Not to Be Taken Read online

  In our own little circle the topic of John’s death became more or less taboo, and even Harold was induced to conform to the decencies in this respect. But one evening, when I happened to be alone with Glen, Frances having run Rona into Torminster to see a film, I raised the subject. I did so deliberately. Glen’s attitude had puzzled me ever since we had heard John’s letter read out in court. I could not make out whether he accepted John’s explanation or not, and I rather wanted to know.

  Glen will fence, if allowed, for hours; but he will usually respond to a straight question. When we had our pipes well alight, and no word had been spoken for at least five minutes, I put the straight question to him.

  ‘Glen,’ I said, ‘do you believe that letter of John’s contained the truth about his death?’

  Glen looked at me. ‘Yes,’ he said after a pause. ‘I suppose I do. At any rate it covers the facts. I shouldn’t have thought him capable of such a gross bit of carelessness, but I’ve come to the conclusion John wasn’t altogether the man we thought him.’

  ‘He certainly wasn’t,’ I agreed. ‘But in what particular way?’

  ‘Oh, almost any way you like. In fact anything we believed him to be, he was probably the opposite.’

  ‘That’s pitching it rather strong,’ I demurred. ‘At any rate he was a good old sort.’

  ‘Oh yes. One of the best. To us.’

  ‘To us?’

  ‘We never came up against him. I doubt if John was quite such a good sort to those who did.’

  ‘He always used to say he was incapable of ruthlessness.’

  Glen nodded. ‘Exactly. And we believed him. Haven’t you ever noticed how much we take for granted that what a person says about himself is true? John was very fond of disclaiming certain qualities. Result, we automatically disclaimed them for him too. Mostly, I should say, we were wrong.’

  ‘John probably believed he was speaking the truth.’

  ‘Maybe. But few of us like speaking the exact truth about ourselves, except the mental exhibitionists.’

  ‘Well,’ I said a little irrelevantly, ‘I’m glad it wasn’t murder.’

  ‘Um,’ said Glen.

  There was another silence, which I broke.

  ‘You were right about Angela, Glen. And I suppose this sudden improvement in health will be maintained?’

  ‘Oh yes. Unless the next husband discovers a cure for cancer or does anything else calculated to attract admiring attention.’

  ‘I’ve never asked Rona. Did she have a terrible time with Angela that fortnight she was there?’

  Glen grinned. ‘Pretty poor, I believe. But there were compensations.’

  ‘Angela keeps a comfortable house at any rate,’ I ruminated. ‘Queer about servants, isn’t it? Angela can’t have been a good mistress, but those self-centred, selfish, exacting women always seem to get good service; while really model employers, like Frances and me, who try to do the best we can for our maids and treat them with every possible consideration, get let down right and left.’

  ‘It’s the slave mentality,’ Glen answered carelessly. ‘They like being treated rough. Be kind to them, and they despise you. That girl of Angela’s – what was her name? – would never have stayed with Frances or Rona. She hated Angela, of course, but she respected her devastating selfishness and felt somehow morally compelled to work for it.’

  I laughed. ‘Pritchard, yes. An unpleasant type. Funny you should mention her. I had rather an amusing encounter with her this morning.’

  ‘Eh? I thought she’d been sacked – and left, according to Rona, in floods of penitent tears.’

  ‘Yes. She was coming back to get some of her things.’

  I told Glen of the incident.

  I had been going down our lane to the village that morning when I passed a neatly dressed girl who looked somehow familiar. The girl smiled and said good morning, and I, feeling I ought to know her, stopped and asked vaguely how she was. She replied that she was quite well and asked politely after Mrs Sewell. It was not till she volunteered the information that she was going into a new place in Torminster on Monday, and had come back to get some things she had left behind, that I recognised Pritchard.

  At that I made to pass on, but the girl detained me.

  ‘Oh, sir, perhaps you could give me some advice. There’s something been worrying me, and I don’t know what I ought to do about it.’

  I promised her my advice for what it was worth.

  ‘It’s about that cider, sir. You remember I said in my evidence that I took Mr Waterhouse a glass of cider into the library at about half-past twelve. Well, I’ve remembered since it must have been nearer twelve than half-past, because I know Mrs Waterhouse wasn’t in the kitchen when I fetched it, and she’d been there before making the lemon sponge; and I know she wasn’t there when the baker called, which he does round about twelve every day, because that Maria asked me how many loaves –’

  ‘Well,’ I said, cutting short this breathlessly delivered rigmarole, ‘what’s the trouble in any case, Pritchard?’

  ‘Why, sir, do you think I ought to go to the police and tell them I’ve thought about it and believe I must have made a mistake about the time I took in the cider? I wouldn’t like to have to tell them I made another mistake, seeing I made one in my evidence already; but if you think it’s important, sir…’

  ‘I can’t see that it’s of the faintest importance,’ I told her, a little impatiently, for I was in a hurry. ‘The whole affair’s over and settled; and in any case what would a few minutes matter one way or another?’

  ‘Oh, thank you, sir. Then I won’t bother about it. That’s a weight off my mind.’

  I extricated myself from her unnecessary gratitude and went on my way.

  ‘It all rather bears out what you were saying,’ I told Glen. ‘I was a bit fierce on one occasion with the girl, so it’s to me she comes for advice and then overdoes the gratitude.’

  Glen was grinning again, broadly. ‘No doubt. But it’s darned lucky for Angela she did make that mistake over the time.’

  ‘For Angela? Why?’

  ‘You asked just now if Rona had a bad time with Angela. She did. It took all her efforts to dissuade Angela from throwing herself on the police and confessing to the murder of her husband, through that same glass of cider.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, perhaps you’d better keep this under your hat,’ said Glen, still grinning, ‘but there was a bit of a muddle over that glass of cider. Actually it was Angela’s glass. She drinks a glass of cider every morning, because someone once told her cider was good for the kidneys. Professes to loathe the stuff, of course, but nobly sacrifices herself for her kidneys. John used to have a glass, too, round about eleven, and he generally drew them both and gave Angela hers. Well, apparently he did so as usual that morning, and it must have been before he strolled over to your place. Have you ever seen a woman with a glass of something she doesn’t like? She’ll carry it all round the place with her before she drinks it instead of getting it over quick and nasty like a man. Angela seems to have been accompanied by that glass of cider most of the morning. She had it with her in the drawing-room when she wrote a letter; she had it with her in the kitchen when she was making that famous limonspong (the only dish, I gather, that Angela is able to make with her own white hands, and goodness knows how she can make that); and she carried it with her, so far as Rona could make out, into the larder to show it the limonspong being put on the shelf to set. But there she left it and, like Angela, forgot all about it.

  Then along comes Pritchard, with a haughty request to Maria for a glass of cider for the master. The cider barrel was kept in the larder, you see. Probably you know the place; it’s the old dairy of the house and big enough for half-a-dozen larders, Pritchard wasn’t allowed in the larder by Maria; so it was Maria who had to draw the cider when it was
wanted. And naturally, being a thoroughly lazy slut and seeing a glass standing there already, she picked it up and gave it to Pritchard. John, of course, had no idea he was drinking stuff that had been drawn over an hour earlier, and history stops short of recording whether he found it a trifle flat.’

  ‘But what’s all this got to do with Angela murdering him?’ I asked, bewildered.

  ‘Why, you see, Angela had dissolved in it some tabloid or other of her own. Killing two birds with one stone: the cider for the kidneys, and the tabloid for some other portion of her perfectly sound anatomy. When John was taken bad she instantly jumped to the conclusion that it was her stuff that had done it: for by that time she knew about the cider, having gone to look for it just before lunch and learning from Maria that it had gone into the library. It was a new concoction that she hadn’t sampled before, and she still blames John’s death on it, the ridiculous woman. However, I will say she made the greatest amends in her power. She threw all the rest of the tabloids down the WC. That must have caused her a wrench.’

  ‘Then you don’t know what it was?’

  ‘Oh yes, I do. It was something young Strangman had made up for her. For the nerves. I’ve forgotten the details, but the stuff was perfectly harmless. Aloes and soap, probably. No, don’t you see? It’s all a case of wish fulfilment. John was in the limelight, through having died. When we thought he’d been murdered he was still more in the limelight, poor chap. There was only one way Angela could turn the limes onto herself and away from him, and that was by being put on trial for his murder. Consciously she professed to dread such a ghastly idea, but all the time her subconscious was egging her on to try to get into that dock.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ I said inadequately.

  ‘Oh, it’s not so rare as all that. In fact I believe it’s the case with the majority of detected murderers. Certainly most of them thoroughly enjoy their trials. To be the centre of all that attention and the cause of all that fuss flatters their egoism no end. And what could be more attractive than to receive the attention and cause the fuss, and yet not have to do the unpleasant deed?’

  ‘Then it’s lucky Rona did manage to dissuade her,’ I said dryly, ‘for I doubt very much whether our local police would have grasped the psychological complexities involved.’

  We pondered the strange ways of the human mind for a few minutes in silence, with the help of a mouthful of beer.

  ‘Did John know there was nothing organically wrong with Angela?’ I asked. ‘It was a complete surprise to me.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Glen said slowly. ‘I think on the whole that he believed she really was an invalid. We’re all fairly suggestible, you see, and Angela certainly was a first-class suggester.’

  ‘On the other hand, that secret cupboard of his was half full of patent medicines and pills and things which I’m pretty sure he must have unobtrusively removed from Angela’s possession.’

  ‘Oh yes, he thought she drugged herself far too freely, as of course she did. He spoke to me about it more than once, and asked if something couldn’t be done on the lines of treatment for a real drug taker: you know, keeping the shot the same size to look at, but gradually diminishing the drug content. In fact,’ added Glen with a chuckle, ‘I believe he may have tried his hand at something of the kind himself, because he borrowed an old pill-making machine of mine not long ago, as he said, to put up in handy form some foul-tasting Eastern preparation he had by him which was supposed to give one a distaste for smoking. That was after I’d warned him that he must cut down his smoking really seriously. He didn’t let on, and I didn’t ask him, but I somehow had the idea at the time that he intended to knock out a few plain chalk tablets to substitute for Angela’s usual muck. Anyhow, I just casually mentioned that plain chalk tablets were procurable from any of the big drug houses, and he jumped at the notion: just the thing, he said. Lucky I did, too, because he reported afterwards that he couldn’t make the machine work – some vital part broken or something. I hadn’t used it for ages.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but what I don’t understand is why Angela should have imagined that a perfectly harmless tablet could change itself into arsenic as soon as it got into the cider.’

  Glen laughed shortly. ‘Then you don’t know much about egocentrics, my lad. They can imagine anything they darned well like – and persuade themselves it’s true, too. Little anomalies like that wouldn’t worry Angela. She wanted subconsciously to have fed John arsenic; the fact that she’d only fed him aloes and soap and limonspong didn’t matter a bit; to suit her purpose (and mind you, everything exists only to suit an egocentric’s purpose, laws of nature and all) the aloes and soap must possess the peculiar property of generating arsenic on contact with cider. My dear old chap, there’s no difficulty about that; none at all.’

  I felt lazily combative. ‘Well, why shouldn’t something and something else generate arsenic? What is arsenic? What does it come from? How do they get it? What do you know about it?’

  ‘Arsenic is a metal,’ said Glen austerely.

  ‘No doubt, but I suppose even metals come from somewhere. Can’t anything make arsenic? One hears of arsenical wallpapers, arsenic in cooking utensils, arsenic in beer barrels. There seems to be a good deal of arsenic about the place in a small way. Where does it come from? What causes it?’

  ‘Good Lord, I don’t know. I’m no chemist. Here, if you really want to know, have a look through these, and let me read the paper in peace.’ Glen got up, collected three or four books from a window seat and dumped them in my lap. They were the same ones that he had shown me before. Probably they had been lying on the window seat ever since. The Broughams’ is one of those comfortable houses where everything does not have to be tidied away out of reach the instant one has finished with it, or even before.

  I turned through the pages, but there was little or no information on the thoroughly fundamental questions I had posed; the books, which were medical ones, were concerned only with the causes of arsenical poisoning, its symptoms and its treatment, with all of which I was becoming quite familiar. That is always the trouble with technical books, for the layman; they never begin early enough. I still do not know what arsenic is or where it comes from or anything about it except that it is a metal, which means little or nothing to me.

  I pushed the books aside and looked at Glen, sprawled in his chair, all arms and long legs. Something put into my mind the village rumours coupling his name with Angela’s. There could never have been a rumour with less foundation. Apart altogether from the existence of Philip Strangman, of whom, of course, Glen had never heard and when he did took him with complete calm, Glen seemed to have no feeling for Angela as a person beyond a mild dislike or at most a pitying contempt; though as a case he seemed to have found her a peach. No, there was nothing along that line.

  Queer about John’s arsenical washes. Why had I had the idea that he was experimenting only with the tar distillates? He could not have told me so, of course; there would have been no point; on the other hand, he had certainly said nothing about arsenic.

  A pity (my mind flitted on) that no other secret cupboards had been discovered. Those two were so interesting that goodness knew what might not have been concealed in a third. Some other totally unexpected aspect of John’s unexpected hidden life.

  What kind of a man had John really been? Glen was as puzzled as I was. But in my opinion he went too far in making out that John had been the exact opposite of everything he had suggested himself to us as being. He was a kindly, good-natured man, that at least was certain. His treatment of Angela alone showed that. It would take a kindly, good-natured man to put up with Angela in marriage for so many years, and then see to it that she came in for a fortune afterwards.

  How unfairly as well as unevenly wealth is distributed, I mused. In all her life Angela had never done a thing to deserve a penny from anyone, while there were excellent and conscientious gentlefol
k in the district – I could name a dozen at least – who hardly knew how to make both ends meet. The deliberate destruction of a type, and a fine type, too, with all its faults, by the politicians to gain the votes of urban mobs is a tragedy when one is living in the middle of it.

  But about John…what did I really think?

  It will be seen that I was meditating very much at haphazard, certainly with no idea of worrying to the roots of the problem of John’s death. Indeed I was hardly conscious that it still was a problem to me. The revelation, when it came, was therefore all the more of a shock.

  Idly I allowed to skim across the surface of my mind the various events, rumours and surprises of the last five or six weeks. It was the middle of November now; John had died early in September. Equally idly, I reviewed the course of this same evening and the different items of information which I had gleaned or of which I had been reminded.

  Suddenly a chord of memory vibrated, most disconcertingly …a voice…something said, which had been called to my notice again tonight…

  I sat up, thinking hard.

  If it was true, if I was right, it could only mean…

  But it was true. I was right. There was no possible doubt about that. Then I began to trace the thing out, step by step. Yes, each bit fell into place. The jigsaw was complete. It only remained to compare it with the picture on the box.

  I sank back into my chair, feeling quite overwhelmed by the revelation which had come to me. I could only regard it as a revelation, though the vision was logical enough.

  I must have made some exclamation, for Glen put down his paper and looked at me.

  ‘Hullo,’ he said, ‘what’s the matter with you? Seen a ghost or something? You’re as white as a sheet.’