Sparkling Cyanide

by Agatha Christie

  ‘No one at all, sir. I am sure of that.’

  ‘Did they all go to dance at the same time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And came back at the same time?’

  Giuseppe screwed up his eyes in an effort of memory.

  ‘Mr Barton he came back first—with the young lady. He was stouter than the rest—he did not dance quite so long, you comprehend. Then came the fair gentleman, Mr Farraday, and the young lady in black. Lady Alexandra Farraday and the dark gentleman came last.’

  ‘You know Mr Farraday and Lady Alexandra?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I have seen them in the Luxembourg often. They are very distinguished.’

  ‘Now, Giuseppe, would you have seen if one of those people had put something in Mr Barton’s glass?’

  ‘That I cannot say, sir. I have my service, the other two tables in the alcove, and two more in the main restaurant. There are dishes to serve. I do not watch at Mr Barton’s table. After the cabaret everyone nearly gets up and dances, so at that time I am standing still—and that is why I can be sure that no one approached the table then. But as soon as people sit down, I am at once very busy.’

  Kemp nodded.

  ‘But I think,’ Giuseppe continued, ‘that it would be very difficult to do without being observed. It seems to me that only Mr Barton himself could do it. But you do not think so, no?’

  He looked inquiringly at the police officer.

  ‘So that’s your idea, is it?’

  ‘Naturally I know nothing—but I wonder. Just a year ago that beautiful lady, Mrs Barton, she kills herself. Could it not be that Mr Barton he grieves so much that he too decides to kill himself the same way? It would be poetic. Of course it is not good for the restaurant—but a gentleman who is going to kill himself would not think of that.’

  He looked eagerly from one to the other of the two men.

  Kemp shook his head.

  ‘I doubt if it’s as easy as that,’ he said.

  He asked a few more questions, then Giuseppe was dismissed.

  As the door closed behind Giuseppe, Race said:

  ‘I wonder if that’s what we are meant to think?’

  ‘Grieving husband kills himself on anniversary of wife’s death? Not that it was the anniversary—but near enough.’

  ‘It was All Soul’s Day,’ said Race.

  ‘True. Yes, it’s possible that was the idea—but if so, whoever it was can’t have known about those letters being kept and that Mr Barton had consulted you and shown them to Iris Marle.’

  He glanced at his watch.

  ‘I’m due at Kidderminster House at 12.30. We’ve time before that to go and see those people at the other two tables—some of them at any rate. Come with me, won’t you, colonel?’

  Chapter 3

  Mr Morales was staying at the Ritz. He was hardly a pretty sight at this hour in the morning, still unshaven, the whites of his eyes bloodshot and with every sign of a severe hangover.

  Mr Morales was an American subject and spoke a variant of the American language. Though professing himself willing to remember anything he could, his recollections of the previous evening were of the vaguest description.

  ‘Went with Chrissie—that baby is sure hard-boiled! She said it was a good joint. Honey pie, I said, we’ll go just where you say. It was a classy joint, that I’ll admit—and do they know how to charge you! Set me back the best part of thirty dollars. But the band was punk—they just couldn’t seem to swing it.’

  Diverted from his recollections of his own evening, Mr Morales was pressed to remember the table in the middle of the alcove. Here he was not very helpful.

  ‘Sure there was a table and some people at it. I don’t remember what they looked like, though. Didn’t take much account of them till the guy there croaked. Thought at first he couldn’t hold his liquor. Say now, I remember one of the dames. Dark hair and she had what it takes, I should say.’

  ‘You mean the girl in the green velvet dress?’

  ‘No, not that one. She was skinny. This baby was in black with some good curves.’

  It was Ruth Lessing who had taken Mr Morales’ roving eye.

  He wrinkled up his nose appreciatively.

  ‘I watched her dancing—and say, could that baby dance! I gave her the high sign once or twice, but she had a frozen eye—just looked through me in your British way.’

  Nothing more of value could be extracted from Mr Morales and he admitted frankly that his alcoholic condition was already well advanced by the time the cabaret was on.

  Kemp thanked him and prepared to take his leave.

  ‘I’m sailing for New York tomorrow,’ said Morales. ‘You wouldn’t,’ he asked wistfully, ‘care for me to stay on?’

  ‘Thank you, but I don’t think your evidence will be needed at the inquest.’

  ‘You see I’m enjoying it right here—and if it was police business the firm couldn’t kick. When the police tell you to stay put, you’ve got to stay put. Maybe I could remember something if I thought hard enough?’

  But Kemp declined to rise to this wistful bait, and he and Race drove to Brook Street where they were greeted by a choleric gentleman, the father of the Hon. Patricia Brice-Woodworth.

  General Lord Woodworth received them with a good deal of outspoken comment.

  What on earth was the idea of suggesting that his daughter—his daughter!—was mixed up in this sort of thing? If a girl couldn’t go out with her fiancé to dine in a restaurant without being subjected to annoyance by detectives and Scotland Yard, what was England coming to? She didn’t even know these people what was their name—Hubbard—Barton? Some City fellow or other! Showed you couldn’t be too careful where you went—Luxembourg was always supposed to be all right—but apparently this was the second time a thing of this sort had happened there. Gerald must be a fool to have taken Pat there—these young men thought they knew everything. But in any case he wasn’t going to have his daughter badgered and bullied and cross-questioned—not without a solicitor’s say so. He’d ring up old Anderson in Lincoln’s Inn and ask him—

  Here the general paused abruptly and staring at Race said, ‘Seen you somewhere. Now where—?’

  Race’s answer was immediate and came with a smile.

  ‘Badderpore. 1923.’

  ‘By Jove,’ said the general. ‘If it isn’t Johnny Race! What are you doing mixed up in this show?’

  Race smiled.

  ‘I was with Chief Inspector Kemp when the question of interviewing your daughter came up. I suggested it would be much pleasanter for her if Inspector Kemp came round here than if she had to come down to Scotland Yard, and I thought I’d come along too.’

  ‘Oh—er—well, very decent, of you, Race.’

  ‘We naturally wanted to upset the young lady as little as possible,’ put in Chief Inspector Kemp.

  But at this moment the door opened and Miss Patricia Brice-Woodworth walked in and took charge of the situation with the coolness and detachment of the very young.

  ‘Hallo,’ she said. ‘You’re from Scotland Yard, aren’t you? About last night? I’ve been longing for you to come. Is father being tiresome? Now don’t, daddy—you know what the doctor said about your blood pressure. Why you want to get into such states about everything, I can’t think. I’ll just take the inspectors or superintendents or whatever they are into my room and I’ll send Walters to you with a whisky and soda.’

  The general had a choleric desire to express himself in several blistering ways at once, but only succeeded in saying, ‘Old friend of mine, Major Race,’ at which introduction, Patricia lost interest in Race and bent a beatific smile on Chief Inspector Kemp.

  With cool generalship, she shepherded them out of the room and into her own sitting-room, firmly shutting her father in his study.

  ‘Poor daddy,’ she observed. ‘He will fuss. But he’s quite easy to manage really.’

  The conversation then proceeded on most amicable lines but with very little result.
r />   ‘It’s maddening really,’ said Patricia. ‘Probably the only chance in my life that I shall ever have of being right on the spot when a murder was done—it is a murder, isn’t it? The papers were very cautious and vague, but I said to Gerry on the telephone that it must be murder. Think of it, a murder done right close by me and I wasn’t even looking!’

  The regret in her voice was unmistakable.

  It was evident enough that, as the chief inspector had gloomily prognosticated, the two young people who had got engaged only a week previously had had eyes only for each other.

  With the best will in the world, a few personalities were all that Patricia Brice-Woodworth could muster.

  ‘Sandra Farraday was looking very smart, but then she always does. That was a Schiaparelli model she had on.’

  ‘You know her?’ Race asked.

  Patricia shook her head.

  ‘Only by sight. He looks rather a bore, I always think. So pompous, like most politicians.’

  ‘Did you know any of the others by sight?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No, I’d never seen any of them before—at least I don’t think so. In fact, I don’t suppose I would have noticed Sandra Farraday if it hadn’t been for the Schiaparelli.’

  ‘And you’ll find,’ said Chief Inspector Kemp grimly as they left the house, ‘that Master Tollington will be exactly the same—only there won’t even have been a Skipper—skipper what—sounds like a sardine—to attract his attention.’

  ‘I don’t suppose,’ agreed Race, ‘that the cut of Stephen Farraday’s dress suit will have caused him any heart pangs.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said the inspector. ‘Let’s try Christine Shannon. Then we’ll have finished with the outside chances.’

  Miss Shannon was, as Chief Inspector Kemp had stated, a blonde lovely. The bleached hair, carefully arranged, swept back from a soft vacant baby-like countenance. Miss Shannon might be as Inspector Kemp had affirmed, dumb—but she was eminently easy to look at, and a certain shrewdness in the large baby-blue eyes indicated that her dumbness only extended in intellectual directions and that where horse sense and a knowledge of finance were indicated, Christine Shannon was right on the spot.

  She received the two men with the utmost sweetness, pressing drinks upon them and when these were refused, urging cigarettes. Her flat was small and cheaply modernistic.

  ‘I’d just love to be able to help you, chief inspector. Do ask me any questions you like.’

  Kemp led off with a few conventional questions about the bearing and demeanour of the party at the centre table.

  At once Christine showed herself to be an unusually keen and shrewd observer.

  ‘The party wasn’t going well—you could see that. Stiff as stiff could be. I felt quite sorry for the old boy—the one who was giving it. Going all out he was to try and make things go—and just as nervous as a cat on wires—but all he could do didn’t seem to cut any ice. The tall woman he’d got on his right was as stiff as though she’d swallowed the poker and the kid on his left was just mad, you could see, because she wasn’t sitting next to the nice-looking dark boy opposite. As for the tall fair fellow next to her he looked as though his tummy was out of order, ate his food as though he thought it would choke him. The woman next to him was doing her best, she pegged away at him, but she looked rather as though she had the jumps herself.’

  ‘You seem to have been able to notice a great deal, Miss Shannon,’ said Colonel Race.

  ‘I’ll let you into a secret. I wasn’t being so much amused myself. I’d been out with that boy friend of mine three nights running, and was I getting tired of him! He was all out for seeing London—especially what he called the classy spots—and I will say for him he wasn’t mean. Champagne every time. We went to the Compradour and the Mille Fleurs and finally the Luxembourg, and I’ll say he enjoyed himself. In a way it was kind of pathetic. But his conversation wasn’t what you’d call interesting. Just long histories of business deals he’d put through in Mexico and most of those I heard three times—and going on to all the dames he’d known and how mad they were about him. A girl gets kind of tired listening after a while and you’ll admit that Pedro is nothing much to look at—so I just concentrated on the eats and let my eyes roam round.’

  ‘Well, that’s excellent from our point of view, Miss Shannon,’ said the chief inspector. ‘And I can only hope that you will have seen something that may help us solve our problem.’

  Christine shook her blonde head.

  ‘I’ve no idea who bumped the old boy off—no idea at all. He just took a drink of champagne, went purple in the face and sort of collapsed.’

  ‘Do you remember when he had last drunk from his glass before that?’

  The girl reflected.

  ‘Why—yes—it was just after the cabaret. The lights went up and he picked up his glass and said something and the others did it too. Seemed to me it was a toast of some kind.’

  The chief inspector nodded.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then the music began and they all got up and went off to dance, pushing their chairs back and laughing. Seemed to get warmed up for the first time. Wonderful what champagne will do for the stickiest parties.’

  ‘They all went together—leaving the table empty?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And no one touched Mr Barton’s glass.’

  ‘No one at all.’ Her reply came promptly. ‘I’m perfectly certain of that.’

  ‘And no one—no one at all came near the table while they were away.’

  ‘No one—except the waiter, of course.’

  ‘A waiter? Which waiter?’

  ‘One of the half-fledged ones with an apron, round about sixteen. Not the real waiter. He was an obliging little fellow rather like a monkey—Italian I guess he was.’

  Chief Inspector Kemp acknowledged this description of Giuseppe Bolsano with a nod of the head.

  ‘And what did he do, this young waiter? He filled up the glasses?’

  Christine shook her head.

  ‘Oh, no. He didn’t touch anything on the table. He just picked up an evening bag that one of the girls had dropped when they all got up.’

  ‘Whose bag was it?’

  Christine took a minute or two to think. Then she said:

  ‘That’s right. It was the kid’s bag—a green and gold thing. The other two women had black bags.’

  ‘What did the waiter do with the bag?’

  Christine looked surprised.

  ‘He just put it back on the table, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re quite sure he didn’t touch any of the glasses?’

  ‘Oh, no. He just dropped the bag down very quick and ran off because one of the real waiters was hissing at him to go somewhere or get something and everything was going to be his fault!’

  ‘And that’s the only time anyone went near the table?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But of course someone might have gone to the table without your noticing?’

  But Christine shook her head very determinedly.

  ‘No, I’m quite sure they didn’t. You see Pedro had been called to the telephone and hadn’t got back yet, so I had nothing to do but look around and feel bored. I’m pretty good at noticing things and from where I was sitting there wasn’t much else to see but the empty table next to us.’

  Race asked:

  ‘Who came back first to the table?’

  ‘The girl in green and the old boy. They sat down and then the fair man and the girl in black came back and after them the haughty piece of goods and the good-looking dark boy. Some dancer, he was. When they were all back and the waiter was warming up a dish like mad on the spirit lamp, the old boy leaned forward and made a kind of speech and then they all picked up their glasses again. And then it happened.’ Christine paused and added brightly, ‘Awful, wasn’t it? Of course I thought it was a stroke. My aunt had a stroke and she went down just like that. Pedro came back ju
st then and I said, “Look, Pedro, that man’s had a stroke.” And all Pedro would say was, “Just passing out —just passing out—that’s all” which was about what he was doing. I had to keep my eye on him. They don’t like you passing out at a place like the Luxembourg. That’s why I don’t like Dagoes. When they’ve drunk too much they’re not a bit refined any more—a girl never knows what unpleasantness she may be let in for.’ She brooded for a moment and then glancing at a showy looking bracelet on her right wrist, she added, ‘Still, I must say they’re generous enough.’

  Gently distracting her from the trials and compensations of a girl’s existence Kemp took her through her story once more.

  ‘That’s our last chance of outside help gone,’ he said to Race when they had left Miss Shannon’s flat. ‘And it would have been a good chance if it had come off. That girl’s the right kind of witness. Sees things and remembers them accurately. If there had been anything to see, she’d have seen it. So the answer is that there wasn’t anything to see. It’s incredible. It’s a conjuring trick! George Barton drinks champagne and goes and dances. He comes back, drinks from the same glass that no one has touched and Hey Presto it’s full of cyanide. It’s crazy—I tell you—it couldn’t have happened except that it did.’

  He stopped a minute.

  ‘That waiter. The little boy. Giuseppe never mentioned him. I might look into that. After all, he’s the one person who was near the table whilst they were all away dancing. There might be something in it.’

  Race shook his head.

  ‘If he’d put anything in Barton’s glass, that girl would have seen him. She’s a born observer of detail. Nothing to think about inside her head and so she uses her eyes. No, Kemp, there must be some quite simple explanation if only we could get it.’

  ‘Yes, there’s one. He dropped it in himself.’

  ‘I’m beginning to believe that that is what happened—that it’s the only thing that can have happened. But if so, Kemp, I’m convinced he didn’t know it was cyanide.’

  ‘You mean someone gave it to him? Told him it was for indigestion or blood pressure—something like that?’