Lucas gave a hesitant cough, and Rex guessed what was coming next.
“Supposing the baby is not Timmy’s—” The inspector leveled his blue gaze upon Mabel.
What little color remained in her face suddenly leached out of it. “What do you mean?”
The inspector turned to Rex.
“Timmy contracted mumps as an adolescent,” Rex obliged.
Anger put the color back in her cheeks. “How did you get hold of that information?”
“The mumps got me thinking. You would never knowingly murder your own grandchild.”
“Of course I wouldn’t! What are you talking about?”
“Calm down, Mrs. Thorpe,” Lucas instructed and continued. “You nursed your husband through his leukemia. You were uniquely qualified to add the arsenic used in his treatment to the icing when Stella Pembleton was called out of the kitchen this morning.”
Mabel stared at him, her skin a bright crimson.
“After the victims were taken away in the ambulance and the reception room was cleared, you snuck in there to get rid of the evidence. Someone saw you go in,” he bluffed.
“I went in to air the room, which was fetid.”
Now Rex knew for sure she was lying. “I had already opened the window,” he informed her. “You removed the miniature bride and groom from the cake and threw them into the fireplace. You disposed of the foil base somewhere and hid the leftover cake crumbs and icing in the dovecote up on the tower roof in the hope birds would eat them so no trace would be left. I’d bet my last Guinness those remains contain the arsenic we’ve been looking for.”
Lucas dispatched Dartford with a brusque sweep of the hand. “SOCO probably collected them, but check anyway.” The sergeant shambled off toward the spiral stairway in evident reluctance.
“I further suspect that crumbs will be found in your pocket,” Rex resumed.
“Please remove your jacket,” the inspector directed Mabel.
She did so and, snapping on a pair of latex gloves, Lucas carefully turned out the pockets of her beige suit, where tiny crumbs and icing stuck to the lining. He scraped them up for analysis. “What are crumbs doing in your pocket?” he asked.
“I wanted to feed the birds.”
“Up on the tower?”
“No, I was never on the tower. I threw the crumbs out the downstairs window for the sparrows. I didn’t know they had arsenic on them.”
“The DJ saw you go up the stone steps,” Rex informed her.
“He must be mistaken. He didn’t strike me as being particularly bright.”
Rex had to give her credit. Mabel Thorpe was nobody’s fool. Wringing a confession out of her was not going to prove easy. He ploughed on, so as not to lose momentum, in the hope she would trip herself up under the unrelenting pressure.
“Inconveniently, Aunt Gwen did not eat the cake, so you fabricated a note from an admirer. Imagine her surprise when she sees you at the top of the tower instead. Harder to imagine how you got her up on the parapet. Did your hat pin provide the necessary threat? Is that what you used on Tom Newcombe?”
“These accusations are insane!” She turned to Inspector Lucas for support, but received no sympathy from that quarter, only a severe expression of rebuke.
“Once you found out Mr. Newcombe was alive, you had to add him to your death list. Now that Timmy was marrying into money, you saw a chance to live a life of ease and help Dudley out of his financial difficulties. You brought charcoal tablets to help absorb the poison, having warned Timmy not to eat more than a tiny morsel of cake since he was suffering from what he termed a ‘funny tummy.’ Incidentally, do you routinely carry charcoal tablets around in your handbag?”
Mabel’s impassive face gave nothing away. “I do. It’s good for stomach upsets.”
“And just to be sure, you’ve been trying to inure him from arsenic poisoning by feeding him small doses over a period of time.”
“I never.”
“Mrs. Thorpe, Timmy exhibits outward physical signs of chronic exposure,” Rex said, lightly dismissing her outrage. “His nails, for example. Dudley, you knew, would not touch the cake. You didn’t care about Mrs. Newcombe, Polly, or even the baby, which you suspected wasn’t Timmy’s and didn’t know was Dudley’s.”
“It can’t be!”
“The child is, indeed, his.”
Mabel jumped to her feet. “You’re lying.” She spun around wildly. “Is it true?” she screamed at Dudley. “Is Polly’s baby yours? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Dudley just stared at her, as if her current reaction were reason enough. Helen, Carter, and the Littons sat up in their seats while Meredith and Reggie watched the drama from a secluded sofa.
“What is she going on about?” Timmy asked no one in particular, the cup of coffee he was holding rattling in its saucer.
Inspector Lucas approached him and put a hand on his shoulder, preparing to lead him away and, Rex assumed, give him the bad news about Polly’s baby. Shrugging the inspector off, Timmy handed him the cup of coffee and strode over to his brother.
“You bastard,” he cried, pulling Dudley out of his armchair by the collar. They stood glaring at each other. Timmy had the advantage of blind rage.
“It meant nothing, I swear!” his twin entreated.
“Stop it. Stop it!” Mabel cried out, but not before Dudley received a blow from his brother that knocked him back in his chair. She flew to Dudley’s side while Timmy stared at his fist in amazement and flexed his fingers to make sure nothing was broken.
“I dare say you had reason to strike your brother, Timmy,” his mother said, kneeling on the rug and dabbing at Dudley’s cut lip with a paper napkin. “But I warned you against marrying that slut.”
“It’s none of your business. You had no right to interfere!”
“Such ingratitude! Everything I’ve done has been for you and your brother.”
“You forced me to drink tea every morning, which you said was fortified with vitamins, and all the time I felt sicker. Were you trying to kill me?”
“Of course not. I was trying to protect you from a poisoner. That’s what I’ve always done! Taken care of you.”
“Was Dudley in on this plot to get rid of the Newcombes?” Rex asked, attacking her Achilles’ heel—her sons.
“No! Dudley didn’t know I’d kept his father’s Trisenox.”
There it was. In her anxiety to protect Dudley, she had confessed to the arsenic.
“Mother, are you stark raving mad?” Timmy lunged at her, but Rex stepped into his path.
“Timmy, I believe your mother thought the baby was Mack Simmons’ but waited to do anything until after the wedding, when she was assured of your future at Newcombe Court.”
“I don’t care about Newcombe Court. Polly’s the only girl who ever loved me!”
Inspector Lucas set down Timmy’s coffee cup.
“Mrs. Thorpe,” he addressed Mabel in a solemn voice that belied the glow of satisfaction in his pale blue eyes. “I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder in the deaths of Reverend Alfred Snood, Gwendolyn Newcombe Jones, Thomas Newcombe, Victoria Newcombe, and the attempted murder of Polly Newcombe and her unborn child.”
What’s in a Name?
“A productive day’s work,” Inspector Lucas congratulated himself after his sergeant had recalled PC Perrin from Aston and taken Mabel Thorpe into custody, the suspect protesting her innocence and admitting only to having had arsenic in her possession at home. Her two sons left shortly thereafter, as did the Littons and Bobby Carter, who wanted to be by Polly’s bedside with Timmy.
“I felt sure Carter was implicated,” the inspector told Rex, hovering by the portcullis door, on the point of departure.
“Whether he helped Tom Newcombe disappear, we may never know,” Rex replied.
“One thing for sure, Mabel Thorpe will never benefit from her crimes. Even if she retracts her confession about the arsenic, which she says was stolen from her house, we have the cru
mb samples found on her person, the notes which an expert can compare with her writing, and the hat pin, conforming to the instrument used in the murder of Thomas Newcombe.”
“She vehemently denies murdering the victims,” Rex said, playing devil’s advocate.
“Why did she keep the arsenic after her husband died? Rather irresponsible, if you ask me. She must’ve thought it might come in handy one day. Timmy Thorpe is heartbroken over his mother. Showed spunk when he turned on his brother.”
“Not surprisingly. Dudley deceived his wife as well. I can only imagine the reception he’ll get when he arrives home. Will you drop the charges against Donna?”
Lucas sighed magnanimously. “Staging your own kidnapping in an attempt to extort money is a serious business, but no one got hurt, and you say she was helpful in the investigation.”
“She was the one who told me about the arsenic used in Dr. Thorpe’s cancer treatment, and she provided me with the first clue that her husband might be Polly’s father.”
When Rex had spoken to Dr. Williamitis on the phone and discovered that the canceled check hidden at Mabel’s house might be for a termination, he remembered the argument Jasmina had said she witnessed between Dudley and Polly—apparently a lovers’ tiff.
Rex and Lucas took leave of each other. It had been a long and eventful night, and Rex was beginning to feel how the inspector looked—drawn and frayed. He rounded up Helen and their young houseguests.
“Some wedding,” Reggie said, exiting the front door.
The rain, Rex was pleased to see, had stopped.
“Are you sure you still want to get married?” he asked Helen on the way to the car.
“What are you getting at, Rex?” she asked, blue eyes narrowing at him. “Are you getting cold feet?”
“Och, no!” He decided this wasn’t the moment to admit that he was. “I just mean, well, as far as weddings go, this one was a bit of a disaster, don’t you think?”
“You could call multiple murders a disaster,” she agreed.
“I suppose now we’ll have to go to the funerals.” It was the respectful thing to do, after all. Rex wondered if he could get away with wearing the same suit.
Helen looked at him strangely. “That’s all right, dear. I think it might be better if I attend the funerals by myself. Murder seems to have a habit of turning up whenever you’re around.”
Rex couldn’t argue with that fact, and didn’t try.
The four of them piled into the blue car, Helen at the wheel.
“I wonder if the Malt Shovel in Aston is still serving bar food,” Rex said. “It’s got a comfortable lounge.”
“How do you know?” Helen asked, pulling her seat belt over her shoulder.
“I was there this evening for the purpose of research. A local from the village knew about Tom Newcombe’s affair with the Romanian au pair.” Rex was curious to see if old Jessop had been allowed back into the establishment. “In any case, it’s a fine old pub. Definitely worth a visit.”
“Or, in your case—two,” Helen said dryly. “And I’ll just bet the beer is good.”
“Fine ales, and cider for you.”
“Oh, all right then. You’ve managed to twist my arm. Okay with you two?” she asked the young couple in the back, who responded enthusiastically.
“Don’t care if I never see that horror again,” Meredith said with a backward glance at Newcombe Court as they took off down the driveway lined with statues shining ethereally in the gloom. “None of this might’ve happened if Polly hadn’t tried to hide the truth about the baby.”
“She didn’t know her uncle Bobby had paid Simmons off,” Rex explained. “But if she suspected her mother of having had something to do with his disappearance, she may have kept the truth about Dudley and the baby from her out of spite. Or shame.”
“So she decided to palm the baby off on Timmy,” Helen took over the narrative. “Victoria was happy that her daughter had finally settled down. Everyone was happy, except Mabel. Seems she was not going to let Polly ruin her son’s life, but nor was she going to pass up the opportunity of a lifetime. Once Timmy was married into the Newcombe family, he stood to inherit a modest fortune—once a few people were out of the way. And what better time to eliminate the other side of the family than at the wedding?”
“Tom Newcombe, eager for a reconciliation with his daughter, agreed to the rendezvous at Worley Station,” Rex pursued, gazing out of the passenger window at the dark countryside. “Returning for the first time from Romania, Worley was his fatal destination. A hat pin through the heart and he fell over the bridge. The attack proved efficacious enough for Mabel to repeat it later at the top of the tower. Evidently, she did not anticipate Polly’s tenacious hold on life. But for Polly and the baby, she would have succeeded in her mission to eradicate all Newcombe blood.”
“So sad for Polly,” Meredith lamented. “I wonder how Madonna will feel about Dudley’s illegitimate child. She and Polly used to be best friends.”
“Madonna?” Rex queried.
“She goes by Donna now, but back in school she was Madonna. We had the same initials: Meredith Matthews and Madonna Maddox. Her mum was a big Madonna fan, had all her albums and dressed just like her, which embarrassed Donna no end.”
Rex recalled the fake diamond studs in Susan’s ear. “I see,” he said, beginning, indeed, to see what he had missed. Now all the pieces tumbled neatly into place.
When the car reached the pub, he told Helen and their young guests to go ahead and order, explaining he had some unfinished business to attend to in the village. As he took off for Donna Thorpe’s house, he could feel his blood roiling from having been so roundly had, his good nature taken advantage of by a scheming and vindictive woman, one even more evil in her way than he had supposed Mabel to be.
If ever two people deserved each other, it was Donna and Dudley Thorpe. Theirs had been a marriage made not in heaven but hell.
Happily Ever After
Donna Thorpe met Rex at the door to her house, a cardigan draped over her shoulders as though she might have been expecting him. “Mr. Graves, how nice to see you again.” She looked abashed, and also guarded beneath the porch light. “Have you come about the ransom I tried to pull off ? I should never’ve involved you, but you seemed so kind and sympathetic when you came round earlier that I decided to turn to you, thinking you would help.”
Rex felt significantly less sympathetic now. “I’ve come aboot something more serious. Are your boys home?”
“They’re at my mum’s.”
“And your husband?”
“At Mabel’s house with the police. She’ll probably be sent to Foston Hall Prison, for life.”
“Does that not make you feel just a wee bit guilty?”
“Why should it?”
“Listen, Madonna—”
“Don’t call me that! I hate it.”
“That’s what Mr. Newcombe knew you by though, isn’t it? And that’s how you signed your note to him: M. The game’s up, Donna. Why don’t you tell me in your own words how you came up with such a clever plan to murder the Newcombe family.”
Donna’s eyes glowed. “It was a clever plan, wasn’t it? And clever of you to suss it out.”
“I almost didn’t.” Luckily, Meredith had inadvertently reverted to Donna’s full name, causing the penny to drop. How could he have been so blind? Well, Donna was a skillful liar and an accomplished actress, that’s how.
The killer drew the front door closed behind her and huddled under her cardigan. She was not going to invite him inside, but she seemed ready to talk. And he was ready to listen. “When you turned up at my house today looking for answers, I saw a way to frame my husband for the Newcombe murders. For your benefit, I gave him a motive—the gambling debts; means—arsenic; and opportunity—his absence from home this morning. But ultimately Mabel did just as well, and my boys get to keep their dad. Lucky her name begins with M too!
“I knew the truth about Polly’s
baby. A gossip at the pub saw my husband and Polly together. Then, after I first found the cancelled check to Dr. Forspaniak—the one I showed you, and which I knew you’d follow up on, as I had—I put two and two together. One more reason for Dud to get rid of Polly, before the truth came out.
“I snuck out of the house this morning while Dud was out and the boys were at my mum’s making the fairy cakes. Borrowing her car, I drove to Newcombe Court. I didn’t know what I was going to do with the arsenic at that point but, once again, luck was on my side. No one was in the kitchen and the top tier of the cake hadn’t been iced yet. The white icing was still in the mixing bowl.
“My mother-in-law kept an old unused prescription of Trisenox in her sideboard—the stuff the police found. She hoards everything. A few months ago she noticed ampoules were missing and, ever paranoid, must have thought someone might try to poison her or her precious Timmy, so she put a small dose in their morning tea to build up a tolerance and immediately washed out the cups so the cat wouldn’t get at it. She never reported the theft to the police. I monitored how much she was using. Timmy showed all the classic symptoms of chronic arsenic poisoning. I wasn’t sure how diluted the injectable Trisenox was and I had to be sure it was a fatal dose.
“I sent Tom Newcombe the newspaper clipping announcing his daughter’s engagement. My mom kept in touch with Tereza, Polly’s nanny, after she returned to Romania. Tereza minded me from time to time with Polly, and my mum sometimes looked after Polly when the nanny had her days off. I hated Mrs. Newcombe for firing her. Polly and I drifted apart over the years, and she outright ignored me after I married Dudley. I realize now she must have always fancied him.
“Anyway, I told Mr. Newcombe how wonderful it would be for him to surprise his daughter on her wedding day. Victoria would forgive him after all these years. She could finally marry Bobby Carter! I didn’t think he would bring my note. I had arranged to meet him at Worley Station and came armed with one of Mabel’s hat pins. I slipped back to Newcombe later and spied Aunt Gwen through the window refusing the cake. I remembered her from when I used to play at Newcombe Court with Polly. I left a note on the bartender’s tray when he was getting ice in the kitchen. A brunette in a silver dress saw me, but nothing came of it, as I was bundled up in a hooded jacket and she probably couldn’t give a helpful description. The DJ was busy working on one of his speakers.
Murder of the Bride Page 17