Evil Angels Among Them (25 page)

‘May I use the phone?' he said without preamble.

Stephen looked up from his tea, surprised. ‘Of course. If you want some privacy, use the one in my study.'

‘Thanks.' David raised his eyebrows to Lucy's questioning look and went off to make the call. What was that woman's name? he asked himself. He'd managed to block it quite effectively. Tom Lansing's wife. Chloe Lansing.

A call to Directory Enquiries got him the number he needed, and in a few minutes he was speaking to Chloe Lansing. ‘We were sitting together at the firm's Christmas dinner,' he explained to her. ‘David Middleton-Brown.'

‘Yes, of course,' she recalled.

‘And you were telling me about your job. About poison.'

‘Yes?'

He took the toxicology report out of his pocket, unfolded it and put it in front of him on Stephen's desk. ‘I was just wondering if you might spare me a few minutes and a bit of your expertise to help me with a case I'm working on,' he began.

‘If I can. It has to do with poison?'

‘That's right. Digitalis,' David explained.

‘Obtained from the leaves of the foxglove plant,' she said promptly. ‘Actually, the whole plant is poisonous, but the leaves are especially so. Scientific name
Digitalis purpurea
. Highly toxic – nasty stuff.'

He'd come to the right person, David reflected. ‘You say it's highly toxic. What does that mean in terms of reaction time? In other words, if you took a massive dose of it, enough to kill you, how long would it take?'

‘How long would it take you to die?' she asked dispassionately. ‘Twenty minutes, maximum. If you took enough of it, that is. Possibly less time, but no longer than twenty minutes.'

He sighed. ‘I was afraid you were going to say that.'

‘And it wouldn't be a nice death either,' Chloe went on. ‘Nausea, headache, irregular heartbeat. A heart attack, in short.'

‘And how soon after taking the poison would these effects start?'

‘Oh, not long,' she said with confidence. ‘No more than a few minutes. And then it would be downhill quickly.'

‘Well.' David scribbled a few notes on the toxicology report. ‘Thanks for your help. I really do appreciate it.'

‘Any time,' she assured him. ‘If you need help in killing someone off, just let me know.'

Later that evening, late enough to ensure that Bryony would be in bed, David and Lucy returned to Foxglove Cottage to share the disheartening news. They'd rung ahead and alerted the women of their intention to drop in, so the wine was already open and the glasses waiting in the sitting room.

‘Hair of the dog,' muttered Lou. ‘We had enough wine last night to last us a while, but we may as well start all over again.'

Gill motioned them to sit down, then poured the wine. ‘Sorry we missed church this morning,' she apologised. ‘We just didn't make it up in time.' She sat down and raised her own wine glass. ‘What's up? I have a dreadful feeling this isn't a social call.'

While David thought how to begin, Lucy plunged in. ‘We've been doing some thinking about the timing, David and I, and I'm afraid that it doesn't look very good.' Lou frowned and Gill gave her an enquiring look. ‘I mean,' she explained, ‘it isn't really enough to talk about motive – about what motive you might or might not have had, or whether there was anyone else with a motive. At the end of the day it still comes down to opportunity. And whether we like it or not, the police say that the tests show she must have ingested the poison that killed her – the digitalis – during the time she was in this house. That's what we're up against.'

Lou slammed her glass down on the table, spilling wine. ‘Bloody hell!'

‘Lucy's right,' Gill said, looking at David for confirmation. ‘I'm still in trouble, aren't I?'

He nodded. ‘I've seen the toxicology report myself, and I've confirmed the findings with a toxicologist. A dose of digitalis of the amount Flora ingested would have killed her in no more than twenty minutes. And she was here longer than that. In fact the symptoms would have manifested themselves pretty quickly – the nausea and chest pains and so on.'

Gill shivered suddenly. ‘It's cold in here,' she said. ‘Is anyone else cold?' Not waiting for a reply, she got up and switched on the gas fire. It hissed into life, the flame caught, and within a moment the realistic-looking coals were bathed in dancing blue flames which took the chill off the air and cast surrealistic shadows in the darkened room. ‘That's better,' Gill said, resuming her seat on the sofa.

No one spoke for a moment. Lucy stared into the fire, Lou took one of Gill's hands between her own and chafed it, and David sat with his eyes closed, biting his thumb nail. ‘Tell us again,' he said into the silence, not opening his eyes. ‘Tell us what happened that day.'

‘Oh, for God's sake,' Lou fulminated. ‘Haven't we been through this enough times?'

‘Obviously not.' David opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘Obviously we're missing something crucial. If the tests show that she couldn't possibly have taken the digitalis
before
she got here, and Gill didn't give it to her while she was here, there must be an explanation.'

Gill sighed in resignation. ‘I offered her some herbal tea,' she began obediently. ‘Straightaway. She tasted it and said it was very nice, though I wasn't convinced that she was all that keen on it. Then I offered her something to eat, some biscuits or cake, and she took a piece of cake, but she just played with it.'

‘You're sure she didn't eat any?' David probed.

‘No. She pushed it round on her plate and apologised. That's when she said that she wasn't feeling very well, that her tummy was a bit delicate.'

‘Already!' Lucy interrupted her. ‘There was something wrong with her already!'

David frowned. ‘It doesn't make sense. If she'd taken the digitalis before she came, she would have been dead by then. She wouldn't have been merely unwell – she would have been dead.' He turned to Gill. ‘Go on.'

‘So then I made her some special costmary tea, to settle her stomach. I think she found it a bit bitter,' Gill recalled with a smile. ‘She added some artificial sweetener tablets to it when she thought I wasn't looking.'

David, in the midst of taking a sip of wine, started, sputtered and managed to spill half a glass of wine on the arm of the chair and the carpet; the red stain spread like blood. ‘Damnation!' he muttered, reaching for his handkerchief in a vain effort to mop up the stain. ‘Sorry.'

‘Oh, don't worry,' Gill assured him. ‘But are you all right? What on earth is the matter?'

He collected himself, then fixed her with an intense look. ‘Repeat what you just said,' he commanded.

‘I said, don't worry.' Gill frowned, puzzled.

‘Before that.'

Gill wrinkled her brow, trying to remember what had happened immediately before David's little fit. ‘I said that she added some artificial sweetener tablets,' she repeated slowly. ‘Oh! I see!'

CHAPTER 19

    
For he spake, and it was done: he commanded, and it stood fast.

Psalm 33.9

It was too late that evening, David judged, to ring Chloe Lansing again, but the next morning he did so as early as seemed civilised, hoping to catch her before she left for work.

‘Oh, hello,' she greeted him. ‘Actually, I was going to ring you back today. After I talked to you last night, I thought of something else I should have mentioned about digitalis poisoning.'

‘What's that, then?'

‘Well, I was a bit more definite than I should have been about the timing,' Chloe admitted cheerfully. ‘There are certain things that would make the poison work much more quickly and more effectively. Quinine, for instance – digitalis administered in gin and tonic would be a most effective way to kill someone. And, of course, there are also factors that would slow the reaction time. Tea is the obvious one – tannic acid and caffeine are both antidotes to digitalis poisoning, so if the victim were drinking tea, it could take considerably longer for them to die.'

‘Tea?' David echoed, dismayed. Was this going to undermine his theory? ‘But the person in my case drank some tea,' he blurted. ‘Herbal tea.'

‘Oh, well, that's different, isn't it?' Chloe pointed out. ‘That's the whole point of herbal tea, it seems to me: no caffeine and no tannic acid. I mean, most of it tastes like washing-up water. You certainly wouldn't drink it for its flavour.'

He sighed in relief; the theory was still hanging together, but there were some crucial pieces missing. ‘I suppose you're right.'

‘But I don't suppose you rang me to discuss the flavour of herbal tea,' Chloe went on. ‘Is there something else I can help you with?'

‘Well.' David thought how best to frame his question; he knew so little about it that it was difficult to know what to ask. ‘It's still about digitalis,' he said. ‘Is it always in the form of leaves? Or is there any way it can be given as a tablet? Don't people take it for heart trouble?'

‘Digitoxin,' she responded promptly. ‘Also digoxin, and a few others. They're all derived from the foxglove plant and are used to treat congestive heart failure.'

‘And what exactly do these tablets look like?' he asked, holding his breath. ‘Do any of them, for instance, resemble artificial sweetener tablets?'

‘Let me think.' There was a pause, excruciating for David. ‘Digitoxin are a bit on the large side – say, ten millimetres. But digoxin are only about five millimetres. They're actually quite similar in appearance to some brands of artificial sweetener tablets.'

‘Ah.' David exhaled his breath on a satisfied sigh. ‘So it would be possible to take digoxin by mistake, if you thought they were sweeteners?'

‘Well, they wouldn't taste very nice,' Chloe cautioned. ‘Quite bitter, I'd think, rather than sweet.'

‘But if you'd put them in something that was bitter anyway . . .' he thought aloud.

‘Like herbal tea!' she finished for him on a note of triumph. ‘Yes, you might not notice the bitterness.'

‘Well.'

Chloe sensed the excitement in that single syllable. ‘Is that what you wanted to hear, then?' she probed.

‘It is so far,' he admitted cautiously. ‘But I have a few more questions for you.'

‘Go ahead.'

‘What would constitute a toxic dose of digoxin?' David asked. ‘In other words, how many tablets would you have to take to kill you?'

‘Difficult to say,' she temporised. ‘I mean, we haven't yet got to the point of experimenting like that on humans, giving them increasing doses of poisons to see how much it takes to kill them!'

David laughed. ‘I see what you mean.'

‘Ten tablets of digoxin, taken over a fairly short period of time, would almost certainly kill you. Possibly quite a bit less would do the job as well.'

Again he thought aloud. ‘And if you were drinking bitter herbal tea, something you weren't used to drinking, and adding sweeteners that didn't seem to be making much difference . . .'

‘You'd probably add a few more for good measure,' she concluded in satisfaction.

It was all falling into place. But before he rang off, David had another question. ‘One other thing. If you were testing for digitalis poisoning, would you be able to tell what the source of it was? Could you tell whether it had come from the leaves of the plant, or from one of the drugs derived from it?'

‘No,' Chloe stated. ‘The test would only pick up the presence of digitalis, not its source. Digoxin or digitalis leaves – it would make no difference. From the point of view of the toxicologist they're indistinguishable from each other, chemically identical. And,' she added humorously, ‘from the point of view of the victim as well. They'd be equally dead either way.'

‘So you think I'm on to a winner, then?' he allowed himself to ask.

‘I think,' Chloe replied, ‘that you've found yourself the perfect murder.'

Thanking her for her help, David put the phone down and turned to Lucy. ‘Good Lord,' he said. ‘I think we've got it.'

‘Tell me!' she demanded eagerly, though she'd been able to follow things pretty well from listening to his side of the conversation.

‘Digoxin. A medical form of digitalis, and chemically indistinguishable from it.'

‘Tablets, then.'

‘Tablets.' He grinned. ‘Virtually the same size as various brands of artificial sweeteners. And the bitterness of herbal tea would mask the taste, as well as probably induce you to use more of them.'

‘Oh!' Lucy hugged him. ‘Darling, you're so clever.'

On this occasion, at least, it wasn't modesty that caused David to shake his head. ‘I'm not the clever one,' he said, suddenly sober. ‘It was the murderer who was clever. All he had to do was substitute digoxin for the artificial sweetener tablets that Flora always carried around in her handbag, and wait for her to use them. Apparently everyone in the village knew about Flora's sweeteners.'

‘He was lucky, though, with the herbal tea,' Lucy pointed out. ‘If it had been ordinary tea, it might not have worked.'

‘True. It might have taken much longer, or only made her ill. But he wasn't taking any risk,' David reasoned. ‘If it didn't work, he could always try again. But as it turned out, it worked spectacularly well – better than he could ever have anticipated. There was the herbal tea, and the added bonus of having it happen at Gill's, so suspicion fell on her immediately.'

‘He was jolly lucky, wasn't he?'

David sighed and shook his head. ‘Lucky or clever, love, the result is the same. I'm afraid that Chloe was right: she called it the perfect murder. And right now, if our murderer is just clever enough to lie low and not try anything stupid, I don't see any way at all that we're going to catch him.'