Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016

Cruickshank shot Banks a glance full of hatred.

“Yes, they’re all turning on you, those friends of yours,” he said. “There’s about as much honour among murderers as there is among thieves. And it’s not only George Harris. What about Ned Howard? Ned’s the local removal man, and after Platt’s murder you got him to ‘move house’ for the dead man. Ned’s one of your cronies, in on the whole deal, so he makes it look good and somehow gets rid of the stuff, furniture, papers, and all. Yes, we’ve talked to Mr. Howard, Oliver, and he’s come clean too, as soon as we found no record of the move on his books. So Tony Platt is dead, and a year later, poor Becky Harris is still so traumatised by what happened that she commits suicide.

“Perhaps she found out what you’d done to Tony? Perhaps he wasn’t the one who raped her? Maybe she made up the story? Maybe they were both willing but Platt just didn’t know his own strength and got carried away? We may never know. But everything’s hunky-dory in the village for a while, then your local PCSO, perhaps with delusions of becoming a great detective, gets suspicious about the suicide and Platt’s disappearance, partly because someone came looking for Tony. There’s a bit of a time gap here. This happened only seven months ago. But Nick Vauxhall and his wife knew Becky Harris, and they knew Max Belling. Nick also knew Tony Platt, whom he was told had left town. Also, George Harris told us that about a week ago this person came back to the Hope and Anchor looking for Platt again. He was quite persistent, and when you told him Tony had moved away years ago, he seemed doubtful, the same as before, according to George. Anyway, in the end he went away. We’re trying to trace him, by the way, and I’m sure we’ll succeed. I’ll bet you never imagined Tony Platt might have had any old friends who’d miss him, did you? Who knows whether this mystery man knows anything, but it’s another link in the chain.

“Anyway, that’s what got Max Belling so nervous, isn’t it, Oliver? Doreen Harris told us that Max had been against the whole thing from the start, remember. He’d been for calling the police after Becky’s rape. He took a lot of persuading that you’d be better off taking the law into your own hands, and I’ll bet he was livid when he found out you’d killed Platt rather than simply booting him out of Fortford. Max was a decent man, moral even, I’m told. He made a big mistake in allowing himself to be complicit with the rest of you, and it gnawed away at his conscience. Anyway, it’s my guess he was about to become a whistle-blower. Things were falling apart. After eighteen months of relative security, you had to run a PCSO off the road for asking questions where they weren’t wanted, and now one of your very own was turning against you. It was time for a stern warning. Time to send a message. And I believe it was you who sent that message, Oliver. In the first place, you’re a doctor. You have the skills and the tools necessary to do what was done, and the stomach to do them. You’d also know that potassium chloride can bring on a heart attack and is practically undetectable in the system afterwards. But Max Belling had a healthy heart, and our pathologist’s better than you think.