The Claresby Collection: Twelve Mysteries (15 page)

“Just coffee!” said Laura. “Rupert, what are you playing at?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“Suzy, go and get my spare. I must be ready. Where the hell can it have gone?” There was a note of real fear in Kirsten’s voice.

“All right. You keep looking; I’ll run down to the car.” Suzy bustled out.

“Can we help?” Laura asked.

Kirsten gave a weak smile. “Oh, no, don’t worry; it is a crisis, not a disaster. I just can’t work out where it has gone. Was Suzy in the room all the time?”

“She did come and look for us and the room was empty when she brought us in,” said Rupert. “Someone could have stolen it, I suppose.”

“I’ll go and ask around and find out if anyone saw anything,” said Kirsten, heading for the door.

After she had left, Rupert picked up the coffee cup again and tipped the contents swiftly down the hand basin in the corner of the room. Laura lifted a quizzical eyebrow at him, but before he could explain his action, the door swung open again and Kirsten returned, carrying a clarinet.

“Panic over! It was taken by some chap who hangs around the place – apparently he is a familiar figure and virtually lives here. They said that he’s a bit odd, but harmless. The floor manager saw him wandering about with the clarinet in his arms and retrieved it. I’d better check it over, but it looks fine. I need a drink first: did I see some coffee?”

“It went cold,” said Rupert disingenuously. “I’ll go and get you something.”

“I’ve got some spring water in my bag,” said Laura, reaching for it.

“Oh, that’ll be fine. Thank you. Sorry this has been such a muddle. We’ll be able to have a proper chat after the performance.”

Just then Suzy returned carrying the spare clarinet in a case. The next few moments involved explanations and – after handing Kirsten the bottled water – Laura and Rupert made a discreet exit as Kirsten sat down to drink the water and calm down, the clarinet safely nestled in her lap.

“What was that all about?” asked Laura.

“What – the missing clarinet?”

“No: obviously the fellow in the aviator hat wandered off with that as a prank – I meant the coffee.”

“Well, for starters, why did our friend from the audience come all the way backstage to provide the coffee?”

Laura shrugged.

“Did it smell odd to you?”

“No.”

“Well it did to me. Did you notice Kirsten’s initials?” pursued Rupert.

“K.C.N. – you read them out. What was the relevance of that?”

“Just that it is the chemical formula for potassium cyanide. The coffee smelled of bitter almonds to me.”

“Rupert, your mind works in the most peculiar ways.”

“Yes: that’s why you love me!”

This statement was perfectly true, which was why Laura declined to respond – except to return the gentle squeeze that Rupert gave to her hand.

Rupert and Laura were only just back to their seats in time for the second half of the concert. The smart man was sitting with his wife and for a second Rupert caught his eyes in a glance. He had small, bright and very dark eyes; but gave no indication of recognising Rupert from when he brought the coffee to Kirsten’s room. Likewise, the vagrant was quietly seated and seemingly indifferent to the fact that his little escapade behind the scenes had nearly scuppered the performance. Kirsten, confident and elegant, made her entrance with a swift smile at the audience and nod to the orchestra, the conductor following deferentially behind her. Taking her place, Kirsten shook her hair and struck her stance: there was nothing in her demeanour to suggest the minor drama that had just occurred. The orchestra set off with a grand melodic opening whilst Kirsten swayed gently in concentration, lifting her instrument to her lips once or twice as if to moisten it, and giving the merest hint of an adjustment to the mouthpiece. Almost from the moment Kirsten started to play it was clear that something was amiss. She made the first high note and the three octave drop, but even in the few notes after that Kirsten seemed to be struggling. For a moment she tried to continue, the conductor glancing at her as if to decide whether he needed to adjust the pace of the orchestra. The first impression was that of a soloist who had lost the plot; but when the clarinet finally dropped from Kirsten’s hands and she clasped her throat, it was clear that the problem was more fundamental.

There was the moment’s pause, followed by the slow chaos which can so often accompany an unexpected calamity. The conductor dropped his baton and turned to Kirsten, but the orchestra carried on playing for a few more phrases, and then petered out in an almost comical way down to the last peep from the last instrument. The audience, at first embarrassed and then confused, seemed to draw a collective breath before breaking out into excited mutterings. The conductor, stooped over his fallen soloist and seemingly trying to raise her head as she struggled for breath, frantically indicated that medical help was needed. One or two members of the audience rushed forwards to assist. After that, Laura lost sight of Kirsten, just catching glimpses of her shiny green dress through the cluster of bodies. She registered the sight of Mr and Mrs Posh quietly leaving, whilst the man in the aviator hat seemed to push forward in the hope of making out what was happening. And then she saw Rupert, pulling himself up onto the stage and picking up Kirsten’s discarded clarinet. He was thoughtfully sniffing the mouthpiece.

Laura and Rupert were sitting in the champagne bar comforting a tearful Suzy. Chaos had come and gone and officialdom had taken over. Pronounced dead where she had fallen, Kirsten had nevertheless been taken away in an ambulance. The consensus seemed to be that she had suffered some kind of fit, but the police had appeared at the scene and were searching her dressing room. Rupert was looking thoughtful and saying very little. Laura was allowing Suzy to talk. The bar was doing a roaring trade.

“I wasn’t even there,” Suzy was saying between gulps. “I was about to come around to the front and listen; and then there was all the commotion. By the time I got anywhere near Kirsten, she was dead!”

Laura, never the most adept at comfort, patted her hand.

“Has she ever had fits before?” asked Rupert. “Is this the first time she has collapsed?”

Suzy shook her head. “Kirsten was perfectly healthy. She was allergic to nuts but we have an EpiPen for anaphylaxis: we’ve used it once or twice when she has eaten something with an unexpected trace of nuts in it, but she has never had a really bad reaction.”

“Could she have eaten anything with nuts in it this evening?” asked Laura.

“Absolutely not,” Suzy shook her head emphatically. “Kirsten would never eat before a concert – she tended to feel a bit queasy. She would have a good lunch and then nothing but coffee or water.”

“She didn’t have any enemies, I suppose?” pursued Rupert as Laura gave him her disapproving look.

“Enemies?” Suzy looked shocked. “No; she was the loveliest person.”

“But she was successful, and success – especially in the entertainment business – can lead to jealousy. Well, what about rejected lovers?”

Again Suzy shook her head. “Her longest relationship was with Hamilton Gilbert; she met him at the Royal Academy – he was a cellist. They were an item for about five years, but he was a really intense, slightly unstable character. Very good-looking and a brilliant musician, but Kirsten found his moods and emotional dependence too much to handle, especially when her career started to take off.”

“What happened to him?” asked Laura. “Did he become a professional musician?”

“No. He was very talented, but he didn’t have the temperament to be a musician. I thought he might make a mark as a composer, but I haven’t heard of him again and Kirsten never mentioned him. But why are you asking? Do the police think that she was murdered?”

“I don’t know what the police think,” admitted Rupert. “But the manner of her death, and the timing, were extraordinary.”

Suzy looked aghast and Laura, disapproving again, said, “Why don’t you go and get us all a drink, Rupert; the crowd at the bar has subsided a little.”

Rupert nodded and left Laura listening to some more of Suzy’s worries and regrets. However, rather than making his way straight to the bar, Rupert – catching sight of Mr and Mrs Posh sitting alone at a table – made his way over to join them.

“You were in the audience just near us,” Rupert said, by way of introduction, as he sat at their table. “Are you both all right?” Up close he could see that the man, who was in his sixties with a tired, pale face which accentuated his dark eyes, looked on the verge of exhaustion. His wife, well groomed and with a bone-structure which bespoke good looks in past years, seemed almost dazed.

“Fine, thank you,” replied the man. “Just a bit of a shock.”

Rupert nodded slowly and then, with barely a moment’s hesitation said, “It wasn’t the cyanide that killed her.”

At this statement the man gave a convulsive jump and his wife actually emitted a little scream. After a moment of horrified silence, the man replied,

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself: I’m Rupert Latimer. You saw me when you brought the coffee in to Miss Norman.”

“I don’t care who you are and I don’t know what you are talking about. I’d rather you left us alone; you are upsetting my wife.”

“You brought the coffee in,” persisted Rupert, “and it looked like there was sugar in the saucer, but Miss Norman didn’t take sugar. I’m rather a nosy person, and I took a sniff of the coffee. After that I swept the white grains into my handkerchief, where they still are. And then I threw the coffee away – so, like I say, the cyanide didn’t kill her. What I want to know is: did you put poison in anything else?”

“But she must have drunk the coffee,” said the man. “If she didn’t, why...?”

“Why indeed!” said Rupert. “So I gather that you didn’t poison her – at least, not successfully. The question is: who did?”

When Rupert eventually returned to his wife with three glasses of brandy, Suzy had disappeared.

“She went to make some phone calls,” explained Laura, her pale, pretty oval face looking a little weary. “What’s going on, Rupert? I know you have probably solved the case by now, but did you have to ask tactless questions of Suzy?”

“Yes and yes,” replied Rupert, putting one of his long, angular arms protectively around his slender wife. “At least, I can deduce what happened, but whether it is susceptible of proof is another matter.”

“Was she poisoned?” asked Laura, who had been following at least some of Rupert’s thought processes.

“Well, that is an interesting question,” said Rupert happily, sipping his brandy. “You know that I was suspicious of the coffee, but even when she collapsed I knew that poison in the coffee wasn’t the cause. I don’t know much about poison, of course, but the classics are strychnine or cyanide. Well strychnine takes the biscuit for drama – violent death throes and all that. Can be concealed in coffee, which masks the bitter taste, but death is not instantaneous. Anyway, Kirsten’s death was sudden and without the spasms, so we can rule that out. So the stuff that looked like sugar wasn’t strychnine, but it could have been cyanide. A teaspoon of cyanide in the coffee would have caused death within minutes – and Kirsten did seem to die struggling to breathe as if she had swollen airways. The only problem is that she was looking just fine when she came on stage, so cyanide wasn’t the cause.”

“And, in any case, she didn’t drink the coffee; you saw to that,” Laura pointed out reasonably.

“No, but it did have a good old dollop of cyanide in it!” said Rupert, almost triumphantly.

“Rupert! – how do you know that?” exclaimed Laura.

“Because I just wheedled a confession out of George Gilbert, father of the very Hamilton Gilbert whom Suzy told us about – the brilliant but insecure musician that Kirsten gave the push because his emotional demands were getting in the way of her career. The two, it turns out, were engaged and Kirsten had been welcomed into the bosom of his family. After she broke off with him he went to pieces, never played the cello again and drowned his sorrows in drink. He alienated himself from his loving family – father is a chemistry lecturer, mother a music teacher – and became little more than a tramp.”

Understanding dawned in Laura’s eyes. “So the father was after revenge and, as a chemist, a little bit of cyanide posed no problem. Are you going to tell the police?”

Rupert shook his head slowly. “Tell them what? That I thought that the coffee smelled funny? That a disturbed old man told me that when he heard that Kirsten Norman was coming to his home town it was more than he could stand? And, after all, she didn’t drink the coffee.”

“Rupert, it is not up to you to make judgements as to what the police should and shouldn’t know and whether or not a man deserves to get off with what was certainly attempted murder. And, anyway, I’d bet my last penny that you took a sample of that white powder.”

“As a matter of fact I did,” admitted Rupert, “But it might well get left in my pocket and come out in the wash! If I am asked I will tell the police; is that good enough?”

“I’m not sure that it is. After all, Kirsten did die and her death is consistent with poisoning, so you can’t rule out the possibility that Mr Gilbert had a backup plan.”

Again Rupert’s expression seemed doubtful. “He was disbelieving when I told him that she hadn’t drunk the coffee – and, I suspect, a trifle relieved. And, as I said, I’m not sure that her death was consistent with a great dollop of cyanide. Furthermore, the only thing we know she did actually drink was the water you gave her. If the police do start asking questions they will be focusing on that!”

“That did cross my mind,” admitted Laura. “But I bought it in the garage shop earlier today and never opened it. Unless someone tampered with it, intending to poison me!”

“I really don’t think so,” said Rupert. “Kirsten seems a much more plausible target and no one could have known that she would be the one to drink the water. No, I don’t think it was that at all.”