cellar was worth looking into.
He guessed there might be access somewhere towards the rear of the house, through the kitchen, and he was right. There was a door in the scullery, to the left of the old leaded sink. The key was in the lock. He let himself in, located a light-switch and went down some whitewashed steps.
The cellar was in a respectable state, as if some effort had been made to keep it free from dust and cobwebs. Plenty of old furniture was stored down here, just as Joy had claimed. Otherwise all he could see were newspapers and magazines in tidy stacks. He stepped around an old coat-stand, checking the furniture, trying to miss nothing, hopeful of locating another filing cabinet. You can tell when a place has been untouched for years, and this was not it. j
Then he saw the display cabinet, an unappealing mid-Victorian piece in some dark wood, without legs, and with three glass doors. What caught his eye was the array of white boxes and small brown bottles, an unlikely collection to be housed here. He opened one of the doors. The interior was in use as a medicine cabinet.
Odd, he thought. Why keep your medicines down here when most people want them handy in the bathroom, or at least in the house? He looked more closely. These weren't the sorts of medicines you keep for emergencies. There were no Band-Aids, aspirins, Alka-Seltzers or Vaseline. Neither were they prescription drugs. They had labels, certainly, but they were handwritten, with just the names of the contents, and nothing about dosage. Burton was not well up on pharmacy, but he was intrigued by this lot. Insulin, hyoscine, morphine, dextromoramide, aconite, digoxin, antimony. Even with his limited knowledge he could tell there were poisons here, lethal poisons. What was a village rector doing with a collection like this hidden in his cellar?
It shocked Burton to the core. He'd harboured suspicions of malpractice, impersonation, even the taking of life. None of it had prepared him for this. For all the evidence to the contrary, he couldn't shake off the thought of Joy as a man of God.
What now? Here was the proof that the man was evil. He hesitated, dry-mouthed with stress, raking his fingers through his hair and tugging at it.
Twenty-one
Frustration for Burton Sands: PC George Mitchell wasn't at home. 'You'd be better off waiting till tomorrow, my dear,' said Mrs. Mitchell, echoing her husband's laid-back style of speech and raising Burton's blood pressure by several points. 'He won't be back till late. He had to drive all the way to Lymington to look at a body they took from the sea at Milford. I'm not supposed to say, but they think it could be poor Mrs. Haydenhall.'
Burton didn't fully take this in. He hadn't extricated his thoughts from that cellar. 'What time do you expect him?'
'Well, he didn't leave till six, and 'tis a two-hour drive, easy. He'll need a bite to eat, if he can stomach anything after a gruesome duty like that. Corpses don't look nice after some days in the water. I'll be surprised to see him before midnight. Why don't you come back in the morning, dear?'
'Did you say the body in the water is Mrs. Haydenhall?'
Dorothy Mitchell pressed a finger to her lips as if she'd said too much already. ' 'Tis not certain yet. That's why George has gone.'
'What was she doing in the sea?'
'Who could possibly say, my dear? Keep it to yourself, won't you?'
Burton looked at his watch. 'This can't wait till tomorrow.'
'My George won't be wanting to talk.'
'I haven't come for a chat. I've got evidence of a major crime. I'd better phone Warminster.'
'If 'tis village, I wouldn't,' she said mildly, but with a look that was not mild. 'George always deals with Foxford matters. They'll give the job to him anyway.'
'Does he have a mobile?'
'George?' She smiled at the notion.
'Can you get him to phone me when he gets in, whatever time it is?'
'I can ask him. If he's not of a mind to pick up the phone, he won't.'
'It's very urgent.'
Burton returned to his cottage. He'd left the party at the rectory before it looked like coming to an end, saying his headache wouldn't shift. Joy had professed concern and again offered a painkiller. The audacity of the man! Knowing what was in that cellar, Burton wouldn't accept a glass of water from Otis Joy, let alone a pill.
He sat close to the phone, primed. On the table in front of him was a small brown pill-bottle labelled Atropine. He'd taken the risk of removing it from the cellar knowing he wouldn't be believed otherwise. With any luck, Joy wouldn't notice it was gone.
How could anyone have acquired such a collection of poisons without working in a pharmacy? Burton was lost for an explanation. It would be up to the police to find out. All he could do was tell them what he'd seen, show them the bottle and his copy of the newspaper report linking the rector with the college in Canada. They could get a search warrant and raid the rectory. Then maybe they'd find the personal papers that his own search had failed to turn up-and discover the real identity of 'Otis Joy.'
He kept looking at the time. He had his front room curtain pulled back in case he saw the police car drive up the street. Several went by at eleven, when the pub closed. George would come from the opposite direction.
It was ten to midnight when he spotted the white Renault with the police stripes along the side. He snatched up the bottle and was out of the cottage and across the street before George Mitchell opened his car door.
'Bugger off, Burton, I haven't got time for you.'
It wasn't the reception Burton felt he was entitled to.
'It's important. It's about the rector. I've been waiting hours for you.'
'Is he dead?'
'No.'
'Standing on the church tower and about to jump off?'
'No.'
'Wait some more, then. I'll see you in the morning.'
Burton said in a hard, tight voice, 'No, that isn't good enough. If you don't take this seriously, I'll go straight home and dial nine-nine-nine.'
'Come in, then,' George said wearily. And to his wife, as he entered, 'Yes, it was her.'
'Poor creature, God rest her soul,' said Mrs. Mitchell.
Next morning at Warminster Police Station, George outlined the case against the rector to Chief Inspector Doug Somerville, the senior CID man, one of the new breed of detectives, brash, unbelievably young and with a low opinion of village bobbies.
'Fantastic,' was Somerville's first comment, and it was said without admiration.
'That's been my feeling all along,' George admitted, 'but the evidence is stacking up.'
'What evidence? This?' Somerville tapped the pill-bottle with his finger, knocking it over.
'It says atropine. That's a poison, isn't it?'
'It's a medicine.'
'What for?'
'Bellyache.' Somerville took a textbook from the shelf behind him, leafed through the pages, and started reading. ' 'Medicinal uses: the relief of gastrointestinal spasm and biliary and renal colic. Prescribed orally in doses of five hundred micrograms three times a day, increasing if required to up to two milligrams daily.''
'I reckon if you take enough, it's poison,' George said.
'Take enough of anything and it's poison. It depends on the dose.'
'What about the hyoscine? There was hyoscine there. That's a killer, I know. Crippen killed his wife with it.'
Somerville turned a few more pages and read out,' 'Hyoscine, also known as scopolamine. Widely used in the treatment of travel sickness.' ' He shut the book. 'Your Mr. Sands found the rector's medical supplies.'
