Murder Strikes Pink Read online

  Hugh, bored stiff, for he had given up riding two years ago, sweltering in the suit he had worn from the sheer terror of being incorrectly dressed in anything else, had sat all day in the enclosure, while his mother, short, square, grey-haired and wearing, he thanked God, a cotton dress and not those unspeakable jeans, had bustled backwards and forwards, plying her children with food and drink, helping Sarah with studs, holding the pony while she visited the Ladies, offering advice and support. Now he saw her at the enclosure entrance signalling to him grotesquely. He got up and threading his way through the mostly untenanted deck chairs, he wondered bitterly why she couldn’t behave like other people. ‘Come on,’ she called loudly. ‘We’re all boxed up and ready to go. And for goodness’ sake take that coat off, Hughie, you look like a boiled lobster.’

  ‘I’m not in the least hot,’ he answered stiffly.

  *

  The Upshott Show was a first venture, the result of the Council’s determination to put Upshott, a new town built mainly to house part of London’s overspill, on the map.

  In a sudden access of civic pride they had decided that whatever Windsor could do, they could do better and they’d embarked on preparations for a two-day show. Certainly the arrangements were excellent. The enclosures, the parking facilities, the fences and the prize money had all been provided on a lavish scale. The competitors had entered in numbers that threatened to disorganize the programme, but spectators, there were almost none. The town councillors, sitting in their reserved seats and mopping their brows as they watched their wives, resplendent in especially purchased summer outfits, handing out cups and rosettes, blamed the poor attendance on the intense heat and hoped that Saturday would bring more temperate weather and a large crowd, to save them from charges of having squandered the ratepayers’ money. But Saturday was equally hot. Some people, ignoring scientific evidence, insisted that it was hotter. The refreshment tent ran out of beer and soft drinks; the ice-cream vans ran a shuttle service between their depot and the showground. Tempers were frayed; the competitors questioned the judges’ decisions; the show-jumping judges quarrelled over the course for the Grade C class, old General Gateley went home in a dudgeon and left the other two to struggle through the rest of the programme without a relief. The chief ring steward sulked and the course builder retired to the refreshment tent and, over a succession of gin and tonics, composed furious letters to the British Show Jumping Association.

  Theodora Thistleton had engaged young Billy Brown to ride her horses. At nineteen he’d just appeared among the top show-jumping riders, having had a tremendously successful season, including several spectacular wins at the International Show. But the sudden transition from Christina Scott’s over-careful placing to Brown’s fast, rather wild style was too much for the Thistleton horses. They galloped round in a confused manner, taking off haphazardly and as the fences fell T.T.’s expression grew grim; it was to be her eighth show without a rosette.

  But if TheodoraThistleton was angry and disappointed, Betty Pratt was in a state bordering on despair, for Top Ten, saddled and ready for the Grade C jumping, had had to be withdrawn at the last minute, apparently lame. Mrs. Pratt was certain that the lameness was in the off fore, but the little knot of grooms, competitors and veterinary know-alls that always gathers when a horse is run out, disagreed. Almost to a man they insisted that it was the near fore the horse was saving. Liz Pratt said it couldn’t be much, perhaps he’d just trodden on a stone, but Mrs. Pratt, showing a solicitude that seemed out of character, announced that she wasn’t going to risk a horse’s soundness by jumping him when he wasn’t one hundred per cent and put him back in the box. For the rest of the day she was in one of her blackest moods. Sybil had her face slapped for taking the wrong course in the Junior Hit and Hurry and wasting a ten shilling entrance fee and the fact that Virginia was only second added to Mrs. Pratt’s anger. Liz, who’d decided that if Top Ten won again, a long-desired stiffened petticoat and perhaps a pair of shoes with stiletto heels were to be her share of the spoils, sulked, squabbled endlessly with Sybil and finally fought with Virginia, who had taken an unfairly large bite out of the ice-cream cornet they were sharing. Rolling on the grass kicking, biting, scratching and hair lolling, they fought like tigers and screamed like cats, at last to be forcibly separated by a pair of disapproving cattle-truck drivers who thought that the undignified scene had gone on long enough.

  Laurence Keswick had better luck, he won the Upshott Shield and the fifty pounds presented by the Chamber of Commerce which went with it and on the strength of this he offered to take Helen Farrell out to dinner. Marion, observing Laurence’s unmistakable air of happiness and Helen’s increasingly affectionate manner towards him, was appalled by the strength of her own feelings; it was incredible that she, who had always considered herself a mild, kindly person, was suffering this bitter jealousy, this frightening, soul-consuming sensation of hate.

  The behaviour of the Browns added to Marion’s misery. In their anxiety to put up some sort of show with T.T.’s horses they hotted the unfortunate animals up into a state of frenzy; martingales were shortened and nosebands tightened before young Billy mounted and warmed them up with liberal, though surreptitious, use of spurs and a cutting whip. Then, just before each horse was due to enter the ring, he was put over the practice jump which had been moved behind the box out of sight of stewards and passers-by — and ‘rapped’ by father Brown and a confederate who, holding a heavy pole between them, crashed it against the horse’s legs in an attempt to make him jump higher and with more care.

  The secretaries passed a very exhausting day. In the morning, it was true that T.T. had allowed them to sit in the enclosure for quite a long time while she wandered about the showground alone, but after lunch she became extremely fractious; sending them perpetually in pursuit of cooling drinks which were obtained with great difficulty and which always failed to please; demanding insect repellent, anti-sunburn lotion and then an umbrella, so that they never ceased scurrying backwards and forwards, except when they were moving her deck chair into what might be a cooler spot. By five o’clock they both felt themselves to be bordering on a state of nervous collapse and, when T.T. demanded the thermos of milk shake that was in the horse-box, for a few moments neither secretary moved.

  ‘My thermos, please.’ T.T. sensed mutiny and her eyes blazed with anger as she repeated her request. Once again it was Molly Steer who, dreading unpleasantness, especially in public, gave way first.

  ‘Yes, Miss Thistleton,’ she answered wearily and set off across the hot dusty showground. She was away a long time. T.T. fidgeted impatiently, grumbled unceasingly and finally sent a reluctant Joy Hemming to investigate. The secretaries returned together. Molly, hot and flustered, explained almost incoherently that she had been unable to find the basket at first for someone had moved it.

  ‘You can never see an inch in front of your nose,’ snapped T.T. disagreeably. ‘Now come on, don’t stand there, pour me out a drink.’ She sighed impatiently as Molly fumbled with the stopper, snatched the cup when at last the pink liquid was poured and drank deeply. A look of surprise crossed her face. ‘I feel —’ she began but before she could finish her sentence her face turned white; her breathing changed to long strangled gasps and, as the secretaries stared at her with alarmed faces, she pitched forward, dropping the cup, and slipped in a sagging heap from the deck chair to the ground.

  ‘She’s fainted,’ said Molly Steer.

  ‘Loosen her scarf; put her head between her knees,’ directed Joy Hemming. But the scarf was already loose and the long unwieldy body only sprawled grotesquely when Molly tried to prop it up. The chalk-white face, the staring eyes, the long shuddering breaths, frightened them both.

  ‘You’d better run for a doctor,’ said Joy and obediently Molly Steer set off, shambling and panting towards the Show Secretary’s tent. Pushing her way through an angry group of competitors who were objecting to the winner of the Grade C class, she managed to stammer out th
at a doctor was needed urgently in the enclosure. The Secretary picked up his field telephone and as she emerged from the tent, having pushed her way back through the objectors, she heard the announcer calling Dr. Fitzgerald. When she got back to the enclosure she found T.T. already covered with a rug and lying in a space cleared of deck chairs, with the doctor, a short, fat man who’d been located in the bar, kneeling beside her. Two St. John Ambulance men cleared more chairs to make room for a stretcher.

  As they hurried her to the ambulance, Dr. Fitzgerald tried to learn the background of the collapse from Joy, and Molly, suddenly becoming aware of her employer’s likely reactions should she return to consciousness and find herself in the general ward of Upshott Hospital, began to plead for nursing homes and private rooms. But the doctor, watching them load T.T. and looking from her body, struggling to draw each laborious breath, to the froth that had appeared on her lips, snapped, ‘If she does return to consciousness she’ll be a very lucky woman. I’m going to telephone the hospital; you’d better go with her.’

  At the hospital they injected and stomach-pumped in vain. Twenty minutes later, just as Laurence Keswick rode in to jump in the final class, Theodora Thistleton died.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE STAFF of Upshott’s gleaming and still unfinished hospital were in no doubt that Theodora Thistleton had died from poisoning and no sooner was the battle for her life lost, than they telephoned the Coroner and the pathologist. Half an hour later a police sergeant appeared to collect the thermos and he also took statements from both secretaries, who were then allowed to return to Whittam. By the time they sat down to eat their overcooked supper — it was macaroni cheese, a favourite dish of T.T.’s — the pathologist, summoned from spraying his roses, was already at work.

  On Sunday the heat was even more oppressive and people, looking at the darkening blue of the sky, spoke hopefully of a storm. The secretaries, having contacted Theodora Thistleton’s solicitor and arranged for announcements of her death in The Times and the Telegraph, had no occupation but answering the telephone and that was unsatisfactory, since they could tell inquirers only that T.T. was dead and the police investigating. Between the calls they bickered. Molly, in her desire to wear something dark, was sweltering in a grey skirt and brown jersey; she had even found a few tears to shed and went about the house on tiptoe, drawing curtains, ‘out of respect,’ she said, ‘for the dead.’

  Joy, maintaining that this behaviour was hypocritical, clattered round after her undrawing the curtains and protesting loudly. Mrs. Maggs served two meals of cold mutton and pink blancmange and Brenda Dix turned all the show jumpers out in a field to exercise themselves and decided to leave the mucking out until Monday.

  At half-past two on Monday afternoon Detective-Superintendent Jackson, head of the County Police Criminal Investigation Department, received the toxicologist’s report and learned that Theodora Thistleton had died from hydrocyanic acid administered in the pink milk shake. At three he discussed the case with his new Chief Constable, Colonel Murray. Jackson, a large moody man with a domed forehead, scanty grey hair, dark pouches under small eyes and an enormous bony nose, had worked his way up from a constable and felt aggrieved that Murray should have reached his present position by way of the Kenya Police. In Jackson’s opinion it made mockery of the theory that the police force was now a closed service. But he was due to retire in three months’ time so he had pushed his antagonism under the surface and contented himself by running his department with as little reference to the Chief as possible and by an occasional spiteful remark if Murray showed ignorance on some point of police procedure.

  Murray, for his part, thought Jackson out of date and intended a reorganization of the C.I.D. as soon as he retired; meanwhile he left Jackson perpetually short-handed by sending his staff on training courses.

  Murray was taller than Jackson, but of much lighter build. He had brown hair, from which nothing would remove a tight corkscrew curl, parted on one side and brushed straight across his flat-topped head. His face was wide at the brow but narrowed abruptly, his eyes were alert-looking and blue, but the expression on his face was generally one of worried stupidity.

  ‘With both Smith and Henty on courses I suppose I shall have to deal with this myself,’ Jackson began aggressively. ‘Of course there’s Craker, but as it is he’s working overtime on this fire raiser and getting nowhere fast.’

  ‘Yes, I think you ought to deal with it, I mean murder’s a serious business. You could let that new chap Roper help you, he seems keen and it would give him some valuable experience.’

  ‘Well now, what have we got so far?’

  Both men opened their folders. ‘Ah, hydrocyanic acid, that sounds like wasps’ nests. Been a bad summer for wasps so there’s probably plenty of it about; we’d better send a man round the chemists.’ Murray glowed with self-satisfaction at having produced this contribution.

  ‘Yes, but which chemists?’ asked Jackson. ‘There’s no reason to suppose that the poison came from Upshott or Hamberley, or Whittam where Miss Thistleton lived. The riders at that horse show came from all over the place, in fact in the George last night they were telling me there was certainly one from Wales, several from Somerset and they thought that Gloucestershire, Warwickshire and Northampton were represented too.’ ‘Um, that does complicate things a bit,’ Murray admitted. ‘Well, I suppose we’ll have to narrow down the suspects a bit before we start to follow up the “access to poison” angle.’

  ‘I’m going over to Whittam now to interview the household,’ Jackson told him. ‘I’ll begin by finding out who could have tampered with that drink. We’ve one or two prints from the thermos, so I’ll take Caley with me to fingerprint all those who admit to handling it. Do you want me to take young Roper too?’ he asked as he heaved himself to his feet.

  ‘Yes.’ Murray wished that Jackson wouldn’t make it sound as though he were doing a favour every time he obeyed an order, but he reminded himself — only three months more. ‘Oh, and report to me when you get back,’ he added, ‘and if I’ve left phone me at home.’

  Jackson grunted as he left the room. He sent for Sergeant Caley and a police car and collected Roper, a fair, gangling, pink and white youth, from the office where, because he was one of the Chief s bright boys, he had kept him, since his appointment from the uniformed branch, on the dreariest of administrative duties.

  They drove westward from Hamberley, through pine and rhododendron country, along a main road edged with one of those opulent ribbon developments of the twenties, each substantial house almost secluded in pine-sheltered garden. Whittam, once a small village, had been engulfed by this rich crawling suburbia, but Whittam House itself was late Victorian. A red-brick unsymmetrical horror with strange turrets and other unnecessary excrescences, it looked away from the road over a sloping lawn, but the drive and the other three sides of the house were shrouded in a mass of conifer and evergreens which would normally have seemed dark and gloomy, but in the heat offered a deep, delightful shade. Jackson rang the bell and waited.

  Then, just as he was about to ring again, the door opened and three women began to explain at once why he had been kept waiting.

  ‘Detective-Superintendent Jackson of the County Police,’ Jackson ignored the explanations and announced himself loudly. ‘I imagine you ladies must be the secretaries?’ he added, walking into the dark-panelled hall and depositing his hat on a chair.

  ‘That’s right. I’m Miss Hemming.’

  ‘I’m Miss Steer.’ both secretaries tried to identify themselves at once.

  ‘And this lady?’ asked Jackson, looking at a thin, bespectacled woman in her late fifties with the withdrawn face of the deaf and wild grey hair.

  ‘That’s Mrs. Maggs, Miss Thistleton’s cook,’ Joy Hemming told him.

  ‘Are there any other staff?’ asked Jackson.

  ‘No, only Miss Dix, that’s what I was trying to explain to you only Miss Steer would interrupt —’

  ‘I didn�
��t interrupt, Joy, how can you be so unkind? It was just that I was trying to tell him too.’ Molly Steer’s face flushed with indignation.

  ‘You did interrupt,’ Joy contradicted. ‘I didn’t,’ Molly began, but Jackson said, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ in loud and testy tones, and having silenced them, added, ‘I’d like to run through the statements you made to the Upshott police with you ladies presently, but first I want to talk to Mrs. Maggs. Meanwhile Sergeant Caley can take your fingerprints — if you’ve no objection — we want to find out whether any outsiders handled the thermos. Now where can I talk to Mrs. Maggs?’

  ‘In the morning-room’ — ‘In the drawing-room’ — Both secretaries spoke at once.

  ‘Well, which is it to be?’ asked Jackson impatiently.

  Joy seized the initiative. ‘Mrs. Maggs, the Superintendent wants to see you in the morning-room,’ she shouted.

  ‘All right, Miss ‘Emming, I ‘eard. I’m not that deaf,’ Mrs. Maggs answered sharply. ‘This way, please,’ she said to Jackson.

  Jackson turned to his staff. ‘That’ll be four sets of prints then, Caley. Come on, Roper, I want you.’

  Mrs. Maggs led them into a large and somehow cheerless room which looked eastward across a strip of lawn to the surrounding conifers. It was crowded with solid, useful pieces of heavily carved oak furniture and metal filing cabinets flanking a kneehole desk revealed that it was used as an office. The floor was polished and rug-scattered, the ornaments all of horses. The row of silver cups on the chimney-piece had been won by horses and the walls were hung with pictures of horses. Half a dozen were indifferent oil paintings and the rest mainly photographs, many of them coloured.