The Piccadilly Murder

by Anthony Berkeley

  “There are a number of small things, but one in particular which makes me doubt,” said Mr. Chitterwick untruthfully, “whether Miss Sinclair did not commit suicide after all, and that is the question of the poison.”

  “Oh, yes, sir?” said Moresby. He wore the air of a university professor endeavouring to listen politely to the observations of the dullest member of his class. That is where university professors differ from schoolmasters, who make no pretence at all of politeness when listening to such observations, but simply reach out briskly for their good birch rods.

  “From what I remember of the action of the prussic acid,” continued Mr. Chitterwick, “I should have thought it a good deal more swift than in this case, considering the size of the dose. I have been working out the times, and, as near as I can put it, at least twenty-two minutes must have elapsed between the moment when I saw that man’s hand over her cup and the moment of Miss Sinclair’s death. What I really wanted to ask you, Chief Inspector, was whether you had any evidence at all to show when Miss Sinclair actually drank her coffee?”

  “None, sir,” Moresby answered cheerfully. “That would really be a bit too much to expect. But I can’t say it worries us like it seems to you.”

  “Well, have you any evidence to show when the man I saw left the lounge?” persisted Mr. Chitterwick.

  “Major Sinclair?” said the chief inspector innocently. “Yes, we’ve got that. He left almost immediately after you were called to the telephone. We’ve got four witnesses to that, if we want ’em. A party a few tables away noticed both of you go. I wish,” added Moresby with feeling, “there were more of that kind about, who really do notice things.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Chitterwick gravely. This was untrue. See was just what Mr. Chitterwick could not. Moresby’s answer had deepened rather than lessened that particular enigma.

  “And what’s more,” said Moresby, “they’re prepared to swear that nobody else went near her till you did. But I don’t think I should worry if I were you, Mr. Chitterwick, sir. There’s a bit more evidence come to light since I saw you last. We’ve got no less than three chemists now, all in London, who recognized the Major from his photographs in the papers and then properly identified him for us as a man who came to their shops trying to buy prussic acid actually the very day before the murder. What do you think of that?”

  “God bless my soul!” ejaculated Mr. Chitterwick.

  “That makes things a bit clearer for you, doesn’t it?”

  “It certainly is very striking,” said Mr. Chitterwick cautiously. “And did any of the three actually sell any?”

  “Well, no,” Moresby had to admit. “We haven’t found the bird who sold it to him yet, I must say, though we’ve combed the chemists as fine as we can and examined every poison register in London and for fifty miles round.”

  “What do you make of that, then?” asked Mr. Chitterwick with interest.

  “Why, it’s my belief that the party who did sell it is lying low. Knows he committed an irregularity, you see (because he can’t have got his poison book signed), and knows he’ll get into pretty serious trouble if it comes out. You can take it from me, Mr. Chitterwick, sir, that we never shall know who sold the Major his prussic acid; but it stands to reason that he got hold of it somewhere. We’ve got the evidence that he was trying to buy it, you see—that’s good enough.”

  “Dear me,” said Mr. Chitterwick mildly, and soon afterward took his leave. Moresby’s farewell was rather less affectionate than his greeting. Mr. Chitterwick was left with the impression that so long as he gave the evidence required of him and simply told what his own eyes had seen, Moresby was prepared to forgive him any private fool doubts and worries.

  Mr. Chitterwick made his way to Charing Cross Road. There was a good half-hour before he was to meet the others, and how can half an hour be spent better than gorming over delectable piles of second-hand books?

  In the meantime, at Chiswick, in a long, low-ceilinged drawing room, with a spinet on one side of her and a white Persian cat on the other, the mauve ribbons in her cap trembling with pleasure, sat an old lady, waiting to receive the first duke who had crossed her threshold for more than fifty years.

  X

  A FANTASTIC THEORY

  Mr. Chitterwick’s first action, after the duties of hospitality had been accomplished and his guests despatched to their rooms to dress for dinner, was to seek out his Taylor and look up the section dealing with prussic acid. What he found there made him shake his head.

  Changing, Mr. Chitterwick endeavoured to review the situation. That the whole aspect of the case had altered for him as a result of the day’s experiment was not to be denied. The fact filled Mr. Chitterwick with mingled pleasure and dismay. He was pleased—intensely pleased—that at last something had emerged from the darkness to indicate the Major’s innocence; nothing substantial, it was true, a pale, wraith-like appearance; but nevertheless something which one might hope to materialize into definite solidity. He was dismayed because his appearance seemed only to make the case more mystifying than ever; for not only did it tend to clear Major Sinclair, but its tendency was every bit as much in favour of the man who (if the Major was innocent) must have been impersonating him. And that was absurd.

  Mr. Chitterwick put the difficulty to the others as they sat in the drawing room after dinner.

  For the sake of the servants all reference to the case had been avoided during the meal, and afterward Miss Chitterwick had offered to leave the three alone to discuss it. Judith and Mouse refused to hear of her going, pointing out that her experience of life might well throw illumination on some point obscure to those with less years behind them; and nobody hinted that the life of a respectable maiden lady might not include very much experience of murder and the ways of murderers. Positively benign with gratification Miss Chitterwick remained, and her nephew noticed with interest that her manner toward himself was more like that of one human being toward another than he ever remembered.

  “You see,” expounded Mr. Chitterwick, still a little diffident in the presence of his aunt, “what I find so baffling is this: Chief Inspector Moresby tells me that this man left the lounge immediately after myself—in other words, a full twenty minutes before Miss Sinclair died. Now whatever else is obscure in the case, this much surely is certain: that this man is the murderer. And that being so, we may assume that he would not leave the lounge until he was assured that Miss Sinclair was on the point of drinking her poisoned coffee. And yet this is what Taylor tells us about the action of prussic acid.” Mr. Chitterwick flicked the pages of his well-worn copy of that work. “Um—um. . . . Ah! . . . ‘When a dose of half an ounce and upward of the B.P. acid has been taken, we may take the average period of death at from two to ten minutes.’ Um. ‘It is only when a dose is just in a fatal proportion that we find a person to survive longer.’ Well!” Mr. Chitterwick looked over his glasses at each of the three in turn, his face a picture of perplexity.

  “Taylor, you see, puts ten minutes as the limit. The mean period, in other words, is round about six minutes for a dose of the size that we know Miss Sinclair must have taken. Yet here we have twenty minutes. I confess I do not understand it at all.”

  Apparently nobody else understood it, either.

  “But isn’t this the same point that we cleared up this afternoon?” said Judith. “You remember Mouse suggested that the man probably delayed her drinking it until he was clear of the place.”

  “Yes, oh, yes; no doubt he would do that. You see . . .” Mr. Chitterwick ran his eye over the page again. “Yes, here it is. ‘It is rare that the appearance of the symptoms is delayed beyond one or two minutes.’ Um . . . ‘Convulsive breathing . . . when the coma is profound it may be stertorous . . .’ Yes. Yes, I quite agree that he would do his best to find some pretext to leave before the appearance of the symptoms. Indeed, he would have to do so. And in the case of so rapid a pois
on that would mean leaving before she had even swallowed it. But there is a very great difference between that and leaving a whole quarter of an hour before she did so.”

  “Something may have delayed her drinking her coffee,” suggested Mouse.

  “For a whole quarter of an hour?” said Mr. Chitterwick very doubtfully.

  “No woman would put off drinking her coffee for a quarter of an hour,” pronounced Miss Chitterwick with decision, drawing on her experience of Life. “Nobody but a gairl. Any sensible woman would want it hot.” For some reason Miss Chitterwick had a remarkable contempt for the young of her own sex.

  “Just what was in my own mind, Aunt,” observed Mr. Chitterwick, in mild surprise at finding his aunt and himself for once in agreement.

  “But it’s ridiculous to suppose that this man isn’t guilty,” said Judith with some impatience, though no one really had supposed anything of the sort.

  “Oh, quite,” Mr. Chitterwick hastened to assent. “Ridiculous. Nevertheless, I think we must take it as an established fact that Miss Sinclair did not swallow the poison until, at the very earliest, two-fifty-six, and probably a few minutes later. Just at the very time, in fact, that I myself was returning to the lounge.”

  “You’ve got something up your sleeve, Chitterwick,” accused Mouse.

  “Nothing, I assure you,” Mr. Chitterwick repudiated the insinuation.

  “You see some way of getting over the trouble.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Chitterwick very modestly, “I have a theory.”

  “Good man! I’ll admit that this beats me altogether. Let’s have it.”

  Mr. Chitterwick cleared his throat and glanced with some nervousness at his aunt. “It may strike you as far-fetched. Indeed, it does myself. But really——

  “In any case, I think we may say that this is an exceedingly carefully laid and clever plot. Any plot involving impersonation must be so. For instance, I need not ask you, Mrs. Sinclair, whether your husband has been trying to buy prussic acid recently; asking for it quite openly in chemists’ shops. And yet the police think they have evidence to that effect. I understand that no less than three chemists have identified Major Sinclair as having tried to buy prussic acid from them on the very day before the murder.”

  “What!” exclaimed Judith, in a horrified voice.

  “Further impersonation, you see; designed to make your husband’s guilt still more evident. Though in my opinion,” pronounced Mr. Chitterwick judicially, “the criminal overstepped himself there. Really, no one in his senses would do a thing like that if he were really guilty. Although,” he felt bound to add, “there are plenty of cases on record in which murderers have done just that very stupid thing; though they, of course, were men of very low mentality. Unfortunately, however, the police, I believe, are very little interested in questions of comparative psychology, and the distinction would not appeal to them.

  “Nevertheless, there is the fact, which goes in its turn to show the immense care and forethought which must have gone to the making of this plot and its execution. My theory, far-fetched as it may seem to you, nevertheless does allow in all this forethought a place for a consideration which must have appealed with force to so cunning a murderer, namely, the diverting, if in spite of his precautions it ever should fall on him, of suspicion from himself. And I think it is not unreasonable to do that.”

  “Is this the theory you hinted at this afternoon?” asked Mouse. “The one that was going to alter all our ideas about the case?”

  “Did I go so far as that?” said Mr. Chitterwick in concern. “Dear me, that was unpardonably rash. It is the same one, yes, but I only put it forward very tentatively, just as a basis of discussion. It occurred to me in the Piccadilly Palace in a flash of illumination, but certainly I should not have gone so far as to say that it actually will alter all our ideas; I ought not to have said more than that it might. For, really, in some ways it may seem to you quite fantastic. At least, I am convinced that the police would term it so.”

  “Well, Ambrose, what is it?”gruffly but sensibly demanded Miss Chitterwick.

  “Why,” said Mr. Chitterwick with becoming diffidence, “that I was entirely mistaken when I imagined that the man was glaring at me in order to make me look away from him. That he was doing so, in fact, with the express idea of ensuring that my eyes would be riveted upon his every movement.” Mr. Chitterwick blushed slightly, as if to apologize for such a preposterous theory.

  “Nonsense,” observed Miss Chitterwick briskly, confirming any idea her nephew might have that he was being foolish.

  Mouse, however, did not look at all as if he thought Mr. Chitterwick was being foolish, while Judith gasped quite audibly. “What—what do you mean, Mr. Chitterwick?” she asked.

  Still more diffidently Mr. Chitterwick tried to explain. “Well, you know that if a person is looking at you fixedly it is impossible to look away for any length of time. One’s eyes keep wandering back to see if the person is still looking. It is quite beyond one’s power to prevent them. At least, that is what I have always found. I can’t say if everyone experiences the same feeling.”

  “Absolutely,” Mouse confirmed. “Every time. Go on.”

  “And the more the other person stares, or glares,” went on Mr. Chitterwick, encouraged, “the more inevitable it is that one must keep on peeping back. Now this man glared at me very fiercely indeed. Is it too much to suggest that he was actually ensuring that I should be staring at him just when he wanted—when he could see in the mirror, in fact, that I was actually doing so and should be bound to notice his hand hovering (rather ostentatiously, as it now appears to me) over Miss Sinclair’s cup?” Mr. Chitterwick drew a breath and looked rather redly round.

  “By Jove!” softly exclaimed Mouse.

  Judith, however, now seemed rather less impressed. “Oh, Mr. Chitterwick, surely that is too far-fetched, yes.”

  “I was afraid you might think so,” admitted Mr. Chitterwick with contrition.

  “I don’t,” Mouse defended his chief. “But I don’t quite see the idea, Chitterwick. Why should the fellow want you to see him putting the poison in her cup?”

  “Because he didn’t do so,” returned Mr. Chitterwick simply. “Because he poisoned Miss Sinclair in some other way altogether. Because he was so clever that, if suspicion did fall on him, he would have the means to clear himself absolutely and his real method of conveying the poison remain quite unguessed.”

  “He could clear himself, you mean, by pointing to the action of prussic acid and showing that it couldn’t have been through a dose in her coffee cup administered by him that Miss Sinclair was killed?”

  “That partially, no doubt. But, if my theory is true, he would have something else to support that; some piece of solid evidence which would clear him altogether, but of which we know nothing at all.”

  “Why not?” asked Mouse, relapsing into stupidity.

  Judith was quicker to read Mr. Chitterwick’s expression. “Why, because—because that piece of evidence would equally clear Lynn! That’s what you mean, Mr. Chitterwick, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Mr. Chitterwick admitted, with a modified beam. “Yes.”

  There was a moment of busy silence.

  “By Jove!” said Mouse again.

  “If I could only think so,” Judith sighed. “But really, I’m afraid—— What do you think, Miss Chitterwick?”

  “If Ambrose thinks there’s a piece of evidence like that, he’d better find it,” said Miss Chitterwick bluntly.

  “And that, I fear, will be an exceedingly difficult task,” lamented her nephew.

  Judith looked at him under thoughtful brows. “Do you intend to tell the police of this idea?”

  “I’m afraid they would find it rather fantastic,” Mr. Chitterwick confessed.

  “I think it would be useless,” said Judith with decision. “
And worse than useless. They’re convinced that Lynn is guilty. On that point, without definite evidence, we’re not going to move them. Now if there really is anything in this idea of yours, Mr. Chitterwick (though I must say candidly that I daren’t hope so), it may lead us to just such a piece of evidence. But we must take care that it is us, and not the police. If any evidence exists to clear Lynn, I don’t want it suppressed; and I’m told the police are quite unscrupulous when they’re determined on conviction.”

  “Oh, really,” expostulated Mr. Chitterwick, “I don’t think they would go to such lengths as that surely.”

  Judith looked unconvinced. “I understand they’re quite unscrupulous,” she repeated obstinately, almost angrily.

  “Well, it’s really for your solicitors to decide whether the theory should be put to the police or not, isn’t it?” Mouse suggested mildly.

  “For me,” said Judith firmly, and she looked quite capable of taking the responsibility.

  “For you, then,” Mouse agreed at once.

  Judith spoke without hesitation. “And I say no. I know solicitors. They wouldn’t listen to us. Anything that can be done we’ll do ourselves. Yes, Mr. Chitterwick?”