A Match Made for Murder by Iona Whishaw (top 10 best books of all time txt) 📗

he came around thinking I’d said something to someone after all this time. I’m glad he’s dead. You find that shocking.” Tina glanced up at Terrell’s face, but could read nothing on it. “This had better be the end of it.” She was embarrassed by how peevish that sounded. A man had died, after all.

Terrell shook his head, frowning at the words he’d written. He could see now that it might not be. “I’m sorry, just one thing more. Do you, by any chance, remember the date of your visit to the police station?”

“So you can dredge it up for all to see?” Tina said furiously. “No, thank heavens, I don’t. All I can say is that it was June of the year I graduated, 1935.”

Terrell made a final note in his book, closed it quietly, and pushed it into his raincoat pocket. “I’m very much obliged to you, Miss Van Eyck. I can’t promise you won’t get any more visits. It depends on the how the investigation goes. But I will say this: I’m sorry it went so badly when you reported it. That wasn’t right. It should never have happened.” It shouldn’t happen, he thought, but it did. All the time.

Just as they reached the car, he stopped. “Miss Van Eyck, I’m sorry to ask this, and you’ll be within your rights not to tell me. Was there any outcome from that meeting when you were sixteen? Pregnancy, that sort of thing?”

Tina reddened. “No, thank God.”

Ames had lurched out of his chair and now stood looking out the window. Rain was coming down again. He could see the little rivulets running along the street below. He imagined them gathering force, turning into a river. Terrell had been reading from his notes about his conversation with Tina Van Eyck.

Ames swore under his breath. “Who the hell would have told a young girl she got what she asked for?”

“It was back in June of ’35. How much turnover has there been here since then?”

“God knows. I don’t know if Darling was even here then. He might know. I bet he never even started a file, whoever it was. And Tina’s right. Why, suddenly, after a decade, did he reappear to ask her if she’d told anyone? Well, Tina’s story supports what we’ve learned about Watts so far,” he said finally. “But it still doesn’t follow that one of the apparently many young girls he probably violated suddenly up and robbed him as he lay dying. It seems Ada Finch wasn’t with him, so we’re back to the hitchhiker theory. When did you say those ads in the paper and the radio about hitchhikers would run?”

“They will be in tomorrow’s paper, and I think the radio will start this evening.”

Ames was about to make another comment when there was a knock on the door. They turned and saw Gilly with a paper in his hand.

“Sorry this took so long. It took some time to complete the tests. I thought you two might be interested in this. Your robbery victim didn’t die of a heart attack exactly, though he did have a weak heart as it turns out, and his heart stopped. He died of suffocation, brought on by ingesting a combination of chloroform and very likely strychnine.” Gilly, usually staid and understated, said this with something bordering on a triumphant flourish.

“Poison?” Terrell and Ames asked at once.

“Yes indeed. And organ failure. His heart for sure, his kidneys perhaps. As to his heart, the failure came on very suddenly. His inability to breathe is interesting in that context as well. It looks as though his whole system gave up.”

“Are you saying . . . what are you saying, exactly?” asked Ames.

“I tested his blood for some sort of poison but it’s difficult with the tests we have now. It was a sweet bleachy smell that put me on to what possibly happened. Chloroform and strychnine together could produce these symptoms. Chloroform by itself can be dangerous. It’s notoriously unreliable, even in competent medical hands. More people than you’d want to think about die on the operating table. A civilian flinging it around could do untold damage. So let’s have the murderer use chloroform to subdue him, thus living up to every cliché in the book, by the way, and strychnine soaked in a rag so he would be breathing it in. It could have been followed up with some administered by mouth, though I couldn’t swear to it. If it was just the strychnine, he could have inhaled a large enough dose that he would have been dead inside of a couple of hours. But I’m going to say that it was much quicker than that because of his heart stopping. Forensic science is moving along at a good clip. In a couple of years maybe someone will come up with a way to definitively screen the blood, but there’s nothing now. However, following on my inhalation theory, I looked for residue of strychnine on his moustache and so on.”

“And?” If Watts was poisoned, it would drastically alter the whole complexion of the case.

“A bit on the right side of his mouth in his moustache.”

Terrell frowned thoughtfully. “So, someone subdues him with chloroform, then makes him breathe in strychnine?”

“That’s about the size of it. Strychnine by itself is not a swift death, and is pretty unpleasant. My guess is if we add a solid dose of chloroform to that hanky, the assailant could have subdued him and then he’d be passively breathing in the strychnine. Pretty elaborate because the chloroform alone probably did it for him with his heart stopping. The killer wouldn’t have known that, of course, so he or she, let’s be generous here, would want insurance, and wouldn’t want his victim thrashing around. I’d say the attack came from behind, by someone who is right-handed. The problem is, a man driving a car, attacked from behind, will have put up a fight no matter how strong the assailant