Deadly Reunion

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Given that Dr Sam ‘Dilly’ Dally had performed the post mortem late on Tuesday and the toxicology reports hadn’t come through until the afternoon of the next day, it was eight in the evening by the time Rafferty and Llewellyn finished questioning the seven suspects amongst the reunees. They had also questioned the cook, Mrs Benton, who had become aggressively defensive when Rafferty had asked her if she had any idea how hemlock might have found its way into either Ainsley’s vichyssoise soup or his chicken salad.

‘That food was perfectly all right when it left my kitchen,’ she had insisted, bosom and grey curls bouncing indignantly. ‘Has anyone else died or been taken ill? No,’ she answered her own question. ‘Of course they haven’t. It’s that lot out there you need to interrogate. Who knows what they did to my food after it left my kitchen?’

She stabbed her right index finger in the direction of the dining hall where the seven suspects had been joined by the other reunees for their evening meal. To judge from the racket going on beyond the serving hatch, the news of the day was still being avidly discussed, but Rafferty noticed that the seven were being given a wide berth. As though conscious of their leper status, they huddled together for warmth. Even the oh-so-confident Giles Harmsworth, and the bad boy, Sebastian Kennedy, seemed subdued and kept their heads bent over their melon and Parma ham starter.

Mrs Benton reclaimed Rafferty’s attention. ‘Thirty years and more I’ve worked at this school, and some of that lot were vicious thugs when they were young, and it seems they haven’t improved with age. Yes, it’s them what you want to question, Mr Detective, not me.’

As he couldn’t see how she’d managed to poison Ainsley without taking out the rest of the table, too, Rafferty opened his mouth to placate her. But she was into her stride and swatted aside his attempted interruption.

‘I’ve always been a good, honest woman, never done anything wrong in my life. Not like that lot. That Giles—the one who’s now “something in the City”.’ Her expression told him what she thought of this Master of the Universe. ‘He’s not as holier-than-thou as he’d have you believe. Teacher’s pet and a snitch is what he always was. I don’t suppose he’s changed much and it won’t be long before he’s confiding something to you. It just better not be about me, that’s all, or I’ll fetch him a clout round the ear, big and self-important as he is.

‘And that Kennedy boy, he was always a troublemaker. Lives on a trust fund, or so I gather. The saying that the Devil finds mischief for idle hands is true enough. And another thing. You want to ask yourselves why it was that too handsome for his own good, Adam Ainsley, was the one who was poisoned. He always had the girls after him. You mark my words, this’ll be one of them crimes of passion that the Froggies go in for. I always thought he’d come to a sticky end.’

Rafferty had, despite her unhidden antagonism, questioned the cook thoroughly, though she’d inadvertently told them as much about several of the suspects as any snitch. He thought he could discount Mrs Benton and Tom Harrison, the grounds-man-c*m-caretaker from the list of suspects. Although Mrs Benton had admitted little liking for the dead man or his fellow reunees and had prepared Ainsley’s last meal on this earth, he couldn’t get away from the facts. As she’d been at pains to explain to him, each table’s soup was served up in a tureen from which it was ladled out into the individual dishes at the table. The same applied to the salad main course and the lemon sponge sweet.

Harrison, the grounds-man, had been in the kitchen earlier in the day, for his elevenses, and could have added hemlock to the ingredients for the meal. But again, like Mrs Benton, he would have had to have no qualms about taking out whoever was unfortunate enough to share Ainsley’s table.

Mrs Benton had explained that one person at each of the dining hall’s eight-seater tables would come to her hatch and collect each course. For the suspects’ table, it had been the Senior Common Room peacemaker, Victoria ‘Brains’ Watson, who had collected the food and dished it out. This would then be passed along the row, first on one side and then on the other. Adam Ainsley had been sitting at the far end of the table on the opposite side from Victoria.

From this, Rafferty had concluded that any one of four people would have had the best opportunity to slip something in Adam Ainsley’s food: There was Victoria ‘Brains’ Watson, who had served up each portion, Giles Harmsworth opposite Victoria, the serious Alice Douglas, and Simon Fairweather, the quiet young man who, beyond mentioning that he was a civil servant at the Home Office, had had little to say for himself, even at the interview. Adam Ainsley had sat next to Fairweather.

This left those who’d been seated on the opposite side of the table to Ainsley as less than prime suspects: Sebastian Kennedy, Sophie Diaz and Asgar Sadiq. It was possible that Gary Sadiq, Ainsley’s neighbour across the table might also have had a chance to slip a foreign substance in his food. Anyway, they would all remain on the suspects’ list for the present.

Rafferty had brought in some more uniforms to help question the other hundred reunees. Although it didn’t seem they would have had the opportunity to poison Ainsley, they might well have other useful information. Rafferty had the feeling that the cause of this murder – if murder it was, as it might turn out that Llewellyn was right, and they could still be labouring over a suicide – lay deep in the past when they had all been teenagers together. The motive for murder was, he thought, going to take some digging out. But at least, for now, he was more than happy to simply burrow into the surface memories of each of them. Any deeper digging would have to wait until they’d separated those who’d been amongst Adam Ainsley’s intimates, whom Rafferty and Llewellyn would question more deeply, and the rest.

Paxton, beyond supplying them with their room, the map of the school, the list of the reunion’s attendees and their home addresses, had been able to provide them with little other information. Of course, he had been in post for less than a year, so hadn’t met any of them before.

Rafferty made a mental note to find out the current address of the school’s previous headmaster. Barmforth, according to Paxton, was in situ for several decades. He had certainly been in his post when the current reunees had attended the school.

He left Mrs Benton, and he and Llewellyn returned to the station. While Llewellyn typed up the interviews of the seven suspects, Rafferty sat and made a list of chores for the next day. If he was to find out about possible vendettas, soured love affairs and the like, he would need to go and see Adam Ainsley’s parents, who lived in Suffolk. And he would need to send somebody to question Adam Ainsley’s two ex-wives. For that he thought a woman’s touch was called for and Mary Carmody, the motherly, thirty-something, sergeant sprang immediately to mind. People confided in her; even Superintendent Bradley tended to seek her out in the canteen and bend her ear over budgetary worries and insubordinate inferiors – not that Mary had betrayed his confidence – but Bradley’s earnest stance over the tea cups and Mary’s motherly, head on one side air, had given it away. That, and the fact that, even when he was whispering, Long-Pockets Bradley had something of a booming voice. Quietness wasn’t in the man. Yes, he’d despatch Mary with Llewellyn, who was diffident with women, to one ex and he’d take the other himself.

As for the suspects, the number of these was thankfully short, as after speaking to the cook and the seven reunees, he couldn’t see that anyone else but those on the same table as Adam Ainsley would have been able to administer the hemlock. Coffee and biscuits had been served on the reunees’ arrival on that first morning, but that was all. Their first – and only, as it turned out – meal all together had been the lunch. And he thought it almost certain that the hemlock must have been administered that Tuesday lunchtime in Ainsley’s meal, as it was too far-fetched to imagine he would accept any part of the plant from anyone. What possible reason could be given for proffering such a thing? No. It was the not so magnificent seven who were in the frame.

Rafferty yawned and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was ten o’clock. It had been a long day and tomorrow would probably be longer. ‘You get off home,’ he told Llewellyn once he had typed up the statements from the seven suspects. ‘We’ll make an early start in the morning.’

After Llewellyn had said goodnight and left, Rafferty spent some time wondering how he was going to explain to Abra that they were about to have some unexpected houseguests. She wouldn’t be any more pleased than he was himself, especially as she still had hopes of persuading him to get started on the decorating, which the presence of guests would make impossible.

How to break it to her, though? Could he perhaps claim that Ma was celebrating a special birthday that required the attendance of the wider Rafferty and Kelly families? He shook his head. No. Abra was the one who remembered all the family birthdays; he hadn’t had to trouble since they’d started living together. She’d know that Ma wasn’t anywhere near a particularly special birthday.

No, there was nothing for it but to tell her straight and wait for the fallout.