Murder in Mercy
Chapter One
Detective Sergeant Kathleen Doyle stood alongside Special Officer Vadik Gabriel as they silently reviewed the body lying on the bed. “Well, here’s a crackin’ surprise,” she said.
Gabriel nodded as they considered the former Mrs. Bradford Song in the stillness of the well-appointed bedroom. The middle-aged woman was in her nightclothes, and looked to have died peacefully in bed.
“She wasn’t well, to begin with,” Doyle offered. “Mayhap the stress was too much for her.”
“She wasn’t very good at picking husbands,” Gabriel agreed.
Both detectives had been to this posh townhouse previously, because the dead woman’s husband—who was now missing and presumed dead—had been steadily poisoning his wife with an eye to inheriting her fortune. It had been a fortunate coincidence; in investigating the husband’s disappearance, they’d stumbled across his poisoning plot and had managed to thwart it—supposedly just in time. Although apparently not, in light of this latest development.
Gabriel leaned down to lift one of the dead woman’s eyelids. “From what I was told, the damage from the digoxin wasn’t fatal.”
“Aye,” Doyle agreed. “But she was in a weakened state, and had some heavy burdens to bear, poor thing.”
This was undeniable; not only had the wealthy woman learned that her husband had been poisoning her, she’d also sustained the additional blow of discovering that he’d been involved in an international money-laundering operation that involved questionable artwork. Bradford Song had been a famous art critic for the news media, and in the course of his work he’d been running cover for some very dodgy people.
“What d’you think?” Doyle ventured. “Fold and file?” This was a term Scotland Yard’s CID used when a death showed little cause for investigation.
But her lead officer seemed troubled, and crossed his arms thoughtfully. “Is it possible the husband isn’t dead? Maybe he’s still pulling the strings, somewhere?”
Doyle—who knew very well that the woman’s husband was dead, even though she couldn’t very well explain how she knew this—pointed out, “That’s unlikely, Gabriel. We’ve an All Ports Warnin’ out for him and besides, no chance he’d think he could get away with finishin’ up the job. He’d not be able to lay hands on her money, and that was the whole reason for the plot.”
“I wonder who gets the money, now?” Gabriel mused as he lifted his gaze to assess the artwork that was displayed on the walls.
“Hopefully, the Police Society,” Doyle joked. The wealthy woman was a well-known philanthropist, and had been generous in donating to various worthy causes—one of which provided benefits and support to police officers.
After a moment’s silence, he let out a breath. “I just don’t like this.” He glanced at Doyle. “And I think we have a reversal of roles, Sergeant; usually you’re the one who’s more suspicious.”
This was true, and with good reason; Doyle was what the Irish would call “fey,” in that she had perceptive abilities that were very helpful in detective-work—mainly because she could sense when people were hiding their true emotions, or were lying. Doyle’s husband, Chief Inspector Acton, knew about her abilities—indeed, they’d helped to solve many a case—but he’d strictly cautioned her to conceal them from anyone else, for obvious reasons. There were times, however, when she felt Officer Gabriel might harbor a small inkling—that Doyle was remarkably spot-on with her “hunches.” It didn’t worry her, though; Gabriel was a friend, and—since he was on temporary assignment from the intelligence services—he tended to be a keeper of secrets.
In any event, Doyle didn’t have the sense that this particular death was anything nefarious; a weakened woman had succumbed to grief—it was unfortunate but not overly unusual, in their business—and so she replied, “I don’t know, Gabriel; it must have been devastatin’ for someone like her to find out that her husband was tryin’ to kill her, and then—as a topper—find out that he was an out-and-out blackleg, and doin’ the biddin’ of some very nasty people. She prided herself on her reputation as a do-gooder, after all. I know that Acton doesn’t believe in coincidences, but this one’s not truly a coincidence; she’d suffered blow upon blow, and may have just lost her will to live.”
He nodded, even though she could see that he didn’t necessarily agree. “I suppose, but it might pay to delve a bit deeper—we should find out who gets her money, to start with. I don’t think we’ll need a forensics team, though—no sign of trauma. An autopsy might be useful to see what’s in her stomach.”
“Aye; if you want—although there’s no one left to poison her, and nothin’ that might point to suicide.” There were no drinking containers or pills beside the bed; instead—as a counter against a potential suicide theory—the woman had a book on the bedstand, with a bookmark showing she was only about half-way finished.
Gabriel nodded in concession. “True, but it’s possible the husband tainted something else and we didn’t catch it.”
This was a possibility, although a slim one; the poisonous doses had been injected into bottles of crème de cassis, an aperitif the dead woman favored. However, once the plot was uncovered the remaining bottles were confiscated as evidence, and all other items in the pantry were destroyed in an excess of caution.
Coming to a decision, Gabriel straightened up. “Let’s interview the reporting witness and if you would, take a look at the street CCTV.”
“Yes, sir,” Doyle replied, resigned to having to do the slog-work, since she’d been assigned as Gabriel’s support officer. No hardship, though; even if they didn’t find anything of interest they should do it up right; the dead woman had been generous to the police in life, and so the police should return the favor in dealing with her death.
Gabriel glanced up at the corners of the room. “No surveillance cameras in the house. Not what you’d expect, in a place like this.”
But Doyle remembered, “It was the same with the Waring case—that victim was the theatre patron, remember? She was also involved in the artwork-rig, and some of the artwork was rotated through her house as a cover. If Bradford Song was doing the same, then he wouldn’t want surveillance on-site, either.”
He nodded, thoughtfully reviewing the artwork. “Why hasn’t it been confiscated, I wonder?”
Doyle followed his gaze. “Oh—now there’s a good point; this lot might be potential evidence for the artwork-case. Shall I check-in with Unit Coordination?” This, because although Gabriel’s original assignment had focused on the Song poisoning plot, when two cases were found to overlap, the CID was tasked with making certain the investigation was coordinated so that nothing that might be important in one case was overlooked in the other. Although in this instance, it wasn’t necessarily as crucial; the artwork-case had stalled, due to all the key defendants having abruptly died or disappeared.
Gabriel nodded. “Yes—if you would. And let’s find out who gets her money, although I imagine she’s not had the chance to change heirs, and so it’s probably still the husband.”
“Right,” said Doyle, making notes in her tablet. “And since he’s missin’, whoever are his heirs wouldn’t inherit for a good long while—not a lot of motive, there.”
“We may have a patient-killer situation, though,” he offered thoughtfully. “Someone who doesn’t mind waiting it out, if it means he’s less likely to be accused of murder.”
“Aye,” she agreed, since this was always a consideration—although patient-killers were a rare breed; people who were willing to commit murder tended to be poor at impulse-control.
“The reporting witness is the housekeeper?”
“Aye; found her this mornin’, when she brought-in the breakfast tray.”
With a thread of humor, he offered, “Maybe Mrs. Radley is the residuary beneficiary in the will, and she’s decided to strike while the iron was hot.”
He was joking of course, because they’d both taken the measure of the woman during the previous poisoning investigation, and the housekeeper wouldn’t make a likely murderer. Although you never knew; as Doyle had seen plenty of times in this business, the various motivations for murder were plentiful and often unexpected. Especially when it came to money; she could never get used to the fact that human beings would often kill each other over shockingly small amounts of money.
Having made the decision open an investigative file, Gabriel called-in the field officer to contact the Coroner’s team, and then take the appropriate measures to secure the scene pending the team’s arrival.
These tasks concluded, as he and Doyle began walking down the stairs to the main room he took the opportunity to ask, “Are you going to the baptism?”
“I am,” she readily replied.
Their colleague, Inspector Isabel Munoz, had just given birth to a daughter and it was a bit of a sticky situation, since Gabriel had dated Munoz before she’d married her husband. Doyle knew—in the way that she knew things—that Gabriel still carried a torch for Munoz, despite the fact she’d married and despite the fact Gabriel had been dating Doyle’s sister-in-law for some months, now. Being as Gabriel had once done a stint in rehab for a drug problem, Doyle was a bit worried that the situation might sink him into a relapse; despite his tendency to joke-about, Gabriel was a sensitive soul and the Munoz-situation had hit him hard.
“You should come,” Doyle ventured, a bit surprised that he’d raised the subject of the baptism in the first place. They weren’t supposed to engage in idle chit-chat at a crime scene—although this one didn’t truly seem a crime scene, so perhaps he’d decided to relax the rules a bit. She added, “Inspector Habib will be there; if you come then he won’t be the only stranger in a strange land.”
In a dry tone, he replied, “As enticing as that sounds, I believe I will abstain.”
She smiled. “You’re sure? Munoz’s Spanish relatives will be there, and they’re a-laugh-a-minute.”
Munoz’s relatives were Spanish blue-bloods, and although Acton—Doyle’s husband—was an English blue-blood, the English nobs couldn’t hold a candle to the Spanish nobs when it came to high-and-haughty.
He glanced at her. “I hear there was some friction about this baptism; the Spaniards wanted it to take place in Spain.”
“I’m not surprised; there was a kerfuffle over Sofia’s baptism, too.”
The reference was to Munoz’s niece, in that Munoz’s sister Elena had up and married the Pakistani Inspector Habib, much against her grandmother’s wishes—the grandmother being the austere matriarch of the blue-blooded family.
Doyle repeated, “You should come; it’s better than a raree-show to watch the grandmother and Acton cross swords.”
Gabriel raised his dark brows. “Is there sword-crossing?”
“Aye. But it’s all done under this polite-and-respectful-aristo façade. Instead of pushin’ chests, they polite each other to death, and it makes me want to give the both of them a hard shake.”
Gabriel smiled. “I would join you, in the hard shaking. The grandmother didn’t like me much.”
Doyle made a face. “That’s a badge of honor, my friend. She thinks she’s still livin’ in the sixteenth-century.”
“The fifteenth, if they’re Spanish. The sixteenth wasn’t much fun for them.”
“Whatever, Gabriel—your bloodline wouldn’t be acceptable, no matter the century.” Gabriel’s family was wealthy, but—as a disqualifier for Munoz’s grandmother—he was half-English and half-Persian.
With a smile, Doyle added, “And since Munoz wound-up elopin’ with a workin’-class Irishman, it turned out to be irony and justice, shakin’ hands.”
“There you go,” he agreed.
Suddenly reminded that mayhap she shouldn’t have spoken of the justness of Munoz’s marriage to her present companion, Doyle quickly added, “You should come to the baptism and bring Callie along, just to show the grandmother that your bloodline is perfectly acceptable to English nobility. Callie’s the sister of an earl, after all.”
In a dry tone, he replied, “I think that would only cement her prejudices.”
Doyle had to laugh. “It’s so strange, isn’t it? That such things matter so much, to some people?”
“And that’s exactly why you are my favorite countess.”
They waited for a few minutes in the main room, since the field-officer reported that the housekeeper had been lying down and needed a minute to make herself presentable. Into the silence, Doyle ventured, “And how are things goin’ with Callie, if you don’t mind my askin’?”
Gabriel sighed. “Things are dissolving, I think.” He glanced at her. “She’s pining after the Irishman—it must run in the family.”
This was a reference to Seamus Riordan, a witness who’d been slated to testify in the artwork-case, but who was now back working in his library in Dublin. Doyle knew that Callie had been smitten with Riordan, and was rather hoping Gabriel hadn’t noticed. “I’m that sorry,” she offered.
But he only shrugged philosophically. “I don’t think it was ever going to work out, in the long run. It was more that your husband was hoping I’d be a good influence.”
This seemed evident, since it had been Acton who’d put the two of them together in the first place. “Aye; you’ve been a steady hand on that particular tiller; the lass seems much more grounded than she was—it can’t have been easy, to find out about her parents.”
Callie was Acton’s half-sister, although none of them had known it until recently—including Callie herself. She’d been conceived when Acton’s awful father had forced himself upon Acton’s youthful girlfriend, and no one had known that Melinda had given birth to a daughter, who’d then been quietly adopted by a couple living hear Acton’s estate. As could be expected, the revelation hadn’t been an easy one for the young woman to accept, and they’d navigated through some rough waters as a result. At present, however, Callie seemed to be on a better track; attending university and cautiously cultivating a relationship with her birth-mother, Melinda.
A knock at the door indicated that the Coroner’s team had arrived, and Gabriel crossed over to open the door. The team leader was a no-nonsense middle-aged woman, who tilted her head in reference to the Song’s door-knocker. “Strange sort of thing, to put on the front door.”
“It’s a Medusa-head,” Gabriel explained, as they all contemplated the elaborate brass knocker. “A Greek myth. Her gaze turned anyone who looked upon her to stone, so it’s along the lines of a joke to put it up on the door.”
“Well, the joke’s on Mrs. Song, I gather. What do we have?”
Gabriel gave the team leader a brief outline of his concerns as the woman nodded along, making quick notes in her tablet.
“It may be nothing, or it may be something,” Gabriel concluded. “If you would expedite an autopsy, I’d appreciate it.”
“Will do. Name of the decedent’s attending physician?” the woman asked in a brisk tone, her fingers poised.
Gabriel turned to Doyle. “Do you remember?”
“No,” Doyle admitted, and thought—now, that’s a bit strange; I don’t remember hearing much about any physician, even though she’d been sickening for some time. But surely, someone like Mrs. Song must have had a good one? Mayhap not, though; you’d think any physician worth his salt would have figured out that she was being poisoned.
As Gabriel directed the team toward the upstairs bedroom, Doyle’s phone pinged, and she saw that it was a text from Acton. “Anything of interest?”
“No,” Doyle replied. “But G wants to do autop.”
“Good. Let me know.”
Now, there’s a wrinkle, Doyle thought as she sheathed her phone. Not only is Gabriel uneasy about this case, I think my husband is, too.