The Wychford Poisoning Case Read online

  ‘Yes,’ Roger said. ‘It’s quite possible. I don’t know how long, but three or four days, I expect, at least.’

  ‘Well, wouldn’t you rather come and stay here than at the Man of Kent, both of you? We should be very pleased to have you if you cared to come.’

  ‘That’s most extraordinarily kind of you, Mrs Purefoy,’ Roger said warmly. ‘But surely we should be most terribly in the way?’

  ‘Not a bit. I should leave you to amuse yourselves; I always do leave my visitors alone, I’m sure they much prefer it. You wouldn’t be any trouble at all.’

  ‘This is really quite overwhelming,’ Roger murmured. ‘Of course we should like to come most awfully. If you’re absolutely certain it would be all right.’

  ‘Good. Then that’s settled,’ Dr Purefoy said briskly. ‘You’d better get your things round tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Need Alec come, mum?’ queried Sheila in some concern. ‘Couldn’t Mr Sheringham come alone?’

  ‘Do you want to be scragged again, Sheila?’ Alec asked with a grin.

  ‘Shut up, Alec!’ retorted his cousin. ‘I’m not on speaking terms with you at present.’

  ‘Because the next time I have to take action,’ continued Alec weightily, ‘the next time, Sheila—I’m going to drop you into a bath of cold water. So look out!’

  ‘The bathroom, Alec,’ remarked Dr Purefoy airily, his eyes fixed innocently upon the ceiling, ‘is the second door on the left at the top of the stairs.’

  An excellent evening then ensued.

  A few minutes before eleven Roger and Alec, reiterating for the fourteenth time their decision that they really must go now, really went.

  ‘Alexander,’ said Roger with his usual frankness as they turned down the High Street, ‘I like your cousins most tremendously. Two more charming people than Dr and Mrs Purefoy I’ve never met.’

  ‘Yes, they’re a topping couple. Awfully decent to me when I was a kid. Sheila used to be a jolly kid too, but she’s grown up pretty ghastly.’

  ‘Oh, she’s all right. Just the usual pose of nineteen or twenty or whatever she is. She’ll grow out of that sort of thing.’

  ‘I certainly did her a bit of good tonight,’ said Alec, with a reminiscent grin. ‘I didn’t notice any more of that dam’ silly languidness about her after I’d finished with her.’

  Roger stopped dead on the pavement and solemnly lifted his hat. ‘Heads uncovered to Mr Alexander Grierson, Strong Silent Man and Tamer of Women,’ he said reverently.

  ‘Don’t be an ass,’ said the Woman-tamer tolerantly.

  ‘And also,’ Roger added, ‘as I was nearly forgetting, Hound, I understand, of Hell. I say, Alec, it really was most awfully good of them to invite us to stay there.’

  ‘Yes; they’re jolly hospitable.’

  ‘And mark my words, that young lady is going to be a great help to us. She can give us an introduction to the Saunderson, as she calls her, off her own bat, and she could certainly wangle any others we might want. I think we shall have seriously to consider taking her into our confidence.’

  And then Alec said a very unexpected thing. ‘We might do a jolly sight worse,’ said Alec.

  Roger looked at him with considerable surprise. It was the last advice he would have expected Alec to put forward.

  ‘Alexander,’ he remarked, ‘if ever I’ve called you a darned and blithering old fool, I herewith take it back. I really don’t think you are.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Alec without exuberant gratitude.

  They reached the Man of Kent and ordered the night-caps to which their position as residents entitled them, in defiance of the dictates of a maternal government, pussyfootism and all the other futilities which order our lives for us in these days.

  ‘Well, you didn’t get much forrarder tonight with the business in hand, I noticed,’ Alec observed, when a sleepy provincial waiter had set their glasses in front of them. ‘Cheerio!’

  ‘Good luck. Didn’t I, though! But most decidedly I did; after you’d gone to interview Sheila. Alec, my friend, this case looks as if it’s going to turn out to be uncommonly simple after all.’

  ‘How do you make that out?’

  Roger told him what he had learned regarding the appearance of the symptoms in arsenical poisoning. ‘So you see,’ he pointed out, ‘this narrows everything down to a very fine point indeed. We’ve only got to find out who came into contact with Bentley during that penultimate half-hour before the symptoms appeared, and among those very few people is your murderer. At any rate we shall know after that whom not to waste time over.’

  ‘And Mrs Bentley?’ Alec asked. ‘How does this affect her?’

  ‘Well, that’s going to be rather interesting. If by any chance she didn’t come into contact with her husband during that time (how the deuce are we going to find all this out, by the way?), one can’t say that she’s cleared completely. The rule isn’t a hard-and-fast one, you see. But as far as all practical probabilities go, I think we might say that she would be.’

  ‘And if on the other hand,’ Alec said slowly, ‘she was the only one to do so, then the case against her appears to be clinched?’

  Roger nodded. ‘Exactly. That’s what I meant. In either alternative the case may turn out comparatively simple.’

  There was a short silence.

  ‘Lord, I wish I’d known the woman,’ Roger remarked restlessly. ‘We haven’t got anything to go on, you see, as to whether she’s capable of murder or not. No personal knowledge. Poisoning, as I said before, isn’t a thing you do in a hurry, like shooting someone in a temper or whacking somebody else over the head with a crowbar on the spur of the moment. It’s a deliberate, cold-blooded business, and you’ve got to be a “pure” murderer, as they call it, to carry it through. You’ve got to be capable of murder—which nine hundred and ninety-eight people out of a thousand aren’t!’

  ‘I can see that,’ Alec murmured, almost to himself. ‘Anybody might shoot a chap; but I’d sooner be shot myself than poison one.’

  ‘It’s all a question of the personal factor,’ Roger continued. ‘The dear old Law doesn’t recognise the personal factor in the slightest (that is, not consciously; though it was the personal factor which hanged Seddon for all that), but it’s a devilish important factor in any case where the murder is a deliberate one. Anybody’s capable of murder on the spur of the moment and with sufficient provocation; precious few people are capable of deliberately planning and carrying out the elimination of an unwanted fellow-creature. It does take a bit of nerve, you know. The French recognise the importance of the personal factor, of course; but then their legal procedure is based on the science of criminology, you might say, whereas ours is based on precedent.’

  ‘But I thought the French legal system was so harsh. Don’t they consider a person guilty till he’s proved innocent, while we do just the opposite?’

  ‘And isn’t that exactly what a detective unravelling a mystery does? Not that I’m defending the entire French legal system by any means. It is much harsher than ours and much more cruel, but there are plenty of points where it has the advantage of ours. All the French are concerned with is getting at the truth, and they don’t care a cuss how they get there; we’re mostly concerned with protecting the interests of every person or thing connected with the case, from the prisoner himself down through the barristers to the usher’s cat. The French confront an accused person with the corpse of his supposed victim and watch him with a magnifying-glass to see what his reactions are; we spend a couple of hours arguing whether a certain piece of evidence, about which the jury perfectly well know already, is to be admitted formally as evidence or not. The French go about it like a business; we go about it like a game—with the prisoner’s life as the prize for the cleverer side.’

  ‘But this is eloquence!’ murmured Alec. ‘Go on, though; it’s damned interesting all the same.’

  ‘Thanks; I will. You mentioned that the French treat a prisoner as guilty till he’s pro
ved innocent, and we treat him as the reverse. That’s the old parrot-cry of the difference between the two systems, and there’s about as much sense in it as there is in most parrot-cries. If I wanted to be startling I might say that precisely the opposite is true—that the French treat a prisoner as innocent and we treat him as guilty; and there’d be just about as much sense in that as in the other. The real truth lies between the two, and you might say that the only way of expressing it is negatively. The French do not necessarily require a prisoner prove his innocence, and we certainly do not consider him innocent until he’s proved guilty. I could give you plenty of instances of that if you doubt what I’m saying, but I’ll confine myself to two. Seddon was certainly never proved guilty of poisoning Miss Barrow; Mrs Thompson was still more certainly never proved guilty of instigating the murder of her husband. Yet they were both hanged. Why? Because they couldn’t prove their innocence. Mind you, I’m not saying that either of these two convictions was necessarily unjust; that’s a very different thing. What I do say is that, if our law is administered as we suppose it to be administered, neither of these two persons should have been convicted; that they were, shows that the administration of the law does not, in fact, sing in tune with our parrot-cry about the benefit of the doubt. Of course I know that’s only one side of the question. If you knew of them, you could produce plenty of instances in which the accused person has been given that benefit and found not guilty because some vital link in the chain wouldn’t stand the test of proof. But that’s not the point. The point is that the other side of the case ought not to have examples in support of it at all.’

  ‘The point is conceded,’ Alec said with due solemnity. ‘So what about a spot of bed?’

  Roger broke into a laugh. ‘Quite right, Alexander. I’m afraid all this is getting rather a hobby-horse of mine. Tip me gently off when I’ve ridden it long enough.’

  ‘I will,’ Alec promised, as they rose from their chairs.

  ‘So now to bed. Well, dormez bien, Alexandre. We’ve got a strenuous day before us tomorrow—I hope!’

  CHAPTER VIII

  TRIPLE ALLIANCE

  AT eleven o’clock the next morning Sheila Purefoy arrived at the Man of Kent with a little two-seater car. Roger and Alec were packed in with their belongings, Alec overflowing into the dickey at the back, and Sheila conveyed them to the house. Mrs Purefoy welcomed them herself and took them up to their rooms.

  ‘And now I must leave you to your own devices ’til lunch time,’ she smiled. ‘We busy housewives, you know. Please do anything you like. I’ll leave Sheila to look after you.’

  ‘Or us to look after Sheila?’ Alec grinned. ‘That’s more like it. All right, Molly, we’ll look after her for you.’

  Roger wandered into Alec’s room.

  ‘Ready, Alec?’ he said. ‘Then come on down. I want to tackle that young lady right away. It’s a good opportunity, and the sooner the better.’

  ‘Right-ho, I’ll come and hold her down for you,’ Alec volunteered.

  Sheila was waiting for them in the drawing-room. ‘Hallo, unpacked your little bibs and tuckers?’ she asked kindly. It was noticeable that Miss Purefoy retained no traces whatever of that air of life-long weariness which she had worn on their arrival the evening before. Alec’s methods were evidently sound.

  ‘Yes,’ said Roger briskly. ‘Look here, Sheila, I want a word with you.’

  Miss Purefoy’s eyebrows rose, perhaps, one thirty-second of an inch. ‘Chat away then—Roger,’ she replied.

  The snub bounded off Roger’s back like a ping-pong ball off the table. ‘That’s right,’ he approved heartily. ‘Now we all know each other. Well, it’s like this, Sheila. We’re not here in Wychford aimlessly, Alec and I; we’ve come for a very set and definite purpose. We’re anxious to look into this Bentley case a little more thoroughly than we can do from a distance!’

  ‘Oho!’ observed Miss Purefoy. ‘Going to write a book about it?’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying to anybody outside the family, so to speak. But no. I’m not going to write a book about it; at least, not so far as I know. Alec and I have come down here because we’re of the opinion that there may be very much more in this case than meets the eye. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, that Mrs Bentley may just possibly be innocent!’

  Miss Purefoy whistled. ‘How in the name of all that’s holy do you make that out?’ she asked frankly.

  Roger told her.

  As he enumerated the doubtful points in the case, the suspicions to which these had given rise in his own mind and the deductions from them which it was quite possible to draw, Miss Sheila’s face became a study in more and more conflicting expressions. When Roger had finished (and it took him some considerable time to state his case) she looked at him eagerly.

  ‘I’m going to have a hand in this,’ said Miss Purefoy.

  ‘That’s precisely why I decided to tell you,’ Roger agreed.

  ‘It’s jolly interesting. There is a lot in what you say. I wonder it never occurred to me before, now you’ve pointed it out. But mind you, you won’t get a single person down here to listen to you. Everybody made their minds up ages ago.’

  ‘I know. And not only here, but all over the country as well. That’s what makes it all the more interesting. Supposing we turned out to be right, you see!’

  ‘And put it across the whole blinking lot of them?’ said Miss Purefoy excitedly. ‘Meredith, I’m in! I’d jolly well like to see Mrs Bentley get away with it too. She sounds as if she’s worth fifty editions of that little rat of a husband. I’m all in favour of her.’ Her face dropped suddenly. ‘Oh, Lor’! But how on earth are you going to get over that evidence? The Bovril and all that, I mean?’

  ‘Well, before we can attempt to do that, we’ve got to find out by hook or by crook what her explanations of that is. It may have come out before her solicitor got hold of her and told her not to say anything, you see. That’s the first thing we’ve got to tackle. And at the same time, find out who were with Bentley during that crucial half-hour, as I explained.’

  ‘Umps! All this isn’t half going to take a bit of doing, is it? Anyhow, count on me. How are you going about it, and what do you want me to do?’

  ‘Well, this is the rough plan of campaign I’ve worked out. The first thing to do, obviously, is to interview every single person who is mixed up in the case; the prosecution’s witnesses, that is to say. And the only one of those we can approach on a personal basis, so to speak, is Mrs Saunderson, on your introduction. Well, I want you to fix up a meeting for me with Mrs Saunderson this afternoon, if you can.’

  Sheila nodded. ‘That ought to be pie. If I know the woman, she’ll jump at you with both feet.’

  ‘Good. Then I see her as Roger Sheringham. To people who don’t seem as if they’d be interested in Roger Sheringham I appear, by a swift and miraculous transition, as the special correspondent of the Daily Courier. So that’s two cards we’ve got to play for getting at our information. Now, I think I’d better see this Saunderson woman alone, so while I’m doing that there’s a little job I want you to do and that is to run round and see if you can pick up any information about Mrs Bentley’s character—little incidents, other people’s impressions, anything to help us form a rather clearer idea of the lady, And a photograph of her I shall want too.’

  ‘But why all this?’

  Sitting astride the arm of the couch, Roger told her, at some length. He was still talking when Alec, tip-toeing up behind him, decanted him neatly upside-down on to the seat.

  ‘Alec!’ exclaimed Mr Sheringham in tones of pained reproach. ‘Why this exhibition of kittenishness?’

  Alec contemplated his inverted friend with a happy grin. ‘Tipping you off your hobby-horse,’ he said laconically. ‘Thought you told me to.’

  ‘Touché!’ acknowledged Roger a little ruefully, regaining an upright position. ‘Anyhow, you see the idea, Sheila.’

  ‘Detective Purefoy, please, to you,’
rejoined that young lady tartly. ‘Detective-for-the-defence Purefoy. Yes, I like that notion of yours, Roger. Right-ho, yes, I see the idea. Your orders shall be attended to, Superintendent Sheringham.’

  ‘What about me?’ asked Alec. ‘Haven’t you got any job for me to do?’

  ‘You?’ queried his cousin with much scorn. ‘What use do you think you’d be at this sort of thing? This is work for bright, intelligent people; not mutts and goops and boneheads.’

  ‘Very well, Sheila,’ Alec said grimly, and advanced full of purpose.

  ‘No!’ squeaked Miss Purefoy, retreating precipitately. ‘I didn’t mean you, Alec. Honour bright, I didn’t! And if I did I take it back. You’re not a mutt or a goop, Alec. You’re simply bursting with bright intelligence. Darling Alec, you’re not a bit of a bonehead!’

  ‘That’s better,’ Alec commented, abandoning the chase.

  ‘At least, not always,’ added Miss Purefoy, just not sotto voce.

  ‘Peace, little children,’ Roger interposed, as Alec showed signs of renewed grimness. ‘We’ve got to find a job for Baby Alexander this afternoon. You might have tried your hand at discovering something about that half-hour, Alec, but I think it’d be easier if Sheila exercised her wiles on Dr James for that. What a help it’s going to be, by the way, to have a lady detective attached to us with such a prepossessing exterior.’

  ‘For these kind words,’ murmured Sheila, sweeping him a curtsey, ‘this person’s thanks. Oh, Hades, how does one curtsey in short skirts? Shall I go and vamp the man this afternoon, then, Roger?’

  ‘Yes, I think you might, if you can spare time from your other duties. It’s a thing we’ve got to find out as soon as we can. Quite possibly James won’t know at all, but he’s obviously the person to try first. As for Alec, I think you’d better take him with you; he might be useful to see after one thing while you’re doing another. He could take over some of the inquiries about Mrs Bentley’s character for you; Alec can splash the name of the Courier about, you see, which you can’t very well do, Constable Grierson, you will take your orders this afternoon from Detective-Inspector Purefoy.’