A Detective at Death's Door Read online

  I am better, she said to herself. I was right to tell John I was, even if at the time I thought I was putting on an act.

  And then, ironically, as they reached the less traffic-ridden suburbs, quite abruptly her old fears came flashing and smiting back.

  God, this woman’s a bloody maniac driver. We won’t last another half-mile. We’ll run smack into a big bus, like that one there. And why did I think it was quieter today? It’s not. God, that’s a road drill. Incessant. An incessant torment of noise.

  Can I ask her to stop? Give me peace for a moment? But she won’t She won’t. Look at her, face set, hands clamped to the wheel, willing herself forward. Plunging onwards. Plunging to death. Yes, to death. I can’t even move —

  ‘My dear, you’re suddenly looking quite ill. I think we had better come to a halt. I’ll see if I can spot somewhere to have a nice cup of — Oh, look. Look, there’s a place. What they call a coffee shop, I think.’

  With a wild swerve that set Harriet’s heart thumping once again, Miss Earwaker brought the battered little Honda to rest alongside the kerb.

  ‘Come along, dear. Some good strong tea will soon put you right. It’s what I used to give myself in the staffroom if my class had been more than usually disruptive. You know, towards the end of my teaching days I did begin to find the children worse behaved. I don’t know whether it was a sign of the times — too much television too late in the evening — or whether I was beginning to lose my grip. But there were certainly days when I thought the bell would never go for the end of a lesson. And, of course, I was getting a little deaf even then.’

  Which accounts, Harriet thought, feeling less panicky now the car was stationary, for the way she drives. She’s deprived of much of her sense of hearing.

  But some sort of a reply was needed. Miss Earwaker ought at least to be assured it cannot have been her fault if she had found it harder to keep discipline in the last of her teaching days.

  But where is the energy to produce such an assurance?

  Curse the individual who, from out of nowhere, took it into their head to pour that foul stuff into my Campari, she thought in a swirl of viciousness. Curse them, curse them, curse them. She pushed open the car door. A passing motorist let fly with a volley of horn blasts.

  And curse him too.

  She half-flung herself out into the roadway, staggered round the back of the car, patting at it with a pawing hand, and at last managed to follow Miss Earwaker through the coffee-shop door.

  Inside, she turned and dropped into the first chair she saw at the nearest vacant table, leaving Miss Earwaker to come trotting back to her when she realized she had been deserted. She set her large handbag squarely down on the table.

  ‘My dear, you are in a state. Now, you just sit here, and I’ll fetch us tea. Well, no, perhaps in a modern place like this they don’t have tea. Or if they do, it will be perfectly horrid. So, I’ll get us coffees. Is that all right?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, thank you, Miss Earwaker. I — I’m sorry to be such a nuisance, but I’m suddenly feeling ridiculously weak.’

  ‘No, no. Not at all. After all, you have been seriously ill, poisoned. But I’m sure a nice strong cup of coffee will put you on your feet again in a jiffy.’

  She trotted resolutely off towards the tall counter where a young Italian-looking man presided over an array of shining silver machines backed by a long, glass-fronted display case with above it a list of the varieties of coffee on offer Harriet sat where she was and allowed her eyes to close.

  Eventually she became aware that the invigorating aroma of freshly brewed coffee was not wafting up to her. Surely it should be? By now?

  She made the effort to lift up her head, open her eyes.

  A scene seemed to be taking place at the counter, very discreetly on the part of Miss Earwaker, volubly on the part of the Italian-looking young man.

  And, yes, he is actually speaking Italian, or what sounds very like it.

  She listened with more attention.

  Ah, got it. It’s his list of the various kinds of coffee available, and rippled out at top speed. Espresso, cappucino, caffè latte, mocha, caramel macchiato, americano, espresso macchiato, espresso restorello, caffè italiano realmente. And evidently being rippled out not for the first time.

  ‘Espresso? Cappucino? Caffè latte? Mocha? Caramel macchiato? Espresso restorello? Caffè italiano realmente?’

  Plainly he’s under the impression that the only way to make a stupido English woman understand is to shoot out his questions each time louder and louder.

  And quite as evidently Miss Earwaker is not understanding a thing.

  Oh God, I’ll have to go and rescue her. Or could I leave her there till she gives up? And goes right out of the place? Or I could get up myself and go out and stand by the car. Say I must go home. But, no. No, I mustn’t give up. I won’t. I got hold of this ally of mine and I must stick by her. Till we have found the monkshood the poisoner may have been digging up as, if I’m right, he will have had to do.

  She put both hands flat on the table, heaved herself to her feet, managed to make her way over to the counter without swaying or stumbling.

  ‘Miss Earwaker, let me help.’

  She took a look at the long list above the glass display case.

  ‘Two caffè lattes,’ she said.

  ‘Beeg? Sma?’

  ‘Big, big. As big as you’ve got.’

  Back at the table, after another short bout of complication over paying, Miss Earwaker was a mass of apologies.

  ‘You know. I really couldn’t understand a word that young man was saying. So stupid of me. But, well, he really was speaking very fast. And rather loudly. People must have been listening. It was ... it was most embarrassing.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Miss Earwaker.’ Harriet sipped greedily at her coffee. ‘It wasn’t your fault at all. He should never have been put behind the counter if he couldn’t speak some sort of understandable English.’

  She found that with each sentence, each new sip of coffee, her mind was becoming clearer.

  Yes, I’ll be ready when she’s finished her cup. Perhaps I shouldn’t have got her a beeg one. But I’ll be ready then to sit in that car, to be driven, however erratically, to wherever she thinks monkshood was in flower a month ago. And then ...

  ‘Well,’ Miss Earwaker was softly twittering, ‘I know places like this are very popular nowadays. But, really, I must say, I do prefer the good old-fashioned tea shop, where one used to be served by — perhaps I shouldn’t say this — by ladies. And where you could always rely on the tea. Where there was a little vase of flowers on the table, even if, as was sometimes the case I admit, the blooms were past their best. You know, there used to be a very nice place not far from here called Mary’s Pantry. When I was taking one of my parties of children to swim at the public baths nearby I used to go there for a cup of tea, and sometimes a cake, a homemade one, after I had handed my charges over to the men at the baths. They were excellent fellows, and the bath itself was always very well kept. So I knew I could safely trust them, as I really had to do since I never learnt to swim myself. But, of course, nowadays they have to shut the baths on September the first. Too costly, they say, to keep them open.’

  She gave a little ladylike snort of derision.

  But Harriet had hardly been listening.

  Over at the long, shelf-like table fronting the shop’s windows a tousle-headed young man, perhaps a student of some sort, was sitting on his high stool, reading a book placed flat on the narrow table. Not so much reading it as poring over it, deeply abstracted. At his side his smart-looking mug of coffee — Espresso? Latte? Americano? — was totally neglected. And, in a lightning flash of revelation, she had seen how simple it would be for someone — a man, a woman — to walk quietly past that bent, studious back and tip into the mug from some small container a quantity of liquid. Then, a moment later, after the heavy glass door of the shop had swung itself quietly closed, death would come.
Loudly. The sharply tingling tongue, the feeling of overwhelming chill, and the vomiting. The vomiting not violent enough to avert the death soon to follow.

  I must go. We must get into the countryside and find, if it’s at all possible, the clump of dried-up monkshood the poisoner has dug at.

  ‘Miss Earwigger,’ she asked, ‘are you ready?’

  And then she realized what she had said. Miss Earwigger, the name the twins had always used at home about the old teacher.

  Oh Christ, will she be offended? Will she say she thinks, really, she will not go hunting for monkshood after all? Have I lost my one real hope?

  ‘Miss — Miss Earwaker, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have ... I mean ... I — ’

  ‘My dear, that’s quite all right. You don’t think I didn’t find out years and years ago that the children liked to call me that behind my back? I rather cherished the name, you know, and had a little laugh to myself if I ever overheard it. And, yes. Yes, I’m quite ready now to set out again.’

  *

  The search for any last remains of tall-flowering monkshood was, however, a failure. Harriet had tramped for what seemed hours over the scrubby stretches of uncultivated land which Miss Earwaker had declared were ‘just the sort of place dear old monkshood loves’ but they had found nothing. At last Harriet knew herself to be so exhausted that she had to cry off.

  ‘Never mind,’ Miss Earwaker said, with a cheerful determination that scraped against every nerve in Harriet’s head, ‘We’ll go again another time. Yes, I shall be free on Sunday afternoon, two o’clock sharp again. Have a good sustaining luncheon, and we’ll try Halsell Common. Do you know, I think that’s where we should have gone first of all. Yes, Halsell Common, quite the likeliest place.’

  A good sustaining lunch? Plainly this ancient tiger I’ve set on the trail doesn’t want to have another long coffee-shop halt. But isn’t there something ... ? Something to do with that place that I ought to remember? Not my vision there of what could so easily happen, at any moment, at any coffee shop, or any pub, or any cafe or restaurant anywhere in Birchester. But something else. Something ...

  No, it’s gone, whatever it was. I dare say it wasn’t at all important. But ... Oh, well, forget about it. God, I shall be glad to get back home. Bed. No supper, nothing. Just bed. Bed and sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep.

  Chapter Nine

  Next morning, when Harriet came to tell John the story of her outing, with certain omissions such as their sudden necessary visit to the coffee shop, she got a considerable talking-to.

  ‘Now, listen, it’s time you paid some attention to what people who aren’t suffering from post-trauma exhaustion tell you. Three months, that’s what Dr Dalrymple said you’d need before you were properly back to full health. And you should have seen yourself when you came home yesterday afternoon. It was a good job I’d got back early. I don’t think you’d have got upstairs if I hadn’t been there to heave you on. It’s not as if I didn’t warn you when you told me about your silly plan to go prowling all over the countryside with that old woman.’

  ‘It wasn’t a silly plan. It was the one chance I had to do something about this maniac creeping round the city poisoning people. Poisoning me. All right, I lied to you a bit about how much better I was feeling. But I had to go. You do see that, don’t you? I had to go.’

  ‘Yes. Well, I do see it, I suppose. But, darling, you really must think before you go leaping into things like that.’

  Harriet looked at him.

  ‘I have thought,’ she said. ‘A bit.’

  ‘Thought about what, for heaven’s sake? You’re not planning to go off again on some — I nearly said fool’s errand. But I grant you that whatever you have in mind won’t be that, or not exactly. But you’re not planning another outing just yet, are you?’

  ‘On Sunday.’

  ‘Tomorrow. But that’s much too soon, much too soon. And where are you thinking of going, anyhow?’

  ‘To Halsell Common. Do you know it?’

  ‘I do, as it happens. I know just where it is, and it’s miles out of the city. Are you intending to go out there with your Miss Earwaker again?’

  ‘She’s coming to collect me at two o’clock.’

  ‘Oh, is she? And here’s another thing. I’m quite likely not to be here tomorrow evening to pick up the pieces. There’s a damn silly affair I’ve got to go to at the Sports and Social Club. A prize-giving for some competition we’re running for something or other. Bit of publicity, I think. It’s Buggins’ turn, and I’m Buggins. I have to be there before six, to see that everything’s in order. Prizes to be presented by Sir Billy Bell, no less.’

  ‘Oh, yes, former Lord Mayor, isn’t he? You were telling me about him for some reason.’

  ‘Because you complained, when we were on our way to see Dr Dalrymple, about the noise pouring out of one of his Sounds A Bell shops.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘Well, that’s a good sign at least. You said then in the car that you’d never heard of him. So your memory is gradually coming back.’

  ‘Which means, with you at home or not when I return, it’s perfectly all right for me to go out again with Miss Earwaker. You know it is, John. And if I do come back totally washed-out, Miss Earwaker can always go round the comer and ask Mrs Pickstock to come in for a few minutes.’

  John made a face.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘If you can cheerfully suggest having Mrs Pickstock come in, you can’t be quite as bad as I’d thought. But take care tomorrow, won’t you? Be sensible.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I will be. Truly. Because out at Halsell Common I may actually advance the poisoner investigation. Miss Earwaker said that, after all, it was the likeliest place outside the city for anyone to find monkshood.’

  *

  This second monkshood hunt turned out to be very different from their first venture when hours of leaden-footed tramping had produced not a single find. Again, it was almost heatwave hot. And again Harriet had failed to provide herself with a hat. But now, when after a quiet Sunday afternoon journey Miss Earwaker brought her little Honda to a sudden jerking halt at the end of a rough track leading into the common, Harriet found her full of confidence.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, we really ought to see the dear things in just ten minutes’ walking. This was where I often used to take my class. There’s a bus that stops just a few yards along there. So convenient with the children. Off we go.’

  And, after perhaps a few more minutes than ten, they came to the first clump of monkshood. Or what Miss Earwaker declared was monkshood. To Harriet the clump looked like nothing so much as a bundle of withered and forlorn-looking stalks, and there were certainly no signs that anybody had been digging nearby. Yet Harriet felt somehow that this had to be a good omen. As apparently did Miss Earwaker.

  ‘So silly of me,’ she said. ‘I knew perfectly well that Halsell Common was the best place. But somehow I got it muddled up with where we went before.’

  ‘Very natural. It’s hard to distinguish between the look of things there and the look here. I can easily see why you got them mixed up. So where do we go now?’

  ‘Oh, not much further. Can you see some smoke rising up at the other side of the ridge here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I rather think we shall find two or three good specimens on the far side. Of course, it isn’t at all likely that they’ll be in flower, but if we’re lucky you’ll be able to see the spikes looking much more erect than these ones, poor things.’

  They set off again.

  ‘But, goodness, isn’t it hot?’ Miss Earwaker said before long. ‘Really, it might be July. And you still haven’t got a hat.’

  Harriet, hardly listening to this chirping, felt the beginnings of jubilation pulsing up in her. Somehow, with reason or against reason, she felt this was going to be the moment she would see for the first time monkshood in its full glory. And, if her luck still held, there would be a clump of it with at its foot plai
n signs of disturbance to the ground. Disturbance caused by the poisoner seeking a fresh supply of the deadly stuff that was obsessing them.

  Almost leading the way, all signs of fatigue banished, she strode up the gentle slope. Five minutes’ more brought them to the crest.

  ‘Look, look,’ Miss Earwaker cried. ‘Look, there it is. Standing up like a-trooper. The dear old plant.’

  Harriet looked in the direction in which Miss Earwaker was pointing, but could see nothing. Only bare brown grass, a few haphazard wind-bent trees, a patch of gorse still in brilliant yellow flower, and further away an ugly heap of discarded scrap metal.

  The countryside, the beautiful British countryside, she thought with an access of bitterness.

  But Miss Earwaker, tiny and determined, was tripping down the far slope. Harriet set off behind her, and in hardly more than a minute was able to make out in the direct line they were taking three tall brown spikes rising up against the greenish tan of the distant grass.

  Two minutes later they were standing there side by side, both puffing and panting, looking at the gaunt stems. In a moment Harriet saw that on the shortest of them there were three — no, four — dried-up bellshaped flowers, still with traces of deep-blue colour.

  No, not bell-shaped, she said to herself. Hood-shaped. Monk’s hood-shaped.

  ‘Mrs Piddock, Harriet,’ Miss Earwaker broke in. ‘Why are you staring at the dead flower-heads? Look at the ground behind. Look at the ground.’

  Harriet looked.

  The ground in the rear of the clump showed clear signs of having been recently, even freshly, dug at.

  ‘Miss Earwaker, do you think ... ?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Someone has been digging at the roots of the clump. And, yes. Yes, look at this.’

  In a moment she had knelt beside the freshly turned earth and, without actually touching anything, she was pointing with her thin, old woman’s finger at what Harriet saw as just a patch of dirtyish white.