Poison in Paddington (A Cozy Mystery) (Cassie Coburn Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  “Thank you, Violet,” DCI Williams said with a small smile, “but I was thinking more along the lines of her phone number.”

  “Oh I know, I just wanted to see the look,” the girl named Violet replied with a small smile. I didn’t even need to ask what look she was talking about; I knew it was exactly the one I was doing now. My mouth hung open, my eyes wide, shocked that she knew all these things.

  “How could you possibly know that?” Violet stepped out of the corner, a small smile on her face.

  “Your accent gives away that you’re American. Your clothes are all American brands so you haven’t lived in London long enough to need to replace any of them. Plus, you came to the second floor rather than the third floor where you were directed, forgetting that we have a ground floor in Europe.”

  My face flushed red as I realized she was right; I’d completely forgotten about the whole ground floor thing. But before I had a chance to be too embarrassed, she continued. “When you saw the formula written on the white board, you didn’t just look at it, you read it. So you’re trained in chemistry, but you don’t have the hands of a chemist; you’re actually wearing nail polish, and you don’t have any scars or traces of experiments gone wrong. So you’re a doctor. But you’ve been in an accident, it’s obvious from the way you walk that your left knee is out of joint, and when you were fiddling with your hands I noticed a slight delay in the reaction from your left hand as well. That says stroke, or accident. For a healthy looking young woman like you, the odds are in favor of an accident. An accident, in America, and traveling relatively soon afterwards? You sued and you won. But you grew up poor because despite the fact that I imagine you’re now incredibly well off, you still came to the police station to report a thirty-pound bike being stolen.”

  I didn’t think it was possible, but my mouth dropped open even more.

  “That’s incredible!” I practically whispered. If I wasn’t mistaken, Violet actually smiled.

  “Most people accuse me of stalking them.”

  “No. No, your logic, it’s perfect. It’s just…”

  “No one thinks logically, so when I do it, it’s impressive.”

  “Something like that. But how did you decide that I wish I was adventurous, but limit the risks I take?”

  “You decided to move halfway around the world, which was an adventurous move on its own, but you also came to England, rather than going somewhere exotic. Adventurous, but you made sure to stay somewhere where the language is the same as yours and you’re not going to experience too much culture shock.”

  “They would have burned you at the stake a couple hundred years ago.”

  There was that small smile again. “Yes, it’s rather fortunate that we live in such an enlightened age. Although some of DCI Williams’ colleagues here would have preferred us to stay in the Middle Ages.”

  DCI Williams shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Yes, well, you help us find the serial killer, Violet, and I’ll make sure everyone knows it was all thanks to you.”

  She waved him away. “You know I do not want the thanks. I simply see it as my civic duty to solve the crimes. It is simply because so many of your colleagues are imbéciles that I manage it so much better.”

  DCI Williams stood up. “Thanks for coming in, Miss Coburn. Don’t worry about getting the wrong floor; I’ll make sure the right people get these notes. And sorry about…” he trailed off, his head tilting slightly toward Violet.

  “Do you really think, Detective Chief Inspector Williams, that I do not know that you’re apologizing about me? Do you think so little of me that you think that’s fooling me?” Violet asked. “No matter. Take out the files, we can get on with the important stuff now,” she urged. I knew I should have been insulted at that, but somehow, I couldn’t be. This Violet, I didn’t know who she was, but she was different, that was for sure. I thanked them both and left the way I came, wondering about the strange Frenchwoman who seemed to know everything about me, while all I knew about her was her first name.

  Chapter 3

  To be honest, I never expected to hear back from the cops. After all, what was a thirty pound bike compared to all the big crimes that must be happening in London on a daily basis? That Violet woman had practically told me my crime wasn’t even worth paying any attention to. And I couldn’t really argue with that, quite frankly.

  The German girl I was sharing a room with had gone out to a club, and I’d briefly perused the internet on my iPad, looking for a place to live permanently. Unfortunately, what I hadn’t realized was that the housing market in London was just as crazy as in San Francisco. Everything that was in a price range I wanted to consider either involved having eight roommates, sharing the space with a copious number of rats going by the droppings I saw in the picture, non-functioning plumbing—one place had an outhouse! An actual outhouse!—, or living in a space where the double bed took up over half the living space.

  I was just about to start wondering if maybe I should up my budget a little bit—after all, it wasn’t like I was wanting for money anymore, but I also didn’t want to be wasteful while I didn’t have a job—when my phone began to ring. At first, I had no idea what the sound even was. After all, it wasn’t like I had this thriving social life with people calling me at all hours of the day. I realized how sad it was that I barely recognized my own ringtone, and realized the caller was probably going to be a telemarketer, but it was a phone call all the same!

  Thinking that maybe this was a whole new low, I pressed the answer button and half-heartedly said hello to the worker bee on the other side.

  “’Allo? This is Cassie Coburn?” came a familiar French accent on the other side.

  “Uh… yes, yeah it is,” I said. Violet’s voice was the last I had expected to hear.

  “Come to my place. Eighteen Eldon Road, Kensington.”

  Before I had a chance to reply, she had hung up the phone. I took mine away from my ear and stared at it. Seriously?

  When did she want me to come over? Now? What for? Was she going to kidnap me and torture me in her basement? I mean, she was super skinny, but with my injured knee I wasn’t totally sure I could take her if she tried. And honestly, she gave off a bit of a vibe that meant I wasn’t sure my body wasn’t going to end up being found mutilated in the Thames.

  But also, a part of me was intrigued. I couldn’t help but remember what she’d said that afternoon: that I wanted excitement, but I wasn’t a risk taker. This wasn’t even that big a risk.

  Before I could change my mind, I got up, grabbed my purse and opened up Google Maps to see how to get to Kensington.

  Forty-five minutes later—I had gotten on the wrong underground line the first time around and had to double back—I was standing in front of a townhouse with a gorgeous façade. It was an off-white, with that late Georgian look to it that just screamed class. Walking cautiously up to the front door, I steeled myself for whatever was going to come next, and knocked three times.

  My heart was pounding through my chest as I waited. About a minute later the front door opened.

  “Got lost, did you?” Violet said with a hint of a smile.

  “Just a little bit,” I muttered, blushing.

  “I’m teasing you, but you cannot expect Americans to know how to read a tube map. You have nothing remotely resembling decent transit.”

  It wasn’t like the BART system was the world’s greatest, but I still felt a little bit insulted. Before I had a chance to retort, however, Violet led me into the house and straight into an old-style living room. The far wall was lined with a giant bookshelf from floor to ceiling, every inch of it taken. The hardwood floors creaked slightly underfoot, and the dim lamp lighting gave the whole place a classy, old-world kind of look. A comfortable-looking couch was shoved away in the corner, and a table on the other side of the room was covered in papers.

  I barely noticed any of that, however. My sight was fixed on my turquoise bike, sitting in the middle of the room, as if on
a pedestal.

  “My bike!” I cried out, rushing over to it and running my hands over it, like I had to touch it to believe it was real. “Thank you!” I said, looking over at Violet, who waved my thanks away.

  “It was nothing. I needed a palate cleanser this afternoon. There’s something off about my case and I hoped finding a petty criminal would distract me for a while.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about. “Did it work?” I asked.

  “No. I am no closer to solving the case.”

  “Well thank you for my bike. How did you do it?”

  Violet did that little smile again. “It will stop being impressive if I tell you all my secrets.”

  I looked over at the desk with all those papers. One of them stood out to me, the chemical symbol for strychnine, same as I’d seen that morning at the police station. Almost instinctively, I got up and went over and had a look. Sure enough, that was what it was. Some sort of lab report, by the looks.

  “Strychnine. You had a poisoning victim,” I said.

  “I had four poisoning victims,” Violet replied. “All of them with strychnine. You Americans. You always feel like you have the right to go anywhere,” she told me, leaning casually against the doorframe.

  “Oh, sorry,” I blushed, realizing that I had really just gone into her private things. But instead of getting mad, Violet waved away my apology.

  “You are a doctor, tell me what you think. Four people were poisoned with strychnine yesterday afternoon, at a soup stall in Paddington.”

  I tried to remember everything I could about strychnine.

  “Strychnine is a paralytic. If I remember correctly, it takes few minutes before the symptoms start, and it’s a crazy painful way to die.”

  I stopped, but Violet didn’t say anything else, so I continued. “It’s got a bitter taste, though. And with a small dosage, since it usually takes a few hours to die and we’re in central London, all a person would have to do would be to go to the hospital. They’d probably give them activated charcoal to absorb anything they could, and so without having ingested a large dose, chances are the victim would survive. But a large dose would mean the strychnine would be tasted.”

  Violet nodded this time. “Good. That is what happened. The soup cart owner served four people from that particular pot. When numbers three and four both complained that the soup was bitter, she assumed that the kitchen had screwed it up and stopped serving it.”

  “But anyone who’s done even a tiny bit of research would know strychnine is bitter. If you’re trying to poison as many people as possible, then you would want to go as long as possible without being noticed.”

  Violet’s eyes lit up. “Yes. Exactly. Keep going.”

  I could feel my brain trying to make connections, trying to get to the point Violet wanted me to figure out, but I couldn’t quite get there.

  “So your serial killer is either incredibly stupid, which seems unlikely but probably also not unheard of,” I muttered, then it came to me. “Oh!” I continued, my eyes widening. “I know! Strychnine is painful. It’s a terrible way to die. You would only use it on your worst enemy, or someone you’re trying to murder. It wasn’t a serial killer, it was someone who wanted the police to think they were a serial killer, but who was really out to kill only one person!”

  Violet grinned, and I couldn’t help but notice that when she really smiled she was incredibly beautiful.

  “Excellent. You are smarter than the entire London police force. I told them that this afternoon, of course, but no. They think the killer wanted to hurt random people. Obviously not. As you say, only a moron would use strychnine. And there are a lot of morons who kill people, but this is not one of them.”

  “So what do you do now? When the police don’t believe you, I mean?” I was curious, and more than just a little bit intrigued. It had been quite a while since I’d actually had to use my brain, and like the first time I got to exercise after my accident, I found that I’d missed it.

  Violet shrugged. “I solve the crime. I hand them their killer on a silver platter. And then they thank me, and they wonder why they cannot solve the crime on their own. I tell them it is because they do not think, and they are insulted. And the next interesting case comes around, and they do the same thing.”

  “But you don’t work for the police?” I asked, and she laughed, a soft, mocking laugh.

  “Mon dieu, no. What an idea, that one. I help the police out of civic duty. And because occasionally they have a case that’s interesting enough to be worth my time. This case, this one is interesting. We have a person who wants to murder someone. That is fine, it happens all the time. But they are willing to murder other people as well, innocent people, and pretend to be a serial killer to cover their tracks? Now that, that is interesting.”

  “So what are you going to do now?” I asked.

  “What do you think I’m going to do?” Violet replied. I wanted to throw up my hands in frustration. I didn’t know! I wasn’t the detective! Still, I thought about it for a few seconds.

  “Now you have to sort through the victims and see which one was the person who was supposed to be killed, and find out who killed them.”

  “Exactement! The first step is see who was supposed to be killed today. Good! Very good!” She clapped her hands together, obviously happy with my deduction. She picked up four file folders and handed them to me.

  “Take these with you. Read them tonight. They are the people who were killed. Then, in the morning, you will come back here. We will go and find out who was killed on purpose, and who was killed by accident.”

  I took the files, filled with conflicting feelings of confusion and excitement. Was I honestly being invited to help Violet out with her murder investigation?

  “But… why?” I asked. “Why me?”

  “Because you are depressed and you need something to do. And I need someone to talk to who will occasionally answer back with something more intelligent than the babble of DCI Williams. And he’s the best of the lot. I should tell you though, I’m not the easiest person to work with.”

  “I’d gathered that,” I replied, trying to hide a smile.

  “Good. So you will come tomorrow.” It was more statement than question.

  A part of me was tempted to say no. After all, I had a big day of doing absolutely nothing planned for the following day, just like most days in the past ten months. But another part of me was intrigued. A little bit about the case, yes. But more about Violet. She was an interesting person; unlike anyone I’d ever met before.

  And that, more than anything, was why I eventually answered “yeah, sure, why not?”

  I left the house with the files, and my bike, and slowly made my way back home. I couldn’t help but wonder what on earth I’d just gotten myself into.

  Chapter 4

  By the time I got back to my hostel, I was almost wondering if I hadn’t dreamt everything. Violet gave off that kind of impression, like she wasn’t quite real. But the bike in my hand and the files I was holding proved otherwise.

  Realizing I didn’t have a lock for my bike anymore, I snuck it in past the reception area while the bored-looking guy from Australia ducked into the back for a minute, and stored it in my room. I knew my roommate wouldn’t mind at all, and I made a mental note to get a new bike lock in the morning. I knew I should probably sell the bike, since London wasn’t exactly cyclist-friendly, but I liked it. It was the first real thing I’d bought in England, and I’d become attached to it.

  That probably wasn’t exactly healthy.

  Pushing that thought to the back of my brain—my long term mental health was a problem for Future Cassie to deal with—I grabbed the files and sat down on my bed. Opening the first one, I saw it was a full police file. There was a five by seven-inch corporate headshot of a man who looked to be in his early thirties. He was just starting to go bald, and had that deer-in-headlights look that wasn’t exactly flattering.

  Putting the phot
o to one side, I read the report behind it. Some of it was stuff I already knew. Manner of death: poison – strychnine. Time of death: 13:42. Location of murder: Sandy’s Stews, Paddington, London. Then below was a lot of personal information. The man’s name, for one. Stephen Glastonbury. He had lived in Chelsea and worked for a financial firm as a broker. He’d been meeting a client in Paddington, hence his reason for being in that part of the city.

  I scanned the rest of the document, then grabbed the next one. Elizabeth Dalton, a woman in her fifties who had her hair pulled back into a bun on the back of her head. She had lived and worked in Paddington, as a secretary to the head of marketing at a major insurance company. Enderby Insurance. The name was familiar; I was fairly certain I’d seen a number of their ads around town. They must have been a huge company. Elizabeth Dalton’s commute was less than ten minutes on foot, I noted when I saw her address, looking up Crawford Road on my phone. Not too shabby, I thought to myself as I flipped over to the next folder. I’d heard the horror stories of people commuting for hours to get to their jobs in the city. Looking at the map of London, the suburbs seemed to extend all the way to the English Channel. Of course, there was a chance that had she worked literally anywhere else she’d still be alive right now, and the thought made me a little bit sad.

  The next folder featured a man in his early forties who could be considered in shape—if you considered round a shape, that was. Pietro Murillo, an immigrant from Italy who ran an importing business, was visiting a potential customer in the neighborhood. He lived in Brixton, and I couldn’t help but smile at the line that read “Known health conditions: none”, where someone who must have been Violet scratched it out and wrote “WRONG—GRAVES DISEASE” in a fat red pen. I took a closer look at the photo. Sure enough, the telltale sign was there. Jonathan Murillo’s eyes bulged only slightly, but enough for it to be noticeable if you knew what to look for, and although the lighting for the headshot was quite frankly pretty terrible, I was fairly certain his eyelids were red and puffy as well. So Violet knew quite a bit about medicine herself. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised.