Injury Time (2 page)

‘Paul asked me what I would have and I asked for a dry ginger ale …'

‘You were driving, miss?' said Sloan. He would deal with Crosby in the privacy of the police car later.

‘No, Inspector, I don't drive. I'm teetotal but,' again the steely glint of amusement, ‘I think you could say that Paul and Anna weren't.'

‘I see, miss. And then?'

‘Paul asked Anna what she would like and she asked for a Black Cat.'

‘A black cat?' Sloan wrote that down rather doubtfully.

‘Paul said she wasn't to call it that. Its proper name was
pousse-café
. Naturally I asked what it was and Anna said it was a cocktail that Paul had been practising.'

Even the soi-disant detective sitting on the settee pricked up his ears at that.

‘Paul,' continued Miss McCormack, ‘said that he'd found the recipe in an old book of drinks and Anna and he rather liked it. In fact he said he'd have one too and was I sure I wouldn't change my mind about the ginger ale.'

‘And did you, miss?'

‘Certainly not, Inspector. I never touch alcohol and it's just as well I didn't because I'm sure that's how he killed her.'

‘With the Black Cat?' Sloan sat back and thought hard. In his file were statements from the Scenes of Crimes Officer and the Forensic Science people that none of the bottles in the Macmillans' drinks cabinet contained antimony.

‘With the
pousse-café
. Anna said she liked the Rainbow one best.' Miss McCormack pursed her lips and said, ‘What I can't get over is that he must have poisoned her while I was watching him. He even told me what he was putting in it as he made it.'

‘And can you remember, miss?'

‘He started with grenadine syrup which is red and then maraschino … white.'

Sloan made a note. ‘Then …'

‘Crème de menthe.'

‘That's green,' said Sloan confidently. ‘After that …'

‘Yellow Chartreuse. I remember that particularly because Paul couldn't find it to begin with and Anna said she was sure there was a full bottle of Chartreuse somewhere.'

‘And was there?' Sloan had a list but he wasn't going to consult it. Not here and now. Nor his notes on the very high solubility of potassium antimony tartrate crystals.

‘Yes, but it was green Chartreuse and that wouldn't have done because of the
crème de menthe
, you see.'

‘No, miss. I don't see. You'll have to tell me why it wouldn't have done.'

‘The Rainbow
pousse-café
is made up of drinks of all different colours,' said Miss McCormack. ‘They're in the glass together but in layers.'

‘Neapolitan,' said the over-grown school boy on the settee decisively.

‘All you need is a steady hand,' she said. ‘And you get a striped drink.'

‘Did your brother-in-law find the yellow Chartreuse?' asked Sloan.

‘Oh, yes, in the end,' said Miss McCormack. ‘And the orange curaçao and the cognac.'

‘What colour is cognac?' enquired Crosby.

‘Amber. That was last.' She looked up. ‘I must say the two glasses looked quite pretty standing there.'

‘Forever Amber,' said Crosby.

‘And then?' said Sloan, taking no notice.

‘And then they drank them.'

‘Both of them?'

‘That is the interesting thing,' agreed Miss McCormack. ‘Yes, Paul drank his, too.'

‘Like the dog that didn't bark in the night,' said Crosby.

He was ignored.

‘And you are quite sure, miss, that exactly the same—er—ingredients went into each drink?'

‘Quite sure,' said Miss McCormack firmly. ‘I tell you, I saw them made and the same amount came out of each bottle. Anyway, Paul let Anna choose the one she wanted herself.'

‘Then what happened?' asked Sloan.

‘We sat chatting while they drank their
pousse-cafés
. You obviously have to do it very slowly or the rainbow effect is spoilt.'

‘Yes, miss.'

‘We must have been sitting there for—oh, the best part of half an hour, Inspector, when the phone went. Paul went to answer it—he hoped it would be the garage to say that his car was ready after servicing. He came back presently to say that it was and he was just slipping out to collect it before the garage closed at six.'

‘And then?'

For the first time Miss McCormack's composure crumpled. ‘Anna got up and took the empty glasses out to the kitchen and then I heard her start vomiting—just ordinarily at first and then really violently.'

Detective Inspector Sloan had all the information he needed about the lethal effects of antimony in his file too but he still listened to the woman in front of him.

‘By the time Paul came back poor Anna was in a pretty bad way with stomach cramps. He rang the doctor and they got her into hospital but she died that night in terrible pain.'

Sloan listened even more attentively to the distressed woman before him and then, policeman first and policeman second, said, ‘What happened to the empty glasses?'

‘They were found on the draining board in the kitchen afterwards, washed and upside-down. I think Anna must have done that before she started being ill.'

Sloan nodded. The police had gone to the house before Paul Macmillan had left the hospital and found no antimony anywhere but he did not say so to the woman in front of him.

‘And neither you nor your brother-in-law was taken ill as well?' asked Sloan, although he knew already that antimony wasn't one of those poisons to which you build up a tolerance with low doses.

‘Right as ninepence, both of us,' responded Miss McCormack. ‘I understand,' she went on spiritedly, ‘that Paul is alleging that I poisoned Anna after he had left to pick up his car.'

‘I haven't spoken to him yet,' said Sloan diplomatically. ‘We're on our way there now …'

Once back in the police car, though, Sloan told Crosby to drive only as far as the nearest lay-by. The two policemen sat there for some time while Detective Inspector Sloan sat and thought and Detective Constable Crosby to all intents and purposes just sat.

Eventually Detective Inspector Sloan pulled out the list of the contents of the drinks cabinet
chez
Macmillan and studied it carefully.

‘What was it you said about the dog that didn't bark in the night, Crosby?'

‘That it was interesting,' said the Constable. ‘It's a quotation.'

‘Would you say a bottle of grenadine that wasn't there was interesting, too?'

‘Sir?'

‘Never mind. Let's go and arrest Paul Macmillan for the murder of his wife, Anna.'

‘How did he do it, then, sir?' Crosby let the clutch in at speed. If there was one thing in the world that he really liked it was driving fast cars fast.

‘He put the antimony in the grenadine syrup beforehand and waited until his sister-in-law or some equally good witness came at drinks time. She was the best bet because she was both teetotal and short-sighted. Admirable characteristics, Crosby, if you propose murdering your wife by cocktail.'

‘But Miss McCormack doesn't drink, sir.'

‘Exactly. He knew she wouldn't accept a
pousse-café
or any other barbarically named alcoholic concoction. He could count on it.'

‘What about the short sight?'

‘I'm coming to that. He makes the cocktail up before her very eyes as the conjurors say and lets his wife choose hers. It doesn't matter which glass she chooses because they've both got antimony in …'

‘But, sir …'

‘But remember he knows there's antimony in his and his wife doesn't know that there's antimony in hers.'

‘So …'

‘So she drinks hers to the very last drop.'

‘And he doesn't?'

‘You can bet your life he doesn't, Crosby. He leaves the bottom layer.'

‘The grenadine syrup?'

‘Exactly. Put in first according to the recipe because it has got the highest specific gravity of all the constituents and thus stays at the bottom of the glass.'

‘Where he leaves it?'

‘Exactly. That was made much easier for him by the telephone ringing when it did—I dare say we shall find out when we ask that he arranged for the call from the garage as late in the day before they closed as possible. It gave him the excuse to leave the last of his drink untouched.'

‘But what about the rest of the grenadine syrup?' asked Crosby, taking the corner at a speed that took insufficient account of centrifugal force.

‘I think we shall find that went into his pocket while his back was to the two women and that it got lost on the way to or from the garage.'

‘Like the Superintendent said, sir,' said Crosby going through the gears, ‘it was an “open-and-shut” case then after all.'

‘Well,' said Sloan modestly, ‘I think you might say it was really more a matter of knowing exactly where the rainbow ends.'

THE MAN WHO ROWED FOR THE SHORE

Norman Pace only made one mistake when he murdered his wife. That was to engage Horace Boller of the estuary village of Edsway and his boat
The Nancy
for the final disposal at sea of Millicent Pace's ashes. Norman didn't know, of course, at the time he did it, that hiring Horace Boller's motorboat would be his only mistake.

By the time he came to do so he thought—and with good reason—that all danger of detection was well and truly past and that he would very soon be able to give the nubile young lady in Personnel—she who saw no distinction, semantic or otherwise, between Personnel and Personal—more of his attention than would have been prudent as a married man.

Besides which he was then considering something which had turned out to be an unexpected problem. If anyone had told him beforehand that the main discussion point with his wife's family attendant upon her murder would be a sartorial one he would have laughed aloud; had he been the sort of man who laughed aloud—which he wasn't.

The right clothes—rather, the correct ones—to wear for the ceremony of casting Millicent's ashes into the sea had considerably exercised the mind of her brother, Graham Burnett, too. In fact the two men even discussed the matter at length—oddly enough it was manifest that the two brothers-in-law were on friendlier terms now than they had been before Millicent's death.

This was no accident. Norman had realized very early on that his main danger of detection in the murder would come from Millicent's brother Graham—a chartered accountant with a mind trained to expect cupidity in those with whom he dealt, money bringing out the best in nobody at all. In the little matter of averting his brother-in-law's possible suspicions Norman Pace felt he had been really rather clever …

First of all, as all the good books suggested in the matter of winning support from those whom you have reason to suppose do not like you, he had asked Graham a favour. Taking him quietly aside after luncheon on Christmas Day he had said: ‘I wonder, old man, if I might put you down as one of my executors? I've got to go over to the States in the spring for the firm and I thought I'd tidy up my affairs first. I've never really enjoyed flying and you never know these days, do you?'

‘Of course.' If Graham Burnett was surprised at the request his professionalism was far too ingrained for him to let surprise show in his face. ‘Only too happy to help.'

‘I know you'd look after Millicent anyway if anything happened to me,' he had said, ‘and so it seemed easier to make it all legal.'

‘Much better,' said the accountant firmly.

‘By the way,' he had murmured as they had rejoined their respective wives, ‘will you remember, if anything does happen, that I want to be cremated—we both do, actually.'

‘I shan't forget,' promised Graham Burnett.

And he hadn't.

When Millicent Pace had died while Norman was safely in America, Graham had arranged for his sister to be cremated—as Norman had been sure he would. The fact that Norman was not able to be contacted in the United States of America at the critical moment was also the result of some careful forward planning. After his business was done, Norman had set off for Milwaukee to visit a second cousin there.

Actually the second cousin wasn't there because he had died the year before but Norman had carefully neither mentioned the fact nor acknowledged the letter apprising him of it. Just before the time that he had calculated that Millicent would have died he checked out of his New York hotel without leaving a forwarding address and set off for Milwaukee. That he chose to do the journey by long-distance bus would, he knew, come as no surprise to his wife's family, among whom he had a fairly well-deserved reputation for being ‘ower careful with the bawbees'.

His colleagues would not have been unduly surprised by his economy either. Always very attentive to his expenses claims, he was more than inclined to parsimony when it came to subscription lists and whip-rounds at work. In fact the only person either at work or among his family and friends who might have been surprised at his frugality was the nubile young lady in Personnel upon whom he had already lavished several gifts—but then she had been brought up by her mother on the well-attested aphorism that it was better to be an old man's darling than a young's man's slave …

In the United States Norman had been written off very early as a tight-wad, and it was this knowledge of his basic meanness which had led his brother-in-law Graham to turn down the undertaker's offer to keep Millicent Pace's body in a refrigerator until her husband's return. Finding out what it had cost to leave the coffin in the Chapel of Rest (Graham Burnett suspected that most of the time this was the shed at the back of the undertaker's yard) had already seriously alarmed him. As an accountant he was accustomed to breaking bad financial news and he did not relish it. The prospect of adding fiduciary complaint to Norman's personal grief did not appeal to him at all and he accordingly took the responsibility for arranging his sister's prompt cremation—as Norman had been sure he would.