The queen of poisons, p.1
The Queen of Poisons, page 1
Also by Robert Thorogood
The Marlow Murder Club Mysteries
The Marlow Murder Club
Death Comes to Marlow
The Death in Paradise Mysteries
A Meditation on Murder
The Killing of Polly Carter
Death Knocks Twice
Murder in the Caribbean
Copyright © 2024 by Robert Thorogood
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For Penny Thomas
Contents
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
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Reading Group Guide
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1
Suzie Harris was on a mission.
She wasn’t sure she’d be able to see it through. In fact, she knew the chance of failure was high, but she was going to give it her best shot. She was going to try to sit through a Marlow town council planning meeting.
Suzie hated meetings, and the idea of a planning meeting seemed even more impossibly boring, but she’d recently come up with a ruse to make a financial killing, and she figured she’d need allies on the planning committee. So she’d decided to attend one of their meetings to discover who the key personalities were, how they made their decisions, and— most importantly— if any of them could be bullied into looking favorably on any application she later submitted.
The meeting was being held in the town council, a pretty Georgian house that overlooked the River Thames by Higginson Park. The entrance was a highly polished black door that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Downing Street, and while most of the two- story building was set aside as office space, it also contained an old debating chamber that was still used for formal meetings. Entering it, any visitor found themselves standing on a viewing gallery for spectators with a few steps that led down to a large room that contained half a dozen desks, filing cabinets along the walls, and a serving hatch that opened onto a little kitchenette. On the far wall, the town’s coat of arms of a swan captured in chains was carved into a wooden shield that looked down on proceedings. Like the town of Marlow itself, the debating chamber managed to be both grand and pocket- sized at the same time.
On this occasion, a screen and projector had been set up beneath the coat of arms so the committee could better inspect the planning applications as they worked through the agenda. Suzie, having arrived nice and early, was sitting in the little gallery with a notebook and pen ready to write thumbnail sketches of the council members, detailing their strengths and— more importantly— any potential weaknesses she could exploit.
The first person to arrive was a man in his fifties who was wearing a pin- striped suit, a blue shirt, and a sky- blue silk tie with pink dots on it. He was broad shouldered and had plenty of swagger about him, and his smile was so natural and effortless that Suzie found her heart give a little skip.
“You here for the planning meeting?” he asked.
“That’s right,” Suzie said, before reminding herself that she wasn’t in fact a schoolgirl who found men attractive just because they had a sharp jawline. As he squeezed past her and trotted down the stairs to the chamber below, he lifted his elbows to show how very fit he was, before striding over to a desk where there was a pile of printouts already waiting.
“Are you here for a particular application?” he asked.
It was only at that moment that Suzie realized she hadn’t worked out a cover story for her presence.
“Yup,” she said, if only to buy herself time.
“Which one?”
“I’m sorry?”
“If you’ve got interest in a particular case, it’s important we hear what you have to say. What application are you connected to?”
“You know,” Suzie said, desperately extemporizing, “the one…on the…the main road. The big house— I mean, it’s not all that big at the moment, but the owners want it to be…you know, bigger.”
Even ever- optimistic Suzie could see that her cack- handed explanation had confused the man, but before he could ask any follow- up questions, the door opened and a woman entered. She was about sixty years old, and whereas the man seemed to radiate goodwill, this new arrival, Suzie thought, seemed to suck the joy out of the air as she looked about herself. Her manner reminded Suzie of all the many dry- as- dust teachers who’d been disappointed with her at school.
“‘But soft,’” the man called up from the chamber below, “‘what light from yonder window breaks?’”
“Don’t be facetious,” the woman snapped, before wrinkling her nose as she squeezed past Suzie. “Sorry, do you mind?” she said.
“Not at all,” Suzie said, already deciding that she didn’t like the woman. She struck her as the sort of person who knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing— and the cost would always be “too much.”
“Good evening, Marcus,” the woman said as she sat down at the desk. “Have you any conflicts of interest you need to declare this time?”
“That’s for the chairman to know,” Marcus said with a wink as he headed over to the serving hatch at the side of the room.
Suzie could see that there was a man in the kitchenette, bringing cups and saucers to the counter of the hatch. He was wearing blue polyethylene catering gloves as he put down a wooden caddy of tea bags, and she found herself thinking that it really was health and safety gone mad that catering staff had to wear protective gloves to serve tea.
“Cup of tea, Debbie?” Marcus asked the woman as he took a cup and saucer over to a metal samovar that was sitting on the counter in the hatch by a Nespresso coffee machine.
“No, thank you,” Debbie replied.
“Suit yourself.”
Marcus returned to the table with his cup of tea.
The main door opened again and a man entered, although he stopped when he saw Suzie blocking his way.
“Well hello,” he said with a nasal voice that managed to be amused, patronizing, and superior all at once. Looking at him, Suzie saw that he had thinning hair that he combed over his otherwise balding pate, and a long, pallid face that made Suzie think of a soap- on- a- rope that was nearing the end of its life. The man had about the same amount of charisma as well, she thought.
“Do you want to get past?” she asked.
“Don’t mind if I do,” the man said, believing himself to be quite the wit, and then he pushed past Suzie and headed down the steps to the main chamber.
“Hail fellow, well met,” he said by way of greeting to Marcus. “Debbie,” he added, and Suzie once again noted the superior tone to the man’s voice.
“Tea, Jeremy?” Marcus asked.
“None for me, thank you,” Jeremy said as he sat at the table. “Not unless and until the council supply us with the biscuits they promised at the last main committee council meeting. In their absence, I won’t be taking any caffeinated libations,” he added, and then reached for a copy of the briefing notes.
Suzie saw the man in the catering gloves turn away from the hatch and head toward a fire door at the back of the kitchenette. As Jeremy called from the main chamber, “Unless there are some biscuits this time?” the man opened the door and left, letting the fire door close behind him with a heavy clunk. Suzie smiled to herself. It almost certainly wasn’t a coincidence that the man had left just as Jeremy h
“Oh,” Jeremy said as he realized there was no longer anyone in the kitchen to serve him.
“Well, if it isn’t Suzie Harris!” a mellifluous voice announced from the doorway as Geoffrey Lushington, the mayor of Marlow, entered the chamber. He was about seventy years old and he was quite short and plump, with a thick shock of unkempt white hair that surrounded a perfectly circular bald patch on the very top of his head. Suzie always thought he looked a bit like a gnome. A jolly gnome with an impish sense of humor. Everyone in the town liked him.
After the first time Suzie and her friends Judith and Becks had helped the police solve a series of murders in the town, Geoffrey had insisted on throwing a drinks reception in honor of the women. He’d said at the time that all local success should be championed, and no one had been more successful than Suzie, Judith, and Becks. Suzie had liked him instantly.
“So what’s your interest in the planning committee tonight?” he asked as he passed Suzie and trotted down the stairs.
“Oh, nothing much, Geoffrey,” Suzie said, realizing she had to modify her cover story since her calamity with Marcus.
“Is that so?” Geoffrey said, heading over to the window to the kitchenette, picking up a little coffee capsule, and slipping it into the Nespresso machine.
“Just exercising my democratic right to witness the committee in action,” Suzie said, playing what she hoped was an ace card.
“Quite so, quite so,” Geoffrey agreed, as the machine poured coffee into a cup he’d put under the spout. “Although you’ve not attended a council meeting before.”
“Haven’t wanted to before now.”
“Fair enough,” he said, taking his coffee over to the table.
“Actually,” Debbie said, standing up, “I think I will have a coffee after all.”
As she went over to the Nespresso machine, Marcus offered a glass jar of sugar cubes to Geoffrey.
“Sugar?” he asked.
“Thank you,” Geoffrey said as he plucked out a cube. He plopped it into his coffee, gave it a stir, and said to Suzie, “Although, I can’t help noticing that the last time I passed your house, you’d finished your building work.”
It was true. After having been left in the lurch by a cowboy builder some years before, Suzie had finally managed to get the extension to her house finished by signing up to a reality TV program. As part of the show, the TV company completed the building work that had been left unfinished, but they also tried to confront the original builder who’d done a runner. In Suzie’s case, all they’d been able to discover was that he’d wound up his company and retired to Spain. When the episode finally aired, Suzie had been a little disappointed when it didn’t make more of a splash, but she’d perhaps overestimated how much the general public cared about daytime home makeover television shows.
Nonetheless, the whole experience had had a happy epilogue. It was because of the conversations she’d had with the TV show’s architect that she was currently attending the planning meeting. Not that she was going to tell anyone on the committee this fact.
“You’re not wrong there,” Suzie said to Geoffrey. “The building work’s finished.”
“Wasn’t there a TV program or something?”
Suzie tried not to be offended by Geoffrey’s lack of engagement with her television career.
“Anyway,” Geoffrey continued, turning to face the other members of the committee, “anyone know where Sophia is?”
“She didn’t say anything to me about being late,” Debbie said.
Geoffrey looked up at the clock on the wall. It was a few minutes past seven thirty.
“Well, I’m sure she’ll turn up in due course. How about we get started?”
“Point of order,” Jeremy said, raising a hand.
“You’re not doing this again,” Debbie said.
“We can’t start the meeting without Sophia. We’re not quorate.”
“Then you can’t raise a point of order,” Marcus said as he stirred his tea.
“What’s that?”
“If we’re not quorate, the meeting hasn’t been convened, so there can’t be any points of order just yet.”
Marcus tapped his teaspoon on the side of his cup and placed it in his saucer with a smile.
“No, good point,” Jeremy agreed, trying to save face, “Good point.”
“So how about we convene the meeting,” Geoffrey said, “rattle through the applications as speedily as possible, and I’ll get the first round in at the George and Dragon.”
“Not until Sophia arrives,” Jeremy said.
“I’m sure we can be quorate as long as more than fifty percent of us are present,” Marcus said.
“That’s not what the standing orders say. Debbie, you’re secretary, are you minuting this?”
Debbie seemed to wake up from a reverie.
“What’s that?”
“I said, are you minuting this?”
“Of course not,” she said. “The meeting’s not started.”
“So I call the meeting to order,” Geoffrey said. “Item 1, the proposed addition of dormer windows to the first floor of 13 Henley Road.”
Debbie opened a notebook and picked up her pen, ready to start taking notes.
“This meeting isn’t legal,” Jeremy whined.
“Of course it is,” Marcus said.
“Jeremy, don’t you remember what happened last time?” Geoffrey said.
“And there it is!” Jeremy said. “Always patronizing me.”
“I’m not,” Geoffrey said.
“He’s really not,” Debbie added.
“And there you go, taking sides!”
“I’m not,” Debbie said, irritated. “Chairman, please can you speak to Jeremy.”
“He’s not the chairman!” Jeremy said.
“I think you’ll find he is,” Marcus said, enjoying the bust- up tremendously.
“He isn’t.”
“No, really, he is.”
“He isn’t,” Jeremy said, banging his fist hard on the table. “Authority is only invested in the chair once the meeting’s convened, and we’re not quorate!” he added with a fury that startled everyone in the room, including himself.
No one wanted to break the silence that followed.
“Sorry,” Jeremy eventually said. “I’ve been under a bit of pressure. Don’t know where that came from,” he added, hoping it could mend the fences he’d just smashed.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” a breathy voice announced from the door.
Suzie looked over and saw a tall woman in her fifties standing in the doorway. She had rosy cheeks, straight blond hair down to her shoulders, and dark eyeliner that accentuated her eyes dramatically. The woman radiated good health, and perhaps, even more so, wealth. Her hooped silver earrings, exquisitely cut summer dress, and polished brown brogues made Suzie tug at the blue shirt she was wearing under her dog- walking coat.
“Hello,” the woman said to Suzie with the interest of someone inspecting an exotic animal in a zoo.
Suzie realized she didn’t know what to say to someone so radiant, and the woman sashayed past her, leaving the fragrant notes of what Suzie guessed was a very expensive perfume.
“Sorry I’m late,” the woman said to the others as she headed down the stairs to the chamber below.
“Now we’re quorate,” Jeremy said in a voice that suggested he finally felt vindicated.
“Ah,” Sophia said, “has there been a procedural issue in my absence?”
“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” Marcus said. “Now, can we start the meeting?”
“How are you, Sophia?” Geoffrey asked.
Suzie couldn’t be sure, but did Sophia’s smile falter before she answered?
“I’m well, thank you, Geoffrey,” Sophia said as she sat down at the table.
“A cup of tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“Or coffee?”
“I think we should just get this meeting over and done with, don’t you?” Sophia said with a smile, but once again, Suzie picked up what she thought was an odd vibe. In her notebook, she wrote “Tension between Sophia and Geoffrey?”
As the meeting got underway, Suzie settled into her chair. This was her chance to discover who she should approach about her own planning application.
Sophia, she guessed, was far too posh and self- regarding to be someone she could ever influence. In Suzie’s experience, people like Sophia didn’t pay much attention to people like Suzie.
