Death in Leamington (28 page)

‘You’ve really been very stupid, Rohit, and now you’re in a lot of trouble. We’ll have to keep you here while we check out this somewhat incredible story. And I need to know right now anything else you know about Miss Taylor’s background. Don’t withhold anything else from me or it will go badly for you.’

*

Some hours later, I returned in excitement from forensics.

‘So tell me, what have they found?’ Hunter asked, with a voice that indicated he probably knew already what I was about to say.

‘There are two matches on the DNA, and you’ll never guess…’

‘Actually I think I will.’

‘I think Pearl Taylor is actually Nariman’s daughter.’ I said triumphantly.

‘Yes, I had begun to suspect that, by an Afro-American woman called Esther, I believe. Detroit is really ‘de Troyte’ – that was the clue Esther left to posterity that nobody ever got.’

‘How on earth did you know that?’ I said, failing to hide my disappointment that he was ahead of me yet again.

‘The bit about Esther is on public record, the perplexing thing is why Miss Taylor was so sure that Troyte rather than Nariman was her father. That is still something I need to figure out.’

‘And what about Nadia’s mother?’

‘Presumably the daughter that Troyte thought he had from one of his other numerous liaisons.’

‘Yes, forensics thinks her grandmother was probably Native American.’

‘And she was possibly a cellist, too?’

‘Now you’re pulling my leg, Sir. How on earth could you possibly deduce that?’ I asked, quite astounded that he had worked that out as well.

‘I’ve just trained myself to expect the unexpected, I guess. And I have a suspect in our cells, who appears to be a better detective than all of us, someone who had worked most of this stuff out for himself a long time ago.’

‘So what are we going to do now?’ I asked, still somewhat deflated that he seemed to be one step ahead of me, even after I had made these breakthroughs in the case.

‘Well first of all we shouldn’t tell Miss Taylor or Lady Flyte about any of this. They don’t need to know and we don’t need to tell them, not yet at least. Secondly, we still have a murderer to catch.’

‘How do you mean, Sir? Khand is dead, isn’t he?’

‘He’s very dead, but it’s unfortunately a case of right nationality, wrong man.’

‘Rohit then?’ I asked. Hunter laughed.

‘No, Rohit, isn’t our man either, he’s both far too scared and far too clever to have killed someone.’

‘Pearl then?’

‘Yes, you never liked her did you? Now you are thinking more logically, but still not with quite the right instinct, I’m afraid. You are right that Miss Taylor had both the motivation to kill Troyte and the strength of character to carry it through. But I am pretty sure she has already exacted her intended revenge by humiliating him at that conference.’

‘Well who then?’ I asked, now getting frustrated that he would not get straight to the point as he obviously knew who the killer was.

‘We might never be able to prove it, but I am pretty sure Khand tried to murder Troyte because he thought he knew something about this Enigma contract. I expect he had concluded that the timing of Troyte’s visit to Leamington was no coincidence and must be connected. Why else would he have come over to meet with Nariman at this time? What I suspect that he hadn’t figured out though, was that when he snuck into Hawthorne House through the garden door to kill him, Troyte was already dead of a heart attack.’

‘And Winnie?’

‘I believe that was Khand too, trying to cover his tracks. Remember you told me that there were reports of an unidentified consultant in the home that Sunday morning? Someone had messed around with her drugs and they also found that white coat in the laundry. Well I think it was either Khand himself or at least one of his cronies. In any case, Khand must have got spooked when he heard that she had seen everything out in the street from her window. Interestingly, he didn’t go after our friend Professor Baxter, but then he did not have the same bird’s eye view of the murder that Winnie did. As Khand was clearly being fed information from our team, I suspect that he dismissed Baxter and the other witnesses like Hugh as not worth the risk of taking further action against.’

‘So who killed Nariman then, was that Khand as well?’

‘The confusing thing there is whether there were one, two or even three separate attempts made on his life that day. The knife attack is fairly clear. There’s no doubt Khand paid the Tamils to attack Nariman, they had clear motivation and Khand probably funded them to fly over. We’ve got the money recovered from the river by Dan and Jack. Further as you told me that first morning, Hugh saw a package, which could have been the money being handed over to them in the car park by someone who matched Khand’s description. We might not have a bullet but we certainly have a smoking gun, so to speak.’

‘You said three attempts. I can only count two.’

‘What if the second possible murder attempt was the heavy metal poison they found in his body? As Alice told us, Nariman was dying anyway, of mercury poisoning. It seems pretty unlikely that that was naturally ingested given his strict religious diet. However, I’m still of the view that this was more likely the result of the medicinal herbs he was using, not a deliberate poison attempt. So at the moment, I don’t think there was any intentional poisoning. It is of course also possible that Khand substituted something in the herbal remedies that Nadia was using. Nadia clearly would not have done that deliberately, she loved him too much and she was the one in control of the herbs, and made his tea every morning.’

‘I suppose it could have been another member of Sir William’s household?’

‘I somehow doubt it, unless it was at Sir William’s instruction and, nasty piece of work as he is, I don’t think he is up to getting his hands dirty like that. He’s too much of a coward.’

‘OK, so murder attempt number three. What about the sniper? Who was he, Khand again?’

‘I agree that that is the biggest open question. Who did fire the shot that actually killed Nariman? Rohit was clearly aggrieved but he had once loved Nariman like a father and had no gun until after the attack. The round was a .22LR calibre, which is commonplace so could have been fired from a number of different kinds of weapon. The Flyte’s possibly had motivation as well, and the weapons also, but none of them was there on Saturday morning and they are also not credible murderers in my estimation. Again, it could have been Khand himself, but I suspect given the distance that the shot was taken from that we are probably looking for a trained marksman. And then we have the statement from Mr Baxter about a turbaned man getting out of the cab and then being picked up by a similar vehicle a few minutes later. I think that was almost certainly our sniper…’

‘Someone local?’

‘Very.’

‘You know who?’

‘Yes, I believe so. We still have a Sikh marksman to find.’

‘The taxi driver, you mean?’

‘No, he’s a Sikh but he’s probably not our marksman as he must have been driving the cab at the time. I suspect that whole thing with the cab and the lamppost was just a nice diversion planned to put us off the scent.’

‘So, there is a second Sikh you mean?’

‘Yes and given the accuracy of the shot, he is probably a serving or ex-army or police officer as well. And unfortunately, I’m inclined to believe that he was more likely connected to the police given that we clearly have a mole in our team as well.’

‘My God,’ Alice said. ‘What about the officer who helped us at the traffic accident? Of course, he could have gotten out of the cab and taken the shot. Then while the cab waited for him he disposed of the gun in the cab, before joining us to help with the two motorcyclists. I wondered during the autopsy how that artery had been severed so neatly when he was hit by a blunt instrument like a car bonnet. He must have slit it with a knife while we were looking at the other guy.’

‘I think she’s after your job, Penny,’ exclaimed Hunter. ‘Alice, you’ve spent too long watching the team at work. exclaimed Hunter. ‘Get Sergeant Singh picked up, Penny. I am going to enjoy interrogating this one.’

Maurice Maeterlinck
(playwright quoted by Elgar when asked about the nature of the Enigma theme)

‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,

‘To talk of many things:

Of shoes – and ships – and sealing-wax –

Of cabbages – and kings –

And why the sea is boiling hot –

And whether pigs have wings.’

Lewis Carroll
– Through the Looking-Glass

‘For heaven’s sake, Eddie Peterson, can’t I trust you for a minute?’ Alice demanded loudly as she entered the kitchen. She turned down the volume on the CD player and surveyed the mess covering the kitchen table. Carrie and Eddie had been making jam tarts while dancing wildly round the kitchen to the latest release from a well-known Swedish pop duo. She wished Eddie would not encourage Carrie like this; she was growing up quickly enough as it was. Alice was however relieved that he, for once, was dressed reasonably smartly in a tweed Burberry jacket, twill shirt, rolled-up green cavalry trousers and Converse trainers and had remarkably thought to wear an apron over his best clothes while preparing the tarts. She wasn’t sure but she could swear that he was wearing eyeliner too. Carrie, on the other hand, was wearing a scruffy T-shirt and jeans and was almost completely covered in flour; there was pastry, jam and orange marmalade all over the table and more flour on the floor. There was also the distinct smell of burning sugar from the oven. Alice opened the oven door, cursed and then quickly opened a window to allow the smoke to escape.

‘I think these might be done,’ she said ironically. Eddie, already wearing her pink oven gloves, snatched the tin away and took it over to rest on a tray by the sink, wildly waving the steam away from the tarts with his gloved hands.

‘
The knave of hearts, he stole those tarts and took them quite away
,’ said Alice, laughing.

‘Really, it’s not funny, they’re just nicely browned, that’s all,’ he replied.

‘Are you ready to go out, Mummy?’ asked Carrie, jumping up and down in excitement and smiling up at her adoringly. ‘You look so pretty in that dress.’

Eddie nodded in agreement. He returned to the table, held her by the waist and gave her a big sloppy kiss. ‘You certainly do, Ms Roberts. Maybe we’ll forget the surprise and just stay in for the night,’ he teased.

‘Get your floury hands off my lovely new dress, Eddie. For heaven’s sake, you two, this kitchen is like a bombsite,’ she said, brushing herself off and turning to Carrie. ‘And if you think I’ve spent all day getting ready just to stay in then you’ve got another thing coming. I hope you’re planning to clear this mess up when we’re gone, young lady?’

*

It was October 9th, Alice’s fortieth birthday. Earlier, while Alice was safely out of the house, Carrie and Eddie had spent most of the day secretively putting the finishing touches to the surprise that they had been plotting for months. At Eddie’s insistence and to create the necessary diversion, Alice’s sister had been drafted in to take her to the local spa for a facial, hot-stone massage, and a mani-pedi followed by a trip to the local salon to have her hair done, abandoning her normal hippie-mummy mop for a smart 1940s style, her hair swept up and sideways over her forehead in a single large wave that crested above the crown of her head.

She finally returned home at 5pm for a luxurious bath in the evening primrose oils that Carrie had given her for her birthday. She was almost exhausted after all this pampering, but had spent the last hour getting ready, squeezing into the little blue and white flowered dress that had been waiting for her, laid out on the bed when she returned. It had the shortest hemline and was accompanied by the most flattering underwear she had worn in fifteen years; a silk and taffeta birthday surprise from her favourite Park Street shop – she still could not quite believe that Eddie actually knew her dress size – and as for the underwear, her mind had been well and truly boggled by his selection. She suspected he must have had some female help. She had tied a little blue silk bow in her hair to complement the dress.

‘I guess I brush up pretty well,’ she said, pouting admiringly at her reflection in the looking glass in the hall.

‘Mummy, please do tell me where Daddy’s taking you,’ asked Carrie, jumping up and down again like a little rabbit.

‘I’ve no idea, darling, really this is all still a terribly big secret that your dad’s arranged.’

They heard the bell ring. Carrie ran to the front door and shouted, ‘It’s Penny!’ She let her in and then in her quietest voice whispered to Penny, ‘she still doesn’t know, you know.’

‘Well let’s keep it that way, shall we?’ whispered Penny in reply, putting her fingers to her lips to emphasise the need for secrecy. ‘You’d better run off and get ready hadn’t you? But don’t let your mum see your costume.’

As Penny entered the kitchen, she whistled, taken aback for a second by the sight of Alice in her finery.

‘Wow Alice, you look absolutely spectacular,’ she said.

Eddie greeted Penny and then pulled her aside, whispering into her ear, ‘Everything ready upstairs?’

Penny nodded quickly and then turned to Alice. ‘So tell me, where is Eddie taking you, Alice?’ she asked, teasing her further. Eddie dug Penny in the ribs and she giggled.

‘I’ve no idea. This major league rat still won’t tell me anything,’ she said, looking at Eddie and Penny somewhat suspiciously. She was now sure they were up to something; the knowing glances and the blush on Penny’s face were dead giveaways. She decided however to play along innocently for a while and see where this was going.

‘Eddie, is it time to go yet? I’m beginning to get really excited,’ asked Alice, looking up at the clock.

‘Nearly, darling, but before we go I do have one more birthday present for you,’ said Eddie, holding out a pretty little glass bottle. Round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words
DRINK ME
beautifully printed on it in large letters.

‘Drink me?’ asked Alice. ‘Is this a clue?’

Lewis Carroll
– Through the Looking-Glass

Eddie smiled and nodded without answering directly and then took her by the arm. Alice issued final instructions to Carrie to tidy up the mess and asked Penny very apologetically if she could give her a hand.

‘Of course, Alice, we’ll be finished in no time. See you later, alligator.’

‘In a while, crocodile,’ sniggered Carrie, who had still not left to get ready herself.

*

Eddie led Alice hurriedly out of the front entrance, looking behind him as he closed the door, mouthing to the two girls to get a move on. They climbed the short flight of stone steps that led from their basement flat up to street level. At the top of the steps he swung open the wrought iron gate, holding it until Alice had passed through and then releasing it again on its squeaking hinges. She walked toward the town a little and waited for him by the pillar box on the pavement. Locking the catch on the gate, he walked forward to stand beside her, pausing for a while, his arm hooked in hers, breathing in the night air.

‘So where would you actually like to go?’ he asked, somewhat vaguely, staring up at the evening stars as if he had not quite made up his mind where to take her yet. The air was slightly chilled after the warm autumn day, so that their breath escaped into the darkness in quietly swirling coils of moisture. Alice was shivering slightly, either from excitement or from the change of temperature; the goose bumps raised on the skin of her forearm. The scent of late jasmine from the window boxes on Lady Mary’s windowsills above them was slightly intoxicating in the night air.

‘I’ll go wherever you are planning to take me, handsome sir,’ she replied, enjoying the game but also getting slightly frustrated with his obvious tactics to confuse her. She suspected she knew exactly where he was taking her. There was a restaurant at the bottom of the Parade that she had noticed he had ringed in the phone book. It had a growing reputation, intimate with exquisite food prepared by the best chef in town but with a faintly exotic-sounding menu. She had walked past it many times wishing they could go there once, because it was certainly pricey. The natural style of décor was one she especially liked; pastel shades, abstract daubs, gilt mirrors and sea-grass flooring.

‘Well then, if it’s really going to be up to me, then it has to be ‘
second star to the right, and straight on ’til morning,
’ he said, laughing.

‘Come on stop teasing me now, Eddie, where are we going? Surely you can tell me now,’ she demanded. ‘And by the way, I hope you’re not going to make me walk too far in these shoes.’

Eddie pulled a rather large brass alarm clock theatrically out of his pocket and said in an equally exaggerated voice, ‘Ah, we’re late, never smile at a crocodile.’

Before she could respond he put one arm behind her back, the other around her thighs and lifted her abruptly into his arms, marching quickly up the steps to the door of No. 5 and rapping loudly on the doorknocker. The door swung open at once, seemingly of its own accord and he carried her inside, putting her down gently in the half-lit hallway. There was apparently no one else around.

Based on Wikipedia,
Peter and Alice

Alice was now very confused. This was not at all what she was expecting. The hall was strangely quiet, only disturbed by the patient ticking of a long case clock, but she was suddenly aware of a white fluffy shape pushing to get past her in the doorway. The white shape (actually a rabbit called Carrie) deposited a little glass box under the ornate Empire console table and ran off into the room at the end of the corridor. Alice, intrigued, stooped to pick the box up and opened it to find a small cake, on which the words
EAT ME
had been beautifully marked out in currants.

‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ she said, playing along now and smiling broadly, realising that she was clearly the object of some elaborate practical joke. In fact, a second ago, she thought she had heard giggling, followed by a loud ‘Sshh’. She followed Eddie obediently down the hall, across the richly patterned carpets, toward the double doors of the main formal drawing room. Her anticipation was building at every step. As soon as he opened the doors, there was a loud cheer, a round of applause and the sound of party poppers and kids’ trumpets being blown.

‘Surprise!’ they all shouted.

Alice found herself immediately moved to laughter in response to the cacophony of sound from her friends. Virtually everyone she knew was gathered in the room and as far as she could tell they had all dressed up in costumes of one sort or another. She looked round at Eddie, who had now ditched his tweed jacket and donned a green tunic and peaked green hat, with an extravagant feather stuck into it. ‘Peter Pan,’ she said. ‘I should have guessed. And I suppose I’m Alice,’ she added, looking down again at the dress.

The exquisitely furnished room was adorned with paper lanterns and festoons of party bunting. Scented candles burned in little silver dishes and there was a CD of a very skilled classical guitarist playing on the music system. At the far side of the drawing room were two doors that each opened out onto the balcony and gardens beyond, overhanging with honeysuckle and jasmine. Over the right hand door hung a sparkling sign saying
Neverland
, while over the left hung a flowery sign saying
Wonderland
.

At the table in the bay of the
Wonderland
door, there was a rather grand looking man with a very large hat, which he removed with a low bow as Alice approached, revealing a bald pate and face reddened with rouge. The table was set for tea, with scones and sandwiches and all sorts of little cakes, including a tray of rather singed looking jam tarts.

Lewis Carroll
– Through the Looking-Glass

‘Gosh, you all look fantastic! I can’t believe how much work you’ve put into this,’ said Alice, clapping her hands in amazement.

‘Have you guessed the riddle yet?’ asked the man with the very large hat, a price tag saying
10/6d
sticking out of its brim.

‘No, you idiot, what riddle are you talking about?’ replied Alice.

‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’

‘Ah, that’s easy,’ Alice replied. ‘I know this one: because he can’t crow like a speaking clock!’

‘Bravo, well said,’ said the Hatter. ‘I think we have another joker here, don’t we Miss Dore-abella mouse?’ He turned to Penny, who was wearing a fake fur stole and animal ears and had sneaked in through the back door to sit beside him at the tea table.

Penny seemed rather breathless, having just rushed up through the garden from the flat below, but smiled and said, ‘Happy Birthday, Alice, I hope you enjoy your surprise party as much as we have enjoyed planning it.’

At the other end of the room, underneath the sparkling sign that said
Neverland
stood a rather smart and fearsome pirate with a silver foil hook and a wig of rolling grey hair (she recognised him at once as Inspector Hunter by his steely blue eyes). He bowed deeply to her, doffing his tricorn hat as he did so. Next to him was seated a man dressed as the surly captain’s mate, Mr Smee. He had a goatee beard, shorn blonde hair and a rather fetching scar painted across his cheek. He was balancing a rather tall fairy with incredibly long flaxen hair on his knee; Izzie. Izzie, or more correctly Tinkerbell, was stroking Mr Smee’s hair in a very familiar way.
Not at all fairy-like
, thought Alice