Absolute Poison (21 page)

Rafferty nodded sympathetically. He was beginning to feel he and Amy Glossop had been similarly cursed. “I gather you and the constable found her around 7.30 this evening?”

She confirmed it. “If only I'd gone sooner.”

Sensitive to ‘if onlys’, Rafferty was quick to reassure her. “It wouldn't have made any difference if you had. I'd say she'd been dead some time. Maybe as much as 24 hours.”

She could tell them little more. She didn't attempt to find words to describe what she had found after the constables had broken into Amy Glossop's flat. Rafferty was grateful for that. The last thing he needed was a description of the indescribable.

Deciding to leave any report writing till the next morning, Rafferty called it a day. The thought of the hot toddy no longer offered the comfort it had. Because between it and himself stood the bulk of Amy Glossop's mother and the duty of breaking news of her daughter's death.

The
Saturday morning sun was making fitful attempts to break through the clouds. It soon gave up.

Shortly after, fat raindrops began pelting the office windows in earnest. Rafferty, like Llewellyn, in the office early, watched gloomily as they hammered the glass. Rafferty, in an attempt to combat his increasing depression, had put on a bright, pillarbox red tie that morning. But the only effect it had was to cause Llewellyn to blink and screw up his eyes as if they hurt every time he looked at him.

Rafferty was beginning to think he was dragging a permanent raincloud around with him. He hoped it wasn't symbolic, but he couldn't forget that they seemed to be making no inroads into the case at all. Even worse, they now had a second murder to solve.

Sam Dally had been on the phone early, after he'd performed the post-mortem on Amy Glossop. He had confirmed that she had died from the same poison that had killed Clive Barstaple. Rafferty's guess as to the time of her death hadn't been far out according to Sam's findings. He'd said she had been dead between 18 and 24 hours. All he'd found in her stomach—apart from the poison—was coffee.

Lilley and Mary Carmody had already been sent out to check possible alibis. Rafferty wasn't hopeful. Given the time
carbohydrate andromedotoxin
took to work, he knew she could have been poisoned under their very noses the day after the murder, while they had been at Aimhurst's offices questioning the staff. As Llewellyn would say—it was an ignominious thought.

Another possibility was that she had been killed at home by one of her colleagues, visiting under the guise of friendship.

It was a shame Sam couldn't get the time of death a bit narrower, he thought. Eighteen to 24 hours gave the killer plenty of slack.

“Amy Glossop's colleagues were all waiting in that staff room for our arrival on the morning after Barstaple's death,” Rafferty observed. “I imagine they all had several drinks from that machine. Any one of them could have dropped the poison in her cup. Maybe WPC Green or Smales noticed something. Get them in here, will you, Dafyd?”

However, luck wasn't running Rafferty's way. Neither WPC Green nor Smales had noticed anything. If whoever had poisoned Amy Glossop had done the deed while they were all captive in the staff room that Thursday morning, the killer would need nerve and daring—which seemed at least to let Bob Harris out of the running.

Of course, as he'd already worked out, shaky maths or no, it wasn't certain the poison had been administered while she had been at work.

And when Lilley returned a short time later, it became clear that Amy Glossop's one neighbour had also seen nothing. That wasn't surprising, though. All the doors to the flats were in the alleyway and a high wall separated the neighbour from Amy Glossop. It would have been a lucky fluke if she'd noticed a visitor.

The possibilities chased one another round and round Rafferty's brain till he felt dizzy. He hadn't even managed to come up with an answer to the suit problem, never mind that of the two deaths. He wasn't sure he cared much any more. The second death had put his problem in perspective. He supposed he could always get a job on the buildings when Bradley got him chucked off the force. Get himself a pair of builder's bum trousers and a hod and he'd be away.

Of course, that still left Llewellyn. Somehow, he couldn't see the elegant Welshman at home on a building site. All those dropped aitches would crucify him. Rafferty didn't reckon he'd be too keen on the builders’ bums, either.

I'll come up with something, he promised his conscience. Just you see if I don't. But even if he managed to sort out that little problem he still had two murders to solve and it wasn't as if they'd yet managed to come close to finding a solution to the first one.

They read through the latest reports in silence. Although convinced that the same person had killed both Barstaple and Amy Glossop, Rafferty wasn't taking any chances. He carried on with the investigation into Barstaple's death as if it was a single event and totally unconnected to the second death.

Lilley had managed to eliminate as suspects in Barstaple's murder all the callers mentioned in Aimhurst And Son's visitors book. He had checked with various members of staff and they all agreed that none of the outside visitors had gone anywhere near either the kitchen or Barstaple's office.

The staff who had left after the takeover had also been cleared. Two had been receiving in-patient care in hospital for nervous conditions during the relevant time and the third had been in Australia on a long-promised visit to see his grandchildren.

That left the staff at Aimhursts and any ancient enemies of Barstaple's who had coincidentally found themselves on the same payroll. The checking into that was still on-going and would be for some time.

As well as checking out the local animal rights activists, Rafferty had put Hanks onto checking whether any of the keys to Aimhurst's premises had gone missing.

There were, he had confirmed, four sets of keys to the premises; the set belonging to Clive Barstaple which Rafferty had appropriated, the second set, held by Gallagher, the third, held by Albert Smith, and the spare set which was kept in Alistair Plumley's safe. None had been lost or gone missing recently. Of course, that didn't mean that someone hadn't managed to borrow a set and get a copy made.

Rafferty was glad to discover that at least the local animal rights activists seemed to be out of the running. Amazingly, the rights people had actually admitted to sending the threatening letter to Plumley. But as they had been checked out and had no apparent connection with either Watts And Cutley or Aimhursts the possibility of them gaining access to the premises was slim. Apart from anything else, it seemed their leading lights had been camped outside an animal laboratory in the north of England for the past fortnight under the watchful eye of the Yorkshire Constabulary.

“Thank God for small mercies,” Rafferty commented. “At least we're now in a position to see the wood for the trees, which is more than I hoped for when I got here this morning. Now, apart from your alphabet hunt through the country's gazetteers for Dot Flowers, and Lilley's continuing search for ancient grudge-holders, we should be able to concentrate our attentions on the main suspects.

“Fortunately, that holds good for both murders, as, from all we've learned about her, it's clear Amy Glossop's life consisted of work, home, and duty visits to her mother, so it seems unlikely she had the opportunity to learn anyone else's guilty secrets.”

Again, Rafferty felt a stab of pity for Amy Glossop. A pity that only increased his feelings of guilt. He'd visited her mother the previous evening. She'd been exactly as Marian Steadman had implied; selfish, demanding, enormous and more concerned about what would happen to her than about her daughter's ghastly death. He had cut the visit as short as decency permitted.

Llewellyn raised his head from the final report and interrupted his unhappy breast-beating. “I know we're digging deeper into the backgrounds of Aimhurst's staff, particularly that of Hal Gallagher and also that of Albert Smith, but we seem to have ignored Eric Penn entirely. We haven't spoken to him again since that initial interview and I think we should question him once more. I agree that it's unlikely he killed either of them, but,” Llewellyn added before Rafferty could interrupt, “he was one of those with the opportunity to put the poison in Barstaple's yoghurt as well as switch the pots. He struck me as being unnaturally excited over this case. Almost as though he knew something we didn't and was determined to hold on to it. You noticed the way he hugged himself when we interviewed him as though he was hugging a secret?”

Rafferty waved away the last part of Llewellyn's observation and addressed the earlier one. “Of course he was excited,” he retorted. “You know what a child he is. This is probably the biggest thing that's even happened to him. He must think it's Christmas, Easter, and his birthday all rolled into one. Anyway, why would he murder Amy Glossop?”

“We don't know for certain that she was murd-”

Rafferty waved an irritable hand as, once again, the Welshman quibbled over the second death. He was aware he was letting his private anxieties spill over into the work area; the thing was, they were connected. That was the trouble.

The wedding was getting closer with no resolution to the suit problem in sight. He was becoming more irritated by Llewellyn's holier-than-thou attitude concerning law and the lawbreakers. Why couldn't the bloody man be more flexible? he asked himself for the hundredth time. If he was, I wouldn't still be distracted from the murder investigation by this farcical iffy whistle dilemma. Wouldn't still be following a dithering line between rapidly reducing alternative solutions.

It wasn't as if he, too, didn't believe the law shouldn't apply to everyone. He did. But, even if he were willing to sacrifice himself and Llewellyn on Bradley's altar, he could hardly let his mother be banged up. And if all the ‘taken into considerations’ were brought into the equation, that was a distinct possibility. Apart from anything else, if the worst came to the worst and ma did end up doing time, it would be sure to be his fault; everything else was. She'd make sure he never heard the end of it.

Conscious that his own judgement was shot to pieces, Rafferty knew he ought to listen to Llewellyn's. “You're right,” he now lamely admitted. “We should question Eric Penn again. Though if he did kill Barstaple, which I doubt, I would have expected even Eric to have sufficient sense not to let us know he hated him.”

“Possibly. Possibly not.”

Rafferty stared at him. “You think he had something to do with it, don't you?”

Llewellyn shrugged. “I don't know. But there's something about him that's been niggling me. It's not just that he seemed excited; as you said, that can easily be explained away. It's more than that. You said he was a child in a man's body. It's true. But he reminds me of a child nursing a secret. A very big secret. Of course, it may be nothing to do with Barstaple's murder. But, before we dismiss him as a suspect, we should try to find out what it is.”

Rafferty nodded and checked his watch, surprised to find that it was still only 9.30. “Why don't we go and see him now? He lives with his mother. I think she should be present when we question him. Give her a quick bell, will you? Who knows? She may be better equipped that we are to prise Eric's secret out of him.”

Eric
Penn's mother was a widow. And, although tiny in body, scarcely more than 4’11” by Rafferty's reckoning, her mind more than made up for any bodily limitations. She seemed not only strong, but very sensible.

Rafferty imagined that if she hadn't possessed such strength originally, being solely responsible for a backward son would have forced its development.

In response to Rafferty's questions, she had told them that she had cared for Eric alone for ten years, ever since her husband had died. Eric was their only child.

She ushered them into the sparse, but spotless living room of the terraced house. There were no ornaments or vases of flowers in the room. No decorative touches of any kind, Rafferty noted. And, as he watched Eric's jerky arm movements as he lay sprawled full length on the floor playing with an extensive collection of toy cars, he realized why. They wouldn't have lasted long.

Eric seemed far too engrossed in his apocalyptic car smashes to notice them. His mother had to touch his shoulder and speak loudly to him before he realized they were there.

“Tidy your cars away, Eric,” his mother told him firmly. “There's a good boy. These policemen want to speak to you.”

It was clear the interruption had annoyed Eric. He glanced sullenly over his shoulder at them, his lips pulled downwards like a child whose game had been spoilt.

Mrs Penn obviously drew the line at petulance because she spoke sternly to him. Amazingly, her giant son obeyed her immediately.

Mrs Penn seemed even tinier beside her son's bulk. It was sheer force of personality, combined with Eric's accustomed obedience that gave her the upper hand in their relationship. God knew what would happen, thought Rafferty, if the day ever came when Eric realized his mother had nothing stronger than a sharp tongue and a quietly authoritative manner to keep him in check

Eric put his cars in a lidded box under the window and sat on the same box rocking and muttering quietly to himself.

Rafferty spoke his name. The rocking and muttering stopped, but Eric wouldn't look at him. “Eric,” Rafferty said again. “We want to ask you some more questions about Mr Barstaple's death. Will you help us?”