‘MR PARRISH?’
‘Paris.’
‘Yes. This is Detective Inspector Dewar from Great Wensham. We met last night.’
‘Right.’
‘I’m calling because we’ve had the lab results on the items you brought in.’
‘Yes?’ Charles was very tense. After the collapse of all his previous thinking about Tottie Roundwood’s involvement in the case, he was fully prepared to be dismissed as a self-dramatising crank. The sceptical tone from the other end of the phone was not encouraging:
‘Well, let’s start with the powder in the jar. That was indeed a preparation made from a vegetable substance . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘. . . though not in fact from a fungus . . .’
‘Oh. But aconite is a poison, isn’t it?’
‘Can be. What was found in that jar, however, would have purely medicinal applications.’
‘Oh.’
‘Something to do with homeopathic medicine. Not a subject on which I’m an expert, Mr Parrish.’
‘Nor me.’ Though he knew that Tottie Roundwood was. He shivered at the thought of how close he’d come to making public accusations against her.
‘No. However, Mr Parrish, it appears that while the plant from which this powder originated is potentially poisonous, at the concentration in which it appears here, it is completely harmless. Or even, I suppose, beneficial, if you happen to be one of those weirdos who believes in homeopathic medicine.’
The scepticism had given way to downright contempt. ‘Now we come on to the contents of the whisky bottle . . .’
Charles prepared himself for a serious dressing-down about wasting police time and being a hysterical theatrical crackpot. But, to his surprise, DI Dewar continued, ‘Traces of poison were found there, Mr Parrish.’
‘A vegetable-based poison?’
‘No, no. A chemical poison. Mercuric chloride.’ There was a silence. ‘It seems you had a very lucky escape, Mr Parrish.’
‘Yes. And it also seems pretty definite that we have a poisoner in the Twelfth Night company, doesn’t it?’
The detective was too canny to commit himself to an opinion on the subject. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well, when you put what’s happened to me – or nearly happened to me – together with Sally Luther’s death . . .’ DI Dewar did not react. ‘Come on, the two must be connected, mustn’t they?’
‘Must they?’ He was not giving anything away. ‘Clearly, Mr Parrish, we need to talk to you further.’
‘Yes. When?’
‘Right away.’
‘The problem with that is . . .’ Charles Paris looked at his watch ‘. . . it’s now five forty-five. I have to be at Chailey Ferrars in three-quarters of an hour to get ready for tonight’s performance of Twelfth Night.’
‘Mr Parrish, if you’re suggesting that a play,’ the word was larded over with distaste, ‘should take precedence over a police investigation . . .’
‘I’m not. I’m fully aware of how serious this is. All I’m saying is that if I’m not there for the performance because I’m being interviewed by the police, it will cause very considerable disruption – and will also provide a warning to any guilty person in the company that your investigation is drawing close.’
There was a silence before DI Dewar conceded, ‘You may have a point, Mr Parrish.’
‘So that means you do think someone in the company is guilty?’
But again the detective wouldn’t be drawn. ‘What time does your play finish?’
‘It comes down at ten-thirty.’
‘And at that time all of the company members will be around Chailey Ferrars?’
‘Yes. Why, are you thinking of questioning everyone then?’
‘Mr Parrish.’ The detective’s stock of patience was quickly becoming depleted. ‘We are in the habit of conducting investigations in our own way. And we are not in the habit of providing information to irrelevant members of the public on how our investigations are going. We will speak again soon, Mr Parrish.’
And the phone was put down with some force.
Charles hadn’t eaten anything since his poisoning of the night before. To his surprise, when his landlady suggested some scrambled eggs before he went out to the show, the idea appealed.
She was a good landlady, with that quality that more landladies should manifest – unobtrusiveness. She brought his scrambled eggs into the dining room and left him on his own to eat them. From a rack by the fire he picked up a copy of one of the previous day’s broadsheet newspapers.
It was, inevitably, full of Sally Luther, but provided a less hysterical assessment of her importance than the tabloids had. Her death prompted a feature on the nature of media celebrity, in which one paragraph in particular caught Charles’s attention.
Sally Luther also suffered from the disadvantages of being public property. She received a disturbing sequence of letters from an obsessed male fan, whose infatuation for her soured into violent fantasies. She also inspired the attentions of a young woman, who took to following her around at a distance for some months. Though Sally frequently tried to engage her in conversation, the girl always ran off when approached.
This was a nuisance, but little more. However, the harassment became more worrying when Sally’s pet cat was found poisoned. And then the mysterious girl began to stake out Sally’s block of flats. The actress was justifiably unnerved by the sight every night of ‘a young blonde woman, her face hidden by the hood of her anorak, standing immobile under the street lamp opposite.’ Sally had been unwilling to call in the police before, but the new development changed her mind. Though the police never managed to catch the stalker, their presence ensured that the nuisance quickly ceased.
I wonder, thought Charles Paris. I wonder . . .
The image was vivid in his mind of a young woman hurrying through the rain, and a straggling wisp of blond hair escaping from a Mutual Reliable anorak.