortly after, losing control of the steering. Had he imbibed too much?

  Without reference to anyone except my Equerry, I returned to Henley a day or so later and spoke to the doctor who had conducted the post-mortem examination. He appeared satisfied that drowning had been the cause of death. He insisted that the classical signs (whatever they may be) had been present. I asked if further tests would be carried out and he thought this unlikely.

  “What caused him to drown?” I asked.

  “The inability to swim, sir.”

  “But this was in shallow water.”

  “Then perhaps he was trapped in the boat. These matters are for the coroner to investigate.”

  “Trapped?”

  “Conceivably he was exhausted.”

  “He was the cox,” I shrilled in disbelief. “He hadn’t even lifted an oar.”

  Far from satisfied, I asked if Bilbo’s clothes had been retained.

  The doctor said they had been destroyed, as was usual in such cases. The only item not disposed of was a silver hip flask. It would be returned to the family. I asked to see it.

  “Returned to the family, you say?” I queried, turning the flask over in my hand. “To Bilbo’s family?”

  “That is my understanding. Is there something amiss, sir?”

  “Only that the initials on the outside are not Bilbo’s,” said I.

  “ ‘A.C.S.’ doesn’t stand for Henry Bilbo. These are the initials of Dr Arthur Stubbs, of Christ Church College.”

  I was in no doubt that I had recovered the lost hip-flask. Better still, it had been well corked and some of the liquor remained inside.

  “If this does, indeed, belong to Bilbo, I shall see that his family receives it,” I told the doctor. “If not, I shall return it discreetly to Dr Stubbs. We don’t want poor Bilbo’s reputation being muddied for any reason.” With that, I took possession of the flask.

  On the train back to Oxford, I was sorely tempted to take a nip of the contents of that flask. What a good thing I didn’t, because when I turned matters over in my mind, it seemed wise to discover some more about the liquor Bilbo had swigged prior to the race. Without speaking to anyone else, I took it the next morning to be analysed by Sir Giles Peterson, the leading toxicologist of the day, who was resident in Oxford.

  Eventually he told me, “Your Royal Highness, I examined the contents of the flask and I found a rather fine malt whisky.”

  “Only whisky?”

  “No. There was something else. The mixture also contained chloral hydrate.”

  “Chloral?” said I. “Isn’t that what people take to send them to sleep?”

  “Yes, indeed, sir. Many a nursemaid uses it diluted to subdue a troublesome child. It’s harmless enough in small quantities, but I wouldn’t recommend it like this. The whisky masks the high concentration.”

  “Could it be fatal?”

  “Quite possibly, if one took about 120 grains. Death would occur six to ten hours later.” He hesitated, frowning. “I hope no one offered this to you, sir.”

  I laughed. “Certainly not. Whisky isn’t allowed at my tender age.”

  The laughter vanished later, when I considered the implications.

  Somebody had laced Dr Stubbs’s whisky with a lethal dose of chloral.

  By some dubious set of circumstances it had come into Henry Bilbo’s possession. He had imbibed and rapidly succumbed during the boat race.

  Who would have plotted such a dangerous trick, and why? One’s first thought was that one of the opposing crew had sabotaged our boat, but I could think of no way it could have been done, and even Cambridge men are not so unsporting a
s that.

  After pondering the matter profoundly, I arrived at the only possible explanation. I decided to share my thoughts with Dr Stubbs.

  I made an appointment and called at his rooms at six in the evening. But I was in for a surprise. Instead of the manservant, or Stubbs himself, I was admitted by Echo—the first I had seen of her since the fatal afternoon. She looked distrait. Beautiful, but distrait. And dressed in black.

  “By George, I didn’t expect to be so fortunate,” I told her.

  She pressed a finger to my lips. “Papa is asleep. He hasn’t been feeling well since the regatta. It upset him dreadfully.”

  “But I made an appointment.”

  She nodded. “And I took the liberty of confirming it. I wanted a few minutes alone with you, Bertie.” She ushered me into their drawing room.

  I could scarcely believe my luck.

  “What did you want to discuss with Papa?” she asked.

  “Oh, it can wait,” I told her, seating myself at one end of a settee.

  She remained standing. “Was it about the flask?”

  I confirmed that it was. I told her about the lethal mixture.

  “Lethal?” said she in horror. “But chloral is a sedative, not a poison.”

  From the look in her eyes I knew for certain that she—my innocent-seeming Echo—had spiked her father’s whisky, and I knew exactly why.

  “Whoever was responsible simply intended to make your father sleepy,” I suggested.

  “Yes!” said Echo.

  “You—the person responsible, I mean—that person planned that your father should feel so tired that he would lie somewhere on the river-bank and take a very long nap. You would be free—free to dance the night away at the Regatta Ball.”

  She nodded, her brown eyes shining.

  “Only the plan misfired,” I pressed on. “Henry Bilbo picked your father’s pocket.”

  “Henry?” she piped, shocked to the core. “You’re implying that Henry was a thief? Oh, no, Bertie!”

  “Oh, yes,” I disabused her. “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but he was a bad lot, a burglar, responsible for that spate of thefts we had. He was just a titch, after all. Quite easy for him to get through small windows. I’ve no doubt that he was the one. And when your father came over to speak to him before the race, Bilbo couldn’t resist the temptation. He saw the flask in your Papa’s back pocket and slipped it out.”