A Picture of Murder

by T E Kinsey

  ‘Armstrong!’ It was Lady Hardcastle. It was bound to be. No sooner had I ambled off to be with my own thoughts for a few moments than she was calling me back.

  ‘On my way, my lady,’ I shouted. ‘Quick as I can,’ I said more quietly. ‘See me run.’

  When I turned, though, I saw that I wasn’t being summoned on a whim, but because Inspector Sunderland had joined her, accompanied by her old friend Dr Gosling. I quickened my pace.

  ‘Simeon and the inspector are here,’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘So it would appear,’ I said. ‘Good morning, gentlemen.’

  They both ‘How do you do?’-ed and tipped their hats.

  ‘What news from our local representative of the fourth estate?’ asked Lady Hardcastle.

  The inspector frowned. ‘I take my duties and responsibilities as servant of the Crown and as an upholder of the public peace very seriously indeed. I am professionally bound to treat all my fellow citizens equally, without fear or favour . . . but that blasted woman gives me the pip.’

  Lady Hardcastle laughed. ‘I, too, am a patient and indulgent soul, but I confess she does the same to me. It’s her manner, I think.’

  ‘I’ve seldom met someone so rude, arrogant . . . and . . . supercilious as that wretched reporter,’ he said.

  It was Dr Gosling’s turn to laugh. ‘I say, old chap, steady on. Nice word, though. Must use it more often myself. I’ve met a few senior chaps in the medical world who could have that engraved on their calling cards. “Mr J Fitzherbert Fotherington-Smythe, surgeon at large and supercilious old buffer”.’

  ‘Well,’ said the inspector, still exasperated. ‘I mean. Really. She completely ignored my questions about her movements and whereabouts at the times of the murders and instead began to badger me about the failings of the Bristol CID in apprehending “The Littleton Cotterell Witch”—’

  ‘To be fair,’ interrupted Dr Gosling, ‘you haven’t actually managed to catch the witch yet, have you? She has a point.’

  ‘I’m not above getting Sergeant Dobson to “accidentally” lock you in the cell for the afternoon, you know,’ said the inspector. ‘Unfortunately, when she finally saw reason and acceded to my polite and patient requests for information, it turned out that she went nowhere, saw nothing, and has witnesses to prove the thoroughness of her inertia.’

  ‘“Unfortunately”?’ I said.

  ‘“Unfortunately”, indeed,’ he said. ‘I should very much have liked an excuse to lock her in the cells for a few hours after all that.’

  ‘We had speculated that she might have committed the murders herself in order to be first on the scene with the “scoop”, as I believe they call it,’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘The thought crossed my mind, too, my lady,’ he said. ‘But she has alibis for all three deaths.’

  ‘She might have an accomplice,’ I suggested.

  ‘That crossed my mind as well,’ he said. ‘But then I had such a devil of a job trying to imagine anyone actually working with her that I had to rule that one out, too. No, she’s an aggravation, but that’s all.’

  ‘Still,’ said Lady Hardcastle, ‘that’s one more we can cross off the list. And this one didn’t even have to die.’

  ‘More’s the pity,’ said Inspector Sunderland.

  She smiled. ‘And what of you, friend Simeon?’ she said. ‘What news from the laboratory?’

  ‘Apart from losing all my bodies?’ said Dr Gosling. ‘I’m going to be a laughing stock at the Police Surgeons’ Annual Dinner.’

  ‘Do they have such a thing?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m sure they’ll convene one specially,’ he said. ‘Just so they can laugh at me.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, dear. The underworld tittle-tattle is that your premises were merely caught up in a spat among the dockside gangs.’

  ‘Since when have you been privy to underworld tittle-tattle?’

  ‘You’d be surprised, dear,’ she said. ‘But, in truth, the inspector told us.’

  ‘Whatever the reason for it, it does make investigating murders rather tricky. You know, having no bodies and all that. But I do have some news.’ He reached into the briefcase he was carrying and handed a manila file to Inspector Sunderland.

  He carried on speaking while the inspector leafed through the papers. ‘The apple you prised from the vice-like grip of the dead actress’s hand – actually, Emily, remind me to talk to you about that later. Sorry, where was I. Oh, the apple. Yes. There was a small puncture in the skin and the apple itself contained quite an astonishing amount of potassium cyanide. Enough to kill her outright in seconds. Well, enough to kill her, her family, all her friends, and a passing herd of elephants, if truth be told. And still have some left over.’

  ‘So it would seem,’ said the inspector as he read the report for himself.

  ‘Either the killer really, really, really wanted to make certain she was dead, or had absolutely no idea what he was doing and just kept squirting the stuff in until he thought there was enough.’

  ‘What about the pie?’ asked Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘The pie?’ said Dr Gosling.

  ‘Yes, the pie. Was it filled with strange mushrooms?’

  ‘It was a chicken and mushroom pie, certainly,’ he said, looking slightly puzzled.

  ‘But was there anything odd about the mushrooms? Might they be from the Americas? Of the sort used in certain religious ceremonies?’

  ‘I’ve not had a chance to look yet,’ he said. ‘I don’t see you nearly as often as I’d like to, old thing, and whenever I do, you bring me a pie filled with poisonous mushrooms.’

  ‘Please look into it,’ she said. ‘I have a hypothesis. There are mushrooms native to the southwest of America which are used to induce trances and visions by some of the ancient tribes of the Americas.’

  ‘Well, if they are . . .’ he said slowly. ‘Actually, I have no idea how I’d check. How do you know about them?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said airily, ‘one reads about these things.’

  ‘Oh, one does, does one?’ he said. ‘Well, I doubt there’s anything in the standard medical texts that would help me. I could ask around and see if anyone knows a mycologist. Or even an anthropologist specializing in the Americas.’

  ‘That would be splendid,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Thank you. You see, if Orum had ingested these mushrooms, that would explain the hallucination that he was being pursued by demons.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘Well, I can but try.’

  ‘It’s just that we know someone who has recently been to New Jersey.’

  Dr Gosling laughed. ‘New Jersey? I thought you said these things grew in the southwestern territories.’

  ‘And central America,’ she said.

  ‘Thousands of miles from New Jersey, then, old thing,’ he said. ‘It’s not enough to convict your putative suspect, whoever it is.’

  ‘We shall see,’ she said. ‘We shall see.’

  Lady Hardcastle invited the gentlemen back to the house for coffee. They were extremely senior men who were frightfully busy with terribly important work that simply couldn’t wait, and so, of course, they accepted immediately.

  I left them in the dining room with the crime board while I went through to the kitchen to fetch coffee and see how things were progressing.

  ‘Good morning, ladies,’ I said as I entered.

  ‘Mornin’, Miss Armstrong,’ said Miss Jones.

  ‘Mornin’, my lover,’ said Edna. ‘’Ow bist?’

  ‘I’m in the finest fettle, thank you, Edna. How about you?’

  ‘Mustn’t grumble,’ she said.

  ‘She mustn’t, but she will anyway, if you gives her half a chance,’ said Miss Jones.

  ‘Better out than in, our ma always used to say,’ said Edna. ‘You shouldn’t bottle things up.’

  ‘You could give it a go once in a while,’ said Miss Jones quietly.

  ‘And what is it that you’re not bottling up at the moment?’ I a
sked. ‘Dan still on the crocked list?’

  ‘He is, the daft old beggar. Do you know, he finally told me how he come to break his stupid leg in the first place? Tripped over a bicycle. A bicycle, if you please.’

  ‘Gracious,’ I said. ‘How on earth . . . ?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I said. “Daniel Gibson,” I says. “How did a man of your age come to fall over a bicycle in broad daylight? Have you been drinkin’ with that Toby Thompson again?” And he says, “I don’t know, my sweet—” – I’ll give him “my sweet” – he says, “I don’t know, my sweet, I just didn’t see it, like.” So I says, “How could you not see a flamin’ great bicycle?” and he says, “I was in the long grass. Just lyin’ there. I swear.”’

  ‘Whatever was a bicycle doing lying in the long grass?’ I said. ‘And where was it?’

  ‘I asked him both those questions myself,’ she said, ‘but he just mumbled about “winter pasture”, “this year’s heifers”, and “old cottage” so I never did get to the bottom of it.’

  ‘But you’re a step closer,’ I said. ‘At least now you know that a bicycle was to blame.’

  ‘And if I ever finds out what blitherin’ nincompoop left their bicycle lyin’ in a field I shall have words. Stern ones.’

  ‘I’d not like to be the owner of that particular bicycle,’ I said.

  ‘I never could get on with ’em,’ said Miss Jones. ‘My cousin is mad keen. She brought it round one day to show us. She kept goin’ on and on about how wonderful it was but I couldn’t see it, myself. Once you get the hang of not fallin’ flat on your face every few yards, you get a sore bum from the saddle.’

  ‘You’re not wrong,’ I said. ‘Now, then. Aside from clumsy husbands and sore bums, is everything else in order? Are Mr Cheetham and Miss Drayton being looked after?’

  ‘It’s all in hand,’ said Edna. ‘We made them some fresh tea shortly after you went out and they’ve shut themselves in the mornin’ room again. Miss Drayton seems a mite nervous, though, I must say. She was witterin’ on about window locks or sommat. I just smiled politely and played the know-nothin’ servant. Locks on the windows, indeed. Whoever heard of such a thing? They might need ’em in the city, but there i’n’t no one round here with more than a catch on their windows.’

  ‘I might have to try to reassure her if she says anything further,’ I said. ‘Have you any idea what they do in there all day?’

  ‘Haven’t got the foggiest,’ she said. ‘Miss Drayton comes out periodically and asks for tea – ever so polite, she is – but I never goes in there till they’ve gone out. And when I does, the room’s always spick and span like no one’s been in there.’

  ‘Most odd,’ I said. ‘Still, it’s a distressing time for them, and everyone reacts differently to these things, don’t they?’

  ‘I reckon they should have a good old-fashioned wake,’ said Edna. ‘Everyone gets roarin’ drunk and has a good sing-song round the piano. That’s the proper way to say goodbye.’

  ‘I dare say you’re right,’ I agreed. ‘Each to their own, though. I think we should leave them be and I’ll just take this coffee tray through to the dining room.’

  ‘Will the gentlemen from the police be stayin’ for lunch?’ asked Miss Jones.

  ‘A good question,’ I said. ‘I’ll let you know.’

  ‘. . . and he said he was in the United States.’ Lady Hardcastle was standing before the crime board like a lecturer explaining her latest theory.

  ‘I agree that it might have given him access to your mystical mushrooms,’ said Dr Gosling. ‘If that’s what was in the pie. But New Jersey is as far from the Arizona Territory as we are from Constantinople.’

  ‘And I have a perfectly splendid pair of Turkish slippers,’ she replied. ‘These things travel. Who’s to say that some enterprising young businessman isn’t selling these “vision mushrooms” from a corner shop in Fort Lee, New Jersey?’

  ‘To be fair, my lady,’ I said, ‘you did pick up those slippers in a bazaar at Stamboul, not from a corner shop in Knightsbridge.’

  ‘Your encyclopaedic memory will be the death of me,’ she said.

  ‘The stall holder was a voluble little chap with a gold tooth who kept calling you “malady”, which I found pleasingly appropriate.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ she said with exaggerated patience, ‘Nolan Cheetham spent some time on the very continent whence those mushrooms originate.’

  ‘I know you’ve always thought me something of a duffer when it comes to chaps and their motivations—’ began Dr Gosling.

  ‘You’ve always seemed to find people so baffling,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘You understand how the machinery works, but not the mind controlling it.’

  ‘Quite so, old thing,’ he agreed. ‘Quite so. But, you see, even a duffer like me – a chap who is never surprised by anyone’s actions because he long since resigned himself to the sad truth that he’d never be able to predict anyone’s next move – even a duffer like me is completely thunderstruck by the notion that Cheetham would murder his pals to further his ambitions. It doesn’t seem to make any sense. He’d have no friends left with whom to share his triumph, not to mention that he’d be killing off the proverbial goose.’

  ‘I made the same anserine observation early on,’ I said. ‘It really does seem foolish to kill his own staff. What if he has a hit with the picture as a result of all the publicity? How does he compound his success with no actors to play in the follow-up?’

  ‘From what I gather, he already has something of a hit on his hands. He asked if he could use the telephone earlier and I accidentally overheard him talking about increased bookings and box office takings and whatnot. I don’t think the murders have done his business anything but good.’

  ‘It still seems odd, though,’ I said. ‘Dead actors can’t act.’

  ‘I’m sure he’d be able to hire more,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘If he’s callous enough to do away with them, he’s not going to think twice about replacing them.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Although actors are a superstitious lot. He’d know how difficult it could be to persuade them to work for the “Company of Death”. There are so many reasons not to go through with it, even for someone inclined to commit murder.’

  ‘Who, then?’ she said. ‘Dinah Caudle?’

  ‘She’s little more than a spoilt child,’ said the inspector.

  ‘Spoilt children can do a lot of harm,’ she said.

  ‘She was genuinely upset at the church. And she’s not an actress so it’s less likely that she could have been putting it on so convincingly.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘Have you checked her alibis for the other two nights, Inspector? We know she was dining with Orum when he ran mad and shot out of the pub.’

  ‘Truth be told,’ he said, ‘hardly anyone has a watertight alibi. Not even you two.’

  ‘We’re paragons of virtue,’ she said. ‘It can’t possibly be us.’

  ‘And I remember telling you once before that if I ever choose to bump anyone off, you’ll never find the body,’ I said.

  ‘I recall that myself, yes,’ he said. ‘You’re quite a frightening woman, you know.’

  ‘People keep saying that,’ I said. ‘I always thought of myself as winsome and charming.’

  ‘You are, dear. Take no notice of them,’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘It was you who said I was scary earlier,’ I said.

  ‘Did I? I’m sure I didn’t mean it.’

  I harrumphed.

  ‘Be that as it may,’ said Inspector Sunderland, ‘I’m afraid that very few people have verifiable alibis. Two of the murders were committed in the middle of the night when all the suspects claim – quite reasonably in my opinion – to have been asleep in their beds, and there’s no one to support or to gainsay them. The last – and I think we can safely say that Mr Orum’s death was manslaughter at the very least – the last happened in a pub full of people.’

  ‘None of whom,�
� I said, ‘were Mr Cheetham.’

  ‘Actually, she’s right, you know,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Cheetham was at the village hall setting up his projector.’

  The inspector looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘I’ll give you that,’ he said. ‘Although dodgy mushrooms can be introduced into a pie at any time.’

  ‘Shall you be speaking to Hughes?’ asked Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘I’ve been trying to put it off,’ said the inspector. ‘But I think the time has come.’

  ‘Put it off?’ I said.

  ‘I find him very wearisome,’ he said. ‘I’d fight to the death to protect his right to hold any opinion he wishes, and for his right to express that opinion openly. But I’d also fight to the death not to have to listen to him while he’s doing so. But I fear that I needs must reacquaint myself with him and his charming wife if I’m to do my own job thoroughly and well.’

  ‘May we come?’ asked Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘I should be glad of some sane company,’ he replied. ‘Though I beg you to remember that it was you who asked to come. I’ll not take the blame for any frustration or annoyance you might feel.’

  ‘Agreed,’ she said. ‘Flo, would you be a poppet and tell Miss Jones we shall be six for lunch? You’ll be staying, gentlemen?’

  ‘I’m afraid I need to nip back into town,’ said Dr Gosling. ‘Some other time, perhaps.’

  Miss Jones was brushing some pastry with beaten egg when I popped my head into the kitchen.

  ‘Five for lunch, Miss Jones,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure when we’ll be back but it shouldn’t be too long after twelve.’