Kathy waited, but he seemed momentarily at a loss. ‘What are we talking about, Sundeep?’ she asked gently.
‘Arsenic, Kathy. I’m almost sure that she died of arsenic poisoning.’
He saw the sceptical lift of her eyebrow and nodded quickly. ‘Yes, yes, I know, arsenic in the library, all very Agatha Christie. A hundred years ago arsenic was the height of fashion in England. You could buy it over the counter at the chemist, freshen your complexion with it, treat your syphilis, kill your rats, poison your husband . . . but not now. Where would you get hold of arsenic today?’ He paused, then stressed, ‘It is very unusual, Kathy.’
‘It does seem unlikely, doesn’t it, Sundeep? Shouldn’t we wait for the test results?’ She suspected there was some agenda here that Sundeep was holding back. She waited.
He sighed. ‘A dear friend of mine, a very distinguished surgeon, has a son, fresh from medical school, newly launched in his profession, working twenty-eight hours a day in accident and emergency. He examined Marion when she was brought in yesterday. His initial tests supported the ambulance crew’s assumption—there was a marked insulin imbalance. He treated this and decided to wait—there was so much else crying for his attention yesterday. That was perhaps a mistake, but an understandable one. If it was arsenic, you see, time was very short—in fact it was probably already too late. You only have about an hour to try to get the stuff out of the victim before it’s absorbed. Once that happens there’s no antidote.’
‘That’s terrible . . .’ Kathy hesitated, wondering how best to put this. ‘But it’s not something we can . . . cover up.’
‘Good Lord, no!’ Sundeep was shocked. ‘No one’s suggesting such a thing. No, no. We . . . I just want to find out what really happened. If it was murder . . .’
‘If?’
‘Well, I suppose you’d have to consider suicide. I saw that, too, in India, but only because the poison was available. And there are old self-harm scars on her wrists. But it would be a very unpleasant way to kill yourself. No, I was thinking, if it was a deliberate poisoning, how was it done, in a public place in the middle of the day?’
‘Her food or drink?’
‘Yes, a lethal drink-spiking, say. And then, was she deliberately targeted, or might it have been anyone? And if the latter, have there been other cases? It would be easy to misdiagnose, you see. Arsenic is not something one would normally test for, especially if the symptoms were masked, as here. And there might be no autopsy.’
‘A serial poisoner?’
‘Or something else; India isn’t the only country where arsenic wouldn’t be hard to find.’
The suggestion hung in the air for a moment.
‘A terrorist? Surely we’re getting ahead of ourselves, Sundeep?’
‘Yes, yes. I’m not wanting to go off the deep end, but with all these terror warnings, and it being such an unusual poison these days . . . I’ve advised the National Poisons Information Service and started phoning around colleagues in other hospitals.’
Kathy sighed inwardly. This was a babysitting job. Sundeep was having a panic attack. ‘All right. I’ll check our sources. What do we know about Marion?’
‘Not much. Age mid-twenties. I understand the hospital hasn’t been able to trace her next of kin yet. They say she was a student. I have her things.’ He indicated a number of bagged items on the bench against the wall.
‘And she collapsed in a library?’
‘In the London Library—you know it? Just off Piccadilly. Apparently she’s a regular there. They say she just returned from a lunch break and collapsed. I have a copy of the ambulance officer’s report.’
‘If she was poisoned, how long would it have happened before she collapsed?’
‘That depends on the concentration of the dose. She could have been feeling ill for hours, or it might have been more rapid, something in her lunch. I won’t be able to make a time estimate until I get the lab results.’
The pathologist’s assistant came towards them carrying a blue plastic bag. She looked at Sundeep through her visor and he gave a brief nod, at which she began to pack the bag, containing the remains of the soft organs, into Marion’s belly.
‘And were they right?’ Kathy asked. ‘Was she pregnant?’
‘No, she wasn’t.’
Kathy put on gloves and began to go through the woman’s possessions. There was an elegant watch—Omega—and three rings: ruby, amethyst and diamond stones on generous gold bands. ‘Which fingers?’
He showed her. ‘Not engagement or wedding rings, I assume. I think the hospital established that she wasn’t married.’
‘But nice things,’ Kathy said. ‘Not a penniless student. What about the clothes?’
She checked the labels. ‘Very nice.’
Marion’s wallet contained sixty-five pounds in cash, a credit card, a driver’s licence with an address in Stamford Street, SE1, and some receipts, as well as a number of identity and membership cards, including a student card for London University. Her bag contained make-up, keys, a phone and a thick notebook with handwritten entries that might have related to her studies. There was also a bag of sweets.
‘If their blood-sugar balance is unsteady,’ Sundeep said, ‘diabetics sometimes carry sugary sweets to help them adjust it. Maybe the same with the lunchtime drink. The sweetness would tend to disguise the taste of arsenic.’
‘Okay. I’ll make some calls, Sundeep.’
‘Use my office across the corridor, Kathy.’ He started to take off his jacket. ‘I have autopsies to perform. But thank you for coming so quickly. I’m sorry if I’m wasting your time. You’ll let me know?’
‘Of course. And ring me as soon as you get the test results.’
‘They’ve promised to do a Marsh test straight away. I may be completely wrong. Let’s hope I am, eh?’
Kathy led the way to Sundeep’s office. Pip’s face was very pale against her dark lipstick and eye shadow.
‘You okay?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Yes, yes . . .’ She swallowed.
‘You’re not going to be sick?’
‘No.’
‘Just sit down for a bit.’
Kathy took the big chair behind Sundeep’s desk and began by putting a call through to the anti-terrorist hotline, reporting Sundeep’s fears. They promised to get back to her. Then she ran a check on Marion Summers, quickly establishing that she wasn’t known to the police. She got the number for the student administration office at the university, giving them Marion’s name and student number, and was told that she was enrolled as a PhD student in the Department of European Literature. Their computer had no record of her next of kin. Kathy followed with a call to the London Library, arranging to meet the librarian mentioned on the ambulance officer’s report, and requesting contact details for the other person mentioned, a Mr Nigel Ogilvie. Apparently Mr Ogilvie, a regular, was at the library and would be asked to make himself available. Kathy thanked them and said she was on her way.
‘I’ve never seen that before,’ Pip said as she hung up. Kathy thought she was referring to the autopsy, but then saw that she was staring at Marion’s mobile, whose buttons she’d been working. ‘No call log, no phone book—no numbers listed at all.’
‘Maybe it’s brand new.’
Pip held it up for her to see the scuffed surface of the cover. ‘She must have wiped the memory.’
‘We’ll have to check the phone records.’
Kathy drove them back to the Scotland Yard annexe at Queen Anne’s Gate where Brock’s team was housed, and dropped Pip outside. ‘I want you to get on to the PNC. You’re looking for reported cases of suspected poisonings, drink-spikings leading to illness or death, unexplained deaths that could have been down to poison, anything like that. Use your imagination. If Sundeep’s right it’s possible that other cases may have been misdiagnosed. Start with the London area in the past seven days. Also any mention of arsenic.’
Pip looked downcast. ‘You’re not sending m
e back to the office as a punishment for feeling dodgy back there, are you?’
‘Of course not. We all feel like that the first few times.’
She managed a pale grin. ‘All right, boss. I’m on it.’
three
The librarian approved of the detective as soon as she introduced herself in the entrance hall. They were physically similar for a start, both women lean in build, with blonde hair cut short. The inspector’s name, Kolla, was intriguing, and she wondered where it came from. It made her think of the Kola Peninsula in Russia, and she imagined it having some Nordic source. Her own name, Rayner, was originally Danish. She identified with the police officer’s manner, too—friendly, brisk and searching, she felt, for nuances in the replies she gave. And perhaps that was to be expected, for the professions of librarian and detective were not so dissimilar, were they? Both processing information, seeking cross-references, patterns of order in the blizzard of data.
‘I phoned the hospital first thing this morning and got the terrible news that Marion had died,’ the librarian said. ‘I was appalled of course, we all were, although we realised that something was very seriously wrong. I’ve never seen anything like that before.’ She shook her head sadly.
‘Did you know her well, Ms Rayner?’
‘Gael, please. She’d been a member here for over a year now, and we often exchanged a few words when she came in, which was fairly frequently in recent months—I’d say two or three times a week. We had a sandwich together once, when we bumped into each other in a café nearby.’
‘She didn’t eat here?’
‘There are no facilities for food or drink in the library at present, although we are in the process of expanding—you’ll probably hear the builders before you go. But there are several coffee shops within a few blocks of here.’ She hesitated. ‘Is that relevant? It wasn’t food poisoning was it?’
Kathy said, ‘It seems to be a possibility, yes. I understand she was returning from lunch when she collapsed. Do you have any idea where she’d been?’
‘No, but I can give you a few names of places to try. Only she had been feeling a bit unwell lately, and she was a diabetic. I told the ambulance officer. I just assumed . . .’
‘They’re still doing tests. We haven’t been able to trace her next of kin yet. Can you help? Do you know of a partner, relatives?’
Gael thought. ‘Well, she was Scots—she had a rather attractive soft accent. She didn’t talk much to me about herself, just her work. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t married, but I think there was a boyfriend, though I don’t know how serious. I noticed a new ring one day, and she said it was a present. It looked expensive, but it wasn’t an engagement ring. Have you tried the university?’
Kathy nodded. ‘We have an address in Southwark.’
‘Really? I thought . . . She mentioned a traffic hold-up at Swiss Cottage one day, and I just assumed she lived up there. Let me check our records.’ She went to a computer and typed, then looked up. ‘No, you’re right. Stamford Street. Unless she moved recently and didn’t tell us.’
‘Did she have any particular friends here, people she might have spoken to?’
The librarian shook her head. ‘Not that I’m aware of. She just came here to do her work. She was writing a thesis on the Pre-Raphaelite painters and poets; Dante Gabriel Rossetti mainly, I gathered, and William Morris—she was particularly interested in him—and their wives and lovers.’
Kathy looked around, at the classical columns, the leather furniture, the other visitors. ‘Do you get many students here? It’s not an ordinary public library, is it?’
‘No, no, this is a private library, the largest independent lending library in the world. It was started by Thomas Carlyle, who got fed up with conditions at the library at the British Museum, and with not being able to borrow their books. Gladstone and Dickens and others agreed with him, and they established the London Library. You’ll find more students at the British Library, now that they’ve opened their reading rooms to undergraduates, and at the university libraries of course, but we get a few PhD students here wanting to access the specialised areas of our collection, although they have to pay our membership fee. People in need can apply for a grant of up to half of that from our Trust, but I don’t know if Marion did. Do you want me to check?’
‘Yes, that might be a good idea.’
‘You’re interested in her finances?’ Gael’s eyes grew sharp with interest.
‘Just curious. I get the impression she wasn’t hard up—for a student, I mean.’
‘Yes, I agree. She had very nice shoes. I couldn’t help noticing.’
She gave a rueful smile, and Kathy asked, ‘When she collapsed, what happened to her bag, do you remember?’
‘It fell on the floor I think. Yes, in fact her things spilled out. We gathered them up and gave them to the ambulance officer.’
‘Is it possible that anyone tampered with her phone?’
Gael shook her head. ‘I couldn’t say.’
‘Well, I’d better have a word with Mr Ogilvie.’
‘He’s waiting up in the Reading Room, where it happened. I’ll take you.’
They climbed the carpeted stairs to the next floor, and entered a double-height galleried space, its walls lined with books. Several dozen readers were working on long tables or consulting periodical racks and catalogue consoles. Gael took Kathy across the room towards a middle-aged man sitting in one of the armchairs with a heavy volume on his knees. He struggled to his feet as he saw them approach.
‘Nigel, this is Detective Inspector Kolla.’
They shook hands. The man was plump, with pink chubby hands and face, glossy black hair swept flat, a dark suit and tie. His eyes sparkled at her through large glasses. Like a mole, she thought. The librarian left them to get the information on membership grants, and Ogilvie led Kathy over to the spot where Marion had collapsed, describing, with some relish she thought, exactly what he’d witnessed.
‘So she was just returning from a lunch break?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Any idea where she took it?’
‘Well,’ the pink tip of his tongue flicked across his lower lip, ‘as a matter of fact I think I do, yes. Let me show you.’ He led the way to the large windows on one side of the room overlooking St James’s Square. Kathy stood at his side, seeing the gardens, the trees in bud and the equestrian statue.
‘I was stretching my legs, and came to the window and happened to notice her out there, in that seat to the left of the statue. See?’ He pointed. ‘She was reading, and there were paper wrappings at her side, as if she’d been eating a sandwich.’
‘Did you notice a drink?’
‘I think . . . yes, I’m fairly sure she had a soft-drink bottle.’ He nodded eagerly at Kathy, very pleased with himself. ‘She got to her feet and dropped her rubbish in that bin down there before coming back into the library. A few moments later she was writhing in agony on the floor.’
He’s enjoying this, Kathy thought. ‘Did you see anyone else in the square?’
Ogilvie pondered, shook his head. ‘No, I can’t say I did.’
‘Would you happen to know if she bought her lunch from around here?’
‘I’m afraid not. Is that significant? About her lunch?’
‘I’m just trying to get a picture of her last movements, Mr Ogilvie.’
‘Oh, come, Inspector! There may be something I’ve seen that could help you, if only I knew what you’re looking for. You must tell me.’
‘Anything you remember may be useful. Did you see her using her mobile phone yesterday?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Kathy got him to describe exactly what happened when Marion reached the Reading Room.
‘Who gathered up her belongings?’
‘Oh, I can’t remember.’
‘If you think of anything else just contact me on this number, will you? Thanks for your help.’
She gave him her card, an
d then as she turned away he gave an odd little skip and leapt after her to say in an intimate whisper, as if he didn’t want any of the other readers, who were trying to listen in to their conversation, to hear, ‘She was interested in poisons, you know.’
Kathy spun around. ‘What?’
‘Ah!’ He stepped back quickly, eyes bright, perhaps just a little alarmed by the look on Kathy’s face.
She looked past him at the others watching them, and drew him over to an empty table in the corner of the room. They both sat and she pulled out her notebook. ‘What about poisons?’
‘Oh,’ he said, back-pedalling now, ‘it was probably nothing. It’s just that one day I happened to notice her reading a book called Famous Victorian Poisoners, something like that. You see, I’m doing research on Lucrezia Borgia myself, for my company. We publish coffee-table books mostly.’ He wrinkled his nose and handed her his card. ‘Anyway, I made some sort of a joke with Marion and she said it was to do with her doctorate.’
‘So you were on first-name terms?’
‘Well, yes. This is a friendly place.’
‘Do you know anything about her circumstances? Partner, family, home?’
‘Oh no, nothing like that.’
Kathy nodded. She felt there was something here, something beneath the surface, but wasn’t sure what. ‘All right. Well, thanks again, Mr Ogilvie. And do get in touch if you think of anything else.’
Kathy rejoined Gael, who told her that Marion had never applied for any financial help. They walked together to the front door, and Gael pointed to a small bunch of white flowers standing in a tiny glass vase.
‘A little memorial,’ she said. ‘Marion brought these in the day before it happened, and knocked them over when she collapsed. Afterwards I retrieved a few of them and put them in water for her.’
Dark Mirror Page 2