Family Matters

by Anthony Rolls

  Phoebe could not restrain a little start of alarm and surprise. “Please go on,” she said quietly.

  “Now, on Thursday night Mrs. Kewdingham says to me, ‘You need not be back till eleven, Martha. I can do most of the washing-up myself,’ she says. Never before had she offered to do such a thing—never. She’d got some new green glasses and she’d got a bottle of burgundy, and I could see she was all in a flutter about something. I come in at half-past ten, when they’d got Mr. Kewdingham on the sofa and the doctor was there. When I’d done what I was told to do, I went downstairs and had a look at the dining-room. The green glasses had been took away and washed and put away—all the other things was just piled up anyhow and anywhere. You may say it’s only my ignorance, Mrs. Kewdingham, but I know there was something wrong, and I believe them glasses had something to do with it. You see, it was my evening off; and so Mrs. Kewdingham laid the table. I’ve been thinking about it ever since, and I know positive there was something wrong about them glasses. Then there’s a bottle gone from the bedroom…I would have spoke to the old gentleman, but then he’s that curious and ancient—I couldn’t tell how he would take it, you see. Then, there’s another thing, Miss Kewdingham—Perhaps I ought not to have done it—”

  Martha hesitated. She knew that she would have to be careful.

  “You may trust me,” said Phoebe.

  “Well, it’s like this. Mr. Harrigall left after the funeral yesterday, as you know, miss. In the evening, about half-past eight, Mrs. Kewdingham gave me a letter addressed to Mr. Harrigall. ‘Here, Martha,’ she says, ‘just run out and post this for me, will you—I’m terribly busy.’ I took the letter and went out with it, but before I got to the pillar-box I felt it was wrong somehow, and so I—I—I thought I would give it to you instead. Here it is, Miss Kewdingham; and, of course, if you like to blame me you’re free to do so.”

  Opening her smart little hand-bag, Martha produced the letter.

  For a moment Phoebe paused. Then she took the letter and turned it over in her hand.

  “No, Miss Kewdingham!” said Martha, in a glow of hot reproach, “I’ve not opened it; if that’s what you think.”

  “I don’t think anything of the sort,” Phoebe replied. A whole multitude of new, disquieting ideas filled her mind. She recalled a number of sinister fragments in the conversation of Mrs. Pyke. She remembered what she herself had observed on different occasions. Tolerant by nature and with no disposition to meddle or pry, she was unaffected by the prevailing rumours. But here she was confronted by a definite responsibility, by something more substantial and more redoubtable than mere suspicion. She was a woman of quick resolve, and she now decided that she would act on her own initiative, with secrecy and with considered method. Having thanked Martha and obtained her address, she impressed upon her the desirability of absolute silence. Then she went back to Mrs. Pyke, who was grimly finishing her breakfast.

  “Martha tells me that she is leaving. Evidently there’s a lot to be done, a lot to be cleared up; and I should like to stay here until to-morrow, if you can manage—”

  “Certainly, my dear. I am very glad to hear you say so. I am not at all surprised. Indeed, I think it is your duty. Robert is much too old, and Richard is too easy-going; and as for Bella and Ethel—what do they know about business? And then, you know, that woman has never taken the slightest interest in family matters.”

  3

  The Chief Constable of the Shufflecester City Police, Colonel Henry Dowser Drayford, D.S.O., was a burly, boisterous man with a flashing red moustache and a sharp staccato manner. He had a constitutional grin upon his face, which, combined with his bristling hot moustache, gave him the appearance of a tiger-man.

  On the afternoon of the 1st of May, Colonel Drayford received in his office a tall, venerable gentleman who was carrying a brown-paper parcel.

  “Mr. Robert Henry Kewdingham? Pray take that chair, sir.”

  The old man sat down, not without dignity, putting his parcel on the edge of the colonel’s desk. He had come up a flight of stairs to the office and he was out of breath.

  “Bitter constraint—” he mumbled.

  “Eh? What’s that? Please explain your reasons for coming here.” The Chief Constable tapped a pencil sharply on his blotter.

  “I will be as brief as I can,” said old father Kewdingham. “I have come to see you about the death of my poor son, Mr. Robert Arthur Kewdingham.” On hearing these words, Colonel Drayford could not refrain from uttering a quick explosive sound, though it would have been hard to say whether he was thus giving expression to surprise or annoyance.

  “That is what I have come to see you about,” the old gentleman continued, fixing his eyes upon the colonel in a melancholy though resolute manner. “I am very dissatisfied, very uneasy. You will appreciate, sir, the difficulties of my situation. It is by no means pleasant to have to say what I am about to say—a terrible duty, sir, I can assure you. I must ask you to listen with all your sympathy, my dear sir, and with all your consideration. You will understand, I know, the extreme delicacy—my great sorrow—”

  Colonel Drayford impatiently twiddled a rubber date-stamp on the corner of his desk. His fiery face did not promise the understanding of anything delicate.

  “My great sorrow—of course, you have heard the talk about my daughter-in-law and Doctor Wilson Bagge. I very much regret having to mention this. I fear it is necessary.”

  “Talk, talk, talk, sir!” replied the colonel, chopping out his words like a ventriloquist. “Talk, did you say? Gad, sir! I’ve no time for listening to talk. Please let us come to the point.”

  “I believe my son was poisoned.”

  Again Colonel Drayford made a sudden explosive noise. He looked up sharply. “Poisoned? Why, and by whom? What makes you think it? Why have you waited so long? Have you said anything about it? What is your evidence? Why didn’t you speak to the doctor?” He shot out his questions like a burst of rapid fire.

  “I suspect the doctor himself.”

  “What! Do you understand what you are saying, sir? Doctor Bagge? Why, sir, Bagge is a friend of mine, and a man of excellent reputation, a most popular man. What you say, if repeated elsewhere, would be highly scandalous. You had better be careful, sir; you had better be careful. Here, of course, it’s a privileged communication. But positively absurd—”

  “Pray listen, Colonel Drayford. The illness which led to my son’s death undoubtedly began when Doctor Bagge gave him a certain medicine. Never mind, for the moment, what made me suspicious. Here is a bottle of the medicine. What has occurred since the death of my poor son has confirmed my suspicions. If you would rather that I communicated with the Home Office—” He was rigid, firm, insistent, even harsh. He now faced the grinning tiger-face of the colonel with a stern determination.

  “Quite absurd, Mr. Kewdingham. Let me look at the bottle.”

  After much fumbling and fiddling with a disordered mass of string and of crackling paper, the bottle was produced. It was half full of a cloudy pink mixture.

  “You had better leave it here, perhaps. But how can I tell where you got it from, eh? You ought to have called in the police, my good sir. I will make one or two enquiries. And I warn you—not a word. Not a word to anyone. I shall communicate with you in due course.”

  He struck a metal bell on his desk. A policeman entered.

  “Now, sir, I must attend to other matters. Good morning, sir. Mackey, show this gentleman out, and then tell Inspector Miles that I want to see him—tell him to bring those papers about the Sibley Hall case.”

  A few minutes later, the chief was writing a memorandum. He looked up at the clock as the inspector came into the room.

  “Look here, Miles—this Kewdingham affair.—We shall have to do something about it. You remember that young lady who came here this morning?”

  “Miss Phoebe Kewdingham, sir?”


  “Phoebe. Yes; that’s right. Her father has just been here. It’s really very odd, the ideas these people have got into their heads. Tuh! Just listen to this…Now I want you to run over to Wyveldon this evening, taking Sergeant Hopkey with you, and get a statement from that girl Miss Kewdingham told us about—Martha—Martha something or other—”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “And look here, Miles. Caution her—put the fear of God into her. You never can tell what’s behind these rumours. There has been a lot of talk about the death of this man Kewdingham. I’ve heard it myself.”

  “Yes, sir; there’s been some very dangerous talk, too. Bound to be trouble before long, if I’m not mistaken.”

  4

  On the 2nd of May, Doctor Bagge was talking to Mrs. Kewdingham. They were in the drawing-room of Number Six. Bertha was looking somewhat haggard, though very graceful in her black clothes.

  “That mixture, by the way. Did you find the bottle? No? Well, I must say it’s rather odd. I wonder if he was taking any dope, or quack medicine, or anything of that sort. You see, I remember noticing that bottle in the bedroom. Please don’t imagine that I have been worrying about a trifle. But I should like to know—”

  Bertha looked at him sharply. Did he suspect anything? Of course not!

  “Perhaps you would like to see the medicine cupboard.”

  “Well, well! I don’t want to seem inquisitive. Still, if you would allow me—”

  “Yes, do. It would relieve my own mind, after what you have been saying.”

  They went up to the bathroom and the doctor opened the cupboard.

  “Ah!” The little man gave a chirp of astonishment. “Good gracious! What an amazing collection! I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  He deftly poked among the tinkling bottles, the innumerable packages and boxes. Some he merely lifted up and put down again, and some he took out and examined carefully. The bottles made a faint crystalline sound as he moved them, jars rattled, corks plopped, the lids of boxes grated or squeaked; and still he went on, shaking the bottles, holding them up to the light, smelling them, reading the labels. He dipped his finger daintily in powders or pastes, occasionally sniffing and even tasting. Bertha watched him grimly. He was fumbling among the discarded lotions with a tush-tush! of disapproval.

  “I don’t like the look of some of these things—not at all! This may be arsenic…And what’s this?—Sugar of lead? How very extraordinary!” He frowned. “I had no idea he had such a deadly assortment.”

  He went on, fumbling in the secret recesses of the top shelf.

  “Hullo! What on earth is this?”

  He had fished out a little cylindrical object, wrapped in an outer cylinder of paper which was bound with a piece of thin ribbon. From the paper wrapping he now withdrew a very striking object: a blue glass phial with a silver filigree mounting.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what it is,” said Bertha. “I’ve never seen it before. It looks like one of those old-fashioned scent-bottles.”

  The doctor pressed open the silver top of the phial, a kind of hollow stopper with a cork lining which fitted very tightly; it worked on a hinge and was held in position by a snap fastening. He sniffed lightly. A subtle, peculiar smell, not unlike the scent of a warm cherry-orchard when the trees are in blossom.

  “Ah!”

  He drew himself up very rigidly, holding the phial in one hand and looking at Bertha.

  “Well?” said Bertha, twitching her eyebrows.

  Doctor Bagge could see that she was not particularly interested. Instead of replying he put the phial to his nose again, and then he slowly walked over to the window. He looked closely at the filigree pattern—unmistakably oriental. He shook the little flask up and down. He held it to the light, as though he was admiring the lovely blue. Then he saw a medicine-glass on the window-ledge, and into this he tipped a few drops out of the phial. He sniffed again.

  “Bless me! This is most extraordinary!”

  He took the glass to the basin and rinsed it out with a more than usual degree of thoroughness. Holding the pretty blue flask in his hand, he looked again at Mrs. Kewdingham.

  “You are sure that you have never seen this before?”

  “No. I have just told you so. I had my orders to leave the cupboard alone.”

  “And the cupboard was never locked?”

  “Not so far as I know.”

  The doctor stood there for a minute in prim, irritating silence. He kept the phial in his hand and stared at it with an air of pure abstraction. He was thinking hard. Indeed, the cupboard had now given him more than enough to think about.

  “What is it?” said Bertha. “Can you tell?”

  “A form of atropine, I should imagine. Enough to kill a whole family.”

  The paper cylinder, with its band of pink ribbon, lay on the window-ledge. Bertha took it up.

  “Look here,” she said, “this is a letter or something of the sort. We had better read it.”

  Pinching the cylinder lightly, she slipped off the ribbon. On the paper, written in faded brownish ink, she read the following remarkable words:

  “This phial was given to me by the Rajah of Pyzaribad. It is one of the many curious gifts presented to me by His Royal Highness in 1863, as tokens (he assured me) of gratitude and esteem. I had been successful in treating the indisposition of one of his favourite ladies, under circumstances which were certainly delicate and possibly dangerous. He did not tell me precisely what the phial contains, but gave me to understand that it would enable me to remove any person who was troublesome to me, without exposing me to the risk of a painful investigation. A few drops, he told me, would be enough. Such gifts are by no means uncommon, as many Englishmen can testify, and of course I could not dream of refusing it. I told the Rajah, with a smile, that it was not likely to be of any use to me, but that I appreciated his kind thought and greatly admired the pretty workmanship of the silver mounting. There can be little doubt that the phial contains a preparation of Dhatoora (datura stramonium) with a more than usually high percentage of hyoscyamine and other poisonous alkaloids. Of its taste I have no knowledge, but it has a slightly acrid smell and is almost colourless. I need hardly say that I keep it merely as a curiosity! Many of my friends have told me that I ought to throw the stuff away, merely retaining the flask; but somehow it would seem a pity to do so.

  “Lionel Tighe Howard, Surgeon, Bombay, June 17, 1881.”

  The writing was that of Robert Arthur’s grandfather, that famous and eccentric Indian surgeon, known to everyone in the Presidency as Bombay Howard.

  5

  The doctor continued his morning round, precise, discreet, friendly and careful as ever. And yet, inside his impenetrable shell of decorum, the doctor was profoundly uneasy.

  He knew well enough that ugly rumours concerning the death of Kewdingham, originating he could not say how or why, had already come to the ears of the police. Now his adventure in the medicine cupboard had given him a whole series of unexpected shocks. There was no limit to the amount of mischief a man might do, either to himself or to others, with such an assortment of deadly drugs. The blue phial was a startling discovery, but it was only one among other discoveries equally strange. If you began to speculate on all the possible uses and abuses of the drugs in that cupboard, the imagination recoiled in hopeless bewilderment.

  Bagge was chiefly disturbed by the loss of the medicine-bottle, the bottle containing his pink invention. Who had taken it away? And why had it been taken away? He had noticed it on the table at the time of Kewdingham’s fatal illness, and then—he could not say precisely when—it had disappeared. Doctor Bagge was a subtle fellow, and he knew how much old father Kewdingham disliked him. Aged men are generally suspicious, incapable of drawing the ordinary line between fantasy and reasonable conjecture. Hence they often arrive at a true conclusion by working on a theo
ry which a vigorous normal mind would never entertain. Suppose the old man had taken the bottle for sinister reasons of his own? He could easily make trouble. The doctor was not so wide of the mark; indeed, he was much closer than he imagined. Then, when he found the blue phial, he saw a possible cause of Kewdingham’s death. He recalled the symptoms; his new suspicion became almost a certainty. Wisely or unwisely, he had persuaded Bertha to let him take the phial. He decided to forestall any enquiry…If his prescription was called in question, he had an excellent defence, and he would be able to produce evidence which pointed to suicide. He did not know the real strength of his position; he was led by a fortunate instinct.

  6

  Colonel Drayford, the Chief Constable of Shufflecester, was at his desk. He had just been having a talk with Inspector Miles. A case of assault was giving them a lot of trouble. The colonel was in a glow of exasperation, his red moustache flickered like a flame under the deeper red of his angry countenance. He was fiercely snapping away in a long chitter-chatter of questions, instructions and cursings when the telephone bell cut him short.

  “Yes, yes…Bagge?…Well, look here; I’m frightfully busy just now…Urgent?…Oh! I see…Can you make it eleven-thirty?…Very good then. Right you are.”

  And at the half-hour exactly the neat little man tripped into Drayford’s office.

  “I see you’re busy, colonel; but you know I wouldn’t bother you unless it was necessary. And it is. Very necessary, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Sit down, Bagge. I suppose it’s one of your usual cases.”

  “No, it isn’t. I wish it was.”

  “Well, fire away, there’s a good chap. I have to be in the court by twelve, and we’re not quite ready.”

  “It’s about the death of a patient of mine. You have probably heard of him. Kewdingham. I believe he was poisoned.”

  The Chief Constable fairly bounced in his chair. He could not get any redder, but he went all of a cloudy purple. He struck violently the bell on his desk.