The Devil's Larder

39

HERE IS HIS NAME, written in our register the day before he died: Toby Erickson, in capitals, above his signature, his home address (illegible), his phone number, his fax. He’d come to stay for four nights, for the angling. He seemed polite and well-to-do and not unsettled by his own company or by the dumbing prospects of the sea.

On the first morning — a beryl sky, with hardly any wind — he phoned down to our jetty house to hire a motor boat and a set of sea rods with some bait. He planned to anchor out in the drift stream, amongst the floods of migrating fish. He’d set his heart, he said, on catching tad. Not easy with a hook and line. A friend of his — and one he needed to impress — would dine with him that evening, so could we cook the tads he caught? Of course we could, we said. Our chef’s a genius with fish. ‘Good angling, Mr Erickson. We have prepared a packed lunch for your trip.’

Here are his signatures again — the boatman’s log, insurance forms, acknowledgements that he had read the boat-hire safety file. This listed all the dangers and the protocols: fouling the propellers in the wrack, being pushed onto the west side of the low-tide buoys, using emergency flares, always wearing a safety line and a buoyancy suit, giving way to sail, staying within clear sight of the hotel. ‘Remember: Our seas are prone to sudden swells’, it warned in red. It’s a pity no one thought to caution him about the lunch.

Here is the list of foodstuffs in our ‘Gourmet Picnic Lunch for Anglers’. It is a feast: one cold-meat baguette with cornichons, rye slices from the bakery, a Baby Camembert, a casket of salad vegetables, fresh seasonal fruit, a choice of home-baked mini-pastries, Swiss chocolate, a flask of filter coffee (select from Java/ Harrar/mocha) or hot water with infusions, a half of our house white, your pick of bottled beers. Who’d think that there were any hazards there?

The boatman checked on Mr Erickson with his binoculars throughout the day. There was, he says, a pancake sea and barely a cloud, so nothing to cause concern. The boat was anchored on the clear side of the wrack with its outboard lifted and correctly tucked. Three fixed rods had been deployed. The gentleman was sitting midships, wearing his yellow buoyancy suit and a straw hat. It was the warmest, stillest day for weeks and not especially good for catching tad. The tad likes choppy seas and hates harsh light. The boatman judged it was the safest afternoon for him to leave his post and drive down to the town ‘for business and a drink’.

The friend arrived a little after seven in the evening and took her aperitif out onto the terrace to wait for the fishing boat to lift its anchor and come home. We joked with her. ‘He’ll not return, your friend, until he’s caught his tad for dinner.’ Here is the bar chit that she set against his room. And here’s her signature.

Nobody noticed when the woman gave up hope and left. And nobody noticed, as the dark set in, that Mr Toby Erickson was still at sea. This is a busy place at night. Chef had more than fifty covers to cook for. And all the hotel’s rooms were booked.

Next morning, the boatman went out in the launch with our manager to bring the body in. It was a little choppier, a better day for catching fish. Our guest was still sitting midships, stiff as wood. He’d caught his tad that night, but hadn’t had the chance to play it in and lift it off the hook. An open bottle had spilled beer onto the deck. What remained of the ‘Gourmet Picnic Lunch for Anglers’ was being picked clean by gulls. The rescue flare had been unpacked from its holdings but had not been fired. There was evidence — again picked clean by gulls — of vomiting. It seemed his death had not been swift. We guessed — incorrectly — he’d had a heart attack or stroke.

We have a protocol: a hotel has at least one death a year. There is a laundry room which can be used for corpses. They had to dislocate his shoulder blade to get the buoyancy suit off so that he was presentable. His face was yellow. Like the suit. The police were called. Somebody phoned the contact number that he’d written in the register to give the sad news to the stranger at the other end.

HOW DID HE DIE? Just when? There are no documents to say. But once the magistrates had finished their reports, and diagnostic tests had been returned from the laboratories, the agent of his death was named. The culprit was a home-baked mini-pastry, which chef had filled with country-canned asparagus. Low-acid vegetables that have been canned by amateurs at room temperature, it seems, are rich in vitamins and poisons. Under such conditions poisons multiply. Here is the Chemical Analysis, which shows that Mr Erickson’s mini-pastry — and the remaining contents of the can — was rich enough in the neuro-toxin Clostridium botulinum to slay a team of horses. He would have found his vision blurred at first. He’d be dry-mouthed, a little weak. Nothing to panic about. He’d blame it on the gently rocking boat. He might have dozed and, when he woke, felt stiff and rheumatoid — first signs of his paralysis, the clamping of his lungs, his loss of reflex and the wrenching pain. If only chef had made another fifty little pies, he could have put a corpse in every room.

Here is a picture difficult to banish from our minds. It’s gone midnight. The moon and stars are bearing down on the anchored boat. Our Toby Erickson is dead. He sits quite still, in his straw hat, intoxicated, and untroubled by the nagging sea. His first and final tad — the dinner catch that might impress his lady friend — is hooked and tugging on the deep end of his line. It can’t escape from predators. The carnivores will pick it clean before the night is done. The bones above the water are holding on to bones below. The numb are fishing for the numb.

At last, his boat is shifting slightly on its ropes as tides regress and winds align in readiness for the day. The hotel staff are innocent, as yet. They are preparing breakfasts for their guests, unscrewing pots, opening cans, cutting off the tops of cartons, snipping sachets, breaching packets, breaking eggs, and quietly laying out the feast.