Absolute Poison (13 page)

As Llewellyn had the sense to keep quiet and not stoke him further, Rafferty finally ran out of steam. “Anyway, he added gruffly, “At least now we know when and where he bought the yoghurt. It's an advance. Can you get Birmingham nick to question Aimhurst's other cleaner? What's her name? Mrs Flowers. Might as well find out what, if anything, she can tell us”

Llewellyn nodded.

Rafferty glanced again at Llewellyn's bundle of paperwork. “And before we set to work checking the names on that great long list or in this,” he slapped the visitors’ book, “I suggest we speak to the boss of Allways Cleaning Services to get the backgrounds on the cleaners and see if we can't at least remove some more names from the suspect list.

“But, before we do that, I think it might pay us to have another chat with Amy Glossop. As Gallagher said, she's a noticing sort of woman. Maybe she noticed more than she's so far told us. I imagine we'll find her at home.”

Amy Glossop
lived in one of five flats above the little parade of shops off Elmhurst High Street. Her flat, like the others in the row, had its entrance round the back of the shops, up a private alleyway. The alleyway was unlaid, it was still raining, and they squelched their way along to Amy Glossop's door which, inevitably, was the last in the row.

Her entrance was unexpectedly private, as a six foot brick wall separated her garden from her neighbour and another on the other side separated her from the side street.

Unlike the rest of the row, Amy Glossop's garden was well-cared for. Even though it was February, the mean little strip was far from bare and several glossy, easycare evergreens broke up the otherwise empty borders.

Rafferty noticed there was a large bare patch in one corner which didn't match the other three, each of which contained a sizeable evergreen. The planting was so symmetrical that the naked corner drew the eye and filled his mind with suspicion. Had Any Glossop torn out a rhododendron and destroyed it before the police had a chance to notice it? He confided his thoughts to Llewellyn.

The Welshman, busy scraping the mud off the high-gloss of his Italian leather shoes, merely commented that if a rhododendron had been planted there and she had removed it to conceal her guilt, it would be a simple matter to plant something in its place.

“In February?”

“It wouldn't matter if the replacement plant died,” Llewellyn pointed out. “To hide the gap, she could continue to replace it with something else till spring arrived. The fact that she hasn't indicates that she has nothing to hide.”

“Or that that's what she wants us to think.”

“I thought she was your star witness not your prime suspect.”

“I'm not so sure. I think Marian Steadman was right. Why would a man like Barstaple recommend that Amy Glossop be kept on the payroll when she had served her purpose? The answer is that he wouldn't. He strikes me as the type to use people and discard them once he's sucked all the juice out of them. Amy Glossop must have suspected as much. After all, she's had the evidence of her own mother in front of her all her life. She seems cut from a similar mould to Barstaple.”

Trying to avoid the drips, they huddled under the narrow lintel over Amy Glossop's door as they waited for her to answer their knock. It occurred to Rafferty that he was about to do his damnedest to suck the remaining juice from the woman.

As he had anticipated, Amy Glossop was at home. And, as they followed her up the stairs from her front door to her flat, Rafferty found himself thinking further about what Marian Steadman had said concerning Amy Glossop's mother. Settled in a worn armchair in the living room, he experienced the feeling of pity that had eluded him earlier. It was obvious that money was tight; everything in the room was faded, shabby, crying out for replacement. There were cleaner, bare areas on the walls where pictures had been and the furniture had a rearranged air indicating that everything that could be sold had been sold. He could imagine every spare pound, every spare penny would be squirreled away so she could continue to keep her mother at Springvale Lodge.

“Not a very nice woman”, was how Marian Steadman had described Amy Glossop's mother. He guessed it was a description she would not bestow lightly. And as he studied a photograph of someone he assumed could only be Amy's mother, he felt she was right. If character showed up in the face, “not very nice” hardly covered it.

Simply put, the woman looked a monster. She must weigh at least 20 stone and, in shape and colour, her face resembled nothing so much as a pasty suet pudding. From somewhere above the middle of this heavy slab of a face two cold eyes gazed with animal slyness rather than true intelligence. She must have had her hair styled especially for the photo, he noted, because, incongruously, her light brown hair was a mass of candyfloss curls.

Rafferty shuddered. Under the shapeless brown dress he could trace the outline of her thighs and each looked as thick as his waist. He wondered why Amy Glossop had the photo on such prominent display. Perhaps, he thought, it was used as a reminder of what would return if she could no longer keep up the payments for the home that caged the monster mother.

Now he understood why Amy Glossop had behaved as she had. He'd have sold his soul to keep such a mother at arms’ length.

Under Llewellyn's introductory chat, Rafferty became aware that Amy Glossop's sharp, bird-bright eyes were studying him. The realization brought him up short. He might feel sorry for her but that didn't mean he had to lower his guard. Quickly he interrupted

Llewellyn and brought the conversation round to Barstaple's murder and how he thought she could help them.

Unlike Hall Gallagher, Amy Glossop was obviously willing to spill any number of beans, though, like Gallagher, she seemed to find his question puzzling and didn't trouble to hide the fact.

“But why should it matter who was in his office? The kitchen was where he kept the food for his lunch. When you questioned me before you hardly seemed interested in that. Surely you should be more interested in who was in the kitchen and had occasion to tamper with the food than-”

Rafferty decided to be frank with her. He guessed it was likely to be the most rewarding route. She was the kind of woman who liked to be in the know. It would encourage her—if she needed encouragement—to share whatever information she had.

“Knowing who had been in the kitchen before lunch on the day of Mr Barstaple's death wouldn't be much help, Ms Glossop. The poison that killed him was in the yoghurt, not the prawns, and that could have been tampered with at any time since Mr Barstaple put it in the fridge last Friday.” He didn't bother mentioning Sam Dally's suggestion that someone could also have bought the same make of yoghurt and added the poison at home.

She stared at him with narrowed eyes and then slowly nodded. “Of course.” With her head tilted to one side just like the bird to which Rafferty had likened her, she added,

”Now I understand why you want to know who was in his office that afternoon. There were two pots of yoghurt, weren't there?”

She didn't wait for Rafferty to answer but went on eagerly. “That's why you want to know who was alone in his office yesterday afternoon. I can't imagine why I didn't realize before. As I told you, Mr Barstaple brought half-a-dozen yoghurts into the office on Friday. Since he started his diet he always ate one a day. He was very regular in his habits, which meant there should still be two yoghurts left. But there aren't are there? There's only one.”

Llewellyn broke in and quickly asked, “How do you know that?”

“It's perfectly simple,” she answered. “I always make—made—Mr Barstaple's tea and coffee, so I know there were three pots of yoghurt in the fridge yesterday morning and two in the afternoon, hazelnut and raspberry. Yet I overheard that young policeman, Smales I think his name is, say something about a hazelnut yoghurt being the only carton in his bin. It struck me as odd and I've been thinking about it ever since.” She sat back, and, with a brief animation, added, “It's obvious somebody switched the pots.” She frowned. “But why would they? I don't understand.”

Rafferty, impressed by her natural powers of observation and deduction, waited to see if she would find even more clinching answers to explain the switch than Dally had managed. But, not being privy to Dally's other confidences placed her at a disadvantage in this respect. She was unable to either answer the question herself or encourage Rafferty to divulge his thoughts on the subject. He was surprised she didn't press him about it.

She had yet to answer his original question he realized and now he asked again, “Can you remember who was alone in Mr Barstaple's office on Wednesday afternoon? If you noticed, that is.”

This was a direct challenge to her observational skills, something she evidently took great pride in and she told him sharply, “Of course, I noticed. All of my colleagues were in Mr Barstaple's office alone at some time yesterday afternoon. Mr Gallagher, Bob Harris, and Marian Steadman; in that order.”

“And do you remember the times?”

She nodded. “They were all in there after three o'clock. I remember because that's when I made Mr Barstaple's coffee. He drank it, closed up his lap-top and went downstairs for his monthly meeting with the sales team.”

“So it was when you made Mr Barstaple's coffee that you noticed there were definitely still two yoghurts in the fridge?”

She nodded.

“Did you notice if any of those three members of staff were in the kitchen after you'd made Mr Barstaple's coffee?” They'd have had to be, Rafferty realized, if one of them was the murderer and if the hazelnut yoghurt pot was to be emptied and put in Barstaple's bin.

“No,” Amy Glossop admitted. “But that's not to say they weren't. I left the main office several times that afternoon to go to the cloakroom or to use the photo-copier which is in a little cubbyhole at the far end of the office, so any one of them could easily have gone in there then and, apart from Mr Barstaple himself who was downstairs talking to Albert Smith when I left, Marian Steadman and Hal Gallagher were the last to leave that night. Which would have given them even more opportunity to switch the yoghurt pots.” She sat back with the air of having emptied her own pot. Her efforts seemed to have tired her.

Rafferty didn't bother to point out that she had forgotten to mention that, by being able to supply such information, she must also have been one of the last to leave on Wednesday evening. And, if she discovered that she had served her purpose and would soon be thrown on the scrapheap with the rest of her middle-aged colleagues, she would have a strong motive for murdering Barstaple herself. He glanced again at the picture of her mother and felt the same revulsion. Anything that would postpone the return of the monster would, he was sure, be grabbed with both hands. And, whatever else it did, Barstaple's death and the apparent disappearance of the report would certainly delay the carrying out of Watts And Cutley's rationalization plans.

Amy Glossop had one of those strangely fluid faces that made the concealment of her real emotions difficult. She seemed unaware of this, but Rafferty found he could trace the direction of her thoughts in the changing expressions; loneliness, anger, resentment. The last-but-one expression to cross her face was one of determination; a resolve to get revenge on the colleagues who had cold-shouldered her that morning, Rafferty guessed.

As though following the thought with the deed, she said, “There is one thing I thought I ought to mention.” She paused and assumed a reluctant air. “But I wouldn't want you to get the wrong idea. I'm sure it's not important at all and I wouldn't want to get poor Bob Harris into trouble…“ She broke off. Rafferty adopted a look of polite enquiry and waited.

She simpered. “But there, I suppose it's my duty to tell you. You know why he really lost his appetite on Wednesday, don't you?”

She didn't wait for Rafferty's response, but carried on quickly as if she had managed to convince herself that the disloyalty would somehow be lessened if she told them as speedily as possible. “You already know that he'd arranged to meet his estranged wife just after midday and this was the first time he'd managed to persuade her to meet him.”

Rafferty nodded and Llewellyn then asked the logical question. “Surely such a meeting would have been better arranged in the evening? If it was so important to him, I would have thought he would wish to devote more time than he could take during the working day.”

“But that's just it, you see, he did. He tried to get his wife to agree to an evening meeting, but she insisted the meeting was held during lunchtime on a weekday. I got the impression it was a kind of test, as I gather that one of the reasons they separated was because Bob's weakness had, in the past, infuriated her. She felt he put work before her and had often let her down on social occasions because work demands kept him late in the office. She knew we're kept very busy because several staff have left and that we often have to skip lunch to get through the work. She probably wanted to see if he would put her first this time and defy Mr Barstaple if he asked him to skip lunch again.” She broke off and with a sigh probably owing more to spite than sorrow, added, “I think she'd given him some kind of ultimatum.”

Rafferty nodded. His late wife had made similar difficulties. Poor Harris, he thought; with the demands of a wife on the one hand and Barstaple on the other, he had been in a no-win situation. “Please go on.”