Something Wicked Read online

  DAVID ROBERTS worked in publishing for over thirty years before devoting his energies to writing full time. He is married and divides his time between London and Wiltshire.

  Visit www.lordedwardcorinth.co.uk to find out more about David and the series.

  Praise for David Roberts

  ‘A perfect example of golden-age mystery traditions.’

  Guardian

  ‘A classic murder mystery with as complex a plot as one could hope for and a most engaging pair of amateur sleuths whom I look forward to encountering again in future novels.’

  Charles Osborne, author of

  The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie

  ‘Dangerous Sea is taken from more elegant times than ours, when women retained their mystery and even murder held a certain charm. The plot is both intricate and enthralling, like Poirot on the high seas, and lovingly recorded by an author with a meticulous eye and a huge sense of fun.’

  Michael Dobbs, author of

  Winston’s War and Never Surrender

  ‘Roberts’ use of period detail . . . gives the tale terrific texture. I recommend this one heartily to history-mystery devotees.’

  Booklist

  ‘The plots are exciting and the central characters are engaging, they offer a fresh, a more accurate and a more telling picture of those less placid times.’

  Sherlock

  Titles in this series

  (listed in order)

  Sweet Poison

  Bones of the Buried

  Hollow Crown

  Dangerous Sea

  The More Deceived

  A Grave Man

  The Quality of Mercy

  Something Wicked

  No More Dying

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  3 The Lanchesters

  162 Fulham Palace Road

  London W6 9ER

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Constable, an imprint of

  Constable & Robinson Ltd 2007

  This paperback edition published by Robinson, an imprint of

  Constable & Robinson Ltd 2008

  Copyright © David Roberts 2007, 2008

  The right of David Roberts to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  UK ISBN: 978-1-84529-318-5 (hbk)

  UK ISBN: 978-1-84529-813-5 (pbk)

  eISBN: 978-1-78033-423-3

  Printed and bound in the EU

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  For Violetta and Fernando

  I am most grateful to Kelly Russell, Wendy Bann and all at The River and Rowing Museum at Henley for helping me research the 1938 Henley Royal Regatta. I am also grateful to James Crowden CVO and to Christopher Dodd whose book Henley Royal Regatta is rightly regarded as definitive. Thank you to Henley Royal Regatta Headquarters, in particular Gino Caiafa and Paddy for showing me Temple Island. Many thanks also to Rebecca Caroe who took me to the 2006 Regatta and explained its rites and rituals.

  I am also grateful to Mark Ryan who took me up in his Tiger Moth and Tim Bruce-Dick whose grandfather was Secretary of Phyllis Court in the 1930s. Thank you also to Gregory Bowden, Nick Mann and Olivia and Katharine Williams.

  With so much help, I have no excuse for getting things wrong.

  By the pricking of my thumbs,

  Something wicked this way comes.

  Shakespeare, Macbeth

  As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;

  They kill us for their sport.

  Shakespeare, King Lear

  Contents

  June and July 1938

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Historical Note

  June and July 1938

  Prologue

  James Herold looked out of the drawing-room window towards his beloved apiary. He was too lame, too weak, too feeble to look after the bees himself. Since his first heart attack he had found even walking difficult. His lungs seemed made of metal, each little breath an effort of will. And this for a man who, in his twenties, had run a mile in four and a half minutes and had climbed the Matterhorn. This was a living death.

  But who was that out near the hives? Watkins? No, he had gone into town to get the mower mended. He called to his wife, his voice thin and reedy, but remembered she had gone shopping. And his nurse – where was she? Of course, it was her day off. He struggled out of his armchair, reached for his stick and stumbled out into the hall. He had trouble with the side door. It was stuck and he tugged on it petulantly. It sprung open, almost knocking him backwards. A sense of urgency, almost panic, seized him. The sunlight blinded him but he forced himself on. He had the idea that he was late for an appointment. There was a meeting he had half-forgotten but which it was absolutely necessary he attend.

  He stopped, leaning on his stick, panting heavily. He wiped the sweat off his brow and wished that he had put on his old straw hat to cover his naked head. He shaded his eyes with his hand. Was it Watkins? He did not think it could be. This man seemed taller and surely broader in the chest. Watkins was a weedy fellow whom he had always despised but had to put up with. Good with the bees – he must be fair – but not strong. Whoever it was in Watkins’ smock beckoned to him across the iridescent grass. He thought for a moment he almost recognized the man but he could not be sure. He wore gloves thick as a wicket-keeper’s. His legs were encased in heavy wellington boots. His head was covered by a wide-brimmed hat from which hung a veil. Herold passed his hand over his hairless skull. A drone began in his head like insects nesting. Was it his hat the man was wearing?

  He shuffled across the lawn, so closely cut but a jungle to a man in his condition. Then his heart began to race. He saw the man go over to one of the hives and begin to shake it. It was a heavy wooden structure but it began to move on its brick base and he could hear, quite distinctly, the bees buzzing, angry at being disturbed. Herold gestured to the man to stop. What he was doing was madness – vandalism. He wanted to shout to him to desist but he could not find the breath. He tried to walk faster and his shuffle became almost a trot. He was now less than a hundred yards away. What was the man doing? He would have the hive over if he wasn’t careful. Why, there it went! Now the man had moved to another hive and was wrenching that over too.

  Suddenly the hum became a roar and a dark cloud of bees poured out of the despoiled hives looking for their enemy. The man in the bee-keeper’s costume began to walk purposively towards him. It was only then that Herold realized the danger he was in. He turned and tried to run but missed his footing and his stick spun away from between his legs. He lay on the ground like an insect helpless on its back and looked up. The man lifted his veil and Herold recognized his nemesis. He saw in the face of the god his own death and knew that this was murder. The bees covered every inch of his flesh. They masked his eyes and left their hooked stings in his eyelids. He put his hands to hi
s face to try to scrape them off but he was too weak. The bees coiled about his head like writhing snakes to make a ludicrous wig. He understood that they had been sent to take him with them into that other world beyond anger and pain. And he was not ungrateful. The venom from a thousand stings stopped his heart and ended his suffering. He had, after all, made his meeting and found that his appointment had been with death.

  1

  ‘Wider . . . open wider. I can’t get at it if you won’t open wide.’

  Lord Edward Corinth was Mr Silver’s last patient. He had told the receptionist she could go early so they were alone in the surgery. The drill buzzed like an angry wasp as the dentist probed the cavity. Edward’s knuckles whitened as he clenched the arms of the chair. He had faced danger in his time – even dodged a bullet or two – but this was worse, much worse. He had had a horror of the dentist’s chair ever since his tenth birthday when his mother had promised him a treat. He had set out joyfully, his hand in hers, on a long-anticipated visit to the circus. They did go to the circus but, traitorous woman, not before he had been unsuspectingly taken to a room in Wigmore Street, placed in a black chair and attacked by a man in a white gown. Never again did he trust his mother. He had forgiven her – of course he had – but from that day forward he was suspicious of any promise of future delight. There was always going to be a catch. There would always be a worm in the bud.

  Take the news that Verity Browne, his fiancée – how he loved to use that word – was returning to London. He had heard from his friend Lord Weaver, the proprietor of the New Gazette and the employer of the woman who had so recently and unexpectedly promised to be his wife, that she was coming home after only a few weeks in Prague as the paper’s correspondent in that troubled city. His heart had leapt with delight but his joy was quickly soiled by suspicion.

  ‘Why, Joe? What’s the matter?’

  ‘She hasn’t wired you? Probably didn’t want you to fuss. The fact is she collapsed at some official dinner. The doctor thinks she has an ulcer but there’s just a chance it might be . . . you know, TB.’

  Tuberculosis! The word fell on his ears like earth on a coffin.

  ‘TB! Oh, my God! I told her she couldn’t go on living such a rackety life and not get ill. When she came back from Vienna she was exhausted. She could hardly eat anything. I told her she should see a doctor but she said she was just tired.’

  He blamed himself bitterly for not having frogmarched her into his doctor’s surgery and insisted that she have a thorough check-up, but Verity was not easy to compel. Now he thought about it, he realized she must have suspected she was not well before she went to Prague but had refused to admit it.

  When he collected her at Croydon Airport, his attempts to disguise his anxiety had been unsuccessful. Her skin was an unhealthy grey and her eyes were dull. She had insisted on walking to the customs hall but, when they reached the Lagonda, she had given up any pretence that she was all right and sat slumped beside him, uncharacteristically silent, her eyes closed. He had put her to bed in her flat in Cranmer Court and summoned his doctor. Verity had never consulted a doctor – never needed to – and had no name to suggest. Dr Clement had taken one look at her and called an ambulance. She was now in the Middlesex Hospital undergoing tests. If she was seriously ill she must let him take care of her, he thought grimly and hated himself for thinking it.

  When Mr Silver had finished and removed the cotton wool from his mouth, Edward said, ‘I had forgotten how much I hated that.’ He rinsed his mouth, feeling the new filling with his tongue. ‘Am I making a fuss or do you find most of your patients hate putting themselves at your mercy? It’s something about lying so helpless in your chair and having to watch as you fit a new head to the drill. I know, rationally, that you are going to take away the pain in my tooth but every nerve in my body is telling me to make a run for it.’

  Mr Silver did not seem to hear him and Edward saw that he was preoccupied. Instead of reassuring him that he was no more of a coward than other men, he said, ‘You remember I told you I wanted to talk to you about something . . . to consult you?’

  ‘Of course, fire away.’ Edward hoped that this wasn’t going to be embarrassing. Was he having trouble with his wife? No, he remembered Silk had no wife. His business then . . .?

  ‘I don’t really know how to say this. It seems so absurd.’

  ‘Get it off your chest, man,’ Edward urged him. He wanted to go to the hospital – sit beside Verity and feed her grapes. She hated hospitals and was a bad patient. She would need a lot of support in the coming weeks.

  ‘Well, the fact of the matter is . . .’ Mr Silver hesitated. ‘You know about murder, don’t you? I mean, you can recognize it?’

  ‘What an odd question, Silver. I think I’d know if someone’s been murdered or not. It’s very rare, you know – murder.’ Edward suddenly felt uneasy and stopped thinking about Verity. ‘Who’s been murdered?’

  ‘No one – or rather no one seems to think it might be murder.’

  ‘Silver – you’re not making any sense. You think there’s been a murder but nobody else thinks so? Is that it?’

  ‘Three murders.’

  ‘Three!’ Edward was disbelieving.

  ‘Three of my patients. No, don’t look at me like that. I didn’t kill them. James Herold was killed by his bees. Hermione Totteridge was poisoned by the spray she was using to kill her greenfly and Sir Ernest drank flies and died.’

  ‘There was an old lady who swallowed a fly. Do you think she’ll die?’ The rhyme came unbidden to Edward and he stifled the urge to laugh. ‘Three deaths connected with insects? Is that it?’

  ‘Well, quite. It sounds absurd, I know, and of course the police refuse to make the connection.’

  Edward very much wanted to get away but he had known Eric Silver for almost twenty years and felt he owed it to him to hear him out. ‘You say they were all patients of yours?’

  ‘Yes, though I had not seen Herold for five years.’

  ‘Herold? The mountaineer?’

  ‘That’s right. He was always so sure he would die on a mountainside. That’s what he wanted, so when he was diagnosed with heart disease . . .’

  ‘I remember reading his obituary. There was something odd about his heart attack, wasn’t there?’

  ‘He was stung to death.’

  ‘So that’s what you meant when you said he was killed by his bees! It’s coming back to me. I read a report in the New Gazette. He could hardly walk but had somehow got among his hives and the bees swarmed.’ Edward shuddered. ‘They said, with his weak heart, he would have died almost instantaneously.’ He had a thought. ‘You don’t suppose it was suicide? I mean, he might have wanted to end his life and thought this was a way of doing it relatively painlessly. If I had been as active as he was, I wouldn’t want to drag out a miserable existence imprisoned in my armchair.’

  He spoke with conviction. He had occasionally wondered what he would do if he were crippled in some way or caught some awful disease. He thought once again of Verity and the urge to go to her was almost overwhelming.

  ‘That’s what the coroner believed,’ Mr Silver said, ‘but to spare the widow he was able to say it was an accident.’

  ‘There was no note or anything?’

  ‘No suicide note but there was an unexplained piece of paper stuffed in his trouser pocket.’

  ‘Was there something written on it?’

  ‘Buzz buzz.’

  ‘Buzz buzz? That’s all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In his handwriting?’

  ‘It was in capital letters but his wife was almost certain it wasn’t his writing. It’s difficult to tell with block capitals. It was his pen, though. A Parker he always used. It was beside his body when he was found.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘I went to the inquest. He was an old friend.’

  ‘Where did he live?’

  ‘Just outside Henley . . . on the river.’

>   ‘And the other two deaths?’

  ‘I don’t know so much about them. Hermione Totteridge was a well-known botanist . . .’

  ‘I see. You think it odd she died of . . .?’

  ‘She was apparently experimenting with a new insecticide.’

  ‘And Sir Ernest . . .?’

  ‘Sir Ernest Lowther. I had seen him only a month before he died. He was in fine fettle. He’d had trouble with his blood pressure but he was certainly not contemplating suicide.’

  ‘General Sir Ernest Lowther. The name’s familiar. He won a VC during the war – a hero of sorts. Was that the man?’

  ‘Yes, a gallant soldier. I was proud to know him.’

  ‘And how did he die?’

  ‘He liked his wine. He was a widower – lived alone. When his housekeeper came to clear up after dinner she found him on the floor. It looked as though he had tried to get out of his chair but had been felled by a heart attack. He had the wine bottle in his hand as though he was looking at it.’

  ‘Another heart attack! What was it – the wine?’

  ‘Clos des Mouches. We had actually talked about it when he last came to see me. It’s a Beaune from Joseph Drouhin. He recommended it – said ’33 and ’35 had been vintage years.’

  ‘Mouches – flies! So you think all three deaths involve insects? Did they test the wine to see if it had been poisoned?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. There was nothing in the paper about it being a suspicious death. It sounds crazy but here’s another thing. All three lived near Henley.’

  ‘Let me get this straight – Herold was the first to die?’

  ‘No, Miss Totteridge was the first. Then, a week or so later, General Lowther . . .’

  ‘Followed by James Herold.’

  ‘That’s right, but all three within two months. I have written down the details for you.’

  Edward looked down the sheet of paper the dentist gave him. It was neat, succinct and to the point. ‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ he murmured. ‘Did Lowther and Hermione Totteridge also have notes in their pockets from our murderer?’