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Moss nodded his thanks.
“Are you sure it is a good idea that you go back to the village?”
“Not at all, but people are dying. I cannot just allow the killer to keep feeding his victims deadly fruit cake.”
“Maybe there is a phantom fruit cake baker?” the doctor reported. “At least you now know how the killer is taking lives.”
“It’s too late to help those that are gone, though,” Moss sighed.
“Yes, but you can have a look at the villagers and find out who likes to make fruit cake. If you see someone going to someone’s house with one, take it off them. Further, as soon as we can identify which mushrooms kill, you can search the area and see if you can find the source.”
“Source?”
Ben sighed. “Where they grow. There must be a patch of them somewhere. If you watch it, the killer will have to come and harvest some eventually, won’t they? I doubt you will have to wait long to find out who is picking them. Besides, at least you know what the tainted cake smells like now. You will be able to identify which have been tampered with by the smell.”
“I don’t think I will forget that smell for the rest of my life,” Moss muttered.
“Find out who likes to bake in the village. I am sure that in places like that the bakers will be well known,” Ben offered.
“The first victim had a visitor the morning she died. It is odd that the damned visitor seemed to want to clean everything.”
“Well, if the victim fell ill like you did, the killer might have cleaned up, so it didn’t look like the victim suffered like you,” Ben suggested. “The victim invariably was sick if they only ate part of a slice like you did. Their suffering might have involved vomiting several times like you. I don’t wish to sound too graphic, but there will be evidence of the cake that poisoned them in their sick. Little pieces of cake in the vomit of several victims would look suspicious to any doctor.”
Moss knew there would be.
“I think that the killer may have removed any remaining cake, but also anything that has traces of sick on and/or cake. With the cake missing and any sign of sickness gone, the final seizure that killed the victim might be passed off as natural causes,” Ben explained.
“Damn it,” Moss growled. He thought over what Clementine had said about Sally Walcott’s clothing having been taken, and the bed sheets. “Damn.”
“What?”
“Sally’s clothing was missing from the house.”
“There you go then.” Ben looked pleased that he was able to help. “If this Sally received some of her cake in the evening, and had a slice before she went to bed, she would have been sick just like you.”
“All over her clothing.” Moss shook his head in amazement. It was as though someone had just opened a book and revealed everything in startling detail.
“When the killer returned to the house to fetch the cake back, he would have seen the vomit and realised that the traces of cake were everywhere, and incriminating. Sally had to be changed, so the clothing, the bedding, and anything else with the cake on had to be removed.”
Moss briefly explained the state of Sally’s cloak.
“Well, given how fast this poison works, I doubt Sally would have wanted to leave the house, so I doubt she used the cloak.”
“But why would the killer want it?” Moss asked, now confident that Sally hadn’t used the cloak. The killer had. “Unless it was raining.”
“Pardon?”
Moss sighed. “Clementine left Sally’s house to dodge a thunderstorm. Maybe the killer needed to go home but wanted to stay dry. That would explain why the cloak was wet the following morning, but back in the closet. Whoever returned the morning of Sally’s death, went back to the house when they knew Sally, and anybody else who had been there, had already left and were not likely to return. I mean, who would have any reason to return to a dead woman’s house? The killer then removed any last traces of the cake.”
Ben shook his head. “I think they must have returned to the house when they were certain that the poison had worked. As a doctor, I wouldn’t be inclined to declare anybody’s death a seizure if there were traces of sickness everywhere. It is more likely that the killer waited outside and then went back into the house when they were certain the cake had been consumed and the victim was dead. They then could have collected what was left of the cake and cleaned up the mess before anybody found the body.”
“So why go back the following morning?”
Ben shrugged. “Maybe to remove the remaining traces of the sickness? Maybe to return the cloak. If it had started to rain while the killer was fetching the cake and, say, the killer needed to stay dry to appear to their wife that they hadn’t been anywhere, they might have borrowed a cloak yet returned it the following morning.”
“Good, its bold but by far the most credible explanation,” Moss breathed. He suspected Ben wasn’t wrong either.
“The killer is going back into the houses and removing all trace of the poison that claimed the victims,” Moss sighed. “God in Hell. But would the victims eventually die of a seizure?”
