by Ngaio Marsh
“I’ll be glad to make this arrest,” said Fox heavily, “and that’s a fact.”
Alleyn did not answer, and after another pause Fox jerked his head at the drawing-room door.
“Shall I—?”
“Yes.”
Fox went away and Alleyn waited alone in the hall. Behind the great expanse of stained-glass windows there was sunlight. A patchwork of primary colours lay across the wall where Henry Ancred’s portrait was to have hung. The staircase mounted into shadows, and out of sight, on the landing, a clock ticked. Above the enormous fireplace, the fifth baronet pointed his sword complacently at a perpetual cloudburst. A smouldering log settled with a whisper on the hearth, and somewhere, away in the servants’ quarters, a voice was raised and placidly answered.
The drawing-room door opened, and with a firm step, and a faint meaningless smile on her lips, Millamant Ancred came out and crossed the hall to Alleyn.
“I believe you wanted me,” she said.
CHAPTER XIX
Final Curtain
“It was the mass of detail,” Troy said slowly, “that muddled me at first. I kept trying to fit the practical jokes into the pattern and they wouldn’t go.”
“They fit,” Alleyn rejoined, “but only because she used them after the event.”
“I’d be glad if you’d sort out the essentials, Rory.”
“I’ll try. It’s a case of maternal obsession. A cold, hard woman, with a son for whom she has a morbid adoration. Miss Able would tell you all about that. The son is heavily in debt, loves luxury, and is intensely unpopular with his relations. She hates them for that. One day, in the ordinary course of her duties, she goes up to her father-in-law’s room. The drafts of two Wills are lying on the dressing-table. One of them leaves her son, who is his heir, more than generous means to support his title and property. The other cuts him down to the bare bones of the entailed estate. Across the looking-glass someone has scrawled “Grandfather is a bloody old fool.” As she stands there, and before she can rearrange the papers, her father-in-law walks in. He immediately supposes, and you may be sure she shares and encourages the belief that his small granddaughter, with a reputation for practical jokes, is responsible for the insulting legend. Millamant is a familiar figure in his room, and he has no cause to suspect her of such an idiotic prank. Still less does he suspect the real perpetrator, her son Cedric Ancred, who has since admitted that this was one of a series of stunts designed by himself and Sonia Orrincourt to set the old man against Panty, hitherto his favourite.
“Millamant Ancred leaves the room with the memory of those two drafts rankling in her extremely tortuous mind. She knows the old man changes his Will as often as he loses his temper. Already Cedric is unpopular. Some time during the next few days, perhaps gradually, perhaps in an abrupt access of resentment, an idea is born to Millamant. The Will is to be made public at the Birthday dinner. Suppose the one that is favourable to Cedric is read, how fortunate if Sir Henry should die before he changes his mind! And if the dinner is rich, and he, as is most probable, eats and drinks unwisely, what more likely than he should have one of his attacks and die that very night? If, for instance, there was tinned crayfish! She orders tinned crayfish.”
“Just — hoping?”
“Perhaps no more than that. What do you think, Fox?”
Fox, who was sitting by the fire with his hands on his knees, said: “Isabel reckons she ordered it on the previous Sunday when they talked over the dinner.”
“The day after the looking-glass incident. And on the following Monday evening, the Monday before the Birthday when Cedric and Paul and his mother were all out, Millamant Ancred went into the flower-room and found a large bottle of medicine marked ‘Poison’ for the school children, and another smaller bottle for Sir Henry. The bottles had been left on the bench by Sonia Orrincourt, who had joined Fenella Ancred there and had gone upstairs with her and had never been alone in the flower-room.”
“And I,” Troy said, “was putting the trap away and coming in by the east wing door. If… Suppose I’d let Sonia do that and taken the medicine into the school—”
“If you’ll excuse my interrupting you, Mrs. Alleyn,” Fox said, “it’s our experience that, when a woman makes up her mind to turn poisoner, nothing will stop her.”
“He’s right, Troy.”
“Well,” said Troy, “go on.”
“She had to chip away the chemist’s sealing-wax before she got the corks out, and Fox found bits of it on the floor and some burnt matches. She had to find another bottle for her purpose. She emptied Sir Henry’s bottle filled it up with thallium, and in case of failure, poured the remainder into her own small phial. Then she filled the children’s bottle with water and re-corked and re-sealed both Mr. Juniper’s bottles. When Miss Able came in for the children’s medicine she and Millamant hunted everywhere for it. It was not found until Fenella came downstairs, and who was more astonished than Millamant to learn that Sonia had so carelessly left the medicine in the flower-room?”
“But suppose,” Troy said, “he’d wanted the medicine before she knew about the Will?”
“There was the old bottle with a dose still in it. I fancy she removed that one some time during the Birthday. If a Will unfavourable to Cedric had been made public, that bottle would have been replaced and the other kept for a more propitious occasion. As it was, she saw to it that she was never alone from dinner until the next morning. Barker beat on the door of the room she shared with Desdemona. She had talked to Desdemona, you remember, until three o’clock — well after the time of Sir Henry’s death. She built herself up a sort of emergency alibi with the same elaborate attention which she gives to that aimless embroidery of hers. In a way this led to her downfall. If she’d risked a solitary trip along those passages that night to Cedric’s room she would have heard, no doubt, that Sir Henry had signed the second Will, and she would have made a desperate attempt to stop him taking his medicine.”
“Then she didn’t mean at that time to throw suspicion on Sonia?”
“No, indeed. His death would appear to be the natural result of rash eating and pure temper. It was only when the terms of his last Will were made known that she got her second idea.”
“An atrocious idea.”
“It was all of that. It was also completely in character— tortuous and elaborate. Sonia had come between Cedric and the money. Very well, Sonia must go and the second Will be set aside. She remembered that she had found Sonia reading it. She remembered the rat-bane with its printed antidote to arsenical poisoning. So, the anonymous letters printed on the kids’ paper she herself fetched from the village, appeared on the breakfast table. A little later, as nobody seemed to have caught on the right idea, the book on embalming appeared on the cheese-dish, and finally the tin of rat-bane appeared in Sonia’s suitcase. At about this time she got a horrible jolt.”
“The cat,” said Fox.
“Carabbas!” Troy ejaculated.
“Carabbas had been in Sir Henry’s room. Sir Henry had poured out milk for him. But the bottle of medicine had overturned into the saucer and presently Carabbas began to lose his fur. No wonder. He’d lapped up thallium acetate, poor chap. Millamant couldn’t stand the sight of him about the house. He was one too much for her iron nerve. Accusing him of ringworm, and with the hearty consent of every one but Panty, she had him destroyed.
“She sat back awaiting events and unobtrusively jogging them along. She put the tin of arsenical rat-bane in Sonia Orrincourt’s suitcase and joined in the search for it. She declared that it had been a full tin, but the servants disagreed. She forgot, however, to ease the lid, which was cemented in with the accretion of years.”
“But to risk everything and plan everything on the chance that arsenic was used by the embalmers!” Troy exclaimed.
“It didn’t seem like a chance. Sir Henry had ordered Mortimer and Loame to use it, and Mr. Mortimer had let him suppose they would do so. Her nerve went a bit, though, after th
e exhumation. She rang up the embalmers, using, no doubt, the deepest notes of her masculine voice, and said she was my secretary. Loame, the unspeakable ass, gave her their formula. That must have been a bitter moment for Millamant. Cedric’s only means of avoiding financial ruin was by marrying the woman she loathed and against whom she had plotted; and now she knew that the frame-up against Sonia Orrincourt was no go. She didn’t know, however, that we considered thallium acetate a possible agent and would look for it. She’d kept the surplus over from the amount she could not get into Sir Henry’s bottle and she waited her chance. Sonia could still be disposed of; Cedric could still get the money.”
“She must be mad.”
“They’re like that, Mrs. Alleyn,” Fox said. “Female poisoners behave like that. Always come at it a second time, and a third and fourth, too, if they get the chance.”
“Her last idea,” Alleyn said, “was to throw suspicion on Dr. Withers, who’s a considerable beneficiary in both Wills. She put thallium in the milk when the tea-tray was sent in to Miss Able, knowing Withers and Sonia Orrincourt were there and knowing Sonia was the only one who took milk. A little later she slipped the bottle into Withers’s jacket. With Sonia dead, she thought, the money would revert after all to Cedric.”
“Very nasty, you know,” Fox said mildly. “Very nasty case indeed, wouldn’t you say?”
“Horrible,” Troy said under her breath.
“And yet, you know,” Fox went on, “it’s a guinea to a gooseberry she only gets a lifer. What do you reckon, sir?”
“Oh, yes,” Alleyn said, looking at Troy. “It’ll be that if it’s not an acquittal.”
“But surely—” Troy began.
“We haven’t got an eye-witness, Mrs. Alleyn, to a single action that would clinch the case. Not one.” Fox got up slowly. “Well, if you’ll excuse me. It’s been a long day.”
Alleyn saw him out. When he returned, Troy was in her accustomed place on the hearthrug. He sat down and after a moment she leant towards him, resting her arm across his knees.
“Nothing is clear-cut,” she said, “when it comes to one’s views. Nothing.” He waited. “But we’re together,” she said. “Quite together now. Aren’t we?”
“Quite together,” Alleyn said.
The End
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