The Prodigal Son(58)

Abe compelled him to stop walking until he had composed himself; they continued slowly.

“Did your wife ever say anything about the poisoner?”

“She told me she knew who it was, but honest, Lieutenant, I didn’t believe her. Telling those kind of whoppers was Emily’s besetting sin — she loved to stir people, you know? But I’m sure she was making it all up. Truth is, Emily would have loved to be like Davina — pushy, glamorous, smart as new paint.”

“Did she say anything specific? Mention a name?”

“You’re missing my point, Lieutenant. She never did say anything convincing. This time she said she knew where the poison stash was — stash? No, I think that’s my word for it. Emily said hoard, I think. Anyway, you know what I mean.”



“I do.”

“But I couldn’t get anything more out of him,” Abe said to Carmine a few minutes later. “We know she had one ampoule of it, but that’s not a stash. The poisoner has at least three ampoules left, maybe more, if he saved what he didn’t use when he took his injection doses.”

“Whatever,” Carmine said, “we’re not going to find any tetrodotoxin in Emily’s kitchen, are we?”

“No, we’re not. My guess? It was in the water carafe.”



A conclusion also reached by Gus Fennell.

“There was nothing left in her stomach at all,” he said to Carmine and Abe. “Her vomiting was so intense that the samples of vomitus we scraped up contained intestinal matter as well. Tetrodotoxin was present, but the nature of the food was impossible to determine beyond the fact that it was soft, quickly digested and non-fatty in nature. The one item we could reconstruct was some bread wrapped around a kind of curry filling, but that held no poison at all. I’m guessing her water from the carafe.”

“Does it have a taste?” Abe asked, curious.

“Who knows? Want to try it?” Gus asked.

“No, thanks!”

“Did you manage to make her presentable, Gus?” Carmine asked.

The nondescript face fell. “No. Once rigor passed off I was able to straighten her out and arrange her body decently, but the face is marred. Her husband will have to identify her, but it’s a closed casket funeral, can’t be otherwise.”

“Time of death?”

“Between four and six p.m. yesterday.”

“Val Tunbull did say she worked day and night in her shed, but he didn’t mention that she wasn’t home at all last night.”

“I think Emily’s hobby has enabled her to get out of domestic or connubial duties she no longer feels much enthusiasm for,” Carmine said. “There was a very comfortable couch in her shed, and a good heater. My guess is that Val didn’t mention her absence because it’s a regular occurrence. Any bets he eats a lot of meals at his son and daughter-in-law’s next door?”

Paul came into Gus’s office. “Want the news about the ampoule?” he asked, dark face inscrutable.

“Why not?” Carmine asked.

“Flea powder. No tetrodotoxin whatsoever.”

“Shit!” from Carmine.

“Any prints?” from Abe.

“Only Emily’s. I think we’ve been handed a genuine red herring,” Paul said.

“More to the point, so was Emily handed a red herring,” Carmine said on a Bronx cheer. “It takes a lot of gall to play with a potential victim before doing the deed. Abe, what next?”

“Depends. Did you break the ampoule, Paul?”

“No. I drilled a hole in its bottom and emptied it that way. The actual gizmo is otherwise intact.” Paul pulled a face. “All I will add is that whoever made it is a total amateur.”



“I’m taking it to Millie Hunter,” Abe said. “She ought to have a few illuminating things to say.”



Abe found her in her laboratory, though it was surely time, he thought, for a married woman to be heading home to fix dinner. But not in the Hunter household, he divined; that was a domicile ran on TV dinners that they burned because they forgot what hour they’d put them in the oven.

She worked in an inside room ten feet by eight feet — a cross between a lab and a cupboard, given the wealth of shelving on its walls. The floor was cluttered with nineteen-inch racks holding electronic equipment, cables had been taped down to prevent being tripped over, and a tiny sink with a swan-neck faucet seemed to be her only source of water apart from carboys marked “Distilled” or “Deionized”. She did her procedures on a stainless steel cart meticulously covered in linen savers, had a small but adequate autoclave on a shelf, and, in a gap, a refrigerator/freezer that bore a steel flap and a padlock.