Sweet Poison

by David Roberts

  Verity screamed again and then turned and grabbed Edward, burying her face in his shoulder. ‘Max!’ she sobbed. ‘Max, how couldthey. . . ?’

  Edward half dragged Verity out of the room and insisted she take some brandy from a bottle on the sideboard in the living-room. Then he made her come down with him to Mrs Parsons’ flat from which he called the police. He had no doubt that this was the Nazis’ revenge for Verity’s folly in going to the German embassy as Friedberg’s guest. When they discovered she was a Communist activist they must have thought she had deliberately made a fool of the Fü hrer’s personal envoy, and this was their response. He felt physically sick. There could be no doubt that these were evil men and from that moment, whatever anyone told him to the contrary, he remained convinced that they would have to be fought and destroyed like vermin.

  Verity’s tears soon turned to ice-cold anger and she wanted to go straight round to the embassy and accuse them of the dog’s murder. It was only with considerable difficulty that Edward managed to convince her of the futility of doing any such thing.

  ‘There are other ways to fight them,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, there are,’ said Verity with stern determination.

  Edward had been going to try to convince her that she should not go to Spain with David Griffiths-Jones but he saw that there was now no point in even trying. Her commitment to the Communist Party had been sealed in Max’s blood and, furthermore, Edward appreciated that she probably needed to get out of the country. In London she would only do something which would attract the wrath of her enemies.

  After the police had been – Edward had considered speaking to Pride but thought better of it – he insisted that Verity come to Albany with him. There could be no question of her staying, let alone sleeping, in her flat. Very gently, he placed the dog in one of the ruined pillowcases and then wrapped a sheet around it. The police had taken away the knife to test it for fingerprints but Edward had little doubt there would be no fingerprints on it; even if there were, what chance would there be of getting anyone in the embassy to agree to having their fingerprints taken?

  He took Verity back with him to his chambers despite her protests and asked if she would mind staying in the spare bedroom for the night. ‘Won’t the landlords or whoever they are protest at you having a girl in your rooms?’ She smiled a watery smile.

  ‘No,’ said Edward, even though he was not certain one way or the other. Fenton was surprisingly gentle with Verity when he understood what had upset her. He petted and pampered her, which in normal times she would not have tolerated and he would never have attempted.

  The following day Verity was going to Spain so she did not ever again have to sleep in the flat desecrated by cold, calculated murder. She would have it cleaned out and sold. ‘It’s not suitable for a comrade anyway, is it?’ she said to Edward. ‘When I get back I’ll buy some modest bed-sit in the East End.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ said Edward. ‘That’s not your style.’

  In the morning, Verity telephoned David, explained briefly what had happened to make her take refuge with Edward in Albany, and asked him to pick her up, go back to the flat with her and pack a few necessaries. They would then take the boat train from Victoria and be in Spain forty-eight hours later. It was evident to Edward as he stood at the doorway unwillingly overhearing her conversation that she could not wait to be away. Edward did not blame her but was a little hurt that David and not he had been selected to take her back to the flat and then on to Victoria.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said when he hinted at his feelings. ‘You have already done enough, more than enough. Now it’s David’s turn to “do his bit” as they used to say in the war. He says he can find somewhere to garage the Morgan while I am away which is one problem solved. It’s so sweet of you to say you’ll keep an eye on my flat and . . . that you will bury Max for me.’

  As they sipped coffee, strong and black, served by Fenton, who seemed almost light-hearted, whether at seeing his master with a woman or because this particular woman was getting out of his life, Edward could not say, he asked, ‘What were you going to do with Max while you were in Spain?’

  ‘I was going to ask you to look after him,’ she said brightly.

  ‘Me! And if I had refused?’

  ‘I don’t think you would have refused.’ She smiled at him in that way she had and he knew she was right: he would not have refused, however inconvenient it might have been.

  When the porters alerted them that Griffiths-Jones had arrived, Verity put her arms round Edward’s neck and kissed him on the lips. ‘Don’t look so mournful,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back soon and perhaps we can detect another murder. I’m sorry we weren’t very successful in putting General Craig’s killer behind bars. Perhaps your theory was right though, and he was his own murderer. Still, I’m not altogether convinced but . . . but what does it matter.’ Then, seeing that her high spirits were making him even more gloomy, she added, ‘We’ve had fun, haven’t we, Edward? I mean, not fun exactly but it was interesting, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he muttered. ‘I think we make a good team. Here, let me come and see you off.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’d rather you didn’t. Let’s say goodbye here.’ She kissed him again as though now there was nothing to fear from being intimate. ‘I must go. I’ll send you a postcard from Barcelona.’

  ‘I’ll look for your name in the New Gazette,’ he responded, trying to sound cheerful.

  She made a little grimace as though she was going to say something but then, perhaps realizing there was nothing else to say, she raised her hand in a half-wave and disappeared down the corridor clutching a small valise.

  Edward was left feeling curiously desolate. He sat in his leather armchair and stared at the ceiling until he guessed that Verity and David must have gone, then he strolled aimlessly down to the hall. He had nowhere to go. Amy was in America and he did not want to see any of his relatives. Then he remembered that he had promised Lord Weaver to visit Hermione. He said she had been asking about him. In any case, he had a few questions that he wanted to put to her about . . . but Verity had said it did not matter any more. Perhaps she was right, but even so it was at least something to do.

  Hermione was sitting up in her hospital bed looking pale and much thinner than when he had last seen her. Her hair was lank and her eyes feverish. Edward was quite alarmed at her appearance but she seemed delighted to see him.

  ‘It is kind of you to have come, Lord Edward,’ she said formally. ‘Mummy’s coming at lunch time but I get very bored.’

  ‘When do they say you can go home?’ Edward asked, sitting himself down on a metal chair beside the bed.

  ‘I don’t know – not for ages, perhaps not ever,’ she said dramatically. ‘Of course, they won’t give me any straight answers but I get the feeling I may have damaged myself worse than . . . worse than they first thought.’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry. You look much better,’ he lied gallantly.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, not pretending to believe him.

  ‘I am afraid I didn’t come here just to see how you were. You see, I have come to the conclusion that you killed General Craig but that you were really trying to kill someone else. Am I right?’

  Hermione looked at him long and meditatively as if she were trying to decide something or as if she were judging him.

  ‘Look,’ she said at last, heaving a great sigh, ‘I didn’t think much of you at first. I thought you were a prig and you made me ashamed of myself. Then I suppose I got some sort of crush on you and you were nice to me even when I had treated you very shoddily, so I think I owe you the truth. I can’t see it matters now,’ she added, unknowingly echoing Verity’s words. ‘It has been a terrible burden and I would like to tell someone. I’m not religious else I could confess to a priest but if it won’t be too much of a burden I would be just as happy to confess it all to you. Is that unfair of me?’

  ‘No,’ said Edwar
d gently. ‘Not unfair at all. I think I know what you are going to tell me but I would like to hear it from your own lips.’

  ‘I don’t know why,’ she went on as though she had hardly heard him, ‘but there are some things I really can’t tell Mummy and I don’t dare tell the police.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Edward. ‘Fire away.’

  ‘I gather,’ she began, ‘that the inquest came back with an accidental death verdict?’

  ‘Yes, they seem to think Craig muddled up his pills.’

  ‘But you don’t think so?’ She looked at him sharply.

  ‘What does it matter what I think?’ he said. ‘But no, as it happens, I think it was an accident but of a different kind.’

  ‘It matters to me what you think,’ she said simply. ‘I was pretty odious to you and yet you stood by me – saved my life even – and when you came to see me I lied to you. At least, I did not tell you the whole truth.’

  Edward said, ‘You don’t have to tell me anything.’

  ‘Well, as I say, I think I owe you something – I think I owe you the truth. What do you think happened?’

  ‘I thought at first that the General was murdered but I ended up thinking he might have been hoist by his thingamyjig.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I thought he might have meant to kill your father but by accident killed himself.’

  ‘Goodness me!’ Hermione sounded amused. ‘But why should he have wanted to kill my stepfather?’

  There it was again, Edward thought, the careful definition of her relationship with her mother’s husband.

  ‘I think he was obsessed with the way the British press was, as he saw it, being over-sympathetic to Germany’s territorial demands which he thought brought a new war closer.’

  ‘But that’s not a motive for murder!’

  ‘It might be. Don’t forget how much it means to your stepfather’s generation to prevent another war with Germany. And there was something else,’ he said reluctantly, seeing the disbelief in her eyes. ‘Your stepfather was going to print a story about the General suggesting that he had been responsible for killing unarmed German prisoners during the war.’

  ‘I see,’ said Hermione meditatively. ‘Perhaps, after all, then I ought to leave it at that.’

  ‘It is whatever you want but, as you said, it might help you to tell someone exactly what happened and why. I promise I won’t tell anyone. Why should I? What would be the point?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind about that so much, though I would not want to hurt my mother,’ she added, and Edward was pleased she was able to think of someone else beside herself.

  ‘I was trying to kill my stepfather because I hated him, because he came between me and my mother, and because he wouldn’t give me any more money to buy drugs even though he had oodles of it. In fact, it was all he was good for: money. Then, just a few weeks before we went to Mersham, he had dared to confess to us – my mother and me – that he had a daughter and that he was proposing to bring her into the family. I hated him even more then for the insult to my mother.’

  ‘You were jealous of Amy Pageant?’

  ‘Not jealous – I just could not bear the idea that there was someone he loved more than my mother, more than me. The next thing, he would cut me out of his will – he hated me, I know he did – and leave all his money to her.’

  Edward shook his head. ‘I think you are wrong; he does love you, or he wants to, if you will let him. I don’t understand why, once you had decided to do this horrible thing, you settled on doing it at Mersham. Surely, that was an odd time and place to choose?’

  ‘Well, I was desperate and anyway I did not see him much at home. We kept out of each other’s way. And I thought no one would know it was me if I did it “in public”, you might say – and I was right, wasn’t I?’

  ‘You are forgetting,’ Edward said, ‘you killed General Craig, not your stepfather, and they could hardly suspect you of killing a man with whom you had no connection.’

  Again, it was as if Hermione did not hear him. She was reliving events in her own mind: ‘You see, as I told you, the only reason I agreed to come to Mersham was that I needed to see Charlie Lomax. He was supplying me with dope and he was keeping me short. He wanted more money – much more money – money I did not have, and when I couldn’t pay he said he would teach me a lesson.’

  ‘Teach you a lesson?’

  ‘Yes. He thought if I became desperate enough I would get the money somehow even if I had to steal it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t your stepfather have given you money if you had explained everything to him?’

  ‘I had already tried that and he had refused me. He hated drugs and said under no circumstances was he going to pay for them. He wanted me to go into some sort of a clinic but I told him to go and boil his head. Anyway, when I got to Mersham I discovered Charlie Lomax had cried off. I had thought that if I got him invited to Mersham, as he begged me to, he would have had to come – he was the most frightful snob – but I was wrong. Obviously, at the last moment, the thought of meeting me there scared him off or maybe he was still torturing me. I was at my wit’s end, really desperate. I plugged myself with the last of my heroin supply. Then, as I told you, my mother came into my room just as I was giving myself the injection. That made me even madder. I love my mother, in fact she’s the only person I have ever loved and I never wanted to hurt her but I did . . . I have.

  ‘When I knew you were coming instead of Lomax I thought I would at least make you suffer. You seemed to me to be just the sort of stuck-up prig I hated. I think I was wrong, but who cares – it’s too late now. Then I remembered that it wasn’t you I hated: it was my stepfather. It was he who had stolen my mother from me and it was he who was making me suffer now by not giving me money for the drugs I was desperate for. It was fortunate really, the Duchess took all us women out to drink coffee in the drawing-room. I hadn’t had an opportunity to poison my stepfather’s drink during the meal and now I thought I had lost my chance for good. But then you and Miss Browne arrived. In the fuss, while everyone crowded into the hall, I slipped out of the French windows in the drawing-room and round to the dining-room windows which I knew were open. Then I saw all the port glasses, mostly half-drunk, so I knew they would be finished when everyone settled down. The glasses were all in a muddle and I wasn’t sure which was my stepfather’s – however, I knew where he was sitting. So I took the glass nearest me which turned out to be General Craig’s and broke the capsule of cyanide into it and then pushed it in front of my stepfather’s place.’

  ‘That was a very wicked thing to do,’ said Edward, aghast. ‘So what did you do next?’

  ‘I ran back through the windows, then into the drawing-room and attached myself to the little crowd of ladies who were seeping into the hall to greet you. No one knew I had been missing, though maybe my mother did, I’m not sure. Anyway, then we all went into the dining-room. I made sure everyone could see where I was and what I was doing, which was nothing except showing interest in what had happened to your car and how you had been rescued by Miss Browne.’

  ‘And then . . . ?’

  ‘And then I saw the Bishop – silly old fool – push the glass I had poisoned back to the General’s place.’

  ‘Why didn’t you warn him?’

  ‘How could I?’

  ‘You could have knocked over his glass or something.’

  ‘I don’t know, it all happened so fast. The General drank and was making those terrible noises before . . . before I knew what was happening.’

  ‘But you are sorry now?’

  ‘I suppose I am sorry about General Craig though he seemed an old idiot to me and Mummy says he was going to die anyway. I’m not sorry I tried to kill my stepfather, just sorry I didn’t succeed. I might be so rich now,’ she said the last words dreamily, ‘but it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Of course it matters,’ said Edward. ‘It was a wicked thing you did. Don’t you understand that, Hermione?’


  ‘Maybe, but that wasn’t the way I thought of it. I was high, don’t forget, and this just seemed a suitable way of getting revenge and, I hoped, getting my hands on a great deal of money. I was feeling really strange. You don’t know what it feels like being without dope – you will do anything . . . anything.’

  Edward looked at her with horror and pity. Here was a girl who had what most people would say was everything but in fact she had nothing.

  ‘But how had you got hold of the cyanide?’ said Edward at last.

  ‘Oh, Charlie had given it to me for a dare once. I had been saying I had nothing to live for and he said, “Well, end it then, you stupid cow. No one will care,” something like that. I didn’t use it then but I stored it up to use one day.’

  ‘How did you end up in Lomax’s house filled with drugs? I suppose what you told me last time was a pack of lies. Did you see who killed Lomax?’

  ‘I killed him, stupid.’ Hermione looked at him with such cold contempt it made him shudder. ‘After the General died instead of my stepfather I was more desperate than ever. I had to get drugs so I had to get to Charlie Lomax and make him give me what I wanted. I knew the only place I could be sure of meeting him was the Cocoanut Grove so I made you take me there. As soon as I spotted him I made a beeline for him and he wasn’t able to escape from me this time. I cornered him in Captain Gordon’s office. I told them both I was desperate and I said if they didn’t give me what I wanted I would go to the police. Captain Gordon said Charlie was to take me home and give me what I needed. I think he wanted me out of the way. He was having some trouble with his suppliers and he was afraid if I went to my stepfather or the police – not that I ever would, of course – he would be in even more trouble.

  ‘I don’t know what they intended to do with me but when we got to that place Lomax called home he started teasing me. He said I was a no good rich bitch and that I had promised to bring him new clients from among my friends and I had let him down. I said I didn’t have any friends but he didn’t believe me. Then he said I was so ugly and . . . well, he made all sorts of horrible remarks about me. He left me and went off to the lavatory where I knew he stored his dope. There was a carving knife on the table beside a mouldy loaf of bread and I picked it up and followed him. He hadn’t closed the lavatory door and he had his back to me. I swear I didn’t know what I was going to do but he heard me and turned around. I remember he lifted his hands in the air and smiled so I stabbed him. When I was sure he was dead I went looking for his drugs cache which I eventually found in the lavatory, taped to the top of the water pan thing. Then I pushed myself full of really good stuff.’