“I was taking my wife some flowers for Christmas.”
Mrs. Eliza Drumming had been in and out of Parkside Mental Hospital, the grand Gothic building on Fullarton Road, for much of the past two decades, and it was at her usual spot within the dayroom, by the window with the best light and the view over the gardens, that Henrik Drumming found her. Along with flowers from their old school friend Maud McKendry’s garden, he had brought his wife a Christmas gift. Her beautiful face, once capable of more nuanced emotion than Henrik had ever seen on another human being, was expressionless, courtesy of the strong pills the doctors prescribed for her. The small paint set fell from its wrapping paper to land upside down on her lap, and she turned it over gently in her hands.
She had adored painting once, and Henrik had built her the studio himself at the back of their garden. She’d always needed time apart from others, even before she suffered the onset of whatever it was that had taken over her. Despite being well loved and loving others in return, she was happiest by herself. He’d used to watch her wandering through the garden, inspecting this leaf and that petal. It gave him pleasure to see her out there, the sun finding golden strands in her hair. She would stop sometimes and stare up at the topmost branches of the gums that grew along the fence line, her focus shifting to a comprehending frown. He’d asked her once whatshe was doing. “Listening to the leaves,” she’d answered. Henrik had thought little of it at the time. He’d assumed she meant their rustling.
His dear wife was the one broken thing he had not been able to fix.
“I should have seen the signs,” he was to tell police after the Turner deaths. “I should have realized.”
“Can you tell us about those signs, Mr. Drumming? When you look back now, what was it that struck you about Mrs. Turner’s behavior in the weeks leading up to the tragedy?”
“She was preoccupied. I met with her every week about the farm records when Mr. Turner was away. She was very bright and had an instinct for business. But lately, I could see her heart wasn’t in it. She seemed indifferent.”
“Why do you think that was?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“But you knew Mrs. Turner was having difficulty sleeping—isn’t that right, Mr. Drumming?”
Henrik looked up at that. He didn’t answer at once.
Sergeant Peter Duke was a man in the happy situation of having found himself in the very occupation for which he knew himself to have been formed by God. His pleasant face was just what one might have conjured for the role of the ideal interviewer: interested but impassive, open and absent of judgment, disarming without resorting to trickery. He made a person want to help him solve his puzzle. “Can you tell us your wife’s name, Mr. Drumming?”
“It’s Eliza.”
“Eliza Drumming? Mrs. ...” He turned back several pages of his pad to find the note he’d made and then looked up again. “Mrs. E. W. Drumming?”
“That’s right.”
Sergeant Duke nodded at the young probationary constable, Eric Jerosch, who glanced apologetically at Henrik, red to the tipsof his ears. He was Maud McKendry’s much younger brother and had spent a number of summers learning how to rewire radios and electric heaters in Henrik’s shed when he was a boy. Now, at his superior’s behest, the young officer turned to the cabinet behind him and retrieved from its top drawer a small amber bottle, placing it on the table between Henrik and Sergeant Duke.
“Do you recognize this item, Mr. Drumming?” Sergeant Duke asked.
Henrik nodded. Later, he would say that although he hadn’t thought of that bottle or its contents in months, he’d experienced a strange foreshadowing as young Eric’s back was turned, and he wasn’t so much surprised as sickened when he saw the amber glass, the faded label with his wife’s name typed across it.
“What we need help understanding is how a bottle of pills prescribed to your wife wound up in Mrs. Turner’s bedside table drawer.”
Henrik’s throat was dry when he answered. “Like you said, she was having trouble sleeping.”
“What’s that, Mr. Drumming?”
“Mrs. Turner was having trouble sleeping.”
“She told you that?”
Henrik gave a short confirming nod.
“Did you and Mrs. Turner often discuss her sleeping habits?”
“No, sir.” His cheeks flushed at the question. It was true that he and Mrs. Turner had seen more of one another while Mr. Turner was away. Henrik had reported on the farm to her each week, told her what supplies they’d be needing, his plans for the various fields. That sort of ritual, while not a social event by any stretch of the imagination, had a way of lowering one’s defenses. “Only the once,” he said, remembering how she’d apologized that day, asking him to start his report again.It doesn’t matter what I do,she’d said,I can’t get to sleep at night, and by day I find I’m sleepwalking.
Sergeant Duke picked up the empty bottle and read the label. “Barbital. That’s a sleeping aid?”
“Yes, sir.” Henrik noticed that the bottle was empty, and the implication arrived like a stone in his stomach. “You’re not saying that these pills had anything to do with what happened to them?”
“We don’t know that yet, Mr. Drumming. The forensic results won’t be back for some time.”
But all of that was still to come. As the blazing sun continued its passage across the sky that Christmas Eve, and as Henrik Drumming was leading his wife, Eliza, out of the women’s ward to sit among the gracious ornamental trees and elaborate flower gardens of the Parkside grounds, back in Tambilla, Mrs. Meg Summers was finalizing the Turner family’s Christmas order. She had also taken advantage of a rare quiet moment between customers to get her sponge cake in the oven, and the smell of browning sugar was beginning to infuse the air, traveling all the way through to the shop from the kitchen.
