Death in the House

by Anthony Berkeley

  ‘Yes,’ returned the Commissioner, bluntly. ‘There was one stuck in the collar of his coat, right at the back of his neck; one actually in his hair, on the crown of the head where Middleton’s hair was pretty thick; and one on the floor. Three.’

  ‘Three,’ echoed the Prime Minister, dully.

  ‘And that settles one thing at any rate, sir. The attack must have been made in the House itself, after we’d parted with him. And in that connection…’

  The door opened suddenly and Isabel came into the library. The wings of the armchair in which he was sitting hid the Commissioner from her.

  ‘Oh, father,’ she cried. ‘Have you heard? Surely there must be some mistake.’

  ‘Heard what, my dear?’

  ‘Why, about the arrest.’

  ‘No, what arrest? Have you been able to make an arrest, Lesley?’ The Prime Minister sat up alertly.

  ‘Oh, Sir Hubert, I didn’t see you.’ Isabel came further into the room. ‘It’s true, isn’t it? You’ve arrested Mr Lloyd-Evans?’

  The Prime Minister gasped, dumbfounded. ‘Arrested Lloyd-Evans? Lesley, what induced you to take such a step?’

  The Commissioner, who had intended to break his awkward news as gently as possible, took his bull by the horns.

  ‘The fact that my men found in his coat pocket a pill-box half full of thorns, Prime Minister. And,’ added the Commissioner, grimly, ‘Sir Angus has identified the substance with which they were smeared as curare.’

  chapter seven

  Suspicion at the Board of Trade

  ‘Lloyd-Evans!’ muttered the Prime Minister. ‘But it’s incredible. Isabel’s right. There must be some mistake.’

  ‘There’s no mistake about those thorns,’ returned the Commissioner. ‘And it’s up to Lloyd-Evans to explain how they got there. Still, perhaps “arrested” is too strong a word. “Detained” would meet the case better.’ He turned surprised eyes on Isabel. ‘But how did you know, Miss Franklin? I’m keeping it a close secret for the present, naturally.’

  ‘It seems hardly possible to keep any sort of secret these days,’ sighed the Prime Minister.

  Isabel explained. She had been waiting for Lord Arthur in the lobby. Sir Hubert had been talking to Mr Lloyd-Evans as they passed her; he had his arm persuasively through that of Mr Lloyd-Evans. She had heard the words ‘arrest you’.

  ‘That was unfortunate,’ said the Commissioner frankly. ‘I hope no one else heard. Actually, I was telling him that I had no intention of arresting him. In justice to the man I must admit he seemed quite flabbergasted when I told him what had been found in his pocket; and naturally enough he denied all knowledge of it. In fact he consented quite readily to come to Scotland Yard. I told him that obviously it was my duty to detain him, pending inquiries, and he quite agreed. Altogether,’ added the Commissioner dryly, ‘nothing could have been more amicable and charming. Still, Miss Franklin, you’ll keep all this to yourself, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Isabel, a little tartly.

  ‘Isabel, my dear…’ The Prime Minister hesitated. ‘I think I’d like Arthur to hear this. You might ask Verreker to ring him up and tell him to come back. Or ring him up for me yourself.’

  ‘Certainly, father.’

  Isabel walked sedately out of the room. She knew, just as well as her father, that the Commissioner would prefer to speak to the Prime Minister alone. It was not that Sir Hubert, a bachelor of course, distrusted women, Isabel told herself with determined fairness; he was just old-fashioned.

  ‘Now, Lesley.’ The Prime Minister’s voice was firm again to the point of sternness. ‘Please tell me just what’s in your mind. There’s something more than you’ve said already, I’m sure.’

  ‘Well…’ The Commissioner seemed a little uneasy. ‘Well, I’m afraid this will be rather a shock to you, sir; but I’m equally afraid there can’t be much doubt about it. Nobody could be more alive than myself to the gravity of the step I’ve taken; but really, I couldn’t see anything else for it. Mind you, Lloyd-Evans isn’t arrested. He’s only detained. It comes to the same thing, I know; but it sounds much better.’

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Isabel told me you wanted me, sir,’ said Lord Arthur’s voice. ‘Luckily I was upstairs with Verreker.’ Lord Arthur had in fact been hanging unhappily about, unable to drive himself back to his own office and half expecting that the Prime Minister would want to see him again.

  ‘Sit down, Arthur. This concerns you as closely as anyone now you’re in charge of the Department.’ In a few words the Prime Minister told the other what had happened. ‘Now, Lesley, if you please. We have to talk this over very closely. I must be satisfied that you had no alternative before this drastic action becomes public knowledge; for I need not tell you what serious repercussions it may have, not merely on this Government in particular, but upon the whole system of Government in this country. In a democracy such as ours the people must feel above all things that their Ministers are beyond reproach. Please tell me exactly why you have “detained” my President of the Board of Trade. I need not say that you must have other reasons beyond the finding of the poisoned thorns in his pocket. The real culprit could have slipped them in there for his own safety…“planted,” I believe, is the technical word. Smoke if you want to.’

  The Commissioner drew out his cigarette case and offered it mutely to the other two. Selecting one himself, he lit it with somewhat elaborate care.

  ‘You say that someone could have “planted” the thorns on Lloyd-Evans, sir,’ he began slowly. ‘Well, that’s true enough. But isn’t it a little unfortunate that Mr Lloyd-Evans should have been chosen again to – er – to hold the baby, if I may put it that way? There was that matter of the impersonation, you see. Why choose Lloyd-Evans for that? Well, of course, it’s all quite easy to explain away; Lloyd-Evans is easy to impersonate, Lloyd-Evans was going to be in Downing Street in any case, the presence of Lloyd-Evans on your doorstep would cause no comment, and so on. All quite feasible. But doesn’t it seem to you, sir, that there’s a good deal more of Lloyd-Evans in this business than there’s any right to be? Who, for instance, was the most nervous man in the Cabinet? Lloyd-Evans. Who thought the Bill ought to be dropped (I’m told, even after the first apparently insignificant anonymous note)? Lloyd-Evans. Who – ’

  ‘One moment,’ interrupted the Prime Minister. ‘I don’t think I’m betraying my Cabinet secret if I tell you that Lloyd-Evans was against the Bill from the very first, long before any threatening letters appeared. Very strongly against it. He was averse to meeting violence with stern repressive measures; he wanted to let the movement blow itself out. There were several who thought the same, but Lloyd-Evans certainly expressed himself more strongly than anyone. I’m convinced, too, that his opposition was genuine.’

  ‘Did he try to block the Bill?’

  ‘He certainly did his best to persuade me not to introduce such a Bill. Moreover, he converted more than one member of the Cabinet to his views.’

  ‘Exactly,’ exclaimed the Commissioner, not without triumph. ‘Lloyd-Evans tried to block the Bill, even before, the first threatening letter appeared. That confirms my theory about him. I’m not concerned with his motives; they may be genuine or they may be crooked. All that matters to me is what a man does. And I’ve come to the conclusion that, in some way or other, Lloyd-Evans is mixed up in this business. In fact I’m not at all sure,’ said the Commissioner boldly, ‘that he isn’t in it up to the neck.’

  ‘That’s a terrible accusation,’ frowned the Prime Minister. ‘You’d better let me have your reasons in full.’

  ‘Well, that impersonation business. There’s something decidedly fishy there. When one’s carrying a letter which would lay the bearer open to a charge of murder if he were caught with it, one doesn’t waste time fiddle-faddling with shoelaces and practically inviting suspicion. One shoves the thing through the letter-box and gets away as quickly as possible while the going’s good.’<
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  ‘You speak as if you weren’t sure now that it wasn’t Mr Lloyd-Evans himself, Sir Hubert,’ Lord Arthur put in. ‘I thought you’d quite made up your mind that it was someone impersonating him?’

  ‘So I had,’ the Commissioner replied quickly. ‘But that was before I’d had a report from one of my men: one of the smartest men we’ve got, as a matter of fact. He thought Lloyd-Evans was behaving in a very curious manner. The fellow, either Lloyd-Evans himself or someone impersonating him, came along from the direction of Birdcage Walk, went up to the front door of this house and seemed to hesitate; he glanced all round him, and my man says if ever he saw a guilty look that fellow had one. Then he went down on one knee and did up his shoelace, right up against the door. My chap can’t say whether he pushed anything under the door or not, and neither can any of the others, because this fellow had his back towards them; but they do say it would have been quite possible for him to have done so. It was an extra-small envelope, you remember, and the fellow could easily have concealed it from view.

  ‘Now, it’s a queer thing, but he was wearing gloves. And you remember there were no fingerprints on the envelope. But one doesn’t keep one’s gloves on to do up a shoelace, does one? After all, the fellow knew he was being watched; my men weren’t concealed or anything like that. And he must have known that a little oddity like that, let alone doing up a shoelace on the Prime Minister’s doorstep at all, would be quite enough to get him watched all the harder. As I said before, a fellow who wanted to do a simple job like delivering that letter under cover of impersonating Lloyd-Evans would get it done as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible.

  ‘Anyhow, after he’d straightened up he glanced round again, seemed to hesitate once more, and then finally walked off at top speed and turned into Whitehall. And then, of course, I’m hanged if he didn’t come back three minutes later, walk up to your front door again briskly enough this time, push in his letter and go off again into Birdcage Walk. That decided my man. He followed Lloyd-Evans back to Carlton House Terrace.’

  ‘Then the second man was Lloyd-Evans all right?’ Lord Arthur commented.

  ‘Presumably,’ the Commissioner replied dryly. ‘Considering, that is, that he let himself in at Lloyd-Evans’ front door, gave his hat and coat to Lloyd-Evans’ butler, walked up Lloyd-Evans’ stairs, kissed Lloyd-Evans’ wife, and sat down in Lloyd-Evans’ chair in Lloyd-Evans’ study to do some of Lloyd-Evans’ work before getting back to Lloyd-Evans’ room at the Board of Trade. Anyhow, if he wasn’t Lloyd-Evans, all I can say is that he deserved to be; and I can’t wish anyone worse than that at the present moment.’

  ‘How on earth do you know what he did when he got inside the house?’ asked Lord Arthur.

  The Commissioner looked at him quizzically. ‘How on earth do we find out what goes on inside any house? But we do. It’s one of the first duties of a good detective to see through stone walls.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ broke in the Prime Minister impatiently. ‘Then I take it that you now believe that the man who delivered that note under the eyes of your detectives was not someone impersonating, but Lloyd-Evans himself?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go so far as to say I believe it,’ replied the Commissioner with caution. ‘I only say that, on balance, the arguments for its being Lloyd-Evans seem rather better than those against.’

  ‘Unless,’ pointed out Lord Arthur, ‘it was someone deliberately trying to throw suspicion on Lloyd-Evans.’

  ‘That is a possibility,’ the Commissioner agreed, ‘which we mustn’t overlook. But there are, I think, other significant points. Why was Lloyd-Evans in a state of abject funk in the House this afternoon? Why did he faint? Was it just a coincidence that he fainted just after I’d broken the news that everyone in the place was to be searched? Did he know what he had in his pocket, and was the idea of being searched too much for him? I may say I had my suspicions about that faint; it would have been a handy way, perhaps, of being taken out on a second stretcher with a good chance of the search being overlooked; so I asked Sir William to give him a look over. But the faint was genuine. And if so, there seems only one explanation – fright! But fright about what?

  ‘And, then, most significant to my mind of all, who was sitting beside Wellacombe and Middleton? Frith on one side’ – Mr Frith was the Chancellor of the Exchequer – ‘and Lloyd-Evans on the other. I’d stake my oath on Frith, but… well, there’s Lloyd-Evans again, you see.’

  Lord Arthur nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I see what you mean.’

  The Prime Minister did not speak.

  ‘Exactly. Well, I don’t think I need elaborate the argument. In the case of Lord Wellacombe we couldn’t be certain, but in Middleton’s case we know that the poison must have been administered on the floor of the House. Apart from the attendant, who gave Middleton a quick brush down before we could stop him – ’

  ‘Grieves,’ put in Lord Arthur, with a slight smile. ‘I don’t think you could stop Grieves giving anyone a brush who has the slightest speck of dust on his coat. He’s noted for it. In fact it’s become a stock joke. We tell him his name ought to have been Jeeves, not Grieves.’

  ‘Yes. Well, apart from him, no one came within arm’s length of Middleton till he passed behind the Speaker’s Chair: and then he had only Frith and one or two others to pass before he was in his place. And if anyone will explain to me how those thorns could have got into him after that except by being inserted surreptitiously by someone sitting close to him, I’d like to hear it. That means either by Frith, by Lloyd-Evans, by Lord Arthur, or by Stanley or Pengelly, who were sitting on either side of Lord Arthur and against whom there’s not a shadow of suspicion. So when identical thorns are actually found in the pocket of one of those persons – well, dash it, sir,’ burst out the Commissioner, ‘I have to do something about it.’

  The Prime Minister was looking very thoughtful. ‘Oh, yes, I quite see that. But Lloyd-Evans denies all knowledge of the thorns, you say?’

  ‘He does, yes.’

  ‘And you found the manner of his denials convincing?’

  ‘Up to a point,’ said the Commissioner slowly. ‘But Lloyd-Evans can act, you know.’

  ‘You have no idea who was in his proximity between your announcement concerning the search and the discovery of the box of thorns in his pocket?’

  ‘You mean, who had the opportunity to put it there? Dozens of people, I’m afraid, sir. There was quite a considerable hurly-burly.’

  There was a little silence.

  ‘I suppose it’s no good considering the Opposition front bench?’ sighed Lord Arthur.

  The Prime Minister gave him the ghost of a smile. ‘It’s true that they seem unusually vehement against the Bill, but I hardly think they would go to such lengths. Dickson is as great a stickler for correct procedure as anyone on our side of the House.’ Mr Dickson was the Leader of the Opposition.

  There was another silence.

  ‘Well, sir,’ said the Commissioner heavily, ‘it’s for you to say. I take it that this is hardly a matter for the Home Office to decide. Am I to hold Mr Lloyd-Evans, or am I to interrogate him and let him go?’

  The Prime Minister stroked his chin. ‘My dear Lesley, I fully realise your difficulty, and I admit you’ve made out a very good case of suspicion against my President of the Board of Trade. But, after all, it is only suspicion, isn’t it? Apart from the box of thorns, you have no evidence against him at all; and that, I feel, must be capable of some other explanation. No, I’m sorry, Lesley, but I simply can’t see Lloyd-Evans as a murderer. Honestly, can you? Interrogate him by all means to your heart’s content. But, after that – let him go. He may know something, or he may not. If he does, no doubt you’ll get it out of him. But for myself I can’t believe it’s possible.’

  The Commissioner rose and bowed with some stiffness.

  ‘Very well, sir. I quite understand. I’ll question him myself, and that’s all. You’ve no objection, I suppose, to my keeping him under surveillance for a day
or two?’

  ‘Of course not,’ the Prime Minister replied in a weary voice. ‘Keep us all under surveillance, if you’re convinced that there’s a member of the Cabinet mixed up in it somewhere – and I’m very much afraid there may be that.’

  The Commissioner bowed again and took himself off.

  ‘You look dead-beat, sir,’ Lord Arthur said. ‘Let me send Isabel in to look after you. You must rest. We rely on you, you know.’

  The Prime Minister smiled at him affectionately. He had always hoped that his daughter and Lord Arthur might make a match of it; though he knew and admired the strength of the younger man’s ambition, which so far had kept him from preoccupying himself with a wife. Moreover, though no one had ever guessed it, the Prime Minister was inclined to share both Lord Arthur’s opinion of Mr Eric Comstock and his surprise over Isabel’s choice. But the man carried the votes and even the confidence of a surprisingly large section of the public; and a man who can command both votes and confidence will usually find a seat in the Cabinet of even the most upright Prime Minister.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’d better rest, I suppose. I shall have to call another Cabinet meeting to consider this unhappy development. There’ll be a great deal of opposition. Dear me, Arthur, I feel a very tired old man.’

  ‘Nonsense, sir. You’re convalescent, that’s all. You’ve the energy of any four of us, and you know it. And you mustn’t knock yourself up, especially at present, because there’s literally no one to take your place. The country would be upside down in a week if anything happened to you.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, my dear boy,’ smiled the Prime Minister, looking nevertheless not ill-pleased at the other’s tribute. ‘Frith would take over, and probably manage things a great deal better than me.’

  ‘Frith would never go on with this Bill, sir.’

  ‘No,’ said the Prime Minister thoughtfully. ‘No; he’s supported me over it, but I don’t believe he would push it on his own responsibility.’