Death at the Cafe (5 page)

Teresa listened to Annabelle speak with a smile of knowing on her face until Annabelle uttered the last sentence, at which Teresa’s smile turned into an expression of pure pain.

Teresa clutched the arms of her chair and looked wildly around her. She opened her mouth and closed it again, without speaking.

Then, in an act of apparent defeat, she slumped as if all the life and fight had gone out of her.

“I… know that I’m… in danger…” she said, as if woozy from the news. “I… know… something… danger-“

Suddenly, her smooth, firm voice began to crackle wildly, and her sporadic speech was accompanied by an increasingly wild swaying to and fro. Annabelle and Mary watched in rapt attention at the sudden and bizarre change in Teresa’s manner.

Before one of them could even offer help, Teresa let out one last broken syllable and clattered forward out of her chair onto the Persian rug beneath it.

“Teresa?” Annabelle gasped, before looking at Mary, who had resorted to her familiar pose of clasping her hand over her mouth. The two of them held each other’s shocked gaze, until Mary’s nursing instincts kicked in, and she sprang into action.

“Teresa, are you okay?” she said, as she knelt beside the fallen woman and gently pressed a hand to her shoulder. When she failed to receive a response, she looked once again at Annabelle, who stood up, cake still in hand, and looked around the room for some answer as to the woman’s collapse.

With all the gentle, yet firm care of a well-practiced nurse, Mary lifted Teresa a little and placed two delicate fingers to the crease of her neck. Her lips pursed as her worst fears were confirmed.

“Annabelle! She’s dead!”

“Are you sure?”

“The way she collapsed… It was almost exactly like the girl at the café today. I was just about to say som-“ Mary stopped herself abruptly, and her expression changed as she seemed to fumble for something in the woman’s neck.

“What is it?” Annabelle asked.

Mary pulled out a tiny, hair-like sliver of something clear and sharp, just short of two inches long.

“It’s… cold… Like a shard of ice,” Mary said, twisting the fragment in her fingers as she searched for some explanation.

Annabelle stepped forward and leaned over her kneeling friend to get a closer look at the curious object.

“It appears to be melting,” she said, before suddenly opening her eyes wide in terror.

Without thinking, Annabelle smacked the object out of Mary’s hand with all the force of a heavyweight boxer.

“Ow! Annabelle!” Mary screamed, clasping her sore hand in her other.

“I’m awfully sorry, Mary, but a thought just occurred to me.”

“What kind of violent thought would cause you to hit me!?”

“Check Teresa’s neck,” Annabelle said, stepping to other side of the woman and kneeling down. “Where you found that shard.”

Mary cast one more scowl of hurt at her friend, before obliging.

“Well the skin is rather pockmarked anyway… But look here,” she said, indicating the very side of Teresa’s neck. “There’s a little redness around this tiny dot. It’s somewhat similar to a puncture wound.”

As if surprised at her own words, Mary and Annabelle once again shared a look of horror. Annabelle took to her feet, turned her head toward the open window that the old woman had sat beside, and hurriedly gestured for Mary to get up.

“Come on, Mary! We have to leave immediately!”

Mary nodded her understanding of the situation and stood up quickly. They ran through the apartment without any of the care and delicacy they had exhibited upon entering. Suddenly, Annabelle almost slid to a stop before quickly turning back the way she came.

“Where are you going, Annabelle?” Mary called.

“The cakes!” she cried, emerging from the living room seconds later carrying the two bags aloft. “We’ve left them behind!”

Once the two friends had scampered out of Glentworth Street and back out into the populated safety of Baker Street, Annabelle found a phone booth and called both the emergency services and DI Cutcliffe.

The detective told them to meet him outside the apartment in half an hour. He needed to investigate the area and ensure that it was safe for them to enter. Annabelle and Mary secreted themselves in a small café, clutching each other and casting glances around them as if surrounded by wolves. When the aforementioned time was up, they locked arms and slowly made their way once more into Glentworth Street. Their nerves jangled with a sense of danger until the sight of multiple police and ambulance vehicles afforded them a feeling of security.

As they drew close, joining the dozen or so onlookers who watched the covered stretcher being wheeled into the back of the ambulance, Cutcliffe appeared before them as if rising from the ground itself – pen and notepad already in hand.

“So, ladies,” he said in his gruff voice, “you should know the drill by now. From the top, if you please.”

Mary looked at Annabelle in the hope she would take the lead, which she promptly did.

“Mary received a note from the woman who died at the café earlier this morning,” Annabelle said, pulling out the slip of paper and handing it to DI Cutcliffe.  “One that said Teresa, the woman now in the ambulance here, was in danger. Along with a number-“

“You didn’t think that was worth mentioning when I questioned you this morning?” Cutcliffe directed toward Mary, with more than his usual amount of intensity.

“I completely forgot about it! It was only when I later found the note that I remembered it!” Mary pleaded, exasperated and overwhelmed by both herself and the situation. “Oh Detective! Please, I know it sounds terribly negligent, but this is all happening so fast! I’m a nun, Detective. I am used to solemn worship. Slow, deliberate thought. All of this is much more intoxicating and confusing than anything I’m accustomed to!”

The detective’s stern face remained still throughout Mary’s speech, as if ignoring the content of her words, and instead studying her manner for clues.

“But you found the note, and instead of deciding to call me, visited Teresa yourself,” he said, calm but forceful.

“When the note mentioned danger,” Annabelle said, stepping in to offer some clarity on behalf of her stressed and frazzled friend, “we never interpreted it to mean immediate, fatal danger. Surely, it would have been easier to go to the police herself had it been so. Instead, the woman at the café handed it to Sister Mary, a nun. We had every intention of telling you, Detective, but we had hoped that we could discover more about the situation before placing the task at your door.”

The detective shifted his eyes toward Annabelle, though his face remained pointed toward Mary, as if reminding her he was still suspicious of both.

“It was my idea, Detective, and I’m incredibly regretful about it,” Annabelle added.

The detective offered a barely perceptible nod, before proceeding to scribble into his notebook in his angry fashion.

“So you visited the house, and then what?”

“She invited us in,” Mary said, eager to answer a question that didn’t depict her as worthy of suspicion, “and we sat down to take tea. We told her what had happened in the morning, and then she collapsed in almost the exact same manner as the girl at the café.”

The detective raised an eyebrow so heavy it almost seemed to require effort.

“You didn’t say anything to each other?”

“We exchanged pleasantries,” Annabelle said, looking at Mary for confirmation.

“We complimented the apartment,” Mary added.

The detective raised his other eyebrow suddenly.

“You complimented the apartment?”

“Why yes,” Mary said, “it’s full of wonder.”

Cutcliffe jabbed his pen back over his shoulder, as if specifying the building. “That mess? You complimented it?”

“Mess, Inspector?” Annabelle said, taken aback both by DI Cutcliffe’s apparently poor taste and his crude manner of expressing it. “How can you call a place so full of history, of beauty, and of rarefied artifacts a mess?”

“Quite easily,” the detective responded, now displaying his own confusion. “When there’s junk piled from the floor to the ceiling, and it looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in a year.”

Annabelle and Mary gasped. Reading their surprise, the detective continued.

“Are you saying that it wasn’t like that when you arrived?”

“Not at all, Detective!” Mary exclaimed. “Why, it was utterly immaculate when we were there. We barely breathed heavily lest we knock something out of place.”

The detective nodded, far more thoroughly this time, and scribbled so much into his notebook that he had to flip a page angrily, as if irritated that he was required to do so.

“Do you think somebody entered the apartment after us and wrecked it, Detective?” Annabelle asked.

“If you’re telling the truth,” DI Cutcliffe responded casually, as if it were still uncertain, “then that’s precisely what happened.”

“Who would do such a thing?” Mary asked.

“I have some ideas,” the detective said dismissively, glancing back at his officers who were now cordoning off the area. “So she collapses, and then what?”

“I went to her, checked her pulse, and discovered that she was dead – I’m a nurse, you see,” Mary added, initiating another bout of manic note-writing from the detective. “I found something very curious, actually. A thin shard of ice, embedded in her neck. We checked for a puncture wound and thought we found one.”

“Hold on,” the detective said, raising his hand. “You’re saying there was a piece of ice in her neck? Like some kind of dart?”

“That’s what I believe,” Annabelle answered, “yes, Inspector.”

“And where is this… ice dart now?”

“It was melting,” Mary said, after a few seconds of thought. “I held it, but Annabelle knocked it out of my hand when we realized it may have been the cause of Teresa’s death.”

“I imagine it would have melted away by now, Inspector,” confirmed Annabelle.

“Convenient,” came Cutcliffe’s reply, as he continued to write.

“Inspector!” Annabelle cried, when realizing the insinuation. “You do not seriously believe that we caused this horrible death, do you?!”

Cutcliffe noisily flipped to a new page in his notebook and raised his fearsome eyes to meet Annabelle’s.

“I don’t believe anything in my line of work. I just deal with facts. You have been at the site of two very similar deaths within the past three hours. The woman at the café died from poisoning, and I would bet a large chunk of my retirement fund that this Teresa died from the same poison.”

Mary gasped. The detective handed his notebook and pen to Annabelle.

“This time I want
your
contact details and phone number, please,” he said, firmly.

Annabelle reluctantly took the pen and the notebook, though she huffed slightly, hoping the detective would detect her annoyance. Cutcliffe just glared at her before continuing.

“You’re telling me that an ‘ice dart’ that has ‘melted away’ was what killed one, or possibly two of these women. You’re telling me that an apartment that looks like wild elephants ran through it was ‘immaculate’ and worthy of ‘compliments’ merely an hour ago. It’s certainly not impossible, but it’s definitely not probable either.”

Annabelle handed back the pen and notepad. “But-“

“The most infuriating thing,” Cutcliffe interrupted, “however, is that you withheld evidence. Not only did you hold back a critical piece of information, but you acted upon it yourselves.”

“It was-”

The detective raised his square hand to silence Mary. “And to top it off, you’re off buying cakes after witnessing the death of a defenceless old woman! What are they,” Cutcliffe said, leaning over the bags Annabelle clutched in her hand, “chocolate?”

“We didn’t-”

“I’ve heard enough. When I need to speak with you – and I most certainly will need to speak more with both of you – I’ll be in touch. Until then, stay where I can reach you.”

“I can’t!” Mary cried. “I have to return to the rectory and then to Africa within a week!”

The detective shook his owl-like head with resolute refusal. “That’s not going to happen. Like it or not, both of you are embroiled in what seems to be a double-murder case, and I’ve already stretched the limit of my leniency by not throwing you into a cell until we’ve answered more questions than we’ve asked.”

Annabelle opened her mouth to offer a reply, but by the time she had thought of something to say, the detective was already heading back toward the apartment entrance, directing orders to his constables.