by Tony Medawar
MRS BARRETT: Oh, but you can’t think that she could have done such a thing, surely, Sir Julius? Of course, I’ve known for some time that he had treated her very badly, but still—a young girl like that! No, if you ask me, if it was anybody, it would be Briggs. After all, he poured out the champagne, and only yesterday I did overhear him speaking to Robert in a most disrespectful way. Oh dear, it frightens me to think of it. I’m sure I shan’t be able to eat any lunch if he waits at table!
JULIUS: Well, if it’s any consolation to you, Mrs Barrett, Rogers seems inclined to think that I am the guilty party.
MRS BARRETT: (with a laugh) Oh, ridiculous, Sir Julius! (Pause) Still—of course—I do see what he means.
(Sound of door opening)
Camilla, dear, have you been with poor Lord Warbeck?
CAMILLA: (in a dead tired voice) Yes.
MRS BARRETT: Sir Julius and I were just saying—what were we saying, exactly?
JULIUS: I don’t know that I was saying anything very much. Mrs Barrett was engaged in distributing suspicion for causing Robert’s death between me, Briggs and yourself.
CAMILLA: I’m afraid I don’t find that very funny. You see, I loved Robert—and yet, up to a few moments before he died I was wishing him dead. Now I just wish I was dead—that’s all.
MRS BARRETT: Oh Camilla, that’s a very dangerous thing to say. Suppose the police were to hear you? That reminds me, Sir Julius, that man Rogers—is he safe? I don’t like his looks at all.
JULIUS: My dear lady, Rogers is a police officer who has undertaken the duty of investigating this crime.
MRS BARRETT: Didn’t you tell me he had been concerned with suppressing this League of Liberty and Justice that Robert was mixed up in? Suppose he thought the best way of suppressing the League was by—
(Sound of door opening)
BRIGGS: May Sergeant Rogers have a word with you, Sir Julius?
JULIUS: Yes, of course, Briggs. I’ll see him in my room.
ROGERS: I would prefer to talk to you here, sir, in the presence of all the others, if you don’t mind. I only want to put a question or two about last night’s occurrences which will be of general interest.
JULIUS: I have no objection at all. Goodness knows, I have nothing to hide.
ROGERS: I am much obliged, sir. First, then, am I right in thinking that Mr Warbeck was in the act of proposing a toast when he died?
JULIUS: Quite right. The toast was ‘Warbeck Hall’, I remember.
ROGERS: That was just on the stroke of midnight, was it not?
JULIUS: I think so, yes.
CAMILLA: Yes. He was in the middle of saying something else when the clock began to strike.
ROGERS: Something else? What was it?
JULIUS: We don’t know, of course. He said something about an announcement.
CAMILLA: Yes, that’s right. He had an announcement to make.
ROGERS: Can you throw any light, sir, on what the announcement was that he was about to make?
JULIUS: I haven’t the slightest idea. How should I?
ROGERS: Can anybody in this room tell me what Mr Warbeck was going to announce when he died?
(A pause)
BRIGGS: Yes, I can.
JULIUS: You, Briggs?
BRIGGS: Yes, Sir Julius.
ROGERS: What was it?
BRIGGS: If you will excuse me for one moment, Sir Julius, I have somebody here who can explain the matter better than I can.
(Sound of door opening)
MRS BARRETT: What in the world is all this about?
BRIGGS: This way, my dear.
(Sound of door closing)
JULIUS: What on earth …?
CAMILLA: Who is this woman?
BRIGGS: My daughter Susan, my lady.
CAMILLA: What right has she to be here?
BRIGGS: The announcement which Mr Robert was about to make, my lady, was that of his marriage to my daughter.
CAMILLA: So that was it! (Fiercely) Married—to you!
SUSAN: (uneducated voice, but with a certain dignity) We were married twelve months ago, my lady, at the Paddington Register Office. I have my marriage certificate here to prove it, if you want to see it.
JULIUS: Is there a child?
SUSAN: Three months old, Sir Julius. He’s in the house now.
JULIUS: (Eagerly) He? It’s a boy, then?
SUSAN: (proudly and with emphasis) Yes, sir—a lovely boy.
JULIUS: Thank heaven for that!
CAMILLA: Robert’s son!
MRS BARRETT: I can’t bear it! Oh, I can’t bear it!
(Sound of running feet)
ROGERS: Stop that woman!
(Sound of door slamming. Then sound of trying to open door)
She’s locked the door! Where does this lead to?
BRIGGS: The gun-room. I’ll go round the other way.
(Sound of door opening and closing)
ROGERS: Open this door!
(Sound of trying to open door)
Open this door!
(A loud explosion from outside. A pause. Then the sound of door being unlocked)
BRIGGS: I was too late, Mr Rogers. Mrs Barrett has shot herself.
JULIUS: I don’t understand. Do you mean that Mrs Barrett—?
ROGERS: Mrs Barrett, sir, was the murderer of Robert Warbeck.
JULIUS: I can’t believe it. Mrs Barrett? She had no grudge against him, surely?
ROGERS: Not against him, sir, but against you.
JULIUS: Against me? I still don’t follow.
ROGERS: Until a few moments ago, sir, you believed yourself to be Lord Warbeck’s heir, did you not?
JULIUS: Yes, I did.
ROGERS: And likely to succeed to the title at any moment?
JULIUS: Quite.
ROGERS: I don’t think you looked forward to the prospect of going to the House of Lords?
JULIUS: I should think not. It would have meant my resigning my post in the Government.
ROGERS: Because the Chancellor of the Exchequer must be a member of the House of Commons, is that not so?
JULIUS: Of course. Everybody knows that.
ROGERS: I don’t know about everybody, sir, but Mrs Barrett certainly did. And if you were compelled to resign, who would succeed you in the Chancellorship, do you suppose, sir?
JULIUS: Why, of course—it would be Barrett! There’s no question of that.
ROGERS: Exactly, sir. And Mrs Barrett was a woman who was prepared to do anything to further her husband’s career. She chose this way to clear the obstacle which you presented from his path, by sending you to the House of Lords against your will. When you were so anxious to telephone to the Prime Minister just now, I suddenly saw what her motive was. But I had reason to think that unknown to either of you Mr Warbeck had left a son, so that in fact you were not the next heir to the peerage.
JULIUS: Oh, and what made you think that?
ROGERS: Well, sir, there are advantages to a detective living in the servants’ hall, you know, sir. I ascertained the truth from Mr Briggs and arranged with him to confront Mrs Barrett with the child. I thought that when she realised that her crime had failed in its purpose she would give herself away—and so she did, with a vengeance.
CAMILLA: Poor woman, poor woman!
SUSAN: Ah, it’s easy to say that of her, my lady, but it’s those that are left behind that need pity most, I think.
CAMILLA: (reflectively) Those that are left behind … (impulsively) Susan, I’d like to come and see your baby, if I may.
SUSAN: You’re welcome, my lady. He’s ever so sweet, and just like his father.
JULIUS: Take great care of that child, young woman! Why, my whole political career depends on him!
CYRIL HARE
Best known to readers of detective fiction under the pseudonym ‘Cyril Hare’, Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark was born in 1900 in southern England. For around thirty years he led what might be described as a double life: as a highly respected lawyer; and as the author o
f nine superb novel-length detective mysteries as well as many criminous short stories.
Gordon Clark’s legal career followed broadly conventional lines. He became a barrister in 1924 and practised on civil and criminal cases. During the Second World War he joined the Public Prosecutions Department and in later years served as a County Court Judge in Surrey, the county of his birth. Gordon Clark’s first novel, Tenant for Death (1937), featured the Scotland Yard detective Inspector Mallett, while his fourth, Tragedy at Law (1942), introduced Francis Pettigrew, an ageing barrister who is based at least in part on Clark himself. Mallett and Pettigrew appear in several novels together but also tackle mysteries independently. While it features neither Mallett nor Pettigrew, one of Gordon Clark’s best books is the elegiac An English Murder (1951), which was derived from the radio play, ‘The Murder at Warbeck Hall’. Gordon Clark died in 1957.
The Murder at Warbeck Hall was first broadcast on the BBC Light Programme on 27 January 1948 as the second in a series of plays specially written for the BBC by Agatha Christie, Anthony Gilbert and other members of the Detection Club, which ‘Cyril Hare’ had joined in 1946. This is its first publication.
THE HOUSE OF THE POPLARS
Dorothy L. Sayers
Adrian Belford, emerging from the offices of Messrs Golding & Moss, Financiers, hesitated uncertainly at the corner of Conduit Street and Bond Street. There was a heavy coldness at the pit of his stomach, and his tongue felt dry. He had, indeed, succeeded in getting the loan renewed, but for one month only, and at what a cost! He could see now Mr Golding’s deprecatory smile, the spreading of his plump fingers with their heavy rings that winked in the lamplight. He heard himself saying, with an effort at easy bravado, ‘It is good security, Mr Golding’; heard the smooth, thick sibilants of Mr Golding’s reply: ‘No thecurity ith abtholutely thound, Mithter Belford that dependth upon a lady’th caprithe—eh?’ The swine!
If ever a fool, thought Mr Belford, had been called upon to pay heavily for his follies, he was that fool. There was his marriage to a plain and peevish invalid, far older than himself—only to find that the narrow hands whose clammy limpness had always displeased him could cling like limpets where money was concerned. Then there was that first unfortunate speculation in Megatherium Stock; then the long series of disasters attending his desperate efforts to recoup his losses; finally, the incredible suicide of mad Lord Ingleborough, whom everybody had expected to go lingering on for ever in his luxurious asylum. In two months’ time the new Lord Ingleborough would be of age and would demand an account of the trust funds. In two months—
His limbs felt leaden, like those of a swimmer climbing out of deep water. Bond Street, with its close ranks of packed and palpitating traffic, roared in his ears, beat in his face, buffeted him. Men and women jostled upon the pavement, hurrying past him, pressing upon him. The glare of shop windows, a little diffused by the light October mist, was a cruelty to his eyeballs. Nothing was real. He, with his sick apprehensions, was the only living and suffering thing in a puppet show of painted masks and jerking movements and noise. He shrank back and shot his hunted glance to left and right of him. It was then that he noticed the restaurant.
It stood on the opposite side of Conduit Street, almost directly opposite the money-lender’s premises. It was small and unpretentious, the lower half of its window discreetly veiled by a lace curtain, against which hung a framed menu. The upper half bore the legends: ‘SANDWICH BAR—COCKTAIL BAR’, silhouetted against the light within. Over the door hung a sign, bearing the single word ‘Rapallo’s’.
He glanced at his watch; it was a quarter to six. He had been over an hour screwing concessions out of the money-lender. Like an automaton he crossed Conduit Street and plunged into the restaurant. The door yielded easily to his touch and fell to behind him with a chuckling click. The place was suffocatingly warm, but it was quiet and almost deserted. A couple here and there sat eating American sandwiches at small tables. Occupying nearly half the available floor space was a vast semi-circular bar, gleaming with polished brass and mahogany. Behind it moved two barmen on soundless feet, taking down bottles from the glittering shelves, measuring, pouring, shaking. The lower murmur of conversation from the tables was punctuated by the musical tinkling of ice. Belford marched heavily up to the bar and demanded a large brandy and soda.
He drank it down and ordered a second, which he sipped slowly. He was beginning to feel better. The demure atmosphere of the place soothed him. The warmth of the brandy stole into his bones. The door clicked open and shut again with its cosy chuckle. A man joined him at the bar and asked for ‘one of the usual’. The barman smiled slyly and secretly at him, as at a well-known patron and began his dainty manipulations. ‘Like a chemist in his white coat,’ thought Belford idly. He was reminded of his visit to the chemist that afternoon and patted his overcoat pocket to assure himself that the little bottle was still there.
The other man finished his cocktail and asked for a special variety of hot sandwich. When it came, he turned politely to Belford and requested him to pass the cayenne pepper.
‘Have you tried one of these?’ he added, pointing to his plate. ‘They are a speciality here.’
Belford remembered that he had eaten next to nothing at lunch, and suddenly felt that he was hungry. He ordered the sandwich and sat absently playing with his empty glass. Presently he became aware that the stranger was talking—vague generalities about the political situation and the present state of England. He answered mechanically, trying in a subconscious way to ‘place’ the other man.
He was stout and dark, with a very high and polished skull, beneath which his features, chubby as a child’s, seemed dwarfed into insignificance. He was dressed in a dark tweed suit with a stiff wing collar, which pushed the flesh of his chin up into a little pink roll. His hands were soft and white, and moved with delicate precision. On his watch chain he carried a curious emblem or charm, which led Belford to imagine that he might belong to some esoteric order. His hat, which he had taken off and laid on the bar, was a soft black felt, rather wide in the brim, and was the only part of his costume that departed in the least from the conventional. His voice was unusual, very soft and clear, with a kind of fluting sincerity.
‘… And, of course, it is not capitalism that is the trouble,’ he was saying. ‘One cannot permanently equalise the distribution of wealth. If only those who had the money knew how to spend it. But they don’t.’
Belford agreed.
‘Rich men are dull dogs, mostly,’ said the stranger. ‘They hoard unwisely and they spend unwisely. The curse of Midas, my dear sir, was lack of imagination. If I were to be given a million pounds tomorrow, I should know how to make it yield a million pounds’ worth of enjoyment. And so would you, would you not? If you were given a million pounds tomorrow—a hundred thousand, even—fifty thousand—’
‘By God!’ said Belford. ‘I could do with it.’ His sandwich was brought and he attacked it savagely. He found it good; curious and unexpected in flavour, but appetising.
The bald-headed man was talking again, but Belford interrupted him. He felt a violent need to unburden himself to somebody.
‘Look here,’ he said. ‘How would you like to be me? I’ve got to get twenty thousand in two months’ time or blow my brains out. I can’t get anything more out of the money-lenders—I’m dipped too far already. And there’s seventy-five thousand that belongs to me—that in justice and decency belongs to me—and I can’t lay hands on it. What do you think of that?’
‘That’s hard,’ said the stout man.
‘My wife’s ten years older than I am. I married her for her money; I admit it, and she knew it. What else would a man have married a plain and sickly middle-aged woman for? Mind you, I did my bit of the bargain. It wasn’t my fault if the kid died and my wife turned into a permanent invalid. Why should she grudge me the very smell of her money? The income’s all right and helps to keep the place going, but if I even suggest she might lend me—len
d me a few thousands of the capital—you’d think I was asking for her life.’
The stout man nodded sympathetically and interjected an order to the barman.
‘You’d better have one of these too,’ he added. ‘They’re another speciality. They’re not for the suburban palate, but they’d cheer up a five-year-old corpse.’
Belford said: ‘All right,’ and drink was put down before him. He lifted his glass and said, ‘Here’s how.’ The stuff was queer, certainly—intensely bitter with fire beneath the bitterness. He was not sure if he liked it. He took it down quickly, like medicine.
‘She says it will come to me when she dies, but what’s the good of that? Creaking doors hang the longest. I’ve got to have money somehow. I daresay I was an ass to speculate, but it’s done now and I can’t undo it.’ He bit savagely at his upper lip. ‘Speculation—if she knew what I needed it for, she’d leave the stuff to a cats’ home. She’s religious. Religious! Let her husband go to prison rather than—’
He checked himself.
‘Mind you, I don’t say it’s come to that. But what does she want the money for? What good’s it to her? Missionary societies and doctors’ stuff— that’s all she gets out of it. That’s a pretty wife for a man, isn’t it? What am I to her? A cross between a male nurse and an errand boy, that’s all. Forced to kowtow for fear of being cut out of her will. Running about with pills and potions and getting up at night to fill hot water bottles. Five hundred a year would give her all she wants—and she’s worth seventy-five thousand.’
‘What’s the nature of her illness?’
‘Damned if I know. Her doctor—oily hand I call him—gives a long name to it. Something to do with the kidneys or the spleen or something. And nerves, of course. They all have nerves nowadays. Also insomnia and all the rest of it. One of these damned tablets every blessed night in the year—not drug-taking, of course, oh, dear no! My wife is a religious woman. She wouldn’t take drugs. Only a harmless pill to ensure natural sleep.’
He dragged the little bottle of veronal from his pocket and flung it on the bar counter. His head felt queer and he was conscious of a curious sensation of interior lightness, as though he were losing touch with realities. He realised dimly that he was talking too much. That odd cocktail must have been pretty potent.