‘Don’t say anything else, you’re absolutely pissed.’ He pushed her through the door. ‘She’s speaking rubbish, Barbara.’ He followed his wife out and closed the door.
‘That’s dashed funny. How could she know it wasn’t a heart attack? It floored me that they knew about the twenty thousand, but that . . . and you let them walk all over you.’ Barbara spat it out.
Stephen sighed. ‘The workings of Flora Baker’s mind, and yours, too, for that matter, have always been a closed book to me, and I’ve had to knuckle down to Ronald all my life. Now, don’t start any more arguments with me, Barbara. I’ve had enough of them – and your nagging.’
The astonishment on his wife’s face made him feel quite proud of the way he had stood up to her, and he realised, in a flash, that things had turned out very well for him after all. Once he received his aunt’s money, he meant to be master in his own house, and Barbara may as well start getting used to it now.
After having spent half the night with police from Thornkirk General Enquiry Department, Sergeant Black was feeling rather ragged. They’d searched Janet Souter’s cottage thoroughly, but had found nothing suspicious, apart from the bag of arsenic in her shed. They’d pounced on that, happily assuming that this had been used to murder the old woman, although Doctor Randall had been outraged at his word being doubted.
‘I know heart failure when I see it,’ he’d said indignantly, when he was called back to the cottage. ‘She didn’t die from the effects of poisoning, and that’s definite.’
‘Did she have a history of heart trouble, Doctor?’ Sergeant Watt of Thornkirk had looked at him questioningly.
‘No, she hadn’t, but it often happens like that. Nothing at all, then poof! A massive coronary. I’ve seen it before. Death by poisoning’s different altogether.’
Watt had smiled sarcastically. ‘If I’d a pound for every time a doctor’s been proved wrong, I could have retired a wealthy man long ago.’
James Randall had turned puce and picked up his bag. ‘I’m going home. I’ve got to get up early in the morning. I’ve my living patients to consider.’ Then he’d slammed out of the house and left Sergeant Watt looking uneasily at John Black.
The Grampian men had recorded everything they found, and had made a list of all the foodstuffs in the cottage before packing them in boxes and sending them off to Aberdeen to be tested for contamination, along with the little plastic bag from the shed. The public analyst would be delighted with all the extra work, the local sergeant had thought, wickedly, when he left them just after three in the morning.
Now it was half past six in the evening, and he was standing at his own front desk, half asleep, and thanking his lucky stars that the buck had been passed to somebody else.
He looked up as Sergeant Watt walked in. ‘Found anything?’
‘Not a damned thing!’ The Thornkirk sergeant sounded disgruntled. ‘You know, I’d have been quite happy to have found some proof that the old woman had been murdered so I could hand the whole thing over to Regional Headquarters. There’s something definitely fishy about this case.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ Black looked pleased.
‘It’s this story of Mrs . . . Wakeford’s that puzzles me. I can hardly believe that any woman in her right mind would do what she says the dead woman did. But maybe the old biddy wasn’t in her right mind?’
‘She never gave any indication that she wasn’t, but I’m beginning to wonder about it myself.’
‘Or maybe it’s Mrs Wakeford that’s got delusions?’ Watt sat down on the bench when Derek Paul handed him a mug of tea.
‘No, I think Mrs Wakeford’s telling the truth.’ John Black stepped back to let the constable deposit another mug on the counter in front of him. ‘What happens now?’
‘There’s really nothing we can do until we have the result of the post-mortem, but I left word for them to ring straight through to here. They’re taking a heck of a long time, though.’ Watt took a sip of tea, and willed the telephone to ring. ‘Maybe he has found something.’
It was only two minutes later that the telephone made them all jump up expectantly. ‘Tollerton Police. Sergeant Black speaking.’ He held out the receiver.
Sergeant Watt stood up. ‘Watt here . . . No traces? . . . What’s that?’ He listened for a few minutes. ‘Oh, so it’s definitely murder? Thanks.’ He laid the phone down. ‘Well, so that’s it!’
John Black waited, rather impatiently, for him to explain, but Watt sat down and took another gulp of tea first.
‘That was the pathologist. Apparently, the doctor at Thornkirk found no traces of arsenic in the body, but he did find the mark of a hypodermic needle on the back of the dead woman’s neck. So he sent her off to Aberdeen, with the details of the discovery of the body, etcetera, etcetera.’
‘So it wasn’t the arsenic?’ Black made a face. ‘Was our doctor right, then? Was it heart-failure?’ Randall would be cock-a-hoop if it was.
‘No, it wasn’t heart failure either. The Aberdeen pathologist discovered that she was full of insulin, injected into her system through her neck.
‘I didn’t know that insulin could kill.’
‘He says it can, if it’s introduced into the system of a person not suffering from diabetes.’
‘Well, well!’ John Black was impressed. ‘There’s never been a murder in Tollerton before, as long as I’ve been here.’
‘There’s always a first time. But that’s it taken off our hands now. It goes to Grampian CID, and the procurator fiscal has already been notifed. He has to receive reports of all murder investigations in his region.’
He straightened his tie and put on his hat. ‘I’ll go and call off my boys at Honeysuckle Cottages. It’s up to the Homicide boys from Aberdeen now, though I don’t expect you’ll see them till tomorrow. I wish them luck, they’re going to need it. Mind you, I think Mrs Wakeford’s probably right. Not about her being poisoned with arsenic, but about the nephews being the ones who disposed of the old woman. So long.’
Sergeant Black was left with only his young constable with whom to discuss this extraordinary new development. ‘Fancy her being killed with insulin. That’s a new one on me.’
Derek Paul nodded sympathetically. ‘You’re always learning. Who could have done it, though? It must have been somebody with medical knowledge, and access to insulin and a needle, but there’s only Doctor Randall in the village, and you surely don’t think he did it?’
‘Thank God we don’t have to figure it out, Derek. That’s what the CID are paid for. The trouble is, they’ll likely be real whizzkids, setting the whole place’s teeth on edge with their efficiency.’
The constable had been thinking. ‘There’s old Mary Lawson, of course, the district nurse. Health visitor, she’s called now.’
‘Eh?’ John Black’s mind had to be jerked back from the horrifying prospect of the CID men upsetting his villagers. ‘What are you on about now?’
‘The health visitor from Thornkirk, Mary Lawson. She’d know about hypodermic needles and insulin.’
‘Oh, aye,’ the sergeant sneered. ‘She’s just the one to kill an old woman around midnight. Mary Lawson’s an old woman herself, nearly retiring age, if not past it. Have some sense, Derek, for God’s sake.’
‘I was only trying to think of somebody in the medical line. There’s nobody else, is there?’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Black said, testily. ‘And get on with typing that report.’
Chapter Six
Saturday 26th November, morning
When the street door opened, twenty-four-year-old Derek Paul looked up impatiently from the Courier crossword and wondered idly who the two strangers were.
One of them looked like a rugby player gone slightly to seed. At least six feet four, with broad shoulders and a broken nose. His shirt collar was creased, and the old tweed jacket and corduroy trousers wouldn’t have looked out of place on a scarecrow. His grizzled hair was cropped quite short, and, although curly, wo
uld have been all the better for a good brushing. On the other hand, maybe a good brushing would’ve had no effect. Some people’s hair was like that.
Derek shifted his sights to the other man. Younger and not quite so tall, he was immaculately dressed in a navy suit, pale-blue shirt and striped tie. His reddish-fair hair was well cut, not too long, not too short, and the constable wondered how much he paid his hairdresser. It certainly wasn’t a barber’s cut. A proper business gent, this one.
Derek hoped that they were only after directions, but civility cost nothing after all. ‘Yes? Can I help you?’
The older man, perhaps around forty, could even be nearer fifty, stepped right up to the counter and fixed the constable with dark-brown eyes, severe under their bushy eyebrows. ‘I hope you can.’ The voice was gruff and carried on, ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector McGillivray of Grampian CID, and this is Detective Sergeant Moore.’
Before the second sentence was half finished, Derek Paul had straightened up, almost to attention, and was looking at the two men with respect. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Chief Inspector. I didn’t realise who you were. We didn’t expect you here quite so early.’
‘Obviously,’ McGillivray said, dryly.
‘You’re booked in at the Starline Hotel, sir, a few doors up the High Street.’
‘Thank you, Constable. Give my sergeant a hand with our bags, and I’ll hold the fort here.’
‘Yes, sir.’
McGillivray leaned against the counter and extracted a flattened pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. This shouldn’t take long, he reflected, as he flicked a battered lighter. An eighty-something-year-old woman, in a little place like Tollerton? No hardened criminals could be involved, so it would be a piece of cake to break the guilty person’s alibi. Just a matter of asking the right questions at the right time.
He took a crumpled envelope out of his breast pocket. The superintendent had handed it to him that morning before they left. They’d been three hours on the road – with only one stop for a quick snack – and hadn’t had time to look at it yet, but he knew that it contained the known details of the murder. He ran his forefinger under the flap, and had just finished reading the report when the other two returned.
‘What’s your sergeant’s name, Constable?’
‘Black, sir.’
‘Is he anywhere about?’
‘He’s waiting for you up at the murdered woman’s cottage in Ashgrove Lane, sir. Oh,’ Derek reached under the counter. ‘Here are the details of Miss Souter’s nephews and their wives, as far as we have been able to ascertain from Mrs Wakeford, who lives next door.’
‘Thanks. Did you know the woman yourself?’
‘Miss Souter, sir? Oh yes, everybody knew her, and nobody liked her very much. She was a regular besom, sir.’
‘What was the state of her finances, would you say? Was she well off?’
‘Absolutely loaded, sir, but she wasn’t a free spender. She knew the right side of a penny, sir.’
Callum McGillivray smiled. ‘Most people with money do, lad. That’s why they have money. And money makes more money – the more you have, the more you get. Not fair, eh? Well, if you tell us how to get there, we’ll be on our way to . . . Ashgrove Lane, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir. Your car’s facing in the right direction, so it’s just straight up the High Street and third turning on the right. You can’t go wrong, sir. If you go any farther, you’ll be out of the village altogether. There’re three houses at this end of the Lane, that’s Honeysuckle Cottages, and Miss Souter’s is the middle one. If you leave your car in the parking place in the Lane, you’ll be going in by her back door.’
‘Thank you. That seems straightforward enough. Your directions are very clear. There’s just one thing, Constable . . . um?’ The inspector’s voice rose, in interrogation.
‘Constable Paul, sir.’
‘Well, Constable Paul, when someone walks into a police station and finds the person left in charge lolling all over the front desk, it doesn’t give a very good impression. Smarten yourself up, lad, otherwise you’ll never get anywhere in the Force.’ McGillivray turned and walked to the door.
‘Yes, sir, I’m sorry, sir.’ Derek Paul wondered if that would be the last he’d hear about his indiscretion, or if the inspector would report it to Sergeant Black. The sarge would give him hell if he found out. Anyway, that chief inspector was one to talk about people not being smart. He looked like something out of a ragbag himself, and that hadn’t stopped him from getting where he was.
The young man sighed at the injustices of life, and started on the crossword again.
When the green Vauxhall drew away from the kerb, DS David Moore said, ‘This shouldn’t be a long job, sir. Rich old ladies are usually knocked off by their relatives.’
‘Quite. And this one was loaded, according to the PC, but things are not always what they seem, Moore. There might be more to this than meets the eye.’
‘There’s the police car,’ Moore remarked in a few minutes, indicating right and waiting until an oncoming car had passed. ‘The middle cottage, I think.’ He turned the steering wheel and entered Ashgrove Lane.
They had almost reached Janet Souter’s back door, when it opened and the local sergeant came out. ‘Detective Chief Inspector McGillivray?’
The inspector nodded. ‘And this is Detective Sergeant Moore, who’ll be helping with the investigation. I gather there’s been a bit of a problem?’
John Black caught the almost imperceptible cautioning look in McGillivray’s eyes, and said, ‘Yes, sir. When I questioned Mrs Wakeford, next door, she told me a most peculiar story, and that, along with one or two other things being said in the village, is the cause of the trouble. It’s going to be a most complicated case, as far as I can make out, much more difficult than was anticipated at first, sir.’
‘Where exactly was the body found, and who found it?’
Sergeant Black did not need to consult his notebook, the facts were printed indelibly on his mind. ‘Miss Souter was found lying dead on her kitchen floor, just there.’ He pointed to the spot as they went in.
The two detectives looked at the chalk mark on the floor. ‘She didn’t have much choice about where to fall,’ Moore observed. ‘There was just room for the body, and no more.’
The inspector surveyed the tiny room. From the back door, working clockwise, there was a deep porcelain sink under the window, a wooden draining board over a cupboard, then a set of wooden drawers. A folding table, covered with Fablon-type plastic, and a step-stool took up the short wall, and, on the wall opposite the sink, a wide kitchen cabinet reached almost to the low roof. The door leading into the passage was on the other short wall, and a narrower kitchen cabinet took him to the back door again.
The body had been lying on the strip of matting which covered the vacant floor area. As Moore had said, it was the only place there had been room for it to fall.
McGillivray’s attention returned to Sergeant Black, who continued with his report. ‘Doctor James Randall and myself were the only persons present at the discovery of the body.’
‘What brought you up here in the first place?’
In his eagerness to tell the facts, Black forgot to be official. ‘It was Willie Arthur, the paperboy. When he’d been here, about twenty to nine in the morning, he’d noticed the old woman’s milk at her door, which worried him a bit because she’s an early riser. But he didn’t really start to panic till he came back on his evening round, about ten past five.’
‘He informed the police then, did he?’
‘No, he told Mrs Wakeford next door, so she phoned the station, and then the doctor. Randall said it was heart failure, and that she’d died somewhere between midnight and two o’clock.’
McGillivray interrupted. ‘It was found later, however, that her death was not due to natural causes, after all?’
‘That’s correct, sir, but the weird thing about the case was the information received from Mrs Wakeford,
just after we found the old lady lying on her kitchen floor. I think it would be best, sir, if you talked to her before you go any farther. If you follow me, I’ll show you the way.’
‘Lead on, Macduff.’
David Moore thought that the inspector was being rather too breezy given the circumstances, but supposed that murder, to him, was only another part of his job. McGillivray had been in the CID for quite a number of years, while to him, Moore, this was his first case of murder and, as such, would be something of an ordeal.
As they went over the fence, the inspector asked, ‘Had anything been stolen, or disturbed?’
‘Not that we could find out, sir.’ Black knocked loudly on the door, which was opened immediately by Mrs Wakeford.
She appeared very nervous, but led the three men into her living room, though not before McGillivray hit his head on the low door frame. Black introduced the detectives and told her to sit down and feel at ease. She sat gingerly on the edge of a chair, and waited for the inspector to speak.
‘Sergeant Black tells me that you have a statement to make, Mrs Wakeford. Just take your time, and give me as many details as you can.’ McGillivray glanced towards Moore, and was pleased to see him ready, notebook and pen in his hands.
The woman did not seem willing to talk, looking beseechingly from one man to the other, until Black said, ‘Perhaps you would feel more at ease over a cup of tea?’
‘What? Oh, yes I would. Will I go and make a pot?’ She glanced at McGillivray uncertainly.
‘Why not? I’m sure we could all do with a cuppa.’ He sat down on the settee, motioning to the other two to follow suit, while Mabel Wakeford disappeared through to the kitchen.
Black remained standing, but leaned forward and whispered confidentially, ‘You’d think she was the guilty party, she looks so damned scared, but she doesn’t want to tell her story, you see, because it involves, incriminates, somebody else.’
‘I see.’ McGillivray never condemned anyone before he had sifted through all the evidence he could unearth.
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