Winking at the Brim (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Did Lady Calshott admit that the flask was hers?”

  “I suppose so. I think she must have done, as the police made no fuss about it.”

  “We had better make certain,” said Dame Beatrice, as she went to the telephone. A long call to Sir Humphrey’s house disposed of the matter to some extent. The flask which had contained the poisoned coffee was Lady Calshott’s property. Angela Barton knew where it was kept and there was no reason why Angela should not have borrowed it.

  “The only thing is,” said Lady Calshott over the telephone, “that, if Angela borrowed one of my flasks, it could only have been to lend it to somebody else. I told the police at the time, and I still hold to it, Dame Beatrice, that under no circumstances would Angela have burdened herself with a thermos flask of coffee when she was taking one of her walks. I stressed this, but the Scottish inspector, although in the most courteous way, adhered to his theory that, on this occasion, I happened to be wrong; that Angela had set out that morning with suicide in mind; that she had made two attempts to kill herself, as was evidenced by the wound in her throat and the attempt she had made to drown herself and that, in a last desperate effort, she had had recourse to the poison.”

  “And you found his arguments difficult to refute, no doubt.”

  “In the end, I found them impossible to refute, especially in view of the letter which was found beside the body.”

  “It’s a tough one,” said Laura, when Dame Beatrice reported the conversation, “because if anybody did borrow that thermos flask, they’re not going to say so, are they?”

  “Of course,” said Sally, “looked at in the broadest sense, I suppose Angela did commit suicide, didn’t she?”

  “Am I right in thinking that there spoke your father’s daughter?” asked Dame Beatrice. “It seems to me that, long years of my son’s professional life having been spent in defending scoundrels against their just deserts, something of his mentality may have been inherited by his daughter.”

  “You may save your jibes, Grandmamma. I mean exactly what I say. If a person is so bitchy and backbiting as to invite murder, I say that that person is a potential suicide. Angela Barton must have known that you can’t keep threatening all of the people all of the time without running the most appalling risks. In my opinion, she was shouting out for one of her victims to kill her.”

  “She never actually blackmailed anybody, did she?” asked Laura.

  “There’s such a thing as moral blackmail, isn’t there?” demanded Sally.

  “Lady Calshott told me one other thing over the telephone,” said Dame Beatrice. “Miss Barton’s will has been proved. She left all that she had to the vicar. I ventured to ask whether the Calshotts were surprised, and Lady Calshott assured me that they were not surprised at all. Sir Humphrey had warned her and Phyllis that something of the sort was to be expected, but that he thought there might be grounds for contesting the will if what he imagined turned out to be true.”

  “And it has turned out to be true. Will they put up a fight?” asked Laura.

  “No.”

  “That’s odd,” said Sally. “I should have thought Lady Calshott would have battled like hell for Phyllis’s inheritance. It was quite understood, at one time, that all of Angela’s money was to go to Phyllis, you know.”

  “Phyllis will not be deprived entirely of it.”

  “The vicar is prepared to brass up?”

  “No, he is prepared to marry Phyllis.”

  “Good Lord! Then what about the Bensons?”

  “They are to obtain what, in any case, has been the summit of their desires. They are to live at the vicarage as joint housekeepers and are to have the sole right to the room with the north light for a studio. But we digress.”

  “As the bishop said to the cardinal when they set out to discuss birth control and ended up talking about the doping of racing-greyhounds,” said Laura, “and that brings us back to the point at issue. Who killed Angela Barton? You know, I think we ought to take a long, hard look at Hubert Pring. His motive wouldn’t impress many people, it’s true, but there’s no doubt he’s scared stiff that somebody might leak it to his headmaster that he allowed that stupid young woman to get sloshed at the ball so that he dared not take her home until he’d got her sobered up. If he thought Angela Barton intended to spill the beans, there’s no knowing what he might have done.”

  “Yes,” Dame Beatrice agreed, “but the fact remains that Angela Barton never did spill the beans as you term it, to anybody who mattered.”

  “But she held the sword of Damocles over her victims’ heads,” said Sally, “and if that isn’t mental cruelty I don’t know what is. I’d have had a go at her myself if she’d ever got anything on me.”

  “Hubert Pring wasn’t the only one of the party who must have wished Angela Barton was dead,” said Laura. “If you ask me, this case bristles with motives.”

  “Like the major’s moustache,” said Sally. “All the same, the major seems the only person who didn’t have a motive. I’ve no doubt he fooled about with Marjorie Parris, but whereas she had a jealous husband, the major had nothing to fear from his doormat of a wife. I expect she was glad to get a few afternoons to herself, if the truth were known.”

  “Motives?” said Dame Beatrice. “It will be interesting to assess them, and Sally, who knows the protagonists much more closely than I do, shall give us the benefit of her deductions.”

  “I regard that as a challenge, Grandmamma, and as there is nobody who can make me look a fool more kindly than you can, I shall attempt to rise to the occasion,” said Sally. “Right, then! Now I don’t think we can wash out the Calshotts. They knew Angela was setting her cap at the vicar and they also knew—or thought they knew—that she had made her will in favour of their daughter Phyllis. Moreover, the thermos flask came from Lady Calshott and, so far, we don’t know whether it was the poisoned coffee or the poisoned wine which killed Angela.”

  “A very fair assessment,” said Dame Beatrice. “Let us examine it. So far as motive is concerned, I give it high marks. Unfortunately, motive is, in law, a subsidiary consideration which has to give way in importance to means and opportunity.”

  “Well, I fall down there, Grandmamma. The thermos flask undoubtedly belonged to Lady Calshott, but there’s nothing to show whose bottle it was which contained the poisoned wine. I’d be inclined to think it was Hubert Pring’s bottle, and Hubert, so far as I can see, adds up on all three counts. He certainly thought he had a motive, and, with his two-by-four outlook on life, I should say it was a powerful one. Also he could have got hold of the strychnine.”

  “How do you make that out?” asked Laura. “I know he had stayed with the Parrises, and all that, but no responsible doctor or vet is going to leave his poisons cupboard open so that any casual murderer can get his hands on a lethal dose. I bet, wherever the strychnine came from, it wasn’t from Nigel Parris’s stock. Anyway, what about opportunity to administer the poison?”

  “Simple. When I last saw Angela alive, she was walking towards the head of the loch. Before she got to it she must have changed her mind and decided to drop in on the Bensons.”

  “Yes, but one thing puzzles me about that. It seems that she was always dropping in on the Bensons, yet I thought they hated her guts.”

  “Yes, but she didn’t hate theirs. Once she’d landed that housekeeping job at the vicarage, she thought she had put one over on them and spiked their guns…”

  “And she did appreciate their cooking,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “I should have thought, all the same, they would have shown her the door,” said Laura.

  “People like the Benson sisters don’t show people the door,” said Sally. “Whatever their private feelings about Angela, she was persona grata at the vicarage and so, to a certain extent, were they. They knew jolly well, I take it, that if there was an open breach between her and them, she would see to it that the vicar was out when they called, whether that was really the case or not. To
resume: after I had seen her go off, I think she turned round and called at the middle caravan, forgetting that she was not calling on the Bensons, for, of course, the major and Nigel had swopped caravans. What she found must have been Hubert Pring on his own, Marjorie having deserted him as usual, and Nigel and Jeremy having gone off on their own, also as usual, to keep Jeremy and Marjorie apart.”

  “Would Angela have forgotten quite so soon that the caravans had been swopped over?”

  “That is how I see it. What else is there to think?”

  “And pretty plausible, too,” commented Laura. “So Hubert, who has somehow contrived (for the sake of the argument, although I don’t believe a word of it) to possess himself of the strychnine from Nigel’s store, invites Angela to come ben, uncorks the burgundy, they take pot-luck together, and Angela gets a dose of poison. But how does she get to the crofter’s cottage? Why is she soaking wet? Why has she a nasty gash in her throat?”

  “I suppose Hubert took her across.”

  “With the other party in control of the boat? With the lunch to prepare? He did all the cooking for that particular party, we have to remember,” put in Dame Beatrice.

  “Yes, I see what you mean,” said Sally. “Well, let me try again. Jeremy I leave right out of it. It’s only speculation that he spent the best part of a week with Marjorie while Nigel was at the conference. He wouldn’t care who knew it, anyway. He’s like that, and, besides, Angela wouldn’t have been able to prove anything.”

  “Mrs. McLauchlin? Although Jeremy had rented a cottage, I expect they went to the pub for drinks,” said Laura. She shook her head before Sally could answer. “No, I can’t see that cheery, open-hearted soul going into a huddle with Angela Barton to disclose an irregular little affair. Sorry! I believe I interrupted you.”

  “Well, next on the list are Marjorie and Nigel, I suppose. Either, especially Nigel, could have provided the strychnine. Angela was known to spread rumours of a particularly unpleasant kind about Nigel. She even tried them out on me.”

  “I think she would have lain herself open to prosecution had she dared to attempt to harm the young man publicly,” said Dame Beatrice. “Mrs. Parris, because of her indiscretions, is a far more likely suspect, in my opinion. She was reckless, undisciplined, not (so far as I could determine on an admittedly brief acquaintanceship) either particularly scrupulous or particularly intelligent. Moreover, except for her husband, she was in the best position of all the party to have access to the poison. She may even have acted as his dispenser. I believe they were not well off and, with Hubert Pring to repay, Nigel Parris probably did without hired help wherever he possibly could. What we must establish, before we go much further, is whether Nigel had taken any strychnine with him to Tannasgan or whether somebody had got hold of it before the expedition was arranged, had murder in mind, and only needed the opportunity to commit it.”

  “So we chalk up Marjorie as a probable suspect, more probable than anyone else, so far, you think,” said Sally.

  “I see her as an accessory before the fact,” said Dame Beatrice, “and I am not at all sure that she was aware of this. She may even be in some danger if it ever occurs to her that she assisted in a case of murder. Owing to her volatile nature and her lack of intelligence, it may take some time for her to put two and two together…”

  “And make five?” asked Sally, putting out her tongue at her grandmother.

  “Maybe,” Dame Beatrice equably replied. “Remember that Gilbert Keith Chesterton once told us that it is only the last and wildest kind of courage which will stand on a hilltop before ten thousand people and tell them that twice two are four.”

  “But if you take away all the other suspects, that only leaves the major,” said Laura.

  “And that’s the one person who hasn’t the shadow of a motive,” said Sally.

  “From what I’ve gathered, he adds up from the point of view of character.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “A bully and a bit of a coward, stupid, arrogant, and selfish,” said Laura.

  “Plenty of men are all those things, but they don’t commit murder.”

  “Only because they’ve never been tempted. Wonder what Mrs. Croc is talking about on the telephone all this time? She’s been out there for nearly half an hour.”

  “Talking of the major,” said Sally, after a pause, “he’d be my choice, too, if only he had the shadow of a motive. What I don’t like is the blithe way he produced those two unopened bottles of sparkling burgundy when he was asked to account for them.”

  “I thought he said they’d do for his guests.”

  “Yes, I know, but when we were talking things over with Grandmamma she gave me the impression that the major rather expected to be asked to account for those bottles.”

  “Well, you’d expect him to expect it, wouldn’t you? Oh, no, though! I see what you mean. Everybody except us still thought that it was poisoned coffee, not poisoned wine, which Angela had taken. Still, it hasn’t been proved either way, and never will be, now. Well, apart from that, there doesn’t seem much doubt that Angela borrowed the thermos flask (purloined it, is perhaps a better word) but it must have been to lend it to somebody else. The question is, to whom?”

  “That’s an easy one, I think. By far the likeliest person to want a thermos flask was Mrs. Tamworth. You remember how Godiva Benson banished her and the major to the tent? What more likely than that she should have wanted a thermos flask to take to the tent for the elevenses?”

  “But that brings Mrs. Tamworth into it and I can’t—I really can’t—see her planning a murder.”

  “Oh, I don’t think she did,” said Dame Beatrice, coming into the room. “I’ve been on the telephone to her. She admits that she asked for and obtained the thermos flask, as she thought it would be useful in the tent. She added a further and more interesting item of information. The major has gone monster-hunting again at Tannasgan.”

  “Whatever for?” cried Sally. “He openly scoffs at the monster.”

  “May be getting cold feet, owing to the enquiries we’ve been making,” said Laura, “and has gone back to make sure he’s left no trace, although trace of what is anybody’s guess.”

  “Well, it does seem a strange move for him to make,” said Sally. “Why, oh, why hadn’t he got a motive for killing Angela Barton? If he had, he’d be the perfect choice for a murderer. His wife even borrowed that flask which held the coffee, and he was being a bit of a tom-cat with Marjorie Parris, apparently.”

  “He had quite a powerful motive,” asserted Dame Beatrice.

  “You mean because Angela knew of the goings-on with Marjorie? She did once call him an old goat in my hearing, so presumably she did know, but I thought we’d agreed that it was Marjorie, not the major, who had something to fear if things leaked out about that liaison.”

  “I have also been talking to Godiva Benson,” said Dame Beatrice, appearing to go off at a tangent. “You will remember that she and her sister had charge of the boat on the day of Miss Barton’s death. Her story is that there was another disturbance in the loch that morning.”

  “While I was cruising about in my van to find a road which led to the hunting-lodge?”

  “So I should imagine. The twin sisters were about to embark when the surface of the loch was disturbed and so they put off their trip for about an hour. During that hour I think Angela Barton was murdered.”

  “By the major?”

  “He is of stout and powerful build. It would not be difficult for him to overcome an unsuspecting little woman and force the poisoned wine down her throat. He had only to follow her on her lonely walk and seize his opportunity. Then came the boat, with her lying hidden in the bottom of it, the body carried up to the cottage, the already prepared evidence of suicide planted. After that, he merely had to return to the caravan after what purported to be an hour’s fishing and leave the boat for the Bensons.”

  “And he had already left the wine bottle in one of the casks up at
the hunting-lodge where, given a bit of luck, it would never be found or, if it was found, would seem to have no importance?” said Laura.

  “I still don’t see what motive he had,” said Sally.

  “Do you not remember that at Phyllis Calshott’s birthday dinner he let fall the information that he was standing for Parliament? Surely, after the embarrassing disclosures which have been made in comparatively recent years, no prospective candidate for a position in public life could afford to have the affair with Marjorie Parris come out?”

  “There’s no proof of all this,” said Laura, “unless the major confesses, and I can’t see him doing that. Besides, how on earth could he have persuaded Marjorie Parris to let him have the strychnine?”

  “I thought we knew that,” said Sally. “Don’t you remember that people use it for getting rid of moles? I suppose Angela was a bit of a mole, you know, tunnelling and burrowing away in the dark and raising little heaps of dirt all over the place, so he got Marjorie to sneak him a dose on the excuse that he had moles on his lawn.”

  “Even moles do not deserve to die of strychnine poisoning,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “And the body must have fallen into the water when he was lifting it out of the boat, and he gaffed it to pull it ashore? That must be true, so now what do we do?”

  “I have telephoned Laura’s husband, our dear Robert. He will take charge of the analyst’s report on the wine bottle and will accompany us to Glasgow, where he will talk to the chief of police. After that, I have no doubt that we shall all go on to Tannasgan to find out what the major has to say for himself. Of course, he planned the murder as soon as he heard about Tannasgan. That is why he joined the expedition. His affair with Marjorie must have begun before the Tannasg monster was ever thought of, and Angela, who knew everything, knew that.”

  “And Marjorie still went to Tannasgan with Jeremy,” said Laura. “Well, what do you know!”