“Pardon?” said the sergeant.
“I don’t think there’s any woman in the case,” said the inspector, equally puzzled.
“Sorry. I meant, who profited by it?”
“Oh. That’s not difficult, sir. Old Sir Henry’s will is pretty well known. There are several legacies to hospitals—they’re out of it. Mrs. van Beer gets the bulk of the estate if Philip dies before she does. Rodd and his wife get two thousand pounds each.”
“Two thousand! That’s a fortune for them.”
“Mrs. Rodd threw away the salad,” observed Inspector Holly. “She was very anxious to impress on the court that the salad was perfectly clean. She practically compelled Ada to support her in that, and there is good reason to believe it was a lie.”
“Would she have kept this cutting? If she had, would she have hidden it in a book in the sitting-room? That’s a good place to hide a paper, especially if the book is one not likely to be read. But it’s hardly the place that Mrs. Rodd would put it. A book in the kitchen, or her bedroom—yes.”
“It’s not necessarily hid there at all, sir. I mean that whoever put it there may have done so temporarily, for one reason or another, and then mislaid it. Suppose he or she was reading it and someone else came into the room. Then he shuts it quickly up in the book, and puts it away. And there it stays. It’s a good place to hide things, it’s true; but you can hide things from yourself that way too.”
“Even so, I don’t see Mrs. Rodd using that room. What do you say, Sergeant?”
Sergeant Knowles started. “Well, for myself, sir, I’d like to know more about Mrs. van Beer.”
“Go on.”
“It looks to me this way. She didn’t like the kid. Mr. Gillingham could tell us more about that, I believe; but anyway, it’s pretty common knowledge. They had a terrible quarrel about her killing a rabbit of his, and if half what Ada Corney has said is true, she’s as malicious as they make them. It’s true Mrs. Rodd threw away the salad, but who made her do it? Mrs. van Beer. Told her twice, Ada said.”
“Ada seems to have a lot to say, Sergeant; I think she’d better say it to us. But remember, Mrs. van Beer was poisoned herself.”
“Only slightly, sir. And this here cutting would tell her that it was a fairly safe risk to take, as the poison was only likely to kill a child. As a matter of fact, she didn’t take hardly any risk. She was sick almost at once. She drank almost half a bottle of port at lunch and that did the trick. At least, it may have done. Or she may just have gone upstairs and put her finger down her throat.”
“I see. Then you think she picked up a handful of ivy dust and mixed it in with the salad dressing in the half-hour while the food was waiting on the table. Maybe. It’s possible. But we want more evidence.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There’s just a chance somebody saw her. Concentrate on Ada, Inspector: she seems to know everything. Send the sergeant down there. See if she can remember—see if any one can remember seeing any one in the dining-room between the time when Mrs. Rodd set the table and they sat down. Let him have a quick look round for the book with the cutting in it and if he can’t find it we must bring Gillingham in some way. Another thing. Find out from Wyman’s at Wrackhampton and all the smaller newsagents who supplied anybody here with a copy of the East Essex Monitor a year ago. They are almost certain to have a record of it: it’s not at all a common thing for someone in Devon to want an East Essex local paper. If none of them have a note of it, it means she probably ordered it direct. We can get an inquiry made at the offices of the paper in that case; they may have kept a record.”
“Yes, sir.” The inspector got up. Then he added: “There’s someone else, besides those two women, who might have done it.”
“You mean Rodd. Yes, I haven’t forgotten him. He stands to gain by the boy’s death too. He is as much under suspicion as Mrs. Rodd. But he had no access to the dining-room. On the other hand, he might well have known, as a gardener, of the lethal effects of ivy. Quite a lot of what passes in textbooks for rare knowledge is common enough among country people, if only the London scientists knew. We certainly have to bear him in mind too.”
“I didn’t mean Rodd, sir. I meant Philip Arkwright.”
“The dead boy? How on earth?”
“He may have determined to kill his aunt. She had killed his rabbit, you know; he detested her and he was a neurotic and passionate child. He may have got hold of that cutting and acted on the information in it. He could have mixed in the ivy dust in the salad bowl. It was ill-luck, from his point of view, that his aunt threw up her lunch, through boozing too much, while the amount he had to take himself to avoid suspicion turned out to be enough to kill him. He didn’t realize he wasn’t strong, perhaps.”
“But if he read that cutting he must have realized he was almost certainly committing suicide.”
“Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t care, so long as darling auntie died.”
11
Part of a further letter from Edward Gillingham to Ellen Cartmell, a few days later, after extensive inquiries among the servants by the police, of which he did not know:
“…The business about poor Philip Arkwright is turning out badly. This morning Sergeant Knowles called upon me and officially asked me to accompany him to Mrs. van Beer’s house. He had with him a tall man who was introduced to me as Inspector Holly when I saw them all at Wrackhampton. My job was to find that cutting, but I wasn’t contented with being told that. I know you say I’m too curious, but after all I was a very important witness and I was obliging them in a very essential matter, so it seemed to me only fair I should be told something about it. So, I asked all the questions I could; they weren’t in the least talkative, but I made it very difficult for them to say nothing at all.
“They wouldn’t admit that they had definite suspicions, but they did say that they had traced the order for the Essex paper last year. It was given to the little newsagent near the Red Lion, across the way from Wrackhampton Station. He generally supplies Mrs. van Beer. He didn’t remember the transaction at all at first and only found it out by looking up his records. It was an unusual request and the paper had to be ordered specially. At first, he said he didn’t remember how it was ordered. Then he said that it was ordered in writing by Mrs. van Beer. Then his wife said that Rodd came in and gave the order verbally, reading it off a slip of paper. Then she said: No, her husband was right. Inspector Holly thought that neither of them had the least idea and were just trying to oblige.
“I couldn’t get anything more out of them. I wondered how they were going to explain my presence with them. They got out of that by offering no explanation at all. All the same, I felt very uncomfortable.
“The door was opened to us by Mrs. Rodd. The inspector asked where Mrs. van Beer was: she was down the garden. The inspector said he would like to speak to her, but might he ask Ada a question on the way? He assumed an invitation to enter, marched into the sitting-room, and left the sergeant and me there while he went through to the kitchen.
“Well, I recognized the book at once. I went to it, opened it and found the cutting there just as before. The sergeant inspected it and asked me if I was prepared to swear it was the identical cutting, in the same place as before, and that I saw it there the day before Philip died. I said I would state that on oath whenever it was required.
“We had to wait rather a long time then. The sergeant got rather fidgety. I heard afterwards that it wasn’t Ada who was responsible for the delay. I don’t know what she was asked or what she answered: they wouldn’t tell me. But Mrs. Rodd had seemed very far from pleased to see us, and it was clear why as soon as the inspector got into the kitchen. Rodd was drunk. He was sitting in front of a bottle of burgundy which he had drank nearly all of. It seems that it came out of Sir Henry’s cellar, and the inspector thinks he has probably been robbing the stock fairly steadily. He spoke to him sh
arply, and Rodd told him to go to hell. They had ‘words’, and that took time.
“Well, in time the inspector came back into the room with Mrs. van Beer. The sergeant nodded to him, and he brought the woman forward face to face with the open book.
“‘I should be glad,’ he said, ‘to hear what you have to say concerning this cutting, which has been found in this book in your drawing-room.’
“She bent over it. I couldn’t see her face. While she was hesitating, he continued by reciting the usual formula—you know, warning her that whatever she said would be taken down and used as evidence.
“She gave a sudden sort of cry, a noise like ang! as near as I can write it down and her hands leapt forward at it. I think she would have torn it up if the sergeant hadn’t caught her wrists.
“Then she began to shout. ‘You can’t do that. You’re framing me! I don’t know anything about it. You put it there yourselves.’ She struck the sergeant across the face. I think she called him a damn lying swine. He hadn’t spoken.
“I think she’s a cruel woman, and if she did kill Philip she deserves no pity. But it’s not a nice sight to see even the worst human being arrested for murder. She sobbed and screamed and kept appealing to them. ‘Oh, let me alone! Can’t you see I’m ill?’ Her face was all yellowy and her hair came partly down. You could see she dyes it. Her face seemed suddenly to come all over lines. The inspector kept saying quietly ‘I’m afraid I must ask you to come with me, madam’, but in the end they had almost to carry her to the car. I think they didn’t formally charge her till they got her to the station. I was left to walk home.
“I’ve been asking myself ever since what I thought of her behaviour. Did she seem guilty, or only frightened? I really don’t know. I suppose the real question is: Did she have time enough to see what that cutting was about? Because if she did, then I suppose if she was quick enough to understand it, she would realize what might be made of it even if she was innocent. And then it would be perfectly natural for her to throw a sort of fit. But if she didn’t, but knew all along what it was, then it looks pretty black. For it means that as soon as she saw they’d found it she knew the game was up.
“I can’t answer that question, though I’ve thought it over time and again. I think the answer is that she may just have had time to grasp its meaning. In fact, no one can tell.
“All the same, darling, to-day I’ve done something that may mean hanging somebody. I don’t feel happy. That’s a very silly thing to say, I feel much worse than that. I am going to bicycle in and wait for you after your work to-morrow, and even if you do have to go to Princes Street I can go down with you. I don’t want to be alone with myself, and after I’ve talked to you I’m not alone any more for the rest of the day.”
12
Mr. Archibald Henderson, who very much disliked his position as Mrs. van Beer’s solicitor, nevertheless had decided that he owed it to the family to do his best to rescue her. He had considered referring her appeal to some other firm more accustomed to dealing with criminal cases, and had decided against it. So he went to Sir Isambard Burns’s rooms in King’s Bench Walk some mornings later, though with a heavy heart. Although he repressed the thought as best he could, he was by no means sure that his client was innocent. Sir Isambard was altogether too cynical, and wholly disregarded the reticences which a family solicitor likes to be observed. Besides, though he had known him many years and called him his friend, Mr. Henderson thought he was a climber, and the evidences of his ambition which decorated his conversation were annoying. Finally, Sir Isambard had decided to drive down to Devon that morning to interview Mrs. van Beer in Exeter gaol, thereby disturbing all Mr. Henderson’s arrangements and ensuring him an attack of indigestion. Mr. Henderson would much have preferred to travel by train, getting there faster and not being incommoded by the smell of petrol. But Sir Isambard had indicated that he needed to consult him at length before the interview, and that the long journey down in the big Packard would serve best for that. There seemed no valid excuse for refusing. Sir Isambard was at the top of his profession, and Mrs. van Beer would need all the help she could get.
Sir Isambard was a thin, tall, very dark man with a face like a vulture and a monocle which he used only for conversational purposes. He was playacting most of his life, and some of the shows he put on brought him a lot of money. What were his real thoughts on any subject hardly any one knew, for he was unmarried. A rather stubborn and set solicitor like Archibald Henderson drew out his strongest tendencies to perverseness.
He had brought the elderly lawyer there at the unreasonable hour of ten o’clock, for an early start, and now that he had arrived would not give the signal for a move, even though Henderson fidgeted and more than once said, “Oughtn’t we to be going?”
He persisted in talking politics, which his colleague disliked. He selected his distinguished rival Sir Stafford Cripps for examination, and reviewed his career since he was expelled from the Labour Party. (Sir Isambard, with well-managed publicity, had joined the same party a month before.) He considered the propaganda for a Popular Front and declared it doomed to failure. (This was before the Labour Party Conference had convinced Sir Stafford of the same thing.) Nevertheless, he said, he was glad of Sir Stafford’s action.
“Glad?” said Mr. Henderson. “I should have thought you would approve of your Party’s official policy at least for the first year of your membership.”
Sir Isambard laughed, or rather cackled.
“I didn’t say I didn’t, my dear fellow. I only said this plays my game. Don’t you see, the next Labour Government will have to give me a big job now. Before this, the two plums were settled already. Attorney General and Solicitor General, Sir Stafford Cripps and Mr. Pritt. Now it’ll have to be Mr. Pritt and Sir. I. Burns.”
Mr. Henderson coldly mentioned two other lawyers in the Party. Sir Isambard waved them away. He also refused the Lord Chancellorship in passing.
“You’re not even in parliament yet,” said Mr. Henderson irritatedly.
“Oh, that! I can be in as soon as I please. Simply a matter of choosing your constituency, spending money wisely, and taking meetings steadily. I speak everywhere that I have a chance now. I go down very well too, I can tell you. Don’t you worry, it’s all in the bag.”
Mr. Henderson was a strong Conservative and this conversation was rapidly exhausting his patience. Exasperation so moved him that he forgot all his professional politeness and even resurrected from his memory a forgotten nickname.
“I really wonder, Ikey, if you can be as shameless as you pretend. One thing alone consoles me—this sort of talk will make it sure you never are offered any such post at all. And in any case the country will never let your people back into power again.” He snorted and added, “I suggest we start out now.”
Sir Isambard gave a loud, coarse laugh, and slapped him on the back. “I thought I’d get a rise out of you in the end,” he said. “Come along then, and tell me why you distrust your client so much.”
“Buffoon,” said Mr. Henderson under his breath.
Aloud he said, as he climbed into the car, “I would not say I distrusted her exactly. It would be more exact to say I have little liking for her, and my reasons for that may not be wholly creditable to me. I—er, well, I find her very common. She was a shopgirl of some kind, I think, who married the youngest Arkwright brother during the war. He was killed, you know, and though old Sir Henry paid her an allowance he would never have anything to do with her. It was a mésalliance. Without doubt. She was a vulgar and silly woman and for years she drank heavily. She married a dance band player for a while, which is where she got her name van Beer. He is dead. She has always seemed to me a greedy and jealous creature. If this unfortunate boy’s parents had not died suddenly, she would never have been in the house at all. But as it was she claimed to be his natural guardian, and there seemed no plausible way of resisting the claim. I ha
ve reproached myself since, but I do not see what I could have done. She had given up drinking to any objectionable extent, and her manner of life was unexceptionable. One cannot tell a court that one dislikes a woman’s voice and manners.” Mr. Henderson shook his head, and then went on to a general outline of the case.
Sir Isambard listened attentively. At the end, he said:
“I take it she insists on her innocence?”
“She does indeed. She makes scenes all the time and insists there is a plot against her. I should say she was a very neurotic woman anyway, and this strain makes her worse. She will not face the facts, and it is very difficult to get any assistance from her.”
“I’ll see to that.” Sir Isambard’s grin made him look even more like a bird of prey. “She’ll talk to me all right.”
He reflected for a moment. “I imagine that what the police consider their strong points are, firstly, the fact that Ada the housemaid saw her in the dining-room before dinner, and that she might have added ivy pollen to the salad then. But Ada didn’t see her doing anything suspicious, and there was no reason why the woman shouldn’t go into her own dining-room. Might be a perfectly innocent and harmless act. Damned fortunate no one saw her picking up the ivy pollen beforehand.”
Mr. Henderson frowned at that, but said nothing.
“That’s not very strong,” continued Sir Isambard. “The second point is the cutting discovered by the snoopy tutor. That is uncomfortable. No jury is going to believe that it got there by accident. Somebody saw a note of the case in the London dailies and sent for the local paper because he or she thought there would be some useful information in a fuller account. And having got the useful information, used it.
“But the newsagent, from what you say, can’t prove it was this woman herself who ordered it. We may be able to press him far enough to make him admit any one in the house might have ordered it. And that weakens the case considerably.”
Verdict of Twelve Page 13