D for Daisy (The Blind Sleuth Mysteries 1)

D for Daisy Part 14: 1950

"I just want to tell you a story... It goes like this: on V-E Day, in forty-five, when everybody was celebrating in the streets, I decided that it would be a good time to call my old friend Major Mannings at Great Dunmow airbase. When I got him on the phone, I asked him as innocently as I could: who was this Group Captain that came to the base on the very morning after Ralph died? 'Oh,' the major answered, 'that was just Cedric Clifton, Air Vice-Marshal Rupert Clifton's boy...' And that's how I learned the identity of the snooping Group Captain. So you lied when you told me that you flew over from Cairo 'as soon as you heard the news'. You were already in Britain, and probably in a position to monitor the lists of RAF casualties as soon as they came in at headquarters. You wanted to make sure you could go and recuperate the Thermos that had contained the coffee that you had laced with poison. Only, there were two Thermoses."

"What are you talking about? All this is just idle speculation! May I remind you that I was the one who got you permission to investigate at the airbase? It was I, remember, who asked Doctor Westmore to take samples... How do you reconcile your accusations with that, eh?"

"It was a tactical move on your part, and it worked brilliantly. I must say I'm impressed by how you kept your cool at Ralph's funeral... The moment you found out that you had blundered with that Thermos, you decided that it would be better, no matter the consequences, to be seen to help me find the culprit, precisely because it was you."

"You can't prove any of this, can you? I just did the decent thing..."

"Well, whatever you say... But the story goes further. On V-E Day I also managed to get hold of the coroner in Saffron Walden, the man who ordered the inquest. Again we talked amiably, and I managed to cajole him into giving me the name of an old school friend of yours at Scotland Yard. This, of course, being the man who had initiated the inquest on your behalf..."

"There you are, I did everything in my power to help..."

"Yes, but the interesting thing, you see, is that both men assured me that they did not receive the pharmacist's report from you. Of course Chief Inspector Cockett already had it, but you didn't know that. So it is a bit suspicious, isn't it, that you didn't even show it to your friend at the Yard? I remember you saying at the funeral that it would help tremendously if you could show that letter to the authorities concerned..."

"Well, it wasn't even necessary to show it to old Thistlehurst, he offered his assistance right away, and the result of my efforts proves that I was really trying to help..."

"But I still believe you were only interested in suppressing evidence when you asked me to give you that letter... At any rate, after that, I showed a photograph of the gang to my witness, Ralph's batman, and he confirmed that you were on it. So then I had a positive identification. It is of course quite tragic that because I'm blind, I have no way of telling how anyone looks. Otherwise I would have known it was you the moment Victor gave me a description of you at first..."

"So that little game you had us play on the last day of your stay, last summer... You in fact already knew what I look like, then?"

"Yes. And you have just implicitly admitted that you are the snooping Group Captain."

"I did no such thing! I can only deny it and protest my innocence... And you have no real evidence against me anyway... So may I ask if you intend to go on for long with this? I'm starting to find all these explanations very longwinded and tiresome. I'd like to go back to bed..."

"Well that's tough, because there's more to come, and you are going to listen patiently like a good boy. Now, the last piece of the puzzle that needed to be solved, of course, was: how on earth did the murderer—whoever he is—manage to administer a lethal dose of arsenic to his victim? It is Victor who found the solution, when I showed him Ralph's pocket diary. There's a page with William's name, and his address at Bletchley Park, and your name and address in Cairo. And Ralph has added: 'send thank-you note' When he saw this, Victor suddenly remembered that Ralph had once received by post a packet of very special coffee. There was some Arab script on the label and it was clearly something exclusive and exotic. So, for a couple of weeks, Victor prepared this coffee for his officer to take along on operations, and Ralph never drank anything else until the packet was finished. And by then, of course, he had ingested a deadly dose of arsenic... And in the meantime Ralph probably sent that thank-you note to your address in Cairo, because he knew that it was you who had sent him that delicious coffee from Egypt. Whether you were still there to receive the note or not, I cannot tell. As for your address—and William's—Ralph must have been in touch with his uncle Rupert, your Dad, and gotten the information from him. And that is the last piece of the puzzle; it fits just so, and completes the picture of your crime..."