I CONSIDERED DR Poynder’s words before considering my options before realising that there were hardly any for me to consider.
Keep him in conversation, I advised myself. No man will kill a woman while he has the opportunity to talk about himself.
‘Why did you kill Beryl Walker?’ I asked.
‘Because she was stupid,’ he explained, which seemed a little harsh to me for, by the same yardstick, half the population of Suffolk and three quarters of the House of Lords deserved to be slaughtered.
‘I only wanted her to give me some relief,’ Poynder was explaining. ‘Such acts are nothing to those guttersnipes, but she made a fuss and pulled my muffler down and recognised me.’ He huffed in exasperation. ‘If she had spoken out I would be ruined. What else could I do?’
‘And so you put your professional standing before her life,’ I pointed out in disgust and winced as the point dug in a little further.
‘What was the life of one street slug to the lives that I have saved and shall save?’ he demanded. ‘I delivered twins by a caesarean on a dead woman last week. Those two lives more than expiate the taking of one.’
I had a feeling that there was more to morality than arithmetic, but I had a stronger feeling that this was not the time to debate utilitarianism.
‘Dolores knew a great many details of the killings,’ I recollected. ‘Surely you were taking a risk in telling her?’
Poynder wiped a tear from his damaged eye.
‘It was partly vanity,’ he admitted. ‘Since my wife met that Ryan woman, her respect for me declined noticeably. She even questioned some of my opinions.’ He surveyed my face but, unable to detect my disapproval of such headstrong behaviour, continued, ‘I wanted her to remember how clever and resourceful I am but, when she expressed her horror at my actions, I increased the doses of her medication.’
‘Arsenic,’ I said.
‘Amongst other things. Some of the other drugs cause hallucinations and delusions. I told Dolores all about the slayings in detail, but in a way that suggested I was merely reminding her of what she had confessed to me. She was so muddled by then that she firmly believed she had committed the deeds. My wife was my insurance policy. Should the police trace any evidence to this house, I had a culprit ready to deliver into their hands.’
‘Speaking of which, what happened to Dolores’s hand?’ It was obvious that the cuts I had seen when she lay in her coffin were not caused by an exploding umbrella.
‘Oh that.’ He flapped his own ungashed hand. ‘She broke a window in a foolish and ungrateful bid to escape.’
‘Ungrateful?’ I queried and he nodded.
‘She had everything that she needed here.’
‘Except love,’ I pointed out, though – amongst other things – I could have listed freedom, a bathtub and clean bedding.
‘Women talk a great deal about love, but they do not understand how it is inexorably bound to lust,’ Poynder told me. ‘If it is not then it is merely affection and one can get that from a dog.’
I knew that he was trying to provoke me but I battled on, determined not to take the bait.
‘And the burn on her face?’
‘She had many more on different parts of her body,’ Poynder told me. ‘Dolores set fire to her mattress in an absurd attempt to burn her door down. I had to ban all candles and lamps after that.’
It was clear that he was getting restless, for he had plans other than making conversation, I suspected.
‘What about Wally Hopkins, the boy you hanged?’ I tried and the blade dug in. ‘Ouch.’
I was almost certain that my skin was pierced.
Not fisherman’s knots, I realised. The bowline is used for tourniquets and the reef was probably, in fact, a surgeon’s knot.
‘Sorry,’ Poynder apologised, as if he had tangoed on my toe at a tea dance, and he eased the pressure a fraction. ‘He saw me with his sister, followed me home and attempted to blackmail me. Need I say more?’
‘Forgive me, Lady Violet. Allow me to summon you a cab,’ might be a good start, went through my head.
‘I see,’ I floundered. ‘I suppose you felt that you had to silence him.’
‘Well of course I did,’ Poynder concurred, my remark being obviously obvious, but he relaxed a little at hearing what he took to be my approval of his actions, for even ruthless multiple murderers do not care to have their actions depreciated.
‘I was just wondering…’ I struggled on, but there was such a jumble in my head. This was worse than when I had tried to write Who Killed Rock Cobbin? in which there were thirty-nine victims and forty-two murderers, some of whom went on to kill each other.
‘Go on,’ Poynder coaxed me, in much the same way that he might encourage a patient to describe her symptoms.
You really should get that eye seen to, I almost advised before remembering what had made it so angry.
‘About Danny the Diamond King,’ I dredged from the swamp of confusedness.
And, to my astonishment, the doctor blushed.
‘Oh yes,’ he laughed sheepishly. ‘That was all a bit of a misunderstanding,’ Poynder admitted and sucked his lips. ‘Dixon consulted me at the clinic and foolishly said that he had seen me in the Lowers and was going to tell The Chronical. I told him that his problem required specialist equipment and to come to my house that evening. It was simplicity itself to strap him to a chair. You would be surprised how much people trust their doctors. As luck would have it I had recently acquired a new set of dental forceps, and so I extracted an upper incisor. What exactly had he seen and who had he told? I wondered. He screamed, of course, and claimed that he had only meant that he wanted everybody to know what good works I performed. I took out another tooth but he stuck to his story. He still stuck to it when all his incisors and dog teeth were gone and it was obvious that he was telling the truth, but I had some hawksbills and eagles that I was keen to put to the test.’
‘And so you took out all his teeth,’ I contributed and he clicked his fingers.
‘I could hardly let him go after that, and I was just looking through my scalpel drawer when the asinine oaf rocked the chair over and smashed a brand-new electrical table lamp,’ Poynder recalled furiously. ‘I was so angry that I ripped the flex out and strangled him with it. Well,’ he held out his hands like Tom Harley, the Sudbury Football Club defender feigning innocence after tripping up the referee, ‘can you blame me?’
‘Some people might,’ I suggested tentatively. Much as I was loath to antagonise a man who had the means to impale me so conveniently to hand, I could not bring myself to condone his actions. ‘Another thing puzzles me,’ I remembered.
‘What is it this time?’ Poynder sighed like the pestered parent of a small child.
‘Dolores thought that the woman who was attacked in the gardens was mistaken for Edwina,’ I said, ‘but your maid was already dead.’
‘But was she?’ Poynder countered. ‘The Edwina I knew was young and beautiful but, at close range, I saw that the woman in the square was haggard and grey. I knew that Edwina had several sisters.’
‘Five,’ I confirmed, but he wafted the number away.
‘I did not even know if one of them might have been a twin.’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘So I began to worry that I may have assassinated the wrong woman.’
‘There was never a right one,’ I said and realised that Martha must have seen her friend’s maid at Haglin House but had not recognised her in the square, so changed Edwina must have been by poverty, grime and her disfigurement.
Poynder hardly paused in his narrative.
‘I went in search of her and, when I saw what looked like Edwina in the Monastery Gardens, I decided not to take the risk of letting her live. Besides which,’ he chuckled, ‘I was rather enjoying exterminating those creatures by then.’
‘Those creatures,’ I responded in horror, ‘were all human beings.’
‘Hardly.’ No matter how often Miss Kidd had told me that there was no such verb, Poynder piffed.
‘I do not understand,’ I admitted, ‘how the bullet entered Edwina’s head from above.’
‘A simple stratagem.’ He tugged lightly at his mutton-chops. ‘I tossed a shilling at her feet to ensure that she looked away and did not see me approach. At the last minute she bobbed to pick it up. I spoke her name; she glanced up and I shot her in the face.’ His cheek ticked. ‘The gun was supposed to be silenced but, as you must have heard, it was not. It was also designed to fire two bullets in quick succession but the second jammed in the barrel.’
‘You should ask for your money back,’ I advised and he glowered.
‘Enough of this.’ He glanced at the garden.
Did that mean he was going to let me go? I wondered fleetingly while Poynder fiddled with his trousers.
Was he checking the buttons?
Unchecking them, I diagnosed.
‘Women are lucky,’ Poynder informed me, though I did not feel especially fortunate at that particular moment. ‘They do not have desires.’
I would not have minded a good strong cup of coffee, but I did not think that one was likely to be offered.
‘Men have such powerful needs,’ he continued, ‘that they must satisfy or be consumed by them.’ He licked his lips. ‘Luckily you are here to satiate my urges.’
‘I most certainly am not,’ I assured him, but Poynder’s fingers slid under my collar and he wrenched, ripping my dress down to my shoulder, buttons flying off at the back.
‘Come to Daddy, little girl,’ he rasped, his spittle spraying into my face.
‘Stop now before it is too late,’ I said firmly but Poynder’s hand had slipped under my dress.
‘A pity you have breasts,’ he commented, though he must have guessed that already and I could have named a few men who would have disagreed with him.
Kick him, I urged myself, but my lower legs were pinned against the side of the desk and, even if they had not been, I could not argue with six inches of sharpened steel at my neck.
He adjusted his grip on the material and I felt it rip further. Poynder was panting already.
‘Give Daddy a kiss,’ he urged and lowered his head.
I twisted my face away and yelped as I felt the point dig in.
‘A kiss, little girl,’ he insisted, and it was then I decided he could do all the skewering he liked but I was damned if I would cooperate.
I might die, I knew, but in my situation, Ruby would go down fighting and so would I. I would chew half of Poynder’s disgusting lip off or go for his eye again.
‘I must warn you, Dr Poynder…’ I began, but was interrupted by a crash and the sounds of breaking glass.
Poynder’s head shot up.
‘What the…’
‘If you dint let milady goo this instance,’ a familiar and very welcome voice yelled, ‘I do make a hole in your face what wint never take repair.’
Poynder stood up and back.
‘This woman tricked her way into my home and threatened me with my paperknife,’ he protested as I struggled to stand upright.
‘And I do break my way in and threat you with a revolver,’ Agnust told him, poking the barrel through a broken pane. ‘Open the door.’
Poynder hesitated but reached into a waistcoat pocket and brought out a key to do as he was told.
‘Stand you back against the wall,’ Agnust instructed and, mindful of her unwavering aim, he obeyed, slowly edging away.
‘Do he outrage you, Lady Violet?’ she enquired without taking her eyes off him. ‘For, if he do, I make certain sure he never do vi’late another silly girl.’
Silly girl? Much as I tried to tell myself that this was no time to take umbrage, it was.
‘Luckily you arrived in time,’ I assured her, making hopeless attempts to straighten my attire.
‘Luck int nothin’ to do on it,’ she asserted scornfully. ‘I tell you Gerrund is all very well,’ she reminded me, ‘but you need a good woman in a n’emergency.’
‘And you are a very good woman indeed,’ I assured her, and Agnust was still blushing when she pulled the trigger.