The Case of the Hidden Flame Read online

  His more responsible colleague, Constable Roach, had also done his best for the new boss. Carlos Alves had, in fact, traveled back from Guernsey that very morning, and the particulars of his stay on Jersey’s sister island and his smart sailboat all checked out. Graham could not rule Alves out of the investigation entirely, as he would have preferred, however. The history between Alves and the deceased was far too compelling for that, but Graham could at the very least put aside suspicion of any direct involvement in the killing. Besides, Graham pondered over yet another pot of fine tea later that afternoon, Alves was neither the kind of man, nor was he carrying the kind of grudge that spoke to poisoning as the preferred method of murder. He could well imagine a calculating, incensed Alves beating Sylvia to death or strangling her as he watched the last light leave her eyes, but not poisoning.

  No. Something else was going on, and they were still some way from what any investigator worth their salt would call a “lead.” Graham finished the tea, feeling energized, quick of mind, and light of feet as he often did at these times, and called Dr. Tomlinson.

  “Do call me Marcus, old chap. I have a feeling we’ll be spending a great deal of time together, and I don’t hold with needless formality,” Dr. Tomlinson told him.

  “Marcus it is, although I’m sorry to disturb you so late in the day. Do you have plans for dinner?” Graham wondered.

  “Thought you’d never ask.”

  Two hours later, in a quiet corner of the Bangkok Palace, the two men were being served cold, crisp Thai lager and an initial snack of sticky rice that came with an incautiously ferocious dip called jaew bong. Fearless of spicy food, Graham found to his delight that the innocuous-looking dip was laced with pungent shallots and searing chilies.

  Tomlinson, far more wary, resolved to dip each ball of rice only fleetingly into its midst. “Christ alive,” he muttered. “I might be too old for this kind of thing. How about a nice, uneventful coconut curry?” he asked the waiter. Graham ordered something that was marked with three chilies on the menu, and the waiter gave him a knowing smile, as if both impressed at Graham’s audacity and slightly fearful for his continued wellbeing.

  “So, I suppose we’re all rather curious,” Tomlinson began. “What brings an accomplished Detective Inspector like yourself…”

  “To a quiet, provincial backwater like this?” Graham smiled.

  “Well, something like that. It’s hardly a hotbed of ambition. Gorey Constabulary, I mean. The previous DI was in his position for sixteen years, between here and Guernsey, and showed absolutely no interest in ascending the ladder of investigative greatness,” Tomlinson explained. “He fit right in.”

  “But surely,” Graham countered, “Jersey is full of aspirational young people? Didn’t I read that the economy is booming?”

  “The banking sector, yes! The police sector, not so much.” The waiter set the steaming, aromatic coconut curry before the doctor, who inhaled the vapors with relish. “With so little to challenge them, beyond the odd missing person, the local force has been resting on its laurels pretty much continuously since the Newall murders. Even the cases involving corrupt bankers, that kind of thing, get sent over the water to the financial crime boffins who work on the mainland.”

  “Resting on their laurels, you say. I guess that includes Roach and Barnwell?” Graham asked as his own seafood curry arrived. Its deep, glossy redness gave ample warning of the raging fires within.

  “They’re good lads,” Tomlinson chuckled. “I was a little nervous of having them work on a murder investigation like this, but I’m sure they’ll do you proud. Just don’t count on miraculous flashes of insight from either of them.”

  “I won’t,” he said, trying the curry. It was excellent and supremely hot.

  “So beyond joining a booming economy, what brought you down here?” Tomlinson asked again. It was a persistence born not of an impolite, gossipy impulse, but of a genuine curiosity. Graham was so unlike his predecessor, far better trained, and much more polished and assured, that his presence seemed, at first glance, almost strange. In fact, Tomlinson had already dismissed the notion that Graham was sent down specifically because Sylvia Norquist’s murder was anticipated by someone in the London hierarchy. And that had sent him on a five-minute reverie that would have produced a pretty good plot for one of the thriller novels Tomlinson was known to pen in his free time.

  “The job came up,” Graham said simply, “and I applied.”

  “But why?” Tomlinson pressed.

  “Change of scenery, I suppose. A new challenge.”

  Tomlinson set down his spoon and dabbed his mouth with his napkin. “Challenge?”

  “Sure.”

  “Dear chap, your main challenge, this highly unusual murder aside, will be to keep yourself busy! You know that Roach plays solitaire on the reception desk for about three hours of each shift? And that Barnwell…” He paused. “I shouldn’t tell tales out of school.”

  “He drinks,” Graham said. “There’s a look in the eye. I recognize it all too well.” Something in Graham’s tone, a firm undercurrent of seriousness, told Tomlinson both that he knew what he was talking about, and that the experiences may well have been first-hand. On this matter, wisely, the doctor did not press further.

  A change of subject was in order. “Is there a Mrs. Graham?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “There was,” Graham told him, and Tomlinson immediately regretted the question. It did not take much digging, it seemed, to reveal the complexities of this new man. It wasn’t that Tomlinson didn’t accept Graham’s reasoning for transferring to this rural idyll. It just made more sense if there were deeper reasons. Perhaps, he wondered, Graham had been pushed as much as pulled toward an obscure assignment like this one. But if so, why not Scotland or a quiet Sussex village?

  “I’m sorry,” Tomlinson said openly. “None of my business.”

  “We were heading in different directions,” Graham said next. “We had very different priorities.”

  “Well, whatever your priorities aren’t, I’d say that you’ve already shown yourself to be an assiduous and competent detective,” Tomlinson said, raising a glass in salute to the new DI.

  “Too kind, Marcus.” Graham paused. “I guess that means you can call me David.

  “I will, if I may. The previous DI went by ‘Buster,’ but I hardly think that fits you.”

  Graham took a moment to laugh it out. The more he learned about his predecessor, the more he seemed the typically comical, buffoonish, rural cop stereotype. Seriously overweight, according to Harding. Lax with his personal hygiene, according to Barnwell, who himself didn’t smell as though he’d just stepped off the set of a deodorant commercial. “Sounds like quite the character,” was Graham’s compromised response.

  “A big pair of shoes to fill.” Both men laughed now, the ice thoroughly broken. Tomlinson was glad to see the younger man enjoying himself and the indelicate questions about his past forgotten.

  But it didn’t take Graham long to get back to business. “I’m afraid we have to talk about this blessed case,” Graham said, pouring Tomlinson some more beer.

  “Fire away, Detective Inspector. I’m as puzzled as you are, if I’m plain.”

  “What’s really bothering me at the moment,” Graham explained, “except for who might have killed her, of course, is the timing.”

  Tomlinson stirred the remaining third of his curry with his spoon. “Hmm?” he asked.

  “She was found dead a couple of hours after lunch, right?” His colleague nodded, his mouth full of lightly-spiced chicken. “So we assumed that the poison was delivered with lunch. Poor Marcella seems to have been the unwitting accessory.”

  “That’s as far as I’d got, too,” Tomlinson confirmed.

  “But you pinned her death to within an eighteen hour period. So, what if,” Graham asked, pointing his chopsticks at Tomlinson, “she was murdered the previous night and carried down the stairs?”

  Tomlinson w
ashed down the curry with a long pull on his beer before answering. “Buried in the dark, when nobody was about?” he conjectured. “Makes more sense than the murderer lugging a dead or dying Sylvia down those steps in broad daylight.”

  “And what about the poison?” Graham pressed.

  “Yes, I was coming to that. I reviewed some old textbooks, and you know, there actually aren’t a lot of poisons that leave so few signs for the post-mortem. The classics,” he said, ticking them off on his fingers, “are strychnine, cyanide, and arsenic. They all leave tell-tale indications of their role.”

  Graham made a wheeling motion with his chopsticks as he braved the nuclear firestorm that was his red seafood curry.

  “Strychnine, for example, causes convulsions that leave the body locked in an arched position. Arsenic leaves a smell of bitter almonds, famously,” he added. “But our Sylvia seems to have died from something that pretty quickly stopped her heart and her breathing without leaving much evidence behind.”

  “So, what are you thinking?” Graham asked, pausing to draw cool air across a scorched tongue.

  “Haven’t a clue, old chap. Give me another day to check with some colleagues in the business and to continue the postmortem.”

  The returning waiter heard the term and blanched slightly. “Is everything to your satisfaction, gentlemen?” he asked warily.

  “Only one thing,” Graham asked, now visibly sweating. “Next time I come in,” he said, pausing again to bring cool air into his mouth, “could you make mine a little hotter?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SERGEANT JANICE HARDING hovered uncertainly at the big double doors. Despite the authority of her rank and uniform, it was hard to shake the feeling that she was trespassing. The hallway was brightly lit but exceedingly quiet, not only because of the early hour, but also because not one of the “patients” in this part of the hospital would ever make a single sound again.

  “Isn’t this a little… unorthodox?” she asked DI Graham as he confidently swept down the hallway. Barnwell and Roach followed behind, Roach looking positively exhilarated.

  “We’re police officers, Sergeant,” he reminded her. “Police work has its dull moments and its exciting parts. And it also inevitably has things like this.”

  Graham pushed open the doors and found Dr. Tomlinson, clipboard in hand, standing by a mortuary table. He wore a face mask, and motioned for all four of his visitors to don them before continuing. Barnwell needed some assistance with his but got there in the end. Before them was a sight which brought different reactions from each officer.

  “I’d like to introduce Dr. Sylvia Norquist,” Tomlinson said with a singularly inappropriate flourish and brought back the white sheet to reveal the corpse. Harding’s hand flew to her mouth. Barnwell stared as though in the audience at a freak show. And Roach’s eyes narrowed studiously. For him, this was a learning opportunity and not one that was likely to come around very often.

  “Asphyxia, ladies and gentlemen. A dangerous constriction of the supply of oxygen to the brain, causing unconsciousness and death. This was the chief cause of Sylvia’s demise.”

  “But,” Graham said, continuing the explanation, “asphyxia doesn’t explain her death. It merely gives us the final reason why she expired. Every asphyxia has a cause. Not to sound like we’re in medical school right now or anything, but could you name some?” Graham asked the trio of officers.

  Roach raised a hand before Graham gave him a look. “Strangulation,” he offered.

  “That’s one,” Tomlinson agreed.

  “Smothering?” Harding tried.

  “That’s another,” Graham replied.

  “Depressurization? Like, on a plane?” Barnwell said next.

  “Sure. Other things are likely to kill you just as quickly way up there, but okay,” Tomlinson allowed. “But there are no signs of smothering, no paleness in the skin around the nose and mouth. No ligature markings,” he said, his pencil at Sylvia’s neck to illustrate the point, “which might indicate strangulation. And she certainly wasn’t on a plane when she died. So…”

  “What else causes asphyxia,” Roach thought aloud, “but doesn’t leave any traces?”

  “Here come two big words that I want you to get used to,” Tomlinson warned. “Tachycardic arrhythmia.” He paused. “Anyone want to try making sense of that?”

  Graham chuckled. “From medical school to linguistics class in one swift leap. Why do we do cardio exercise?”

  “To get our heart’s racing,” Harding offered, remembering her fitness instructor’s stern insistences.

  “Excellent. And what might an ‘arrhythmia’ be?” Graham asked.

  “Like a rhythm?” Roach tried.

  “Yes, but in this case,” Tomlinson said, his hand aloft in a lightly closed fist, “a lack of rhythm.” He pumped the fist in a steady pulse, but then it shuddered and failed, restarted and stopped again, jumping like a scratched record. “Something made her heart beat so abnormally un-rhythmically that it fatally compromised her ability to breathe.”

  Barnwell was fixated on the pulsing fist. “So, she went and had a heart attack and asphyxiated, at the same time?”

  “Well, one came as a result of the other, but you’ve got the idea, young man,” Tomlinson told him. “So… What was it? What could possibly make a healthy human heart behave like this?”

  All three stared down at the spotless, white tiles in thoughtful puzzlement. “Electricity?” Harding said first.

  “There would be characteristic burning under her skin,” Tomlinson said.

  “No stab wounds or signs that she was hit by anything? Roach said.

  “Not even a little bit. No signs of struggle in her room, either,” Graham said.

  Then Barnwell lit up. “Poison. You suspected that all along, didn’t cha?”

  Graham clapped the Constable on the shoulder and gave Tomlinson a wink. “Marcus, would you be good enough to introduce these fine officers to the murder weapon in this case?”

  They could not have been more keyed up if Sherlock Holmes were walking them through his deductions. “Aconitum variegatum,” Tomlinson announced, bringing from behind the table a small bunch of delicate, purple-blue flowers. “Of the order Ranunculales, but of course you knew that,” he grinned.

  “A plant did this to her?” Harding gasped.

  “Not just any plant,” Tomlinson told them, passing each a stalk topped with a group of the flowers. “You can see how it gets one of its colloquial names, ‘Monkshood.’”

  Even at first glance, they could. The center of each flower was protected by a tall, drooping, purple hood, and pairs of petals on either side. “They’re rather pretty,” Harding said. “Almost like something my grandmother would have in her garden.”

  “Oh, I agree,” Tomlinson said. “But like most colorful, attractive things in nature, the color is there as a warning. These things,” he said, taking the stalks back as though removing unlit sparklers from lighter-toting teenagers, “are bloody deadly. Mash up a big handful of these stalks and petals, dissolve the results in alcohol, and you have something called ‘tincture of aconite’, otherwise known as Wolfsbane.”

  “Sounds like something out of Harry Potter, doesn’t it?” Graham quipped. “But it’s real, and it’s not nice at all.”

  “Slip even a teaspoon of your tincture into someone’s drink,” Tomlinson told them, “and your victim would be as dead as a doornail inside four or six hours, tops. But it doesn’t show up on a toxicology screen and leaves behind neither a smell nor color that a post-mortem might pick up.”

  “Wow,” Roach breathed.

  “Indeed, Constable. It’s not something,” Tomlinson said with a tone of pride, “that your garden-variety pathologist would have spotted. There were few signs, you see. Tiny amounts of foam. Not many things make us literally ‘foam at the mouth.’”

  “I suppose not,” Harding said, eyeing the corpse warily.

  “And then we found that her stomach was en
tirely empty. That’s normally only as a result of having vomited very heavily. If someone is poisoned,” Tomlinson told them, “this can be the best thing for them.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to… whatcha call it,” Barnwell was saying, “induce vomiting?”

  “You are,” the pathologist agreed. “And she did. But not fast enough, unfortunately. I could tell from the way the sand clung to her that she’d been sweating before her death. All these symptoms are indicative of poisoning by aconitum or Wolfsbane,” he concluded, satisfied with his own work.

  Graham took over again. “The poison also causes the heart problems we talked about. This, in turn, stopped Sylvia’s breathing and caused the asphyxia. Can you believe that growing and owning the plants, even the tincture, is perfectly legal?”

  “It’s been used for centuries in Chinese traditional medicine,” Tomlinson added. “And aromatherapy. Quite safe on the skin, but damned near always fatal if you’re dosing someone’s drink with it.”

  Barnwell’s fingers clicked. “The Chardonnay.”

  Roach stared at his colleague as though he’d stolen his girlfriend, but Graham was impressed. “The Chardonnay, and the glass it was in. Those are the most promising pieces of evidence, but there’s no bloody sign of them.”

  Tomlinson covered the body. “Not yet, anyway. Fingers crossed, eh?” He thanked the team and ushered them out. “Keep in touch, David. We’re getting close, I can feel it.”

  The four talked the matter through all the way back to the station and then in an animated, focused huddle in DI Graham’s small office. Graham was anxious to know what Barnwell had learned during the previous day’s sleuthing. “I saw you striding around that hotel with a purposeful air, Constable. What did you discover?”

  Barnwell flipped through his notebook. “It’s pretty much as we expected, sir. The Pilkingtons, well… They’re a funny pair, sir. Very argumentative at the moment. She’s furious with him for hiding the return of his cancer and for spending time with Sylvia without her knowing.”