Speedy Death

by Gladys Mitchell

  He took a newspaper from his tunic, unfolded it, placed it on the ground, and seated himself. Then he produced his note-book, licked his pencil, and wrote busily for several seconds. Carstairs seated himself on the edge of a stone garden ornament and hummed softly.

  The inspector finished writing, and rose, tidily picking up the newspaper as he did so. ‘And that brings us back to Eleanor Bing,’ he placidly observed.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Carstairs was obviously startled.

  ‘I mean this.’ And from his tunic-pocket the inspector drew a little bottle more than half-filled with small round white tablets. He extended the bottle so that Carstairs could decipher the chemist’s label upon it, but did not offer to relinquish his hold.

  ‘Aspirin,’ said Carstairs. ‘What’s the point, inspector?’

  The inspector returned the bottle to its place.

  ‘Exhibit One,’ he replied contentedly, ‘to prove that Miss Eleanor Bing is a very poor liar.’

  ‘Eh?’ Carstairs was still puzzled.

  ‘Didn’t she tell all of you that she went into Miss Clark’s room that night for aspirin tablets to relieve her neuralgia? Well, I found this bottle in the very front of the little cupboard in her own room. It ought not to be difficult to find out whether it was bought yesterday, and, if so, who has had—let’s see!’

  He took out the bottle again.

  ‘It ought to contain fifty, according to the label. It actually does contain’—he removed stopper and cotton wool, and shook out the tablets on to his hand—’thirty-one. Well, it’s fairly safe to assume that she hasn’t taken nineteen of them since the night before last, so, if I can prove that nobody else has had nineteen out of this bottle since then, I’ve got reason for saying that Miss Bing told a lie when she said she went to Miss Clark’s bedroom for aspirin. This, taken in conjunction with the fact that the finger-prints on the poker are those of Miss Bing, justifies me in assuming that she dealt the blow to that Guy Fawkes. Now, the snag will be to prove whether she thought she was trying to kill Miss Clark, or whether she knew it was only a dummy, and, if the latter is the case, why she wanted to do such a darn fool thing—especially in the middle of the night.’

  He paused, and drew breath.

  ‘I hope I haven’t been boring you,’ he said apologetically. ‘I don’t usually say off a whole long piece like that at once, but I wanted to get the hang of my ideas.’

  ‘Inspector, you belie your name,’ said Carstairs, laughing. ‘Boring you may be, but boring you are not.’

  They walked up to the house together.

  Breakfast was on its last legs, as Garde observed to them when they entered by the French windows. That was to say that Eleanor, who found herself sufficiently recovered from her experiences of the day before to resume her usual position as mistress of ceremonies at the breakfast-table, was pouring out a last cup of coffee for the indolent Bertie, who never dreamed of appearing at breakfast until everyone else had finished. This habit, which would not have endeared anyone else to Eleanor, elicited from her, in this case, nothing more than a long-suffering moan of motherly reproachfulness.

  The inspector came to the point in his blunt but effective way.

  ‘I hope it isn’t the aspirin habit that makes you sleep so sound, Mr Philipson,’ he observed, with heavy jocularity.

  ‘Aspirin? Good Lord, no! I leave that harmless, unnecessary drug to the ladies,’ said Bertie, laughing.

  ‘Indeed,’ retorted Eleanor, rising swiftly to the bait, ‘I am sure, Bertie, that you have no reason for saying so when I am the only member of my sex present. Personally, I rarely, if ever, have recourse to such a means of inducing sleep. In fact, I only keep aspirin in the house at all for the sake of the maidservants, in case they should suffer from aching teeth, or some such affliction common to the lower classes. I am constantly saying to Mabel, “Why don’t you have your teeth properly attended to? You are an insured person. It will cost you nothing. I will arrange your work so that you can visit the dentist at a convenient time!” But no!’ cried Eleanor, warming to one of her favourite subjects. ‘The lower classes have no forethought! Mabel became quite impertinent. I was obliged to pull her up very sharply.’

  ‘Do you never take aspirin, Miss Bing?’ pursued the inspector. ‘When did you purchase the last amount of it?’

  ‘I am at a loss to understand your interest in the subject, inspector,’ observed Eleanor coldly, ‘but, since you ask, I will tell you that I purchased the last bottle of aspirin tablets——’ She pulled at a gold chain, which, in defiance of feminine fashion of the moment, she wore suspended round her neck, and which terminated in a large flap-pocket in her house-frock. A small, black, stiff-covered book came into view. She consulted it, and then gravely announced: ‘On May 15th I bought a bottle containing fifty aspirin tablets at the chemist’s in Wavertree.’

  ‘And you’ve purchased none since?’ the inspector persisted.

  Eleanor returned the little book to its place, pursed her lips, shrugged her shoulders, and, ignoring the inspector entirely, asked: ‘More coffee, Bertie?’

  Carstairs and the inspector returned to the garden.

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Boring at last, when they had traversed the gravel path round the lawn, ‘what do you make of her?’

  ‘I think she has forgotten she went to Miss Clark’s room that night with the poker,’ answered Carstairs deliberately.

  ‘Forgotten she went there?’ The inspector was incredulous.

  Carstairs smiled ruefully and nodded.

  ‘You see, it was fairly obvious,’ he said, ‘that your questions about the aspirin touched no responsive chord in her mind.’

  ‘Or else she’s deeper than you think, sir,’ the inspector pointed out. ‘It’s wonderful how some of these people refuse to give themselves away, you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Carstairs, ‘that is true, I think. All the same, I had a good deal of experience during the war in interrogating people. I speak German, and so I was given the job of interviewing German prisoners, and I learned to detect, almost infallibly, whether a man was concealing anything from me. Now, I watched Eleanor Bing very closely while you were speaking to her, and I feel certain that your questions irritated her simply because she considered them pointless.’

  ‘You said just now that she has forgotten she ever went into Miss Clark’s room that night,’ said the inspector, wrinkling his brow. ‘Do you mean she is suffering from loss of memory?’

  ‘Not exactly. I think it likely that the shock resulting from her being nearly drowned has not yet worn off, and the incidents which produced the shock are filling her mind to the exclusion of everything else.’

  ‘Then you mean she might have obtained aspirin since then and forgotten she did so?’ pursued the inspector.

  ‘I think nothing is less likely,’ pronounced Carstairs, filling his pipe. ‘To begin with, it seems that she keeps a record of her purchases in that small book which we saw her produce from her pocket, and, to go on with, as she was in bed all day yesterday, she could not have gone out and bought anything, could she? All you have to do——’

  ‘Thank you, sir. No need to teach me my business,’ chuckled the inspector. ‘I’ll go and find out what parcels were delivered at the house yesterday and the day before, and who went out shopping and what they bought. No, I don’t smoke when I’m in uniform, sir, thanks very much.’

  Left to himself, Carstairs retired to the summerhouse for a quiet smoke, and found the little building in the possession of Mrs Bradley, who, rather to his surprise, was reading, with a frown of concentration, the best-selling novel of the month. She put the book down when she saw him, and grinned fiendishly.

  ‘Good morning,’ said she. ‘At what hour are we due to start for the church? You see me attempting to get my mind in tune with the great event. Dear young people! I hope they will be very, very happy together. And how hugely delighted our dear Eleanor is, isn’t she? Have you observed that fact
?’

  ‘No,’ replied Carstairs, ‘I can’t say that I have. Rather a curious attitude on her part, if all that I suspect about her is true.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ contradicted Mrs Bradley, with spirit, ‘it is absolutely in line with all her behaviour throughout these curious proceedings.’

  ‘Expound,’ said Carstairs, ‘for, behold, we have an hour and forty minutes before we need start for the church.’

  ‘Of which period of time I shall require to spend the hour in donning my wedding garments,’ remarked Mrs Bradley. ‘But the forty minutes is completely at your disposal. First of all, I wish you would tell me your version of all that has occurred since last we talked together.’

  ‘I don’t think I have one,’ Carstairs began. ‘I thought Eleanor killed Mountjoy, and I’m sure she intended to kill Dorothy Clark. But since then somebody has certainly tried to kill Eleanor herself, and so I am forced to the conclusion either that Mountjoy’s death was an accident—which I am not prepared to believe for a single instant, in spite of what I’ve said to the inspector—or else that the murderer is a homicidal maniac who accounted for Mountjoy, attempted to kill first Dorothy Clark, and then Eleanor Bing, and, for all I know to the contrary, may be lurking at the back of the summer-house at this very moment waging to make an attempt on you and me. The only question is, who is it?’

  Mrs Bradley cackled.

  ‘And you, brave man, sit here calmly talking about it,’ she jibed. ‘Run for your life! Run!’

  ‘Well, if you know a more feasible explanation, give it,’ said Carstairs, laughing. ‘But, first of all, there is just one point about the whole affair that I can’t get clear in my mind. It’s trifling, I admit, but it worries me considerably.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Mrs Bradley, with quiet relish. ‘I thought you’d notice the scream.’

  ‘You are a witch! I’ve always thought as much, and now I know it,’ said Carstairs. ‘What on earth gave you the clue to my thoughts?’

  ‘Nothing. After all, the scream was the extraordinary part of the business, so why shouldn’t you notice it?’

  ‘Passing over your quite unique habit of reading my mind,’ said Carstairs, ‘I admit at once that you are right. Why did Eleanor scream like that?’

  ‘Well, why do women usually scream?’ asked Mrs Bradley.

  ‘They scream because they are in agony, or because they are in danger, or because they are badly frightened.’

  ‘Well, let us say because they are suddenly frightened,’ corrected Mrs Bradley. ‘Very well. We can dismiss the idea that Eleanor was in agony, I think. She seemed quite remarkably healthy both before and after the scream.’

  ‘She said she had neuralgia,’ Carstairs interpolated.

  ‘Yes, she said so,’ Mrs Bradley agreed, ‘but, even if that were true, people don’t usually give one loud, terrifying scream that wakes the whole household when they have neuralgia. Besides, if she did scream with pain, she could have said so. There was no reason against saying so.’

  ‘That leaves us with the alternatives of danger and sudden fright,’ said Carstairs.

  ‘Exactly. Let us examine them. The view that she was in danger in that bedroom must not be lost sight of, and the view that something in the bedroom frightened her is undoubtedly true. She admitted it herself, but her explanation of what caused her sudden fright is amazingly thin. She said that when she turned on the light she saw that dummy figure in the bed, when she had expected to see Dorothy Clark. Now I contend that Eleanor was not telling the truth. To begin with, a glance should have sufficed to tell her what the dummy was. To go on with, although I grant it may have startled her, I very seriously doubt whether it would have startled anyone except an extremely hysterical person into screaming at that pitch. Now, Eleanor is not an hysterical subject, for, if she were, the probabilities are that she would have gone on screaming, aren’t they?’

  Carstairs nodded.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Like Portia’s, your exposition is sound. The sight of the dummy figure did not cause her to scream. The question is, what did?’

  ‘Let me conclude my argument about the dummy figure,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I think Eleanor told a lie when she said she turned on the light. Her fingerprints were on that poker. The head of the dummy was staved in by a heavy blow. The inference is that Eleanor struck that blow. The poker is a particularly weighty one, which is, or rather was, used and kept in the dining-room. What was Eleanor doing with it in the middle of the night? She must have intended to kill Dorothy Clark with it. Would she have risked turning lights on, if she had had this purpose in her mind? No! no! The moonlight, she judged, was sufficient to guide her aim. She struck the blow, and then——’

  ‘Screamed,’ said Carstairs. ‘But why?’

  ‘Because somebody was hiding in Dorothy’s room that night,’ said Mrs Bradley, quietly, ‘and this person sprang out and confronted Eleanor immediately she struck that heavy blow. It was this person who switched on the light. It was at sight of this person, it was at this sudden, utterly unexpected appearance, and his fierce, almost murderous attitude and expression, that Eleanor emitted that fearful scream. Not only did she realize that someone had seen her kill Dorothy, but she thought her own life was in danger from the eye-witness.’

  ‘But she didn’t kill Dorothy,’ said Carstairs feebly.

  ‘No, but she thought she had. It was not until the unknown person pointed to the bed that Eleanor realized her own life was safe.’

  ‘But—but I’m hanged if I see where you are getting your facts from,’ said Carstairs. ‘It’s all out of my depth.’

  ‘These are not facts. This is only my reconstruction of what must have happened that night. You admit that it accounts for Eleanor’s dreadful scream as no mere sight of a dummy figure could do, don’t you?’

  ‘I admit that it is a clever reconstruction,’ said Carstairs, smiling.

  ‘Yes, but don’t you see that it also accounts for the attempt made on Eleanor’s life? If Eleanor had struck Dorothy instead of the dummy figure that night, she herself would never have left that room alive. But because Dorothy was safe the unknown witness allowed Eleanor to go. Later on, however, he thought better of allowing her to escape scot-free and remain at liberty to injure Dorothy on some future occasion, so he entered the bathroom next morning, and, as he thought, drowned Eleanor in the bath.’

  Mrs Bradley broke off, and emitted another of her hideous yelps of laughter.

  ‘I expect he worked tremendously hard yesterday morning trying to bring her round,’ she observed. ‘It must have been a staggering shock to him when she recovered, and he realized that he had taken all that trouble and run all that risk in vain.’

  Carstairs frowned.

  ‘You say “him,” and that means you are certain you know the identity of this unknown person,’ he said.

  ‘I am not certain of his identity, although I could make a guess at it,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘But I am sure he is a man and not a woman, because we can all account for Eleanor, and Dorothy and I can account for one another, because we slept in the same bedroom, and, as I don’t think it was one of the maids,’ she added, cackling, ‘that leaves, besides the menservants, yourself, Alastair, Garde, and Bertie Philipson. Come along. Take your choice. Which one will you have?’

  Carstairs pondered.

  ‘Garde Bing is the likeliest,’ he said slowly, ‘but you won’t persuade me that he was the unknown witness if you try from now until my dying day!’

  He spoke with some heat. Mrs Bradley shook her head. ‘A fair guess,’ she said, ‘but, I think, a mistake. Try Bertie Philipson.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  A Confession

  ‘BERTIE PHILIPSON?’

  Carstairs laughed heartily.

  ‘That is where your excellent reconstruction falls flat,’ he said.

  ‘Very well,’ agreed Mrs Bradley, quite unruffled. ‘Then perhaps you’ll tell me why, of all the members of the household, servants included,
Bertie was the only person who did not join the rest upon the landing outside Dorothy’s room.’

  ‘Wasn’t Bertie there?’ asked Carstairs slowly, although his own retentive memory had answered the question almost before the words had left his lips.

  ‘You know he was not. Don’t you remember at breakfast next morning Garde teased him about his non-appearance? Besides, I counted up, and I know he was not there. He was hiding still in Dorothy’s room. Naturally he could not step out and advertise his whereabouts. Young men don’t usually spend the night crouching behind the head of someone else’s bed, especially that of a young unmarried woman. Besides, there was the heavy poker and the dented mask to be accounted for. So Bertie, when he heard the pandemonium following on Eleanor’s startled scream, went to earth again. And small blame to him,’ added Mrs Bradley, chuckling. ‘I could wager that he spent a remarkably uncomfortable half-hour, too; for, besides the discomfort of his crouching position, he could not be sure that some one of us would not spot him. He wondered, also, whether Eleanor would give him away.’

  ‘Yes, if what you say is true, why didn’t she?’ asked Carstairs. ‘She would not have needed to alter a word of her own story, and it would have made her screaming appear the most natural thing under the circumstances. Even the fingerprints on the poker need not have proved an insurmountable difficulty, for she could have said that Bertie used some sort of a holder for it and that she had handled the poker last—snatched it away from him, or something, after he had struck the blow.’

  Mrs Bradley shook her head at him playfully.

  ‘There is a master of sensational fiction lost in you,’ she said.

  ‘I like that,’ said Carstairs warmly. ‘Who devised this whole remarkable account of the proceedings on that interesting night, pray?’