Death of a Salesperson (24 page)

It was six days later that Lottie heard Davina was dead. She met Cybella in the late afternoon in the greengrocer's, Lottie clutching her courgettes and Cybella looking terribly upset.

‘Have you heard?'

‘No. Heard what?'

‘Davina's dead. Died this morning.'

Lottie was overcome. She sat down on a packing case outside the greengrocer's, her head swimming.

‘It's horrible. I'm not going to pretend I liked her, but a young life like hers . . . You shouldn't have broken it like that.'

‘Sorry. I thought you'd have known.'

‘I haven't been . . . going around much these last few days. How did it happen?'

‘They were on their way to see the vicar of St Matthew's. You knew Davina had persuaded Mike to have a church wedding after all?'

‘She hadn't!' Lottie's outrage was such that she almost seemed to suggest that Davina was well punished.

‘She had—if it was possible, Mike being divorced, and all that. They were on their way to have this talk with the vicar, and as they went up the drive Davina took out her mouth-spray—you know what she was like about personal freshness—and as soon as she sprayed it in, she gagged and said “ugh”, and by the time Mike was ringing the doorbell of the vicarage she was vomiting. She died a few minutes later in the vicar's study.'

‘Good Lord! But how on earth—?'

‘I just don't know. But they've called the police in.'

Lottie's first thought was: now, if ever, we ought to be supportive as a group. She hurried over to Mike's, but she was met by Terry in the hall, and he said his dad was too upset to see anyone. He'd been with the police all afternoon, and now he was up in his room, still in a state of shock.

‘Does anyone know how it happened?' Lottie asked.

‘Cyanide in the mouth-spray,' said Terry, but Lottie could get nothing more out of him.

That, at any rate, was something to pass on. Though the Originals had been a bit splintered since the announcement of the engagement—or at least Lottie had been splintered off from the rest—now everything would be back to normal. However, Lottie found that Nicholas and Jonathan were on their way out to a gay disco (which was a bit
too
‘life must go on', she thought), and Pam came to the door and said that Judith was just too bowled over to talk about it. So in the end Lottie had to go back home and thrash it out with Gabriel (up for
Ballo in Maschera
), who of course knew nothing beyond what she could tell him.

More facts emerged over the next day or two. The mouth-spray had been in Davina's bathroom for two or three weeks, and she had not used it because she had another in her handbag. When this was used up, she replaced it with the new one. Lottie had often commented on Davina's
finickiness, how aware she was of the impression she made on others, on her spraying herself here and there all the time. ‘I'd never have called attention to it, if I'd realized,' she said now.

The spray, apparently, was a perfectly simple one, and it had a screw top, so probably anyone could have interfered with it. At least, anyone with access to Davina's flatlet.

‘And that means us,' said Nicholas to Lottie, when they met in the street two days after Davina's death.

‘Oh come: it could be anyone. She had family.'

‘A mother, crippled with arthritis. Davina went to visit
her
, not vice versa.'

‘Friends . . .'

‘We were her friends. She didn't have any others that she was on visiting terms with. She'd just moved into the district, remember.'

‘I do think you're talking nonsense,' Lottie said firmly. ‘I'm just
not
going to believe it has anything to do with any of us. We're all dedicated to non-violence.'

‘I'd love to see you telling that to the police,' said Nicholas. ‘I can just see the expressions on their faces.'

And, to her surprise, Lottie found that the police did want to interview her. In fact, they talked to all the Westbury Originals in turn, because they quite soon found out from the young man in the bed-sit over the landing to Davina that they were the only people likely to have had access to Davina's flatlet. Lottie had in fact only been to Davina's once, and she told Jonathan she bitterly regretted it, though as Jonathan said, the police would probably say she'd have had access to her handbag, and thus to the spray, whether she'd been to the flat or not.

‘Not if she'd only just put the new spray in,' said Lottie. ‘I hadn't seen her for
days.
Then I'd have been free of all this murk, and suspicion, and nastiness . . .'

Lottie found it a funny feeling, talking to the police. She'd always been instinctively anti, of course, ‘knowing how rape
victims suffer at their hands,' as she said to Pam, ‘not to mention anti-nuclear protesters, and anyone really
caring
in our society.' She had to admit afterwards that the particular policeman who interviewed her was not actually violent, but she said she could feel violence in the atmosphere.

The Superintendent, whose name was Sutcliffe, took her briskly through the background—no doubt it was the briskness that gave Lottie the feeling of violence in the atmosphere. He showed signs of irritation when Lottie tried to elaborate on what a wonderful, mutually supportive collection of people they were, but she managed to make the point nevertheless.

‘We're just a tremendously close, caring lot of men and women,' she concluded.

‘I see. But Miss Stubbs was quite a new member of the group, wasn't she?'

‘That's right. She only moved here five or six weeks ago.'

‘But you were all close and caring towards her? She fitted in well?'

‘Wonderfully well.'

Lottie felt a tiny twinge when she said that. But how could she hurt Mike by making public what she really thought of Davina? And how could she bring the Originals further under suspicion by making clear to the policeman what they felt? The trouble was, Sutcliffe's scepticism, which had previously sailed over Lottie's head, now became more pronounced.

‘Miss Stubbs was a shop assistant,' he said carefully.

‘That's right. A salesperson.'

‘Most of you are in rather more exciting occupations.'

‘More creative, certainly.'

‘And yet she was part of your group—'

‘We're not
snobs
!'

‘—and you were all of you in and out of each other's homes?'

‘She
was always in and out of Mike's!' This came out fast,
and Lottie felt at once that it gave the wrong impression. She added: ‘But of course you know why that was. Actually, I can't recall her ever being in my house, and I was only once in hers.'

‘And when was that?'

‘Oh, about ten days ago, I suppose. To return a book. It was just before she and Mike announced their engagement.'

‘But the others may have been there more often?'

‘Possibly. You'd have to ask. Davina was modelling now and then for Nicholas, so he probably went there to try things on her—
with
Jonathan, most likely. Judith may well have been there a fair bit, but Pam was
most
unlikely to have. Gabriel was never there, so far as I know. Cybella seemed to like her, so I should think she dropped in from time to time.'

‘Thank you,' said Superintendent Sutcliffe, pondering. ‘That tells me quite a lot. I take it, from what you say, that Judith was attracted to her, Nicholas found her useful, Cybella liked her as a person, while you and Pam were dubious or downright hostile.'

‘No, really, that's not true—'

‘Now let's come to this engagement. Did it set the cat among the pigeons?'

Lottie was annoyed. She felt rushed, confused and wondered whether she was making the right impression.

‘Well, I mean an en
gage
ment. We're all
madly
against marriage—Mike as much as anyone, until then. We have no time for the dominance-submission pattern it implies. So we all—the rest of us, that is—did think it sad for Mike to dwindle into marriage. Of course, if they'd just been sleeping together, that would have been another matter.'

‘I see . . . Do you think that the marriage may have been the catalyst behind this?'

‘Certainly not!' protested Lottie. ‘Absolutely unthinkable. It's nonsense to imagine anyone else could be involved—I mean, any of us. The thing must have been poisoned before
she brought it home, that's what I think. Have you thought of the other salespersons in David Lewis's?'

‘Yes, we have. Unfortunately your theory hits a snag. This mouth-spray is called
Autumnfresh
, and it's not yet on general sale. The head of the cosmetics section had three samples sent her, and she kept one for herself and gave out two to two of the . . . salespersons, just before the store closed for the day. Davina was one, and she remembers her putting hers straight into her handbag and going off with it. We've inspected the other two sprays, and they're perfectly innocuous. Since the head of the cosmetics section was very friendly with Davina, and thought her an excellent salesperson, we have no reason to suspect her.'

‘I see,' said Lottie, digesting this information.

‘Now, about this engagement . . .'

And off they went again. It soon became apparent to Lottie, rather to her chagrin, that he not only knew more than he had let on, but in some respects he knew a lot more than she did. He knew that Gabriel had taken Davina to
I Capuleti
, and had gone home with her afterwards. That shocked Lottie, and she had to bite back the opinion that the experience would have been wasted on one of Davina's intelligence. Sutcliffe knew that Judith had been a fairly frequent visitor to Davina's flat when Mike was working—though he also mentioned Judith's claim that ‘nothing had happened'. He asked if Lottie thought that Pam would have been jealous, and Lottie said she was sure Pam would have been quite happy about it, or at any rate that she would have been ‘civilized.'

‘Well, anyway,' Sutcliffe said, in his dry, policeman's way, ‘it doesn't seem likely that there was anything between Davina and Nicholas or Jonathan.'

‘Nothing
sexual
, you mean,' said Lottie.

‘Quite.'

‘Because there
are
other things,' said Lottie, feeling she had scored a point.

The pattern of the next few days was made by the police interviews. One after another of the Originals went to the Station, and in the course of the questioning the police usually let slip—or dropped deliberately—some new piece of information about their investigations, so that gradually the group got a near-complete picture of what had happened. They had to chew it over together, and as it didn't seem right to congregate at Mike's as they had used to, they straggled one after another to Lottie's. She had got two quiches from the wholefood shop, and lots of salad stuff. Even Mike came, though he looked awful and was sadly quiet, Lottie squeezed his hand when she let him in, and though Lottie and Cybella were backwards and forwards to the kitchen, throwing salads together and opening bottles of Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon, they got the gist of things as the subject was tossed backwards and forwards.

‘The police have changed their minds about the spray,' said Jonathan. ‘They say the thing hadn't been tampered with.'

‘Hadn't been tampered with?' said Gabriel (who was again at Lottie's, drawn irresistibly by the sensation). ‘That sounds like the girl who hadn't been interfered with even though she'd been battered to death with a crowbar. Even I don't think the products of our consumer society are as deadly as
that.
Of course it had been tampered with.'

‘Sorry. What I mean,' explained Jonathan, ‘was that the spray container itself was completely as it left the makers'. The screw top had never been removed and put back. They think the concentrated potassium cyanide was injected down the nozzle of the spray.'

‘How interesting,' said Gabriel. ‘That would take time.'

‘It would. Which rather rules out someone who made a thirty-second trip to Davina's loo.'

‘What about the other two girls at David Lewis's?' asked Pam. ‘Surely they could have injected the stuff into theirs at home, then switched it with the one in Davina's handbag?'

‘Surely. But the problem is that the police are pretty sure it never
was
in Davina's handbag until the day she died. She had a mouthspray she was finishing up first. The boy in the flat opposite hers was only at Davina's once, and that was the day she was given the sample. He saw it on the bathroom shelf then. Pam says she saw it there on Friday—the day before she died. So neither of the girls she worked with could have done a switch easily. And none of us could, because we had no access to
Autumnfresh
. Hence, so the fuzz think, it must be one of us who holed himself up in Davina's bathroom for quite a while.'

Seated now with her salad and wine, Lottie shifted uneasily. It had occurred to her that the one who was most likely to feel sufficiently at home in Davina's bathroom to do that was Mike. She hoped no one else would think of that.

‘Who had actually been in Davina's flat?' Cybella asked.

‘All of us, apparently,' said Judith.

‘Who had been since the announcement of the engagement?'

‘All of us except Lottie,' said Jonathan.

‘I was only in the flat once,' said Lottie. ‘You were there, Nicky. It was about two days before the engagement.'

‘That's right. You did go to the loo, but you were in and out.
Not
long enough.'

‘Actually,' said Gabriel, ‘I hadn't been there either, not since the engagement. We went to the opera together weeks before.'