Poison?

The following day, Agaton Sax found himself back in his beloved Sweden and returned to his duties as the sole owner and editor-in-chief of The Byköping Post.[1]

Which is not to say that his mind had strayed completely from his recent adventures. He had, in fact, already begun work on a comprehensive report for the paper on the workings of the Brosnian police. It was a subject that fascinated him greatly and one in which he felt confident at least twenty of his eight-hundred and seventy-four regular subscribers would be equally interested.

He had just completed the section on the importance of hats within the upper ranks when the wall of his office began to speak to him.

‘Agaton?’

‘Yes?’

‘You said you had something you wanted to ask me?’

The voice was Aunt Matilda’s, and it emanated from a specially-designed speaking tube that led from Agaton’s editorial office to the kitchen of their shared home.

‘Yes. What sort of gardens are to be found at Princes Street and where are they?’

‘What are you going on about?’

‘Princes Street Gardens.’

‘And what are they when they’re at home?’

‘If I could work out where they are when they’re at home, it would be a start.’

‘Well, I’ve never heard of them. India somewhere?’

‘Hmmm. I don’t think so.’

‘Then why did you ask?’

‘I hoped you might look it up for me,’ said Agaton, brightening his tone, ‘you’re terribly good at that sort of thing.’

‘Well, that may be, but—’

‘Thank you, Aunt Matilda.’

Matilda Sax was a stern, strong-willed person who didn’t suffer fools gladly. In fact, she didn’t suffer fools at all. She occasionally suffered from them, as she had been heard to remark on more than one occasion, but they seldom lasted long under her withering gaze. She had, however, a soft spot for her nephew. For Aunt Matilda, this meant that no matter how much she believed his detective adventures to be quite nonsensical and his determination to drag mud and trouble through their home was most lamentable, there was very little she wouldn’t do for him. As a result, she had become quite the talented investigator in her own right, though she’d deny it under all but the most determined interrogation.

Half an hour later, her voice piped back through the speaking tube.

‘Agaton?’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you remember your Uncle Geoffrey?’

‘Of course. He was my uncle.’

‘And his cousin?’

‘Which one?’

‘Not that one. The other one.’

‘Aunt Matilda, please.’

‘The one whose wife had a sister.’

‘A great many wives have sisters, Aunt.’

‘The sister that was married to the brother of that gentleman whose name I’ve forgotten.’

Aunt Matilda often climbed their joint family tree in this haphazard fashion. The thing that worried Agaton most was that he was beginning to understand it.

‘Ah, the uncle with the cousin who had a nephew.’

‘Yes.’

‘Arthur Nilsson.’

‘I knew that you knew who I meant.’

‘And you were right, Aunt. Now what about Arthur?’

‘Who?’

‘My uncle’s cousin’s nephew.’

‘Oh, Arthur.’

‘Yes, what about him?’

‘He was married several times.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

Agaton sighed.

‘What does any of this have to do with Princes Street Gardens?’

Aunt Matilda harrumphed.

‘I’m trying to tell you that, Agaton. You know, you have a terrible habit of interrupting people. You remind me of my brother, Karl. Do you remember Karl?’

‘Yes, Aunt Matilda. He was my father.’

‘Of course he was. He was there, in fact.’

‘Who was? Where?’

‘Your father. At one of Arthur’s weddings.’

‘Was he?’

‘Yes, before they went off to their honeymoon.’

‘That is the traditional order of weddings, yes.’

Agaton was beginning to put the fractured pieces together.

‘Arthur and one of his many wives visited Princes Street Gardens on their honeymoon!’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘And where were the gardens?’ Agaton pressed on, before things could get too complicated again.

‘Edinburgh, of course.’

‘Of course!’

‘Really, you do make things difficult, Agaton. You should try to organise your thoughts more efficiently,’ she scolded, ‘and you, a detective!’ she scoffed.

‘You’re right of course, Aunt. I shall try to do better in future.’

‘Well, that’s alright then.’

‘I am very much obliged for the information; I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

Aunt Matilda grumbled in response, but her nephew could tell she was pleased.

Agaton switched off the speaking tube and returned to his office chair.

Edinburgh. So that was to be the meeting place. Had this beautiful Scottish city become the centre of a criminal spider’s web? He was forced to admit he didn’t know for sure that the King of Spades had been dropped by the crooks as a message for an accomplice, but any other explanation seemed so unlikely.

Unlikely things did happen to him on a fairly regular basis, however.

Deep in thought, Agaton Sax paced the confines of his office. It was a risk. He could find himself rushing to another country to interrupt a perfectly innocent meeting between friends or sweethearts. But if he ignored the mysterious card, he might be allowing some terrible crime to be planned.

Almost without realising it, he found himself staring out the window at his beloved Byköping. It was a beautiful August day. The sun was shining. The birds were singing.

Somewhere in the garden below, his beloved dachshund Tickie was doing his level best to avoid the sun and stop the birds from singing.

Agaton would do anything to keep this town and all the other towns like it safe from trouble.

Yes, he would go to Edinburgh.

Suddenly his ears pricked up, caught by a sound that no newspaper editor could ignore – the teleprinter mounted near his desk. It brought him news from around the world, as it happened, printed on long strips of paper. New York, Singapore, Paris, London… they were all within reach of the Byköping Post.

Agaton Sax bolted back to the machine, drawn like a moth to a flame. With one hand he grabbed the end of the paper now stuttering from its innards and held it in front of his face, skimming the stories coming in.

CENTENARIAN SWIMS OVER 800 MILES TO CELEBRATE SON’S 80TH BIRTHDAY

Well done, thought Agaton. He hoped he would still be solving crimes at 100 years old.

DACHSHUNDS DECLARED ‘UNHYGIENIC’ BY MOTHERS AGAINST DIRTY DOGS.

How dare they! Agaton would see about writing a sternly worded letter, directly after Tickie’s bath.

The detective’s mounting outrage was sent packing by the very next line he read. His eyes grew wide and he tore off the end of the tape, leaving the rest of the news to curl off the edge of the desk.

Then he slumped into his office chair and swivelled absentmindedly from side to side.

‘Extraordinary,’ he said. ‘Absolutely extraordinary.’

He thought silently for a moment, staring blankly into the middle distance.[2]

He soon returned his attention to the strip of news.

IS SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF BROSNIA?

ACCORDING TO RELIABLE SOURCES, A BATCH OF FORGED CURRENCY – WITH SOME ESTIMATING A VALUE OF AS MUCH AS FIVE HUNDRED MILLION BROSNIAN KRONSKS – IS CURRENTLY IN CIRCULATION.

WORSE STILL, SIMILAR OPERATIONS ARE SAID TO BE UNDERWAY IN NEIGHBOURING NATIONS. BROSNIAN AUTHORIES, AS YET, HAVE NO SOLID LEADS, WITH ONE EXCEPTION.

TWO DAYS AGO, A MAN LEFT BROSNIA VIA SNAIL-EXPRESS. HE WORE A DEERSTALKER HAT, DARK GLASSES AND A TWEED JACKET. SEVERAL EYEWITNESS REPORTS DESCRIBED THE MAN AS ENGLISH, BUT THIS WAS LARGELY SUGGESTED BY HIS DRESS SENSE.

NONETHELESS, SCOTLAND YARD IS TAKING A KEEN INTEREST IN THE CASE.

Agaton Sax’s first impulse, on re-reading this startling story was to contact his good friend, Inspector Joshua Lispington at Scotland Yard. They would be able to clear up the misunderstanding in no time and then work together on a plan to catch the real culprits.

He had all but dialled the number when a change of heart struck. No, there were still too many questions to answer before he dragged poor Lispington into it. The Inspector was under enough strain. Agaton would go to him when he had something on which they could act.

He leant back in his chair and ran through the most important queries, as he saw them.

Why had he been seized upon as a person of interest? He had been in flamboyant disguise, yes, but that was not unusual on the Snail-Express, which drew all manner of tourists. Besides, he liked to think that the two crooks looked far more suspicious than he, especially with them flashing around the large sums of fake (he now realised) kronsk, as they had been doing.

Come to that, why would a mysterious ‘Englishman’ immediately fall under suspicion with regards to a Brosnian forgers’ ring? Surely there were suspects closer to home?

Finally, why, with so much on the line, would the two men from the train be so careless with the incriminating King of Spades?

So many questions and so far, too few answers.

He glanced at his bulletproof watch.[3]

It was currently August 14th. If he left Byköping the next morning, he would arrive in Edinburgh with plenty of time to make some enquiries, before keeping his ‘appointment’ at Princes Street Gardens.

The next few hours therefore were spent in hurried preparation. Aunt Matilda was briefed on how best to pass messages to him in his absence and which codes to use when doing so. She, in turn, gave him a brief 45-minute speech about the importance of keeping one’s socks dry, and how to avoid the sort of Scottish alleyways in which one might lose one’s wallet... or even one’s neck.

Then, after a good night’s sleep filled with dreams of justice served, he clambered into the cockpit of his private helicopter and took to the skies. Soaring above the town he loved so much, he tipped his hat to it, before setting course for Scotland.

***

Agaton Sax had never been to Edinburgh, though he had once maintained a fascinating correspondence with a detective there by the name of James Remus. A curious fellow, loved his music. Unfortunately, Remus had moved onto pastures new some years ago, having become a crime-fighting farmer on the Isle of Man.

Still, Agaton looked forward to seeing the city his old friend had once served.

Besides, it would be a sensible idea to familiarise himself with his surroundings, before tackling whatever awaited him at Princes Street.

Thus, donning the same disguise that had seemingly attracted so much attention on the Snail-Express, Agaton rented a car and spent the best part of the afternoon driving around the city. He took a methodical approach to his sightseeing however, determined to feel as at home as he could in such a short time. His prodigious memory for places and details was built for just such a purpose, and he filed away each of the magnificent squares, parks, gardens, tall houses, churches and thoroughfares as they passed by.

The founders of the city had obviously been bullied by a motor car in their respective youths, if the complex one way system was any indication, so intense familiarity would undoubtedly prove essential in the coming hours.

By 14:30, Agaton was seated at a table in Princes Street Gardens, his hands wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee as he watched the crowds roll through the broad paths and across the green lawns.

On a nearby bandstand, a group of musicians with a fife, bagpipes, and a drum were playing a selection of Highland reels. It was rousing music, but also left you with the strangest feeling in the back of your mind that you had forgotten to feed your cat.

As he reached the bottom of his coffee cup, he found himself craving something sweet. Inspector Remus had once offered glowing reports of the ice cream in these parts, so Agaton Sax flagged down a passing server and ordered himself a bowl.

While he waited, he produced a pair of binoculars from around his neck and appeared to train them on the imposing bulk of Edinburgh Castle, as any good visitor might do. He was obviously looking at something else entirely, but we’ll come to that shortly. For the moment, he had seen nothing suspicious.

The ice cream arrived in a small but beautifully-crafted glass bowl. Agaton gave the server a smile of thanks, the sort that promises not to short-change the receiver on their eventual tip, then picked up a spoon.

Ice cream was a serious thing in Agaton Sax’s world, and something to be savoured. Aunt Matilda was determined to keep him fit at all costs, and restricted his dessert selections to various crispbread products – all of which tasted primarily of recently varnished wood – so he was really looking forward to this.

He scooped a delicate, perfectly-textured curl of ice cream onto his spoon and lifted it to his lips. The ice cream hit his tongue at just the right temperature, cold enough to raise a bit of gooseflesh, but not so cold as to trigger an ice cream headache.

But something was wrong.

The colour drained from his face and his hands flew to his mouth.

The ice cream…

It was…

Disgusting!

He grabbed a napkin from the table and spat into it, with as much dignity as he could muster. He was tempted to find a police officer and have the restaurant owner arrested for fraud. To call that ice cream… well, if it wasn’t a crime in this country, it ought to have been.

Still, Agaton thought calming slightly, perhaps he was being too hasty. He hadn’t appreciated the subtle tones of Brosnia’s famous goat milk ice cream on first tasting, but he’d quickly come to rank it amongst his favourites.

He took another spoonful.

It was, if anything, worse than the first. As though someone had taken the first spoonful of ice cream and left it out in the sun for a few hours.

Then a darker thought struck him.

What if it wasn’t simply bad ice cream? What if he had walked into a trap?

Could it be… poison?

It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing had been attempted on his person, and he could visualise the whole dreadful scene. The clattering collapse, the anguished shrieks of his fellow diners, the far-off sirens… the sight of the satisfied crook slinking off into the crowd just as everything went black.

What should he do? Perhaps he should head directly to the nearest hospital, bowl in hand, and have the remaining ice cream analysed. There might still be time to synthesise an antidote…

Then a thought – or rather a smell – hit him.

It wasn’t poison. It was an overpowering wave of garlic from somewhere nearby, infiltrating and corrupting everything in its path – including Agaton’s ice cream.

He had only ever encountered such a deadly level of garlic-osity once before, and that had been in the compartment of the Snail-Express.

The two crooks were here somewhere.

Somewhere – to judge by the way the other diners around him were beginning to stare angrily at their plates – nearby.

1 The world’s smallest newspaper and also the best.

2 The ‘middle distance’ is any point at least four feet from the end of your nose that doesn’t contain something to actually look at, like a biscuit or your younger brother shaving the cat.

3 His own design; it also repelled sharks and double glazing sales agents.