Harriett (8 page)

“
It is either that or I can arrest everyone here and now while
we wait for a cause of death from Doctor Woods. I don’t know about
you but I think everyone would be better off after a good night’s
sleep.”

“
Quite right,” Mr Bentwhistle replied. He glared at Madame
Humphries to silence her further protests. “I would rather remain
at home for a few hours in the morning and cancel my appointments
than spend the night in the cells.” He turned to Mark. “I will be
at home if you need me. Is it alright for us to go now?”

“
Yes, but I would like to add that if any of you are not at
home when we call tomorrow, I will not hesitate to arrest you.” His
tone was as hard as the glare in his eyes as he stared pointedly at
Madame Humphries and her assistant for several long
moments.

“
Ladies, I think that given the lateness of the hour, Mr
Bentwhistle, Mr Montague, myself, and Detective Brown will escort
you home. It isn’t wise for you to go out into the night by
yourselves.” He knew that Isaac lived in Great Tipton. “Detective
Brown, I suggest that you take Madame Humphries and Miss
Hepplethwaite home and I will see you in the morning.”

He
turned to Mr Bentwhistle and Mr Montague.

“
I live on the High Street closer to Hilltop Farm, so I am
happy to take Tuppence home and can drop Beatrice and the ladies
Dalrymple on my way. Assuming that Mr Bentwhistle here is happy to
take Eloisa, Miss Smethwick and Miss Haversham?” Mr Montague
glanced at everyone enquiringly but nobody made any objection. His
suggestion rendered Mark’s involvement unnecessary. Mark mentally
applauded the man’s ingenuity and didn’t even attempt to object and
instead watched while everyone took their leave.

As soon
as the front door closed behind the last guest, Mark turned toward
Harriett. “As soon as I have a cause of death for you, I will pop
around and let you know if we need to take any further action.
Meantime, I should be obliged if neither you nor Babette, leave the
house either.”

“
Is Charles alright to go? He wasn’t here at all this evening
and will have no idea what went on. We need to open the tea shop,
you see. Our regular customers will expect it.”

Mark
reluctantly drew his gaze away from Harriett and turned toward
Babette. “Charles is fine to carry on as normal. We know that he
was at the pub throughout the evening. It is just everyone who was
present at the time of the death who needs to remain at home. It
will just be until we know for certain how Mrs Bobbington
died.

Harriett
tried hard not to stare at him. He really did have the most
mesmerising green eyes. Her gaze skimmed over the high cheekbones
to the firmly chiselled lips bracketed by the faint outline of
dimples and she wondered if they appeared when he
smiled.

“
Harriett?”

Harriett
blinked and felt a tell-tale blush colour her cheeks. It took her a
moment to try to remember what had actually been said; something
about someone being ill? Oh, right, Mrs Bobbington.

“
The only slightly strange thing that happened was that Miss
Hepplethwaite appeared to pretend to faint,” Harriett murmured
thoughtfully.

Mark’s
gaze sharpened. “How do you mean ‘pretend to faint’?”

“
Well, she collapsed and drew everyone’s attention to her.
Madame Humphries demanded some water but, within a couple of
minutes of being out cold on the floor, Miss Hepplethwaite had
recovered and seemed completely unaffected by her
collapse.”

“
You think she was pretending?”

“
I haven’t fainted myself, but of the few people I have seen
suffer from the malady had needed more than a minute or two to
recover. Miss Hepplethwaite continued with the demonstration within
a couple of minutes and was completely unperturbed by her apparent
‘faint’.”

“
Thank you for that.” Mark made a note on his pad. “Is there
anything else?” His gaze flickered from Harriett to Babette before
lingering on Harriett.

“
I cannot recall anything,” she replied with a frown. She
wished he wouldn’t stare at her like that; it was strangely
difficult to focus her thoughts on anything. His dimples were
really rather distracting and they captured far too much of her
interest as it was without her being pinned down by the intensity
of his wonderful green eyes, framed with the thickest lashes she
had ever seen on a man. “Of course, Madame Humphries glowed when
she was in a trance but other than that -” she shook her head
slowly.

“
Glowed?” Mark’s brows rose and he flicked a glance at
Babette.

“
She turned a strange colour and was talking in an odd voice.
A green haze gathered around her when she went into
trance.”

“
Did it smell?”

Harriett
shook her head and glanced at Babette, who merely shrugged her
shoulders.

“
I can’t remember anything else unusual, sorry.”

“
I will be back tomorrow.” Marks voice dipped to a husky
rumble as he sidled around Harriett in the narrow hallway. The
sleeve of his jacket brushed her arm as he passed and it took all
of his fortitude to continue to move toward the front door. “I will
say goodnight.” At least he had a good reason to return in the
morning. Even if Minerva Bobbington had died of natural causes, he
was going to make a personal call to inform Harriett of the cause
of death rather than leave it to Isaac.

“
Good night,” Babette called as the door closed behind him.
“Are you alright, my dear? You seem a little dazzled.” Babette had
no idea what was wrong with Harriett, but strongly suspected it had
something to do with the delightful policeman who had just left.
The tension that had hovered in the doorway between them had been
palpable, to the point that Babette had decidedly felt like the odd
one out.

“
I think that we need to get a good night’s sleep,” she
murmured when Harriett continued to stare absently at the front
door.

Harriett
gave herself a mental shake and turned toward the sitting room with
a shudder. “I don’t think we should tidy up right now. Let’s leave
everything as it is and sort it all out in the morning.” Rather too
hastily, she closed the door on the sight of the now empty hearth
and hurried up the stairs after Babette.

The rest
of the house could wait until morning. Right now she needed some
time alone to think.

CHAPTER FIVE

The following
morning, Mark watched David Woods settle into the chair opposite
his desk at Great Tipton Police Station. Last night had been a late
night for everyone, and David looked about as tired as Mark felt,
but, right now, the fog of tiredness was ignored with the weight of
the impending news on his shoulders.

Last
night, as soon as he had left Harriett’s, he had been faced with
the unenviable task of informing Mr Bobbington of the dreadful
news. To say the man had been distraught was an understatement.
Without any cause of death, and only a few sketchy details to rely
on, it had been a difficult conversation that had lasted until the
wee small hours of the morning. It had been nearly dawn by the time
Mark had crawled into bed, but even with exhaustion pulling at him,
he had been unable to find sleep. His thoughts had been plagued by
beautiful brown eyes and a mop of curly dark hair that he felt
driven to see again.

The
gravity on David’s face told Mark that he wasn’t going to like the
news that the Doctor was about to impart.

“
I think it must be murder.”

Mark’s
brows rose and he mentally cursed. “How?”

“
She choked to death,” David Woods sighed. He dug into his
pocket and produced a cloth, which he placed on Mark’s desk. Mark
watched him carefully unfold it to reveal a small lump of what
looked like heavily stained gloop.

“
What is it?”

“
At first glance? Cheese cloth or muslin, my first guess would
be. It was lodged in her windpipe.” David looked at him. “This is
what I think may have happened. Last night, only two of the gas
lamps in the parlour were lit, if you remember? It was gloomy to
say the least. Minerva had been drinking sherry, which is naturally
dark in colour. On examination, there was a fairly large amount of
sherry in her stomach. She wouldn’t think to look in her glass and,
unfortunately, the sherry would hide the evidence of this kind of
foreign object. The sherry was served in tumblers, not sherry
glasses and she must have had a large amount of the alcohol in her
glass. This little piece of cloth must have been in her drink and
she inadvertently swallowed it with the sherry.”

“
It had to be drunk,” Mark murmured and wrinkled his nose up
in disgust at the brown mulch on his desk.

“
Anyone finding it in food would spit it out. Like I said, it
was lodged in her windpipe and isn’t something she could have stuck
in her throat without knowing.”

“
So, she couldn’t have inadvertently left a small piece of
cloth, say wrapped around a pie, and ate it with her
tea?”

“
I am afraid not. If it was likely to be with food, she would
have chewed it and probably swallowed it with her food. There was
food in her stomach but that was not consumed directly before her
death. This little piece of cloth choked her because it was in the
liquid she was knocking back. You couldn’t sip this without
noticing it in your mouth.”

“
Good Lord. This was in her throat?” Mark frowned down at the
horrid, sludgy object and watched as David picked up a pencil off
the desk, and slowly prised the small lump apart until it resembled
a small square patch of cloth. To Mark, it looked more like cotton
than muslin, but he was no haberdasher. He froze at that thought
and studied the small square before him a little more
closely.

“
I need to do some further tests on it just to make sure, but
I think it may have been coated in something. See the darker edges
here?” The pencil tip pointed to the slightly frayed edges of the
material.

“
What? Poison?”

David
sighed and shook his head. “I really don’t know. Examination has
proven that she choked to death. There are clear signs of
asphyxiation and she had this foreign object lodged in her
windpipe. There are scratch marks to her neck and chin which points
to the fact that she was clawing at them as she tried to draw
breath. This in her windpipe is almost certainly what killed her,
even if it was coated in some sort of poison.”

“
When will you know for certain?” Mark’s voice was sharp. No
sooner had David dropped the pencil back onto the desk than Mark
swept it up and threw it into the waste paper basket.

“
I should know if poison is involved this afternoon. My staff
is working on it as we speak. It is supposition, you understand?
The fraying could just be where the material was cut to
size.”

Mark
nodded.

“
This cloth is too small to be of any use to anyone though, so
you need to consider whether it was specifically cut for purpose.
What could anyone use something of this size for?” He pointed to
the small piece of cloth that was no bigger than an inch and a half
square.

“
Do you think someone intended to frighten her?”

“
Why would you want to frighten someone by dropping a piece of
muslin into their drink though? I mean, for what purpose? Nobody is
going to admit to putting it there as a joke. It isn’t
inconceivable that it contained someone’s medication; a tablet or
powders of some sort, and it was accidentally dropped into
Minerva’s drink, but it seems highly unlikely that someone would
take powders in the middle of a psychic circle meeting.”

Mark
studied the object. “It’s too small for powders, even if one could
put powders into a piece of cloth like this.”

“
Powders are usually wrapped in paper though, Mark,” David
replied. He leaned back in his seat and studied his colleague. He
really didn’t relish Mark having to figure this one out.

“
We are doing more tests on the contents of her stomach. I
should have some of the answers to you tomorrow morning at the
earliest, but it may take longer than that if I need to do more
detailed tests.”

“
Was she on any medication at all?” Mark frowned. He wondered
if the woman had carried a tablet or powders in the cloth and had
accidentally dropped it in her drink herself.

David
shook his head. “I haven’t seen her for at least six months. If she
was taking medication, it was nothing I have given her. I am going
to call into the pharmacist and make a few enquiries, but Minerva
always seemed to be one of the village’s residents who was always
in fine fettle.”

“
Good Lord, so there may be a killer amidst Tipton Hollow’s
first psychic circle?”

“
There may indeed.”

“
Damn,” Mark sighed. He inwardly groaned at the thought of all
of the people who were in the room last night. It was going to take
the next couple of days to interview everyone. The only high point
was the fact that he now had a very good reason to remain in
contact with Harriett for the next few days at least.

“
Do you know if anyone else in the room were on any kind of
medication that they might conceivably need to take with
them?”