Thursday 24th November
It was so cold that Willie Arthur pulled his red ski hat right down over his ears before he took two newspapers out of his bag and folded one of them very carefully. If he crumpled the old dragon’s Courier, he’d be for it, and she’d go complaining to Miss Wheeler again.
Whistling, he shoved a copy roughly through the letter box of the first cottage, then stopped, puzzled, when he came to Miss Souter’s door. Her pint of milk was still sitting on her step. She was usually up at the crack of dawn – before dawn, in the winter – often waiting to grab her paper before he folded it. She must be ill.
He looked furtively through her bedroom window and saw that her bed had been made, and that everything seemed to be in order, so he walked past her door to the living room window, but there was no sign of her there, either. She must be at the back, in her kitchen or the bathroom, both of which had been built on to the original house.
If she was up, she couldn’t be ill. She must have just forgotten to take her milk in. Her memory would be slipping a bit at her age. He pushed the Courier under the flap and turned back. He was finished with Honeysuckle Cottages for the time being, because Number Three just took the Evening Citizen.
He jumped down the steps and lifted his bicycle from the grassy bank, wishing that these three cottages had their front doors to the Lane like the houses at the foot. This was a funny set-up, with no front gardens, just a narrow path along the buildings, and a barbed-wire fence separating them from a field. It was their long back gardens which ran on to the Lane, and they were the last three houses in the village, or the first three, depending which way you were travelling.
When he turned left into Ashgrove Lane off the High Street, he glanced at the rear of the cottages and saw that smoke was spiralling from the chimneys at each end, but not from Miss Souter’s. His unease returned, making him wonder if he should go and look in her kitchen window to make sure she was all right, but he was running late already, and the old woman would go spare if she caught him snooping round her back door.
He carried on to the terraced houses at the bottom of the hill, where he had only one Courier to deliver, because the other five took the Evening Citizen. Walking up the first path, he could see old Mrs Gray smiling to him from her window and, as he acknowledged her, he thought what a difference there was between the two oldest women in Tollerton. Miss Souter, though she nipped around the village like a two-year-old, was nasty and cantankerous, but Mrs Gray, just as old, if not older, and crippled so much with arthritis that she couldn’t get out at all, was always friendly and cheery.
He shoved his last paper through the letter box, and saluted to Mrs Gray again before he ran down the path and jumped on his cycle. He puffed laboriously up the hill, then, once he was on the level again, he pedalled like mad down the High Street to leave his newspaper bag at Miss Wheeler’s shop – grocer-cum-baker-cum-newsagent-cum-post office – before going to school.
‘See you at half past four,’ the postmistress remarked, from behind the grille.
Willie was on his way out when he remembered. ‘Miss Wheeler, old Miss Souter’s milk hadn’t been taken in when I delivered her paper, and her fire wasn’t lit.’
His employer, tall and angular, looked at him pityingly. ‘She’s a very old lady, Willie. She’s been having a lie-in.’
The fourteen-year-old shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I looked in her bedroom window and her bed had been made, but there was no sign of her. Nor in the living room, because I looked in there as well.’
‘She’d have been in the bathroom having a wash, I suppose. That one can look after herself.’
‘OK, if you say so.’ Willie had passed on the problem, so he went off to school with a clear mind, and without further thought for Janet Souter.
Emma Wheeler did think about her, but only for a short time. Old Miss Souter was always ready to complain about the least little thing and didn’t deserve anybody’s concern.
A customer came in for two postal orders and stamps, followed closely by a senior citizen collecting his pension, followed even more closely by a long queue of housewives needing newly baked loaves, so it was well after half past ten before Miss Wheeler’s conscience pricked her.
‘What do you think, Phyllis?’ she asked the young girl who served at the bakery counter. ‘Should I tell the police about Miss Souter, so they can go to find out if there is anything wrong with her?’
Phyllis Barclay was seventeen years old, and had been working for Miss Wheeler for nearly a year. She was a pretty little thing with long blonde hair, but she was rather shy and retiring. She considered the question carefully. She’d been on the sharp end of Janet Souter’s tongue more than once, and was completely terrified of her, but she didn’t like to think of the old woman lying ill on her own. Thank goodness it wasn’t her place to make the decision.
‘I don’t know, Miss Wheeler,’ she said at last. ‘Whatever you think’s best.’
The woman pursed her thin lips. Miss Souter would be livid if the policeman went up there and there was nothing wrong with her, and she’d blame the postmistress for interfering in what was none of her business. It would be better to play safe and do nothing. ‘If Derek Paul comes in today,’ she said, to salve her conscience, ‘I’ll have a word with him, but I think I’ll leave things as they are meantime.’ She picked up her pencil and started doing some calculations on a piece of paper.
Phyllis could sympathise with her employer’s reluctance to act on Willie Arthur’s information. Miss Souter was not a person you would knowingly offend.
At half past four, the boy went back to collect the evening papers, and ducked down behind the counter for his bag. ‘Did you do anything about what I told you in the morning?’
Emma Wheeler looked slightly guilty as she pushed forward a bundle of Evening Citizens. ‘No, Willie. I did mean to speak to Derek Paul if he came in, but he must have been for his Courier before you told me, though I didn’t notice.’
‘Oh well, I suppose she’s OK.’ The boy shoved the papers into his bag and slung it over his shoulder.
He forgot all about the matter until he was nearing the end of his round, but when he approached Honeysuckle Cottages and saw that there was still no smoke issuing from the middle chimney, he felt most apprehensive.
He took the steps in one leap, and ran along the path. The milk bottle was still sitting at Miss Souter’s door, and he wondered what he should do. Luckily, the door of Number One opened, and Mrs Wakeford came out. She was a pleasant, friendly woman, who often gave the boy a newly baked biscuit or a piece of sponge cake, and he decided to ask her advice.
She spoke before he could find the right words. ‘Willie, would you please post this letter for me when you get back to the shop? Here’s 40p and you can keep the change from the stamp.’
‘Mrs Wakeford,’ the boy said hastily, before she went inside again. ‘I’ll put a stamp on for you, of course, but there’s something . . . Miss Souter’s fire hasn’t been on all day, and her milk’s still at her door.’
‘Oh, my goodness!’ The woman looked flustered. ‘Have you rung her bell to see if she’s there?’
‘No,’ he admitted. ‘But there was no sign of her in the morning, either, and she’s usually up before I deliver the papers.’
‘You should have told me in the morning, Willie. She must have been taken ill. You wait there and I’ll go and phone the police station.’
He wondered why she wasn’t going to phone the doctor if she thought the old woman was ill, but it was nothing to do with him. He slipped along to Number Three to deliver the Citizen and put his finger on the bell of the middle house on his way back, but nothing stirred. Miss Souter was definitely incapable of answering the door.
At last, Mrs Wakeford reappeared. ‘Constable Paul’s going to ask Sergeant Black to come up as soon as he comes back on duty, which shouldn’t be very long, but he told me to phone Doctor Randall as well.’
‘I’d better finish my round, Mrs Wakeford. I’ve just five for the foot of the Lane, then I’ll be back.’ Willie thought she looked as if she needed somebody to be with her, and he didn’t want to miss any of the excitement when the sergeant came.
When he ran off, Mabel Wakeford stood wringing her hands for a few seconds, before she went inside to have a small glass of the brandy she kept purely for medicinal purposes. If ever she needed it, now was the time.
Willie returned in less than ten minutes, just before the police sergeant and the doctor, whose cars arrived one after the other. They parked in the Lane, to save congestion on the High Street, and walked quickly along to the steps where Mrs Wakeford and her stalwart, rather excited, protector were waiting.
Sergeant Black took charge immediately. ‘Something wrong with Miss Souter, eh? Doctor, you’d better give me a hand to break down her door.’
‘No, no.’ The woman clutched at his sleeve. ‘There’s no need to break in, her back door’s never locked. You can come through my house, to save you going all the way round by the road. You’ll just have to go over the fence.’
‘Right you are, Mrs Wakeford.’ John Black was slightly puzzled. If she knew that Miss Souter’s back door wasn’t locked, why hadn’t she gone in herself to see what had happened to her neighbour? Still, the old woman had a reputation for quarrelling with everybody, so they may not have been on very good terms.
Mabel watched him striding over the low fence which separated the gardens, and waited for him to try the handle of Janet Souter’s back door. Her legs were shaking, and her heart was beating twenty to the dozen.
‘It is open,’ the sergeant said. ‘I’d be obliged if you didn’t come in, though, Mrs Wakeford, nor you, Willie. Just the doctor and myself, in case there’s anything . . .’
James Randall smiled apologetically to her, then followed John Black into Miss Souter’s kitchen. Almost immediately, the sergeant’s head popped round the door again.
‘She’s lying on the kitchen floor, I’m afraid. I think she’s dead, but the doctor’s examining her now. I’d suggest that you both go inside to wait, because I’ll have to take statements from you, you understand, and it’s cold out there.’
Willie noticed that his companion seemed to be rooted to the spot, and took hold of her elbow. ‘Come on, Mrs Wakeford, I’ll make you a cup of tea when we get inside.’
She went with him, as docile as a baby, and collapsed inelegantly into an armchair by her fireside. ‘She’s been murdered,’ she whispered.
The boy’s mouth and eyes sprung wide open. ‘M . . . murdered?’ This would be something to brag about to his pals, if it were true – that he’d been there at the finding of a murdered woman. Slowly, his features returned to normal. ‘How d’you know she’s been murdered?’
‘I just know.’
It struck him that she might be suffering from shock, and hot, sweet tea was the remedy for that, as he’d learned at the first-aid class he’d attended after school a few months ago.
He went through to the kitchen, and felt quite important as he filled the kettle and ignited the gas with the torch that hung at the side of the cooker. He even began to whistle while he looked in the cupboard for cups, but he stopped the tuneless noise when he remembered what had happened next door. Murder! He might get his photograph in the papers. ‘Boy alerts police to murder of woman’, the headline would say.
When he returned to the living room with a loaded tray, he found that Mrs Wakeford was still sprawled in the same position as when he’d left her.
‘She’s been poisoned,’ she informed him in a low voice. ‘That arsenic she had was too big a temptation . . . and she told everybody about it.’
‘That’s right,’ Willie nodded eagerly. ‘I heard some folk saying what she needed was a dose of her own arsenic. But that was only talk,’ he added heartily. ‘None of them would really have done it.’
‘Somebody did.’ Mrs Wakeford stirred her tea for the third time, then laid the spoon down on the tray because the boy had not given her a saucer.
‘I came straight over,’ announced Sergeant Black, appearing from the passage. ‘I’ve left the doctor with Miss . . . the dead woman, for I can’t help him with that. Now!’ He took out his notebook and held his Biro ready. ‘To business! Who was the first person to notice that something might be wrong with Miss Souter?’
‘Me.’ Willie was practically jumping with excitement. ‘I noticed her milk hadn’t been taken in when I was delivering her paper in the morning.’
The sergeant looked up, surprised that it had been so long ago, then he bent back to his task. ‘What time would that be?’
‘Must have been about twenty to nine, for I just had to deliver one at the bottom of the Lane before I went back to the shop to leave my bag. I was in the school playground just before the bell went at five to.’
Black was writing in a methodical, careful manner, and the boy paused, to give him time to catch up.
‘I thought she might be ill, ’cos she’s usually up long before I get here, so I looked in her bedroom window first. Her bed had been made, but I couldn’t see her anywhere, so I had a look in her living room, as well. She wasn’t there, either.’ Willie was relishing his starring role.
‘Did you tell anyone about it at that time?’
‘No, you see, I was a bit behind with my round, so I just carried on. But I did notice her fire wasn’t on, so I told Miss Wheeler when I went back.’
‘Ah!’ The sergeant’s Biro was moving much more quickly now. ‘Do you know if she did anything about it?’
‘She said she’d tell Derek . . . er . . . Constable Paul, but when I asked her at half past four, she said she hadn’t seen him all day. I think she was too scared of Miss Souter to do anything.’
‘I see. What time would you say it was when you delivered the evening papers here?’
Willie considered. ‘I’d say it was about twenty past five, but you can check Mrs Wakeford’s phone call to the police station, because she phoned as soon as I told her about the milk.’
‘Thank you, Willie.’ John Black turned to the woman, now sitting upright in her seat. ‘Have you anything to add to what Willie’s told me, Mrs Wakeford?’
‘It was her own arsenic that killed her.’ The whispered words seemed to be forced out of her.
The Biro hovered for a moment. ‘Arsenic? Where on earth did Janet Souter get hold of arsenic?’
‘She got it from Davie Livingstone for killing the rats in her garden, and she went round boasting about it. Anybody with a grudge against her could have done it.’
A sense of disquiet made the sergeant feel very much at a loss. ‘Ah, yes . . . well . . . but a grudge isn’t the usual reason for committing murder. It needs something far stronger than a grudge to drive a person, or persons, to those lengths.’ He stared at her intently, and she squirmed under his scrutiny.
‘At least, you know now how she died,’ she said, on the defensive. ‘That should save you time in your investigations.’
‘Where did Davie get the arsenic?’
‘They used it in the glass factory where he worked before he retired. He took some home for the rats in his garden.’
A short silence indicated that the sergeant was rather unsure of what to do next, but his puzzled face suddenly cleared. ‘Why are you so positive that it was the arsenic that killed her, Mrs Wakeford? Do you know something about her death?’
She looked more agitated than ever, and bit her lip.
‘Come now,’ Black persisted. ‘You’d better tell me whatever it is you think you know. We’ll find it all out eventually.’
Her eyes looked helplessly at him before she burst out, ‘I didn’t want to have to tell you this, and it’s maybe not true, but Janet Souter told me, last Sunday night, that her two nephews were trying to kill her. She said they’d put arsenic in her flour bin and her sugar bin. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that’s what she said.’ The woman seemed happier now that she’d told him.
The sergeant wasn’t happier. This complication was something he could have done without, but he couldn’t ignore it. In the middle of phrasing his next question in his mind, he became aware that young Willie Arthur was standing, eyes like saucers, drinking in every word that the woman had uttered.
Clearing his throat, he said, ‘Willie, thank you very much for answering my questions so well, but I needn’t keep you here any longer. And Mrs Wakeford has just made a statement which must be kept absolutely confidential, so you must never breathe a word of it to anybody. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Sergeant.’ Willie’s blissful expression revealed his pleasure at sharing a secret with the police.
‘And Willie,’ John Black added, when the boy turned to go, ‘remember, I’m trusting you.’
‘Yes, sir. You can depend on me. Scouts’ honour.’ His tousled head was held high when he went out.
The sergeant turned to the woman, who was sitting on the edge of her chair nervously. ‘Now, Mrs Wakeford. Tell me everything you know.’
‘If anybody in Tollerton had to end up murdered, I’m glad it was that Miss Souter.’
‘Derek! That’s not a nice way to speak of the dead.’
‘She wasn’t a very nice person, Sergeant.’
‘Even so!’ Police Sergeant John Black drummed his Biro on the counter, and the young constable recognised this sign of deep thought and kept quiet, waiting for the profound utterance which should follow.
Sure enough, in a few minutes, the Sergeant looked up from his contemplation of the blank form in front of him. ‘You’re right, though, Derek. She wasn’t a very nice person,’ he declaimed, with all the wisdom of an oracle.
Derek Paul smiled. ‘I don’t think there’s a soul in the village that’ll be sorry she’s . . .’
‘I wouldn’t say that. She aye made big contributions to all the kirk appeals.’ Black had obviously tried to find at least one saving grace in the character of the dead woman.
Derek snorted. ‘My mother said Miss Souter was trying to buy her way into heaven, for she wouldn’t get in any other way, but she made such a song and dance about it, it wouldn’t work.’
‘There’s aye some sort of appeal,’ the sergeant said, ruefully. ‘My hand never seems to be out of my pocket. If it’s not Oxfam, or a disaster or Save the Children, it’s the Fabric Fund, or the Organ Fund, or some other kind of Fund.’
‘And she went to the kirk every Sunday.’ To the young constable, a non-church-goer, like most of his age group, this was the final proof of a depraved mind.
‘If you went a bit oftener, lad, you’d have more Christian charity.’ Black looked down again. ‘I’d better get this report made out. Name of deceased . . . Miss Janet Souter. Address . . . 2 Honeysuckle Cottages, Ashgrove Lane, Tollerton, Grampian Region. Age . . . How old would you say she was? Eighty?’
The young man grimaced cheekily. ‘Nearer a hundred, I’d say, by the way she spoke sometimes.’
‘Oh no. She wasn’t as old as Mrs Gray down the Lane, and she told the postie it was her ninetieth birthday last Tuesday. I’ll put down eighty, anyway.’
There was silence while the sergeant finished completing the form, then he straightened up. ‘I’d better go back to her cottage and have a proper sniff round. I got such a shock when I found her lying there, nothing else registered, and that business with Mrs Wakeford absolutely shattered me.’
‘Is this your first murder case, Sergeant?’ Derek was rather excited about it, because nothing very interesting ever happened in the area.
John Black frowned. ‘We don’t know yet if it is murder. The doctor was positive it was a heart attack, then Mrs Wakeford said the old lady had been poisoned. Everything would have been plain sailing, if it hadn’t been for that.’
‘So you’ve to wait for the result of the post-mortem to find out the exact cause of death?’
‘To confirm the doctor’s diagnosis, I hope. Where’s my hat?’
The sergeant’s cheesecutter had a habit of finding new places of concealment, but the constable located it under a pile of official communications and held it out.
Black grabbed it ungraciously. ‘You know where I’ll be if anybody needs me?’
‘Yes, Sergeant.’ Derek Paul was quite happy to be left in sole charge of the police station. Tollerton was no hotbed of crime, and he’d have peace to finish the Courier crossword he’d started that morning. He’d only three clues to solve, so it shouldn’t take him long, though they were a bit tricky.
Outside, John Black placed his hat on his head carefully. Not at an angle, like some of those fancy TV bobbies wore theirs, but square on and well down, as befitted a sergeant with his length of service. He wondered, for a moment, about taking the car. It wasn’t too cold for November, and a brisk walk would do him good, for all the distance he had to go. The bright moonlight swung the balance, so he left his car keys in his pocket and started up the High Street.
‘Good evening, Sergeant.’
‘Oh, hello, Mrs Gill. I didn’t notice you.’ He tipped his hat and would have kept on walking, but the woman stood up, smiling knowingly.
‘You were busy thinking about the murder, I suppose. I could hardly believe it when they told me old Janet Souter had been poisoned. She was asking for trouble, of course, keeping that arsenic in her shed.’
‘Oh?’ He pricked up his ears, hoping for some relevant information. ‘Who told you about that?’
Mrs Gill laughed. ‘She told me herself, last week. She was telling everybody she met. I think it made her feel important, or something, but it backfired on her for she must have put the idea into somebody’s head.’
‘Excuse me, Mrs Gill, but I have to be getting on.’ Black felt quite annoyed, not so much by the unfruitful hindrance, but by the extra doubt the woman had raised in his mind.
James Randall had been quite definite that the old lady had died as a result of myocardial infarction, as he’d called it at first: plain heart-failure, to the layman. Then Mrs Wakeford had upset the applecart with her little contribution, and a second assumption of murder by poisoning made it two too many for the sergeant’s peace of mind.
He strode purposefully along, and was passing the chip shop when the postman came out carrying a fat bundle wrapped in white paper and sending out a very appetising aroma.
‘Off to carry on your investigations?’ Ned French was smiling in the same knowing way as Mrs Gill had been. ‘Have you found out yet how the murderer gave the old woman the arsenic?’
‘I suppose Miss Souter told you about the arsenic, as well?’ The sergeant’s voice was tinged with sarcasm.
‘Yes, she told me, and she even took me out to her shed to show me where she kept it.’ The postman’s smile disappeared, and he added, defensively, ‘But I’m not your man.’
‘Hell, no, Ned. I never thought you were.’
John Black carried on into Ashgrove Lane, and opened the dead woman’s back gate. He walked up the garden and went into the shed, which stood halfway between the gate and the house. On the shelf, sitting there for all to see, was a plastic bag maybe a quarter full of a white substance. This would be the arsenic that everyone but the police seemed to have heard about before, but it would have to be tested to make sure.
He left it where it was – Miss Souter may not have been poisoned at all – and pulled the door shut, then turned the big key protruding from the lock and slipped it in his pocket. No sense in leaving the stuff easily available for any other prospective killer who wanted to dispose of somebody.
He let himself into the cottage and walked through the small kitchen, across the passage to the not-much-larger living room, where he sat down heavily on the two-seater settee. Removing his hat, he laid it on the trolley beside him, and smoothed down his thinning grey hair.
He should really be searching for clues . . . No, he shouldn’t. If it was murder, he shouldn’t touch anything, and, anyway, the place was absolutely crammed with furniture so he wouldn’t know where to start.
In what had once been a bed recess, there stood an old oak sideboard and an ancient Welsh dresser. Low cabinets flanked the tiled fireplace, one holding a large geranium and the other a bulky wireless. There was no sign of a television set, so Miss Souter hadn’t moved with the times, and she wasn’t missing much, Black reflected, with the drivel that passed as entertainment nowadays.
In front of the cabinets were two Cintique chairs, and four upright chairs were arranged round the gate-legged table under the window, but he presumed she used the trolley for eating on when she was on her own.
Curiosity made him look behind him, and his eyebrows rose at the sight of the massive bookcase, the books, all shapes and sizes, stuck in higgledy-piggledy. Janet Souter obviously had a wide taste in reading. Ethel M. Dell and Barbara Cartland rubbed shoulders with Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh. Leather-bound Shakespeares sat side by side with dog-eared Kiplings, Irwin Shaw with Catherine Cookson. A few surprises!
It occurred to him as he faced the fireside again that, with the settee he was sitting on, and the trolley, the old lady must have had a hell of a job hoovering! If she had such a thing. But he hadn’t come here to test her cleanliness, so he tried to channel his thoughts more constructively.
Whatever the result of the autopsy, he’d have to do something about the statement made by Mrs Wakeford after the body had been found. At first, he’d believed that the poor lady had cracked up with shock, but Mrs Gill and Ned French had given him cause to think again.
It was quite upsetting, really: everything had seemed so straightforward.
The sergeant opened his eyes – he had not been asleep, but could often recall events more clearly if there was nothing to distract him – and stared, unseeingly, at the blackness of Miss Souter’s fireplace. It was several minutes before it registered with him that the cinders hadn’t been cleared out or reset. His brain came to life instantly.
This meant that the old woman must have died last night, before she went to bed at all, since her bedclothes were undisturbed. He became more uneasy about what Mrs Wakeford had told him earlier that evening, even though the doctor had stated categorically that it couldn’t have been a violent death.
‘There are none of the symptoms of poisoning evident.’ James Randall had been astonished when he learned what Mrs Wakeford had said. ‘It’s come to a pretty pass when a doctor’s word is doubted.’
‘I’m not doubting you.’ Black felt confused. If he believed Mrs Wakeford, he was bound to be doubting Randall.
‘That’s what it sounded like.’ The doctor had packed his bag angrily. ‘Anyway, the post-mortem’ll prove me right. Janet Souter did not die from the effects of arsenic poisoning. It was a coronary, pure and simple.’
‘I’ll have to tell them about the arsenic, though.’
‘Tell them what you bloody well like. It makes no difference.’
Remembering the contretemps, John Black sighed. He’d never come up against anything like this, for as long as he’d been in the Force, and he’d only a couple of months to go. The mortuary-cold atmosphere in the room suddenly penetrated his bones, and he picked up his hat and stood up.
But . . . if it wasn’t heart failure, he could perhaps solve the murder single-handed and retire in a blaze of glory. A great weight lifted from his troubled mind as he made his way to the back door.
It should be simple enough to find out what had happened. It would just be a matter of proving which of Miss Souter’s two nephews had actually done the job.
Locking the door securely, he wished that he knew what had gone on in this cottage to make the old woman suspect that they were trying to kill her.
John Black leaned back with a sigh. ‘Well, Derek, that’s the problem passed on. The Thornkirk lot’ll be here as soon as they can.’
‘It’s a shame you had to call them in,’ the young constable remarked. ‘I’m sure we could have managed on our own, even if it was murder.’
The sergeant’s mouth screwed up. ‘Maybe . . . maybe not.’
He had thought about it all the way back from Honeysuckle Cottages, and had come to the conclusion it was more than likely that he’d end up with egg on his face if he tried to cope without help. Murder was the big one, and it needed experience to carry it off.
It was going to be difficult to explain why he’d waited for almost two hours before notifying Thornkirk, but Randall would verify that he’d said the death was from heart failure. And it could be heart failure at that. It was this story of Mrs Wakeford’s that was the stumbling block.
He was going to look foolish either way, the sergeant reflected. On the one hand, for not believing the doctor, if he was correct, and on the other, for not reporting a murder immediately, if it was murder after all.