Injury Time (10 page)

Both men nodded.

Wendy sniffed. ‘I think I'll just ring Phyllis Locombe-Stableford …'

‘No,' said Tom Witherington quietly. ‘I don't think I would if I were you, Wendy.'

‘Why ever not?' Wendy stared at her husband. ‘She was there too last night.'

‘That's why,' said Tom. ‘And she may not want to talk about it. Or have been asked not to by her husband …' He put his arm round his wife. ‘I think you're forgetting something about old Locombe-Stableford.'

She was close to tears now. ‘What's that?'

‘That he isn't only a solicitor.' Tom went on steadily: ‘He's the Coroner as well.'

Beyond speech now, she nodded her comprehension. ‘Brenda said they were doing a post-mortem examination this morning. Oh, poor, poor Margot …'

Henry Tyler said: ‘I have to be back in Whitehall tomorrow, Wen. I must be with my Minister at ten but I'll come back for the funeral … or if anyone else wants to talk to me …'

In the event the persons who wanted to talk to Henry Tyler went to the Foreign Office to see him—where they found his rank to be rather higher than that of errand-boy. In fact he had his own office and a considerably larger area of carpet than anyone in Berebury suspected.

The two policemen who were shown into his room did not appear to be daunted by this. ‘Detective Inspector Milsom,' said the senior of the pair, ‘and my assistant, Detective Constable Bewman. We are making enquiries into the sudden death of Mrs Margot Iverson.'

Henry Tyler bowed his head. ‘Anything I can tell you, Inspector, I will, but my acquaintanceship with Mrs Iverson in the event was brief.'

‘It is the event,' said Milsom drily, ‘which interests us. You were, I understand, one of the guests on the fatal night …'

‘Indeed,' said Henry, noting with the appreciation of an expert the Inspector's choice of words.

‘And partook of the complete meal?'

‘Oh, yes, Inspector. And very good it was, too.'

‘Save for Mrs Iverson, sir. It didn't do her any good at all. Quite the reverse, you might say.'

‘Are you telling me,' said Henry cautiously, ‘that Mrs Iverson—er—consumed …'

‘Ingested was the word the Home Office pathologist used, sir.'

‘Ingested that from which she died at that meal?'

‘It would seem so, sir. And we want you to tell us everything you remember about it.'

Henry cast his mind back over the evening. ‘I think we all ate the same …'

‘That is one of the things that is making our enquiries difficult.' Detective Inspector Milsom had his notebook at the ready.

‘And from the same dishes … no, I forgot. The first course was on the table when we went into the dining-room. Potted shrimps.' He looked sharply at the policeman. ‘Shell-fish can be dangerous in their own right.'

‘The potted shrimps were put on the table by the parlourmaid immediately before the guests entered the dining-room,' said Milsom.

Henry hesitated but not for long. ‘Our host did slip out to attend to the claret …'

‘That was before the shrimp dish reached the dining-room,' said Milsom, revealing that he already knew a great deal about the evening. ‘It was—er—safely in the kitchen at that stage.'

‘And,' said Henry as lightly as he felt the conversation warranted, ‘I suppose you are sure that Edith wasn't harbouring a grudge against her mistress.'

‘As sure as we can be,' said Milsom.

Detective Constable Bewman stirred. ‘Besides, if you remember, sir, the potted shrimps had a solidified butter glaze on top.'

‘So it had,' said Henry appreciatively. The constabulary had certainly done its homework. ‘And Mrs Iverson would certainly have noticed if that had been disturbed.'

‘I think we can go a little further than that, sir.' Milsom gave a faint smile. ‘Human nature being what it is my guess is that any maid worth her salt would have put a slightly imperfect dish in front of anyone but her master or mistress for the cook's sake.'

‘Quite so,' said Henry gravely. He had forgotten the old joke about a policeman being the best kitchen range-finder in the world. ‘Well, apart from the potted shrimps I think I can assure you, Inspector, that one way and another all the other dishes were shared.'

‘This is what all the other guests say, sir, and that is what is puzzling us.'

‘What about after we all left?' said Henry.

‘The experts assure us that symptoms occur between one and four hours after this particular substance has been ingested.' The Detective Inspector went on in tones totally devoid of emphasis: ‘Unfortunately Dr Iverson went out after the dinner-party to pay a late visit to a man with pneumonia about whom he was worried and so cannot tell us anything about the time immediately after the guests had left. By the time he got home his wife was already beginning to be unwell.'

‘I see.' Henry frowned. ‘Well, after the potted shrimps we had the beef—and very good it was, too.'

‘I understand that Cook has an excellent relationship with the butcher. She got him to send round the largest and best fillet he had,' said Milsom.

‘The vegetables, as I recollect, Inspector, were Brussels sprouts and glazed carrots.' The man on the Belgium desk at the Foreign Office was being driven to despair by what was coming out of Brussels at the moment but Henry saw no reason to say so.

‘We think we can give the vegetables a clean bill of health, sir.'

‘Finished up in the kitchen, were they?' divined Henry. ‘I say, Inspector, what about the horseradish sauce? It brought a tear to my eye.'

‘Home-made, Mr Tyler, by Cook, according to Mrs Beeton's recipe, with cream, white wine vinegar, a little caster sugar and some mustard—and horseradish, of course.'

‘I have heard,' said Henry slowly, ‘that on occasion—by accident, usually—aconite has been known to have been mistaken for horseradish.'

‘Picked by Cook herself in the kitchen garden,' said Inspector Milsom with evident approval. ‘She says that when she asks the gardener for produce she feels she doesn't always get the best.'

‘Human nature doesn't change, does it?' said Henry absently. They knew quite as much about human nature at the Foreign Office as they did down at any police station. ‘Besides, coming back to your problem, Inspector, nearly everybody had some of the horseradish sauce.'

‘Exactly, sir. Our problem is that while Mrs Iverson appears to have ingested that from which she died at the dinner party there is no dish which some or all the guests did not share.'

‘Difficult,' agreed Henry, ‘and made more so, I imagine, by the fact that both the Coroner and the Chairman of the Magistrates' Bench were there.'

Detective Inspector Milsom said with deep feeling that this had not helped in the investigation so far. ‘They both insist that there was no way in which their hostess could have been poisoned before their very eyes—and both the parlour-maid and the cook swear that she didn't take anything afterwards. What with the doctor going straight out and the deceased going down to the kitchen to thank both staff for a very good meal there wasn't time—even if she took it herself, which is unlikely from all I hear.'

‘That means Edith and Cook liked her,' said Henry at once. ‘And I understand there were no money troubles …'

‘None,' said the Inspector stoutly. ‘She was very well off, was Mrs Iverson.'

‘And yet …' began Henry.

‘Yes?' The policeman leaned forward.

‘It does seem almost staged, doesn't it?'

‘Just what the Chief Constable said …' The Detective Inspector lowered his head. ‘I'm sorry, sir, I shouldn't have said that.'

Henry Tyler waved a hand airily. ‘My dear fellow, we spend our time here working on things that shouldn't have been said, but unless they are,' he added thoughtfully, ‘nobody gets anywhere. That case of pneumonia?'

‘Genuine,' said the Inspector. ‘The doctor had visited the man earlier in the day and said he would be back later that night when he thought the pneumonia would have reached its crisis.'

‘Mrs Iverson hadn't been beastly to Miss Amy Hall, I take it?'

‘Kindness itself, I understand, sir.' He coughed. ‘That doesn't mean that Miss Hall enjoys being a poor relation. Very few people do, sir. However, both staff agree Miss Hall fitted in as well as anyone could in the circumstances. Cook is a most observant woman and parlour-maids have to be of a noticing cast of mind otherwise they wouldn't be any good for the job, would they, sir?'

Henry confessed it was something that hadn't crossed his mind before.

‘Like detective constables,' said the Inspector generously. ‘Constable Bewman here pointed out that each guest had their plate handed to them by Edith but I can't see how that gave a murderer any scope.'

Henry frowned. ‘She would have done it in a preordained way, of course,' he mused. ‘The lady on the host's right first, and then the one on his left. My sister was served after them, I think, and then Miss Amy and Mrs Iverson.'

‘That would have meant,' said the Inspector alertly, ‘that anyone who knew where you were all sitting would have been able to work out who would get which plate in the pile.'

‘Oh, yes, Inspector.' Henry Tyler smiled faintly. ‘It's an interesting little puzzle when you think about it like that. The quickness of the hand deceiving the eye and all that. Except that we don't know whose hand.'

‘Yet …' responded Milsom.

Detective Constable Bewman scratched his head. ‘But even if you knew beforehand who was going to get—say—the fifth plate how could you put poison on it and not on the other plates?'

‘Difficult,' agreed Henry Tyler, ‘isn't it?'

‘But not impossible,' growled Milsom. ‘According to the pathologist, the timing is wrong for her being poisoned except at the meal. He's prepared to swear to that.'

Henry Tyler screwed up his eyes in an effort of recollection. ‘There were some glazed onions and Duchesse potatoes round the fillet … our host put those on the individual plates before he handed them to Edith.'

‘We thought of that, sir,' said the Inspector, a touch of melancholy in his voice. ‘Both were brought in from the garden—home grown—and never left the kitchen until Cook gave them to Edith for the table. Apparently the doctor's very particular about his potatoes. Never lets seed be used that's more than two years out of Scotland.'

‘Quite right,' said Henry stoutly. ‘I think the same should go for the Scots race, too.'

‘Not everyone had the same pudding,' said the Inspector with a certain tenacity. ‘Some had one and some had the other.'

‘And some, Inspector, I fear, had both.'

‘And those that had the Normandy pudding,' said Detective Constable Bewman, ‘had the wine sauce that went with it.'

‘It was a splendid sauce,' said Henry appreciatively.

‘Consisting, I understand,' said Milsom heavily, ‘of a small glass of brandy, ditto of Madeira, a gill of water, an ounce of unsalted butter and a little caster sugar.'

‘You should try it sometime, Inspector,' said Henry.

‘It was handed round,' said Milsom, ignoring this frivolity, ‘by Edith in a sauce boat on a tray.'

‘No room for monkey business there,' agreed Henry. ‘Or with the fruit and nuts.'

‘Two bowls of each were placed within easy reach of all the guests,' said Milsom. ‘In theory I suppose the nearest piece of fruit could have been doctored but I don't see myself how the murderer could have been sure the victim would have picked it.'

‘No.' Henry noted how the Detective Inspector's speech had now widened to include words like ‘poison' and ‘murderer'. ‘I can't tell you if Mrs Iverson had any port.' He grinned. ‘I did and it was splendid.'

‘Vintage,' said Milsom. ‘Nineteen twelve and nothing wrong with it at all.'

‘Just as well to check, though,' agreed Henry gravely.

‘The doctor had decanted it himself,' the policeman informed him, reddening slightly, ‘before the guests arrived.'

‘You can't be too careful with a really crusty port,' said Henry.

‘Someone,' said Inspector Milsom meaningfully, ‘seems to have been altogether too careful, to my way of thinking.'

Henry Tyler nodded. ‘Careful and very clever, Inspector. It takes a great deal of prestidigitatory skill to poison someone before your very eyes, so to speak.'

‘That's not a word that I know, sir, but I think I take your meaning.'

‘We are talking of the art of the conjuror …'

‘Ah,' said Milsom.

‘Where did the patter come in, then?' enquired Detective Constable Bewman. ‘You would have all been talking normally like, wouldn't you, sir?'

‘Yes … that is, I suppose so.' Henry cast his mind back to the small talk of a small town. ‘Conversation was very general. The nearest thing to a conjuring trick was the new bell-push that had been fitted under the carpet for Mrs Iverson.'

‘That was the doctor's idea, sir. Cook tells me he'd seen it somewhere and wanted one for his wife. The parlourmaid likes it because it saves her …'

‘Just a minute,' said Henry, a thought beginning to burgeon in his mind. ‘You, Constable, said something about a conjuror's patter.'

‘You don't get that many silent ones, sir,' responded Bewman stolidly. ‘Not on stage, anyway.'

‘It did occur to me that the doctor did choose an odd moment to draw attention to the bell's being there. It would have been much more subtle just to have allowed his wife to demonstrate it when the time came and then to turn it into a talking point.'

‘Out of character you might say?' suggested the Inspector. ‘And what, might I ask, sir, was he doing at the time he was talking about the bell?'