The Poison Pen

by Evelyn James

  “Let’s go into the kitchen and you can explain,” Park-Coombs glanced over his shoulder. “I prefer to talk somewhere without a dead man peering over my shoulder. You can remove him now Deáth.”

  The coroner gave a nod. The Inspector and Clara went through into the kitchen and sat down at a small table with three chairs.

  “Well, Clara?”

  “At the beginning of this week I was contacted by a number of concerned local residents who had received poison pen letters. Mr Johnson was among them.”

  “Ah.”

  “Due to the delicate nature of the business, the victims were not inclined to go to the police for fear the scandalous rumours in the letters would be made public. They asked me to discreetly investigate the matter and stop whoever was responsible. Subsequently I have been interviewing those who have received letters, and today I was to speak with Mr Johnson. Upon my arrival no one answered the door and this seemed odd. I peered in the window and, as you can imagine, was rather startled to see my client hanging from the ceiling.”

  “And what secrets did Mr Johnson have that this poison pen had unearthed?”

  “Mr Johnson, unbeknown to most of his neighbours, had been married. But his wife had left him for someone else, or at least that is what the letter implied. I think the poor man felt shamed by the situation and the letter tipped him over the edge.”

  “But he waited until you were coming before killing himself.”

  “That, I imagine, was to ensure his body was discovered. Or perhaps, at the last moment, he couldn’t face speaking about his failed marriage to me. We shall never know now what he was thinking before he made the decision.”

  “No.”

  “Inspector, what is the punishment for writing a poison pen letter?”

  Park-Coombs scratched at his chin thoughtfully.

  “It is a tricky one. Naturally, if the information in the letter was a lie you could have the writer for defamation of character. But if the information is true, or the manner of the letter is just nasty and not actually making direct accusations, it tends to fall under harassment or causing a public nuisance. If the culprit is discovered, often we will just give them a warning.”

  “And what about now, with a man dead?”

  “No judge in the country would rule that a foul letter was the direct cause of Mr. Johnson’s suicide. At best the next of kin might be able to take the writer to court on a civil charge of harassment. They would probably receive a fine, if the case could be proved.”

  Clara mused on this. It did not seem right that a person who was causing such harm should escape punishment.

  “I shall take what I can get,” she said after a moment. “From what I have seen, this letter writer is a coward who hides behind anonymity. I suspect a visit from the police alone would be so shameful to them it would put a stop to the matter.”

  “But you need proof, Clara.”

  “I’ll get it,” Clara assured the Inspector. “Don’t worry about that.”

  “And what about other matters?” The Inspector dropped his voice to a whisper and looked to Clara anxiously.

  “I am working on that too,” Clara promised.

  Behind them, in the front room, there was a soft thud as Mr Johnson’s body was removed from the light fixing.

  Chapter Twenty

  At seven o’clock that evening, Clara returned to the hospital. It was now the official visiting hour and there was no receptionist to bark at her as she slipped into the foyer with a number of other visitors and headed upstairs. On the second floor she made her way to Brompton’s private room and knocked on the door. There was a muffled response; it could have been an invitation to enter, or it might have been a cough. Clara decided to bank on it being the former and pushed open the door.

  Constable Brompton was lying in bed, the top of his head wrapped round with white bandages. He opened his eyes wearily as she entered, the lids fluttering as if the light stung, then he gave a little groan.

  “Miss Fitzgerald.”

  “I am impressed you remember me,” there was a chair beside the bed and Clara sat in it. “How are you feeling?”

  “Sore. What are you doing here?”

  “Making sure you are in one piece,” Clara said calmly. “I promised Alfie Ling.”

  She waited to judge his response. There was no sign of surprise or consternation at the mention of the name, Brompton just closed his eyes to the artificial light in the room.

  “Alfie is a good friend.”

  Clara relaxed. The confirmation assuaged the last of her doubts.

  “Mr Brompton, might I say you seem a lot more alert than at our last meeting. I rather feel you took me for a fool last time.”

  Brompton grimaced a little, and it was no longer because of the bright light.

  “I didn’t know if I could trust you.”

  “I gathered that. I might also suggest that you suffered very little in the way of brain damage from your previous accident. You have been masquerading as a simpleton to deter your would-be assassins, am I correct?”

  Brompton risked opening his eyes to look at her.

  “How much has Ling said?”

  “Not a lot, but it was when he said you had worked on ‘hush-hush’ operations during the war that it dawned on me. A clever man, such as yourself, would recognise when his life was in danger and do what he could to protect himself. At least until he could deal his own blow against his attackers.”

  “You are quite right,” Brompton sighed. “I knew the only chance I had to stay alive was to pretend the accident had robbed me of my wits. I had to make it seem as though I was no longer a threat to my attackers. In any case, you are wrong to say it caused me no brain damage. I suffer the most appalling headaches and I do have lapses in memory, though not as dramatic as I have feigned. Who else knows all this?”

  “No one, though I would suspect your attackers will be less comfortable leaving you alive after your visit to the archives. That was extremely risky.”

  “Yes, but after your visit I was concerned my assailants were checking up on me and I couldn’t wait any longer to find answers. I stumbled upon something last year, but the irony is that I am not entirely sure what that ‘something’ was. I clearly scared someone by asking the wrong question, I simply don’t know which of the questions I asked was wrong, if you see what I mean.”

  “I do,” Clara replied. “I also know you are in great danger and I would like to help, if you are prepared to trust me.”

  “That will put you in danger too,” Brompton protested.

  “Constable, my life was threatened last year due to someone in the police double-dealing. There is a possibility that, should one of my future cases lead me in the wrong direction, my life will be in danger from this person once again. It is, therefore, for my own self-defence that I intend to root out the crook among your colleagues.”

  “You know that there is a toad among us, then?”

  “Yes.”

  Brompton closed his eyes again. His head hurt and he felt so tired. Every time he became conscious it seemed only a fragile interval before he descended back into oblivion. He tried to flutter open his eyes once more, but they resisted him. Sleep called irresistibly.

  “Before I lose you Brompton, what were you looking for in ‘C’ section?” Clara asked quickly as Brompton’s breathing grew deep and his face relaxed into the softness of sleep.

  He mumbled something. She leaned forward over his mouth to try and hear.

  “Brillian…” the words were almost silent. Clara leaned closer, but Brompton had fallen to the call of sleep and was gone. All she had was a muttered sentence that sounded like ‘brilliant chance’. What did that mean? That if Clara returned to ‘C’ section she had a good chance of finding an answer? Perhaps there was some clue in the section itself that would aid her. Clara sighed. Or perhaps it had been the ramblings of a semi-conscious man.

  Clara sat back down in her seat and checked her watch. There was a go
od forty minutes left of visiting time and she was reluctant to leave, not so much because she thought Brompton would rouse again, but because she was curious to see if anyone else appeared. Would Brompton’s killer put in an appearance, for instance?

  Unfortunately she was to be disappointed. No one else showed up during visiting time, not even Brompton’s parents. When the bell rang to say it was time for visitors to leave, Clara headed for home feeling she had gained very little that evening, other than discovering that Brompton was not as out-of-his-mind as she first thought.

  ~~~ * ~~~

  Tommy was alone in the parlour when someone rapped at the door. He rolled himself into the hall and opened it before Annie could appear. On the doorstep was Agatha.

  “I must talk with you!” she said as soon as she saw him. “I think something awful has happened to the woman in the hotel room next to mine, but when I speak to anyone they think I am a nosy old bat!”

  Agatha threw her hands up in the air.

  “Oh, well, maybe I am a nosy old bat, but I swear I heard the woman groaning and she did not come down for dinner. We had made an arrangement to dine together, you see, and I am deeply concerned. Did I tell you I worked in a hospital pharmacy? I know the signs of drug abuse and this dear lady is an addict of some description, I am sure. I suspect ether, rather an old-fashioned drug in this day and age, but she is a woman who would have been young when it was fashionable. If she has been taken ill it could be very serious.”

  Tommy tried to calm her.

  “Explain it all to me, from the start,” out of the corner of his eye he spotted Annie hiding in the shadows below the staircase.

  “The woman, Mrs Welk, arrived at the hotel the same day I did. That first night the dining room was rather crowded and the management politely asked if I would mind allowing Mrs Welk to dine at my table. I said she was most welcome. It was rather dull sitting there on my own. Mrs Welk sat down and we started to talk. I noticed at once the woman was under the influence of something. Her eyes were dull and they darted about the room. She would begin to speak and forget what she was saying. Sometimes she would giggle for no reason. Despite that, she was pleasant company, and we discovered a shared love for card games and small dogs. After that we arranged to dine together most nights,” Agatha paused to catch her breath. “At supper today Mrs Welk looked out of sorts. I asked if she had a headache coming on, and she responded that she rather thought she did. After supper she went to her room and I promised to call on her for dinner just before seven. She said she thought she would feel better by then and would be glad of some dinner, having hardly touched her supper. I went to my own room and began typing up some notes. Mrs Welk’s room, as it happens, is next to mine and I cannot comment politely on the quality of our shared wall. It is thin, to say the least, and you can hear the person moving about next door. All was silent for a time, I assumed Mrs Welk was resting, then I heard something like a crash, as if a glass had been knocked off a table. I pricked my ears up and a moment later I could have sworn I heard a groan.

  “Naturally, I was by now concerned, and I went to Mrs Welk’s door, but there was no answer to my knock. I returned to my room and thought things over for a while, it was nearly half past six and I should soon be calling on Mrs Welk for dinner. I really hoped I had allowed my imagination to run away with me and had mistaken a very simple accident for something more dramatic. I went to her door again and knocked. There was still no reply. I called her name, but still nothing. I was very concerned. My instinct was that the dear woman had overdosed herself on something, as I said before she was a person who I felt had a carefree way around drugs. I thought, perhaps, she had taken a sleeping draught or, Heaven forbid, a dose of morphine. It is scandalous what a woman with money can get her hands on. But the hotel manager will not listen to my concerns, Tommy. Mrs Welk could be dying, or already dead, and he simply suggests she did not want to come down for dinner. Can you imagine?”

  Tommy could, all too easily.

  “I need your help,” Agatha concluded. “I thought you might have some influence you could bring to bear.”

  It was at this moment that an exhausted Clara arrived home. She looked wearily at Agatha and wondered if they were entertaining her again that night. She hoped not. All she really wanted was a hot bath and a quiet dinner.

  “The person with influence around here is Clara,” Tommy said as soon as he spied his sister. “Maybe she can help? Agatha believes a guest at the hotel she is staying at is seriously ill, but the manager won’t listen.”

  “Ah,” Clara said, only half-listening.

  “You must come at once Miss Fitzgerald,” Agatha seized her arm. “Time is of the essence!”

  Clara gave a helpless look to Annie who had emerged from the shadows of the staircase and was standing in the hallway. The girl merely shrugged, what was there to be done when an emergency was afoot. With a tired sigh Clara turned to Agatha.

  “You better explain this all to me on the way.”

  Agatha was staying at the Grand Hotel, a model establishment, aside from the paper thin quality of its internal walls. It hosted tea dances and had a full-time band, along with a pianist who played soothing drawing room numbers during tea. It had recently been refurbished in the latest fashion, with shiny white and red tiles in the foyer and faux pillars decorated with blue palm fronds. It was as if someone had visited an Egyptian hotel, liked it, and then tried to create an anglicised version back home, only without the sunshine or the sand. It looked rather ‘overdone’ on a dark February evening.

  Agatha took Clara straight upstairs to Mrs Welk’s room and once again rapped on the door. There was silence. Clara reflected this had rather been the pattern of her last few days. Should she ever knock on a door and someone actually respond, she would be quite stunned.

  “You see my dilemma?” Agatha asked.

  Clara held up a finger and retreated to Agatha’s room. There she found an empty glass and help it against the dividing wall. She pressed her ear against it and listened. For a seemingly endless time neither woman dared to hardly breathe, and then Clara moved from the wall.

  “It’s faint, but I believe someone is groaning in there.”

  She offered the glass to Agatha and the procedure was repeated, this time with the other woman listening at the wall. When she finally moved she looked pale.

  “I believe you are right.”

  “Let’s speak with that manager again.”

  Downstairs, the Grand Hotel manager was tucked away in his office. Agatha, acting the indignant guest (which was not difficult considering the circumstances), asked to see him at once. The manager, Mr Miller, was summoned and appeared at the front desk.

  Mr Miller had served as manager at the Grand for a decade, and he was used to dealing with whatever perceived outrage his guests felt the need to complain about. He was not, however, used to Clara. As soon as he appeared in his black suit and grey bowtie, she descended on him with irrepressible determination.

  “Mr Miller, I insist you summon a doctor at once!”

  Miller blinked at her.

  “Are you ill?” he tried to place Clara as one of his guests.

  “No, but my friend upstairs is. Gravely, I fear. She is lying groaning in her room, and I dare say has little time left. I fear if you do not summon a doctor at once, then it must be the coroner.”

  There is one thing that no hotel manager wants and that is a scandal. At the words ‘coroner’ Mr Miller paled a little, Clara dug in the knife.

  “I feel it my duty to inform you, that my dear friend may have taken a dangerous substance. If that is the case, the police may need to be summoned as well.”

  “Police?” Miller almost choked on the word.

  “Then again, if we summon the doctor and he transfers her to the hospital, the matter will be out of your hands. Policemen are not that irregular a sight at the hospital to cause alarm, and certainly the coroner would not raise a flutter there. Though, should he appear here�
�”

  “I shall summon a doctor at once!” Miller said without hesitation. “Which guest is unwell?”

  “Mrs Welk,” Agatha chipped in. “But she has locked her room door and we cannot enter.”

  “I have the master key,” Miller assured them. “I shall only take a moment.”

  While Miller headed for the telephone, Clara ushered the shaken Agatha to a seat in the foyer. Clara’s feet hurt, but she feared that if she sat down she would fall asleep from exhaustion. She compromised by resting her arms on the back of Agatha’s chair and balancing one foot off the ground by the toe of her shoe, to take the pressure off her heel. Opposite where she was standing a man in a dinner suit was leaning against a stand of magazines, smoking a cigarette. He was unremarkable, except he was of Chinese descent, and there were few such exotic souls wandering around Brighton. Aside from his Asian origins, he could have been a quintessential English gentleman in his top hat and tails, his hair oiled back and cut short; he smoked elegantly, as if it was an art-form.

  Clara realised she was staring and dropped her head. Tiredness had stripped her of her inhibitions. She felt sorry for Mrs Welk, but the call of a warm fire and a comfy chair made it a fleeting sympathy. Drugs were becoming an endemic problem within the country, and there was only so much empathy you could have for a person who deliberately took such dangerous substances. There was something self-destructive about drug addicts that Clara couldn’t quite fathom.

  Miller returned from his office and flapped around the ladies.

  “The doctor will be here shortly. Can I get you anything? A glass of brandy?”

  Agatha shooed him away with one hand.

  “I had a dog like him, always fawning and pawing at your feet. Quite distracting,” she said.

  Clara finally gave in to her weariness and sat down in one of the neat, low-backed armchairs the hotel kept in the foyer. She slipped off a shoe and rubbed her heel.

  “It has been quite a day,” she said, almost to herself. “I don’t suppose you would know if Mrs Welk intended to overdose herself?”