Speedy Death

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘That’s interesting, sir. May I ask a question or two?’ said Boring, who had drawn out his friend the note-book and was engaged in scribbling down what Sir Joseph had related.

  ‘By all means. One or two suggested themselves to me when I heard Pamela’s story, and I put them to her. I expect yours will be much the same questions, so carry on.’

  ‘Well, sir, how long did it take Mrs Bradley to get the thermos flask and go out again?’

  ‘I asked that, and Pamela was certain that Mrs Bradley came in so hastily that she knocked her arm against the wardrobe, snatched up the flask, which was on a small occasional table near her chair, and was off again immediately.’

  ‘Hum!’ said the inspector, in a disappointed tone. ‘I was hoping Miss Storbin might have seen her tampering with the flask in some way.’

  ‘I pressed the point,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘but the girl remained firm.’

  ‘How was it she could see all this in the bedroom?’ was the inspector’s next question.

  ‘Mrs Bradley was using an electric reading-lamp,’ replied Sir Joseph. ‘It did not shine on Pamela’s face so as to interfere with her slumber, but its light was sufficiently diffused for her to see Mrs Bradley and observe her actions.’

  ‘And—most important, sir—how can Miss Storbin be sure that Mrs Bradley did not return to the bedroom after getting the flask?’

  ‘I asked her that, and she said she was feeling frightened, and, as Mrs Bradley had not returned after what seemed to her a long time, she got out of bed and put a chair against the door. The chair was still there in the morning, and she was still alone in the bedroom.’

  ‘Hum! Seems conclusive to me, sir. I don’t know what you think.’

  The Chief Constable shook his head sadly. He had detested Eleanor Bing.

  ‘I certainly will question Mabel Cobb about the voice that answered her, sir,’ said Boring, after a short pause. ‘If she really did hear it, it’s a fairly valuable bit of circumstantial evidence. It eliminates all the men, I suppose, and that leaves Mrs Bradley, Miss Storbin and Mrs Garde Bing. Well, we can eliminate Miss Storbin. It’s hardly probable that it was Mrs Garde Bing, as she slept with her husband for the first time that night, and so, I suppose, was hardly likely to leave him and climb into Eleanor’s bed before six-thirty in the morning; and that leaves us with Mrs Bradley again.’

  ‘It seems so,’ the Chief Constable assented, without noticeable enthusiasm. ‘Well, we’d better drive on. I expect I’ve missed the resumed inquest proceedings altogether. With luck we might be there in time to hear the verdict.’

  ‘They won’t start without me, sir,’ grinned the inspector as he started up the car. ‘I’m one of their chief witnesses.’

  ‘By the way,’ said Sir Joseph, as they drove along, ‘the fact that the key did not fit the bedroom door is in Alastair Bing’s favour, isn’t it? A guilty man wouldn’t have thrown the wrong key away. He’d have kept it, to show that he couldn’t get into Eleanor’s room with it. By the way, did you notice anything about the key of the bathroom door when they forced it open?’

  ‘When I arrived, sir, there was no key in the bathroom door on either side,’ said Boring, consulting his note-book, for the Chief Constable had again taken the wheel.

  The car turned in at the gates of Chayning Place.

  ‘And yet the bathroom door was locked, and they had to break it down to get in,’ said Sir Joseph pensively.

  ‘Yes, sir, and the key that won’t fit Eleanor Bing’s room fits the bathroom door,’ said the inspector, with sly triumph.

  ‘And the locks of the upper and the lower bathrooms are identical,’ concluded Sir Joseph.

  Boring’s face fell, for a moment, to think that he had overlooked this interesting fact, but soon brightened again.

  ‘Then Mrs Bradley could have handed Alastair Bing one bathroom key, and used the other herself, while still keeping possession of Eleanor’s bedroom door key!’ he cried exultantly.

  Upon the inspector’s arrival, the adjourned proceedings took their course. Carstairs, who had given what further evidence was required of him, and then gone out into the garden, now re-entered the house, and walked into the morning-room just as the jury filed out. The coroner scowled at him, and Carstairs sat down as unobtrusively as possible. Mrs Bradley leaned across to him and whispered loudly enough for everybody in the room to hear:

  ‘That silly little man thinks I did it.’

  Carstairs fought down an overmastering impulse to giggle like a schoolgirl, and glanced involuntarily at the coroner, who, of course, had heard the remark, and, scowling more fiercely than ever, tapped irascibly on the table and said irritably:

  ‘Silence, please, silence.’

  In the midst of the silence that followed, in trooped the jury, after an absence of two minutes. The foreman, who, under ordinary circumstances, was the local butcher, rendered the verdict in the voice he usually kept for advertising the more luscious portions of his stock. ‘Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown.’

  Carstairs drew a deep breath. ‘And death was due to poisoning, not drowning,’ he said to himself. ‘Hum! Doesn’t sound very nice. I wonder why they found for murder, though? It could just as easily have been suicide, according to the evidence—or lack of it!’

  With her uncanny trick of reading minds, Mrs Bradley, having drawn him into the garden, began to talk about the very point that was puzzling him.

  ‘Of course, that horrid little coroner told them to say it was murder,’ she stated. ‘Otherwise, I am certain they would have said suicide.’

  ‘Told them?’ questioned Carstairs, with an amused twinkle in his eyes.

  ‘Well, it amounted to that. His whole attitude was a disgrace. We all know the ordinary law courts are not impartial, but a coroner’s court ought to be. Those poor idiots would just as easily have said suicide if he had encouraged them. But no! He intended to have it murder, and brought in as murder it is! It makes matters so very awkward for me, you see, now that coffee cup has been washed up. Of course the horrid little fellow fastened on that, and there you are!’

  Carstairs gave a long whistle. ‘No wonder you are perturbed,’ he said. ‘Good Lord! Yes, it’s a pity Mabel Cobb couldn’t leave well alone!’

  ‘Good Lord indeed!’ said Mrs Bradley, with spirit. ‘I shall find myself in the dock before many weeks are out. You mark my words!’

  Carstairs made sympathetic noises, but, as usual, could think of no adequate reply.

  ‘I shall plead not guilty,’ said Mrs Bradley firmly, ‘and I shall get Ferdinand Lestrange to conduct my case.’

  ‘He is a very young man, isn’t he?’ said Carstairs doubtfully.

  ‘He is thirty-nine, and was born on my eighteenth birthday,’ Mrs Bradley promptly replied. ‘Oxford 1908 to 1911, called to the bar in 1914, Great War 1914 to 1917. Invalided out in June, 1917. Now a K.C.’

  ‘You seem to have followed his career with some minuteness,’ said Carstairs, amused.

  ‘Well, he is my son,’ was Mrs Bradley’s somewhat startling reply. ‘By my first husband,’ she added. ‘A clever boy, Ferdinand. Besides, it will make an immediate appeal to the jury—the dutiful and anxiety-racked son defending his poor old mother against the monstrous, foul, and calumnious charge of being concerned in a murder!’

  Her harsh cackle of eldritch laughter filled the summer air with hideous merriment.

  Carstairs shivered in spite of the sun’s warmth. Extraordinary woman!

  ‘It seems to me that you are in an infernally awkward position,’ he said slowly. ‘If there is anything I can possibly do——’ He stopped short. ‘After all, you are not arrested yet,’ he said hopefully.

  ‘Am I not?’ said Mrs Bradley, with her mirthless chuckle. ‘Look!’

  From the house two men were advancing. Both were clad in police uniform. At about twenty paces, the taller man halted. The other still advanced.

  Carstairs and Mrs Bradley stood waiting, both
outwardly calm, but Carstairs was conscious of the sickening thumping of his heart. It reminded him of his first tiger-hunt. He glanced at his companion. To his amazement he saw her dive into her capacious skirt-pocket and produce a small bottle and a large green-bordered handkerchief. Without, apparently, removing the cork, she tipped up the bottle on to the handkerchief and then handed the bottle gravely to him under the nose of the advancing policeman.

  ‘You might thank Dorothy very much and tell her my head is much better,’ she remarked quietly. Then, to the policeman, she said:

  ‘Well, my man?’

  ‘I arrest you for the wilful murder of Eleanor Millicent Bing,’ gabbled the officer, ‘and it is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be taken in evidence against you.’

  ‘Thank you for the kindly, timely, and exceedingly thoughtful warning,’ said Mrs Bradley, smiling. ‘Good-bye, Mr Carstairs. I perceive the gallant inspector’s hand in all this. That man has intelligence.’

  ‘I will do everything I can,’ said Carstairs, from the depths of his heart. ‘It will be quite all right, I am sure. You can’t possibly be convicted. I must get to work and find the real murderer. That will be the thing to do.’

  He stood frowning thoughtfully, and gazing after the little procession. The police certainly had not wasted much time.

  He became conscious that he was still holding the little bottle which Mrs Bradley had handed him. He looked at it curiously. It was a small, flat, dark-green bottle, with a famous perfume-maker’s name on the label, and was marked ‘Lavender Water.’

  Carstairs slipped it into his coat-pocket.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Sleuth

  AFTER THE ARREST of Mrs Bradley, Carstairs returned to his bachelor flat, and set himself solidly to the task of finding out the facts regarding the death of Eleanor Bing.

  Rack his brain as he might, he could think of no one who might be guilty of the crime.

  ‘After all,’ he said to himself, ‘it seems impossible to suspect Mrs Bradley, and yet, if she did not do it, who did? Young fellows like Garde and Philipson don’t go about poisoning people. I don’t pretend to know why it is so. They just don’t do such things. Dorothy Bing wouldn’t do a thing like that. Alastair? Well, he isn’t above committing a murder if he felt angry enough, but I don’t somehow see him poisoning anybody. It wouldn’t be sufficiently violent or picturesque for his liking. I myself didn’t do it. That brings us back to Mrs Bradley, unless it was a case of suicide after all. But there! I’ve thrashed that theory out in my own mind time and again. If Eleanor Bing had wanted to make away with herself she would have drunk laudanum, or overdosed with aspirin, or put her head in the gas-oven, or shot herself with Alastair Bing’s revolver, or opened a vein with one of Garde’s surgical instruments, but she would never have gone to the lengths of obtaining a drug like hyoscin for her purpose. Why, I doubt whether she knew such a poison existed.’

  He took up his note-book, and wrote, one on each page, the names of the fateful house-party, and against each name put down what he knew of the person, and any evidence for or against his having committed the murder.

  1. Alastair Bing.—Possible, even though deceased was his daughter, but not probable.

  2. Garde Bing.—A strong case could be made out against this boy. It seems fairly certain that Eleanor attempted the life of his sweetheart. He is a medical student, and so might have been able to obtain the drug which poisoned his sister. N.B.—This might prove a big point in Mrs Bradley’s favour. It looks as though Garde could have obtained the drug more easily than she could, although this requires proving. Moreover, there was ill-feeling between the brother and sister, although that would be scarcely strong enough to form a motive for murder. Against this must be set the important fact that G. is a normal, healthy, cheerful young Philistine; that is to say, not at all one’s conception of a poisoner; also, he has a strong alibi.

  3. Dorothy Bing.—Well, poisoning is quite as much a woman’s crime as it is a man’s—more so, perhaps, as a man tends to rely upon his physical strength more than a woman does upon hers. Nevertheless, the important aspect of character comes in again here. One cannot tolerate the thought of that charming little girl as a murderer. Still, the facts of the case must not be burked on that account. Dorothy Bing’s life had been in danger from Eleanor. N.B.—I have not had the courage to ask her whether she knew that fact. I ought to have done so. In fact, I must do so. It would clear up a doubtful point. If she did know that Eleanor meant to kill her, she would have had a powerful motive for wishing Eleanor out of the way. Undoubtedly she has become a very different person since Eleanor’s death.

  4. Bertie Philipson.—I cannot understand this young man. He poses as a butterfly, but there is something deeper in his nature than he wants one to see. He was in love with Dorothy Clark, and he certainly was quixotic enough to want Dorothy’s enemy to be out of the way. Of course, he has an alibi of a sort for that night when, presumably, the poison was administered, but that says nothing, because there is no evidence as to the exact time of death.

  5. Mrs Bradley.—The evidence points a little more to her than to anybody else at present. The prosecution is bound to stress that point about the dirty coffee cup, unless the defence can put up a good show about the wineglass which was found.

  At this point, Carstairs laid down his pen and laughed ruefully. Then he picked up his pencil, re-read his notes, looked at the clock, and determined to go for a walk and thrash the whole thing out again in his mind.

  ‘Starting from the point that poor Eleanor Bing was undoubtedly mad,’ he added, half humorously.

  An hour’s hard walking brought him no further light, and he turned into his usual place for lunch with the problem still bombarding his brain. To his relief, nobody of his acquaintance was lunching near him, for he felt in no mood for the usual urbanities. Just as he was drinking coffee, however, in came a man he had known fairly well for some years. He was a medical man, a specialist in his own line, which happened to be tropical diseases. Carstairs determined to ask him a few questions. He had his coffee taken to the doctor’s table in response to a signalled invitation, and sat down there.

  ‘What do you mean by lunching, when all your patients are clamouring for attention?’ said Carstairs, smiling.

  The other man grinned. He was tall, thin, and might easily have passed for an Oriental, so expressionless and dignified was his face, so urbane his manner, so charmingly polite and yet so absolutely non-committal his air.

  ‘My wife’s on holiday,’ he explained. ‘Must lunch somewhere, and I detest my own home when she isn’t there. Beastly month for a holiday, September, I think. But the school vacations settle these matters for us, don’t they?’

  ‘I am not a parent,’ said Carstairs dryly. ‘How is your daughter?’

  ‘Mavis? Oh, charming, charming! Of course, I very rarely see her. She is always out when I’m at home, or else in bed, or, as in this case, away with Phyllis. They’ve gone to Normandy. Do you know Normandy?’

  ‘Yes. My old nurse lives there,’ confessed Carstairs. ‘She is one hundred and two. But look here, Woodford, do you mind answering a few questions?’

  ‘My dear chap! Nothing wrong with you, I hope.’ The doctor was all professional concern at once.

  ‘No. Nothing wrong with me. But, Woodford, you have heard of the Bing case?’

  ‘I should think so! Oh, of course, you were staying there at the time. Found hyoscin-hydrobromide in the viscera, didn’t they? That’s a queer drug for a lay murderer to get hold of. Reminds me of the Crippen case. Do they know where she got it?’

  ‘Where who got it?’ asked the startled Carstairs.

  ‘Why, the woman they have arrested. Mrs Bradley, you know.’

  ‘Look here,’ said Carstairs. ‘I wanted to ask you about that drug. You see, strictly between ourselves, the other people down at the house—Chaynings, you know—don’t believe for an instant that this Mrs Bradley did it, and neither d
o I. There are various others who could equally well be suspected, as a matter of fact, but immediately the second inquest was over the police collared Mrs Bradley on very slight evidence (it seemed to us), and charged her with the crime. She is behaving rather madly, I think, by reserving her defence.’

  ‘Oh? Is she doing that? Looks fishy, you know. Much better to make a frank statement to a magistrate or the coroner. The prosecution are certain to make a big point of that.’

  Carstairs nodded gloomily. ‘She will not be persuaded,’ he said. ‘But what I really wanted to ask you was this. You say it is a queer drug for a lay murderer to procure. What’s your definition of a lay murderer?’

  The other smiled.

  ‘I mean, of course, someone who is not a medical man—or woman.’

  ‘Thank you. Would a medical student be able to procure hyoscin easily?’

  ‘Oh, I should hardly think so. Certainly not enough to kill anybody, I should imagine.’

  ‘How much constitutes a fatal dose? It was given in the medical evidence at the inquest, of course, but I didn’t make a note of it.’

  ‘A fatal dose? Oh, a quarter to half a grain, I believe, but really, you know, it is out of my line. If you want to know all about hyoscin, an asylum for the insane is your objective. It is a calmative drug, often used for cases of nymphomania, I believe, and for violent cases—homicidal mania and so on. They use it a lot in America, if you feel inclined for a short sea trip.’

  Carstairs left the doctor, feeling more downhearted than ever.

  Hyoscin was a difficult drug to obtain. It was unlikely that Garde, the medical student, could have had any quantity of it in his possession. But it was used in the treatment of lunatics—and Mrs Bradley was a psycho-analyst and a specialist in mental and nervous diseases. She had visited asylums, both public and private, in America, where the drug was commonly used.

  It looked a black, a horribly black, prospect for Mrs Bradley, if these facts came out in court.