Tea with Milk and Murder (Oxford Tearoom Mysteries ~ Book 2) (16 page)

I had never been in the ICU ward at the hospital—probably a good thing—and I hovered just outside the doorway, unsure how to proceed. To be honest, I hadn’t really thought this through and, now that I was here, I was beginning to wonder if I was mad to think that it could work.

Then I saw what I had been looking for through the doorway: the familiar tall figure of Lincoln Green, looking very different in scrubs, with a stethoscope around his neck. He was standing at the nurse’s station, flipping through some charts. I waved as he glanced up and his face broke into a smile of delight.

“Gemma! What are you doing here?” he asked as he came over to greet me.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I said breathlessly. “But I heard about Meg Fraser and the poisoning.”

Lincoln’s face became grim. “Yes, it was touch and go for a while. But I think she’s going to be all right. Most patients who survive the first four hours with nicotine poisoning will usually recover fully. She’s out of Intensive Care and has been moved to the High Dependency Unit.”

“Can she have visitors? I mean, to ask her a few questions?”

“No. O’Connor has already been hounding me about that.” Lincoln’s lips thinned in annoyance. “As I told him, Meg is still much too ill to be questioned.”

“You mean, she’s still unconscious?”

“No, she’s awake. But I don’t want her to be stressed; it could affect her recovery. Being questioned could be very traumatic.” Lincoln paused, then added savagely, “Especially by that O’Connor.”

I glanced at him and wondered how much of Lincoln’s resistance was due to genuine professional concern for Meg and how much of it was personal antagonism towards Devlin.

“If I spoke to her, it wouldn’t be like the police questioning her,” I said quickly. “I’ve chatted with Meg a few times when we met out in the garden; we’re… we’re sort of friends.” (Okay, that was a bit of a white lie. One meeting next to the rubbish bins in the rear alley didn’t quite make me and Meg bosom buddies but what Lincoln didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him) “In fact, it might do her good to see a friendly face,” I added blithely.

“Her parents have been with her so she hasn’t been alone,” said Lincoln.

“Are they with her now?”

“No, they went down to the hospital café for a bite to eat.”

“Well, then I could pop in—just a really quick visit.” I looked at him pleadingly.

Lincoln sighed impatiently. “Gemma, I’m sorry. I can’t—”

“Please, Lincoln, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t really important.” I took a step closer and put my hand persuasively on his arm. “Please?”

He hesitated, looking down the ward corridor, then back at me. Finally he blew out a breath of resignation. “Fine. But only five minutes. She’s the second cubicle on the right.”

“Thank you!” I stretched up on tiptoe and gave him a peck on the cheek, which left him slightly pink, then I hurried down the corridor to Meg’s bed. I slipped through the curtains around her cubicle and was relieved to find the Walthams’ young maid propped up against her pillows. She looked pale and weak, but otherwise better than I had expected.

“Hi,” I said softly.

Her eyes widened in surprise. “Hullo…” Then recognition dawned. “You’re the girl from next door. Gemma, right?”

I smiled at her. “Yes. I heard about what happened to you. I thought I’d pop in to see how you were.”

“Oh… thanks.” She looked at me quizzically, no doubt wondering what had prompted this sudden excess of neighbourly concern.

I sat down in the chair by her bed and wracked my brain for a way to broach the subject. “Er… Dr Green told me that it was nicotine poisoning. That sounds really scary!”

Meg nodded, a perplexed expression on her face. “That’s what he told me too, but I don’t understand—how can I be poisoned by nicotine when I don’t smoke and nobody in my family does either?”

“Did you eat anything strange yesterday?” I knew Devlin had already asked Meg’s mother and Mrs Waltham about this but I wanted to hear it from the girl herself.

She shook her head. “No, I had elevenses as usual at the Walthams’ place—”

“What did you have?”

“Just tea, with milk and sugar, and some bickkies. The ones I always have. It was a new pack.”

“And then?”

“And then at lunch I had a sandwich I’d brought from home. Cheese and tomato. And an apple.”

“What about tea?”

“Didn’t have time for tea yesterday—I was a bit behind with the ironing and I wanted to get it done before I finished. So I skipped my tea, but I was starvin’ when I got home!”

“And you just had dinner with your parents?”

Meg nodded again. “Yeah, fish fingers and peas. Oh, and some potatoes. And I had a cuppa afterwards with some chocolate cake that Mum had baked. But Mum and Dad both had the same as me and they weren’t sick.”

I frowned. It did seem a complete mystery how Meg could have been poisoned. “Okay—what about anything else you might have done? Like… maybe you inhaled something by mistake?”

“Inhaled?” She looked bewildered.

“You know, like sniffed something. Like…” I was grasping at straws here. “Like… I don’t know… like, did you sniff any strange perfumes or something like that? Something which didn’t belong to you?”

“No,” she said quickly, but something in her expression alerted me.

“Meg,” I said gently. “You won’t get in trouble—but it’s important that you tell the truth. It could help to catch the person who did this to you.”

She flushed, then said, “Well, you know Miss Sarah used to have all these nice things in her bathroom and she’d open one and use a bit and then open the next one. And sometimes she’d just chuck out the old stuff, even though they were still perfectly good—real posh lotions and creams and such… So pricey… Such a waste…”

“Yes?” I prompted.

She ducked her head, looking embarrassed. “Well, I… I could never afford anythin’ like that, of course.  So when I heard Mrs Waltham sayin’ the other day that she was throwin’ out some of the stuff in Sarah’s room, I thought I’d try to get some to take home. I mean, it’s not like it’s food, is it? Creams don’t go off.”

I leaned forwards. “Meg, are you saying that you took something from Sarah’s bedroom and used it last night?”

Meg nodded. “Well, not her bedroom, exactly. I mean, I did pick up some things from her room. But that wasn’t the one that I tried. You see, I was takin’ out the rubbish before I left yesterday and I saw this bottle of lotion in the bin outside. Almost new, it was, too! So I fished it out and took it home. It was from that posh French store in town—Loccany or somethin’ like that.”

“L’Occagnes?” I said.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Lovely smell it was—like almonds. My hands were so dry and scaly from all the washin’ and cleanin’, so I thought I’d put some on. And I put some on my arms and legs too.”

My mind was racing. I remembered suddenly the story that Professor Christophe had told me and Seth the other day, about the man whose wife had poisoned him by putting some nicotine into his aftershave lotion. The man had been particularly susceptible because his freshly shaven skin had absorbed the lotion—and poison—more easily.

I thought back to Sarah’s movements on Saturday: she had probably showered just before coming to the party and maybe even shaved her legs. That’s the kind of thing a girl would do, particularly if she was going to a party where a love interest was going to be and she wanted to look her best. And if she applied some lotion to her skin, fresh from the shower…

Absorption into her bloodstream could have been slow, which would have explained why her death was delayed until she reached the party, although she was already showing symptoms of poisoning when she arrived…

Another thought occurred to me. Maybe the Walthams’ maid hadn’t been poisoned intentionally—maybe it was all just coincidence, a rare case of bad luck because she had picked up the same lotion which had been intended for the original victim.

I thought suddenly of Jon Kelsey. Maybe I
hadn’t
been wrong when I thought I saw him in that lane by the Walthams’ place last night! If someone had poisoned Sarah by adding nicotine to a bottle of lotion, then that someone would be keen to get rid of the evidence… Was that why Jon had come back from Italy early? Had he been trying to get into the Walthams’ place to remove the tainted lotion?

I looked at Meg, my pulse quickening. “Listen, Meg—where’s the bottle? The lotion that you used last night? Have you still got it?”

“Yeah.” She pointed to a large leather tote slung across the back of my chair. “It’s in my handbag, I think.”

“Do you mind if I take it and show it to the police?”

Her eyes widened as she grasped my implication. “Do you mean… Was the poison in
that
?”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I opened the handbag and looked inside. There, at the bottom, amidst a pile of tissues, chewing gum, keys, loose change, hair ties, lip balm, pens, old receipts, and a miniature deodorant, I saw a slender plastic bottle with the distinctive silver top and label of the L’Occagnes store. In fact, it looked very familiar. Using one of the tissues to cover my fingers, I lifted the bottle out carefully. I grabbed a small plastic waste disposal bag from the table next to the bed and dropped the bottle in, then knotted the top securely.

“I’m going to take this to the police right away,” I said excitedly. “This could be a really important piece of evidence.”

Lincoln stuck his head through the cubicle curtains. His stern expression relaxed when he saw Meg propped up against the pillows.

“I’m just leaving,” I assured him, stepping around him. I gave Meg a warm smile. “Thanks for speaking to me and I hope you feel better soon.”

I added to Lincoln as we stepped out of the cubicle, “Thank you so much again for letting me speak to her.”

“Did you find out anything useful?”

“Yes.” I held up the bottle of lotion wrapped in the plastic bag. “This could be key evidence in tracking down the murderer. I just need—” I broke off as I stared suddenly at the bottle in the bag.

I remembered now why it had looked so familiar: I had seen a similar bottle recently. Yesterday morning, when Cassie had come into the tearoom and was telling everyone about her trip, she’d mentioned Jon buying her some lotion in Heathrow. In fact, I remembered her brandishing the bottle in front of me. It was a bottle of L’Occagnes body lotion, just like this one…

Seth’s words came back to me:

“…she might start asking Jon questions and he might decide that the best thing is to silence her before she digs up stuff he doesn’t want revealed.”

I froze, my heart thumping in sudden fear. The poisoned lotion had been a brilliant idea… No one would have thought of looking in Sarah’s numerous bottles of creams and lotions and it would never have been found out, except for the unlucky coincidence of Meg finding the tainted bottle. What if Jon had thought it the perfect method of murder… perfect enough to use again?

“Oh my God!” I gasped. “
Cassie!
”

“Gemma? What is it?” Lincoln looked at me quizzically.

I didn’t answer. I was frantically dialling Cassie’s number on my phone. It rang and rang but no one answered.

“Pick up… pick up… please pick up!” I muttered, listening to the hollow ringing. I didn’t know if she couldn’t hear the ringing or was just still ignoring me.

Or was unable to get to her phone.

I hung up and rang the gallery. Jon’s assistant, Danni, answered and told me that neither he nor Cassie was there.

“I think they might have gone to Cassie’s place,” she said.

I thanked her and hung up.
I’ll go to Cassie’s flat straight away
, I decided.
But I’m sure nothing’s happened to her—it’s just my over-active imagination
. She’d had the lotion since yesterday and Seth had spoken to her this morning, right? She was fine then. There was no reason to think that she would suddenly use the lotion now…

“Gemma? What’s going on?”

I refocused on Lincoln’s worried face. “Oh God, Lincoln—I’m sorry but I can’t explain now. I’ve got to go. I need to see if Cassie’s okay. I’ll give you a ring and explain everything later!”

Before he had a chance to reply, I turned and ran out of the ward. I didn’t bother with the lifts, flying down the hospital staircase like a maniac and nearly colliding with an orderly carrying some boxes. In the lobby, I dodged frantically through the stream of people crossing the room.

“Sorry… excuse me… excuse me… pardon me, sorry…” I gasped, pushing my way through the crowd.

Just as I reached the main entrance, I collided with a tall, male body.

“Gemma!” Devlin caught me by the shoulders. “Steady—where are you going in such a hurry?”

“Oh, my God, Devlin…” I panted. “I must… I must… find Cassie… I must warn her… the lotion—”

“The lotion?” Devlin’s gaze fell on the plastic bag clutched in my hands. I thrust it at him and quickly explained what I had just learned from Meg.

“The cunning devil,” said Devlin, whistling under his breath. “I did suspect something like this—it’s why I wanted to question Meg so urgently but Green was being particularly obstructive.” He looked at me dourly. “I was just coming back to try again. I suppose I should be glad he’s got a soft spot for
you
.”

“Jon gave a bottle of that lotion to Cassie as well!” I said breathlessly. “I tried to ring her but she’s not picking up. I’ve got to find her to make sure she doesn’t use any of the lotion! I’ve got to—”

“We’ll go in my car. It’ll be a lot faster.” Devlin caught hold of my elbow and swung me around, herding me out of the hospital and towards the carpark.

A few moments later, we were shooting out of the hospital grounds in his black Jaguar XK. Devlin handled the powerful car with expert precision, cutting skilfully between the lanes and driving at a speed which took my breath away. In less than fifteen minutes, we were pulling up with a screech of the brakes in front of Cassie’s flat in Jericho.

I was out of the car before Devlin had even brought it to a complete stop and banging on the front door. 

“Cassie! Cassie! Open the door!” I yelled. “Cassie! Can you hear me?”

Suddenly, the door was yanked open and Cassie stood there, a scowl on her face.

“What do you want?”

“That lotion that Jon gave you—have you used it?” I demanded.

She looked at me like I was crazy. “What?”

“Just answer me!” I begged her. “Have you used any of that lotion, Cassie? Do you feel okay?”

Something in my urgency must have got through to her and her expression softened. “Yes, I feel fine, Gemma. Why?”

I took a deep breath and tried to speak a bit more calmly. “Have you used any of that lotion?”

“No, I haven’t opened it yet. I was finishing up my old bottle first.” She looked at me in bewilderment. “Gemma, what
is
this about?”

“Do you have the lotion here? Can we see it?” Devlin spoke from behind me.

Cassie’s expression grew suspicious. “Is this some stupid attempt to incriminate Jon? Because if it is—”

“Cassie, please!” I said. “This isn’t us being spiteful or anything. A girl’s been murdered and another is in hospital. This is serious!”

Cassie looked undecided for a moment, then stood aside to let us in. She shut the door, then led the way into her tiny living room.

“Cassie? What’s going on, darling—?” Jon sprang up from the sofa as he saw Devlin. “Inspector O’Connor!” I thought I saw a flash of fear in his eyes but he said smoothly, “How nice to see you again. What can I do for you?”

“You can answer some questions concerning your relationship with Sarah Waltham,” said Devlin bluntly. “And this time, I want the truth.”

I saw Jon pale slightly. “What do you mean, Inspector? I told you the truth. Sarah was a customer and she was trying to get me to have a relationship with her, and when I refused, she became unreasonable and started causing scenes at my gallery in London…”

Devlin raised the bottle of lotion encased in the plastic bag in front of Jon’s face. “Did you purchase a similar bottle of L’Occagnes body lotion to give to Sarah Waltham?”

Jon stared at the bottle. “I…” He hesitated, then admitted, “Yes, I did. But it didn’t mean anything! I was just trying to placate her.”

“Placate her?” Devlin raised an eyebrow. “Mr Kelsey, do you smoke?”

“Well, no, I don’t smoke cigarettes. But I do have a cigar after dinner sometimes,” Jon said.

Typical
, I thought. Of course Jon Kelsey would be the type of man to have a pretentious cigar habit. And with cigars containing up to twenty times the amount of tobacco found in cigarettes, they would also be a highly concentrated source of nicotine.

Devlin regarded Jon for a moment, then said, “I think you’d better come down to the station with me, Mr Kelsey, to answer some questions. You can come voluntarily or I can arrest you and formally charge you with the murder of Sarah Waltham and the attempted murder of Meg—”

“WHAT!” cried Jon. “No, no! I didn’t murder anyone! This is crazy! You have to believe me! Look…” He looked desperately at Cassie, then turned back to Devlin. Raising his hands up, palms forwards, he said, “Okay, okay—I admit it—Sarah was more than just a customer. We… we did have a relationship.”

I felt Cassie stiffen next to me.

“But it was just a brief fling, nothing serious,” said Jon quickly.

Devlin held up a hand. “I must caution you, sir, that you do not have to say anything, but anything you
do
say may be given in evidence, and it may harm your defence if you fail to mention something now which you later wish to rely on in court.”

Jon nodded, then took a deep breath and said, “Sarah came into my London gallery, as I said, and was very flirtatious. I took her out to dinner—and then we started seeing each other for a while—that is, until I realised that she seemed to be taking it very seriously. I saw it as a fling, nothing more, whereas she saw a ring on her finger. So I tried to break it off and that’s when she got nasty. The part about her stalking me and causing scenes in my London gallery is true.” Jon gave a helpless shrug. “I tried to reason with her—explained that I wasn’t interested in a long-term commitment—but she just wouldn’t take no for an answer. Then I hoped that things might fizzle out when I was away from London for a while, setting up the gallery here in Oxford—so imagine my dismay when I realised that she lived in Oxford! I had a nasty shock when she walked into the gallery on the first day we opened.”

“So you lied to me that night at the party,” said Devlin. “You told me that you hadn’t had any contact with Sarah after leaving London—that the party was the first time you’d seen her again—when in fact, you had seen her since coming to Oxford.”

“Only twice,” said Jon. “The first time was the day she came in and the second was when she bullied me into taking her out for a drink. I agreed on the condition that it would be the last time. Sarah seemed to agree and I thought maybe she was finally coming round. That’s when I gave her the lotion—as a sort of a parting gift, I guess. Anyway, I thought it was all fine after that… until she turned up at the party.”

He gave Cassie a pleading look. “I didn’t say anything because I was worried that I would lose you, Cassie! I wasn’t sure you would believe that Sarah was just a fling and that it was all in the past anyway. I was trying to figure out a way to tell you, and then she came to the gallery that night and spoiled everything.”

Cassie’s face softened. She started to move towards Jon but I jumped forwards, barring her way.

“Where were you yesterday evening?” I asked him.

He looked at me warily. “Yesterday? I was in Italy. I flew back this morning.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You’re a liar. I saw you myself in North Oxford yesterday evening. In the lane beside the Walthams’ residence, in fact. You were probably trying to sneak into the Walthams’ house to get hold of this bottle of lotion from Sarah’s room and remove it.”

“What? That’s a ludicrous idea!” cried Jon. “Why on earth would I want to do that?”

“Because the lotion is poisoned. It contains a lethal amount of nicotine and is what was used to kill Sarah.”

Jon stared at me, his jaw dropping. I had to admit that if he was faking surprise, he was doing a really good job. “That’s… that’s crazy! Ridiculous! I never put poison in anything!”

“You just admitted to giving Sarah a similar bottle of lotion,” Devlin reminded him.

“Yeah, I did, but I didn’t put poison in it! I had nothing to do with Sarah’s murder and I can prove it.”

“How?” said Devlin.

“That’s not the same fragrance as the one I gave her,” said Jon, pointing to the bottle in the plastic bag. “That one says it’s Sweet Almond. The bottle I bought Sarah was Lavender—same as the one I gave Cassie. And in fact…” He dug into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “I think I’ve still got the receipts here. And you can check on my credit card account too—it’s got the product number with the purchases. I’m sure if you check with the L’Occagnes store, they’ll confirm that my purchases were all Lavender.”

I fell back and looked at Devlin in confusion. Could Jon have been telling the truth? Did that mean that he wasn’t the killer after all?

“You still haven’t explained what you were doing in North Oxford when you should have been in Italy,” Devlin said evenly. “I can confirm that easily enough with a call to the airport authorities.”

“I—” Jon hesitated, his eyes going to Cassie again.

She frowned. “You told me you weren’t coming back from Italy until this morning.”

“I lied,” he admitted. “I came back yesterday. But it wasn’t to break into the Walthams’ property or anything,” he added quickly.

“So why did you return early?” asked Devlin. “And why did you lie about it?”

Jon squirmed slightly. “I… well, I had a sort of… assignation, I guess you could call it.”

“An assignation?” said Devlin sharply.

“Oh, not a criminal one!” said Jon. “A… a romantic one.”

Cassie took a sharp intake of breath.

Jon looked down, unable to meet Cassie’s eyes. “I… I’m sort of having an affair on the side… with my assistant, Danni.”

“So why were you by the Walthams’ property then? You haven’t explained that,” said Devlin.

“That day I came to pick up Sarah for that last drink, she told me to come to the side gate because she didn’t want anyone to see me at the front door. She had some problem latching the gate and I got out of the car to help her. Then, on the day of the party, I realised that one of my cufflinks was missing. It was a special pair from Cartier, engraved with my initials, and I was missing the cufflink on the right side. The last time I’d worn them was on the day I had the drink with Sarah. I checked everywhere else but I couldn’t find it and I was suddenly worried that it might have fallen off by the Walthams’ side gate, when I was fiddling with the latch. I thought—in case the police searched the place and somebody found the cufflink, especially with my initials engraved…” Jon grimaced. “Well, I thought it would be better if I went back to find it. Normally I wouldn’t have any good reason to go near the Walthams’ property without incurring suspicion, but since everyone thought I was still in Italy and Danni could drive me there…”

“And can she confirm your whereabouts for the rest of the time yesterday?”

“Yeah, she was with me the whole time. She picked me up from the airport and then we stopped off at a… um… a hotel on the way.” He darted a look at Cassie.

I looked at my friend as well. Her face was like stone.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” said Jon pleadingly. “I mean, it’s just sex. You know, it’s more exciting when you… when you think someone might catch you. You’ve got to sneak around and hide and tell lies and it’s all a bit of a
thrill
…”

I remembered suddenly that BBC documentary about people who enjoyed “dangerous sex” and the thrill of cheating.

“It was you and Danni talking in the garden of the gallery on the night of the party!” I said in sudden realisation. “I overheard you! I thought maybe you were talking about planning a murder—”