“Max, Cyril and Jessie.”
Diamond clasped the back of his head with locked fingers. “I wish it were so simple. Take a look at this entry. I’ve been trying to relate it to what we know, and I can’t.”
The best-laid plans… I made my preparations and knew what ought to work, but the current one behaved out of character. People, being people, have minds of their own. I mustn’t let it get to me. I can’t bail out this time, because this one knows far too much and has to go. Knows I’m coming? Possibly. It’s a new challenge for me. I simply have to be equal to it.
Cool is the rule.
“Something went wrong,” Ingeborg said. “The intended victim ducked out in some way and it really upset him.”
“Who does he mean?” Halliwell said. “Who was it?”
“That’s what I’m asking you,” Diamond said.
“Jessie, obviously,” Ingeborg said. “He’s had to change his method. She doesn’t die at home like the others. She’s younger and more mobile. He has to take extra risks with her, but she knows too much about Cyril’s death, so there’s no choice but to kill her. She ends up in the river, apparently drowned. Major change in the modus operandi.”
“I wish I could feel so confident,” Diamond said.
“What’s your problem with it, guv?”
“I thought of Jessie when I read it first time, just as you did. But what if it referred to somebody else who knew far too much for Pellegrini’s liking?”
“Another victim?”
“That’s my worry. He talks about the conjuror’s trick of misdirection.”
“‘I’ve baited the trap and we’ll see if it works.’”
“Exactly. Are we walking into his trap? I’ve got the advantage of having read this thing right through more than once and it’s clear to me they aren’t the only killings. There’s a history of homicide here.”
“The railway friends?”
“Maybe them, maybe not. It’s tempting to lay every death at his door, but we’ve already looked into this and some of them may be from natural causes. There must be others. I get the impression it goes back years.”
“Nobody who ever met him was safe,” Halliwell said.
“They said that about Graham Young,” Diamond said.
“Who’s he?”
“Who was he? A poisoner who came to trial in the early 1970s. Most people haven’t heard of him. He’s not up there in the top ten with Nilsen and Shipman and murderers like that, but he ought to be.”
“I sense a story coming on,” Ingeborg said, knowing of Diamond’s reading habits. “Is it X-rated?”
“I’ll tell you about him because there are parallels. He was just a bright teenager when he started, fourteen, I think. A grammar-school boy. First his stepmother died mysteriously, and then others in his circle became ill-his father, his sister and a school friend. It was pretty obvious something extraordinary was happening and Young was accused of poisoning them with arsenic. He told the local toxicologist how incompetent he was. He was very opinionated.”
“I can see one parallel already,” Halliwell said.
“Yes, but he went on to say it was obvious he hadn’t used arsenic because the symptoms were typical of another poison, antimony.”
“Crazy.”
“Arrogant, anyway. He boasted he’d used it on his stepmother. They decided the boy was criminally insane and locked him up in Broadmoor. He convinced the authorities there that he was interested in science and wished to spend time in the prison library studying chemistry and medicine. After nine years the Broadmoor psychiatrist decided this scholarly young man had made a full recovery and was fit for discharge. He was neat in appearance, knowledgeable and serious and there was no difficulty placing him in a job as assistant storeman in a photographic works in Hertfordshire.”
“With access to chemicals. Here we go,” Ingeborg said, seeing the point at once.
“Exactly. Christmas had come early for Graham Young that year. It wasn’t long before the head warehouseman became ill with stomach pains and died in St. Albans hospital of what they decided was ‘peripheral neuritis.’”
“A nerve thing?”
“It is, weakness, numbness and pain, often the legacy of a number of different illnesses. But the real cause was thallium poisoning. Young had moved on from antimony. His researches had told him this would do the job better. Thallium is a heavy metal, similar to lead and mercury, but colourless, tasteless and easily dissolved in water. As the newest recruit, he’d been made the tea-boy.”
“Bad choice,” Ingeborg said. “I suppose they got it in their cuppas.”
“Twice a day sometimes. It’s cumulative.”
“Nasty,” Halliwell said. “How did he get hold of thallium in the first place?”
“Good question. Although it’s sometimes used in the manufacture of lenses, this company used a different method. There wasn’t any in the store where he worked, so he ordered his own supply from a London pharmacist. He dosed his victims methodically, little by little, gradually increasing the amount and keeping a record in his diary.”
“A diary? He wrote it down, like Pellegrini?”
“Like him, yes. That’s good scientific practice, logging each stage in the process. He didn’t stop at one victim. He poisoned the replacement storeman the same year.”
“Killed him?”
“Yes.”
“Same way?”
“He’d found a method that worked, hadn’t he? After that, it was open season. Six more workmates developed symptoms of numbness, stomach cramps and hair loss. Some sort of bug was suspected, but one of the management feared some chemical used at the works might be responsible and a medical team was called in. They invited all the staff to a meeting and who do you think had most to say?”
“Showing off again?” Ingeborg said.
“And how! He demanded to know why they hadn’t considered thallium poisoning.”
Halliwell said, “That’s dumb.”
“It’s attention-seeking,” Ingeborg said. “He couldn’t bear to have anyone else take the credit.”
“Still dumb.”
“It’s the dilemma Pellegrini writes about in these notes,” Diamond said. “He commits a perfect murder and wants the world to know how clever he is.”
“Was that how he was caught?” Halliwell asked.
Diamond nodded. “The management checked him out. They didn’t know he’d already done time for poisoning, but when they dug out his original job application it stated that he’d studied chemistry and toxicology. After that they called in the police and his previous was revealed. They searched his home and found more than enough to convict him, quantities of thallium, antimony and aconitine and, most damning of all, the diary.”
“Was it cryptic, like Pellegrini’s?” Halliwell asked.
“More explicit, along the lines of, ‘I have now administered a fatal dose. I gave him three doses altogether.’ Such attention to detail didn’t do much for his defence case. He claimed he was writing a crime novel. Oh, and there’s another paralleclass="underline" Young’s first victims, his stepmother and the store-keeper, were both cremated, making it unlikely the murder would be discovered. However, the store-keeper’s ashes were sent for analysis and, thanks to a new forensic technique called atomic absorption spectrometry, traces of thallium were found.”
“So there was never any question of his guilt?”
“You’re joking, I hope? After his conviction he announced that he could have killed many more if he’d wished. To quote him: ‘But I allowed them to live.’”
“Generous.”
Ingeborg smoothed back her hair with both hands and gripped it. “You’ve told us this for a purpose. Graham Young managed to fool a lot of people, but gave himself away through boasting. Pellegrini is smarter.”
“From all we know so far.”
“But highly conceited, if this stuff is anything to go by.”
“He won’t crack easily,” Halliwell said.