Hold on just a minute, I told myself sternly. Better check out a couple of things before you go announcing to Robin that you’ve figured it all out.
With my own warning in mind, I stepped into the jeweler’s tent I waited until he had finished chatting with a woman, already overloaded with jewelry, who couldn’t make up her mind between a lovely pendant and an ornate ring. Finally she left without buying either, and the merchant stared after her with a sour face.
“Good afternoon, sir,” he said, turning to me with a hopeful smile. “Is there anything in particular that catches your eye? I have some handsome rings that would well suit a gentleman of your stature.”
I smiled back. “Actually, I am rather interested in rings.” I pointed to a tray of them on the table in front of me. “These are all most attractive, but what I had in mind was something special.”
“I’m certain that I will have something to suit you, sir. What is it you seek?”
I laughed, as if I were embarrassed. “Well, what I’d really love to have is one of those poison rings. You know, a ring like the Borgias or Catherine de Medici used to get rid of their enemies.”
The jeweler beamed at me. “I know exactly what you want, sir, and I must say that I am often asked for such objects.” He pointed to three different rings, all set with large single stones, on the tray in front of me. “Each of these has a special hollow chamber beneath the stone.” He picked one up and deftly manipulated the stone open to show me the hollow space beneath. It was more than ample for the secretion of a deadly amount of prussic add powder.
“That’s quite striking,” I said. “And I’m sure you must have ladies’ rings like it.” I waited for his enthusiastic nod before I continued. “In fact, I fancy that I’ve seen a couple of these rings already. ”
His head kept bobbing up and down as he beamed at me. “Oh, yes, sir, they are quite popular with the ladies.” He winked at me. “You never know when a lady might need to add a little love potion to her lover’s drink, naturally.”
Or a little poison, I added silently.
“Did you make the one that Dame Alysoun wears?” I asked.
“Yes, indeed, I did, though that was several years ago. Does she still wear it, sir? I had feared it was lost, and she was too shamed to tell me.”
“Oh, no,” I said blithely. “She still has it.” And before much longer, the poor man would discover to just what use Totsye Titchmarsh had put said ring. I doubted that he would welcome the news, though I could be wrong. Some people loved any kind of publicity, and the tabloids would have great fun with a medieval poison ring.
I decided that having such a ring might prove useful, and I tried all three of the men’s rings he had shown me. One of them fit perfectly on my forefinger, and I liked the way it looked. I winced a bit at the price, but he was delighted to take my credit card. A few minutes later I was again on my way, ready to put the next part of my plan in motion.
As I had hoped, there was still a PC posted outside Totsye’s pavilion. I explained that I needed to speak with Detective Inspector Chase most urgently. He directed me to the area where Robin had set up a temporary headquarters, and luckily I found Robin seated at a desk, going over statements.
He looked up at me and without missing a beat said, “I take it you’ve got it all figured out, Simon. You look very much like a cat who’s just had the canary for lunch.”
“Quite right, Robin,” I said, dropping down in the chair across from him. “I believe I know who did it and why, and for once, I don’t think it should be all that difficult to prove.”
“Go ahead, then,” he said, dropping the sheaf of papers on the desk and leaning back. “Dazzle me.”
“Totsye Titchmarsh in the tent with a poison ring.”
“What?” Robin said, puzzled. Then his face cleared as he caught the reference. “This isn’t a game of Cluedo, Simon. Do be serious.”
“I am serious, Robin,” I said. “Totsye Titchmarsh is your murderer. She put the poison in a ring like this.” I paused to demonstrate my new trinket, and Robin stared at it.
“Ah, I begin to see,” he said.
“The poison wasn’t in the fig pastries at all,” I said. “It was in the mead. Mead is made from honey, and Totsye dropped the poison into Luke’s drinking cup before she poured in the mead.”
“How can you be so certain?” Robin said. “Couldn’t she have sprinkled the poison on a pastry?”
“No,” I said. “She did it right in front of me, though I didn’t realize it until a little while ago.”
“Are you certain it couldn’t have been put on a pastry?”
“Reasonably so,” I said. “Were you able to find out how long the pastries had been on the plates?”
“The pastries arrived only a few minutes before she began to pour out the mead. She had her serving girl place the pastries on the plates, and I don’t think she had a chance to poison one of them. But it does explain why the second fig pastry disappeared. She took it so that you would think it was the pastry that was poisoned. But it was in the mead all along.”
“When did she take the uneaten pastry?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, “but she probably managed to swipe it before she left the tent in search of the doctor. Once she had, it would have been easy enough for her to dispose of it somewhere along the way.”
“It makes sense,” Robin said. “But why? Why did she want to kill him?”
“Has anyone told you that, once upon a time, Totsye and Harald Knutson were an item?”
Robin shook his head.
“I thought not,” I replied. “Apparently they were a couple until Luke and Adele de Montfort joined the group. Adele quickly enthralled Harald, and Luke inveigled him into a disastrous business deal. If you do some digging, I imagine you’ll find that Luke and Adele had done that a few times before. Luke also involved Totsye in a bad deal, and she was lucky, according to my source, to escape without going bankrupt.”
“Revenge, then,” Robin commented.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s as simple as that. She was never in love with Luke at all. It always seemed ludicrous to me, and it was nothing more than an act. She’s quite an accomplished actress, I’d say. She was biding her time until she could pay him back, and if she’s not stopped, I imagine she’ll try to kill Adele as well.”
“This is all well and good, Simon,” Robin complained. “I grant you that it’s all very plausible, and I could probably charge her based on all this, but to make it stick, I need something a bit more concrete.”
“I thought you’d never ask,” I said, leaning forward in my chair. “Let’s get Totsye in the same room with Harald and Adele, and even Millbank, if you like, and let me have a go at her. I don’t think it will take long.”
Robin rolled his eyes. “Not again, Simon. Haven’t you tired of playing Poirot yet? Assembling the suspects in the drawing room is a bit much, don’t you think?”
“Have you a better idea at the moment?” I said. “Do you want to run the risk that Totsye might try to do away with Adele de Montfort while you’re trying to get your concrete proof?”
He shifted uneasily in his chair. “You win, Simon.” He called for one of his subordinates and began issuing orders. His men would find Totsye and the others and get them assembled at the scene of the crime.
“Come along, Simon,” Robin said. “Let’s go.”
Smiling, I followed Robin back to the encampment to Totsye’s pavilion. It didn’t take long for the group to assemble, and they all watched me and Robin warily.
Robin waited until Totsye, Adele, Millbank, and Harald had seated themselves, then he launched into his spiel. “I appreciate your cooperation in this, ladies and gentlemen. It will not take long, and no doubt you are all as anxious as I to get this matter settled. To that end, I have enlisted the aid of Professor Kirby-Jones, who will explain everything.” He moved to one side, and I stepped in front of the group.
“Thank you all,” I said. “As Detective Inspector Chase told you, this won’t take long.” I paused for the effect. “I am here to reveal to you the name of the murderer of Luke de Montfort, late Duke of Wessex.”
I paused again, and three of the audience leaned forward, their faces alight with curiosity. Totsye did not move.
“I discovered rather quickly that a number of people had reason to dislike, even despise, Luke de Montfort,” I said. “He was apparently a sharp operator when it came to his business dealings, and he wasn’t above using the rather obvious physical charms of his sister to help him get what he wanted.”
Adele hissed in outrage.
“I would beg your pardon, Adele,” I said, “but I have little doubt that you were complicit in your brother’s schemes. It’s a bit late to pretend that Luke used you without your consent”
Harald Knutson spoke up. “You’ve got that right. That bitch did whatever her brother wanted. I learned that, to my cost. The two of them nearly put me out of business before I realized what they were doing.”
I nodded. “Yes, they did. Unfortunately you were rather an easy mark, weren’t you?”
Glaring at me, Harald shrank back in his chair. “Luke and Adele went after you, Your Majesty,” I said, “but that wasn’t enough. They also went after Totsye. You dropped Totsye very quickly when you thought Adele was interested in you, and Luke tried to involve Totsye in one of his disastrous deals.” I smiled. “But Totsye was a bit smarter than you, Your Majesty. She at least managed to get out of the mess with much of her business intact”
Harald shot a poisonous glance at his former love. She stared straight ahead, acknowledging nothing.
“Totsye had two reasons to hate Luke and Adele. First, they destroyed her relationship with you, and second, they nearly cost her her whole livelihood. She didn’t forget that, nor did she forgive them. She put on an incredibly convincing act of a woman hopelessly in love, and she even had me believing her. That’s one reason it took me longer than it should have to realize that she was the most likely suspect the whole time.”
I didn’t say anything more for a moment. I watched Harald and Adele squirm. Millbank had the look of a man who would pay dearly to be anywhere but there.
“Totsye decided to revenge herself, and she did that by poisoning Luke.”
I stepped forward and brandished my new ring in front of them. “See what I bought today? I found a jeweler here who sells very interesting rings. Watch.” I demonstrated how the ring opened to reveal the cavity beneath the jewel, and Totsye paled. The others merely looked puzzled.
I snapped the jewel back into place and moved back a couple of steps. “It took a bit longer than it should have to get to the solution,” I said, “because we thought at first that Luke had been poisoned with foxglove. That was a mistake, but if it had been foxglove, Luke could have been given the poison four to six hours, roughly, before he collapsed in this tent.
“Everyone knew how much he loved those fig pastries, and it would have been easy to give him a fig pastry laden with foxglove, and that would have been more difficult to prove.”
“If it wasn’t foxglove, what was it?” Millbank asked, his curiosity overcoming his discomfort.
“Cyanide,” I said. “Prussic acid, in the form of powder. It acts almost immediately, which meant that Luke had to have ingested it very shortly before he collapsed.”
I waited. No one spoke.
“You can all see the implications of that,” I said. “He had to have been poisoned after he arrived here for Totsye’s dinner party. I thought at first that he had been poisoned by a fig pastry, because the poison was in the honey, according to the pathologist. But as you all know, mead is made from honey.”
“So she poisoned the mead with poison she had in her ring,” Adele said wonderingly as she turned to stare at Totsye.
“Yes,” I said. “I was even watching her while she did it, and I didn’t realize, until this afternoon. She got rid of the second, untasted pastry on Luke’s plate when she went to fetch the doctor. Very quick thinking on her part. Tell me, Adele, did you drink out of your cup?”
Wide-eyed in horror, Adele stared at me. “No, I didn’t Luke collapsed before I had a chance to taste it”
“I don’t know for sure,” I said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if your mead had been poisoned as well. She would have gotten rid of both of you at once, though that might have been more difficult to carry off.”
Adele paled to the point that I thought she might faint, and Millbank got out of his chair to come and put a comforting arm around her shoulders. She leaned against him and closed her eyes.
“Do you have anything to add to this?” I addressed Totsye. “Have I left out anything?” Dull-eyed, she shook her head. “No.”
Suddenly she began to sob—a deep, wrenching sound. Her right hand clutched convulsively at her throat, and she twisted sideways in her chair.
As I watched in horrified fascination, she pulled her poison ring from her bosom, opened it, and swallowed the contents.
By the time Robin realized what she had done, she had slid out of her chair onto the ground.