The Wychford Poisoning Case Read online

  ‘Oh, dear, yes! Plenty of times. But she didn’t take me in, I can assure you.’

  ‘That I can quite believe,’ Roger said, trying hard to prevent the excitement he was feeling from showing on his face; he had hit the right trail with a vengeance! ‘But what sort of thing could she say? About the Bovril, for instance. How on earth could she give any reasonable excuse for that?’

  But here came an unexpected check. Perhaps Roger had been indiscreetly eager; but whether it was that the lady felt the centre of interest to be in danger of shifting too far from herself or whether she didn’t, she certainly proceeded to pull it back again with a jerk.

  ‘Oh, you mustn’t ask me anything about that, Mr Sheringham,’ she said demurely. ‘That’s part of my evidence, you know, and I’ve been specially warned that I mustn’t say a single word about that to anybody.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Roger approved warmly, concealing his disappointment. ‘Oh, quite right, of course.’

  He decided swiftly on his next move. That this was only a temporary set-back he felt sure; Roger had too good an opinion of himself to doubt that, with sufficient time and patience, he could cozen out of this ridiculous little person anything on which he had really set his heart. But in the meantime he must walk warily; a false move might delay matters very badly. He would administer a little stimulant in the way of studied indifference and see whether that would precipitate matters.

  Withdrawing into his own corner of the couch he proceeded to talk firmly upon such matters of impersonal interest as entered his head, to the lady’s patent bewilderment and concern.

  He was just completing a wordy examination into the causes of unrest among the native population of Southern Nigeria, when the expected result of his diplomacy came to pass.

  ‘Have you met Mrs Allen yet, Mr Sheringham?’ his companion asked irrelevantly.

  ‘Mrs Allen?’ Roger repeated with a careless air. ‘No, I haven’t. I was thinking of going to call on her tomorrow afternoon. Now, about this question of totem-worship, Mrs Saunderson, has it ever struck you how very short-sighted the authorities are in not permitting the natives to—’

  ‘Oh, just excuse me one minute, Mr Sheringham! You will stay and have some tea, won’t you?’

  ‘May I really? I should simply love to, of course. But I’m afraid I’ve been boring you dreadfully for the last half-hour.’

  ‘Oh, not at all. I’m—I’m most interested in the poor natives of Southern Iberia. So—so quaint. If you wouldn’t mind just ringing the bell on the other side of the fireplace! Oh, thank you so much.’

  ‘Why did you ask if I’d met Mrs Allen?’ Roger remarked as he resumed his seat.

  ‘Oh, well, I just wondered, you see. Of course she doesn’t know nearly so much about this terrible affair as I do, you know.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Oh, no. You see, after she found out that dreadful news about her husband, she hardly went there any more. She couldn’t bear to see Jacqueline again, naturally.’

  ‘That was just about twenty-four hours before Mr Bentley died, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, less. No, Mrs Allen wasn’t there at all when the nurse gave us the bottle of Bovril. It wasn’t till we’d had to shut Jacqueline in the spare room after Mr Bentley’s death that his brother sent for her to come and make another witness when we decided to make that search.’

  ‘I see,’ Roger said with a little smile. A point to Mrs Saunderson certainly.

  There was a discreet knock at the door.

  ‘Come in!’ said the lady. ‘Oh, Mary, will you bring tea, please. And I’m not at home if anybody calls.’

  They talked on indifferent subjects till the tea had been served. Then Roger reverted to a point which his companion’s last remark had raised in his mind.

  ‘Mrs Allen wasn’t in the house after dinner that evening at all, then?’ he asked. ‘The evening before Mr Bentley died, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I was forgetting. She did come in once for a few minutes, while the nurse was having her dinner downstairs. She came to see Mr Bentley.’

  Roger pricked up his ears. ‘To see Mr Bentley, did she? Now I wonder why she did that.’

  ‘I think it must have been about something to do with Mrs Bentley and her husband, because she wanted to see him alone. Do have one of those little cakes, won’t you? They’re really quite nice. Yes, I was sitting with him at the time while the nurse was downstairs, and Mr Alfred Bentley brought her up and asked me to leave her alone with him.’

  Roger took two of the little cakes in his excitement. ‘Would that have been about—about an hour before he was taken so ill that evening?’ he asked as calmly as he could.

  Mrs Saunderson wrinkled her white forehead rather delightfully. ‘Yes, it would have been; just about. Let me see, the nurse must have come downstairs at eight o’clock or so, because I remember that Mr Alfred Bentley and I had just finished our dinner as the clock struck on the dining-room mantelpiece.’

  ‘And she asked you to take her place upstairs?’

  ‘Yes, you see, after what we’d found out that day, Mrs Bentley wasn’t allowed to be alone with him for a single minute.’

  ‘But Mrs Bentley was alone with him while the nurse was going downstairs?’

  ‘Oh, no; she wasn’t in the room then. Besides, Mr William Bentley was there. He came down when I went up.’

  ‘I see. And then Mr Alfred Bentley brought up Mrs Allen and you and he went down again?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, Mr Sheringham, even then I knew something was going to happen! Quite plainly. I’m supposed to be psychic, you know. It’s from my mother’s family; they’re Scotch. Quite often I feel something dreadful is going to happen, long before it does. It’s so terribly uncanny. You can’t understand, if you’re not psychic yourself, how—’

  ‘But I am!’ Roger told her with perfect gravity.

  ‘Oh—oh, are you?’ said the lady, somewhat dashed. ‘How—how interesting!’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it? But I don’t know that I’ve ever felt anything so strongly as this. You felt even then that something was going to happen, did you? That’s very notable indeed. But why do you say “even then”? Weren’t you all expecting anything to happen?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ cried Mrs Saunderson, much heartened. ‘That’s just the extraordinary thing. We weren’t expecting anything. Right up to nine o’clock that evening Mr Bentley seemed to be quite a lot better. We all thought he was going to recover. And then that last awful attack came on quite suddenly, and he never got over it.’

  ‘And that started at about nine o’clock?’

  ‘Just about nine, yes.’

  ‘Was Mrs Allen still with him?’

  ‘Oh, no; she’d gone ages ago. She was only with him about five minutes. She was crying dreadfully, poor thing, so I had to take her into the drawing-room and try to comfort her. So horrible for her; and being so much older than her husband and not nearly so pretty as Jacqueline and everything. Horrible!’

  ‘Horrible!’ Roger repeated mechanically. ‘But wasn’t Mrs Bentley alone with her husband then, while you were with Mrs Allen in the drawing-room?’

  ‘Oh, no. Mr Alfred Bentley had gone up to bring Mrs Allen down, and he stayed with him for a few minutes till the nurse came.’

  ‘The devil he did!’ observed Roger under his breath, totting up in his mind the number of people who might perfectly well have fed arsenic to the unfortunate man during that critical half-hour. ‘And what time did the nurse go up again?’

  ‘Oh, soon after half-past eight, as far as I know,’ returned Mrs Saunderson in a voice which was unmistakably verging on boredom. ‘Another cup of tea?’

  ‘Thank you. Then as far as you know, Mr Bentley wasn’t left alone for a single minute between eight o’clock and half-past?’

  ‘As far as I know. But he may have been, mayn’t he? So many people running in and out. Anybody might have left him for a minute or two, just like I did to run down to the library and get a book.’


  Roger very nearly jumped in his seat. ‘You went down to the library to get a book?’ he repeated with commendable mildness. ‘How long did that take you?’

  ‘Really, I haven’t the least idea. Three or four minutes, I suppose. It couldn’t matter, leaving him just that little time!’

  ‘Oh, of course not. I was meaning—was Mrs Bentley with him then?’

  ‘No,’ said the lady petulantly. ‘I told you she wasn’t. She was having her dinner downstairs with the nurse, if you really want to know.’

  Roger knew he was driving her hard, but he had to ask one more question. ‘And when you got back, Mr Bentley was still alone?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t! The servant, Mary Blower, was with him. As a matter of fact, she was giving him a drink of lemonade; though what that matters to anybody, goodness knows. You seem very interested in all these silly details, Mr Sheringham.’

  ‘They’re only incidental,’ Roger replied unctuously, hastily disguising himself as a sick cat again and reaching for his shovel. ‘What really interests me is the part you played in this appalling tragedy, and the magnificent way you played it!’ Two minutes later he was lighting the lady’s cigarette for her, while she lightly rested the tip of her little finger on his hand to keep it steady. And quite possibly Roger’s hand did need steadying just then; let us be fair.

  Less than a quarter of an hour afterwards he rose, despite warm protests, to go. He knew perfectly well that no more information would be volunteered that afternoon, and he did not wish to force matters. But before departing he angled for and very promptly received an invitation to tea on the following afternoon; the two words ‘Mrs Allen,’ ensured that.

  ‘Personally,’ observed Mr Sheringham to himself, as he turned out of the drive gates into the road and wondered which ever way he had to go, to make his way back to the High Street. ‘Personally, I think there’s the very devil of a lot to be said for the modern girl. I shall write an article for a Sunday paper about it.’

  CHAPTER X

  SHOCKING TREATMENT OF A LADY

  IT was nearly half-past five when Roger got back to the big house in the High Street. Mrs Purefoy was alone in the drawing-room.

  ‘No,’ she said in answer to his first question. ‘They came in to tea, but they went out again immediately afterwards. Sheila gave me a message for you if you came in first.’

  ‘Oh?’ Roger asked eagerly. ‘What was that?’

  ‘“Not much luck.” She was very mysterious about it, and wouldn’t tell me a word of what she is doing or why she was looking so important and pleased with herself.’

  ‘In other words,’ Roger laughed, ‘you know perfectly well that there’s something going on, and please, what is it?’

  ‘Well, not quite so bluntly as all that,’ Mrs Purefoy smiled.

  ‘Yes, we are up to something, the three of us,’ Roger had to admit. ‘But would you mind very much if I asked you not to ask me what it is? I’m responsible; it’s just a little bee in my bonnet. But I can promise you that it’s nothing that a perfectly respectable mother wouldn’t like her perfectly respectable daughter to be mixed up in.’

  ‘Then I suppose I shall have to be content with that, shan’t I?’ returned Mrs Purefoy serenely.

  ‘I say, do you mind frightfully? I’ll tell you like a shot if you really want me to.’

  ‘Of course I don’t! I was only teasing you. Now then, sit down and talk interestingly to me about the weather ’til the other two babies come back.’

  ‘I like you, Mrs Purefoy,’ said Roger frankly.

  It was not ’til an hour later that Alec and Sheila returned. They marched in single file into the drawing-room, halted and right-turned.

  ‘All present and correct, Superintendent,’ announced Miss Purefoy, saluting briskly. ‘But I have to report Constable Grierson for a grave derewhatd’youcallit of duty, to wit and namely viz. that at half-past six on the twenty-first inst. prox. he did commit a grievous assault against the peace of our sovereign lord the King and of Superintendent Sheringham by endeavouring to shove his superior officer into the pond. I demand his immediate execution without bail.’

  ‘Not guilty, m’lud,’ said Alec promptly. ‘The woman tempted me and she fell. I didn’t shove her. I just blew at her.’

  ‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ Roger summed up, addressing the chair in which Mrs Purefoy was sitting, ‘you have now heard the evidence on both sides. The plaintiff’s case is that she paid for the pork-pie and obtained a receipt, which she has subsequently mislaid, while the defendant contends that the words uttered were true both in substance and in fact; it is for you to say which of them is speaking the truth. You will take the law from me. In order that the charge of arson can lie, you must first be satisfied in your own minds that the goods found on the plaintiff were not only in intention but also de jure the goods missed from the defendant’s shop on the date in question. I will now ask you to deliver yourselves of a verdict.’

  ‘M’lud,’ replied the jury, gathering up its knitting, ‘I must ask permission to retire—and leave you three silly children alone together which I know you’re wanting to be. No, don’t bother to be polite! In any case I’ve got to go and have a word or two with my cook.’

  ‘It’s rather nice, having a mother with a sense of humour, isn’t it?’ observed Sheila, as Alec closed the door behind the retiring jury. ‘It’s a thing so many mothers seem to lose, poor dears. Now then, Roger, tell us all about it! Did you kiss the Saunderson?’

  ‘Miss Purefoy!’

  ‘Well, did she kiss you, then? Perhaps that’s more like it—though I’m not a bit too sure.’

  Roger turned pointedly to Alec. ‘Have you anything to report, Constable Grierson?’ he asked coldly.

  ‘He’s huffy, ’cos I spoke disrespectably about the Saunderson and he’s smitten with her,’ Miss Purefoy confided to that gentleman in a loud aside.

  ‘Not me,’ Alec replied. ‘I spent most of the afternoon shivering outside different places, waiting for Sheila to come out.’

  ‘Men always fall for the Saunderson,’ Miss Purefoy continued with much scorn. ‘She just makes a couple of goo-goo eyes at ’em, and down they go like blinking nine-pins.’

  ‘Alexander,’ Roger said with energy, ‘last night I believe you made a request of me. I refused. I’m sorry I refused, Alec. Is it too late to accept now?’

  ‘Not a bit! Three times a day, before or after meals, is the prescription. Wait while I fix her!’

  ‘No!’ squealed Miss Purefoy, repenting too late. ‘I’m sorry, Roger. I take it back. You never fell for her at all. You just kissed her without falling. No, Alec! What’s it got to do with you, anyway? Stop it, you brute! Let me go! Mother! Mother!’

  With some difficulty Miss Purefoy was persuaded to arrive at the end of the couch and assume a position suitable for chastisement, her agonised appeals to the deity meeting with no response. With a rolled-up magazine Roger dealt with this first breach of discipline in his force.

  ‘Roger Sheringham,’ exclaimed the indignant recipient of his attentions when, very red in the face, she was allowed at last to regain her erect position. ‘I hate you worse than boiled beef. I won’t play detectives with you any more, and I think your books are tripe!’

  ‘There, my child,’ Roger returned equably, ‘I am more than disposed to agree with you; still, they sell well enough, and that’s the main thing, isn’t it? So now to business. It may interest you both to learn that I, at any rate, have had a most successful afternoon.’

  ‘Then you did—’ Sheila began, caught Alec’s eye and thought better of it. ‘Have you found out anything, dear Roger?’ she cooed in a voice of honey.

  ‘I have. A devil of a lot. And I’m going to find out a good deal more before very long. Seriously, you two, I’ve struck oil. Listen!’

  He went on to give a condensed version of the conversation he had had with Mrs Saunderson, picking the facts like plums out of the dough of their surrounding emotion. Sheila, by a swift
transition perfectly serious, listened as attentively and as gravely as Alec himself.

  ‘Half a minute!’ she interrupted, as Roger was nearing his conclusion. ‘Just say that again, will you? I want to get that quite clear. How many people were alone with him during that half-hour?’

  ‘For varying periods, no less than six—Mrs Saunderson, Mrs Allen, Brother William, Brother Alfred, Mary Blower and the nurse. Six for certain.’

  ‘Then, Mrs Bentley herself wasn’t?’ Alec asked.

  ‘So far as we know, that is so,’ Roger assented.

  ‘Then that clears her!’ Sheila cried.

  ‘Oh, no. Not in a court of law, it wouldn’t. The defence could make a point of it, no doubt, and a big point too; perhaps they intend to in any case. But the prosecution could tear it to shreds with the greatest ease.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, for one thing we don’t know that she didn’t nip into his room. She had at least one opportunity, while that fool woman was in the library; probably others. So for that matter had anybody else—a point, by the way, which we mustn’t forget to remember! But the chief thing is that this question of the time before the symptoms of poisoning appear, is, as your father said, somewhat anomalous; that is to say, you can’t lay down a really hard and fast rule about it. In ninety-seven cases out of a hundred, perhaps, they would begin to show themselves in from an hour to half an hour after administration of the arsenic; in the remaining three they wouldn’t. Going by probabilities, Mrs Bentley is certainly cleared. But it’s only probability. One can’t say that there’s the least certainty about it. And “probability” as a defence in a court of law isn’t worth two pence, I fear.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Alec asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s this futile attitude towards things known as “the legal mind”. To the legal mind a thing either is or it isn’t; there’s no half-way house, no “pretty nearly, but not quite,” no “rather less than more,” no “not exactly”; everything is either fact or non-fact. Any more absurd way to approach just the very problems that the courts are there to tackle I defy anybody to imagine. To put it in a nut-shell, the legal mind is absolutely lacking in any sense of proportion.’