‘Which one, specifically?’

  Stride’s bored tone made Flynn want to arrest him on the spot, but he knew that being a pompous oaf wasn’t exactly a criminal offence. Just an offence against Flynn’s reputation as a detective. Even though the Doctor’s tone was beginning to get on Flynn’s nerves, he said politely, ‘I’d say Deadly Nightshade.’

  Flynn had to stand and silently witness the doctor breaking into gales of laughter. Determined to be heard, Flynn repeated his warnings, finishing with, ‘Do you really want to be responsible for Mrs Carter’s death if you don’t act on my advice?’

  That brought the man up short and perhaps gave him an inkling that Flynn could be right, or at the very least that he meant business. Mabel gasping at Flynn’s words probably helped as well.

  ‘Very well, I’ll add your request to the blood screen,’ and Dr Stride turned away, clearly still finding the whole conversation humorous, as his shoulders were shaking.

  ‘What now, Flynn?’ asked Mabel.

  ‘Coffee while we wait and maybe a sandwich. My fish and chip supper is ruined now, and I haven’t eaten.’

  An hour later they were back in A&E. Flynn walked purposefully into the patient examination area casting around for Dr Stride.

  ‘You go and see Mrs Carter, Mabel,’ he said, ‘I’ll find the doctor.’

  But the doctor found Flynn.

  ‘How is Mrs Carter?’ Flynn demanded. ‘What were your findings?’

  Dr Stride cleared his throat and seemed to have difficulty starting the conversation. ‘Um, well, she has high levels of atropine in her system. Has she overdosed on her medication by mistake?’

  ‘As far as I know she didn’t take any! So she must have been poisoned then. I wonder who by?’

  ‘That’s your department, Detective. I just get her better,’ and Dr Stride turned on his heel and walked away. No thank you, no well-done Flynn, nothing. Flynn shrugged. Let’s face it he was used to it. People didn’t like it when he was right and they were wrong, but there was nothing he could do about that. He turned and went to find Mabel and Mrs Carter.

  Chapter 9

  Finding Mabel still with Mrs Carter, he pulled her to one side and told her of the doctor’s findings. ‘So, Mrs Carter was the unwitting victim of her husband’s poisoning,’ Flynn concluded.

  ‘From?’ asked Mabel.

  ‘Atropine, aka Deadly Nightshade. So, it was probably in the port. Come on, we need to rush back to the house,’ Flynn said and dashed out of the door.

  Mabel tried and failed to keep up with him and shouted after him, ‘Flynn why are we rushing?’

  Flynn stopped at the bank of lifts, allowing Mabel to catch up.

  ‘Because that’s what detectives do! Isn’t it?’ he asked, suddenly unsure.

  ‘I’m finding all this rushing about exhausting.’

  ‘Go home then,’ said Flynn, not unreasonably.

  ‘Not on your life,’ said Mabel as the lift doors opened.

  ‘Then stop moaning!’

  ‘I’ll stop moaning if you’ll stop rushing,’ Mabel countered.

  As Flynn didn’t want to continue investigating on his own, deciding he rather liked having Mabel with him to bounce ideas off, he had to agree. Thinking about it logically, he was half her age and therefore should be aware of her physical limitations. He figured that her local knowledge was proving to be invaluable, so he needed to accommodate her. He mumbled an apology of sorts and looked at the floor for the entire journey to the ground level.

  Once at Mrs Carter’s home, Mabel pulled the keys out of her handbag and they gained entry to the house, walking into the sitting room.

  ‘First,’ said Flynn as he pulled an evidence bag out of his pocket and snapped on gloves, ‘where’s the glass Mrs Carter drunk port from?’

  Mabel pointed to it and Flynn put it carefully in the evidence bag, sealed it and wrote on the outside.

  ‘Now, where’s the bottle?’

  ‘It’ll still be in the study,’ said Mabel and led the way, even though Flynn knew where to go. ‘There,’ she said, ‘that’s the bottle I used.’

  Sat on a windowsill was a silver tray with a bottle of vintage port on it and one small port glass. Using his gloved hands, Flynn put the bottle in a further bag and then, for good measure, grabbed the other glass from the tray.

  ‘Mabel?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When the mayor died, had he been drinking?’

  ‘Yes, I remember his wife saying he was given a bottle of port as a gift. She left him drinking it the night she went to bed early. Oh, that was the night he died!’

  ‘Was this his glass?’

  ‘Ah…’

  ‘Aah what?’

  ‘Well I tidied up and put everything in the dishwasher the next day. Still, I wasn’t to know, was I? I was just helping out a friend.’

  ‘Well, if the Mayor did have a drink and the port is laced with Deadly Nightshade as I suspect, he would have suffered a massive dose of atropine, as he was already on that medication for his dicky heart.’

  Flynn started on a long-winded explanation of the effects of Deadly Nightshade on the body and how the sweet taste of it would have been masked by the sweetness of the port.

  Mabel started rolling her eyes after five minutes, so Flynn guessed he better shut up and take her home. It was a shame, but some people clearly just didn’t have the capacity for information that he had.

  Chapter 10

  It wasn’t until a couple of days later that Mrs Carter was sufficiently recovered to leave hospital and go home and was also strong enough to talk to Flynn.

  He wasted no time in asking, ‘Who gave your husband this bottle of port?’ and he showed her a photograph of it.

  ‘Let me think,’ she said.

  Flynn hoped she wouldn’t take too long thinking, as he was in rushing mode.

  ‘Oh, one of his councillor friends, I think. Oh yes, the friend said he had a couple of bottles and thought the Mayor would like one of them.’

  ‘Which councillor friend was that?’

  ‘Um, I’m afraid I can’t remember just now. It’ll come to me I’m sure.’

  ‘But…’

  Flynn was cut short by Mabel raising her eyebrows at him.

  ‘Could you ring me when you do remember?’ he said, instead of urging the blasted woman to remember.

  ‘Ah, so it’s important is it?’

  ‘Yes, very.’

  ‘But it depends on the forensic testing of the liquid,’ said Mabel. ‘Doesn’t it, Flynn?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ he agreed. ‘But still, it would be very helpful to know who your husband got the port from.’

  ‘I suppose I could check in his diary. That might ring a bell. Shall I do it now?’

  ‘That would be very helpful, dear,’ said Mabel. ‘If you and Flynn go into the study, I’ll make us a nice cup of coffee.’

  The last thing Flynn wanted was a cup of coffee. He was eager to get the information and get on with the investigation. But if there was one thing he was learning from Mabel; it was that sometimes rushing and being so focused wasn’t the best approach, even though it was normal for him. At least it had been when he was in London and dealing with the underbelly of society. He guessed things were a bit different in Muddlebay. Everyone seemed so much more relaxed and time seemed to move far slower than in the big city.

  Flynn didn’t necessarily like it, but he had to put up with it. His plan was to show everyone what a good detective he really was, so he would be able to return to the job he loved in London and to doing real detective work again.

  Chapter 11

  For once it didn’t take long for the forensic tests to come back on the port and the pathologist rang Flynn with the results two days later.

  ‘Good morning,’ Dr Stone the pathologist, began. ‘Well, we tested the bottle of port you brought in.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And a foreign substance was found in it.’

  ‘A foreign substance? Can you be more specific?’

  ‘Atropine.’

  ‘Deadly Nightshade,’ breathed Flynn.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘In that case, how much would the Mayor needed to have drunk to kill him.’

  ‘Oh, about half for that of a normal person.’

  ‘Half?’

  ‘Yes, I understand that the Mayor was already taking atropine for his heart condition, so drinking a couple of glasses of doctored port, well, it would be like him taking an overdose of his pills. Has it been known to happen before?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Taking extra pills by mistake?’

  ‘No and that certainly wasn’t what happened. Not this time it wasn’t,’ said Flynn. Pausing for dramatic effect before saying, ‘This time it was murder.’

  ‘But,’ spluttered the Pathologist. ‘Nothing ever happens here in Muddlebay!’

  Flynn smiled to himself as he replaced the telephone receiver. It seemed it was his job to prove that murder very definitely did happen in Muddlebay.

  He mulled over the poison. Deadly Nightshade. Of course, the reason this one worked so well in the port was because the berries of Deadly Nightshade tasted sweet. Not that he tasted them personally. But he’d read that in a fermented drink, you probably wouldn’t find much difference in the taste of say a red wine, port, sherry, mead, or ale. You would only be aware that there was a slight extra sweetness. It seemed Deadly Nightshade was the perfect poison for those who liked a tipple at the end of the day. But someone had put it in the bottle of port. Who? And Why Mayor Carter? Flynn would have to dig deeper and a good place to start was the library and Mabel.

  Chapter 12

  The same morning that Flynn got the report on the bottle of port that both Mayor Carter and his wife had drunk from, Mabel had a telephone call at the library from her friend, Mrs Carter.

  ‘Mabel,’ I’ve just remembered who gave the Mayor that bottle of port!’ gushed Jessie.

  ‘Oh, well done, dear.’

  ‘Thank you. It had been bothering me, but after a good night’s sleep I woke up with the name in my head.’

  ‘Fancy that!’ said Mabel.

  ‘I know, spooky isn’t it.’

  ‘Yes, it is. So what is it, dear?’

  ‘What’s what?’

  ‘The name of the person who gave the Mayor the port.’

  ‘Oh yes, sorry, I was getting a bit distracted there. Well, it was Tom Ludlow. He’s a Councillor and was a firm friend of the Mayor’s.’

  ‘Thank you, Jessie. I’ll pass that information on to Flynn.’

  ‘Oh, by the way, I wondered if you wanted to pop in for a sandwich for lunch, say 12.30?’

  ‘That would be very kind, thank you. I’ll see you then.’

  Mabel replaced the receiver. Tom Ludlow, eh? That was a turn up. Tom was the last person that Mabel would have suspected to have done anything underhand, let alone try and poison the Mayor. It just didn’t make sense. As she started on the big stack of books that needed returning to the shelves, Mabel turned the information over in her mind. She knew she’d have to give Flynn Tom Ludlow’s name and also tell him of her concerns. The longer she pondered on it, the more she wondered if Mrs Carter had got the name right. She could quiz her more at lunchtime.

  Surely it couldn’t be Tom.

  Could it?

  Chapter 13

  Mabel couldn’t let Flynn know the name behind the gift of port straight away, as there were too many people in the library. For the next hour, Mabel had to content herself with returning books to the stacks. It was while she was in the cookery section that she became aware of a whispered conversation.

  As she listened, she found the speaker was Tom Ludlow’s wife no less, who was boasting in whispers to one of her cronies. She was saying that her husband could be made Mayor any day.

  ‘But Mayor Carter’s only just died!’ her friend exclaimed. Mabel recognised the voice of Juliet Samson, an active member of the local Women’s Institute and one of the women responsible for arranging the flowers in the local church.

  ‘Yes, I realise that,’ hissed Mrs Ludlow. ‘But our little town needs a leader, don’t you think?’

  Mrs Samson murmured a reply that Mabel couldn’t quite catch.’

  ‘We wouldn’t want anything getting out of hand. Tom would rule with a firm but fair grip.’

  Mabel wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. It seems Mrs Ludlow was getting ideas above her station. Let’s face it this was modern day Muddlebay, not George Orwell’s 1984! Ruling with a firm but fair grip indeed. The very idea was preposterous. They didn’t live in the time of Dickens, with a ruling class and an underclass.

  Thankfully the two women left the library shortly after that, without either of them borrowing any books. As a result, Mabel wondered if it had been a secret tryst. But thought it probably hadn’t been. It was pretty unlikely. The two were well known gossips and would have talked about the latest rumours over morning coffee, or even afternoon tea. On both occasions in public. So why the whispered conversation?

  Deciding speculation was just wasting time, and as she had a break, she lifted the telephone and dialled Flynn’s number.

  Flynn was delighted with her call and wanted to go and see Tom Ludlow immediately. And for Mabel to go with him.

  ‘But I have a lunch appointment in,’ Mabel looked at her watch, ’30 minutes. It will have to wait until the library closes.’

  Flynn huffed down the line. ‘But I wanted to go now.’

  ‘Don’t be petulant,’ admonished Mabel, ‘it doesn’t suit you. An hour or two isn’t going to make any difference.’

  ‘It’s longer than that,’ said Flynn.

  ‘And you can stop being so bloody pedantic as well, Flynn,’ Mabel said, feeling that she was dealing with a surly teenager, not a seasoned detective. ‘I’ve been invited to have a sandwich with Jessie Carter. She needs the company at this difficult time. I know how that feels and I won’t let her down.’

  ‘Oh, alright,’ said Flynn, seemingly unable to challenge that train of thought.

  Perhaps just for once Flynn was showing some compassion, Mabel thought. After all the poor woman had just lost her husband and been poisoned herself. Although Mabel seriously wondered if Flynn would even recognise compassion if he saw it. She thought that to Flynn it was just some idealised state that people said he didn’t have any of, and he’d no way of knowing how to get some. If something wasn’t clear cut and black and white, he just didn’t know how to deal with it.

  ‘I’ll meet you outside the library at 4.15 precisely,’ he said to Mabel and he put down the phone, cutting off her call.

  ‘Well, really,’ said Mabel out loud.

  ‘Problems, dear?’ a woman asked in passing. It was one of Mabel’s neighbours.

  ‘Oh, no, just library stuff, you know.’

  It was far more than that, but Mabel wasn’t about to share her secrets with anyone. She made a point of listening to people whispering in her library, after all you never knew what they could be up to. But she never gossiped about it. But this time she might have to break her golden rule and tell Flynn about Mrs Ludlow’s aspirations to be the next Lady Mayoress.

  Chapter 14

  At last it was 4.00pm and Mabel could close the library. By 4.10 she was locked up and waiting for Flynn outside on the pavement. With a hoot of his horn that told her he had arrived, he pulled over and swung open the passenger door for her.

  ‘Right, where are we off to?’

  ‘To see Tom Ludlow,’ Mabel frowned, wondering what was wrong with Flynn.

  ‘I know that, Mabel, but where does he live?’

  ‘Oh, sorry, I see,’ and she gave him the address.

  On the way she told him about Mrs Ludlow’s visit to the library, boasting how her husband was to be the new mayor.

  ‘Do you think he will be?’

  ‘More than likely. He’s the best of a bad bunch if anything.’

  Just then they pulled up outside an impressive Victorian villa.

  ‘That looks worth a lot of money,’ Flynn said.

  ‘It does,’ agreed Mabel.

  ‘Conservative councillor, is he?’

  Mabel laughed. ‘Labour. He calls the house the fruits of his labour and says anyone can do what he has done with diligence and hard work.’

  ‘A Tory by another name, then,’ huffed Flynn as he climbed out of his car.

  The man who opened the impressive black front door was of an equally impressive bulk. Mabel noted Tom had put on a lot of weight since she’d last seen him, what, about six months ago. Too much good living maybe? No doubt enjoying the fruits of his labours to the full.

  Tom Ludlow seemed taken aback to see them on his doorsteps. ‘Oh, hello, Mabel. Who’s your friend?’ he asked, looking askance at Flynn.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Moran,’ said Flynn waiving his ID under the man’s nose. ‘May we come in?’

  Tom Ludlow shuffled backwards and invited them in with a nod of his head. Mabel and Flynn followed him through to a hallway with original black and white tiles on the floor and on into an impressive living room, complete with resplendent tiled fireplace.

  ‘Nice place,’ said Flynn.

  ‘Thank you, but what can I do for you?’

  Flynn ignored the question. ‘Must have cost a pretty penny.’ More a statement than a question.

  ‘More like lots of elbow grease,’ said Ludlow. ‘But you still haven’t told me why you’re here.’

  ‘We understanding you’re running for Mayor,’ said Flynn, staring at Tom Ludlow.

  Mabel decided her friend was being deliberately antagonistic. Tom Ludlow must have thought so as well, for he didn’t respond.

  ‘Have you heard about Mrs Carter?’

  ‘No, why?’

 

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