damage to her lips and some small scratches around the mouth from glass beads which didn’t go down her throat. If that blood
‘Then why leave the smock and the towel behind, I wonder? I can understand someone missing the blood on the sink in their hurry to get out, but that seems a little careless.’
‘Perhaps he or she was worried about being seen with them. Anyway, the smock and the towel don’t actually tell us anything very incriminating—unless you think that the plan all along was to frame Baker for his daughter’s murder.’
‘I see what you mean. Baker may simply have come looking for Marjorie and turned up at the wrong moment, then had a helping hand down the stairs?’
‘I don’t put the story together, Archie—that’s your job—but I’ve found nothing yet to disprove what you’ve just said, although Joseph Baker had enough alcohol in him to end up at the bottom of those steps on his own. It’s only the scratches that suggest any sort of struggle—he was knocked unconscious by the fall and died of hypothermia, which makes the time of death difficult to establish, I’m afraid. Someone of his age didn’t stand a chance left out there in those temperatures.’
‘What about a time of death for Marjorie?’
‘She’d been dead for between eight and twelve hours when she was found. Unofficially, I’d say towards the upper end of that.’
Which fitted with what Lettice had told him about the lights going off in the studio, Penrose thought. ‘You said she had no other injuries—presumably she was drugged if she didn’t put up a fight?’
‘Yes, although I can’t say for certain with what until we get the results of some tests. She’d been dragged across the floor at some stage—her stockings were torn, and we found matching fibres on the leg of one of the tables.’
‘Was it in the vodka?’
‘Perhaps. Her pupils were dilated and her skin was grey—in fact, if you discount the horror of her injuries, the picture as a whole resembles clinical cardiovascular collapse, so one of the nitrites would have done the job. Amyl nitrite’s a possibility—it’s a muscle relaxant and they use it to treat angina, but it’s absorbed very rapidly from the lungs so making her inhale a good dose of that would achieve what the killer needed in order to complete the rest of the work.’
‘Is it readily available?’
‘Well, it has various medical uses and it’s commonly prescribed.’
‘Was she conscious throughout the worst of it?’ Penrose asked, although he thought he knew the answer already.
‘Oh yes. For a while, at least. She’ll have lost all the power in her muscles and she’ll have been drowsy, but certainly not drowsy enough. If she’d been allowed to remain lying down, she’d have recovered very quickly from the drug, but she didn’t stand a chance as long as she was tied upright to that chair.’
‘Medical knowledge, then?’
‘Perhaps.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I’ll get the full reports over to you as soon as I can.’
‘Thanks, Bernard—I appreciate it.’ Penrose put the phone down, satisfied. He had known in his heart that Joseph Baker, while having plenty to reproach himself for, was not guilty of his daughter’s murder, but he tried to see where the Cowdray Club fitted into the overall picture. Had Baker persuaded Marjorie to write those notes and try her hand at blackmail, and, if so, how had she got hold of the information to put in them? He tried to remember the details of the letters, but he had only given them a cursory glance at the time. Why, though, would someone kill Marjorie to silence her when the notes had been freely handed over to the police and their contents already made public? Perhaps there was someone at the club who had never confessed to receiving one.
Fallowfield put his head round the door and Penrose brought him up to date, then asked: ‘Are WPC Wyles’s sewing skills up to scratch, do you think?’
Fallowfield looked curiously at him. ‘Why, sir, have you got something that needs mending?’
Penrose laughed. ‘No, but I’m about to tell my cousins that they’ve got a new member of staff—I want Wyles in that club, watching those women like a hawk.’
‘Why don’t you ask Miss Tey to keep an eye out, sir? She’s on the spot already.’
‘Because she’s Miss Tey, not Miss bloody Marple. You’ve been spending your evenings in St Mary Mead again, haven’t you?’
Fallowfield looked sheepish. ‘Seriously, sir, that sort of work’s not really up Wyles’s street, is it? Women coppers are all right for taking statements and looking after juveniles, but undercover work’s a bit risky.’
‘Oh don’t be so old-fashioned, Bill. She’ll suit a smock better than you will, and she’s perfectly capable of looking after herself. I thought about putting her in there as a nurse, but that would mean trusting someone in the building and, for all we know, any one of them could be capable of wielding a sack needle. No, the girls’ moving into the Cowdray Club is too good a chance to miss.’ Fallowfield still looked sceptical. ‘Cheer up, Bill—even if I’m wrong, it might get the chief constable’s wife off our backs. Have you got those anonymous letters handy? I’d like to have another look at them before we go over there.’
The telephone rang while he was waiting. ‘Inspector Penrose? It’s Hilda Reader. I’m sorry to bother you.’
‘It’s no bother, Mrs Reader. Are you all right?’
‘Oh yes, thank you, but I’m glad I’ve caught you. There’s something you should know—something I’ve just found out from my husband.’
‘What is it?’
‘I told him about Marjorie—I hope you don’t mind, but he could see how upset I was and it helped to talk to him about it.’
‘Of course. I understand.’
‘Well, it turns out he saw her yesterday when she came into the shop to get the things Miss Motley needed. A man in his department served her, and there was a bit of a scene between them. John—that’s my husband—had to go over and tell them to be quiet. It turns out that this man—Lionel Bishop, his name is—had been seeing Marjorie behind his wife’s back, but she’d given him his marching orders. He was trying to talk her into starting things up again, but she was having none of it. John said he heard her threaten to tell Mr Bishop’s wife if he didn’t leave her alone. He was furious, apparently.’
‘And is Mr Bishop at the store today?’
‘Yes, Inspector. All day.’
‘Thank you again, Mrs Reader—you’ve been very helpful.’
‘There’s one more thing, Inspector.’
‘Yes?’
‘I don’t know if it’s important or not, but he sold her those beads.’
Penrose went to look for Fallowfield and handed him a slip of paper in exchange for the folder of letters. ‘Lionel Bishop. Works in the haberdashery department of Debenhams. He’s been playing around with Marjorie Baker, but she wanted to put a stop to it and threatened to tell his wife.’
‘And he wasn’t best pleased?’
‘Exactly. Go and bring him in.’
Chapter Nine
The man waiting downstairs to be questioned stood up as soon as Penrose and Fallowfield entered the room. ‘What the hell is this all about, Inspector?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Your lot turn up at my place of work, embarrassing me in front of my staff, and no one has the decency to offer an explanation. I have rights, you know —you might have been more discreet.’
