‘Miss Travis, the officers who responded to the 999 call last week reported that you made a number of allegations concerning Mrs Davenport’s tragic death. Now under the circumstances it would be perfectly natural if you had said things which you perhaps didn’t really mean. If that’s the case, just say so and this need go no further.’
They stood in a ring, Jarvis, Anderson and his sister, looking down at the elderly lady sitting bolt upright on the edge of the armchair. To mitigate the effect of an interrogation, Jarvis seated himself on the wooden stool which stood in front of the writing-desk.
‘It must have been a terrible shock for you,’ he suggested in a kindly tone.
Rosemary Travis looked him in the eye.
‘Murder is always unpleasant, Inspector. So much the more so when the victim was one’s best friend.’
‘Chuck it, Travis!’ growled the woman in overalls.
She grinned coquettishly at Jarvis.
‘Brains in their bums,’ she said.
Anderson put his arm around his sister’s shoulders.
‘I think perhaps you should go and see how lunch is coming along, Letty,’ he muttered.
The woman flinched.
‘There’s no need for that, William.’ The arm encircling her tightened a fraction. ‘I believe there is.’
‘It’s spam sandwiches with cold baked beans. What can go wrong?’ Anderson smiled thinly. ‘Nevertheless, I feel quite strongly that you should g0.’
‘But I don’t want to.’
They stared at each other. After some time the woman’s breathing became loud and laboured, and her left cheek began to twitch uncontrollably. Anderson smiled and withdrew his restraining arm. His sister turned and ran out of the room, slamming the door loudly behind her.
Anderson sighed and shook his head.
‘Poor Letitia!’
He looked at Jarvis.
‘Our father was exceptionally intelligent, our mother strikingly beautiful. In an ideal world, each child would have received a portion of these gifts. As it was, I inherited Papa’s brains and Mamma’s looks, while Letitia got the latter’s muddle-through-somehow mind installed in a superficially feminised version of Pater’s burly bod. It is an unenviable not to say frankly repellent combination, and one which perhaps goes some way towards explaining her often startlingly abrupt manners. My apologies for the interruption, Inspector.’
He drifted over to the writing-desk and refilled his tumbler. Jarvis turned to the elderly lady perched on the edge of the armchair. Her expression was full of mild determination, but held no clue as to her feelings about the scene which they had just witnessed.
Jarvis got out his notebook, turned to a blank page and licked the lead of his pencil.
‘Right, let’s have it.’
Rosemary Travis frowned politely.
‘I beg your pardon, Inspector?’
‘What makes you think Mrs Davenport was murdered?’ Jarvis demanded.
‘I don’t think so,’ Rosemary replied.
Jarvis narrowed his eyes.
‘You don’t?’
‘Certainly not. I know she was murdered. And so you jolly well should too. The evidence is clear enough, for heaven’s sake.’
Anderson gave Jarvis a look which said ‘Now do you see what I mean?’ Perhaps he has a point at that, thought Jarvis with a sudden flash of irritation. He’d been willing to give the old biddy the benefit of the doubt, but enough was enough.
‘What evidence?’ he snapped.
‘Why, the morphine syrup and the cocoa, of course! I managed-with some difficulty, I might say-to persuade one of your officers to take them away with him. Frank, I believe his name was. The near-sighted one from the Isle of Wight. I assumed they would have been analysed by now, and the results communicated to whoever’s in charge.’
She peered at Jarvis as though struck by a sudden doubt.
‘You are in charge, aren’t you?’
Jarvis knew that the way he was gaping suggested he wasn’t in charge of his wits, never mind the investigation. Although Frank-‘call me Franklin’-Tomkins had indeed been born and raised in Newport, he wouldn’t have admitted under torture that it was the one on the Isle of Wight rather than the Kentucky bank of the Ohio River, still less that the ‘shades’ he affected were in fact prescription sunglasses.
The items in question mentioned were duly passed to our forensic department for routine examination,’ said Jarvis, pulling himself together with an effort.
‘With what result?’
Jarvis took refuge in his notebook for a moment.
The cocoa in the mug contained nitrazepam, commonly known by the trade name Mogadon. The medicine bottle contained a mixture of morphine syrup, as specified on the label, and a proprietary liqueur known as Bols Blue Curasao.’
Anderson grunted.
‘Personally I prefer this cask-strength Ardbeg ‘73. The distillery may have closed, but its spirit lives on. Sure you won’t indulge, Inspector?’
Rosemary smoothed the skirt over her lower limbs.
‘Well, there’s your evidence,’ she remarked tartly. The question now is who did it, and I warn you that the solution will be a supreme test of your detective abilities. All the residents visited Dorothy’s room that evening to wish her farewell, and in the melee which followed Miss Davis’s appearance it would have been a simple matter for any of them to have added the lethal combination of sleeping tablets to the cocoa and alcohol to the morphine syrup.’
Jarvis clacked his teeth together a few times. Preston North End 1, Accrington Stanley 1. Billy Duff’s goal saved the day for the Reds, but Preston went on to win the replay. They’d wept, him and his dad.
‘Who’s Miss Davis?’ he murmured.
‘My sister,’ replied Anderson. ‘Letty affects our mother’s maiden name in order, and I quote, to “make a statement”.’
Rosemary gave a discreet cough, as though to call the proceedings to order.
‘George Channing is the only suspect who can be excluded at this stage,’ she continued, ‘having been confined to his bed following the unfortunate incident involving Mr Anderson’s dog. We are thus left with a total of seven suspects. A very satisfactory number, don’t you agree, Inspector? Large enough to allow a sufficient variety of possibilities without being, as dear Dorothy once put it, unnecessarily vast.’
Jarvis squirmed about on his stool, which seemed to be growing harder by the moment.
‘Look, Miss Travis, there’s nothing to suggest that those pills were taken from your room by anyone other than…’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t pursue that avenue of inquiry, if I were you,’ Rosemary interrupted. ‘None of our rooms can be locked, and I only use the sleeping tablets very infrequently. Any of the suspects could therefore have taken them, possibly some time ago, without my being aware of the fact. Bearing that in mind, I suggest we concentrate our attention on the question of the blue Curasao.’
‘My dear Miss Travis…’ boomed Jarvis.
‘Now at one time, it is true, we used to be offered a glass of sherry at Christmas and suchlike festivities, but that custom has long since lapsed. Mr Anderson will bear me out when I say that at present the residents have no access to alcoholic beverages at all. That being so, the first problem we must resolve is how the murderer obtained a supply of the exotic liqueur which he-or she-used to intensify the narcotic action of the morphine syrup to a fatal degree.’
Feeling an urgent need to assert his authority, to say nothing of giving his backside a rest, Jarvis rose to his feet. He towered over the elderly woman, swaying back and forth in the manner cultivated by the constabulary for the purposes of impressing the populace.
‘I fully recognise how painful it must be for you to accept that Mrs Davenport took her own life,’ he stated. ‘Nevertheless, the fact remains that there is not a single shred of evidence to suggest otherwise. As far as the curacao is concerned, we naturally made inquiries as soon as the forensic report revealed its presence in the sample of morphine syrup. It transpired that this liqueur is among those kept on the premises for the use of the owners.’
Anderson walked over to the escritoire. He lifted a wide-bottomed bottle and swirled the viscid blue contents around.
‘My sister’s poison,’ he said. ‘I’d as soon drink meths myself.’
‘I believe this room isn’t locked?’ Jarvis prompted.
Rosemary held up her hand like a pupil in class.
‘Surely the important point, Inspector…’
‘No, no,’ Anderson replied. ‘Although my little sanctum is theoretically off-bounds to residents, it would have been quite simple for Mrs Davenport to sneak in here and filch some booze with a view to ceasing upon the midnight with no pain. The only mystery is why, with such an array of rare-and in some cases unobtainable-malts at her disposal, she should have chosen this appalling blue muck.’
‘Precisely!’ cried Rosemary.
Struggling to her feet, she grasped Jarvis’s arm.
That is the key to the whole mystery! Don’t you see, Inspector? Even supposing that Dorothy had been capable of breaking in here and stealing spirits-and anyone who knew her will tell you how absurd that hypothesis is-we have to explain the remarkable coincidence that of all the drinks available she happened to select the only one which will not reveal its presence when added to morphine syrup because they are the same colour.’
She stared intensely at Jarvis.
‘If Dorothy had deliberately chosen to put an end to her life, she would have had no need to dissolve the sleeping pills in her cocoa or carefully disguise the fact that her medicine had been adulterated with alcohol. There is only one possible reason why anyone should go to such extraordinary lengths, and that is to conceal the fact that Dorothy’s death was not suicide but cold-blooded premeditated murder!’
‘Or to draw attention to it,’ said Jarvis.
They stared at each other.
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ Rosemary replied in a haughty tone.
Jarvis turned to Anderson.
‘If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like a word with Miss Travis in private.’
Anderson drew Jarvis to one side.
‘You’re not starting to take her seriously, I hope?’ he murmured. ‘If so, let me slip you a quick verb. sap. Letty may be a foul-mouthed slag who might be compared to a brick outhouse to that edifice’s advantage, but believe me, she has this lady’s number. Like all those who deceive themselves before practising on others, if s a tangled web Miss Travis weaves. Should you become ensnared in it, Inspector, you would become the laughing-stock of your colleagues and superiors.’
‘I’ll thank you to allow me to carry out my duties as I see fit, sir,’ Jarvis replied stiffly.
Anderson shrugged.
‘Very well!’ he sighed.
He refilled his glass and slouched out, closing the door with an exaggerated care in pointed contrast to his sister’s abrupt exit.
‘Now I do hope you’re not going to allow yourself to be deceived into suspecting the staff,’ Rosemary told Jarvis. ‘Even discounting those purists who would exclude such a solution on principle, it seems safe to assume that any suspect whose guilt seems as blatant as the Andersons in the present case is bound to be a red herring.’
Jarvis grasped the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. Give me strength, he thought. Don’t let me hit an old lady.
‘May I remind you, Miss Travis,’ he said, ‘that this is real life, not some thriller?’
‘Thriller?’ Rosemary queried acidly. ‘My dear Inspector, I hope you don’t think for a moment that I would concern myself with any such rubbish. My only interest is in the classic English detective story, with its unique and fair play. There is no room for sloppy vulgar sensationalism. If you observe the clues and make the appropriate deductions, you should be able to arrive at the correct solution.’
‘In real life,’ Jarvis continued implacably, ‘poison is the least common method of murder, accounting for less than six per cent of all cases.’
‘Of the cases that come to light, perhaps. But who is to say how many homicidal poisonings are successfully passed off as illness, accidents or-as in the present instance-suicide?’
Jarvis struck his forehead with the heel of his hand.
‘For the love of…!’
He stared into space for some time, running over the results and league positions for January 1958. Eighteen thousand turned out to watch them draw one all at Bury. Happy days! ‘I am a police officer, Miss Travis,’ he declared at last. ’
‘I know that,’ Rosemary replied brightly.
‘As such, I cannot conduct an investigation on the basis of hearsay, innuendo, rumour or fantasy. I require evidence. And as I have already said, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Mrs Dorothy Davenport did not take her own life.’
‘But why should Dorothy go to such pains to disguise the lethal combination of drugs mixed into her cocoa and medicine?’
‘I don’t believe she did.’
‘Exactly!’ Rosemary exclaimed triumphantly. ‘Then who did?’
‘You.’
They confronted each other for a long moment. Then a smile of pure pleasure lit up the woman’s frail, wrinkled features.
‘Do you know, Inspector, you’re not such a fool as you look! How clever of you to notice that I had deliberately excluded myself from the list of suspects.’
Jarvis hid his face in his hands. I don’t believe this, he thought.
‘I don’t believe this,’ he said.
Rosemary frowned.
‘We can’t afford to exclude any possibilities at this stage, however unlikely they may appear. Even George Channing’s innocence should perhaps not be taken for granted. One might argue that the very fact that his alibi seems unbreakable in itself constitutes grounds for suspicion, and his room is of course next door to the victim’s. Secret passages are always a tendentious topic, but I think one might be regarded as permissible in a house such as this. On the other hand, the hideous injuries which Channing sustained might seem to preclude…’
‘What injuries?’
‘…and of course his motive is a good deal less obvious than, say, the Andersons’.’
Jarvis felt the way he had on the never-to-be-forgotten day when Accrington creamed Stockport 4 nil to stay in the promotion race, and his dad let him drink the sediment out of his bottles of White Label. The pitch was tilting, the goalposts moving, the ref nowhere to be seen.
‘Who is this Channing?’ he demanded truculently. ‘What happened to him?’
Rosemary waved vaguely.
‘Don’t let’s get off the point, Inspector. The only aspect of poor Channing’s ordeal which need concern us is that it might appear to give him a perfect alibi…’
‘What happened to him?’
‘…intended to divert suspicion from the real culprit, who has cleverly covered his-or her-tracks by…’
‘FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WOMAN, WHAT HAPPENED?’
Rosemary Travis threw up her hands in exasperation.
‘Oh really, Inspector! Since you persistently refuse to listen to my advice, you can jolly well go and find out for yourself.’