The Wychford Poisoning Case Read online

  ‘So Mr Alfred is staying here as well, is he?’ Roger remarked.

  ‘Yes; been here nearly two months now, he has.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know that. Now let me see; where shall we start? About those fly-papers. Had you ever seen fly-papers soaking in Mrs Bentley’s room before?’

  ‘Oh, no. Never, I hadn’t, that’s what made me think it was funny-like, you see.’

  ‘What did you think when you did see them, then, Miss Blower?’

  ‘Why, that it was funny-like. I thought it was funny-like, you see.’

  ‘And why did you think it was funny-like?’

  ‘Why, because I’d never seen anything of the sort before. Besides, there wasn’t no call for them. We always had the sticky sort before.’

  ‘And how did you know what these were, and that they were dangerous?’

  ‘It was written on them. “Fly-papers, dangerous, poison,” Something like that, it said.’

  ‘I see. Now, how long have you been here?’

  ‘Two years next November.’

  ‘Had Mr and Mrs Bentley seemed to you to be on pretty good terms, before these last quarrels?’

  ‘No, that they hadn’t! Always biting each other’s heads off, they were, in a manner of speaking.’

  ‘Did Mrs Bentley seem to you upset, when her husband was taken ill?’

  ‘Not her! She pretended to be all right, but I could see through her play-acting.’

  ‘Oh, she did pretend to be, then?’

  ‘Yes, but she always was a cunning one. All those foreigners are.’

  ‘No doubt,’ Roger said mildly. ‘Now, Miss Blower, I want you to tell me your own impressions of Mr and Mrs Bentley. For instance, did you, before this business began, like Mrs Bentley?’

  Miss Blower snorted. ‘That I didn’t, Mr Twobottles!’ she replied with emphasis. ‘Not from the very first moment I ever set eyes on her, I didn’t. She was a proper cat, Mrs Bentley was—a proper cat! I never could stand her.’

  ‘What makes you feel so strongly about her? Wasn’t she a good mistress?’

  ‘A good Nosey Parker!’ retorted Miss Blower with much scorn. ‘That’s what she was, a Nosey Parker. Dear me, you must think I’m dreadful to be talking like this, but I always was one for saying what I thought. And reelly—!’

  ‘But that’s exactly what I want you to say, Miss Blower; what you really thought.’

  ‘Well, it does seem funny, don’t it? Me sitting in here and talking to a gentleman like you.’

  ‘But I’m not a gentleman!’ Roger replied with energy. ‘Don’t think that for a minute. I’m just a reporter, and I want you to talk to me just as you do to the cook out in the kitchen.’

  ‘Not if I did, you wouldn’t,’ giggled Miss Blower coyly. ‘I’m a one for the rough side of my tongue, I am. Lor’, the things I say to poor cook sometimes! You wouldn’t believe!’

  ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t,’ said Roger gallantly. ‘But about Mrs Bentley, why do you call her a Nosey Parker?’

  ‘Well, always interfering and messing about with things that didn’t concern her, she was. Used to make me wild at times, I can tell you. It’s a wonder to me I never give in my notice months ago.’

  ‘But aren’t you sorry for her now, with this terrible accusation hanging over her head?’

  ‘Not me! She deserves all she’s going to get and more, you mark my words.’

  ‘Of course you have no doubt whether she’s guilty or not?’

  Miss Blower tossed her head. ‘Whether she’s guilty or not, there’s them as ’ud be glad to see her swing,’ she observed darkly.

  Roger lit a cigarette with some care. He realised that Miss Blower might be on the verge of some really important revelation; but as things were, he doubted whether she could be induced to give voice to it to a person so far removed from her own sphere. Roger knew all about the intense class-feeling that a person of Miss Blower’s type might be expected to possess; and he knew also that a thing of which she might talk freely to a person of her own standing, she would probably conceal instinctively from anybody belonging to the division of society known to herself as ‘toffs’ He determined swiftly, before proceeding with the matter in hand, to do something towards breaking down the barriers between them.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said chattily, holding his cigarette case out to her. ‘Do you smoke? Have a cigarette.’

  ‘Well, I don’t mind if I do,’ said Miss Blower graciously.

  Roger lit one for her, employing the tip of his finger in the orthodox way. ‘You know, I’m rather surprised to see you in service, Miss Blower,’ he remarked in tones of some earnestness.

  ‘You are? Why?’

  ‘Well, you seem to me to be rather wasted here. You ought to be on the stage, you know, with your looks and figure.’

  ‘Well, I have thought of the stage meself,’ Miss Blower admitted with a little giggle. ‘But there! It’s not reelly the sort of thing for a respectable girl, is it?’

  Roger reassured her. He went on to invent a perfectly fictitious cousin of his own whom he asserted to be an ornament to the chorus of one of the big London revues. He was quite certain that this cousin could be persuaded to use her remarkable influence with London’s theatrical managers on Miss Blower’s behalf. He was equally certain that London’s theatrical managers, once given the opportunity of inspecting Miss Blower’s form and features, would vie eagerly with each other for the privilege of displaying them from their respective stages to an eager public.

  Miss Blower bridled visibly. ‘Me on the stage in a string of beads and a couple of doodahs!’ wriggled Miss Blower delightedly. ‘I’d be a scream, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Well, I’ll certainly speak to my cousin,’ Roger affirmed, deciding that the ice was now sufficiently shattered. ‘Oh, by the way, there was something I was intending to ask you. What did you mean, about Mrs Bentley, just now when you said “whether she’s guilty or not”? Have you any reason to suppose that she mightn’t be?—Our readers will naturally attach tremendous weight to your views, you know,’ he added perfunctorily.

  But Miss Blower was not to be drawn so easily as that. She leaned back in her big chair and puffed unskilfully at her cigarette.

  ‘Oh, she’s guilty all right,’ she replied carelessly. ‘They’re going to try her, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, but that doesn’t necessarily follow. Now just see how interesting it would be if I could tell our readers that you think she might be innocent,’ Roger urged persuasively. ‘Why, it would be the sensation of the hour! Everybody would be talking about you. Just think for a minute and see if you can’t give me some fact that you haven’t mentioned to anybody else.’

  ‘No, I don’t know anything like that,’ replied Miss Blower evasively.

  ‘Just think! the Courier would be ready to pay very handsomely for any information that might point to a sensation of that sort.’

  ‘She’s guilty all right,’ retorted Miss Blower with a touch of sullenness. ‘There’s nothing I can tell you that I haven’t told anyone else.’

  Roger changed the subject; he had no wish to dam the stream of this lady’s promising information. ‘You never liked Mrs Bentley, then. Did you like Mr Bentley’?

  ‘Oh, he was all right, as they go,’ said Miss Blower, in a curiously flat voice.

  Roger’s eye gleamed, but he did not betray himself. ‘That doesn’t sound as if you thought much of him?’

  ‘I didn’t; not a fat lot.’

  ‘You didn’t like him at all?’ Roger insinuated.

  ‘Oh, he was—Oh, well, if you must know, I hated the sight of him, an’ I don’t care who knows it!’

  ‘Quite right. Why should you? I can’t say I have a very high opinion of him myself if it comes to that. And why particularly didn’t you like him?’

  Miss Blower shifted uneasily. ‘He—he didn’t treat me properly.’

  ‘Oh? How was that?’

  ‘He promised me—’ An expression of intense mal
ignance distorted Miss Blower’s features. ‘He was a dirty dog!’ she exclaimed with sudden defiance. ‘He was a dirty dog, an’ I’m glad he’s dead, see? I don’t care who hears me say it—I’m glad he’s dead!’

  Roger paused for a moment, looking at her closely. Miss Blower’s face was flushed and she was breathing heavily; her emotion was obvious.

  ‘At about half-past eight on the evening before Mr Bentley died,’ he went on deliberately, ‘you gave him a drink of lemonade out of a glass, in spite of the fact that strict orders had been issued that nothing should be administered to him except by the nurse in charge. Now, why did you do that?’

  Miss Blower’s flushed face paled slowly to a dead-white. She swallowed convulsively and her small slits of eyes widened unnaturally as she stared at her visitor.

  ‘I—I never did!’ she cried a little stridently after a pause of nearly half a minute. ‘I never did anything of the sort!’

  ‘You were seen in the act,’ Roger returned impassively.

  ‘It’s a lie! Who told you a filthy lie like that, I should like to know?’

  Roger exchanged glances with his cameraman. ‘But why deny it, Miss Blower?’ he asked in a soothing voice. ‘Surely it was a perfectly harmless thing to have done. We know it for a fact, but we didn’t attach any importance to it. Why deny it?’

  Miss Blower continued to stare at him. Suddenly she burst into noisy tears.

  ‘I—I didn’t see any harm in it,’ she sobbed. ‘He said he was thirsty, an’ I didn’t see any harm in it. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known, not if it was ever so. He was a swine to me, but I wouldn’t have done that, honest to God I wouldn’t!’

  ‘You wouldn’t have done what?’ Roger asked quickly.

  Miss Blower raised a tear-stained face and sniffed. ‘I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t have gone against Mr Alfred’s orders, sir. Not if it were ever so, I wouldn’t. But I didn’t see no harm in it, sir.’ Her cringing demeanour was in marked contrast with the former familiarity of her manner.

  Roger contemplated her for a moment. ‘Where did you get the lemonade from?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘From—from the top o’ the chest-of-drawers, sir.’

  ‘I see,’ Roger nodded. ‘There was a glass of lemonade standing on the top of the chest-of-drawers?’

  A noticeably crafty look appeared in Miss Blower’s eyes. ‘Oh, no, sir. That there wasn’t, if you’ll pardon me, sir. It was a jug of lemonade on the top of the chest-of-drawers, an’ I just poured some out of it, sir. An’ it wasn’t a glass either, sir; it was a cup.’

  ‘I see.’ Roger appeared to be pondering.

  ‘But sir,’ remarked Miss Blower with some anxiety, ‘you won’t put anything about this in your writing, will you, sir? There’s no harm done and nobody any the wiser, but just as it happens, I haven’t told anybody about it, an’ it might get me into trouble in a manner of speaking, what with going against Mr Alfred’s orders an’ all, sir. So you won’t put any of that into your writing, will you, sir?’

  ‘Very well,’ Roger agreed. ‘Provided you answer truthfully the rest of my questions, I won’t.’

  ‘You see, it isn’t as if there was any harm done, sir, is it, sir?’ Miss Blower persisted. ‘If there had been, then I’m not saying but what—but what things might have been different. But there isn’t, you see, is there, sir?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Roger said absently. ‘Now, about that packet of white powder which was found in the locked drawer in Mrs Bentley’s bedroom. You were there when it was found?’

  ‘Yes, sir; I was, sir.’

  ‘And you’d never seen it before?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. I’d seen it on the table by Mr Bentley’s bed. On his bed-table, sir.’

  ‘Had you, indeed? Just once, or several times? I mean, had it been there for some time?’

  ‘Yes, sir, it had. A matter of two or three days, I should say, right up to when Nurse Watson came.’

  ‘And then it disappeared?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Clean disappeared.’

  ‘Now, can you remember when you first noticed it? Which particular day?’

  Miss Blower screwed up her face in a painful effort of memory. Miss Blower was very palpably anxious to please.

  ‘Yes, sir; it was—it was—it’d be the Monday evening. Yes, that’s right, sir, when I was helping madam fix him up for the night. I can tell you that, ’cos I cleared the table when I brought his supper-tray up, and it wasn’t there then, an’ when I moved the table out of the way later on, I saw it an’ said to meself, “Lor’,” I said, “here’s another medicine for ’im to dose ’imself with,” I said.’

  ‘I see. And it stayed there ’til Nurse Watson arrived on the Wednesday. Now are you quite sure that this really was the same packet as was found in the drawer in Mrs Bentley’s room?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. Because of the label, you see.’

  ‘The label?’ Roger repeated eagerly. ‘Was there a label on it? What did it say?’

  ‘Well, there was a label on it in a manner of speaking, sir, an’ yet there wasn’t. It’d bin torn off. But there had bin a label.’

  ‘Oh!’ Roger said disappointedly. ‘It had been torn off, had it? Ever since you first saw it?’

  ‘Well, all but one corner, sir. There was still one corner left, you see, sir. That’s how I knew it had bin a label.’

  Roger brightened again. ‘Ah! Now, was there anything written or printed on that corner? Any words, or a pattern, or anything like that?’

  ‘Well, yes, sir, you might say there was. A sort of squiggle, if you see what I mean, sir, an’ C.3 printed on it.’

  ‘See three?’ Roger repeated in puzzled tones.

  ‘Yes; I could draw it for you, sir, the squiggle, just to give you an idea like.’

  ‘That’s a good notion. Yes do!’

  Roger produced his notebook and pencil, and Miss Blower applied herself to her task. Her finished sketch was rough and ready, but the nature of the squiggle appeared to be more or less indicated.

  ‘Oh, C.3!’ Roger said, looking at it carefully before putting it away in his pocket. ‘I understand. Some part of a chemical formula, I suppose. Thank you very much, Miss Blower. Now then, is there anything more I want to ask you? I don’t think so. Oh, by the way, how are you able to say so certainly that it was Monday evening when the packet first made its appearance, and not, perhaps, Sunday evening, or Tuesday?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy, sir. It was after I’d let that Mr Allen out, you see, sir; that’s how I remember. Mr Allen, he’d bin spending the evening with Mr Bentley; though if you ask me, sir, it’s more like it was madam he wanted to see. She an’ her goings-on!—I say, sir, do you think they will hang her? Cook, she says, no, they won’t, she says; but I’m not so sure myself. What do you think, sir?’ Miss Blower was rapidly recovering her self-possession.

  ‘I think, Miss Blower,’ Roger said weightily, ‘that you’ll find that Mrs Bentley will not be hanged. And now we must be getting along.’

  ‘Well, I can’t say as how I hope she will be,’ Miss Blower remarked frankly as she rose to her feet. ‘A cat she was to me an’ a cat she always will be, but I hope they don’t hang her. Not but what she don’t deserve it, though!’ she added with stern morality.

  She accompanied them to the front-door, and Roger made their joint farewells. Alec had not opened his mouth from the time they had entered the house. Miss Blower’s manner became decidedly more cheerful.

  ‘Here, wait!’ she exclaimed indignantly, as they were on the point of turning down the drive. You’ve forgotten to take my photograph!’

  ‘God bless my soul, so we have!’ cried Roger. ‘Here, Mr Sheepwash, unsling that camera of yours and look nippy.’

  Miss Blower was duly posed on the front-door step, Roger taking a good deal of trouble to get her in exactly the right light and in the best possible position, and Alec gloomily clicked an empty camera at her. After that, they were allowed to depart.

  ‘Well
, Alexander,’ Roger said, as they turned into the road, ‘what did you make of all that? A distressing young person, wasn’t she? Offensively familiar at first, then cringing, and then familiar again. A low type, about the lowest there is; no brains, plenty of cunning, and no morals. At the moment, also, absolutely eaten up with her own importance over this business. Rather a dangerous young animal, eh?’

  ‘You didn’t show that you knew she’d been Bentley’s mistress?’

  ‘No; I didn’t want any hysterics this morning. I’m holding that, in case I ever want to frighten anything out of her later.’

  ‘She knows something, you know,’ Alec said. ‘I’m positive she’s got something up her sleeve that she wouldn’t tell us about.’

  ‘Not so much knows something, I fancy, as fears something,’ Roger amended. ‘And she did tell me, as a matter of fact; though she certainly didn’t intend to. Didn’t you arrive at the same conclusion? I thought it was obvious enough.’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘Why, that Mrs Bentley is innocent!’

  ‘Oh! Yes, I did have vague suspicions about that. Jolly interesting. I thought you were meaning that she thought somebody else was guilty.’

  ‘Yes, I did mean that, too.’

  ‘Oh? Who, then?’

  ‘Miss Mary Blower!’ returned Roger happily.

  CHAPTER XVI

  CONFERENCE AT AN IRONING-BOARD

  ‘THAT she did it herself?’ Alec cried.

  ‘Yes, that she did it herself—by accident! It was quite clear that when she said she poured the lemonade out of the jug on the chest-of-drawers into a tumbler she was lying; obviously there was a tumbler of lemonade standing on the chest-of-drawers. It’s my opinion that Miss Mary Blower isn’t at all sure that that lemonade isn’t part of the stuff which was found in the tray of Mrs Bentley’s trunk.’

  Alec whistled. ‘Oh—ho! That she fed him with Mrs Bentley’s arsenical cosmetic, you mean?’