Hunnyton frowned at the reference. “An old country trick. There’s more than one way to ruin a horse. To make it skittish and bad-tempered, they take a half-crown coin and run the bevelled edges along the soft part of the mouth. No outward sign it’s been tampered with. But it can drive a horse crazy when someone tries to put in the bit and then the poor animal gets an undeserved reputation for bad temper. It lowers its price dramatically in the sale ring, of course. There’s more than one scallywag groom who’s hit back at his master using that trick. Still, if ever I get my hands on the bloke who did that …”
The cracking of the knuckles in his large hands as they suddenly became fists finished the sentence for him and won him an approving smile and a pat on the hand from Adelaide.
“I’ll be there holding your coat, Superintendent,” she offered.
“Father doesn’t say much in his statement about Lavinia—assuming her body would be dealt with by a medical authority, I expect. Quite proper. Not his place to comment. But he did note some oddities.” She reached for a small silver box lying on the table, a box Joe had taken for a cigarette container. “The wounds to her head, neck and torso were extensive and clearly lethal, but her hands were untouched. Hard to discern by torchlight in the falling rain and welters of blood but he smelled something strange on her right hand. It was clutching a mess of … he swears it was cake of some kind. He took a sample of it, left the rest in place to be inspected by others and brought it back to have a look under a light. He probably ought not to have done that but he always thinks he knows best and his interest in animals must have pushed him to do it. That’s what I say. You’re probably thinking: ‘Interfering old nuisance!’ ”
“Not at all,” said Joe politely. “If he hadn’t taken the steps to preserve it, it would have disappeared with the remainder down the drainage channel on the autopsy table. Some solid evidence at last! May we see?”
The metal box was strong and airtight and Joe struggled to get it open.
“Lord, what a pong!” Hunnyton exclaimed as Joe removed the lid.
“It’s not Sachertorte, I think we’d all agree,” Adelaide said, wrinkling her nose.
Joe poked at the contents with a pencil end. “But it is cake. Was cake. It looks more like the sweepings of an ancient Egyptian mummy’s tomb. A sop to Cerberus? Some opiate in there, did your father assume? A little something to quieten the horse?”
“You’ll need to take it to a laboratory in Cambridge if you want to find out. My father’s equipment was not up to the job. But I’ll tell you something. Pa’s not easily put off. He decided that if the cake was laced with something mysterious intended for use on the horse, it was probably acquired from the chemist. He went along and grilled old Mr. Morrison. Made him show his dispensing book.” Her eyes gleamed and she said apologetically, “No right to do that, I’m sure you’d be the first to tell him, but Pa can be very forceful and the local … country shyness”—she looked with smiling apology at Hunnyton—“ ‘foot shuffling’ he calls it—irritates him no end. Faced with all that ‘Don’t you be asking me, sir, twern’t none o’ my business,’ stuff he turns into a raging bully. Interesting, what he managed to extract, though. And no illegalities revealed, so no harm done. The day before the adventure, our innocent chemist had sold four bags of exotic culinary spices. To Grace Aldred, Lavinia’s maid.” She handed over a sheet of paper. “He took a copy: fenugreek, cumin, rosemary, cinnamon. Grace told him the cook had requested them to make up a curry.”
“Sounds reasonable to me. Not sure about the rosemary,” Joe said, “but the others are all constituents of Indian dishes. They do, however, as I think you’ve guessed, have another quite different use.” He looked at Hunnyton, who understood the unspoken question and nodded imperceptibly.
The superintendent undertook the explanation. “Horse magic! In folklore, those spices are all attractants. Horses have huge nostrils and a very sensitive sense of smell. If you want a horse to love you or just behave itself in your presence you can do it by magicking it with these scents, which it adores.” He grinned. “They tell me oil of cloves dabbed on a hanky works a treat too.”
“That’s the refined way of doing it,” Adelaide said. “My father came upon a ploughman once, stripped to his skin in the shed, in the act of wiping down his armpits with a bit of stale bread. When Pa challenged him on his strange behaviour, he explained that he was taking on a new horse. This sweat business was a good way, known to all the horsemen, of making horses familiar with their handler’s scent.” She wrinkled her nose. “I must say, this bit of cake smells as though it’s been somewhere even less salubrious than a ploughman’s armpit at close of play on Plough Sunday.”
Joe picked up the box, looked more closely, held it to his nose and inhaled deeply. For a moment his head reeled and his stomach churned. He couldn’t quite smother an exclamation of distress so visceral the other two turned a gaze of solicitous enquiry on him. He put the lid back on firmly and, gasping apologetically through gritted teeth, recalled: “Trenches. Pinned down. Holed up unable to clear out for a fortnight. Plague of rats feasting on the bodies we couldn’t dispose of. The men bayoneted them. Left them lying about in piles to rot. Same smell.” He stabbed an accusing finger at the silver box. “Rotten rat carcass. It’s the livers that go first … the stinkiest bit … Excuse me …”
Joe dashed from the room and, thankful that the front door had been left open, he made his way quickly to the nearest rose bed. Through his unpleasant retching noises, he was aware of a clattering of clogs down the hallway. A moment later, a white cotton handkerchief was pushed over his nose.
“Lavender. Breathe it in. Antidote.”
A cool, professional hand ran lightly over his forehead. A warm, very unprofessional voice murmured in his ear, “That’ll teach you to go sticking that great conk of yours into unknown substances. Poisons can be inhaled, you know. But I don’t think it’s poison that’s provoked this reaction. It’s memory. Smell and taste—they can be very acute and the mind associates them with pleasure or pain we’ve experienced in the past. This is very real nausea you’re suffering but the brain will soon sound the all-clear and you’ll wonder what on earth that was all about. I’m sure you needn’t worry.”
“Embarrassing, though! What do you prescribe, Doctor?” Joe managed to say, beginning to win the struggle with his heaving stomach.
“Keep starching the old upper lip and stay away from dead rats, of course. Ready to come back inside? Your friend is anxious.”
Hunnyton was standing by with a glass of water when they rejoined him.
Adelaide exchanged a meaningful look with him and voiced the thoughts of both of them. “Just imagine, Superintendent—if it can do that to him—what must it have done for an animal with a hundred times the sensitivity?”
“Terrified the poor beast to death,” said Hunnyton. “I think we understand now after that little demonstration. Is the commissioner all right?” He peered at Joe with concern. “Looks a bit seedy to me … Now listen. There’s not many who know and I ought not to be speaking out, but … oh, well. We all accept that it’s fear and its response, flight, that dominate in a horse? Fear is what’s kept the species alive through the millions of years they’ve been on earth.” Joe and Adelaide nodded. “Man has always tried to influence and tame horses to fulfil his own requirements. He’s worked out some subtle ways of doing that. There’s horse lure, like the curry spices, and then there’s horse bate. Nasty stuff that has the opposite effect. Smear a trace of it on the posts of a horse’s stall and it won’t pass between them even if it’s starving. Push a load of it on a bun close up to its nostrils and you’d send it out of its mind. Do that when you’re advancing on it in a narrow space, driving it backwards, blocking its escape route, and, mad with fear, it’s going to tear right through you. As its nature insists. It has no choice.”