by H. Y. Hanna
Finally, they sent me into the little adjoining shop to look after the customers there, in the hope that I might do less damage if I wasn’t handling edibles. I had just finished serving a group of Japanese tourists (who bought copious amounts of traditional English Breakfast and Earl Grey tea, jars of local Cotswolds preserves, an assortment of little bone china teacups, several umbrellas decorated with the Union Jack, and a range of T-shirts with the iconic Oxford skyline in different colours) when my friend, Seth, walked into the tearoom.
“Hey Gemma…” He stood aside and waited until the Japanese tourists had filed out, beaming and comparing their purchases, then he looked at me, a frown on his usually cheerful face. “What’s going on with Cassie? I rang her this morning and she sounded very odd. When I mentioned you, she changed the subject and was very frosty. Have you guys fallen out or something?”
I gave him a sheepish look. “Yeah, we’ve sort of had a fight.”
Seth raised his eyebrows. “You’ve had fights before. I’ve never known her to behave like this.”
I shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, well, it’s different this time. It’s about Jon…”
Seth’s expression changed, his brown eyes hardening. “What about him?”
Quickly, I brought him up to speed on the case, including my suspicions about Jon Kelsey.
“Cassie could be in danger if Jon is really the murderer!” said Seth in alarm. “What if he decides that she knows too much and he needs to get rid of her as well? You’ve got to speak to Cassie!”
“I’ve tried, Seth! She just won’t listen—she won’t even talk to me now!” I shook my head miserably.
“You’ve got to find a way to make her listen,” Seth insisted. “I’ll call her now myself and tell her to speak to you—”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said hastily. “She’s so angry at me right now—if you tackle her too, she’ll just think that we’re ganging up against her.”
Seth clenched his fists in frustration. “I just can’t believe what a fool she is over that man!”
I sighed. I couldn’t believe it either. Cassie had always been so sensible, so down to earth—if anything, she was the one who used to laugh at others for behaving like infatuated idiots. Maybe it was because she had never really been in love before—I guess it was true that when you finally fell, you fell hard. Oh, Cassie had had her fill of boyfriends—with her looks, she’d never had a shortage of offers—but she always seemed to view them as nothing more than a bit of fun flirtation. They had never competed with her real love: Art. Until now…
“I’ve got to get back to college,” said Seth. “I only popped in because I was worried and I wanted to see you in person.” He looked at me, his brown eyes dark with concern. “You’ll let me know what happens, won’t you, Gemma? With Cassie, I mean.”
I gave his shoulder a pat. “Yes, but don’t worry, I’m sure Cassie will be fine. I mean, even if Jon is the murderer, why would he want to harm her? She doesn’t know anything. In fact, she won’t believe a single bad word against him!”
“If he’s the murderer, he doesn’t need a good reason,” said Seth darkly. “They don’t think like the rest of us. And besides, you know what Cassie is like: even if she denies it in front of you, she might start asking Jon questions and he might decide that the best thing is to silence her before she digs up stuff he doesn’t want revealed.”
I watched Seth go worriedly. I didn’t want to admit it but his words had frightened me. Could Cassie have been in danger? But until we found out how Meg—and Sarah—were poisoned, there was so little to go on…
On a sudden impulse, I dashed back into the dining room and asked the Old Biddies if they would mind if I popped out for a bit. They practically ushered me out the door. I think I was being so little help that they were pleased to see me go. I jogged across to the bus stop in front of the village school and got there just in time. With a last look at my tearoom, I hopped aboard a bus that was heading south, towards Oxford and the hospital.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I had never been in the ICU ward at the hospital—probably a good thing—and I hovered just outside the doorway, unsure how to proceed. To be honest, I hadn’t really thought this through and, now that I was here, I was beginning to wonder if I was mad to think that it could work.
Then I saw what I had been looking for through the doorway: the familiar tall figure of Lincoln Green, looking very different in scrubs, with a stethoscope around his neck. He was standing at the nurse’s station, flipping through some charts. I waved as he glanced up and his face broke into a smile of delight.
“Gemma! What are you doing here?” he asked as he came over to greet me.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I said breathlessly. “But I heard about Meg Fraser and the poisoning.”
Lincoln’s face became grim. “Yes, it was touch and go for a while. But I think she’s going to be all right. Most patients who survive the first four hours with nicotine poisoning will usually recover fully. She’s out of Intensive Care and has been moved to the High Dependency Unit.”
“Can she have visitors? I mean, to ask her a few questions?”
“No. O’Connor has already been hounding me about that.” Lincoln’s lips thinned in annoyance. “As I told him, Meg is still much too ill to be questioned.”
“You mean, she’s still unconscious?”
“No, she’s awake. But I don’t want her to be stressed; it could affect her recovery. Being questioned could be very traumatic.” Lincoln paused, then added savagely, “Especially by that O’Connor.”
I glanced at him and wondered how much of Lincoln’s resistance was due to genuine professional concern for Meg and how much of it was personal antagonism towards Devlin.
“If I spoke to her, it wouldn’t be like the police questioning her,” I said quickly. “I’ve chatted with Meg a few times when we met out in the garden; we’re… we’re sort of friends.” (Okay, that was a bit of a white lie. One meeting next to the rubbish bins in the rear alley didn’t quite make me and Meg bosom buddies but what Lincoln didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him) “In fact, it might do her good to see a friendly face,” I added blithely.
“Her parents have been with her so she hasn’t been alone,” said Lincoln.
“Are they with her now?”
“No, they went down to the hospital café for a bite to eat.”
“Well, then I could pop in—just a really quick visit.” I looked at him pleadingly.
Lincoln sighed impatiently. “Gemma, I’m sorry. I can’t—”
“Please, Lincoln, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t really important.” I took a step closer and put my hand persuasively on his arm. “Please?”
He hesitated, looking down the ward corridor, then back at me. Finally he blew out a breath of resignation. “Fine. But only five minutes. She’s the second cubicle on the right.”
“Thank you!” I stretched up on tiptoe and gave him a peck on the cheek, which left him slightly pink, then I hurried down the corridor to Meg’s bed. I slipped through the curtains around her cubicle and was relieved to find the Walthams’ young maid propped up against her pillows. She looked pale and weak, but otherwise better than I had expected.
“Hi,” I said softly.
Her eyes widened in surprise. “Hullo…” Then recognition dawned. “You’re the girl from next door. Gemma, right?”
I smiled at her. “Yes. I heard about what happened to you. I thought I’d pop in to see how you were.”
“Oh… thanks.” She looked at me quizzically, no doubt wondering what had prompted this sudden excess of neighbourly concern.
I sat down in the chair by her bed and wracked my brain for a way to broach the subject. “Er… Dr Green told me that it was nicotine poisoning. That sounds really scary!”
Meg nodded, a perplexed expression on her face. “That’s what he told me too, but I don’t understand—how can I be poisoned by nicotine when I don’t smoke and nobody
in my family does either?”
“Did you eat anything strange yesterday?” I knew Devlin had already asked Meg’s mother and Mrs Waltham about this but I wanted to hear it from the girl herself.
She shook her head. “No, I had elevenses as usual at the Walthams’ place—”
“What did you have?”
“Just tea, with milk and sugar, and some bickkies. The ones I always have. It was a new pack.”
“And then?”
“And then at lunch I had a sandwich I’d brought from home. Cheese and tomato. And an apple.”
“What about tea?”
“Didn’t have time for tea yesterday—I was a bit behind with the ironing and I wanted to get it done before I finished. So I skipped my tea, but I was starvin’ when I got home!”
“And you just had dinner with your parents?”
Meg nodded again. “Yeah, fish fingers and peas. Oh, and some potatoes. And I had a cuppa afterwards with some chocolate cake that Mum had baked. But Mum and Dad both had the same as me and they weren’t sick.”
I frowned. It did seem a complete mystery how Meg could have been poisoned. “Okay—what about anything else you might have done? Like… maybe you inhaled something by mistake?”
“Inhaled?” She looked bewildered.
“You know, like sniffed something. Like…” I was grasping at straws here. “Like… I don’t know… like, did you sniff any strange perfumes or something like that? Something which didn’t belong to you?”
“No,” she said quickly, but something in her expression alerted me.
“Meg,” I said gently. “You won’t get in trouble—but it’s important that you tell the truth. It could help to catch the person who did this to you.”
She flushed, then said, “Well, you know Miss Sarah used to have all these nice things in her bathroom and she’d open one and use a bit and then open the next one. And sometimes she’d just chuck out the old stuff, even though they were still perfectly good—real posh lotions and creams and such… So pricey… Such a waste…”
“Yes?” I prompted.
She ducked her head, looking embarrassed. “Well, I… I could never afford anythin’ like that, of course. So when I heard Mrs Waltham sayin’ the other day that she was throwin’ out some of the stuff in Sarah’s room, I thought I’d try to get some to take home. I mean, it’s not like it’s food, is it? Creams don’t go off.”
I leaned forwards. “Meg, are you saying that you took something from Sarah’s bedroom and used it last night?”
Meg nodded. “Well, not her bedroom, exactly. I mean, I did pick up some things from her room. But that wasn’t the one that I tried. You see, I was takin’ out the rubbish before I left yesterday and I saw this bottle of lotion in the bin outside. Almost new, it was, too! So I fished it out and took it home. It was from that posh French store in town—Loccany or somethin’ like that.”
“L’Occagnes?” I said.
“Yeah, that’s the one. Lovely smell it was—like almonds. My hands were so dry and scaly from all the washin’ and cleanin’, so I thought I’d put some on. And I put some on my arms and legs too.”
My mind was racing. I remembered suddenly the story that Professor Christophe had told me and Seth the other day, about the man whose wife had poisoned him by putting some nicotine into his aftershave lotion. The man had been particularly susceptible because his freshly shaven skin had absorbed the lotion—and poison—more easily.
I thought back to Sarah’s movements on Saturday: she had probably showered just before coming to the party and maybe even shaved her legs. That’s the kind of thing a girl would do, particularly if she was going to a party where a love interest was going to be and she wanted to look her best. And if she applied some lotion to her skin, fresh from the shower…
Absorption into her bloodstream could have been slow, which would have explained why her death was delayed until she reached the party, although she was already showing symptoms of poisoning when she arrived…
Another thought occurred to me. Maybe the Walthams’ maid hadn’t been poisoned intentionally—maybe it was all just coincidence, a rare case of bad luck because she had picked up the same lotion which had been intended for the original victim.
I thought suddenly of Jon Kelsey. Maybe I hadn’t been wrong when I thought I saw him in that lane by the Walthams’ place last night! If someone had poisoned Sarah by adding nicotine to a bottle of lotion, then that someone would be keen to get rid of the evidence… Was that why Jon had come back from Italy early? Had he been trying to get into the Walthams’ place to remove the tainted lotion?
I looked at Meg, my pulse quickening. “Listen, Meg—where’s the bottle? The lotion that you used last night? Have you still got it?”
“Yeah.” She pointed to a large leather tote slung across the back of my chair. “It’s in my handbag, I think.”
“Do you mind if I take it and show it to the police?”
Her eyes widened as she grasped my implication. “Do you mean… Was the poison in that?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I opened the handbag and looked inside. There, at the bottom, amidst a pile of tissues, chewing gum, keys, loose change, hair ties, lip balm, pens, old receipts, and a miniature deodorant, I saw a slender plastic bottle with the distinctive silver top and label of the L’Occagnes store. In fact, it looked very familiar. Using one of the tissues to cover my fingers, I lifted the bottle out carefully. I grabbed a small plastic waste disposal bag from the table next to the bed and dropped the bottle in, then knotted the top securely.
“I’m going to take this to the police right away,” I said excitedly. “This could be a really important piece of evidence.”
Lincoln stuck his head through the cubicle curtains. His stern expression relaxed when he saw Meg propped up against the pillows.
“I’m just leaving,” I assured him, stepping around him. I gave Meg a warm smile. “Thanks for speaking to me and I hope you feel better soon.”
I added to Lincoln as we stepped out of the cubicle, “Thank you so much again for letting me speak to her.”
“Did you find out anything useful?”
“Yes.” I held up the bottle of lotion wrapped in the plastic bag. “This could be key evidence in tracking down the murderer. I just need—” I broke off as I stared suddenly at the bottle in the bag.
I remembered now why it had looked so familiar: I had seen a similar bottle recently. Yesterday morning, when Cassie had come into the tearoom and was telling everyone about her trip, she’d mentioned Jon buying her some lotion in Heathrow. In fact, I remembered her brandishing the bottle in front of me. It was a bottle of L’Occagnes body lotion, just like this one…
Seth’s words came back to me:
“…she might start asking Jon questions and he might decide that the best thing is to silence her before she digs up stuff he doesn’t want revealed.”
I froze, my heart thumping in sudden fear. The poisoned lotion had been a brilliant idea… No one would have thought of looking in Sarah’s numerous bottles of creams and lotions and it would never have been found out, except for the unlucky coincidence of Meg finding the tainted bottle. What if Jon had thought it the perfect method of murder… perfect enough to use again?
“Oh my God!” I gasped. “Cassie!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Gemma? What is it?” Lincoln looked at me quizzically.
I didn’t answer. I was frantically dialling Cassie’s number on my phone. It rang and rang but no one answered.
“Pick up… pick up… please pick up!” I muttered, listening to the hollow ringing. I didn’t know if she couldn’t hear the ringing or was just still ignoring me.
Or was unable to get to her phone.
I hung up and rang the gallery. Jon’s assistant, Danni, answered and told me that neither he nor Cassie was there.
“I think they might have gone to Cassie’s place,” she said.
I thanked her and hung up. I’ll go
to Cassie’s flat straight away, I decided. But I’m sure nothing’s happened to her—it’s just my over-active imagination. She’d had the lotion since yesterday and Seth had spoken to her this morning, right? She was fine then. There was no reason to think that she would suddenly use the lotion now…
“Gemma? What’s going on?”
I refocused on Lincoln’s worried face. “Oh God, Lincoln—I’m sorry but I can’t explain now. I’ve got to go. I need to see if Cassie’s okay. I’ll give you a ring and explain everything later!”
Before he had a chance to reply, I turned and ran out of the ward. I didn’t bother with the lifts, flying down the hospital staircase like a maniac and nearly colliding with an orderly carrying some boxes. In the lobby, I dodged frantically through the stream of people crossing the room.
“Sorry… excuse me… excuse me… pardon me, sorry…” I gasped, pushing my way through the crowd.
Just as I reached the main entrance, I collided with a tall, male body.
“Gemma!” Devlin caught me by the shoulders. “Steady—where are you going in such a hurry?”
“Oh, my God, Devlin…” I panted. “I must… I must… find Cassie… I must warn her… the lotion—”
“The lotion?” Devlin’s gaze fell on the plastic bag clutched in my hands. I thrust it at him and quickly explained what I had just learned from Meg.
“The cunning devil,” said Devlin, whistling under his breath. “I did suspect something like this—it’s why I wanted to question Meg so urgently but Green was being particularly obstructive.” He looked at me dourly. “I was just coming back to try again. I suppose I should be glad he’s got a soft spot for you.”