The Wimbledon Poisoner (20 page)

‘It is difficult to understand why Charles March should have built the windmill in this way. But Wimbledon Windmill bears a striking resemblance to one or two other post mills. It is possible—’

Here he tapped Maisie on the chest, ‘Listen, Maisie – it is possible that he simply copied this building out of ignorance of normal windmill practice. Do you see? Isn’t that amazing?’

‘No,’ said Maisie.

‘I mean,’ said Henry, trying to breathe some life into this subject, ‘what an amazing dumbo. Just . . . copying a windmill like that. Not knowing anything about normal windmill practice!’

‘A windmill,’ said Maisie, ‘is just a windmill. Isn’t it?’

Henry sighed. It was true that since Donald’s death he had been making more effort with his daughter; there were times, as a result, when he wondered whether she, not Elinor, was the problem. There were even moments when it occurred to him that he was the problem. He looked across at Elinor.

OK, she was a feminist. That was a harmless eccentricity, wasn’t it? She was a feminist, but when it came down to it she put the things in the dishwasher like anyone else. She mowed the lawn. These days she sometimes even listened to him.

‘I’m bored of this windmill,’ said Maisie. ‘I want to go to the café.’

‘Yes, my darling,’ said Elinor. ‘Yes, of course. Salt and vinegar crisps? Or a sticky bun?’

At the worst point in her therapy (she didn’t seem to go quite as often these days) she would never have allowed such words to pollute her lips. The women in the therapy group were of the opinion that poisons in foodstuffs were a direct cause of many emotional and psychological difficulties, one of them having gone as far as writing Henry a note to tell him to lay off the salami, and once the mere mention of the word ‘salt’ would have brought her out in the kind of rash experienced by someone suffering from a dose of atropine methonitrate or a crafty snort of alkaloids of calabar.

It was Henry who saw the world as under the sway of poisons these days. Poisons, like ugly shapes emerging from a Rorschach blot, were there, behind things, and as he read more and more on the subject, he found himself chanting their names like a litany as he rode the train to Blackfriars, or walked up the hill alone to the Rose and Thorn.

Ecgonine . . .
Ergot . . .
Pomegranate . . .
Stavesacre . . .
Papaverine . . .
Thebaine . . .
Apomorphine . . .

From acetyldihydrocodin, its salts, to zinc phosphide, from tartar emetic to bismuth, Henry rolled the syllables round his tongue until he felt he was eating the names. He planned delicious meals, which would have as their centre some ragout of veal à la alkaloids of sabadilla, followed perhaps by a little side salad of homatropine; he thought about poison as something sweet, something that would be easy to swallow, that would lull you to sleep, get you out of all this. And, if he was honest, the poisons he dreamed about were no longer anything as vulgar as a weapon, they were not aimed at anybody, not even Elinor.

‘I’ll have some crisps too!’ said Henry.

‘Fatty!’ said Elinor, almost amiably.

As the three of them waddled across the car park, pitted with puddles, from the woods facing the windmill, where once Henry had dreamed of burying Elinor in a shallow grave, couples walked in the October sunshine.

The couples wear each other on their faces, thought Henry. The Spanish say that the wife wears the husband on her face, the husband wears the wife on his linen. But in England it isn’t like that. People simply grow into each other, the way ivy grows into English walls or roses grow into housefronts in any suburb in this quiet island. Perhaps he and Elinor were growing into each other in that way, as they walked, now, towards the steamed-up glass front of the café where couples sat in a silence he might, a week or so ago, have construed as hostile, staring out at their limited, peaceful horizon. Perhaps he and Elinor had just been going through a crisis. They had ‘displaced their aggression’. They had, rather spectacularly, ‘dumped’. And if four people had had to die, well . . . according to a woman in Elinor’s therapy class, you had to ‘die to grow’. They had obviously simply persuaded others to go through this part of their therapy for them.

‘I want salt and vinegar, chilli beef and cheese and onion!’ said Maisie.

‘Yes, darling!’ said Elinor, with just the faintest trace of strain in her voice.

If there was one thing that made Henry feel he should do away with her, it was Donald.

He really missed Donald. He was surprised quite how much he missed him. He often found himself wanting to say the kind of thing he always said to Donald, things like, ‘I don’t know, squire . . .’ or ‘Whichever way you slice it, mate . . .’ or even ‘Mine’s a light and special!’ and halfway through enunciating them, turned to find the doctor absent. And, in a way, it was Elinor’s fault. If only she hadn’t forced her Chicken Thallium on him, if she had only eaten it up, like a good girl, at the very moment when his hatred of her was as pure as the best poison. And now it was sometimes hard to remember why he was poisoning her; poisoning her wouldn’t bring Donald back. Although, thought Henry, as they joined the queue for food, if his death had brought them together perhaps her death would bring him back to life.

‘Mmm,’ said Maisie, biting into her bun before it was paid for, ‘this is yum!’

‘Mmm!’ said Elinor.

They moved to a table. The Farr family ate in a briskly competitive, albeit communal style. No one spoke while eating; all that was to be heard was grunting and wheezing until the last crisp, the last drop of tea and orange juice and the last fragments of white icing had disappeared down one or other of the Farr family throats.

Someone was prodding Henry in the ribs. Looking down he noticed that it was Elinor. Her mouth full of crumbs, she said, ‘What are all those books on poison doing in your study?’

Henry belched and looked at his boots. ‘What books on poison?’ he said.

‘Oh,’ said Elinor, ‘
Great Poisoners of the World, Death Was Their Business, Encyclopedia of Murder, Forensic Medicine, Exit a Poisoner, The Life of “Apple Pip” Kelly the Strychnine Killer, Six Hundred Toxic Deaths
—’

‘Oh, those,’ said Henry, ‘I—’

‘Strong Poison, A Life of William Palmer, the Notorious Staffordshire Poisoner, Hyoscine; Its Uses in Toxicology
by
Adolf Gee Smith, Some Applications of Arsenic in Industry
by—’

She broke off and peered at him. ‘Are you trying to poison me, Henry?’ she said, and then, looking round the café, in a humorous voice – ‘I say, everybody – Henry wants to poison me!’

Then, because it was such a ridiculous idea, she threw back her head and gave a booming, confident laugh.

‘I couldn’t do that, darling,’ said Henry, ‘I love you!’

Elinor’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do you?’ she said.

‘You’re the sun and the moon and the stars to me,’ said Henry, ‘you’re the reason why I get up in the morning and go to bed at night. You give meaning to my every breath. You are my rationale!’

Elinor folded her arms. She looked, Henry thought, like an off-duty policeman listening to some suspect political opinions in his local pub.

‘Am I?’ she said.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Henry, ‘deep down. You know. Really deep down. Of course you are.’

She didn’t look very convinced by this. Did she, he wondered, really suspect him? And if she did, was it the kind of thing she might mention to Detective Inspector Rush, assuming that she and Rush were . . .

‘Actually,’ Henry found himself saying, ‘I just got really interested in poisons. It became a bit of a . . . well . . . a . . . hobby. You know?’

‘Well, I always said,’ said Elinor, ‘that you should have more interests.’

Henry gulped. ‘That’s right!’ he said. ‘And I was trying to look at our relationship in the light of that. To make it, you know, grow . . .’

She still did not look entirely convinced. Henry talked more rapidly. ‘Did you know,’ he said, ‘that alkaloids of pomegranate are a deadly poison? Or that the poisoner Neil Cream handed out strychnine to young girls for no apparent motive!’

Elinor’s brow furrowed. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I am very interested in food additives of any kind.’

‘Precisely!’ said Henry wildly. ‘This is all part of it, you see. I’ve been trying to . . .’ He groped for the word. ‘Rethink my attitudes!’

She shook her hair out and for a moment looked like someone he remembered liking, years ago. Why was it that they no longer had a common language?

Henry blundered on, trying to use the words she used. ‘I’ve been thinking about poison as . . . as a mode of communication!’

She looked a little doubtful about this. Picking at the crumbs on the table, she said, ‘It is odd though, isn’t it?’

‘What is?’

‘Those deaths. All those people at Donald’s funeral. And the punch . . .’

‘What about the punch?’ said Henry.

She didn’t answer this question but continued to trace little circles on the damp plastic of the table.

‘I was talking about it all to John Rush,’ she said, ‘I think he knows something. But isn’t saying. You know?’

‘I know!’ said Henry.

‘Mind you—’ said Elinor, ‘the police never do, do they?’

‘No, no . . .’ said Henry.

What was all this about
John
Rush?

‘They could,’ said Elinor, ‘be biding their time.’

‘I know!’ said Henry.

There was a long silence. Henry filled it with a boyishly enthusiastic speech about Mrs Greve, who had poisoned her husband with ground glass in Dublin in the early 1920s. Elinor watched him as he spoke with a kind of sadness he did not understand.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘it’s nice to see you excited about something. There were times when I thought you’d . . . you know . . . given up. There were times when I thought . . .’

She laughed, a little nervously. ‘You know . . . you’d . . . poisoned the chicken or something . . .’

Then she clasped his hand, firmly. ‘But you wouldn’t do a thing like that. You’re a confused man. You’re a sad man in many ways. But you’re not a bad man, are you?’

Henry tried, not very successfully, to look deep into her eyes. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not really!’

‘Why would you ever want to poison me anyway?’ went on Elinor wistfully. ‘What have I ever done to you? You’d be lost without me. Wouldn’t you?’

And, with those words, she took Maisie’s hand and walked out to the rain-soaked car park.

Indeed.

What, when you thought about it, had she actually done to him? Why was he trying to poison her? Didn’t this approach to their marriage need a complete rethink?

As they trudged across the common towards the village, Henry realized that few, if any advantages, financial or social, would accrue to him on her death. He would have to get an au pair – some Swedish or German floozy who went out till four in the morning and brought men back to her room. He would have to do even more domestic work than he did at the moment. There would be another funeral to organize. He might even have to speak at it (Henry shuddered slightly at this thought).

Then there was her mother. She would want to help. She would take the train down from Cumbria and sit in the front room and want to talk about her daughter. She would hold Henry’s hand and look deep into Henry’s eyes and say ‘Let’s talk about Elinor!’ She would go on about how wonderful her daughter was, she would probably describe her talent for opera singing and gourmet cuisine. She might even – Henry started to shake uncontrollably – ask to stay.

There was quite a lot to be said for leaving Elinor alive. From the administrative point of view alone. Where, now he thought about it, was the salt kept for the dishwasher? How often did you have to put salt in it? When you put salt in it – where did it go? Did you just chuck it over the dishes like seasoning, or what?

How would he tell Maisie about periods?

They stopped outside a bookshop in the village High Street. Maisie pressed her nose to the glass. Elinor did the same. Then they squashed their lips against its cold, clean surface. They started to laugh.

‘Can I buy a book?’ said Maisie.

‘Of course, darling!’ said Elinor.

She wasn’t all bad, thought Henry. When the three of them were like this, it almost felt good to be part of a family, knowing you were going back to a warm house, a well-tuned piano, a decent, ordered existence. Didn’t married men stand less chance of getting heart attacks than bachelors?

Let’s be reasonable, he told himself, as he followed Elinor and Maisie into the bookshop, you’re not going to find another woman anyway. You’re one of those people who looked interesting but turned out not to be. You didn’t show much early promise, but what promise you showed you didn’t fulfil. You’re just another little Englishman who gets a laugh at parties. That’s what you are. The one interesting thing you’ve ever done is try and murder your wife. Even if you did end up murdering your doctor and your dentist and—

Oh my God, thought Henry, I’m a murderer. I am actually a murderer. He felt suddenly very cold. Why? Why did he feel something that was almost guilt but not quite? As he stood watching Elinor and Maisie he realized it was something very simple. It was the urge to tell someone what had happened, coupled with the realization that he would never be able to do so. That what he had done was a totally private act, that it condemned him to an awful isolation, a world in which every remark or approach, however natural-seeming, was false. ‘You are a poisoner!’ an unpleasant, small voice in his head began to say.

And this was worse than anything he had felt before. It was worse, precisely because he now knew that he didn’t want to poison his wife. With that realization came an inexpressible relief. He felt like a man who has just been told his brain scan is clear. He wanted to rush up to her and tell her the good news (although in that negative way women had she would probably brood over the implications of his original intention). But at the same time as this relief came this stinging, nagging ache. This feeling of isolation that threatened to overwhelm him, and lead him to shout out the truth here, in the shop, on a cold October afternoon.