by Richard Hull
It was a risk, but it would have several advantages, of which the most important was that it would force Ford to talk. It would be interesting and instructive to see how open the secretary would be. Also, in order in fact to carry out the threat he had delivered to himself, he had to go to the Club and he wanted to tell Ford that he was coming. He could almost say that he saw no reason why he should be forced to resign because one waiter was being kept.
He was prepared, therefore, when he heard Ford’s voice speaking from a public telephone box, to enjoy a grim ten minutes or so of cross-purposes. He had worked out the right reaction, as he thought, to every line that Ford might take if he should speak to him. Silence, of course, would have been perfectly easy. He had merely to go to the Club after the forty-eight hours were over, and carry out his own plan against himself with the additional advantage of being able to complain afterwards that Ford had not warned him.
But when he put down the receiver, he was no longer amused. Ford had not warned him, Ford had not played fair! It was no longer safe for one moment to trust a man who would allow himself to adopt such a feeble device. A man, moreover, who, when he decided to act a part, acted it so badly that no one could be deceived.
He had not been surprised when Ford had opened the conversation by suggesting to him that it would be wise for him not to come into the Club for a while. That was easy and proper. Ford was going to warn him of the contents of what was actually his own letter, and, being Ford, he would prefer to do it in some absurd, roundabout way. It implied, of course, that he was refusing to sack Hughes, which was annoying. Ford should suffer for that later. Still, if it showed that the recipient of his letters was disobedient, it did prove that his nominal ally was still reasonably loyal.
But when in reply to his very natural question as to why he should not go to the Club, Ford had gone on to give his reasons, the doctor had been seriously displeased. Ford had produced the most ridiculous cock-and-bull story which, as an excuse, would have deceived no one.
He had begun by going back to the question of books being stolen from the club – a subject that did not interest Anstruther. He had gone on to say that Cardonnel was conducting an enquiry. Anstruther had refrained from retorting that Cardonnel had much better stick to that as his only subject for investigation. In view of what he intended to happen to Cardonnel, the less he seemed to be interested in him the better.
So far Ford’s remarks, if irritatingly irrelevant, were no worse. But when Ford went on to suggest with much humming and hawing that Cardonnel thought that he, Anstruther, was taking away the books, and was trying to prove the fact, and that therefore it would be a good plan if he stayed away for a while, because, if in his absence a book went, it would prove that he was not responsible, and so Cardonnel would be convinced and would turn his activities elsewhere, then Anstruther really was angry.
A futile performance. Book thief indeed! It was an insult to suggest that he was, and he had no intention of staying away from the Club. So much was easy to say and, indeed, helped his plan. But when, despite his denials, Ford only protested the more and at the same time absolutely refused to admit that he had any other motive, Anstruther found himself not only angry but more than ever determined that he must waste no time in putting both his plans into execution.
That Ford was disobedient, disloyal and untruthful, he was quite prepared to discover. That he was a bad actor, if it was a cause of contempt, was certainly no surprise. But the serious part of the revelation was that Ford was plotting with Cardonnel, and so far advanced were their plans that they had now realised that the fact that they were trying to find out something must be obvious to him, and were accordingly trying to cover the fact of their investigations into Pargiter’s death by pretending to be working for something else.
Save for the one book, The Ways of Melanesia, he had never even borrowed a book from the Club. Clever, by the way, of Cardonnel to have introduced it into the conversation the other night; it served to give an appearance of verisimilitude to his wild accusation.
Safe in the knowledge of his own innocence, Anstruther disregarded it as a serious enquiry. It was clear to him that Ford, frightened by the possibility of danger to himself, had been talking to Cardonnel and was now actually prepared to have the impertinence to sacrifice him, Anstruther, as the cause of Pargiter’s death. Even though he was, accidentally, the agent by whom Pargiter had died, that was no business of Ford’s. In time he must be punished for that too. But would there be time? Cardonnel, the dull, boring Cardonnel, seemed to hover in front of him, a menacing figure of inexorable justice from whom there was no escape. All that night and the next he dreamed of Cardonnel.
At the other end of the line Ford put down the receiver, as he said to himself, ‘with a gratifying feeling that his duty had been done’. Forgetting that he had done exactly what Cardonnel had told him not to do, that he had in fact betrayed the confidence reposed in him in a most scandalous way, he congratulated himself on his diplomacy.
Anstruther had sounded annoyed – naturally perhaps; the accusation that you were a thief was one that any gentleman might resent – but he would get over that, and in the meanwhile two very solid advantages would be gained. First, Anstruther was now fully on his guard as to why Cardonnel was asking all these inquisitive questions which must seem so very peculiar to him, and must surely now be able to dispel the amateur detective’s hopes of catching him, and with that gone Cardonnel might abandon his idea of worrying about how Morrison died. And secondly, Anstruther, despite his protests, would keep away from the Club, so that the threats in the unpleasant letter he (Ford) had received could not be carried out.
With the doctor out of the way, and Cardonnel quieting down – though the difficulty of an absent Anstruther soothing an inquisitive Cardonnel did not occur to Ford – time would be gained, and, said Ford to himself, ‘something will always turn up’. It might even be possible to give Hughes his summer holiday earlier or find him a job with another club? Perhaps it was, but Ford was very ignorant about finding jobs for other people. Indeed, how he kept his own was a mystery to himself, but not to himself alone.
As to the possibility of the threat, whatever it might be, being carried out elsewhere, Ford was completely indifferent. So long as this tiresome man would refrain from killing the members inside the Club, he was perfectly happy, at least unless copies of letters addressed to him should be found lying about. He wondered if he could induce Anstruther to destroy everything he had received? It would be much more prudent.
26
Once More The Sherry
For a few seconds Anstruther stood outside the Whitehall Club and looked at it. From an architectural point of view, he was prepared to agree that the exterior was a success, though why light coloured stone should invariably be regarded as the proper material for a city where it was certain to get dirty in the shortest possible time, he never could guess. Still, the outside was all right, and the inside, if very undistinguished, was passable. If only there had been any ventilation! However, it was of no importance that evening. Even if the smaller library had reached a temperature of eighty, he would not have to stay there any length of time.
Hanging up his hat and coat, he made his way up to a billiard-room at the top of the house, so cunningly concealed among the bedrooms that many who had been members for years had no idea that such a room existed. As he had confidently expected, the room was deserted. There was no obstruction to putting the first step of his plan into operation. He rang the bell and immediately walked out again. No one could know that he had been in the room.
The next step required the assistance of fortune. He had to hope that the passage outside the service bar on the library floor would be empty for the necessary minute or less. Luck was with him. There was no one about. It was the work of far less than a minute to slip into the bar and out again. By the time that Hughes had returned down the back stairs, wondering why ghosts had taken to ringing the bell in the billiard-room, Anst
ruther was sitting in the small library. Five minutes later he rang the bell again and asked for a glass of sherry.
Once more fortune favoured him. Just as he was about to raise the glass to his lips, Ford, engaged in one of his aimless prowls round the club to see if ‘everything was all right’, came in and started violently on seeing the doctor. The presence of two other members absolutely prevented him from saying anything. Even if it had not been a silence room, there was a certain difficulty in opening a conversation that could be overheard with the remark that Anstruther had been advised not to enter the Club. It was open to the most slanderous misinterpretations. Ford was reduced to scowling and shaking his head.
Neither shake nor scowl had any effect. To his slight surprise, Ford saw that Anstruther was in a more genial mood than usual. Instead of ignoring him completely as he had expected, the doctor actually smiled and raised his glass and drank about a third of it. For so reserved a man, it was an unusual gesture. Besides, it was early in the evening to start drinking sherry. Ford began to think that Hughes’s allegation that Anstruther was too partial to sherry must be correct.
Suddenly, however, he saw that this particular glass offered no temptations. With a wry face Anstruther put it down; then with a puzzled expression he raised it again to his nose and smelt it; then, hurriedly returning it to the small table by his side, he put a handkerchief to his mouth, rushed past Ford and fled from the room.
Recovering himself, Ford first picked up the sherry and smelt it. He could detect nothing unusual in it. He would have liked to have sipped it, but, after all, it was not his, and even if the doctor did not appear to like it very much, he felt that he ought not to touch it without his permission. He put it carefully in a corner, and went to see if anything was really the matter. Somewhat belatedly he remembered that there had been a threat against possibly Anstruther’s life or more probably his comfort, and that though he had warned him of Cardonnel’s activities, he had made no mention of that. He was relieved to find that though the doctor was being violently sick, apparently nothing worse was likely to occur.
Characteristically, at the first moment when Anstruther was able to listen to him, he commented with relief on the fact that he had not died. It might, had not the doctor been completely aware of what was happening, have been rather an alarming remark. How long he would have stood by, inactively uttering platitudes, is uncertain, but after about the third trite remark, he was suddenly interrupted by one of the other two members who had been in the library, also overcome by sudden and irresistible nausea. It flashed through Ford’s mind that, despite the inconvenience he was undergoing, Anstruther seemed sardonically amused to find a fellow sufferer. By now, however, the doctor had sufficiently recovered to be able to gasp out a few words.
‘The sherry, you fool. The sherry.’
Somewhat late in the day it dawned on Ford’s mind that there might be something wrong with the sherry. It might even be advisable to prevent any more of that particular bottle being served. He arrived just in time to prevent a third man from receiving an unexpected and powerful emetic. Telling Hughes to open a fresh bottle, he himself took the decanter and the remains of the two glasses to his office. He returned to find Anstruther consoling his fellow sufferer.
‘Something wrong with that sherry. You’ll take it away?’
Ford nodded.
‘Mr Warrington here,’ Anstruther continued, ‘tells me that he fortunately only took the slightest sip.’
‘Knew it was wrong at once. Wine had a sort of dull taste. Thought it was a dirty bottle at first. It used to happen years ago before the bottlers got new modern processes, but that sherry has only been in bottle a short while; shouldn’t happen with it.’
‘It must have been something worse than that, sir,’ Anstruther suggested. He was pleased to see that the suggestion was both readily agreed to by Warrington and disturbing to Ford. ‘A dirty bottle could hardly have so powerful an effect’
Ford reluctantly agreed. And as a gesture, which, if futile, was well meant, he remarked:
‘I can only offer you the Club’s most ample apologies.’
Warrington nodded. ‘Been a member for forty-two years, and never been poisoned in the Club before. Extraordinary thing.’ (Apparently he meant that it was extraordinary that he had been poisoned now, not that he had never been poisoned before.) ‘Most extraordinary. But the wine should not be served if there is any doubt about it.’
At the suggestion that it was in some way Hughes’s fault, Ford rushed to the defence. He pointed out that there was very little wrong with the smell – he had himself smelt it – and that he did not want to encourage the waiters to sample the wines for obvious reasons.
Fortunately Warrington was a good-humoured and just man. He saw the point and he also saw the opportunity to make a joke.
‘I suppose, Mr Secretary, that you weren’t trying to find out if there was any unauthorised sampling going on, and then forgot to remove the bottle! It would have been a pretty conclusive automatic test!’
In silence Anstruther listened to the conversation going on. He was not quite sure as to the exact chain of circumstances that would ensue; it would depend on the individual and on the amount drunk, but he thought that probably by now the effect had passed off. All the same he was none too certain. He felt fully justified in recommending Warrington to go straight home and go dinnerless to bed.
Warrington was rather annoying him. He was an accidental victim, it was true – he had imagined that the first action of any man would have been to see that the sherry decanter was instantly put aside, and he had not reckoned with the extreme slowness with which Ford’s mind moved – still Warrington was a victim, and as such was behaving very badly. Not only was he not really angry, but he did not seem even to have undergone much pain. He felt a strong sense of grievance rising against Warrington. The man had no right to deprive him of his pleasure!
He was longing, too, to tell Ford what was wrong with the sherry. He felt that the use of perchloride of mercury was artistic. As he had slipped it into the decanter in Hughes’s bar on his way down from the billiard-room, he had congratulated himself on using a substance which would dissolve rapidly in alcohol, which would not produce too strong a taste or smell, and which must bring back such very awkward recollections to Ford. For full artistic effect he would have liked to have served it in some way as vanilla by the agency of Benson, but in so imperfect a world it was not possible to have everything, and, failing Benson, Hughes was the next best agent.
For the moment, however, he contented himself with sending Warrington off home. He gave him advice that sounded speciously good, but unfortunately, as the contingency was not one that he had foreseen, he had not got ready at the tip of his tongue the remedy he would have liked to have proposed. Had he known of one, he would have suggested something which, though generally a suitable thing to prescribe, would in the case of perchloride of mercury poisoning actually irritate the symptoms and certainly cause the utmost inconvenience to anyone who took it. But there it was, something so seemingly right and so actually wrong was not to be thought of in a flash.
When Warrington departed, he turned his attention to Ford. He would have liked to have spent some time dextrously turning the thumb-screw, but unfortunately he did not really feel quite fit enough, even for that delicate pleasure. Besides, in the state of health he was in, he might miss the full savour.
He contented himself with suggestions that there was something after all, perhaps, in Warrington’s complaint that Hughes should not have served the sherry, and then leaving that aside, went on to advise that the sherry be analysed. Finally he began to hint that Ford must be keeping something back from him. He refused to believe, he said, that the fact that it was he who was the first to suffer was a coincidence. Somehow or other that glass had been planted on him, and there must be some reason. Moreover, it seemed to him to be extremely suspicious that this should occur immediately after Ford had tried to keep him away
from the Club on an obviously frivolous pretext. He ended by indicating that he did not feel well enough to continue the subject that night, but that he did not intend to let it drop.
Left to himself, Ford remarked that troubles never came singly, by which apparently he meant first Warrington and then Anstruther. Next he sent down to the hall porter and obtained a list of all those who had been in the club immediately before Anstruther had been given that very doubtful glass of sherry. When it came, it proved to be a startling list to him. It was not very long, and it contained absolutely no one who had previously been connected in any way with any of the untoward incidents, as he euphemistically termed them. Ford found it absolutely baffling.
‘The long arm of coincidence,’ he murmured to himself. ‘It does seem a singularly long arm.’
He looked again at the list of members he had just obtained and tried to remember something of each of them.
‘A. J. Burke,’ he read. Burke, that was a man who used to come in every day at lunch time, eat two sandwiches and retire to the library where he would throw himself into a chair with an air of complete despondency. He would then light a cigarette, heave a deep sigh and order a large liqueur brandy which he would swallow in a gulp. Finally throwing away the half-finished cigarette in a way that seemed to imply that the human race was damned, he would leave hurriedly and return about six to read the evening paper with unexpected eagerness.
Simonds, the next man on the list, had no fixed time at which he was in the Club. His only constant habit was to start The Times crossword puzzle in ink and leave it incomplete and mainly wrong, to the distraction of anyone else who tried to finish it. Moreover he usually had at least six reference books brought to him and left them all over the Club. A tiresome man, but irrelevant to the matter in hand.