Jam and Jeopardy Read online

  ‘What do you mean?’ Her eyes refused to meet his.

  ‘There was another reason for you wanting to silence her. Something even more private.’

  ‘I suppose you know about that, too.’ She straightened her shoulders. ‘Yes, I was afraid she’d find out about my own illegitimate child, and I couldn’t have that circulating round the village. I wouldn’t have been able to hold my head up.’

  She took a sip of her tea and laid the cup in the saucer carefully. ‘She’d been going on about how she hoped her nephews would try to poison her with the arsenic in her shed, that’s what put the idea into my head. When I saw her going out one morning, I went round to her house. There were three jars of raspberry jam sitting on her draining board, and I thought, raspberry jam’s got such a strong flavour she wouldn’t taste the stuff if I put it in there.’

  She paused for a moment, reliving the horror of what she’d done. ‘I got the bag from her shed, and took the covers off the jars. She always uses circles cut from red gingham to make them more attractive. Then I added half a teaspoonful to each jar.’

  The irreverent thought crossed David Moore’s mind that it was almost as if she were giving them a new recipe. Rasp and Arsenic Jam. He tried to stifle the laugh which welled up in him and it came out as a spluttering cough, making the inspector kick his shins under the table. With a great effort, he kept listening to what the woman was saying.

  ‘I stirred it in well, to be sure it was mixed thoroughly.’

  At that, the sergeant whipped his handkerchief out of his pocket and held it over his mouth, trying to make his mirth sound like a choking fit. ‘I’m sorry,’ he gasped, after a moment. ‘Tea went down the wrong way.’

  Clearly annoyed by this untimely, and unseemly, interruption, McGillivray glowered at him. The look was enough to quell Moore’s giggles.

  Mabel Wakeford had scarcely noticed the young man’s confusion. ‘Then I replaced the covers and washed her spoon, before I put it in her dustbin just to be on the safe side. I returned the arsenic to her shed, of course.’

  She looked imploringly at the inspector. ‘I must have been mad. Later on, I was appalled at what I’d done, but she’d come back by that time, and there was no way I could do anything about it. I didn’t have the least idea that she’d give the jars away, that’s really awful. But she must have used the third jar herself, or she wouldn’t be dead, would she?’

  McGillivray leaned forward and said quietly, ‘I don’t think she did. She hadn’t ingested any of the arsenic. Now, when did all this take place?’

  ‘It was nearly two weeks before she died, and I’ve been through absolute hell since then.’

  ‘Was that before the church Sale of Work? It strikes me the jam and cakes had been laid out to give to Mrs Valentine.’

  ‘That’s right. Mrs Valentine had been round collecting later on that same day, now that you speak about it.’

  Without thinking, McGillivray helped himself to a piece of toast, and stretched across for the marmalade. ‘Now, we’ve . . .’

  ‘Inspector.’ Mabel’s anxious voice interrupted him. ‘How could Janet Souter have given the jars of jam away, when she gave them to Mrs Valentine?’

  ‘That good lady apparently arrived at an inconvenient time, so the old lady refused to get them for her.’

  ‘She could be very nasty, but what a thing to do to the minister’s wife, she’s such a pleasant young woman.’

  Taking a bite of toast, McGillivray chewed and swallowed. ‘As I was about to say, we’ve accounted for two of the jars, but you said there were three. I wonder where the other one went? It wasn’t amongst the stuff that was taken away to be tested.’

  ‘I hope to God you trace it before . . .’ She paused, her eyes tortured. ‘What’ll happen to me now? Will I be charged with murder? I deserve to be, because I meant to do it, but only to stop her vicious tongue.’

  ‘Do you know what happened to your child?’

  The abrupt question startled her. ‘No, I never saw it. I don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl. I shouldn’t have let my mother persuade me to have it adopted. Even if I’d kept it, the shame I’d have gone through wouldn’t have been nearly as bad as the disgrace this is going to bring me.’ Her voice broke and she dabbed her eyes again.

  Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, McGillivray looked at her compassionately. ‘You didn’t commit murder, Mrs Wakeford, whatever your intention, although two innocent ladies have had to endure discomfort because of you. However, until we find the missing jar of jam, I’m going to leave things as they are.’

  ‘Thank you, and I hope you find it quickly. I don’t know what came over me, and I know I’ll have to pay for my sins.’

  ‘One thing more. When the body was found, why did you cast suspicion on Miss Souter’s two nephews? It would have been more sensible if you’d held your tongue and accepted Randall’s verdict of a heart attack as a godsend.’

  Her shoulders lifted briefly. ‘I really can’t tell you why. I suppose I felt so guilty about what I’d done, I subconsciously wanted to be found out and punished. But Miss Souter did say that about Ronald and Stephen trying to poison her, and that they’d be disappointed. I presumed they’d be in the clear.’

  The inspector stood up. ‘Things would have been very much worse for you, if you’d succeeded in your purpose.’ His voice was reproving. ‘Be thankful you didn’t.’

  David Moore glanced back as he closed the door. The woman was staring into space, twisting her serviette round and round her fingers, and his heart went out to her in her misery.

  ‘I can understand why that poor lady tried to shut the old harpy up,’ McGillivray remarked. ‘The thing is, she didn’t accomplish it. Who did?’

  He stopped with his hand on the gate. ‘We’ll have to find that jam, before somebody else falls foul of the stuff.’ He walked towards the car, then halted again. ‘Who else would have called on the old woman between the time she laid out these things for the minister’s wife and the day she was found dead? That’s over two weeks – there must have been somebody.’

  ‘Sir, she told Mrs Valentine that the chiropodist was in her house when she called. Would she have given it to him?’

  The inspector looked more cheerful. ‘Could be, though she fully expected Mrs V. to go back for her donation. I tell you what. You go back to the station, lad, find out the chiropodist’s phone number, if Black’s got it, and ring him up and ask.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Moore idly wondered what McGillivray intended to do in the meantime.

  ‘Another thing that’s just come to me. If Mrs Wakeford added half a teaspoon of arsenic to each jar, it would have been pretty lethal, I’d have thought, yet two women were only slightly affected. Go and have a word with the retired glass worker about what he actually gave to Miss Souter.’

  Moore looked puzzled. ‘D’you think he’d diluted it?’

  ‘He might have done, to make it less deadly before he gave it to a woman of her age.’ McGillivray’s eyes twinkled suddenly. ‘Can you remember all that with your limited intelligence?’

  Moore ignored the wisecrack. ‘Contact the chiropodist, then the retired glass-worker. Anything else, sir?’

  ‘Yes, make a report of all we’ve done since the funeral. I’m going down to see Mrs White.’

  A cheeky grin appeared on the sergeant’s face. ‘Have you succumbed to the delectable May’s charms, sir?’

  ‘Not on your life! I’m a confirmed bachelor, lad.’

  ‘They’re often first to fall, especially to women like her.’

  ‘Ach shit!’ said McGillivray companionably.

  Moore set off down the High Street chuckling. At the police station, his telephone call to the chiropodist drew a blank, so he walked, rather sadly, to the address Sergeant Black had given him for the retired glass-worker.

  Davie Livingstone looked up from his newspaper when his tiny wife showed in the visitor. Quite stout, almost completely bald, his red face was cheery
and welcoming.

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Moore,’ the young man began, but got no further.

  ‘Speak o’ the devil. I was just sayin’ to the wife, nae ten minutes ago, “It’s funny the ’tecs havena been to see me.” An’ she says to me, she says, “You’d better go an’ have a word wi’ them.” An’ here you are.’

  Moore’s eyes widened. ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s this business o’ Janet Souter bein’ murdered. They tell me a’body thinks it was the arsenic I gave her that killed her, but it couldna’ve been.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’ Davie folded his paper methodically, then stretched over to lay it on the table.

  The sergeant watched him rather impatiently, but when the man took his pipe off the mantelpiece and began to fill it, slowly and deliberately, Moore could wait no longer. ‘Why could it not have been the arsenic?’

  Davie looked up from his absorbing task. ‘It’s like this. After I tell’t her I’d give her some, I got to thinkin’. I’d warned her to be careful, but she was a really auld woman and could easy’ve got muddled. So I puzzled my brains how to tone it down a bit, then I minded about the powder the wife uses when she’s had a bath.’

  ‘Talcum powder?’

  ‘That’s the stuff. She’s got a sensitive skin, so she says, and she buys the kind that’s nae scented, in a thing like a bowl. Well, I mixed the powder four tablespoons wi’ one tablespoon o’ arsenic in a polythene bag, afore I took it up to Janet Souter. So you see, Sergeant, unless somebody shovelled the whole bloomin’ lot doon her throat, that stuff couldna’ve killed her. Mind you, if she’d forgot to wash her hands, or let some on her food by mistake, she’d have got a real bad bellyache.’

  Davie stopped, then said, ‘What was it you wanted to see me about, though?’

  Moore couldn’t tell him that Janet Souter hadn’t been poisoned at all, so he did some quick thinking. ‘We just wanted to confirm that it was you who gave her the arsenic. Thank you for telling me about the talcum powder, and we’ll bear it in mind.’

  ‘You dae that, and I hope you discover what poison did kill her, for it wasna the arsenic I gave her.’

  There was one thing more that Moore felt obliged to say. ‘Mr Livingstone, you know, of course, that it’s against the law to keep . . .’

  ‘I ken that fine, laddie, but there’s nae much left now, and it’s well locked awa’. You’ll nae report me?’

  ‘I should, but . . . just be careful. And don’t give any more of it away.’

  ‘There’s nae enough left to be dishin’ it out, in ony case.’

  Moore returned to the station to make up his report of their activities since the funeral.

  As Callum McGillivray locked the car door, the window of Mrs Gray’s house opened and the old lady shouted, ‘Can you come in a minute, Inspector? There’s something I want to tell you.’

  By the time he sat down in her living room, she’d forgotten that she’d asked him in, and started reminiscing about the old days again. He quite enjoyed her anecdotes about her own past, and the pasts of several others in the village, because her dry wit appealed to his sense of humour, but time was passing.

  He jumped in when she stopped for breath at the end of a long and involved story. ‘You said you’d something to tell me?’

  She found it difficult to drag her mind back. ‘Did I? Oh, aye, of course.’ She launched into another long, involved account which boiled down to the fact that she’d seen a man she thought she should know leaving May White’s house late on the night of the murder.

  McGillivray had had experience of very old ladies before, and knew the lies they could concoct if they took an ill-will against someone. ‘Why do you think this man you can’t identify had anything to do with the murder? We’ve no reason to suspect him of anything other than seeing Mrs White. We can’t go accusing any Tom, Dick or Harry, you know.’

  ‘I know that, but the more I think about it, the surer I am. He came out of her back door and over the paling into my garden, then over the other paling into the field. Then he went out of my sight.’

  ‘You’d say he didn’t want to be seen?’

  ‘Oh, he did not want to be seen, skulking about like a thief, he was. I just about broke my neck trying to watch him, and it was near midnight and me in my nightie.’

  McGillivray stifled a laugh at the picture of this arthritic old woman in her nightdress craning her neck to watch the man who’d been visiting May White so late at night.

  She caught the amusement in his eyes and gave a throaty chuckle. ‘Aye, it’s a good thing nobody could see me.’

  ‘But it was dark?’ Her thick glasses meant that her eyesight must be pretty poor.

  ‘There was a full moon, Inspector. I couldn’t see his face but there was a kind of swagger about the way he walked that reminded me of somebody, but I’m dashed if I can remember who.’ She shook her head in anger at her shortcomings. ‘I was making a cup of tea before I went to my bed, or I wouldn’t have seen him at all.’

  ‘I really can’t do anything, Mrs Gray, until you can give me a name.’

  ‘As soon as it comes to me, I’ll get somebody to tell you.’

  ‘Good, I’d be really grateful. It could be our first real lead. Now, I’ll go next door and see what Mrs White has to say about it.’

  ‘She’d swear black was white and have you believing it, but she likes to blaw about her conquests so you’ll maybe be lucky. She’s not that bad as a neighbour, mind, for she often does errands for me, but I’m warning you, watch yourself or you’ll be a goner.’

  McGillivray laughed uproariously. ‘I can look after myself. I’ve met her kind before, and I’ve never been lost yet.’

  A few minutes elapsed after he rang the bell on the next door before it was opened, fractionally. May White held it wider when she saw who it was, and he was shocked to see her enveloped only in a large bath towel.

  ‘Come in, Inspector. I was just having a bath.’

  It crossed his mind that she’d seen him going into Mrs Gray’s, and had done this on purpose in case he called on her, too, but he sat down on an upright chair. His eyes were drawn to her long, slender legs, on show for as far as was possible, and the deep cleavage which stopped short of revealing her breasts completely, but he averted them hastily.

  Her light, musical laugh emphasised her femininity, if anything more was needed to do so. ‘Does this bother you, Inspector?’ She indicated the towel. ‘Would you prefer me to put something on?’

  She grinned at his nod. ‘Shan’t be a tick. Would you like a drink?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  The long sheer negligee she was wearing when she returned showed every part of her as though she were naked, and she lay back provocatively on the settee.

  McGillivray’s temperature rose by several degrees. This was even worse than the towel. If this was how she received her gentlemen callers, no wonder they fell.

  The femme fatale swivelled round to lift a packet of cigarettes from the cocktail cabinet behind her, then stood up and came towards him. ‘Will you do the needful and kindle me, Inspector?’ It was said with stressed double entendre as she pointed to the lighter lying on the coffee table at his other side.

  When he held the flame up for her, she bent over with her breasts brushing his hand, rousing him in spite of himself, so he quickly crossed his legs on the pretext of replacing the lighter. ‘You have quite a number of male visitors, I believe, Mrs White?’

  She laughed again, knowing how she’d affected him. ‘I have to pass the long winter evenings somehow. You wouldn’t like to think of poor little me being lonely, would you?’ She fluttered her long eyelashes.

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with me,’ he said as coldly as he could with the blood pounding in his ears. ‘If you give me names, in confidence, we’ll try to eliminate each one.’ He actually hoped she could deny the stories he’d heard about her.

  But her eyes were dancing with . . . pride? ‘God know
s what any of them have to do with Janet Souter’s murder, but I don’t mind telling you. I’ve had most of the men around here, and quite a lot of the boys. It’s great fun teaching a young lad all the intricacies, you know.’ She stroked her thigh lazily.

  A strong revulsion swept over him. She was anybody’s, after all. Just a whore. Calming, he listened to her rattling off a list of names, most of which he hadn’t heard before, although a few caused him to raise a mental eyebrow. It suddenly occurred to him that she could be shielding someone, so he quietly mentioned two reputable men that she had missed.

  Her eyes held his for an instant, then she laughed. ‘Of course, them, too. You men are all the same, aren’t you?’ She rose and moved towards him, but he jumped up and sidestepped away from her.

  ‘Thank you very much, Mrs White. That’s all I wanted to know.’ He strode to the door.

  ‘Inspector,’ she called after him, and he turned to see the folds of chiffony nylon lying at her feet.

  Looking at the typewritten sheets he’d just completed, David Moore reflected that, although he and the inspector had solved some of the problems with which the case was riddled, the original murder, and its perpetrator, was still a mystery, as was the whereabouts of the last jar of jam.

  A whodunnit writer would probably call this story ‘The Case of the Missing Raspberry Jam’, he thought, and realised that it would pass the time to think up more titles. He took out another sheet of paper and began to write.

  No.l. The Case of the Missing Raspberry Jam.

  No.2. The Mystery of the Diluted Arsenic.

  No.3. The Revenge of the Dog Lovers.

  No.4. The Bashful Bastard.

  He chuckled. Alliteration was more clever, and more fun. He was finding this quite enjoyable.

  No.5. The Paperboy’s Puzzle.

  No.6. The Milkman Misses the Murder.

  No.7.

  He stopped in the middle of working out one for the postman. How could he have forgotten? There were three other people who had called regularly at Janet Souter’s cottage. She could have given one of them the third jar.

  He ran through to the front office excitedly. ‘Can you give me the addresses for the postman, the milkman and young Willie Arthur?’