Eleven Pipers Piping (29 page)

B
loody hell, what did she do?
Stuff
those flaming pastries with whatever that poison is?” Nick struck a match against the wall of the village hall.

“Taxine,” Mark supplied brightly.

“You watch it, mate.” Jago leaned towards Nick, fists clenched. “That’s my sister you’re talking about. And she didn’t bloody stuff anything with bloody anything. Who’s to say
you
didn’t stuff them with something? You kept going out for a pee.”

“Get your own self stuffed, Jago.” Nick flicked the match into a patch of snow. “If I wanted to kill a bloke, I wouldn’t waste my time fucking about with poison.”

“You bloody would, too, if you thought it would work.”

“Gentlemen,” Tom snapped before Nick opened his mouth to retort. “Enough! This is serious. Will’s death is being treated as suspicious. The coroner said as much not five minutes ago.”

Everyone stopped and flicked him a cheerless glance, then
looked away. With the preliminary hearing of the inquest into Will Moir’s death completed, there was no compelling reason to stand about in the frosty air made acrid with the smell of Nick’s cigarette smoke, yet none of the representative members of the Thistle But Mostly Rose seemed inclined to dash away to resume the rhythms of his day. For Tom, at least, the inconclusiveness of the morning’s proceedings brought little surprise; it was the finer points of the testimony that left him disturbed and confounded—and, if truth be told, somewhat relieved.

He had arrived early to find Joyce Pike, the village hall custodian, struggling to unfold the ancient trestle table by herself. Silently—as Joyce was little given to conversation—he lent a hand, setting out the old wooden folding chairs so that the smaller of the building’s two rooms resembled a court. Roger Pattimore, who had left his shop in the incapable hands of his mother, joined him in the task, but, as it happened, they underestimated the need for seating and by the time the coroner arrived, some ten minutes late and without apology, a number of villagers had only the back wall to lend their frames support. The air was thick with curiosity, but it was a curiosity left unsatisfied. The coroner, a well-upholstered woman with grey hair swept into a French twist and dark eyes behind wire-frame spectacles, moved briskly and with little formality through the proceedings, as though a much more attractive option—an early luncheon at the Ritz, perhaps—was in the offing. She acknowledged statements taken by police from Judith Ingley, witness to the death of the deceased, and from Adam Moir, who had made the official identification of his father’s body at the morgue. What arrested Tom in the recitation of details to establish the facts of Will’s death was the pathologist’s evidence. The pathologist herself was fetching—svelte frame encased in a smart black two-piece suit, honey-blond hair falling over her shoulders—but Tom lent her his ears rather than his eyes.

According to cardiac blood samples taken at the time of autopsy,
Will died of acute taxine poisoning after ingesting an unknown quantity of plant material of
Taxus baccata
, the Latinate name for the yew. What the pathologist found more compelling and quite unusual was the evidence provided by an examination of the contents of Will’s stomach. Though very few cases in her career had featured taxine poisoning, all had yielded up observable quantities of yew leaves or seeds in the stomach and duodenum. In Will’s stomach, however, the yew residue was not detectable except by microscopic analysis, indicating that the taxine had been delivered to his system in finely fragmented form—crushed into particles or possibly mashed into a pulp. The poisonous plant material, she said, looking up from her notes for the first time and flicking a glance at the coroner, had been “pre-extracted.” The word seemed faintly elliptical and a moment passed before its meaning—that the plant material had been processed—registered, but when it did, when most realised a deliberating intelligence, not bloody bad luck, lay behind Will’s death, a small frisson of horror, like a jolt of electricity, passed through the room. But before anyone could even let out an involuntary gasp, the pathologist moved quickly to a generalisation with terrible implications: The decisive role in the process of poisoning was the form of ingestion. Yew leaves or seeds or bark by themselves brought a slower toxin release than pre-extracted plant material. The latter ensured that survival after poisoning was relatively unlikely and that death was relatively quick.

“Bless,” Roger said, breaking the silence, “I can’t wrap my head around it. I know the coroner’s role is only to establish the cause of death, right? But if I understood what I heard, it means that someone at the Burns Supper deliberately poisoned Will. Yes?”

“I can’t think it’s anything else.” Tom whispered a prayer.

After the pathologist’s evidence was heard, the coroner adjourned the inquest for the police to make further enquiries. But for the final civilities, the hearing had taken all of twenty minutes.

“Metric still foxes me.” Roger lowered his voice, glancing at
Nick, who had moved away to finish his cigarette. “That pathologist went on about … what was it?”

“Grams per kilogram of body weight,” Mark supplied. “In Will’s case, then …” He frowned in thought. “… A lethal dose would be between … fifty and a hundred grams of taxine.”

“Which is what in imperial?”

“Oh, somewhere between two and four ounces.”

“Bless, that seems like a lot! Sorry, Tom, you’re thinking me callous.”

“No.” In truth, the conversation was a little disconcerting, but Mark’s calculations proved illuminating. Surely one of Madrun’s pastries weighed no more, and most likely less, and surely now no question lingered over her culpability in this tragic death.

“Although someone else could have added the taxine to the tartlets
after
they arrived at Thorn Court.” Mark directed the remark to Tom.

“You’re reading my mind.”

“But then how would anyone ensure that Will took the right tartlet? Or the wrong tartlet? Or tartlet
s
?” An incredulous look descended over Mark’s face. “Maybe the poison was intended for someone else.”

“But who?” said Jago.

“Bless, and why?” Roger added.

“Taxine must be bitter,” Mark mused. “Most poisons are. I’ve been doing some research.”

The others smiled at him indulgently. Mark Tucker’s literary ambitions weren’t unknown in the village.

“Better to doctor the curry,” Jago said. “You could disguise anything in all that spice. Well, at least our Madrun had no hand in that! Would you bloody look at him!” Jago jerked his head towards Nick as he tossed his cigarette away and loped after the pathologist exiting the village hall, her hair swimming becomingly over her black coat. “He doesn’t half fancy his chances, does he.”

They watched in silence as Nick detained the woman aiming her car starter at the door of a Mercedes. She appeared to be listening to Nick with some concentration.

“Perhaps he’s asking some sort of technical question?” Mark offered.

“Pull the other one.” Jago thrust his arms across his chest.

“I doubt she’d tell him anything of importance.” Tom’s eyes shifted from Nick’s chatting up the pathologist to Judith exiting the hall with Old Bob, and shifted again, as a familiar red Astra parked next to a fat green Citroën van that could only belong to the coroner. Through the windscreen’s smoky glass, he glimpsed two familiar figures. So had Jago.

“They’re late,” he said.

“Who?” Mark asked.

“The coppers.”

“Detective Inspector Derek Bliss and Detective Sergeant Colin Blessing,” Tom supplied. “Totnes CID.”

“Well, I’ve got work to get back to.” Jago turned up the collar of his jacket. “Caroline’s car was towed in earlier this morning.”

“Bless! Poor woman! What now?”

“Someone crashed into her.”

“Oh, no!”

“On Saturday or Sunday, Roger. Where she’d parked it, no damage to her. Buggered the steering a bit, but nothing to worry about.” Jago frowned. “Best we hold off band practice and the like for a while, yes?”

“Bless, I suppose we’ll all be having those two to tea.” Roger sighed as they watched the two policemen squeeze out of the Astra. “I don’t know what possible use I can be, though.”

“Nor I,” said Mark.

“They won’t have an easy time of it, I shouldn’t think. All the evidence has likely gone into the bin, for one thing.”

Roger wrapped his scarf tightly around his neck. “Molly was a
fiend to clean up last Saturday. Perhaps she finds activity soothing, poor woman. I suppose neither she nor Victor was here this morning because attending another inquest so soon would be unbearable.”

Tom had attended the inquest into the death of Harry Kaif, in September, and it had indeed been unbearable. The day had been exceptionally warm, the venue the same. The pathologist had not been the smart young woman currently being importuned by Nick Stanhope, but a middle-aged man with prominent ears, who read through his report emotionlessly. Few villagers bore witness in the stuffy room. There was no mystery, after all, no ambiguity, nothing to be curious about. Perhaps people felt they would do best to not attend the Kaifs’ grief in this perfunctory exercise. Perhaps, too, Tom thought at the time, some felt the taint of guilt for their own absence of consideration to the boy who had found living too intolerable. Molly did not attend; she was at home, at Damara Cottage, sedated. Victor did, sitting stone-stiff next to a table where someone—Joyce?—had failed uncharacteristically to tidy a vase of wilting red roses, which released three or four petals, like drops of blood, in the lazy stir of air onto the table’s white surface. Will had attended, slipping in as the proceeding began, slipping out just as it finished, acknowledging Tom with a pained expression. Events moved swiftly to adjournment, cause of death was undisputed; the small hall heard no lamentation, but the atmosphere seemed drenched desolation. Tom had been reminded too painfully of the inquest into his own wife’s death, with its brisk, uncomforting ritual and its verdict of unlawful killing—a murder whose perpetrator had yet to be winnowed from the masses.

Mark interrupted his thoughts: “You said earlier that you were going into town.”

“I have hospital visits this afternoon, and I’m driving Old Bob in for a medical appointment. I have a notion—if there’s a minute—to take him to the optician in Fore Street.”

“Eye trouble?” Roger frowned down at his zipper, which was being uncooperative.

“I’m willing to stand him some new frames.”

“Bless, folk have been saying that for years, but you’ll never get them off him.”

“Why not?”

“Ah, Tom, those spectacles of his once belonged to Mrs. Prowse.”

Tom frowned.

“Old Mrs. Prowse, I should say. Madrun’s mother. She was quite the looker in her day.”

“You mean she and Old Bob had a …?” Mark interjected, eyes twinkling with incredulity.

“Bless, I wouldn’t really know,” Roger retreated quickly. “I was much too young to notice. At any rate, he’s very fond of those frames. He’d hardly be Old Bob without them. There!” He rolled the zip up. “Got it! Well, I’d best be off before Mother has one of her spells.”

Tom and Mark watched him pass through the gate and turn into Pennycross Road, followed at a short distance by Nick, who turned in the direction of Thorn Cross. The pathologist backed her car out of its parking space.

“I’m sorry I blurted out that bit about Will’s life insurance to you the other night.” Mark made a face. “Will you say anything to those detectives, if they ask? I don’t want to drop Caroline in it.”

“It’s hearsay, Mark, as far as you and I are concerned. I shouldn’t worry anyway. They’ll be digging through such things on their own, and won’t need our help. I’m afraid some focus on Caroline is inevitable.”

“Spouses potentially standing to benefit and all.”

Tom grimaced.

“Your experience? Sorry, shouldn’t ask.”

“It’s all right. In my case, it was simple proximity. When Lisbeth was killed I was in the same building—in St. Dunstan’s Church. She
was in the south porch. I was in the office. Bristol CID found that interesting—at least for a time.”

“Opportunity.”

“But no motive. They did dig around, though. It wasn’t pleasant.”

“Lucky for Caroline, she was in town last Saturday.”

“Yes, that will help.”

“I must go, too. My father will be wondering where I’ve got to. I was finally able to deposit Sunday’s collection money at the bank, by the way.” Mark pulled a pair of leather gloves from his pocket. “John looks grave,” he added over his shoulder as he departed.

Tom watched John Copeland push through the doors of the village hall with Adam Moir, passing Bliss and Blessing with a frowning glance. John’s open jacket revealed a three-piece of olive tweed and a tie loosened at his neck; Adam was more informally dressed, in jeans and waxed jacket.

“I’m so very sorry for this appalling consequence,” Tom said to Adam, feeling, as he sometimes did, the very meagreness of words.

Adam stared at him mutely.

“He’s a bit cut up,” John answered for the younger man, putting one hand on his shoulder briefly. “We all are. I suppose no one’s wanted to believe that this”—he gestured towards the village hall—“would be the result.”

“How’s your mother been?” Tom addressed Adam.

“Caroline’s being very brave.” John answered once again.

“I think she wants to meet with you.” Adam’s voice was thick with suppressed emotion. “I mean, because of the …”

“Yes, I know,” Tom said gently. Now that the autopsy was complete and its results known, Will’s body could be released from the hospital morgue and a funeral planned. “Tell her I’m happy to come tomorrow morning, if she would like. Or earlier. Anytime, really. Others will understand if I’m unavailable. This evening, perhaps.”

“There’s the men’s group,” John reminded him.

“Ah, yes.” Tom had launched the St. Nicholas’s Men’s Group as a low-key way of spreading Christian fellowship. “Perhaps we ought to cancel, in the circumstances. What do you think?”

“Isn’t Brian Plummer coming from Plymouth to talk about coaching Rugby League? It might be a welcome distraction.” John frowned at the flat cap in his hand.