Burton Sands called on George one evening and asked why the rector had not been arrested yet.
'It's out of my hands,' said George.
'It's disgraceful,' said Burton. 'I gave you enough evidence to put him away for the rest of his life. He's still at liberty.'
'They're working on it. You know Gary Jansen was exhumed,' said George.
'That was ten days ago.'
'It can't be hurried.'
'He'll get away if you don't arrest him.'
'He hasn't gone,' George pointed out. 'He could have gone, and he hasn't.'
'Bluffing it out.'
'That's why we have to make sure of everything.'
'Did they find any poison in the body?'
'We don't know yet.'
The test results came in from the Home Office Forensic Science Laboratory at Chepstow on a Friday morning two weeks after the autopsy. Tissue samples taken from Gary Jansen's body showed a minute trace of aconitine, one of the most virulent poisons known.
DCI Somerville called the lab to find out more.
'You might well ask,' said the toxicologist on the end of the phone. 'We don't know of a case in Britain since eighteen eighty-one. We were very excited when the gas-chromatographic screen picked it up. It's an alkaloid, a plant poison, derived from monkshood. The stuff grows wild in shady, moist places all over Europe and North America. You've probably got some near you. There's a cultivated variety as well. Usually it's purple in colour, but you can get it in white, pale blue and reddish-blue. Are you a gardener?'
'Some chance.'
'It was common at one time, flavour of the month, but you have to go a long way back. 'Stepmothers' poison,' the Greeks called it. And the Romans used it so much that the Emperor Trajan banned them from growing it in their gardens. Right through the Middle Ages people were poisoning their rich uncles with it. It fell out of favour in modern times because the neuropathy is so obvious. Tingling and numbness in the mouth, throat, hands and limbs. Severe stomach pains, nausea and vomiting. Diarrhoea. Want me to go on?'
'Be my guest.'
'OK. Loss of power in the limbs, giddiness, deafness and impairment of vision, indistinct speech, loss of consciousness and convulsions. Didn't the GP pick up on any of this?'
'He wasn't called till late.'
'Who called him-the patient?'
'The wife.'
'She must have seen him suffering.'
For a moment the case against Otis Joy teetered slightly. Then Somerville remembered. 'No. She was out all evening. Got back late.'
'Poor sod-having to endure all that on his own. Horrible symptoms.'
'When she got back he was too far gone to talk. The diagnosis was a heart attack.'
'Correct, in a sense. The ultimate cause of death is cardiac or respiratory failure from paralysis of the brain. Why wasn't there a PM at the time?'
'The GP had been treating him for a heart problem.'
'Even so.'
'Perkins is one of the old school. Ought to be retired.'
'He will be, if this comes to court.'
Somerville thanked him and said they were sure to be in touch again. He phoned George Mitchell and told him the news.
George said, 'I'm punching the air, sir. We've got him at last!'
'Can you get over here fast?'
'You bet I can.'
At the main police station, Warminster's CID team was setting up an incident room and Somerville was calling himself the SIO-senior investigating officer. George was shown into an office where three senior detectives waited.
'I can tell you about monkshood,' George offered. He was more of a countryman than any of these clever dicks. 'The leaves look a little like parsley, except this grows at least a metre high. It grows wild in the woods round here, down by the River Wylye. Purple flowers. You don't come across it so much as when I was a lad. Farmers get rid of it as soon as it appears because it's just as deadly for animals as it is for humans. The 'monk's hood' is the shape of the flower.'
'There's a garden variety,' Somerville said.
'Yes, you can get it in other colours if you want. Looks nice enough in your herbaceous border if you put it in a shady position.'
'Does it come with a health warning?' one of the detectives asked.
'Certainly ought to.'
'George, you know what I'm going to ask next?' said Somerville.
'If it grows in the rectory garden? I couldn't tell you. It's a wilderness, that garden. The rector doesn't have time to look after it.'
Somerville didn't like being so predictable. 'Did I say anything about his garden? If the plant occurs locally, it doesn't have to be grown at the rectory. Come to that, he could have used pure aconitine in powder form. If that tosspot Sands is right, Joy has a fine collection of poisons.'
'Where would he get the pure poison?'
'God knows.'
'A pharmacy?'
'Unlikely. It says in the book it was formerly used in low concentrations as a liniment for rheumatism, but that was many years back. It went into a cure for toothache, too, applied as a tincture.'
'Dodgy,' said George. 'Personally, I'd rather put up with the toothache.'
Somerville saw no humour in the situation. 'If the Crown Prosecution Service are going to take this on board we have to give them more than we've got so far.'
'Proof of poisoning,' George said. 'You've got that.'
'Big deal. And now all we have to prove is that Otis Joy administered it, and how, and why.'
'Gary Jansen was seen going into the rectory on the afternoon of his death,' said George. 'Ann Porter was a witness to that.'
One of the others asked, 'How long does this stuff take to kick in?'
'Up to an hour,' said Somerville. 'You get the tingling and numbness in the mouth first, and the other symptoms follow on. Death can take anything up to several hours.'
'Well, then.'
'A sighting of the victim going into the rectory won't be enough for the CPS,' said Somerville with a glare. 'They want the lot, full chain of evidence. A poisoning has to go to the Central Criminal Court. There's sure to be massive public interest.'
There was a moment for reflection while the senior detectives imagined the sensation of a clergyman on trial for a series of murders. Warminster had not seen anything like it since the spate of flying saucer stories in the sixties.
'When this breaks, we're going to be under siege,' said Somerville.
'He's got to be questioned,' one of the others pointed out.
'So do we nick him now?' said another.
Somerville vibrated his lips. He didn't want the press and television muscling in at this delicate stage of the enquiry. 'George, you know the guy. Would he come in and make a voluntary statement? He won't want the media crawling all over him any more than we do.'
