Puzzle of the Silver Persian

by Stuart Palmer

  The coroner seemed interested, if no one else in the room did. Miss Withers saw Candida Noring stifle a yawn at the end of the aisle.

  “Aha!” cried Maggers. “But he was reinstated?”

  The captain nodded. “Investigation showed that there was nothing to show that he had done anything discreditable. The lady involved was certainly old enough to know her own mind.” There was a murmur of laughter in the court, instantly hushed by the coroner, who liked to make all the witticisms that were made.

  “And that lady, she was not a passenger aboard the American Diplomat on this present voyage?”

  Captain Everett shook his head. “She’s safe and sound in Minneapolis, surrounded by sons who are trying to make her forget her shipboard romance,” he announced.

  The coroner glared. “Please confine yourself to answering the questions.” He consulted some notes. “Oh, Captain. Is it true that there is a rule in your shipping line that only Yanks—I mean, citizens of the United States—are employed?”

  Captain Everett hedged a little and admitted that he believed so.

  “We have shown that Peter Noel was born in Montreal, a British subject,” said the coroner quickly. “How do you explain that?”

  Captain Everett was unable to explain that and clearly thought it unnecessary. He gave it as his opinion that Noel carried an American passport.

  “Then how do you—” began Coroner Maggers. He was interrupted by Chief Inspector Cannon, who had a seat at the inner table. They conferred for a moment.

  “I understand,” said the coroner testily, “that Noel carried British and American passports, as well as those of several other countries. Was this known to you?”

  “It was not,” Captain Everett snapped. “I am master of a ship, and haven’t the leisure to rummage through my crews’ duffle boxes, as your police seem to have.”

  He was told that he might step down but must remain for further testimony later on. Much ruffled, Captain Everett sank onto a bench so heavily that the floor trembled. He folded his arms and waited. The Honorable Emily turned to Miss Withers and expressed a fervent wish that “the man would get on with it.”

  A dour and elderly police surgeon was called, very evidently a man to whom inquests were an everyday occurrence. He testified that he had made an examination of the body of Peter Noel and had found that the deceased came to his death through the absorption into his system of more than six grains of potassium cyanide, taken through the mouth. Such a death would be practically instantaneous.

  Said Coroner Maggers: “In your opinion, was the poison taken in liquid or in powder form?”

  The surgeon avoided an opportunity to plunge into abstruse and technical points. The poison had not been administered in liquid form, else it would have been found in the throat. Nor had it been in the form of an open powder, which would have remained in the mouth. “It seems clear that the cyanide was wrapped in a folded bit of paper and swallowed,” he admitted.

  “Was such a bit of paper found in the stomach of the deceased?” It was. The police surgeon stepped down.

  Candida Noring was called. Miss Withers was interested to note that the transformation which had come over the girl still remained. She had dressed herself carefully and well for the ordeal, in smart woollen coat and tarn, and she went to the witness chair without visible perturbation.

  Coroner Maggers established rather quickly her identity, and the fact that she had had a room mate, one Rosemary Fraser, on board the vessel American Diplomat.

  “On the morning of September 21st, did your room mate, Rosemary Fraser, disappear from the ship?” Coroner Maggers spoke with an unwonted delicacy, and Miss Withers wondered if he had not been coached a bit by the Yard official who sat just behind him.

  Candida nodded, and then said “Yes” in a low voice.

  “At the time of the ship’s arrival in the Port of London, did you give certain information to Chief Inspector Cannon of the C.I.D. in regard to the disappearance of Rosemary Fraser?”

  “I did,” admitted Candida. “It was about—”

  “Answer the questions, please. Did this information implicate Peter Noel, bar steward of the ship?”

  Candida bowed her head. The jury was wide awake now, visibly stirring with uncertain suspicion. The young men at the press table began to make marks upon their blank white notebooks. Miss Withers leaned forward, intrigued and puzzled. But Candida Noring was permitted to step down. Cannon himself took the stand, made his oath with the ease that had marked the police surgeon before him, and sat down.

  “Chief Inspector,” began the coroner quickly, “you have heard Miss Noring’s testimony. As a result of information given to you by her, did you arrest Peter Noel aboard the vessel American Diplomat shortly after midnight on the morning of September 23rd?”

  “I made an effort to arrest him, yes,” said Cannon. “I gave him the usual caution and was about to lay hands upon his person in formal arrest when he snatched something from his right-hand coat pocket and put it in his mouth.”

  “You made no effort to prevent him?”

  The policeman paused. “It was too sudden,” he said. “I moved toward him, and so did Captain Everett and his first officer, but the man collapsed as we reached him.”

  Coroner Maggers nodded, and as a little hum arose from the press table, he plunged on.

  “Would you say that Noel’s attitude was one of perturbation and excitement, in other words, that he was in a desperate mood in which he might have taken his own life?”

  Chief Inspector Cannon was certain of it. “He seemed excited, surely,” said Cannon. “And he had a sly look, as if he was pleased with himself.”

  “Did you see what he put in his mouth?”

  The Yard man rubbed his wide chin. “It seemed to me like a bit of paper,” he said finally. “But I would not take my oath to it.”

  “You made no effort to prevent him from swallowing the paper—or whatever it was? Or to apply proper first-aid treatment?”

  Cannon looked annoyed. “I thought,” he said, “that the prisoner was trying to destroy a bit of evidence against him. Then he went down as if struck by lightning.”

  Dr. Waite leaned toward Miss Withers. “Any fool knows that there is no first-aid treatment for cyanide,” he whispered. “Why, before—”

  He was startled to hear his own name called out. After his oath, he was asked questions establishing his profession, and his billet aboard the ship. Then the coroner got down to brass tacks.

  “Dr. Waite,” he began, “as part of your equipment of medical supplies, was there a bottle of cyanide of potassium in your sick bay?”

  “There was.”

  “When was that bottle filled?”

  Dr. Waite wasn’t sure. But he had inspected all the bottles in the cabinet at the beginning of the voyage in question.

  “Tell the jury what you found when, at the instigation of the police, you looked in that poison bottle some four hours after the death of Peter Noel?”

  Dr. Waite sniggered. “I found it full of Epsom salts,” he said.

  “There was no way in which the salts could normally have been in that bottle?”

  Waite shook his head. “None whatever.”

  “Unless someone removed the cyanide and poured them in its place?”

  “No. I mean, that would be the only way.”

  “Who, in your opinion, made that substitution?”

  Dr. Waite protested that he could not swear as to that. He would rather not say.

  “Very well. Was Peter Noel in your office, where the medicine cabinet was kept unlocked, on any day immediately preceding his death?”

  Waite nodded. “On the night that Rosemary Fraser jumped overboard—”

  “Please!” cried Coroner Maggers. “We are not hearing that case. Answer the question.” Cannon leaned back in his chair.

  “On the night of September 20th,” Dr. Waite corrected himself, “Noel dropped into my office, where a number of us had congrega
ted for a friendly game of craps.”

  “Craps! Craps! Please confine yourself to the English language, which has proved extensive enough for the courts of England these hundreds of years.” Maggers grew oratorical. “Craps! What do you expect the jury to understand by that American slang expression?”

  “Craps!” reiterated Dr. Waite. He looked bewildered. “Is there any other name for it? You play the game with a pair of dice, win on seven or eleven first throw, lose on—”

  “Never mind! The jury will understand that you refer to a Yankee gambling game. Who were the participants?”

  Waite thought a moment. “Besides Noel, who stayed only a little while, there were Mr. Hammond, Mr. Reverson, the purser, the third officer, Mr. Healey, First Officer Jenkins until his watch came at midnight, and Colonel Wright.”

  Maggers nodded. “You were much engrossed in the game? So much so that it would have been possible for an onlooker to open the cabinet and swiftly make a substitution of salts for the deadly poison?”

  Dr. Waite admitted that it might have been so. He stepped down gratefully and mopped his brow beside Miss Withers, who was shaking her head rather dubiously.

  Coroner Maggers looked at his notes. Then he consulted his watch and had a brief word with Cannon.

  Then he turned toward the jury. “It seems to me that this hearing could be brought to a close without further delay,” he said.

  “Hear, hear!” said Hildegarde Withers under her breath. Maggers went on.

  “I had planned to call a dozen other witnesses, but their testimony could do no more than corroborate what you have heard. It is rather late, and we shall have to adjourn within half an hour. In spite of the unfortunate and regrettable circumstances under which it appears that Peter Noel was able to cheat justice, the case seems to be very clear.”

  Maggers glared at Cannon, who smiled sleepily. “A girl, with whom Peter Noel was implicated, disappeared from the American Diplomat. When the ship arrived in port, a high detective official went on board to make inquiries and was given information implicating Noel. While placing Noel under arrest, the man swallowed a packet of paper and immediately fell dead. We have shown that he died of potassium cyanide poisoning, and that he was in a position to have secured a supply of the poison from the medicine cabinet of the ship some time before.

  “Understand, gentlemen,” continued Maggers, who dearly loved summing up, “that in this case there can be no question arising out of the hour of death, the means used, or the method of application. I submit to you that Noel, fearing arrest for his implication in the death of Rosemary Fraser, supplied himself with poison as a last resort. It is within your power to bring a verdict against a person or persons unknown, or against any particular person, who may have administered poison to him. However, let me point out to you that there can be little question in this case of anyone administering the poison to the deceased, as cyanide is almost instantaneous in its action, which means that Noel could not have drunk or eaten anything beforehand which resulted in his death at the moment of arrest, and also let me point out to you that he was seen to place a bit of paper in his mouth and swallow it.

  “In other words, you will concentrate upon a decision as to whether or not Peter Noel met his death at his own hand or through misadventure. You will also consider the fact that Noel had already been in difficulties with his employers over an affair with a woman passenger, and that he may very well have feared final suspension over the Rosemary Fraser affair.”

  Coroner Maggers beamed on his jury. “Gentlemen, do you think that you can arrive at a verdict from the evidence brought before you?”

  Somewhere in the rear of the room, a woman snorted. It was not a loud snort, but it was a snort nevertheless. Miss Withers turned suddenly and saw Tom and Loulu Hammond. Loulu did not look like the type of person to snort, yet Miss Withers stared at the young wife very intently indeed.

  The jury was in a huddle. They had not left the courtroom, and the foreman, a thick and stolid person with watery eyes and a dirty white scarf around his throat, was haranguing his mates.

  He stood up. “Hi say…” The courtroom became tense and silent.

  “Gentlemen, are you ready to return your verdict?”

  The foreman nodded vigorously. “Has I was saying…” He nearly choked himself with his scarf. “We ’old that the deceased met ’is end through the neg—negligence of the perlice, while nervous-like on account of being arrested for murderin’ Rosemary Fraser—”

  “But you’re not to consider—” interrupted Coroner Maggers. Yet Miss Withers saw that Cannon, who had risen to his feet, was moving his lips in what seemed to be “Let it stand, man!”

  “And that he committed suicide, by his own ’and,” finished the foreman. There was a moment of silence, and then a woman rose to her feet not far from where Loulu Hammond was biting her handkerchief.

  “Stuff and nonsense,” said a clear voice. Everyone in the room turned to see the sturdy figure of Mrs. Snoaks, the stewardess. “Peter Noel was not the one to take his own life by no matter of means. He had every reason to live, he had—we was to have been married come Christmas.”

  Candida Noring’s soft laughter broke the spell, and then pandemonium reigned for a moment. Mrs. Snoaks was escorted from the court, proudly sniffling in a handkerchief. Coroner Maggers had several things to say, but before he could say them the crowd had risen, and the jury were fumbling with their hats.

  Miss Withers found herself moving up the aisle next to Candida. The girl caught her arm.

  “Do you believe what she said?”

  Miss Withers bit her lip. “Mrs. Snoaks is a fine figure of a woman,” she admitted. “But she’s at least ten years older than Noel. I’m afraid she’s letting her imagination run riot.”

  They passed a bluff and towering person who was struggling into his greatcoat. He bowed to Candida, who nodded, and then turned to Miss Withers. “That’s Colonel Wright,” she said, “and the lady helping him with his coat is his wife.”

  “Aha!” Miss Withers, owing to her being a poor sailor, had not become acquainted with all her fellow passengers on the voyage. “Colonel Wright—wait a minute. You mean he’s the man that Rosemary feared would let her family know of the scandal on board?”

  Candida nodded. “Wright worked for her father’s firm,” she said. “He left after some sort of an argument, Rosemary told me. And while she never had anything to do with him or his wife on board, she was positive that they would not let the occasion go by without carrying the bad news back to her people.”

  Miss Withers nodded absent-mindedly. “Excuse me,” she told her companion. “I want to catch up with the Hammonds.” They were ahead, arm in arm, at the doorway.

  She had a very important question to ask, but it was not to be answered for many a day. Though she was without any intention of eavesdropping, she came up swiftly behind the young couple, and heard Loulu say in a hard and unfriendly voice:

  “And this, my love, ends the play-acting.”

  With that phrase she left Tom Hammonds side abruptly and stepped into a waiting taxicab. She was whirled away, and as Miss Withers drew back beside Candida, she saw Tom Hammond holding a match several inches from the end of his pipe, with fingers that seemed to waver considerably. He gave voice to an epithet which has not been current in polite society since Elizabethan days, and sought another taxi for himself.

  Miss Withers stood still, blocking half the doorway. Her nostrils were flaring.

  Candida Noring was beside her. “You look as if you’d seen a ghost,” said Candida wonderingly.

  “I’ve smelled one,” Miss Withers told her.

  Chapter VII

  Nails for a Coffin

  SUPERINTENDENT FILSOM OF C Division leaned back from his desk in a very squeaky armchair and stared out across the muddy Thames at the uninspiring bulk of County Hall. His large and well-shod feet were resting upon a sheaf of papers marked “Andrew Todd,” and he drummed impatiently upon the arm
of his chair and wished for tea.

  But Sergeant John Secker lounged gracefully against the file cases, his rather handsome face lit by a mild inquisitiveness. The superintendent listened for a few moments.

  “Ingenious, very ingenious,” he gave as his verdict when the younger man had finished. “But, all the same, I’m inclined to take the black-bordered note at its face value. Rosemary Fraser wrote it, all right—and then doctored it up in a silly theatrical fashion. As I told you, I think she had a premonition of death. And from what I hear, she had reason enough to wish Todd all the bad luck in the world.”

  Secker nodded without enthusiasm. “That’s what Inspector Cannon said, too. And yet, sir, I’ve been wondering—”

  “You’ll get over that,” Filsom promised him. There was a knock at the door, and a somewhat doddering constable put in his gray head.

  “Lady to see you, sir,” he said. “Same lady as before.”

  “What? The Yankee schoolmistress again? Tell her—” he turned to Secker. “Sergeant, you turned her loose on me. Now it’s up to you to go down and steer her off. I’ve got other things to do besides listen to amateur Sherlock Holmeses.”

  “Right,” said the sergeant. He stood aside as the superintendent’s tea tray was brought in, and then walked down one flight of musty and ill-lit stairs to the main hall of Scotland Yard, where an angular and fuming Miss Hildegarde Withers was stalking up and down.

  “I want to know—” she began.

  “I’m with you there,” said Sergeant Secker. He led her into a little waiting room whose single window opened out upon the Quadrangle, where a solitary officer was wrestling with a tire on the rear wheel of a Flying Squad Chrysler.

  Miss Withers accepted a hard-backed chair. “I’ve come to make a trade,” she informed him. “I tried to see Chief Inspector Cannon, and he seems to be out of his office. Superintendent Filsom is too elusive. But you’ll do.”