‘You know,’ he said, ‘I think it’s fairly normal for a person to talk to their pets. But pretending they are having a conversation with you is a little weird.’
Champagne
Tamara had regained consciousness but took one look at Tarquin with a knife sticking out of his face and promptly screamed until she fainted again. The paramedics were going to have fun with that one.
The police arrived shortly afterward. Vince called them but they were already en route. Local citizens had called to report screaming coming from our general area.
Vince and I were sitting on the open boot lip of Tarquin’s car. I had Amber on my lap and Buster snoring loudly in the empty space behind us. It was nicer than sitting on the ground and the police made it clear they wanted us to hang around. We kind of guessed that anyway.
As luck would have it, one of the first to arrive was Detective Sergeant Mike Atwell, who at this point I considered to be a friendly face.
DS Atwell had news for us. ‘I found myself to be curious about how Mr Bleakwith came to be so ill and then recover so quickly. That was your doing, Mrs Philips,’ he praised me. ‘All that excitement at the hospital this afternoon, well it wasn’t for nothing.’ He turned to looked at Tarquin’s body lying just a few yards away. ‘Of course, you were right anyway. There really was someone trying to kill Mr Bleakwith. It just wasn’t his wife.’
I really didn’t feel there was a need to remind me how much of a fool I’d made of myself.
‘It turned out Mr Bleakwith’s brandy had been poisoned. It was a very subtle concoction. It was guess work … and a little intuition,’ he allowed himself a small pat on the back, ‘that led me to find it. I figured it had to be something he was coming into regular contact with. A short discussion of what he had ingested, imbibed, or absorbed on a regular basis but not since going into hospital reduced the list to just a few items. My guess, for that is all it can be since our suspect cannot answer any questions or give a confession, is that Mr Tremaine dosed the brandy whenever he visited.’
I nodded my head. In all the dazed confusion, it hadn’t occurred to me to tell anyone about the poisoned brandy. Now I didn’t need to. They would take a statement from me later, and I would tell them everything Tarquin confessed to then.
Two crime scene chaps arrived, tutting and sighing as they circled the body.
DS Atwell turned to observe them. ‘What do you think, Steven?’
One of the pair, a man in his mid-forties and difficult to distinguish from his colleague except that he wore glasses, said, ‘Looks like a cat scratched his face off.’
Amber said, ‘Meowlr.’
Steven raised his eyebrows and snorted a laugh when he spotted the cat in my arms. ‘I guess I was right then. Hey, Simon, when was the last time we had a death by cat attack?’
The crime scene man’s partner smiled. ‘You know. I think that might be a first.’
They were both joking and smiling – it seemed terribly out of place standing over a man who had recently died, but I held my tongue because I could only imagine what death and horror people in their line of work saw.
When DS Atwell excused himself - he needed to coordinate and stuff, Vince took out his phone, shot me a smile, and called The Wild Oak.
‘Yes, good evening. Yes, I hope you can be of assistance. You probably heard the police sirens going by a moment ago. Yes, there has been a minor incident in the carpark by the river. It’s all over now though. That’s why I’m calling actually.’ He kept pausing to listen to the person at the other end of the line. ‘Yes, can you send a bottle of your best champagne and two glasses down to me. Please tell whoever is delivering it that I have a handsome tip for their trouble. You’ll bring it yourself? Even better.’ He fumbled in his jacket to retrieve his wallet and came up empty.
Frowning, he mouthed, ‘Excuse me,’ and darted across the carpark.
Stroking Amber’s fur, I watched him reach a car. It wasn’t the car he’d been driving this morning though; it was a black BMW.
My mouth fell open.
He jogged back to me, reciting the number from his credit card. He paid for the champagne right there and then.
I had to admit it, it was a smooth move.
When he ended the call, I asked. ‘Did you find one of your tyres slashed today?’
He gave me a confused look. ‘No. Why?’
‘Nevermind,’ I muttered. ‘You were following me though, weren’t you?’
He shrugged apologetically. ‘I thought you might get into trouble.’
Among all the other things Mindy and I had done today, we had stuck a knife in an innocent person’s tyre.
While we waited for the waiter to arrive, Vince explained what he had been doing since breakfast this morning. ‘When we overheard that man last night – we know it was Tarquin now – I felt sure there was something happening that was far more sinister than a man falling off his balcony. When we got arrested because the other senior partner died, it left me with no doubt. I took what I knew and the little bit of evidence I had, and I started to dig. I had to look at all the employees and dug into their pasts.’
I interrupted him. ‘I thought the police took the data drive when they arrested you.’
‘They did,’ he agreed.
Across the carpark in the cut through between the line of buildings, a young man holding
