The Problem of the Green Capsule

by John Dickson Carr

  “I do,” returned Elliot grimly.

  “If somebody in this house did it, who could have done it? Joe Chesney was out on a case; if he didn’t leave the case until midnight, he’s certainly out of it. Wilbur Emmet was nearly killed by the real murderer. There’s nobody else except a couple of maids and a cook, who could hardly qualify. The only other alternative—yes, I know this sounds fantastic—but there’s only one other possibility. This would mean that the murderer was one of the three persons who were supposed to be watching the show in this room. It would mean that this person crept out of here in the dark, coshed poor Emmet, put on the clothes, gave Chesney a poisoned pill, and crept back in here before the lights went up.”

  “No, sir, it doesn’t sound likely,” agreed Elliot dryly.

  “But what else have we got?”

  Elliot did not reply.

  He knew that they must not theorise now. Until the postmortem, they could not even say with definiteness how Marcus Chesney had died, except that it had probably been by one of the cyanides in the prussic acid group. But the Chief Constable’s final possibility had already occurred to him.

  He looked round the Music Room. It was about fifteen feet square, panelled in grey picked out with gilt. The French windows were closed in with heavy velvet curtains of a dark grey colour. As for furniture, the room contained only the grand piano, the radio-gramophone, a tall Boule cabinet beside the door to the hall, four light arm-chairs upholstered in brocade, and two footstools. Thus the centre was comparatively clear; and a person—if he took care to avoid the grand piano by the windows—could cross the room in the dark without bumping into anything. The carpet, they had already seen, was so thick as to prevent any footstep being heard.

  “Yes,” said the Chief Constable. “Test it.”

  The electric switch was behind the Boule cabinet beside the door to the hall; Elliot pressed it down, and darkness descended like an extinguishing-cap. The lights had been so bright that a ghost-pattern of the electric candles in the chandelier still wove and shrank in front of Elliot’s eyes in the dark. Even with the curtains open, it was impossible to distinguish anything against the overcast sky outside. There was a faint rattle of rings as someone drew the curtains close.

  “I’m waving my hands,” came the Chief Constable’s voice out of the dark. “Can you see me?”

  “Not a thing,” said Elliot. “Stay where you are; I’m going to open the double-doors.”

  He groped his way across, avoiding a chair, and found the doors. They opened easily and almost without noise. Shuffling forward some eight or nine feet until he found the table, he felt for the bronze lamp. He turned the switch, and the dead white glare sprang up against the opposite wall. Then Elliot backed away to study it from the Music Room.

  “H’m,” said Major Crow.

  The only living thing in that “office” was the clock. They saw it, ruthless and busy, on the mantelpiece of dark polished wood behind the head of the dead man. It was a fairly large ormolu clock, having a dial fully six inches across, and a small brass pendulum which switched and swung in moving gleams. Beneath it sat the dead man, undisturbed. The time was five minutes to one.

  The table was of mahogany, with a brown blotter; and the bronze lamp stood towards the front of it slightly to (their) right. They saw the chocolate box with its design of blue flowers. By standing on tiptoe, Elliot could see the pencil lying on the blotter, but there was no trace of the pen Marjorie Wills had described.

  In the wall towards their left, they could make out one of the French windows. Against the wall to their right stood a roll-top desk, closed, with a green-shaded lamp over it; and a very long filing-cabinet in steel painted to represent wood. That was all, except for one more chair and a pile of magazines or catalogues spilled on the floor. They saw it framed in the proscenium arch of the doors. Judging by the position of the chairs in the Music Room, the witnesses had been sitting about fifteen feet away from Marcus Chesney.

  “I don’t see much there,” observed Major Crow doubtfully. “Or do you?”

  Elliot’s eye was again caught by the folded piece of paper he had seen before, stuck behind the handkerchief in the pocket of the dead man’s jacket.

  “There’s that, sir,” he pointed out. “According to what Miss Wills told us, that must be the list of questions Mr. Chesney prepared.”

  “Yes, but what about it?” almost shouted the Chief Constable. “Suppose he did prepare a list of questions? What difference——?”

  “Only this, sir,” said Elliot, feeling tempted to shout himself. “Don’t you see that this whole show was designed as a series of traps for the witnesses? There was probably a trick in half the things they saw. And the murderer took advantage of it. The tricks helped him; covered him; probably still cover him. If we could find out exactly what they saw, or thought they saw, we should probably have a line on the murderer. Not even a lunatic is going to commit such a slapdash, crash-bang, open murder as this unless there was something in Mr. Chesney’s plan that afforded him protection, threw the police dead wrong, provided him with an alibi, God knows what! Isn’t that clear?”

  Major Crow looked at him.

  “You will excuse me, Inspector,” he said with sudden politeness, “if I still think your manner has been odd all evening. I am also curious to know how you knew the surname of Miss Wills’s fiancé. I hadn’t mentioned it.”

  (Oh. hell!)

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Not at all,” returned the other, with the same formality. “It doesn’t matter in the least. Besides, with regard to the list of questions, I am inclined to agree with you. Let’s see if we learn anything from them. You’re right: if there are any catch questions, or questions about catches, they will be here.”

  He pulled the paper out of the dead man’s pocket, unfolded it, and spread it out on the blotter. Here is what they read, in neat copper-plate handwriting.

  ANSWER CORRECTLY THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

  1. Was there a box on the table? If so, describe it.

  2. What objects did I pick up from the table? In what order?

  3. What was the time?

  4. What was the height of the person who entered by the French windows?

  5. Describe this person’s costume.

  6. What was he carrying in his right hand? Describe this object.

  7. Describe his actions. Did he remove anything from the table?

  8. What did he give me to swallow? How long did it take me to swallow it?

  9. How long was he in the room?

  10.What person or persons spoke? What was said?

  N.B.—The LITERALLY correct answer must be given to each of the above questions, or the answer will not count.

  “It looks straightforward enough,” muttered Major Crow, “but there are catches. See the N.B. And you certainly seem to be right about the fake swallowing, Inspector. See question 8. Still——”

  He folded up the paper and handed it to Elliot, who put it carefully away in his note book. Then Major Crow backed away towards the double-doors, his eyes fixed on the clock.

  “Still, as I was saying——”

  A shaft of light cut across the Music Room as the door to the hall opened. The silhouette of a man was framed there, and they saw a bald head gleam against the light.

  “Hullo!” said a voice, sharp and going a little high, “Who’s in there? What are you doing there?”

  “Police,” said Major Crow. “It’s all right; come in, Ingram. Put the lights on, will you?”

  After fumbling a moment on the wrong side of the door, the newcomer groped behind the Boule cabinet and switched them on. And Elliot realised that his first brief impression of Professor Gilbert Ingram, gained in a courtyard at Pompeii, would have to be revised a little.

  Professor Ingram’s round, shining, amiable face, his tendency towards portliness and his somewhat bouncing movements, gave the impression that he was short and tubby. This was aided by the twinkle of a guileless-se
eming blue eye, a button nose, and two tufts of dark hair ruffled out over the ears on either side of his baldness. He had a trick of lowering his head and looking up with a quizzical expression which matched his attitude towards life. But all this looked subdued now; subdued, and a trifle scared. His face was mottled with colour; his shirt-front, which had a deep crease, bulged out around the waistcoat like dough rising in an oven; and he brushed the fingers of his right hand together as though to remove chalk from them. Actually, Elliot saw, he was of middle height, and he was not noticeably fat.

  “Reconstructing, eh?” he suggested. “Good evening, Major. Good evening, Superintendent.”

  His manner had a casual courtesy which included everybody in the flick of a smile, like the flick of a whip over a team of horses. Elliot’s chief impression was of a strong and penetrating intelligence looking out of that guileless face.

  “And this, I suppose,” he added hesitantly, “is the Scotland Yard man Joe Chesney was telling me about? Good evening, Inspector.”

  “Yes,” said Major Crow. He went on with some abruptness. “Look here, you know—we’re depending on you.”

  “Depending on me?”

  “Well, you’re a professor of psychology. You wouldn’t be fooled by tricks. You said you wouldn’t. You can tell us what really happened in this damned show. Can’t you?”

  Professor Ingram took a quick look through the double doors. His expression altered still more.

  “I think so,” he said grimly.

  “Well, there you are!” said Major Crow, with a gesture of rising argumentativeness. “Miss Wills has told us there was some jiggery-pokery intended.”

  “Oh. You’ve seen her?”

  “Yes. And, from what we can gather, this whole show was designed as a series of traps——”

  “It was more than that,” said Professor Ingram, looking him straight in the eyes. “I happen to know it was designed to show how the chocolates at Mrs. Terry’s shop were poisoned without anyone seeing the murderer do it”

  Chapter VI

  PREPARE FOR TRAPS

  To hide the association of several new thoughts, Elliot walked into the office before anybody commented. He switched on the green-shaded lamp over the roll-top desk there, and turned off the Photoflood bulb on the table. By contrast the ordinary light seemed feeble, but it still showed Marcus Chesney huddled in his last chair.

  “So? two days before he was murdered—according to Superintendent Bostwick—Marcus Chesney had been asking the police questions about the exact size of the chocolate-box at Mrs. Terry’s shop. A box of cheap chocolates lay on the table now, and had figured in the “show.” But how?

  Elliot returned to the Music Room, where Major Crow was attacking the same problem.

  “But how,” inquired the Chief Constable, “could he illustrate how somebody had poisoned the chocolates at Mrs. Terry’s by having the bogey-man—whoever it was—shove a green capsule into his mouth?

  Professor Ingram lifted his shoulders slightly. His eyes remained strained when he glanced into the other room.

  “I can hardly tell you that,” he pointed out. “But, if you want my guess, Chesney meant this green-capsule incident to be only a side-line; a part of the show; perhaps not even a necessary part of it. My guess is that the real incident we were to watch was something to do with a box of chocolates in there on the table.”

  “I think,” said the Chief Constable, after a pause, “that I shall keep out of this. You carry on, Inspector.”

  Elliot indicated one of the brocaded arm-chairs, and Professor Ingram sat down gingerly.

  “Now, sir. Did Mr. Chesney tell you that the purpose of this performance was really to show how chocolates could be poisoned without anybody noticing it?”

  “No. But he hinted at it.”

  “When?”

  “Shortly before the performance began. I taxed him with it. ‘Taxed him with it!’ There’s a phrase for you: it sounds like farce comedy.” Professor Ingram shuddered a little, and then his guileless look became shrewd. “Look here, Inspector. I knew at dinner there was something queer about Chesney’s sudden and headlong desire to give us a show. The subject seemed to be introduced casually, and to work up by an argument among us to his final challenge. But he meant to introduce that challenge all along. He meant it before ever we sat down at the dinner table. I could see that; and young Emmet was grinning like a wolf whenever he thought nobody saw him.”

  “Well, sir?”

  “Well! That is why I objected to his postponing the show until so late, and taking nearly three mortal hours after dinner before he was willing to get down to business. I will interfere with no man’s vanities, which I hold are sacred things: but that seemed to be carrying it too far. I said frankly, ‘What’s the game? Because there is one.’ He said to me privately, ‘Watch with care, and you may see how Mrs. Terry’s chocolates were poisoned, but I’m betting you won’t.’ ”

  “He had a theory?”

  “Evidently.”

  “A theory which he was going to prove in front of all of you?”

  “Evidently.”

  “And,” asked Elliot casually, “he suspected who the poisoner was?”

  Professor Ingram glanced up briefly. There was a thick shade of worry in his eyes; if the term had been applicable to so genial a face, you might almost have said that he looked haunted.

  “That was the impression I gathered,” he admitted.

  “But didn’t he tell you—give you any hint——?”

  “No. Otherwise it would have spoiled the show.”

  “And you think the poisoner killed him because he knew?”

  “It. seems probable, yes.” Professor Ingram stirred in his chair. “Tell me, Inspector. Are you an intelligent man? A man of some understanding?” He smiled curtly. “One moment, please. Let me explain why I ask that. With all due deference to our good friend Bostwick, I hardly think that this affair so far has been handled in a way that will do any credit to him.”

  Major Crow’s expression became bleak and stiff.

  “The Superintendent,” he said slowly, “has been trying to do his duty——”

  “Oh, stop that balderdash,” said Professor Ingram without offence. “Of course he has. God help us, so have all of us! But doing our duty doesn’t mean getting at the truth; sometimes it means just the reverse. I don’t say there is any police plot against Marjorie Wills. I know there isn’t, though it seems a pity that the niece of a friend of mine cannot even walk down the High Street without danger of having mud thrown in her face by the very children. What real effort has been made to solve the problem of those poisoned chocolates? What approach has been made to it? What kind of crime is it? Why were those chocolates poisoned at Mrs. Terry’s?”

  He struck the arm of the chair.

  “Superintendent Bostwick,” he went on, “supports the soothing, sweeping doctrine that loonies are loonies; and there you are. And to bolster up their accusation against Marjorie, they cite the parallel case—a fine parallel, by gad!—of Christiana Edmunds.”

  Major Crow did not comment.

  “Similar? There never were two cases more wildly dissimilar, on the only grounds that are important: motive. Christiana Edmunds was mad, if you like, but she had as sound a motive as most murderers. This young lady, in the Brighton of 1871, fell violently in love with a married doctor who gave her no encouragement. She first attempted unsuccessfully to poison the doctor’s wife with strychnine. It was discovered; she was forbidden the house, and went away in a frenzy. To show that she was innocent, as she claimed— to prove there was a poisoner at work in the town, who could not be Miss Christiana Edmunds—she conceived the idea of doctoring the chocolate creams in a sweet-shop, and killing people wholesale. Very well; where is the parallel? Has anything like that ever been suggested about Marjorie? In heaven’s name, where is the motive? On the contrary, her own fiancé, after coming to Sodbury Cross and hearing what is being said about her, is on the point of get
ting cold feet and slipping away.”

  At this point Professor Ingram’s expression was what can only be called cherubically murderous, emphasised by the crackling of his shirt-front. He laughed a little, and grew more quiet.

  “Never mind,” he said. “You were asking the questions.”

  “Has Miss Wills,” Elliot asked unexpectedly, “ever been engaged to anybody before?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “Has she, sir?”

  Again Ingram gave him that brief, indecipherable glance. “No, not that I am aware of. I believe Wilbur Emmet was and is intensely fond of her. But Wilbur’s red nose and his general—I am sorry—his general unattractiveness would hardly recommend him, even if Marcus had favoured it. I hope I am speaking in confidence?”

  Here Major Crow intervened. “Chesney, I am told,” he observed in a colourless voice, “used to discourage all possible suitors from coming here to see her.”

  Professor Ingram hesitated.

  “In a sense that is true. What he called caterwauling disturbed his smooth life. He didn’t exactly discourage them, but——”

  “I was wondering,” said Major Crow, “why this boy Marjorie met abroad got Chesney’s approval so easily.”

  “You mean,” the professor spoke bluntly, “you mean he was becoming anxious to get her off his hands?”

  “I did not say that.”

  “My friend, the devil you didn’t. In any case you’re wrong. Marcus liked young Harding; the boy has prospects; and his exaggerated deference towards Marcus may have helped. But may I ask why we are arguing about this? Whatever else is true or false in this world”—here Professor Ingram’s shirtfront gave a sharp crackle—“it is absolutely certain that Marjorie had nothing to do with killing her uncle.”

  Again it was as though the temperature of the room altered. Elliot took charge.

  “You know what Miss Wills thinks about it herself, sir?”