Murder Begets Murder (12 page)

‘Then she was a large woman! Were she and her husband happy together? Did he have any lady friends while she was still alive? Did he have a job, or did he live on her money?’

‘I’m sorry, but as I’ve just said, the report doesn’t list those facts since they proved to be irrelevant.’

‘Señor, as a very great favour might I speak to someone who can tell me these things?’

‘I really can’t see there’s any point . . .’

‘Tom, you can surely lay that on for Mr Alvarez,’ said Udell.

Fletcher’s mouth tightened.

Alvarez, in the larger of the two hotel bars, was mournfully thinking about how much a very small brandy had just cost him when a man came up .and said: ‘Are you Mr Alvarez from Mallorca? I’m Detective-Sergeant Inchcape, from Menton Cross.’

Alvarez shook hands. ‘Would you like a drink, señor?’

‘A half-and-half would slide down a treat! Realizing that Alvarez had not understood the order, he gave it direct to the barman. ‘I’ve been told to come here and give you all the gen on the Heron case. I gather you think things may not be quite as straightforward as they seemed?’ Alvarez studied the detective-sergeant and judged him to be a man with a strong sense of humour and the ability to accept the possibility of having made a mistake. ‘I will tell you the exact truth. I just do not know. All there is is this feeling . . .’ He shrugged his shoulders.

‘I know what you mean. Something stinks, but you don’t know what.’

Not quite the expression he would have used in this case, thought Alvarez. The barman pushed a tumbler of beer across and he paid for this, then suggested they went over to one of the tables.

As soon as they were seated, Inchcape raised his glass.

‘Here’s to everyone.’ He drank. ‘That’s better! . . . Now, what can I do for you?’

‘Please, you can tell me everything you know about the case.’

‘OK. And I’ll give you the facts as I finally knew them, not in the order in which I learned them. She was nearly ten years older than he was and had inherited a fortune from her father: he had worked in an insurance office before they married, but never reached much of a position. They met at a party and it’s pretty obvious he decided he’d nab her if he could. She was known as a rather dull woman, without looks, who’d messed up her life by staying at home to look after her father. Heron was a bachelor with a reputation for chasing the skirt and very sure of his own charm. Three months after the party they became engaged, three months after that they were married. People thought she was being a fool, but she was more than old enough to know what she wanted to do.

‘It’s difficult to be certain now — people seldom accurately remember their past judgements — but it does seem as if the marriage was happy for the first four to five years. Then something happened. No one seems to know what, but I’d give you ten to one that she discovered he was two­ timing her. There were rows, reconciliations, and more rows. She became unusually firm and threatened to chuck him out of the house, then lacked the courage actually to do so — probably because she was still in love with him.

She suddenly began to eat like crazy. Her GP became worried and persuaded her to see a psychiatrist and he diagnosed something he called compensatory hunger: to you or me that means she was desperately unhappy because her husband was fooling around and so by way of compensation she ate and ate. Seems a damn funny way of going about life, but apparently it happens quite often. So in next to no time she was a barrel and had lost any looks she’d had — and because she’d become a barrel, he lost whatever small interest he still had in her.

‘He had been reasonably circumspect with his women until now, but once she’d become fat he no longer seemed to give a damn what she found out about him. He was seen all over the place with one particular woman and the tongues in the neighbourhood wagged themselves silly. There was a tremendous row with his wife, she told him she wasn’t going to stand it any longer and he took fright and swore to mend his ways. And in order to prove that despite everything he did still love her, he became all affectionate and cooked her all the meals she specially liked — I suppose he reckoned the way to her money-bags was now through her stomach. And that’s how he came to cook the mussels in a sauce of garlic and tomato. Sounds horrible to me, but then I’m a fish and chips man. They hadn’t eaten long when she said she wasn’t feeling at all well and as he was also beginning to be a bit queer he decided they ought to take something to settle their stomachs. He gave her some stomach pills they’d got — innocuous, they were checked — but they didn’t do any good and she got worse and suddenly he became pretty ill as well. He managed to phone their GP and then collapsed. They were both rushed to hospital where she died and he survived.

‘In her will she’d left everything to him, barring a few small legacies. A month after the funeral he put the house up for sale and managed to catch the market on the upswing so he sold it for a pretty high price. He left the neighbourhood and none of his friends or acquaintances saw him after that. In fact, it’s a safe bet they didn’t even know he’d gone to Mallorca until they saw the notice in the papers — always assuming there was one.’

Alvarez spoke urgently. ‘Señor, nothing could more suggest murder than a rich wife who is no longer attractive and a husband who is running after other women.’

‘Check!It had me all inquisitive, I can tell you. But in this country any death which seems at all suspicious or where the doctor hasn’t been in attendance very recently is referred to the coroner who can order a post-mortem. There was a post-mortem on Mrs Heron and that found that she died from mussel poisoning.’

‘Do you know what was the name of the woman the señor was seeing just before the señora died?’

‘Elizabeth Stevenage.’

‘But . . . but Betty Stevenage came out to Mallorca with Señor Heron and after he died from heart trouble she decided to leave the island and then she died — from mussel poisoning.’

Inchcape said: ‘Now there’s a coincidence!’ Then he drank and emptied his glass.

‘It cannot be a coincidence: I swear to that. Both women must have been murdered.’

‘Didn’t you have a PM on Betty Stevenage?’

‘There was one, yes, but the body was not found for a month and by then there had been so much putrefaction that no precise cause of death could be ascertained. All the surrounding circumstances suggested mussel poisoning. Now that I know this, though, I also know . . .’ He paused, then corrected himself. ‘I can be almost certain that she was murdered.’

‘Are you sure you can go that far? After all, as I’ve told you, Mrs Heron wasn’t murdered, she died from mytilotoxin poisoning. Accidental death.’

‘The post-mortem result has to be wrong. I must speak to the pathologist and try to show him that he has missed something. Any man can miss something, even a man like Detective-Inspector Fletcher.’

‘I think you’re wrong there.’ Inchcape smiled. He stood. ‘Let’s have the other half, then. What was yours?’

In Menton Cross, a smaller town than Bearstone but with far more character, the mortuary was a modern two-storey building not far from divisional HQ. The post­-mortem room, beautifully equipped and looking like an operating theatre with its central adjustable table under an enclosed pod of overhead lights, was to the right of the building and behind this was a small office. Professor Keen spoke to Alvarez in here.

He was a friendly man, with a round, smiling face, and an air of quiet competence. He shook hands with Alvarez and Detective-Sergeant Inchcape, then indicated the two chairs which had been set out in front of the desk. He settled on the edge of the desk, took off his spectacles, and rubbed the side of his nose where the rests had irritated the skin.

Inchcape said: ‘Mr Alvarez wanted to have a word with you about the Heron case, sir. There are one or two facts he needs to check up on because they may be connected with a case he’s handling in Mallorca.’

‘Yes, you mentioned that over the phone.’ He reached across the desk, opened a folder, and brought out a sheet of paper which he read very briefly. ‘OK. Fire away.’

‘Señor, in Mallorca a woman has died from mytilotoxin poisoning after eating mussels and her name was Betty Stevenage. She came to the island with Señor Heron, who died a month before because of his heart.’

‘I see.’ He replaced his spectacles.

‘It would seem a very great coincidence.’

‘I’d agree.’

‘So I am wondering . . . Can it really be a coincidence ?’

Keen slid off the desk and went round to sit. He pulled the folder round, studied one of the papers left inside it, then looked up at Alvarez. ‘Presumably what you’d really like to know is if there’s any chance I made a mistake in my autopsy on Monica Heron?’

‘I regret the necessity, señor.’

‘Don’t give it a thought — no one else ever does. I can answer you very briefly. It is quite certain that Monica Heron died from mytilotoxin poisoning, as a result of eating contaminated mussels.’

‘There remains no possibility of doubt?’

‘I think the best way of answering you is to give you a brief resume of all the facts. As always, when this case was referred to me I asked for the full background. The two people had eaten mussels in a prepared sauce. The first symptoms of illness began not long afterwards. Both suffered prickling in the fingers and tingling in the throat and mouth and this tingling spread over their bodies, causing considerable distress. Heron described the sensation as feeling as if his hands were made of fur: this is a well documented symptom, sometimes described as the “glove feeling”. They suffered cold sweats and shivering, which led up to a deadly chill — as if all the blood in their bodies had turned to ice water. They suffered agonizing pains around the body and head, in particular about the heart. Mrs Heron suffered circulatory paralysis and cardiac distress after about three hours.

‘Now these symptoms are wholly consistent with poisoning from two entirely different sources. The first is mytilotoxin. It’s a poison which is found in some mussels and is particularly connected with their breeding season, that is during the summer months. Some places grow mussels far more likely to contain this poison than others and to the best of my knowledge no one has ever yet been able to explain on scientific grounds why. The most famous example is South Darkpoint on the east coast — here, the taking of mussels is now banned from April through to September. As one might expect, there are people fool enough to ignore the ban and most of them suffer no ill effects, but some suffer mild symptoms of poisoning, a few become very ill, and there is the oc­casional death. Naturally, if the mussel is dead before being prepared, then the danger is far worse.

‘The second form of poison is the alkaloid aconite which comes from the monkshood plant. The roots of this are occasionally eaten in mistake for horse radish, usually with fatal results. As a matter of interest, although it is a deadly poison, in therapeutic doses it is very effective in relieving some pains, such as neuralgias. A lot of poisons have this dual identity-rather a fascinating subject.

‘I’ve mentioned all this at some length to show why, when I commenced the PM, I could be reasonably certain that Mrs Heron had died from either mytilotoxin or aconitine poisoning. Examination showed she had died from mytilotoxin and there was no trace whatsoever of aconite in her body.

‘I asked Mr Heron, who made an excellent recovery, where he’d bought the mussels and he told me from a shop in Soho. They’d been in their shells and imported from Spain. His wife had developed a very considerable appetite and he bought quite a quantity and cooked and served these at the one meal. His estimate was that she’d eaten at least four-fifths of the mussels, so it’s no wonder she was taken fatally ill since it’s quite possible that the majority of these mussels were poisonous.

‘The authorities were informed and they investigated the matter. As I understand it, the Spanish exporters and refuse to accept any blame. However, Mrs Heron was killed by mytilotoxin poisoning so one has to accept the fact that a mistake must have been made.’

Alvarez, his shoulders hunched, stared down at his shoes. ‘It is very strange,’ he said, after a while. ‘When a man marries a woman for her money and seeks his pleasures elsewhere and she threatens to throw him out of the house if he does not behave himself, then dies a violent death, it is very strange to discover she died accidentally.’ The pathologist smiled briefly. ‘You sound as if you’re a cynic.’

A cynic? He hoped he was not that. A cynic was contemptuous of people: he believed in people. But as a detective . . .

Detective-Inspector Fletcher, not a hair out of line, tie exactly centred, shirt uncreased, suit immaculate, met Alvarez just outside the main entrance to county HQ. ‘I hear you had a wasted morning,’ he said, not without a hint of malice.

Alvarez, certain he looked as dowdy as Fletcher looked smart, said: ‘It was very kind of you to arrange everything.’

‘I gather the PM was properly conducted after all?’

‘Indeed, señor.’

‘It’s one of the advantages of this country. We can always accept the PM report without the slightest hesitation.’

‘It was just that it seemed to me I must find out for certain about Señora Heron.’

Fletcher nodded. Clearly, one had to make allowances for foreigners who, of necessity, lacked experience.

The plane turned slowly and the starboard wing dipped to let Alvarez look down at the dramatic northern coastline. They swept over mountains and crossed the plain and as they slowly descended, their shadow playing tag with the Don Quixote windmills, he could see patchwork fields, a few animals, houses sleeping in the sunshine, and empty roads. The island of calm. So different from that grey, over-populated, frenetic island he had left only two hours before.

He heard the grinding noise of the wheels being lowered and he closed his eyes. Most crashes occurred on take-off or landing. Sometimes a few passengers survived and that was why he had chosen a seat by one of the emergency exits.