Bryant & May 09; The Memory of Blood

an academic.”

“A university background is no signifier of class. She could have had a college education and become a junkie. She had tetanus. It’s a soil-based infection, Mr Kershaw. In other words, dirt. Clostridium tetani is very hardy. The spores get into a wound and spasm the muscles, locking the jaw and forcing air from the body. It’s found in the environment, not transmitted from person to person. More common in developing nations than over here. Soil, dust, animal waste – apparently there was a neighbourhood dog her mother sometimes let in. There’s a potential source, right there. The bacteria enters through puncture wounds. I’ve seen it caused by rusty nails, insect bites, a wooden splinter, a torn nail. IV drug use, obviously, but she wasn’t a user. The only wound on her body was a tiny nick from the bread knife.

“I checked the knife blade and found traces of the toxin Tetanospasmin on the serrations. There were further traces on the bread board. It seems fairly clear to me that the knife had fallen on the floor at some point earlier in the day and had been replaced without being washed. My assistant spoke to the mother and she remembers picking it up from the kitchen floor not long after the dog had been allowed in there. The Marquands have a small garden. If the dog sometimes did its business on the path and the mother rarely cleaned up the mess… well, poor hygiene. It’s unfortunate, but hardly uncommon.”

“It’s my understanding that tetanus takes a while to become established,” said Giles. “Anna Marquand died quickly.”

“There are exceptions to every rule,” replied Hendrick impatiently.

Giles thanked the doctor and took his leave, but he was not convinced. On his way back to the station he rang Longbright. “Something feels wrong,” he told her. “Didn’t you say there was a packet of Handi Wipes in Anna’s shopping bag?”

“That’s right. There was a small plastic bottle of antibacterial stuff in her handbag, too.”

“Then I think Anna knew what her mother was like and was careful at home. I don’t think it’s very likely that she would have used the knife without washing it first. Wait. The shopping bag was taken away from her and returned.”

“That’s right. The mother says Anna came out of the house and found it on the back step.”

“Can we get everything in it tested?”

“I’ll do it right now.”

Longbright ran the bag up to Banbury, who was working in the makeshift laboratory he had been rigging on the floor above. She explained the problem as Dan debouched the shopping items. “Give me a couple of hours,” said Dan. “I’m sorry, I should have done this at the outset.”

“You had no reason to be suspicious then,” Longbright reminded him.

At six-thirty p.m. he came down to find her. “You were right. It’s in the bread,” he said.

“The bread wasn’t in the shopping bag I gave you.”

“No, it was in the shopping bag originally, but she took it out to make a sandwich. I just had the remains of the loaf brought over from the house. It was still in her mother’s cupboard, untouched. The cut on Anna’s finger was incidental. She ingested poison. Not tetanus but strychnine. It’s quite similar in chemical structure. Hendrick wouldn’t have expected to test for that. He went with the most likely cause of death.”

“We should call the supermarket and warn them.”

“No, I mean it’s in the bread. Injected into it. I found a pinprick in the plastic covering that corresponds to an indentation on the crust, both with traces of poison. It got to her internally. Anna Marquand had a bleeding ulcer. The poison killed her in a fairly short space of time. So I think you can call Giles and tell him the cause of death was strychnine poisoning. The mugger took the bag and returned it with a lethal addition.”

“This is much bigger than a mugging,” said Longbright. “The girl in the house, the man in the alley. There are others involved.”

? The Memory of Blood ?

38

Hypnotized

Maggie Armitage, Grand Order Grade IV White Witch of the Coven of St James the Elder, Kentish Town, was having problems of her own. “We’ve got sprites,” she complained as she opened the door to Arthur Bryant. “Come in but be careful. They’re everywhere, getting into the cupboards and breaking things. They’re especially fond of custard.”

“Are you talking about mice?” said Bryant, checking to see if he’d brought his hearing aid. He rarely used it in the PCU building because it kept picking up old episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour, which was very distracting.

“No, these are white and made of discarded ectoplasm, but they have little legs and can really shift. They appeared after a seance and now we can’t get rid of them. I can’t see them but Daphne swears she can, ever since her accident. She says they moved into the back of the television, but something has repelled them. The poor quality of programmes, I imagine. It’s nice to see you, give me a kiss.”

Bryant proffered his cheek and received a lipstick brand.

“How are you getting on in your new building? Had any manifestations yet?”

“What of?”

“Oh, the usual things that get left behind after a seance. Spirit dregs. Every building keeps a ghost imprint of its past and for over a decade yours was full of people contacting the dead, so you must have all sorts of things floating about in there. Don’t you hear strange noises at night?”

“All the time, but I think it’s mostly Raymond swearing.”

“The signs of manifestation include speaking in tongues, the gift of prophecy and damage to skirting boards,” said Maggie. “I’ll come over with my thermal scanner one evening. I suppose you’re here wanting information. There was a time when you’d pop by for my banana treacle trifle, but these days you just use me as a resource.”

“I’ll have some trifle if it’s going, but I do have a question for you. Do you know anything about stage magic, how the effects are achieved?”

“A fair bit. Shakespeare was a dab hand, Banquo’s ghost pointing an accusing finger at his killer, that sort of thing. Early melodramas often materialized pale, melancholy figures from behind folding doors. Sometimes they burst sachets of blood under their white gowns. But I think the Victorians did it best. They had phantasmagoria, magic lantern shows which projected images of the dead onto smoke, looming menacingly over the spectators. And in 1863 there was Pepper’s ghost, of course.”

“What was that?”

“Oh, that was a marvellous effect by all accounts. Professor John Pepper lit a sheet of glass so that it looked like people were walking through walls and gliding across the set. Thanks to the illusion, the London stage was soon awash with disappearing ladies, dancing skeletons and babbling severed heads. And they came up with something called the ‘ghost glide’. An actor would ascend through the floor of the stage, moving forward without taking a single step. Of course, most mediums were more like stage magicians than real psychics. Why do you want to know?”

“We’re dealing with a very peculiar case.”

“Well, that is your remit, isn’t it? The peculiar?”

“It was never meant to be,” Bryant admitted. “Anyway, it’s not why I’m here. I have another problem. I need you to hypnotize me. I have to recall something I’ve forgotten.”

“Oh, that’s easy enough. Didn’t I regress you to your past lives once?”

“Yes. You went back too far. I couldn’t speak, remember?”

“Oh that’s right, I think I turned you into protoplasm. It’s not my fault you’re so susceptible. Go and make yourself comfortable on the chaise longue, I’ll brew us some seaweed tea. What exactly do you need to remember?”

“I gave all my file notes to the girl who was helping me with my memoirs. I told her I remembered