Core of Evil (35 page)

Which reminded her – where was Eunice? Despite the way Daisy had dosed her with cyanide she wasn’t in the bedroom upstairs any more. When Daisy heard the doorbell ring she had been terrified that Eunice had staggered downstairs and was going to open the door in some kind of delirium, but there was no sign of her. Where could she have got to?

That could wait. First things first: she had to rid herself of this policeman.

Pulling open the cutlery drawer, she retrieved a butcher’s knife from the plastic tray where it sat: a grey triangle of metal that came to a razor-sharp
point. She didn’t like the idea of using a knife, but it was a useful backup. Just in case.

She emerged from the kitchen holding a tea towel behind which the knife sat, comfortable in her hand. ‘Clumsy of me,’ she said. ‘I do apologise.’

The policeman was holding an empty cup. He looked at her with a slight frown, twin wrinkles forming between his eyebrows.

‘Oh, my dear,’ she said with exaggerated concern, ‘you do drink quickly. Would you like another cup?’

‘No … no thank you,’ he said. She noticed with pleasure that his hand was trembling slightly, and there was a mist of perspiration across his forehead. ‘The coffee’s a little … a little strong for me. I’m fine with just the one cup.’

‘As you wish,’ she said, sitting. One cup should be enough. She had proved that with Jasper the dog, and then again with Eunice – wherever she was. A man was a slightly unknown quantity – she had never poisoned anyone apart from women before – but she didn’t think the difference in size or sex would delay things by more than a few minutes. And if it did, well, there was always the knife.

The policeman put his cup down on the table beside him. He misjudged the distance and fumbled slightly, banging the saucer hard on the varnished surface. ‘I think I should be … going …’ he said. ‘Perhaps I could come back when Daisy Wilson is here.’ He tried to stand, but he couldn’t seem to coordinate
his movements. His hands slipped off the arms of the chair, pitching him sideways, and he straightened up slowly. ‘What’s happening?’ he said vaguely.

‘You are probably feeling your stomach twisting,’ Daisy said. She leaned back in her chair, resting the towel-wrapped knife on her lap. ‘That will be your digestive system hydrolysing the cyanogenic glycosides from the apricot kernels into hydrocyanic acid. Or cyanide, if you prefer. You will start to feel increasingly tired as the cyanide is carried through your body, and you may start to vomit, although I really hope not. It’s such a tedious business, clearing it up. That’s the trouble with poison, though – the body always seems to want to expel it, although it’s usually too late.’

‘Apricots?’ the policeman said.

‘Apricot
kernels
,’ she corrected. ‘I grated them up and mixed the powder with the ground coffee. I hoped that the bitterness of the coffee would cover any taste.
Could
you taste anything? I really would like to know. I may want to use this method again, at some stage. On another old woman.’

He lurched forward in his chair, and Daisy allowed the tea towel to drop away to let the policeman see that she was holding the knife. The blade gleamed in the light. ‘I suggest you stay where you are while the poison gets to work. If you try to get up, I will have to stab you, and that would be a shame.’

‘Madeline,’ he said. ‘Madeline Poel.’

‘No.’ She shook her head firmly. ‘There is no Madeline Poel. I am Daisy Wilson now, just as I was Violet Chambers before and I will be Eunice Coleman next. Madeline is long gone.’

‘You become these people. You take on their identities.’

‘I have always had a knack for imitation. I enjoy watching people, working out their little foibles and habits. And it has paid me dividends over the years.’

‘But you don’t do it for the money, do you?’

‘The money helps,’ she said, almost unwillingly. ‘It makes me comfortable.’ She leaned forward. ‘How are you feeling, by the way? Are your joints tingling yet? Can you feel the dryness in your mouth?’

‘But you aren’t rich, and you never will be. You choose old ladies who won’t be missed, but you also choose ones who have a small amount of money. Nothing too obvious.’

‘I so dislike ostentation,’ she said. ‘You must be feeling the discomfort in your bowels now. That will get worse. Much worse. Again, the clearing up will be wearisome, but it will be worth it for the effect.’

‘But the money isn’t that important,’ he pressed. ‘You do it for the comfort, of course, but you could have stopped at any stage. You could have stopped when you were Rhona, or Deirdre, or Kim, or Violet, or Daisy. What was it that kept you moving?’

Daisy glanced away from him. His questions were
disturbing her. She would much rather he died in silence, or at most with some groaning and gasping.

‘Habit, I suppose,’ she said eventually. ‘Your head will be throbbing, I think. I will enjoy watching you die.’

‘What were you running from?’

‘Nothing. I just wanted to be safe.’ She raised the knife and pointed it at him. ‘We have met before, haven’t we? A long time ago. I offered you tea then, as well.’

‘
What were you running from?
’

She suddenly flung her arm out, knocking the small table over with the knife and sending her forgotten coffee splashing across the room. ‘My
grandmother
!’ she screamed, the words tumbling out of her in a rush, almost colliding with each other. ‘I was running from my
grandmother
, and what she did to me, and what she did to my sisters and my brothers, but she kept following me. Whenever I thought I’d got away from her I would turn around and see her reflection, or catch sight of her from the corner of my eye. I had to keep on running. I had to get away from her and what she did!’

‘And what you did,’ the policeman said. ‘You killed her. You poisoned her.’

‘She deserved it. She kept hurting us. And then … and then …’ Tears were suddenly coursing down her cheeks as she remembered back to the garden, and the heat, and the way little Kate screamed and
screamed as the blades of the secateurs came together and her thumb fell away, trailing a ribbon of blood behind it.

‘And you ended up here. In Leyston, where it all started. Where Madeline was born.’

‘What goes around, comes around,’ she said slowly. ‘That’s what they say, isn’t it? I never really understood that before, but it’s true.’

‘And Eunice? The real Eunice Coleman? Did you kill her as well? Did you take out on her this bizarre retribution you’ve been carrying out on your dead grandmother for all these years?’

‘She is upstairs somewhere: comatose, as you will be. She managed to stagger out of the bedroom. I assume she is in the bathroom, or the spare room. When I have finished with you I will go and check on her.’

The policeman straightened in his chair. His face lost its slackness, its vacancy. ‘We found your house,’ he said. ‘We’re digging up your garden. The people at your tea party have all gone home, I’m afraid. It’s over, Madeline. And you are under arrest for the murders of Daisy Wilson, Wendy Maltravers, Rhona McIntyre, Violet Chambers, Alice Connell, Kim Stothard, Deirdre Fincham and six other as yet unidentified women, as well as the attempted murder of Eunice Coleman.’

Daisy just gaped at the policeman. ‘But – the coffee? You drank it!’

‘I poured it away,’ he said impatiently, ‘into one of your potted plants. One of
Eunice
’s potted plants.’

‘No!’ she screamed, and leaped at him, knife raised. He caught her arm as her body crashed against him and pushed her backwards, holding onto the knife. She staggered back, the seat of the armchair catching her beneath her knees and forcing her to sit down suddenly. ‘No!’ she said again, the anger replaced with denial.

‘We’re going upstairs,’ he said. ‘Eunice Coleman might still be alive up there.’

Grabbing her wrists, he hauled her up from the chair and pushed her ahead of him up the stairs to the first floor. She squirmed in his grip, but she had no strength left. She could feel her bones grinding together beneath his fingers. His rough masculinity overpowered her, rendering her helpless as he took the knife away from her and threw it across the hall. Everything she had, she had invested in other identities. There was nothing left to fight with.

The policeman moved towards the front of the house, to the master bedroom where Daisy had left Eunice, dying. He pulled Daisy along behind him. Pushing open the door, he glanced around the room, but she already knew that he would find nothing.

He pulled her after him to the next room, the spare bedroom, but it was empty as well. The bathroom was at the end of the hall, and he pushed the door open with one hand while keeping Daisy’s
wrist pinioned with the other. The moment the door opened, Daisy could smell the sour smell of fresh vomit.

Eunice was lying twisted in the bath. Her face was glossy with sweat. Blood was trickling from her lips where she had bitten through them. Daisy could almost see the miasma of decay and death rising up from every pore and every orifice of her body.

‘Stay here,’ the policeman ordered, and pushed Daisy down on the toilet seat. He moved across to Eunice to check her pulse, then quickly turned her into the recovery position so that if she threw up again she wouldn’t choke. Not that it would do any good. Daisy had watched enough old women die to know that Eunice was beyond all help now. Like a barnacle-encrusted lifeboat heading down a slipway into a cold, dark ocean, there was no calling her back. The journey into death, once begun, could not be reversed.

The policeman had taken a mobile phone out of his jacket and was calling for an ambulance, and for extra police. While he was distracted, Daisy slipped quietly out of the bathroom and into the hall.

There was no escape for her now.

No, she was wrong. There was one avenue left, if she dared take it.

Moving quietly but rapidly, Daisy descended the stairs to the hall. She cast a longing glance at the front door, but where would she go? She had no car,
and the police would hardly have to exert themselves to find her waiting for the bus at the bottom of the road. No, she would not demean herself by running away like that.

Instead, Daisy turned and headed toward the kitchen.

The coffee pot was still where she had left it, sitting on the hot plate, half-full of black and steaming liquid. She reached out for it and picked it up by the handle. The weight of the jug almost overbalanced her, and she had to put out her other hand and hold the worktop to prevent herself falling.

For a moment she debated pouring the coffee into a cup, placing a splash of milk and a spoonful of sugar in it, just the way she liked it, and then drinking it slowly, in a civilised manner, but she thought she could hear the sound of footsteps pounding on the stairs, so she brought the glass jug to her lips and gulped the coffee down, tipping the jug further and further back. Steam wreathed her head, bringing beads of perspiration out on her forehead. The glass burned her lips and the liquid scalded her throat, but she kept on going. She could feel a growing heat in her stomach, spreading through her abdomen. Her mouth was raw, blistered, the coffee searing her throat like acid as it poured into her body.

Someone knocked the jug from her hands, and somewhere in the distance Daisy heard it smash
against the wall, but her world was consumed by the fire in her stomach now. She fell forward, trying to stop herself from retching, but the heat of the coffee had made her throat close up and she could hardly take a breath.

Hands caught her from behind and lowered her to the kitchen floor. Tears blurred her eyes. Someone was talking urgently but the words slipped past her.

She seemed to have been lying down for a long time, although she had little sense of time passing. Pain creased across her stomach and sent tendrils along her arms and legs. Shivers racked her body. Snatches of meaningless conversation drifted past her – ‘The woman upstairs is dead, boss’, ‘Where the hell’s that ambulance?’, ‘DCS Rouse is having kittens back at the HQ!’ – but it was all remote, abstract.

What was real was the gateway ahead of her. A hedge led off to either side, but through the gap she could see flowers of every hue. Entranced, she moved towards the gateway, and was not surprised when it swung open at her approach.

A path led through the garden, and she followed it eagerly. On her left was a bed of bright blue Cuban lilies virtually dripping with poisonous glycosides; on her right a clutch of Star-of-Bethlehem plants reached their little white hands up to heaven, filled with lethal convallatoxin and convalloside. Beyond them, on both sides of the path, Daisy could make out a profusion of water arum, with its bright red berries
and its roots laden with deadly calcium oxalate raphides. And around them all, the oval green leaves of ipecacuanha plants, source of the drug emetine which could take weeks to kill if enough was given, and years to recover from if too little was used.

‘I
will
escape her,’ she said firmly. ‘I
will
,’ and as her legs gave way, dropping her to the floor amongst the plants, the beautiful, beautiful plants, they reached out to enfold her with their tender stems and cover her mortal body with their eternal leaves and petals. And finally, nestled in the bosom of her beloved plants, she found the peace she had craved all those long years.

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