Jam and Jeopardy (4 page)

‘No, no.’ The woman clutched at his sleeve. ‘There’s no need to break in, her back door’s never locked. You can come through my house, to save you going all the way
round by the road. You’ll just have to go over the fence.’

‘Right you are, Mrs Wakeford.’ John Black was slightly puzzled. If she knew that Miss Souter’s back door wasn’t locked, why hadn’t she gone in herself to see what
had happened to her neighbour? Still, the old woman had a reputation for quarrelling with everybody, so they may not have been on very good terms.

Mabel watched him striding over the low fence which separated the gardens, and waited for him to try the handle of Janet Souter’s back door. Her legs were shaking, and her heart was
beating twenty to the dozen.

‘It
is
open,’ the sergeant said. ‘I’d be obliged if you didn’t come in, though, Mrs Wakeford, nor you, Willie. Just the doctor and myself, in case
there’s anything . . .’

James Randall smiled apologetically to her, then followed John Black into Miss Souter’s kitchen. Almost immediately, the sergeant’s head popped round the door again.

‘She’s lying on the kitchen floor, I’m afraid. I think she’s dead, but the doctor’s examining her now. I’d suggest that you both go inside to wait, because
I’ll have to take statements from you, you understand, and it’s cold out there.’

Willie noticed that his companion seemed to be rooted to the spot, and took hold of her elbow. ‘Come on, Mrs Wakeford, I’ll make you a cup of tea when we get inside.’

She went with him, as docile as a baby, and collapsed inelegantly into an armchair by her fireside. ‘She’s been murdered,’ she whispered.

The boy’s mouth and eyes sprung wide open. ‘M . . . murdered?’ This would be something to brag about to his pals, if it were true – that he’d been there at the
finding of a murdered woman. Slowly, his features returned to normal. ‘How d’you know she’s been murdered?’

‘I just know.’

It struck him that she might be suffering from shock, and hot, sweet tea was the remedy for that, as he’d learned at the first-aid class he’d attended after school a few months
ago.

He went through to the kitchen, and felt quite important as he filled the kettle and ignited the gas with the torch that hung at the side of the cooker. He even began to whistle while he looked
in the cupboard for cups, but he stopped the tuneless noise when he remembered what had happened next door. Murder! He might get his photograph in the papers. ‘Boy alerts police to murder of
woman’, the headline would say.

When he returned to the living room with a loaded tray, he found that Mrs Wakeford was still sprawled in the same position as when he’d left her.

‘She’s been poisoned,’ she informed him in a low voice. ‘That arsenic she had was too big a temptation . . . and she told everybody about it.’

‘That’s right,’ Willie nodded eagerly. ‘I heard some folk saying what she needed was a dose of her own arsenic. But that was only talk,’ he added heartily.
‘None of them would really have done it.’

‘Somebody did.’ Mrs Wakeford stirred her tea for the third time, then laid the spoon down on the tray because the boy had not given her a saucer.

‘I came straight over,’ announced Sergeant Black, appearing from the passage. ‘I’ve left the doctor with Miss . . . the dead woman, for I can’t help him with that.
Now!’ He took out his notebook and held his Biro ready. ‘To business! Who was the first person to notice that something might be wrong with Miss Souter?’

‘Me.’ Willie was practically jumping with excitement. ‘I noticed her milk hadn’t been taken in when I was delivering her paper in the morning.’

The sergeant looked up, surprised that it had been so long ago, then he bent back to his task. ‘What time would that be?’

‘Must have been about twenty to nine, for I just had to deliver one at the bottom of the Lane before I went back to the shop to leave my bag. I was in the school playground just before the
bell went at five to.’

Black was writing in a methodical, careful manner, and the boy paused, to give him time to catch up.

‘I thought she might be ill, ’cos she’s usually up long before I get here, so I looked in her bedroom window first. Her bed had been made, but I couldn’t see her
anywhere, so I had a look in her living room, as well. She wasn’t there, either.’ Willie was relishing his starring role.

‘Did you tell anyone about it at that time?’

‘No, you see, I was a bit behind with my round, so I just carried on. But I did notice her fire wasn’t on, so I told Miss Wheeler when I went back.’

‘Ah!’ The sergeant’s Biro was moving much more quickly now. ‘Do you know if
she
did anything about it?’

‘She said she’d tell Derek . . . er . . . Constable Paul, but when I asked her at half past four, she said she hadn’t seen him all day. I think she was too scared of Miss
Souter to do anything.’

‘I see. What time would you say it was when you delivered the evening papers here?’

Willie considered. ‘I’d say it was about twenty past five, but you can check Mrs Wakeford’s phone call to the police station, because she phoned as soon as I told her about the
milk.’

‘Thank you, Willie.’ John Black turned to the woman, now sitting upright in her seat. ‘Have you anything to add to what Willie’s told me, Mrs Wakeford?’

‘It was her own arsenic that killed her.’ The whispered words seemed to be forced out of her.

The Biro hovered for a moment. ‘Arsenic? Where on earth did Janet Souter get hold of arsenic?’

‘She got it from Davie Livingstone for killing the rats in her garden, and she went round boasting about it. Anybody with a grudge against her could have done it.’

A sense of disquiet made the sergeant feel very much at a loss. ‘Ah, yes . . . well . . . but a grudge isn’t the usual reason for committing murder. It needs something far stronger
than a grudge to drive a person, or persons, to those lengths.’ He stared at her intently, and she squirmed under his scrutiny.

‘At least, you know now how she died,’ she said, on the defensive. ‘That should save you time in your investigations.’

‘Where did Davie get the arsenic?’

‘They used it in the glass factory where he worked before he retired. He took some home for the rats in
his
garden.’

A short silence indicated that the sergeant was rather unsure of what to do next, but his puzzled face suddenly cleared. ‘Why are you so positive that it was the arsenic that killed her,
Mrs Wakeford? Do you know something about her death?’

She looked more agitated than ever, and bit her lip.

‘Come now,’ Black persisted. ‘You’d better tell me whatever it is you think you know. We’ll find it all out eventually.’

Her eyes looked helplessly at him before she burst out, ‘I didn’t want to have to tell you this, and it’s maybe not true, but Janet Souter told me, last Sunday night, that her
two nephews were trying to kill her. She said they’d put arsenic in her flour bin and her sugar bin. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that’s what she said.’ The woman seemed
happier now that she’d told him.

The sergeant wasn’t happier. This complication was something he could have done without, but he couldn’t ignore it. In the middle of phrasing his next question in his mind, he became
aware that young Willie Arthur was standing, eyes like saucers, drinking in every word that the woman had uttered.

Clearing his throat, he said, ‘Willie, thank you very much for answering my questions so well, but I needn’t keep you here any longer. And Mrs Wakeford has just made a statement
which must be kept absolutely confidential, so you must never breathe a word of it to anybody. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Sergeant.’ Willie’s blissful expression revealed his pleasure at sharing a secret with the police.

‘And Willie,’ John Black added, when the boy turned to go, ‘remember, I’m trusting you.’

‘Yes, sir. You can depend on me. Scouts’ honour.’ His tousled head was held high when he went out.

The sergeant turned to the woman, who was sitting on the edge of her chair nervously. ‘Now, Mrs Wakeford. Tell me everything you know.’

‘If anybody in Tollerton had to end up murdered, I’m glad it was that Miss Souter.’

‘Derek! That’s not a nice way to speak of the dead.’

‘She wasn’t a very nice person, Sergeant.’

‘Even so!’ Police Sergeant John Black drummed his Biro on the counter, and the young constable recognised this sign of deep thought and kept quiet, waiting for the profound utterance
which should follow.

Sure enough, in a few minutes, the Sergeant looked up from his contemplation of the blank form in front of him. ‘You’re right, though, Derek. She wasn’t a very nice
person,’ he declaimed, with all the wisdom of an oracle.

Derek Paul smiled. ‘I don’t think there’s a soul in the village that’ll be sorry she’s . . .’

‘I wouldn’t say that. She aye made big contributions to all the kirk appeals.’ Black had obviously tried to find at least one saving grace in the character of the dead
woman.

Derek snorted. ‘My mother said Miss Souter was trying to buy her way into heaven, for she wouldn’t get in any other way, but she made such a song and dance about it, it
wouldn’t work.’

‘There’s aye some sort of appeal,’ the sergeant said, ruefully. ‘My hand never seems to be out of my pocket. If it’s not Oxfam, or a disaster or Save the Children,
it’s the Fabric Fund, or the Organ Fund, or some other kind of Fund.’

‘And she went to the kirk every Sunday.’ To the young constable, a non-church-goer, like most of his age group, this was the final proof of a depraved mind.

‘If
you
went a bit oftener, lad, you’d have more Christian charity.’ Black looked down again. ‘I’d better get this report made out. Name of deceased . . .
Miss Janet Souter. Address . . . 2 Honeysuckle Cottages, Ashgrove Lane, Tollerton, Grampian Region. Age . . . How old would you say she was? Eighty?’

The young man grimaced cheekily. ‘Nearer a hundred, I’d say, by the way she spoke sometimes.’

‘Oh no. She wasn’t as old as Mrs Gray down the Lane, and
she
told the postie it was her ninetieth birthday last Tuesday. I’ll put down eighty, anyway.’

There was silence while the sergeant finished completing the form, then he straightened up. ‘I’d better go back to her cottage and have a proper sniff round. I got such a shock when
I found her lying there, nothing else registered, and that business with Mrs Wakeford absolutely shattered me.’

‘Is this your first murder case, Sergeant?’ Derek was rather excited about it, because nothing very interesting ever happened in the area.

John Black frowned. ‘We don’t know yet if it
is
murder. The doctor was positive it was a heart attack, then Mrs Wakeford said the old lady had been poisoned. Everything would
have been plain sailing, if it hadn’t been for that.’

‘So you’ve to wait for the result of the post-mortem to find out the exact cause of death?’

‘To confirm the doctor’s diagnosis, I hope. Where’s my hat?’

The sergeant’s cheesecutter had a habit of finding new places of concealment, but the constable located it under a pile of official communications and held it out.

Black grabbed it ungraciously. ‘You know where I’ll be if anybody needs me?’

‘Yes, Sergeant.’ Derek Paul was quite happy to be left in sole charge of the police station. Tollerton was no hotbed of crime, and he’d have peace to finish the
Courier
crossword he’d started that morning. He’d only three clues to solve, so it shouldn’t take him long, though they were a bit tricky.

Outside, John Black placed his hat on his head carefully. Not at an angle, like some of those fancy TV bobbies wore theirs, but square on and well down, as befitted a sergeant with his length of
service. He wondered, for a moment, about taking the car. It wasn’t too cold for November, and a brisk walk would do him good, for all the distance he had to go. The bright moonlight swung
the balance, so he left his car keys in his pocket and started up the High Street.

‘Good evening, Sergeant.’

‘Oh, hello, Mrs Gill. I didn’t notice you.’ He tipped his hat and would have kept on walking, but the woman stood up, smiling knowingly.

‘You were busy thinking about the murder, I suppose. I could hardly believe it when they told me old Janet Souter had been poisoned. She was asking for trouble, of course, keeping that
arsenic in her shed.’

‘Oh?’ He pricked up his ears, hoping for some relevant information. ‘Who told you about that?’

Mrs Gill laughed. ‘She told me herself, last week. She was telling everybody she met. I think it made her feel important, or something, but it backfired on her for she must have put the
idea into somebody’s head.’

‘Excuse me, Mrs Gill, but I have to be getting on.’ Black felt quite annoyed, not so much by the unfruitful hindrance, but by the extra doubt the woman had raised in his mind.

James Randall had been quite definite that the old lady had died as a result of myocardial infarction, as he’d called it at first: plain heart-failure, to the layman. Then Mrs Wakeford had
upset the applecart with her little contribution, and a second assumption of murder by poisoning made it two too many for the sergeant’s peace of mind.

He strode purposefully along, and was passing the chip shop when the postman came out carrying a fat bundle wrapped in white paper and sending out a very appetising aroma.

‘Off to carry on your investigations?’ Ned French was smiling in the same knowing way as Mrs Gill had been. ‘Have you found out yet how the murderer gave the old woman the
arsenic?’

‘I suppose Miss Souter told
you
about the arsenic, as well?’ The sergeant’s voice was tinged with sarcasm.

‘Yes, she told me, and she even took me out to her shed to show me where she kept it.’ The postman’s smile disappeared, and he added, defensively, ‘But I’m not your
man.’

‘Hell, no, Ned. I never thought you were.’

John Black carried on into Ashgrove Lane, and opened the dead woman’s back gate. He walked up the garden and went into the shed, which stood halfway between the gate and the house. On the
shelf, sitting there for all to see, was a plastic bag maybe a quarter full of a white substance. This would be the arsenic that everyone but the police seemed to have heard about before, but it
would have to be tested to make sure.