David Ashton - The Painted Lady

Silence followed this graphic image.

“The servant will confirm such?” asked Roach.

“I have his sworn testimony.”

McLevy and Mulholland exchanged glances. So that’s what Dunsmore had up his sleeve — no wonder he’d been so cocksure — but now his case was shot to pieces.

“I’ll charge her anyway,” said Dunsmore bitterly. “The world will get to see her. A dirty little trollop.”

“What is the woman on trial for, inspector — murder or adultery?”

Dunsmore paid no attention to McLevy’s remark. “She killed her husband to enjoy her lover. I know it in my bones. One way or another — she poisoned him dead!”

A long silence ensued on all sides before Roach took command.

“I’ll deal with you later, McLevy. You may have stayed within the strict letter of your promise but that’s about all, the rest is wilful disobedience. You may leave.”

The inspector nodded, but just before departing, his eyes locked with the bitter angry gaze of Adam Dunsmore.

“Quack, quack, Adam,” he said. “Who’d have thought a nostrum seller could lead to such a pass, eh?”

“I hope you burn in hell, McLevy.”

Roach sighed as the other two shut the door behind them. Though Dunsmore had brought this upon himself, he felt some pity for the stricken man.

“Inspector,” he asked, reaching into a low drawer of his desk whence the clink of glass was heard. “May I offer you a small malt whisky — just to show that Leith is not completely beyond redemption?”

Dunsmore bowed his head, Victoria gazed into the middle distance and the liquid headed for the glass as if signalling an end to proceedings.

Outside in the main station McLevy’s face was sombre; despite his parting jibe, he felt. . incomplete.

What had been said? What had been betrayed that he could not bring to mind? What had slipped him by?

Mulholland was by no means celebrating either — they had yet to face the wrath of Roach.

“The inspector has strong evidence that Judith Pearson is guilty of infidelity,” McLevy muttered. “And that furnishes hard and proven motive.”

“But you’ve demolished the case for poison,” the constable pointed out. “Arsenic no longer applies.”

McLevy made no answer. Something was obviously swirling in his mind and Mulholland wondered if it was the same image of vertical infidelity.

“Not such a sweet wee butterfly after all, eh?” he commented. “A Painted Lady. Caught in the act.”

The inspector had been replaying the meeting with Judith Pearson — what had she said? Caught? Once caught he might stifle their senses? And then what had slipped him by, the intuition that had been trying to throw rocks up from the depths, finally hit the mark.

Damnation!

McLevy moved off swiftly and called back to the still stationary constable. “If Dunsmore comes out with a gun looking for yours truly, tell him I’ve gone to consult an expert in Papilionidae !”

With that he was gone. Mulholland wondered whether to follow but he hadn’t been invited and besides it was Thursday, the Old Ship tavern would have sheep’s heid broth on the evening board, and it had been a long while since he’d had a decent meal.

A safer course of action by far.

Judith Pearson was caught indeed; amid elation and a certain dread as she stood before an impassive McLevy while her portrait hung between them on the wall.

Elation — when he had informed her that the arsenic found in her husband’s body was a result of the judge’s choosing and not hers.

Dread — that Dunsmore intended to press the case regardless and had sworn testimonial to her lubricity.

She nevertheless dismissed the butler’s evidence. Judith had banished him the previous day — the man had been devoted to her husband and had turned the servants against her. A despicable spy.

“But is his tale true?” asked the inspector, a sardonic glint in his eye. “Come along. You owe me some veracity, just atween ourselves. I am your knight in shining armour after all.”

The widow took a swift glance around as if to make sure no witnesses were present. “I. . cannot deny I have some feeling for Mister Boothroyd and he for me.”

“Was it consummated?” he enquired bluntly.

The violet eyes flashed in anger. “That is not the matter of accusation. It is murder, and I am innocent!”

“Not quite.”

The force of these two words silenced her for a moment. “What do you mean?”

James McLevy looked around at the glass cases hung upon the wall. “I have been consulting with an expert in the field and he confirmed my suspicions.”

“As regards what?”

He did not answer the question immediately but looked at her as perhaps a collector of crime might regard a rare specimen. Then he whistled a Jacobite tune under his breath before launching forth.

“Let us suppose,” he began quietly, “a wife wishes to murder her husband and comes upon a perfect solution — use the man’s own obsession as the weapon against him.”

He crossed to where the Painted Lady lay quiescent in her case, and continued. “When he caught a beautiful creature within his net, the husband would pinch the thorax to stifle consciousness, then pop the victim in the killing jar — you mentioned such on our first meeting, Mistress Pearson, and it lodged deep within my mind yet did not emerge until this very day.”

Judith was calm, her gaze unwavering.

“Death for the butterfly would be caused by a fermentation of crushed laurel leaves — hydrocyanic acid, otherwise known as. . cyanide. As I say, a perfect solution for the husband.”

It was summer. Dusk was falling and some creature in the garden let out a screech of triumph or disaster, the noise piercing through the French windows. Neither player paid it any heed as she responded with the polite air of a good hostess. “But surely, does not cyanide taste of almonds? Sweet, sickly, difficult to disguise?”

McLevy banged his hands together, the lupine eyes lit with a yellow fire. “An old wife’s tale and, in any case, the husband has a heavy cold and whisky is a powerful masking agent!”

He moved around suddenly, almost as if dancing a jig to end up at close quarters to her, near enough to smell a fragrant perfume. “Cyanide also leaves little or no trace and so to forestall suspicion the wife insists upon a post-mortem, confident that nothing will be found.”

Her face betrayed little and, as McLevy hammered home to the end of his deduction, he had the errant thought that she would be a bugger to shift in the witness box.

“But irony thickens the plot. The husband’s own addiction provides proof of poison. Arsenic. Wrong toxin in the right body. Small wonder ye fainted.”

McLevy let out a whoop of laughter but Judith remained unmoved, her beautiful face like polished marble.

“It is a fine story,” she remarked. “Tragic and yet with a grotesque humour.”

“That’s how I like them!” McLevy abruptly changed tack. “The wife is in a desperate plight, correctly guilty for the wrong reason, and so she has a last wild throw of the dice.”

Now his eyes bored into her for he was angered both by his own gullibility and her manipulation. “Ye brought me into the equation, fed me what you could, hoped for the best, and set me loose.”

“And what you have found has set me free.”

The inspector nodded acknowledgement. Nothing he had said so far had moved her at all; a bonny murderess with ice in her veins. “I shall acquaint Adam Dunsmore with my more recent discovery. He will not thank me for it but it may give the prosecution some bullets to fire.”

A hidden smile and for a moment the expression on Judith’s face mirrored exactly that of the portrait as he continued. “You will be held up to ridicule and shame, lustful acts exposed to one and all. Naked to the bone.”