‘Such a hot afternoon,’ she observed graciously. ‘I see you have stayed behind, Mr Pyne. Very wise of you. Shall we have some tea together in the lounge?’
Mr Parker Pyne rose promptly and followed her. It cannot be denied that he was curious.
It seemed as though Lady Grayle felt some difficulty in coming to the point. She fluttered from this subject to that. But finally she spoke in an altered voice.
‘Mr Pyne, what I am about to tell you is in the strictest confidence! You do understand that, don’t you?’
‘Naturally.’
She paused, took a deep breath. Mr Parker Pyne waited.
‘I want to know whether or not my husband is poisoning me.’
Whatever Mr Parker Pyne had expected, it was not this. He showed his astonishment plainly. ‘That is a very serious accusation to make, Lady Grayle.’
‘Well, I’m not a fool and I wasn’t born yesterday. I’ve had my suspicions for some time. Whenever George goes away I get better. My food doesn’t disagree with me and I feel a different woman. There must be some reason for that.’
‘What you say is very serious, Lady Grayle. You must remember I am not a detective. I am, if you like to put it that way, a heart specialist—’
She interrupted him. ‘Eh—and don’t you think it worries me, all this? It’s not a policeman I want—I can look after myself, thank you—it’s certainty I want. I’ve got to know. I’m not a wicked woman, Mr Pyne. I act fairly by those who act fairly by me. A bargain’s a bargain. I’ve kept my side of it. I’ve paid my husband’s debts and I’ve not stinted him in money.’
Mr Parker Pyne had a fleeting pang of pity for Sir George. ‘And as for the girl she’s had clothes and parties and this, that and the other. Common gratitude is all I ask.’
‘Gratitude is not a thing that can be produced to order, Lady Grayle.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Lady Grayle. She went on: ‘Well, there it is! Find out the truth for me! Once I know—’
He looked at her curiously. ‘Once you know, what then, Lady Grayle?’
‘That’s my business.’ Her lips closed sharply.
Mr Parker Pyne hesitated a minute, then he said: ‘You will excuse me, Lady Grayle, but I have the impression that you are not being entirely frank with me.’
‘That’s absurd. I’ve told you exactly what I want you to find out.’
‘Yes, but not the reason why?’
Their eyes met. Hers fell first.
‘I should think the reason was self-evident,’ she said.
‘No, because I am in doubt upon one point.’
‘What is that?’
‘Do you want your suspicions proved right or wrong?’
‘Really, Mr Pyne!’ The lady rose to her feet, quivering with indignation.
Mr Parker Pyne nodded his head gently. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t answer my question, you know.’
‘Oh!’ Words seemed to fail her. She swept out of the room.
Left alone, Mr Parker Pyne became very thoughtful. He was so deep in his own thoughts that he started perceptibly when someone came in and sat down opposite him. It was Miss MacNaughton.
‘Surely you’re all back very soon,’ said Mr Parker Pyne.
‘The others aren’t back. I said I had a headache and came back alone.’ She hesitated. ‘Where is Lady Grayle?’
‘I should imagine lying down in her cabin.’
‘Oh, then that’s all right. I don’t want her to know I’ve come back.’
‘You didn’t come on her account then?’
Miss MacNaughton shook her head. ‘No, I came back to see you.’
Mr Parker Pyne was surprised. He would have said off-hand that Miss MacNaughton was eminently capable of looking after troubles herself without seeking outside advice. It seemed that he was wrong.
‘I’ve watched you since we all came on board. I think you’re a person of wide experience and good judgement. And I want advice very badly.’
‘And yet—excuse me, Miss MacNaughton—but you’re not the type that usually seeks advice. I should say that you were a person who was quite content to rely on her own judgement.’
‘Normally, yes. But I am in a very peculiar position.’
She hesitated a moment. ‘I do not usually talk about my cases. But in this instance I think it is necessary. Mr Pyne, when I left England with Lady Grayle, she was a straightforward case. In plain language, there was nothing the matter with her. That’s not quite true, perhaps. Too much leisure and too much money do produce a definite pathological condition. Having a few floors to scrub every day and five or six children to look after would have made Lady Grayle a perfectly healthy and a much happier woman.’
Mr Parker Pyne nodded.
‘As a hospital nurse, one sees a lot of these nervous cases. Lady Grayle enjoyed her bad health. It was my part not to minimize her sufferings, to be as tactful as I could—and to enjoy the trip myself as much as possible.’
‘Very sensible,’ said Mr Parker Pyne.
‘But Mr Pyne, things are not as they were. The suffering that Lady Grayle complains of now is real and not imagined.’
‘You mean?’
‘I have come to suspect that Lady Grayle is being poisoned.’
‘Since when have you suspected this?’
‘For the past three weeks.’
‘Do you suspect—any particular person?’
Her eyes dropped. For the first time her voice lacked sincerity. ‘No.’
‘I put it to you, Miss MacNaughton, that you do suspect one particular person, and that that person is Sir George Grayle.’
‘Oh, no, no, I can’t believe it of him! He is so pathetic, so child-like. He couldn’t be a cold-blooded poisoner.’ Her voice had an anguished note in it.
‘And yet you have noticed that whenever Sir George is absent his wife is better and that her periods of illness correspond with his return.’
She did not answer.
‘What poison do you suspect? Arsenic?’
‘Something of that kind. Arsenic or antimony.’
‘And what steps have you taken?’
‘I have done my utmost to supervise what Lady Grayle eats and drinks.’
Mr Parker Pyne nodded. ‘Do you think Lady Grayle has any suspicion herself?’ he asked casually.
‘Oh, no, I’m sure she hasn’t.’
‘There you are wrong,’ said Mr Parker Pyne. ‘Lady Grayle does suspect.’
Miss MacNaughton showed her astonishment.
‘Lady Grayle is more capable of keeping a secret than you imagine,’ said Mr Parker Pyne. ‘She is a woman who knows how to keep her own counsel very well.’
‘That surprises me very much,’ said Miss MacNaughton slowly.
‘I should like to ask you one more question, Miss MacNaughton. Do you think Lady Grayle likes you?’
‘I’ve never thought about it.’
They were interrupted. Mohammed came in, his face beaming, his robes flowing behind him.
‘Lady, she hear you come back; she ask for you. She say why you not come to her?’
Elsie MacNaughton rose hurriedly. Mr Parker Pyne rose also.
‘Would a consultation early tomorrow morning suit you?’ he asked.
‘Yes, that would be the best time. Lady Grayle sleeps late. In the meantime, I shall be very careful.’
‘I think Lady Grayle will be careful too.’
Miss MacNaughton disappeared.
Mr Parker Pyne did not see Lady Grayle till just before dinner. She was sitting smoking a cigarette and burning what seemed to be a letter. She took no notice at all of him, by which he gathered that she was still offended.
After dinner he played bridge with Sir George, Pamela and Basil. Everyone seemed a little distrait, and the bridge game broke up early.
It was some hours later when Mr Parker Pyne was roused. It was Mohammed who came to him.
‘Old lady, she very ill. Nurse, she very frightened. I try to get doctor.
’
Mr Parker Pyne hurried on some clothes. He arrived at the doorway of Lady Grayle’s cabin at the same time as Basil West. Sir George and Pamela were inside. Elsie MacNaughton was working desperately over her patient. As Mr Parker Pyne arrived, a final convulsion seized the poor lady. Her arched body writhed and stiffened. Then she fell back on her pillows.
Mr Parker Pyne drew Pamela gently outside.
‘How awful!’ the girl was half-sobbing. ‘How awful! Is she, is she—?’
‘Dead? Yes, I am afraid it is all over.’
He put her into Basil’s keeping. Sir George came out of the cabin, looking dazed.
‘I never thought she was really ill,’ he was muttering. ‘Never thought it for a moment.’
Mr Parker Pyne pushed past him and entered the cabin.
Elsie MacNaughton’s face was white and drawn. ‘They have sent for a doctor?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ Then he said: ‘Strychnine?’
‘Yes. Those convulsions are unmistakable. Oh, I can’t believe it!’ She sank into a chair, weeping. He patted her shoulder.
Then an idea seemed to strike him. He left the cabin hurriedly and went to the lounge. There was a little scrap of paper left unburnt in an ash-tray. Just a few words were distinguishable:
‘Now, that’s interesting,’ said Mr Parker Pyne.
Mr Parker Pyne sat in the room of a prominent Cairo official. ‘So that’s the evidence,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘Yes, pretty complete. Man must have been a damned fool.’
‘I shouldn’t call Sir George a brainy man.’
‘All the same!’ The other recapitulated: ‘Lady Grayle wants a cup of Bovril. The nurse makes it for her. Then she must have sherry in it. Sir George produces the sherry. Two hours later, Lady Grayle dies with unmistakable signs of strychnine poisoning. A packet of strychnine is found in Sir George’s cabin and another packet actually in the pocket of his dinner jacket.’
‘Very thorough,’ said Mr Parker Pyne. ‘Where did the strychnine come from, by the way?’
‘There’s a little doubt over that. The nurse had some—in case Lady Grayle’s heart troubled her—but she’s contradicted herself once or twice. First she said her supply was intact, and now she says it isn’t.’
‘Very unlike her not to be sure,’ was Mr Parker Pyne’s comment. ‘They were in it together, in my opinion. They’ve got a weakness for each other, those two.’
‘Possibly; but if Miss MacNaughton had been planning murder, she’d have done it a good deal better. She’s an efficient young woman.’
‘Well, there it is. In my opinion, Sir George is in for it. He hasn’t a dog’s chance.’
‘Well, well,’ said Mr Parker Pyne, ‘I must see what I can do.’
He sought out the pretty niece.
Pamela was white and indignant. ‘Nunks never did such a thing—never—never—never!’
‘Then who did?’ said Mr Parker Pyne placidly.
Pamela came nearer. ‘Do you know what I think? She did it herself. She’s been frightfully queer lately. She used to imagine things.’
‘What things?’
‘Queer things. Basil, for instance. She was always hinting that Basil was in love with her. And Basil and I are—we are—’
‘I realize that,’ said Mr Parker Pyne, smiling.
‘All that about Basil was pure imagination. I think she had a down on poor little Nunks, and I think she made up that story and told it to you, and then put the strychnine in his cabin and in his pocket and poisoned herself. People have done things like that, haven’t they?’
‘They have,’ admitted Mr Parker Pyne. ‘But I don’t think that Lady Grayle did. She wasn’t, if you’ll allow me to say so, the type.’
‘But the delusions?’
‘Yes, I’d like to ask Mr West about that.’
He found the young man in his room. Basil answered his questions readily enough.
‘I don’t want to sound fatuous, but she took a fancy to me. That’s why I daren’t let her know about me and Pamela. She’d have had Sir George fire me.’
‘You think Miss Grayle’s theory a likely one?’
‘Well, it’s possible, I suppose.’ The young man was doubtful.
‘But not good enough,’ said Mr Parker Pyne quietly. ‘No, we must find something better.’ He became lost in meditation for a minute or two. ‘A confession would be best,’ he said briskly. He unscrewed his fountain pen and produced a sheet of paper. ‘Just write it out, will you?’
Basil West stared at him in amazement. ‘Me? What on earth do you mean?’
‘My dear young man’—Mr Parker Pyne sounded almost paternal—‘I know all about it. How you made love to the good lady. How she had scruples. How you fell in love with the pretty, penniless niece. How you arranged your plot. Slow poisoning. It might pass for natural death from gastroenteritis—if not, it would be laid to Sir George’s doing, since you were careful to let the attacks coincide with his presence.
‘Then your discovery that the lady was suspicious and had talked to me about the matter. Quick action! You abstracted some strychnine from Miss MacNaughton’s store. Planted some of it in Sir George’s cabin, and some in his pocket, and put sufficient into a cachet which you enclosed with a note to the lady, telling her it was a “cachet of dreams”.
‘A romantic idea. She’d take it as soon as the nurse had left her, and no one would know anything about it. But you made one mistake, my young man. It is useless asking a lady to burn letters. They never do. I’ve got all that pretty correspondence, including the one about the cachet.’
Basil West had turned green. All his good looks had vanished. He looked like a trapped rat.
‘Damn you,’ he snarled. ‘So you know all about it. You damned interfering Nosey Parker.’
Mr Parker Pyne was saved from physical violence by the appearance of the witnesses he had thoughtfully arranged to have listening outside the half-closed door.
Mr Parker Pyne was again discussing the case with his friend the high official.
‘And I hadn’t a shred of evidence! Only an almost indecipherable fragment, with ‘Burn this!’ on it. I deduced the whole story and tried it on him. It worked. I’d stumbled on the truth. The letters did it. Lady Grayle had burned every scrap he wrote, but he didn’t know that.
‘She was really a very unusual woman. I was puzzled when she came to me. What she wanted was for me to tell her that her husband was poisoning her. In that case, she meant to go off with young West. But she wanted to act fairly. Curious character.’
‘That poor little girl is going to suffer,’ said the other.
‘She’ll get over it,’ said Mr Parker Pyne callously. ‘She’s young. I’m anxious that Sir George should get a little enjoyment before it’s too late. He’s been treated like a worm for ten years. Now, Elsie MacNaughton will be very kind to him.’
He beamed. Then he sighed. ‘I am thinking of going incognito to Greece. I really must have a holiday!’
Harlequin’s Lane
Mr Satterthwaite was never quite sure what took him to stay with the Denmans. They were not of his kind—that is to say, they belonged neither to the great world, nor to the more interesting artistic circles. They were Philistines, and dull Philistines at that. Mr Satterthwaite had met them first at Biarritz, had accepted an invitation to stay with them, had come, had been bored, and yet strangely enough had come again and yet again.
Why? He was asking himself that question on this twenty-first of June, as he sped out of London in his Rolls Royce.
John Denman was a man of forty, a solid well-established figure respected in the business world. His friends were not Mr Satterthwaite’s friends, his ideas even less so. He was a man clever in his own line but devoid of imagination outside it.
Why am I doing this thing? Mr Satterthwaite asked himself once more—and the only answer that came seemed to him so vague and so inherently preposterous that he almost put it aside. For the only reason that pr
esented itself was the fact that one of the rooms in the house (a comfortable well-appointed house) stirred his curiosity. That room was Mrs Denman’s own sitting-room.
It was hardly an expression of her personality because, so far as Mr Satterthwaite could judge, she had no personality. He had never met a woman so completely expressionless. She was, he knew, a Russian by birth. John Denman had been in Russia at the outbreak of the European war, he had fought with the Russian troops, had narrowly escaped with his life on the outbreak of the Revolution, and had brought this Russian girl with him, a penniless refugee. In face of strong disapproval from his parents he had married her.
Mrs Denman’s room was in no way remarkable. It was well and solidly furnished with good Hepplewhite furniture—a trifle more masculine than feminine in atmosphere. But in it there was one incongruous item: a Chinese lacquer screen—a thing of creamy yellow and pale rose. Any museum might have been glad to own it. It was a collector’s piece, rare and beautiful.
It was out of place against that solid English background. It should have been the keynote of the room with everything arranged to harmonize subtly with it. And yet Mr Satterthwaite could not accuse the Denmans of lack of taste. Everything else in the house was in perfectly blended accord.
He shook his head. The thing—trivial though it was—puzzled him. Because of it, so he verily believed, he had come again and again to the house. It was, perhaps, a woman’s fantasy—but that solution did not satisfy him as he thought of Mrs Denman—a quiet, hard-featured woman, speaking English so correctly that no one would ever have guessed her a foreigner.
The car drew up at his destination and he got out, his mind still dwelling on the problem of the Chinese screen. The name of the Denman’s house was ‘Ashmead’, and it occupied some five acres of Melton Heath, which is thirty miles from London, stands five hundred feet above sea level and is, for the most part, inhabited by those who have ample incomes.
The butler received Mr Satterthwaite suavely. Mr and Mrs Denman were both out—at a rehearsal—they hoped Mr Satterthwaite would make himself at home until they returned.
Mr Satterthwaite nodded and proceeded to carry out these injunctions by stepping into the garden. After a cursory examination of the flower beds, he strolled down a shady walk and presently came to a door in the wall. It was unlocked and he passed through it and came out into a narrow lane.
Midsummer Mysteries Page 4