A Sticky End (31 page)

“Look, that's what he told me.”

“You can sit down now,” I said. That was more than I could do; after the pounding Bert had given me, I preferred to remain standing. Durran took his place in a chair next to Walter Ross; I saw the older man stiffen and edge away. His tolerance of his late partner's activities obviously had its limits.

“The contents of this capsule puzzled me,” I said. “So I obtained a copy of the toxicology report from Frank Bartlett's post mortem. May I, detective sergeant?”

Weston nodded.

“The pathologist who examined Bartlett's body initially assumed that the cause of death was loss of blood from multiple wounds on the arms, inflicted by a razor that was taken by the police from the bathroom of this house. It seemed obvious, given the depth and severity of the cuts, and the amount of blood on the walls and floor of the bathroom. When Bartlett's body was removed from the house, there was still so much blood in those wounds that it spilled on the hall floor. Is that right, Sergeant Godley?”

“I don't remember. But yes, there was blood everywhere. It was a messy business.”

“We'll return to that blood later,” I continued. “But for now, I am interested in poison. Before the pathologist signed the death certificate, he noticed certain unusual things about the body. One: the face was bright pink, as were the fingers and toes. Two: there were scratch marks on the stomach, possibly the result of some vigorous sexual activity, but possibly also self-inflicted. Three: the ankles and neck were swollen. When he opened up the body, he discovered that the kidneys were damaged. All of these symptoms are consistent with mercury poisoning.”

“Mercury? Good God,” said Trent, “how horrible!”

“Very horrible. One of the nastiest ways to die, I believe. So, given the suspicious circumstances of Bartlett's death, the police removed more items from this house—specifically, the contents of Bartlett's overnight bag. They analyzed everything—his toothpaste, his mouthwash, his soap, his pillbox. And what did they find?”

“Mercury, I assume,” said Ross. “But how did it get there?”

“No, Mr. Ross. They found strychnine. In his mouthwash.”

“Strychnine? But you said—”

“Confusing, isn't it? Razor cuts, symptoms of mercury poisoning in the body, and strychnine in the mouthwash. Three possible causes of death for one corpse. Whoever killed Frank Bartlett wanted to make very sure that he died.”

“Killed? Good God, Mitchell, you're not suggesting this was murder?” Ross looked horrified. “Frank committed suicide, surely. That seems clear. The trouble he was in… I mean, he did what he thought was right, didn't he?”

“That is what we were supposed to think.”

“But for heaven's sake, man,” said Trent, “he cut his wrists! You said yourself that there was blood everywhere.”

“So he did, and so there was.”

“I'm in the dark,” said McDermott, with relish. I think
he regarded the whole affair as a sophisticated drawing room entertainment. “What happened?”

“I'm going to tell you,” I said, feeling somewhat as if I were onstage myself. “But first, gentlemen, please recharge your glasses. Officers—you might allow yourself a drop of the hard stuff. This isn't a very pretty story. As a doctor, I recommend it.”

The whiskey decanter was passed, and everyone helped themselves liberally. When everyone was ready, I began.

“Frank Bartlett and Harry Morgan were lovers. They had been for nearly eighteen months prior to Bartlett's death. There was a certain amount of overlap between Jack McDermott and Harry Morgan—but, as McDermott has told us, Bartlett made his choice, and paid the price for discarding his old lover in favor of the new.”

McDermott looked pained, but nodded.

“At various points throughout their affair, Morgan tried to break with Bartlett—he felt he was in too deep, that he was endangering his marriage and family life, as well as compromising his professional relationship with the firm of Bartlett and Ross.”

“He didn't try very hard, did he?” said Ross.

“Perhaps not. But we must remember at all times that, in his way, Morgan loved Bartlett just as much as Bartlett loved Morgan. I know Morgan pretty well—we were students together at Cambridge, and we've been in a lot of scrapes over the years—and I know that he's a passionate, impulsive fellow.”

“He's a married man,” said Trent. “He should have learned to control himself.”

“Yes, he should,” I said, “but he didn't. And how many of us do? Life is a constant temptation. Morgan was swept off his feet by Bartlett—but he still loved his wife and children, and had no desire to leave them. Bartlett made that easy for him—he didn't want to upset the apple cart any more than
Morgan did. He was a respectable City solicitor, with a reputation to maintain, and a very presentable wife at home.”

“A wife who is now very ill from the shock,” said Trent.

“Let us hope for a speedy recovery,” I said. “As Bartlett bound Morgan tighter and tighter to himself, so Morgan realized that he was way out of his depth. When Bartlett came to this house for what he thought would be a romantic weekend, they argued. Morgan told him it was over. Bartlett was furious, crazy—he had only just changed his will, as an ultimate gift to Morgan, hoping that it would bind them forever. In a last-ditch effort to win Morgan back, he took him out and found another playmate—thinking, perhaps, that Morgan had tired of him, just as Bartlett had tired of Jack, here. But that wasn't the case. Morgan didn't want another man. The only man he wanted was Frank Bartlett.”

“So why did they want me?” asked Durran. “Mr. Morgan seemed to enjoy himself.”

“He did. Morgan's led by his dick. He's young and he doesn't always think before he acts.” Neither do I, I thought, glancing rather ruefully at Arthur Tippett, whom I'd fucked in the name of the investigation and who, from the look in his eyes, was eager for seconds. “It wasn't the first time Bartlett had encouraged him to do something new, something dangerous, even. Bartlett had a great deal of influence over Morgan.”

“That's absolute nonsense,” said Trent. “If anything, it was the other way around. Who was giving Morgan money? Buying him a house? Making him his heir?”

“I'll come to that. But to return to the events of Saturday night and early Sunday morning. At some point, Sean Durran slipped a suppository containing mercury oxide into Bartlett's asshole. Subsequent investigations have found a concentration of the substance in the lining of his rectum. There is no doubt whatsoever that it was administered per ano.”

“But the razor, for God's sake,” said Ross. “Who cut him with the razor?”

I held up a hand. “When they had finished, Morgan left Bartlett and Durran together in the bathroom. Bartlett gave him some money, and then Durran handed over the letter and the message, and left. Frank Bartlett was alive and well when you last saw him, wasn't he, Sean?”

“Yes. I told you, he looked like he'd had a shock. But there was nothing wrong with him.”

“When Morgan came back upstairs, he found Bartlett brushing his teeth at the bathroom sink, showing no sign that anything was wrong. They exchanged a few words, then Morgan saw Durran off the premises and prepared for bed. When he came back upstairs, Bartlett had locked the bathroom door. Morgan smelled smoke, and assumed that Bartlett was having a cigarette before coming to bed.”

“We found ash in the bathroom,” said DS Weston. “But it was not cigarette ash.”

“No,” I said. “In fact, Bartlett had burned the letter that Durran delivered to him, and tried to flush the remains down the toilet. A few pieces floated around the room and escaped his notice. He was not smoking a cigarette. He was trying to destroy a final note from his blackmailer.”

“But I wasn't blackmailing him anymore!” cried McDermott, springing to his feet. “I told you. You must believe me!”

“I know. Please sit down, Jack. No—it was not you who was blackmailing him. Nor was it Morgan. It was someone else—someone who was threatening to expose Bartlett not only to his wife, but also to the newspapers and the police. To destroy his entire life. This final demand—whatever it was, we will never know for sure—must have been some kind of ultimatum. Perhaps Bartlett had refused to pay his blackmailer. Whatever the contents of that letter, it was enough to make Bartlett despair. Enough, in fact, to make him suicidal. He took the razor—which, only a few minutes
previously, had been used to shave Sean Durran, and with which he had frequently shaved Morgan.”

“And me,” said McDermott. “He was keen on all that business.”

“Thank you, Jack. Bartlett's shaving fetish was well known to all his lovers. He was not always discreet.”

“So you're saying, in fact, that Frank cut his wrists after all?”

“Yes, Mr. Ross. There was no one else in the bathroom with him. The door was locked from the inside. Morgan could not get in, and Durran had left the house. There is no other means of access, apart from a window which was also closed on the inside. Frank Bartlett, stricken with horror at the contents of the letter, desperately sad after his argument with Morgan, perhaps remorseful after the orgy they had with Durran, decided to take his own life.”

“Make your mind up, Mitchell. Murder, or suicide?”

“Both. Already the mercury oxide was absorbed into his bloodstream. He experienced a burning, itching pain over his torso—hence the scratch marks. His heart would have been beating fast, his mind disordered—he would have experienced a sort of panic. All these factors together drove him to cut himself with the razor. Whether it was the loss of blood that killed him, or the mercury poisoning, we don't know. The two causes would have been racing each other to take Frank Bartlett's life.”

“Oh God,” said Trent, “how horrible.”

“But the strychnine in the mouthwash?” asked Sergeant Godley. “The lab found that right away.”

“A red herring,” I said, “or a precaution in case Durran failed to deliver, whichever way you look at it. Bartlett's interest in oral hygiene was even better known than his lust for shaving. Anyone close to him would know that he regularly rinsed his mouth out after sex.”

“But if Durran had already poisoned him—”

“What puzzled me for a long time about this case was why, if the murderer had found such a clever way of killing Bartlett, he or she would go to such lengths to make it look like suicide. And then it struck me. Nobody would ever believe that Harry Morgan was a murderer—you only have to talk to him for five minutes to realize that. But it's possible, just possible, that he could be the sort who would drive a man to suicide. They were having a queer affair, weren't they?—and a man who is capable of that is capable of almost anything, certainly blackmail and extortion—in the eyes of the law. So the killer, who wanted Bartlett dead so badly, stumbled upon a brilliant way of deflecting suspicion, of disguising Bartlett's death as suicide, knowing that the police would look no further than the scandalous sexual relationship between the two men, and would instantly assume the worst.

The police would want a quick conviction—and when they found poison in the mouthwash, and Morgan with blood on his hands, they would put two and two together. Minor details like the toxicology report could be overlooked. Yes, it was a muddle—nobody would be sure if Morgan had simply driven Bartlett to suicide, or had a more active hand in his death by poisoning him or by wielding the razor himself. He had a cut on his finger, which he said was sustained while trying to shave Sean Durran—but who would believe that? And where was Durran, to corroborate all this? Gone. As far as the police were concerned, there was no such person as this mysterious Sean Durran. Morgan had just made him up as a desperate alibi. Perhaps he wouldn't even mention him—being a married man, a father of two small children. Perhaps he would lie all the way to the gallows. Whatever happened, the murderer was confident that Morgan would be found guilty.”

“You keep talking about a murderer,” said Ross, “but who is it?”

“You are about to find out.”

“Bet it was the blackmailer,” said McDermott, “whoever that was.”

“You're right, and you're wrong, Jack. Bartlett certainly was being blackmailed, and he was paying out a large amount of money to his persecutor, as we can tell from the records he kept at the office. He told you to enter it all in a ledger, didn't he, Arthur?”

“Yes. He was very careful like that.”

“Hoping, perhaps, that one day he might bring the blackmailer to justice. Well, justice worked a little too slowly for Frank Bartlett—but we will finish the job for him.”

There was a gentle knock at the door.

“Come in!”

It was PC Stan Knight, my little blond cop, right on cue, looking very neat and fuckable in his blue uniform.

“Just to let you know, Doctor Mitchell, that I'm stationed outside the door as requested. And there are police officers at the front and back of the house, and at points along the road.”

“Good man, Knight,” said Weston. “Carry on.”

Stan saluted, winked at me, and left the room.

“What the hell is the meaning of this?” said Ross. “You surely don't think that one of us—”

“Very useful, that ledger,” I continued. “Proof that Bartlett was being blackmailed. All there in black and white. You're very efficient, Tippett. I know Frank Bartlett relied on you in all things.”

“I did my best,” said Tippett, with a slight break in his voice. His eyes were wet.