I, Richard - Elizabeth George [11]
This made more than one person watch Polly with some concern, waiting for the least sign that she too was about to collapse from whatever it was that had taken Ralph from them. Someone even quietly suggested that she might want to retire to a lavatory and do what she could to upchuck just in case. But Polly, who didn't seem to understand the implication being made, merely grimaced at the suggestion and went on taking her pictures, albeit noticeably subdued from her usual ebullience.
Death by trail mix naturally brought up the question of poison in people's minds. And that made people ask themselves how someone was supposed to get a poison in Cambridge. You couldn't just walk into the local pharmacy and ask for something fast-acting, untraceable, and non-messy. So it stood to reason that the poison in question had been brought from home. And that led people into thinking more seriously about Noreen Tucker and whether her devotion to dear Ralph was all that it seemed.
The group was in the library when Thomas Lynley and his lady rejoined them, with Lynley running his speculative gaze over everyone in the room. His companion did much the same, having been brought into the picture while poor Ralph was being loaded into the ambulance. They separated and took up positions in different parts of the crowd. Neither of them paid the slightest attention to what the guide was saying. Instead they gave their full attention to the visitors to Abinger Manor.
From the library they went into the chapel, accompanied by the sounds of their own footsteps, the echoing voice of the guide, the occasional snapping of cameras. Lynley moved through the group, saying nothing to anyone save his companion, with whom he spoke a few words at the door. Again they separated.
From the chapel they went to the armory. From there into the billiard room. From there into the music room. From there, they traipsed down two flights of stairs and went into the kitchen. The buttery beyond it had been turned into a gift shop, and the Germans made for this as the Americans did likewise. It was at this moment that Lynley spoke.
“If I might see everyone together,” he said as they began to scatter. “If you'll just stay here in the kitchen for a moment.”
Mild protests rose from the German group. The Americans said nothing.
“We've a problem to consider, I'm afraid,” Lynley said, “with regard to Mr. Tucker's death.”
“Problem?” Sam Cleary asked the question as others chimed in with “What's going on?” and “What do you want with us?”
“It was heart failure,” Cleve Houghton asserted. “I've seen enough of that to tell you—”
“As have I,” a heavily accented voice put in. The remark came from a member of the German party, and he looked none too pleased that their tour was once again being disrupted. “I am a doctor. I, too, have seen heart failure. I know what I see.”
This begged the question, naturally, of why the man hadn't done something to help out during the crisis, but no one mentioned that fact. Instead, Thomas Lynley extended his hand. In his palm lay half a dozen seeds. “It looks like heart failure,” he explained. “That's what an alkaloid does. It paralyzes the heart in a matter of minutes. These are yew, by the way.”
“Yew?” someone asked. “What was yew—”
“Those would be from the potpourri,” Victoria Wilder-Scott pointed out. “It spilled all over the carpet when Mr. Tucker fell.”
Lynley shook his head. “They were mixed in with the nuts in his hand,” he said. “And the bag he was carrying in his jacket was peppered with them. He was murdered, I'm afraid.”
So everyone's secret fears had been harped aright. And while some of them dwelled once more on the question of why Ralph Tucker had been murdered, the rest of them