Harriett (The Tipton Hollow 1)

“Glowed?” Mark’s brows rose and he flicked a glance at Babette.

“She turned a strange colour and was talking in an odd voice. A green haze gathered around her when she went into trance.”

“Did it smell?”

Harriett shook her head and glanced at Babette, who merely shrugged her shoulders.

“I can’t remember anything else unusual, sorry.”

“I will be back tomorrow.” Marks voice dipped to a husky rumble as he sidled around Harriett in the narrow hallway. The sleeve of his jacket brushed her arm as he passed and it took all of his fortitude to continue to move toward the front door. “I will say goodnight.” At least he had a good reason to return in the morning. Even if Minerva Bobbington had died of natural causes, he was going to make a personal call to inform Harriett of the cause of death rather than leave it to Isaac.

“Good night,” Babette called as the door closed behind him. “Are you alright, my dear? You seem a little dazzled.” Babette had no idea what was wrong with Harriett, but strongly suspected it had something to do with the delightful policeman who had just left. The tension that had hovered in the doorway between them had been palpable, to the point that Babette had decidedly felt like the odd one out.

“I think that we need to get a good night’s sleep,” she murmured when Harriett continued to stare absently at the front door.

Harriett gave herself a mental shake and turned toward the sitting room with a shudder. “I don’t think we should tidy up right now. Let’s leave everything as it is and sort it all out in the morning.” Rather too hastily, she closed the door on the sight of the now empty hearth and hurried up the stairs after Babette.

The rest of the house could wait until morning. Right now she needed some time alone to think.

CHAPTER FIVE

The following morning, Mark watched David Woods settle into the chair opposite his desk at Great Tipton Police Station. Last night had been a late night for everyone, and David looked about as tired as Mark felt, but, right now, the fog of tiredness was ignored with the weight of the impending news on his shoulders.

Last night, as soon as he had left Harriett’s, he had been faced with the unenviable task of informing Mr Bobbington of the dreadful news. To say the man had been distraught was an understatement. Without any cause of death, and only a few sketchy details to rely on, it had been a difficult conversation that had lasted until the wee small hours of the morning. It had been nearly dawn by the time Mark had crawled into bed, but even with exhaustion pulling at him, he had been unable to find sleep. His thoughts had been plagued by beautiful brown eyes and a mop of curly dark hair that he felt driven to see again.

The gravity on David’s face told Mark that he wasn’t going to like the news that the Doctor was about to impart.

“I think it must be murder.”

Mark’s brows rose and he mentally cursed. “How?”

“She choked to death,” David Woods sighed. He dug into his pocket and produced a cloth, which he placed on Mark’s desk. Mark watched him carefully unfold it to reveal a small lump of what looked like heavily stained gloop.

“What is it?”

“At first glance? Cheese cloth or muslin, my first guess would be. It was lodged in her windpipe.” David looked at him. “This is what I think may have happened. Last night, only two of the gas lamps in the parlour were lit, if you remember? It was gloomy to say the least. Minerva had been drinking sherry, which is naturally dark in colour. On examination, there was a fairly large amount of sherry in her stomach. She wouldn’t think to look in her glass and, unfortunately, the sherry would hide the evidence of this kind of foreign object. The sherry was served in tumblers, not sherry glasses and she must have had a large amount of the alcohol in her glass. This little piece of cloth must have been in her drink and she inadvertently swallowed it with the sherry.”

“It had to be drunk,” Mark murmured and wrinkled his nose up in disgust at the brown mulch on his desk.

“Anyone finding it in food would spit it out. Like I said, it was lodged in her windpipe and isn’t something she could have stuck in her throat without knowing.”

“So, she couldn’t have inadvertently left a small piece of cloth, say wrapped around a pie, and ate it with her tea?”

“I am afraid not. If it was likely to be with food, she would have chewed it and probably swallowed it with her food. There was food in her stomach but that was not consumed directly before her death. This little piece of cloth choked her because it was in the liquid she was knocking back. You couldn’t sip this without noticing it in your mouth.”

“Good Lord. This was in her throat?” Mark frowned down at the horrid, sludgy object and watched as David picked up a pencil off the desk, and slowly prised the small lump apart until it resembled a small square patch of cloth. To Mark, it looked more like cotton than muslin, but he was no haberdasher. He froze at that thought and studied the small square before him a little more closely.

“I need to do some further tests on it just to make sure, but I think it may have been coated in something. See the darker edges here?” The pencil tip pointed to the slightly frayed edges of the material.

“What? Poison?”

David sighed and shook his head. “I really don’t know. Examination has proven that she choked to death. There are clear signs of asphyxiation and she had this foreign object lodged in her windpipe. There are scratch marks to her neck and chin which points to the fact that she was clawing at them as she tried to draw breath. This in her windpipe is almost certainly what killed her, even if it was coated in some sort of poison.”

“When will you know for certain?” Mark’s voice was sharp. No sooner had David dropped the pencil back onto the desk than Mark swept it up and threw it into the waste paper basket.

“I should know if poison is involved this afternoon. My staff is working on it as we speak. It is supposition, you understand? The fraying could just be where the material was cut to size.”

Mark nodded.