“A very good point, indeed, Sergeant. It might account for the attack of fever being so virulent. The bandage would hold millions of the bugs which were—literally—applied to an open wound as a dressing. Small wonder the results were fulminating and rapidly fatal.”
“Chalk one up, S’arnt,” said Green, “and chuck over one of your fags before you do it.”
Berger handed over his packet without a word and without looking at Green. He continued to address Masters. “If Carla Sanders died because she had scratches on her leg, presumably she wouldn’t have died if she hadn’t had scratches.”
“No, no,” interjected Tip. “She could have swallowed a mouthful of bug-infested water.”
“Would that have been just as serious, then?”
“I honestly don’t know,” supplied Masters. “I imagine it would have been nasty, but at any rate the leptospirae wouldn’t have been fed directly into the bloodstream.”
“I’ve been trying to find an answer to that, Chief,” said Tip, “but the nearest I could get, and I’m by no means sure it is true or would hold good in this case, is that if Carla Sanders had been drinking a fair amount of alcohol, her mouth and tubes could well have been so antiseptic as to be virtually leptospirocidal or more so than they would have been had she not been drinking alcohol. So if she took in a mouthful of water and spat it out without swallowing any …”
“Immediately on surfacing?”
“Yes, Chief. She could then, perhaps, have avoided a serious nasty by that route. But if she did swallow any, well then I imagine the contents of the inside of her stomach could well have been like one of those broths you mentioned as being culture mediums for bugs. And from then on she would grow her own colonies at a merry rate and so virtually bring about her own destruction.”
“With a little help from her friends,” murmured Green.
Masters ignored this and said to Berger: “You were making a point, Sergeant, before we got all the footnotes.”
“Sorry, Chief,” said Tip.
“Nothing to be sorry about. I was simply calling Sergeant Berger back to the point he was making.”
“I asked if Carla Sanders would have died if she hadn’t had open wounds on her leg. The answer seems to be that she wouldn’t have died unless she’d swallowed some of the water. My point is, Chief, that whoever infected that pool would have been most unlikely to kill Hugh Carlyle unless he went into the water with some sort of open lesion on his body or unless he was in the habit of drinking his bath water.”
“I don’t think you are right, Sergeant. Take Hookham, for instance. He drained the pool and went in, wearing rubber boots, to scrub it out. He got a mild attack of something or other after simply wielding a brush.”
“You are sure of that, Chief?”
“Not absolutely. But you have read the medical papers. One of them specifically states that the spirochaete enters the human body through skin abrasions or via the alimentary tract. This latter route was what Tip was referring to when she spoke of swallowing the water. So far, so good. But in the entry in one of the textbooks, under infective diseases, it states that in addition to these other routes, the spirochaete is also able to gain entry through the nasal mucosa. Did you hoist that in-board?”
“No, Chief.”
“Ah! But it is a highly important point. I believe Hookham, while brushing the bottom and sides of the pool, got a spray of the liquid in his face thrown up by the action of the bristles. Nothing very much, perhaps. A few minute droplets not big enough to wipe away, as likely as not. If one or two of those particles of water entered his nostrils there is a reason for his mild influenza-like illness, with a little fever, lasting a couple of days. You saw such cases mentioned, did you?”
“Yes, Chief. It said mild cases recover without any specific treatment, most with no treatment at all.”
“Right. So far, so good. We believe Hookham got a mild attack. But Hookham, I imagine, is a strong, healthy countryman, used to manual labour, and generally immune to the colds and other febrile diseases which flourish among indoor workers. Hugh Carlyle is very different. Though, apart from the effect on his lower limbs of his particular form of demyelinating disease, he appears to be a fit, strong man, the truth is somewhat different. Any infection, and by that I mean something as slight as a summer cold, can be very troublesome for Carlyle. A severe bout of flu would be very serious. You can imagine what an attack of Weil’s disease would do to him.”
“Carry him off without a shadow of doubt,” grunted Green. “Not nice.” He looked across at Berger. “Were you thinking that whoever dosed that pool only did it to give Carlyle a bout of flu to pay him out for some little thing? If so, you’re wrong, lad. Anybody who would go to those lengths to get at a crippled man meant mischief. Real mischief. Like death in agony. In other words, lad, murder with a capital M.”
Berger sat quiet for a moment or two, and then said quietly: “That’s answered my question, Chief.”
“Good. Now I suggest we break off this particular discussion and get about our several businesses.”
The AC (Crime) had listened very carefully to what Masters had to report. His reaction was the expected one. The case was now to be upgraded from the mere investigation it had started out as, to a full-blown murder enquiry.
“For me to tackle, sir?” asked Masters.
“Who else? The girl died in the Metropolitan area, so she’s your pigeon. In any case you’re nine tenths of the way to a solution, so it would be ridiculous to duplicate work by passing it over to somebody else. And I’m damn’ sure the Kent people won’t want to know about it, though I’ll be getting through to them to keep them informed of what has happened.”
Masters got to his feet.
Anderson said shrewdly: “Don’t let it worry you, George. You’ve told me all about your business agreement with Carlyle, so there’s no chance of any awkward questions being asked. You’ve been quite open about it and I shall shove a note in my diary to that effect. It will go in today’s entry upgrading the Sanders case to one of murder and I’ll minute my clearance for you to go ahead with the house-buying.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Now don’t be long about this business, George. Get it sewn up tight as soon as possible. We’ve wasted too much valuable time on it already.”
***
Hookham tilted his old trilby hat and scratched his head above one ear.
“Plazzi bags, you say? In the swimming pool that day? Sunday worn’t it? Aye, Sunday. Extra clean up I’ad to do. We-ell, there was a deal of rubbish there. Food of one sort or another. Aye, and glass. Two or three glasses not broke, but some were smashed to flinders. And my old woman said to go in in my bare feet! I ask you!”
“Plastic bags,” reminded Berger quietly.
“No bags that I remember. I swep’ up, of course and had a heap of rubbish, but bags! I can’t remember any bags.”
“Could you have missed them?” asked Tip anxiously. “Just not noticed them, perhaps.”
“Let me see now. I opened up the drain, like. I don’t have to go in to do that. Just turn the wheel over there.”
“Just a moment,” said Berger. “Weren’t you a bit worried all the rubbish might block the drain?”
“Not it,” said Hookham. “There’s a grill to …”
“Yes?” asked Berger quietly.
“Now you come to mention it …”
“What?”
“It stopped.”
“What did?”
“The outflow, of course. When there was still more than two foot of water left.”
Berger and Tip said nothing, unwilling to break the slow thread of thought.
“Aye, that’s right. I had to go in. There wasn’t any depth at the shallow end, of course. Lucky there wasn’t or I’d ’ave needed thigh waders at the deep end and I hadn’t got them up here with me. It woulda meant going back to the cottage, an’ that’s a tidy step, there an’ back.”
Berger just
managed to keep his patience as Hookham rambled on. Tip took hold of his wrist and gripped it tightly as a warning against interrupting.
“Were was I? Aye! Even so I had to use a stick to unblock that drain. Clogged it was.”
“What with?” asked Berger at last.
“Why, plazzi bags, of course. In’t that what you’re asking? Glass and stuff doesn’t block sinks like them bags. They sit over the grill like a waterproof tent. Glass an’ stuff just works like an extra filter.”
“What did you do with the bags, Mr. Hookham?” asked Tip.
“Let me see now. Oh, yes. I chucked ’em up onto the side. On to the surround, like. I didn’t just want to rake them away so’s they could float back an’ play the same trick again, did I?”
“And you collected them up later?”
“No, I didn’t, now you come to mention it. Forgot all about ’em, I did. Somebody else must ’ave took ’em, because I’d ’ave seen them there since, an’ I ’aven’t.”
Tip went to call on Mrs. Hookham.
“Took some old plastic from round the pool? I should just think I did. Mucky stuff! Where it came from I can’t imagine. But there, at a party you get all sorts.”
“You’ve no idea who could have brought it?”
“I put it down to them caterers we had in. Thought it was something they’d had to cover food on the tables and couldn’t be bothered to bring it indoors. The breeze took it into the water, I suppose. At any rate, that’s where Hookham got it from. I saw him throw it onto the surround, so I picked it up and put it in the outside bin.”
“Which has been emptied since then I suppose?”
“Every Tuesday, regular as clockwork. We’ve got good bin men. I tie the sacks up Monday afternoon and they’re here to collect it before eight next morning.”
“I see. Did you happen to notice whether the plastic was a sheet or bags?”
“Bags it was. At least there was corners among it. But I didn’t count them. Just ordinary see-through plazzi-bags as far as I was concerned.”
And with that, Berger and Tip had to be satisfied.
Masters rang Hugh Carlyle at the latter’s office. “ ’Morning, Hugh. No, not about Housmans. I’m leaving all that to Wanda for the moment. I understand she and Doris Green … yes, wife of DCI Green whom you met … are close to some arrangement about taking over our little place. Yes, the Greens appear to have a buyer for their present house, but nothing is certain these days, so we can’t go firm for a day or two yet. Business? Yes, I’m calling on a business matter. Interviewing people. We’d like a word with some of your guests. No, we won’t upset them. I don’t suppose your daughter and her boyfriend will mind answering a few questions, will they? No? Right. If I could have her address. Yes, Rosemary’s. And the phone number …”
Green, who had been listening to this conversation, asked, “Does this mean a trip to Cambridge?”
“It might well mean that.”
“Today?”
“I shan’t know until after I’ve phoned Rosemary Carlyle. But we can do it fairly easily in a long afternoon if the Sergeants get back with the car.”
“They’ll be here for a latish lunch,” Green forecast.
“In that case, if the girl can see us today I’ll make an appointment.” Masters picked up the phone. A minute or two later he said: “I thought they’d be living together in that holiday cottage, but they’re not.”
“Haven’t fallen out, have they?”
“No. Young Chesterton goes to see her every afternoon apparently. He’s got some sort of mornings-only job for the vacation and is still living in his digs in the city.”
“Right. What time did she suggest? I didn’t hear her say.”
“Anytime we can get there. She gave me instructions for finding the place.”
“In that case let’s have some lunch while we wait for the kids.”
They were on their way by half-past two. Berger took them east to Stratford and then turned north to join the M11. Masters had not asked for a report on the Sergeants’ journey to Kent, preferring to let them have lunch and to hear what they had to say during the journey.
Tip had made a full report by the time the Rover was fairly on to the motorway. When she had finished her account of the interviews with Hookham and his wife, Green, who had been paying close attention to all that was said, despite his almost pathological dread of travelling in heavy traffic, said: “It looks as though you guessed right, George. About the plastic bags, I mean.”
“No guess, really,” said Masters quietly. “Or if it was it was sparked off by your remark about the litre tonic bottle.”
“How come?”
“Of late, our tonic has been delivered in plastic bottles. Not glass as formerly. There’s an instruction with these new ones. About their disposal. The suggestion is to fill them with hot water. This softens the plastic to a degree that after emptying them you can put your foot on them and they flatten.”
“Like disposing of old tin cans.”
“Just like that. I found Wanda trying it out one day. Her tread couldn’t have been heavy enough. The one she was doing didn’t go fully flat.”
“You mean it splurged out into a flask shape? Like a half-bottle of whisky?”
“More or less. When I took over they squashed completely flat.”
“They would, wouldn’t they, with your plates of meat?”
“Quite. But it was the recollection of that which made me think of the bags. Flat, easy to carry bags like the ones you buy frozen shrimps in. Convenient to hide about the person.”
Green grunted his understanding and his acceptance of the acknowledgement of his part in the discovery of how the leptospirae were almost certainly introduced into the pool.
“Straight into Cambridge itself, Chief?”
“No. My instructions from Miss Carlyle were to continue along the motorway till junction fourteen, then to take the six-oh-four trunk road for a short way until the turning for a small village called Dry Drayton. On the left. The cottage overlooks a golf course before we reach the village.”
“Got it, Chief.”
The cottage was easy to find, but it was not a cottage. It was a part of a larger house called Gleaners Hall, a long building almost surrounded by derelict barns, but recently converted into three dwellings for summer letting. As Berger did a hairpin left turn off the minor road, he ran onto a patch of gravel newly laid to provide hard-standing for the three cottages. Before they were fairly out of the car, Rosemary Carlyle appeared at one of the nearby front doors.
“Hello, Mr. Masters.”
“Hello, Rosemary.”
The two had met, briefly, some years before, when Masters and Wanda had called in on her parents. Then Rosemary had been a grown-up girl. Now she was a personable young woman whom Masters had some difficulty in recognising at first glance.
“You’ve changed, Rosemary. You’re well and truly adult now.”
“Am I?” She laughed. “I suppose a year or two at my age does make a difference. How is Mrs. Masters?”
“Very well, thank you. Has your mother told you Wanda is expecting another baby?”
“Oh, yes. Mummy was a bit worried about the lateness. In age, I mean.” She reddened. “Oh, I am sorry. I didn’t mean …”
“Don’t apologise. Wanda and I both know that fortyish is not the best time for a woman to have children, but we have taken the best advice and Wanda is in good hands.”
“I’m sure she is.” Rosemary looked across to where the other three had congregated. “Can I meet the rest of your team? Mummy told me she has been very impressed by them.”
The introductions were made.
“Now come in for a cup of tea,” invited Rosemary. “Everything is ready. Or it should be if Tom is doing his stuff properly.”
“Is he good in the kitchen, love, this lad of yours?” asked Green as they went through the door which had obviously been newly pierced into this part of the wall.
“
Not bad. Do you know what he made for supper last night?”
“Tell me.”
“Giblet pie. Have you ever heard of it?”
“Heard of it? I lived on it when I was a kid.”
“I thought your staple diet was white stew with bubble-and-squeak,” said Berger. “It was the last time the subject was mentioned.”
“You mind your own barrer, lad. And if you can’t push it, shove it.”
Rosemary gurgled with mirth at this verbal passage and went to call Tom from the kitchen into the quite large sitting room of the cottage.
“Glad to meet anybody who can make and appreciate giblet pie,” said Green, greeting him. “As long as you take that wrinkled skin out of the gizzards and then chop them small.”
“What? The wrinkled skins?” asked Berger.
“The meat,” said Tom with a grin. He turned back to Green. “I cut everything very small,” he said. “I stew the necks whole—with the chopped livers, hearts and so on—then I strip the meat from the bones so that there’s no impediment to easy eating.”
“You’re a man after my own heart, lad. Can you buy sets easily enough?”
“From the local poulterer. Dirt cheap, because so many of his customers don’t want the offal.”
“More fools they.”
“Tea for everybody?” asked Rosemary loudly.
There was plenty of room for everybody to sit. The owners of the cottage, in addition to a three-piece suite, had added a divan bed to make extra sleeping space for their clients. Berger and Tip shared this, Rosemary and Tom were on the settee. Masters and Green had the armchairs.
The questioning began with Masters asking whether either of the young people had noticed anybody dropping or putting anything into the pool.
Both assured him that they hadn’t.
“No unusual movement when the lights went out?”
Rosemary shrugged. “It was almost dark, and I must admit I was more interested in the area of the French windows. I wasn’t watching the pool. Not the ends and side away from the house, anyway. And they were in deep shadow. You know how the trees and shrubs throw quite thick patches of black.”
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