Enter Pale Death (16 page)

Joe was the first to recover from the surprise of finding himself in the presence of a bright-faced, extremely pretty and self-assured woman. But it had been the sight of the unfashionable abundance of light auburn hair which had silenced him.
Hunnyton also had been knocked sideways. What on earth could he be thinking? Joe caught the man’s eye and asked him a silent question. Hunnyton pulled a comedy villain’s face and shrugged a shoulder, saying clearly: “No idea! Nothing to do with me, guv.” Joe’s waggling eyebrows replied in kind: “Me neither!”

Joe held out a hand and shook the doctor’s, introducing himself, and then he presented Hunnyton.

“Well, I’d have been happy to welcome PC Plod up from Bury but—a Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner and a Detective Superintendent from Cambridge? They’re really rolling out the big guns! Do you two normally work together?”

“No, Miss … Doctor … just for this one outing,” Hunnyton supplied.

“I’ve made some coffee. Suit you both? Good. Sit down, will you, and if you can stop gurning at each other like loonies, we’ll get started.”

While she poured coffee into blue-and-white china cups and passed around a plate of shortbread biscuits, she explained her presence in her father’s house. Adelaide Hartest had only been in the village a week or two. She was taking time off from St. Thomas’s Hospital in London, where she’d begun her medical career as a junior doctor and was about to enter general practice if her father could scrape the money together to buy her a partnership. Joe steeled himself to nod sympathetically through an outpouring on the difficulties that beset a woman forging a career for herself in the man’s world of medicine in this post-war era, but none came. She was focussed and succinct.

Joe took the notebook she passed him and began to read through it, checking that it corresponded with the notes he’d already seen in the file. He’d deliberately handed the reins of the conversation to Hunnyton and he listened with half an ear as the superintendent held up his end. The young woman appeared to be asking more questions than the detective.

“But why? I can’t understand. Why there? Why then? In the stables at crack of dawn with no company other than the two inexperienced lads? Deliberately encountering a stallion with a reputation for violent behaviour? Was the woman mad? You’ll have to tell me—I never met her.”

She listened to Hunnyton’s explanation with incredulity. “You’re saying it was done in a spirit of rivalry? Like children showing off in a playground? Lady T. was letting everyone know that when it came to horses she was more skilled than her husband’s student? Ooo … er … mmm … Something going on there, wouldn’t you say?”

Joe was beginning to wonder if the girl communicated in anything other than questions when she abruptly changed gear.

“Silly women! That’s the sort of behaviour you might expect from men.
They
have more opportunities, of course, for affirming their superiority—they can always shoot more birds, pee further, drink more whisky and seduce more women.”

Hunnyton froze her with a scandalised glare straight from the pulpit.

Deflected by its force, her attention slid over to Joe. “Tell me, Commissioner—you’re clearly a successful member of the competitive sex—how do
you
go about establish a pecking order?”

“Oh, all of the above come in useful,” he said with a happy smile. “Luckily I have a lot of gold braid to do my bragging for me these days. My other accomplishments, I’m sorry to say, have not stood the test of time and are getting a bit rusty.”

“Ah! The uncertainties of middle age! Like motorcars, men need a yearly check-up. If you’re seriously concerned about your declining capacity in any of the aforementioned skills, pop in and consult me. I’m sure I can do something for you.”

It was Joe’s turn to launch the pulpit stare, though there was a trace of laughter held in check as he replied, “Unless you’re an adept with a twelve-bore shotgun, madam, I’m not sure you can
help. The old eyes are less sharp than they were perhaps but—as for the other organs you questioned … what were they?—kidneys, liver …”

“Yes, yes. I understand. Tongue in good working order, too.”

“I’m sure we take your point, Doctor.” Hunnyton mastered his disapproval of this exchange and reclaimed his hostess’s attention. “How else could the lady demonstrate her pre-eminence? Assuming she needed to. You have to admit—it would have been quite a
coup de théâtre
if she’d pulled it off. Parading with a famously fierce stallion trotting behind her on a lead and eating out of her hand right in front of the eyes of the breakfast crowd? A crowd that knows its horseflesh,” he added thoughtfully. “Well, that beats a talent for flower arranging and needlepoint. Nothing like it since Professor Champion put on his show in the Ipswich Corn Exchange when I was a nipper!”

Hunnyton’s eyes blazed suddenly with a storyteller’s zeal. He pushed back the wayward lock of sandy hair from his forehead and launched into his reminiscence. “
Battle between Man and Stallion
, it was billed.
One night only. Vicious horse will be tamed before your very eyes by Professor Champion, the King of all Horse Educators
. Very fine show it was, too! That Champion may have been no more a professor than I was but otherwise he was all he was cracked up to be. He squared up to that horse—Draco, the Transylvanian Man-Eater, his name was. A thundering big black stallion, all rolling eyes and gnashing teeth. Took a crew of six strapping lads to keep it under some sort of control. In two minutes, the beast was eating out of his hand. After half an hour of sashaying around the arena, he’d got a saddle on him and a young lad hopped aboard and trotted him round the ring! To put the final flourish on a memorable evening, I had my first pint of Greene King Ale in the Nag’s Head before my old dad and I climbed back in the cart and turned for home.”

His boyish blue eyes misted over in pleasurable nostalgia, and
Adelaide’s hazel eyes twinkled back her appreciation of his story. She gave him a sweetly indulgent smile.

“There he goes again,” Joe thought. “He’ll be breathing down her nostrils any minute.”

“I’m sure you’ve understood it exactly, Superintendent,” the doctor commended him. “But, poor woman! What a desperate thing to do. Sad and wrong-headed. And never likely to work the magic she wanted it to. When will women ever learn there’s
nothing
that can bring back a husband who’s determined to go astray? No demands, no persuasion, no appeals to conscience and duty.” She sniffed. “I always prescribe a boot up the backside to help him on his way if anyone ever asks me. Not that they do very often. We old maids are not expected to have any useful insights into the married state. But you can bet that’s what all this was about: a skirmish over an unworthy man. A tug of war that led to death. Two deaths. I add the name of the horse, Lucifer, to the butcher’s bill. Now, you chaps will want to know who put her up to it.”

“What makes you think she had an accomplice?” Hunnyton asked.

“It’s pretty obvious. My father says she was an unadventurous woman, not given to original thought. He thinks someone planted the idea in her noddle and gave her some professional advice.”

“Advice? What advice are you thinking of?”

“Pa was the first medical man on the scene—I suppose you know that. He attended to the body of Lavinia Truelove before anyone else saw it. He checked it for signs of life, of course.”

Joe referred to the notes. “He stated that he shot dead the horse, which had retreated back into its stall and was stamping and quivering in apparent fear at the back. He was curious enough about this behaviour to have the carcase hauled back to his surgery for inspection and wrote a full autopsy. Very interesting. Especially the observation of the condition of the mouth.”

“That made me angry! The sides of the mouth had been subject to abrasion of some sort. The wounds were not healed and the horse must have been in some pain,” Adelaide said.

Hunnyton frowned at the reference. “An old country trick. There’s more than one way to ruin a horse. To make it skittish and bad-tempered, they take a half-crown coin and run the bevelled edges along the soft part of the mouth. No outward sign it’s been tampered with. But it can drive a horse crazy when someone tries to put in the bit and then the poor animal gets an undeserved reputation for bad temper. It lowers its price dramatically in the sale ring, of course. There’s more than one scallywag groom who’s hit back at his master using that trick. Still, if ever I get my hands on the bloke who did that …”

The cracking of the knuckles in his large hands as they suddenly became fists finished the sentence for him and won him an approving smile and a pat on the hand from Adelaide.

“I’ll be there holding your coat, Superintendent,” she offered.

“Father doesn’t say much in his statement about Lavinia—assuming her body would be dealt with by a medical authority, I expect. Quite proper. Not his place to comment. But he did note some oddities.” She reached for a small silver box lying on the table, a box Joe had taken for a cigarette container. “The wounds to her head, neck and torso were extensive and clearly lethal, but her hands were untouched. Hard to discern by torchlight in the falling rain and welters of blood but he smelled something strange on her right hand. It was clutching a mess of … he swears it was cake of some kind. He took a sample of it, left the rest in place to be inspected by others and brought it back to have a look under a light. He probably ought not to have done that but he always thinks he knows best and his interest in animals must have pushed him to do it. That’s what I say. You’re probably thinking: ‘Interfering old nuisance!’ ”

“Not at all,” said Joe politely. “If he hadn’t taken the steps to
preserve it, it would have disappeared with the remainder down the drainage channel on the autopsy table. Some solid evidence at last! May we see?”

The metal box was strong and airtight and Joe struggled to get it open.

“Lord, what a pong!” Hunnyton exclaimed as Joe removed the lid.

“It’s not Sachertorte, I think we’d all agree,” Adelaide said, wrinkling her nose.

Joe poked at the contents with a pencil end. “But it is cake.
Was
cake. It looks more like the sweepings of an ancient Egyptian mummy’s tomb. A sop to Cerberus? Some opiate in there, did your father assume? A little something to quieten the horse?”

“You’ll need to take it to a laboratory in Cambridge if you want to find out. My father’s equipment was not up to the job. But I’ll tell you something. Pa’s not easily put off. He decided that if the cake was laced with something mysterious intended for use on the horse, it was probably acquired from the chemist. He went along and grilled old Mr. Morrison. Made him show his dispensing book.” Her eyes gleamed and she said apologetically, “No right to do that, I’m sure you’d be the first to tell him, but Pa can be very forceful and the local … country shyness”—she looked with smiling apology at Hunnyton—“ ‘foot shuffling’ he calls it—irritates him no end. Faced with all that ‘Don’t you be asking me, sir, twern’t none o’ my business,’ stuff he turns into a raging bully. Interesting, what he managed to extract, though. And no illegalities revealed, so no harm done. The day before the adventure, our innocent chemist had sold four bags of exotic culinary spices. To Grace Aldred, Lavinia’s maid.” She handed over a sheet of paper. “He took a copy: fenugreek, cumin, rosemary, cinnamon. Grace told him the cook had requested them to make up a curry.”

“Sounds reasonable to me. Not sure about the rosemary,” Joe said, “but the others are all constituents of Indian dishes. They
do, however, as I think you’ve guessed, have another quite different use.” He looked at Hunnyton, who understood the unspoken question and nodded imperceptibly.

The superintendent undertook the explanation. “Horse magic! In folklore, those spices are all attractants. Horses have huge nostrils and a very sensitive sense of smell. If you want a horse to love you or just behave itself in your presence you can do it by magicking it with these scents, which it adores.” He grinned. “They tell me oil of cloves dabbed on a hanky works a treat too.”

“That’s the refined way of doing it,” Adelaide said. “My father came upon a ploughman once, stripped to his skin in the shed, in the act of wiping down his armpits with a bit of stale bread. When Pa challenged him on his strange behaviour, he explained that he was taking on a new horse. This sweat business was a good way, known to all the horsemen, of making horses familiar with their handler’s scent.” She wrinkled her nose. “I must say, this bit of cake smells as though it’s been somewhere even less salubrious than a ploughman’s armpit at close of play on Plough Sunday.”

Joe picked up the box, looked more closely, held it to his nose and inhaled deeply. For a moment his head reeled and his stomach churned. He couldn’t quite smother an exclamation of distress so visceral the other two turned a gaze of solicitous enquiry on him. He put the lid back on firmly and, gasping apologetically through gritted teeth, recalled: “Trenches. Pinned down. Holed up unable to clear out for a fortnight. Plague of rats feasting on the bodies we couldn’t dispose of. The men bayoneted them. Left them lying about in piles to rot. Same smell.” He stabbed an accusing finger at the silver box. “Rotten rat carcass. It’s the livers that go first … the stinkiest bit … Excuse me …”

Joe dashed from the room and, thankful that the front door had been left open, he made his way quickly to the nearest rose bed. Through his unpleasant retching noises, he was aware of a
clattering of clogs down the hallway. A moment later, a white cotton handkerchief was pushed over his nose.

“Lavender. Breathe it in. Antidote.”

A cool, professional hand ran lightly over his forehead. A warm, very unprofessional voice murmured in his ear, “That’ll teach you to go sticking that great conk of yours into unknown substances. Poisons can be inhaled, you know. But I don’t think it’s poison that’s provoked this reaction. It’s memory. Smell and taste—they can be very acute and the mind associates them with pleasure or pain we’ve experienced in the past. This is very real nausea you’re suffering but the brain will soon sound the all-clear and you’ll wonder what on earth that was all about. I’m sure you needn’t worry.”