The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club lpw-5

by Dorothy L. Sayers

  “Juggins. You poison the half-crown with Prussic acid.”

  “Splendid! And he falls down foaming at the mouth. That’s frightfully brilliant Do you mind giving your attention to the matter in hand?”

  “You think we can leave out the taxi-drivers, then?”

  “I think so.”

  “Right-oh! I’ll let you have them. That brings us, I’m sorry to say, to George Fentiman.”

  “You’ve got rather a weakness for George Fentiman, haven’t you?”

  “Yes — I like old George. He’s an awful pig in some ways, but I quite like him.”

  “Well, I don’t know George, so I shall firmly put him down. Opportunity No. 3, he is.”

  “He’ll have to go down under Motive, too, then.”

  “Why? What did he stand to gain by Miss Dorland’s getting the legacy?”

  “Nothing — if he knew about it. But Robert says emphatically that he didn’t know. So does George. And if he didn’t, don’t you see, the General’s death meant that he would immediately step into that two thousand quid which Dougal MacStewart was being so pressing about.”

  “MacStewart? — oh, yes — the moneylender. That’s one up to you, Peter; I’d forgotten him. That certainly does put George on the list of the possibles. He was pretty sore about things too, wasn’t he?”

  “Very. And I remember his saying one rather unguarded thing at least down at the Club on the very day the murder — or rather, the death — was discovered.”

  “That’s in his favour, if anything,” said Parker, cheerfully, “unless he’s very reckless indeed.”

  “It won’t be in his favour with the police,” grumbled Wimsey.

  “My dear man!”

  “I beg your pardon. I was forgetting for the moment. I’m afraid you are getting a little above your job, Charles. So much diligence will spell either a Chief-Commissionership or ostracism if you aren’t careful.”

  “I’ll chance that. Come on — get on with it. Who else is there?”

  “There’s Woodward. Nobody could have a better opportunity of tampering with the General’s pillboxes.”

  “And I suppose his little legacy might have been a motive.”

  “Or he may have been in the enemy’s pay. Sinister men-servants so often are you know. Look what a boom there has been lately in criminal butlers and thefts by perfect servants.”

  “That’s a fact. And now, how about the people at the Bellona?”

  “There’s Wetheridge. He’s a disagreeable devil. And he has always cast covetous eyes at the General’s chair by the fire. I’ve seen him.”

  “Be serious, Peter.”

  “I’m perfectly serious. I don’t like Wetheridge. He annoys me. And then we mustn’t forget to put down Robert.”

  “Robert? Why he’s the one person we can definitely cross off. He knew it was to his interest to keep the old man alive. Look at the pains he took to cover up the death.”

  “Exactly. He is the Most Unlikely Person, and that is why Sherlock Holmes would suspect him at once. He was, by his own admission, the last person to see General Fentiman alive. Suppose he had a row with the old man and killed him, and then discovered, afterwards, about the legacy.”

  “You’re scintillating with good plots today, Peter. If they’d quarrelled, he might possibly have knocked his grandfather down — though I don’t think he’d do such a rotten and unsportsmanlike thing but he surely wouldn’t have poisoned him.”

  Wimsey sighed.

  “There’s something in what you say,” he admitted. “Still, you never know. Now then, is there any name we’ve thought of which appears in all three columns of our list?”

  “No, not one. But several appear in two.”

  “We’d better start on those, then. Miss Dorland is the most obvious, naturally, and after her, George, don’t you think?”

  “Yes. I’ll have a round-up among all the chemists who may possibly have supplied her with digitalin. Who’s her family doctor?

  “Dunno. That’s your pigeon. By the way, I’m supposed to be meeting the girl at a cocoa-party or something of the sort to-morrow. Don’t pinch her before then if you can help it.”

  “No; but it looks to me as though we might need to put a few questions. And I’d like to have a look round Lady Dormer’s house.”

  “For heaven’s sake, don’t be flatfooted about it, Charles. Use tact.”

  “You can trust your father. And, I say, you might take me down to the Bellona in a tactful way. I’d like to ask a question or two there.”

  Wimsey groaned.

  “I shall be asked to resign if this goes on. Not that it’s much loss. But it would please Wetheridge so much to see the back of me. Never mind. I’ll make a Martha of myself. Come on.”

  The entrance of the Bellona Club was filled with an unseemly confusion. Culyer was arguing heatedly with a number of men and three or four members of the committee stood beside him with brows as black as thunder. As Wimsey entered, one of the intruders caught sight of him with a yelp of joy.

  “Wimsey — Wimsey, old man! Here, be a sport and get us in on this. We’ve got to have the story some day. You probably know all about it, you old blighter.”

  It was Salcombe Hardy of the Daily Yell, large and untidy and slightly drunk as usual. He gazed at Wimsey with childlike blue eyes. Barton of the Banner, red-haired and pugnacious, faced round promptly.

  “Ah, Wimsey, that’s fine. Give us a line on this, can’t you? Do explain that if we get a story we’ll be good and go.”

  “Good lord,” said Wimsey, “how do these things get into the papers?”

  “I think it’s rather obvious,” said Culyer, acidly.

  “It wasn’t me,” said Wimsey.

  “No, no,” put in Hardy. “You mustn’t think that. It was my stunt. In fact, I saw the whole show up at the Necropolis. I was on a family vault, pretending to be a recording angel.”

  “You would be,” said Wimsey. “Just a moment, Culyer.” He drew the secretary aside. “See here, I’m damned annoyed about this, but it can’t be helped. You can’t stop these boys when they’re after a story. And, anyway, it’s all got to come out. It’s a police affair now. This is Detective-Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard.”

  “But what’s the matter?” demanded Culyer.

  “Murder’s the matter, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, hell!”

  “Sorry and all that. But you’d better grin and bear it. Charles, give these fellows as much story as you think they ought to have and get on with it. And, Salcombe, if you’ll call off your tripe-hounds, we’ll let you have an interview and a set of photographs.”

  “That’s the stuff,” said Hardy.

  “I’m sure,” agreed Parker, pleasantly, “that you lads don’t want to get in the way, and I’ll tell you all that’s advisable. Show us a room, Captain Culyer, and I’ll send out a statement and then you’ll let us get to work.”

  This was agreed, and, a suitable paragraph having been provided by Parker, the Fleet Street gang departed, bearing Wimsey away with them like a captured Sabine maiden to drink in the nearest bar, in the hope of acquiring picturesque detail.”

  “But I wish you’d kept out of it, Sally,” mourned Peter.

  “Oh, God,” said Salcombe, “nobody loves us. It’s a forsaken thing to be a poor bloody reporter.” He tossed a lank black lock of hair back from his forehead and wept.

  * * *

  Parker’s first and most obvious move was to interview Penberthy, whom he caught at Harley Street, after surgery hours.

  “Now I’m not going to worry you about that certificate, doctor,” he began, pleasantly. “We’re all liable to make mistakes, and I understand that a death resulting from an over-dose of digitalin would look very like a death from heart failure.”

  “It would be a death from heart failure,” corrected the doctor, patiently

  Doctors are weary of explaining that heart-failure is not a specific disease, like mumps or housemaid’s knee
. It is this incompatibility of outlook between the medical and the lay mind which involves counsel and medical witnesses in a fog of misunderstanding and mutual irritation.

  “Just so,” said Parker. “Now, General Fentiman had got heart disease already, hadn’t he? Is digitalin a thing one takes for heart disease? ”

  “Yes; in certain forms of heart disease, digitalin is a very valuable stimulant.”

  “Stimulant? I thought it was a depressant.”

  “It acts as a stimulant at first; in later stages it depresses the heart’s action.”

  “Oh, I see.” Parker did not see very well, since, like most people, he had a vague idea that each drug has one simple effect appropriate to it, and is, specifically, a cure for something or the other. “It first speeds up the heart and then slows it down.”

  “Not exactly. It strengthens the heart’s action by retarding the beat, so that the cavities can be more completely emptied and the pressure is relieved. We give it in certain cases of valvular disease — under proper safeguards, of course.”

  “Were you giving it to General Fentiman?”

  “I had given it him from time to time.”

  “On the afternoon of November 10th, — you remember that he came to you in consequence of a heart attack. Did you give him digitalin then?”

  Dr. Penberthy appeared to hesitate painfully for a moment. Then he turned to his desk and extracted a large book.

  “I had better be perfectly frank with you,” he said. “I did. When he came to me, the feebleness of the heart’s action and the extreme difficulty in breathing suggested the urgent necessity of a cardiac stimulant. I gave him a prescription containing a small quantity of digitalin to relieve this condition. Here is the prescription. I will write it out for you.”

  “A small quantity?” repeated Parker.

  “Quite small, combined with other drugs to counteract the depressing after-effects.”

  “It was not as large as the dose afterwards found in the body?”

  “Good heavens, no — nothing like. In a case like General Fentiman’s, digitalin is a drug to be administered with the greatest caution.”

  “It would not be possible, I suppose for you to have made a mistake in dispensing? To have given an overdose by error?”

  “That possibility occurred to me at once, but as soon as I heard Sir James Lubbock’s figures, I realised that it was quite out of the question. The dose given was enormous; nearly two grains. But, to make quite certain, I have had my supply of the drug carefully checked, and it is all accounted for.”

  “Who did that for you?”

  “My trained nurse. I will let you have the books and chemists’ receipts.”

  “Thank you. Did your nurse make up the dose for General Fentiman?”

  “Oh, no; it is a prescription I always keep by me, ready made up. If you’d like to see her, she will show it to you.”

  “Thanks very much. Now, when General Fentiman came to see you, he had just had an attack. Could that have been caused by digitalin?”

  You mean, had he been poisoned before he came to me? Well, of course, digitalin is rather an uncertain drug.”

  “How long would a big dose like that take to act?”

  “I should expect it to take effect fairly quickly. In the ordinary way it would cause sickness and vertigo. But with a powerful cardiac stimulant like digitalin, the chief danger is that any sudden movement, such as springing suddenly to one’s feet from a position of repose, is liable to cause sudden syncope and death. I should say that this was what occurred in General Fentiman’s case.”

  “And that might have happened at any time after the administration of the dose?”

  “Just so.”

  “Well, I’m very much obliged to you, Dr. Penberthy. I will just see your nurse and take copies of the entries in your books, if I may.”

  This done, Parker made his way to Portman Square, still a little hazy in his mind as to the habits of the common foxglove when applied internally — a haziness which was in no way improved by a subsequent consultation of the Materia Medica, the Pharmacopoeia Dixon Mann, Taylor, Glaister, and others of those writers who have so kindly and helpfully published their conclusions on toxicology.

  Chapter XVI

  Quadrille

  “Mrs. Rushworth, this is Lord Peter Wimsey. Naomi, this is Lord Peter. He’s fearfully keen on glands and things, so I’ve brought him along. And Naomi, do tell me all about your news. Who is it? Do I know him?”

  Mrs. Rushworth was a long, untidy woman, with long, untidy hair wound into bell-pushes over her ears. She beamed short-sightedly at Peter, “So glad to see you. So very wonderful about glands, isn’t it? Dr. Voronoff, you know, and those marvellous old sheep. Such a hope for all of us. Not that dear Walter is specially interested in rejuvenation. Perhaps life is long and difficult enough as it is, don’t you think — so full of problems of one kind and another. And the insurance companies have quite set their faces against it, or so I understand. That’s natural, isn’t it, when you come to think of it. But the effect on character is so interesting you know. Are you devoted to young criminals by any chance?”

  Wimsey said that they presented a very perplexing problem.

  “How very true. So perplexing. And just to think that we have been quite wrong about them all these thousands of years. Flogging and bread-and-water, you know, and Holy Communion, when what they really needed was a little bit of rabbit-gland or something to make them just as good as gold. Quite terrible, isn’t it? And all those poor freaks in sideshows, too — dwarfs and giants, you know — all pineal or pituitary, and they come right again. Though I daresay they make a great deal more money as they are, which throws such a distressing light on unemployment, does it not?”

  Wimsey said that everything had the defects of its qualities.

  “Yes, indeed,” agreed Mrs Rushworth. “But I think it is so infinitely more heartening to look at it from the opposite point of view. Everything has the qualities of its defects, too, has it not? It is so important to see these things in their true light. It will be such a joy for Naomi to be able to help dear Walter in this great work. I hope you will feel eager to subscribe to the establishment of the new Clinic.”

  Wimsey asked, what new Clinic.

  “Oh! hasn’t Marjorie told you about it? The new Clinic to make everybody good by glands. That is what dear Walter is going to speak about. He is so keen and so is Naomi. It was such a joy to me when Naomi told me that they were really engaged, you know. Not that her old mother hadn’t suspected something, of course,” added Mrs. Rushworth, archly. “But young people are so odd nowadays and keep their affairs so much to themselves.”

  Wimsey said that he thought both parties were heartily to be congratulated. And indeed, from what he had seen of Naomi Rushworth, he felt that she at least deserved congratulation, for she was a singularly plain girl, with a face like a weasel.

  “You will excuse me if I run off and speak to some of these other people, won’t you?” went on Mrs. Rushworth. “I’m sure you will be able to amuse yourself. No doubt you have many friends in my little gathering.”

  Wimsey glanced round and was about to felicitate himself on knowing nobody, when a familiar face caught his eye.

  “Why,” said he, “there is Dr. Penberthy.”

  “Dear Walter!” cried Mrs. Rushworth, turning hurriedly in the direction indicated. “I declare, so he is. Ah, well now we shall be able to begin. He should have been here before, but a doctor’s time is never his own.”

  “Penberthy?” said Wimsey, half aloud, “good lord!”

  “Very sound man,” said a voice beside him. “Don’t think the worse of his work from seeing him in this crowd. Beggars in a good cause can’t be choosers, as we parsons know too well.

  Wimsey turned to face a tall, lean man, with a handsome, humorous face, whom he recognised as a well-known slum padre.

  “Father Whittington, isn’t it?”

  “The same. You’re Lord
Peter Wimsey, I know. We’ve got an interest in crime in common, haven’t we? I’m interested in this glandular theory. It may throw a great light on some of our heartbreaking problems.”

  “Glad to see there’s no antagonism between religion and science,” said Wimsey.

  “Of course not. Why should there be? We are all searching for Truth.”

  “And all these?” asked Wimsey, indicating the curious crowd with a wave of the hand.

  “In their way. They mean well. They do what they can, like the woman in the Gospels, and they are surprisingly generous. Here’s Penberthy, looking for you, I fancy. Well, Dr. Penberthy, I’ve come, you see, to hear you make mincemeat of original sin.”