The Poisoned Chocolates Case

by Anthony Berkeley

  One came, promptly. “But you can’t possibly get round that,” exclaimed Mrs. Fielder-Flemming impatiently.

  Mr. Chitterwick looked a trifle distressed. “Is ‘get round’ quite the right expression? I’m not trying wilfully or maliciously to pick holes in Miss Dammers’s case just for amusement. You must really believe that. Please think that I am actuated only by a desire to bring this crime home to its real perpetrator. And with that end alone in view, I can certainly suggest an explanation of the typewriter evidence which excludes the guilt of Sir Eustace.”

  Mr. Chitterwick looked so unhappy at what he conceived to be Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s insinuation that he was merely wasting the Circle’s time, that Roger spoke him kindly.

  “You can?” he said gently, as one encourages one’s daughter on drawing a cow, which if not much like a cow is certainly unlike any other animal on earth. “That’s very interesting, Mr. Chitterwick. How do you explain it then?”

  Mr. Chitterwick, responding to treatment, shone with pride. “Dear me! You can’t see it really? Nobody sees it?”

  It seemed that nobody saw it.

  “And yet the possibility of such a thing has been before me right from the beginning of the case,” crowed the now triumphant Mr. Chitterwick. “Well, well!” He arranged his glasses on his nose and beamed round the Circle, his round red face positively aglow.

  “Well, what is the explanation, Mr. Chitterwick?” queried Miss Dammers, when it seemed that Mr. Chitterwick was going to continue beaming in silence for ever.

  “Oh! Oh, yes; of course. Why, to put it one way, Miss Dammers, that you were wrong and Mr. Sheringham was right, in your respective estimates of the criminal’s ability. That there was, in fact, an extremely able and ingenious mind behind this murder (Miss Dammers’s attempts to prove the contrary were, I’m afraid another case of special pleading). And that one of the ways in which this ingenuity was shown, was to arrange the evidence in such a way that if any one were to be suspected it would be Sir Eustace. That the evidence of the typewriter, in a word, and of the criminological books was, as I believe the technical word is, ‘rigged.’” Mr. Chitterwick resumed his beam.

  Everybody sat up with what might have been a concerted jerk. In a flash the tide of feeling towards Mr. Chitterwick had turned. The man had got something to say after all. There actually was an idea behind that untimely request of the previous evening.

  Mr. Bradley rose to the occasion, and he quite forgot to speak quite so patronisingly as usual. “I say—dam’ good, Chitterwick! But can you substantiate that?”

  “Oh, yes. I think so,” said Mr. Chitterwick, basking in the rays of appreciation that were being shone on him.

  “You’ll be telling us next you know who did it,” Roger smiled.

  Mr. Chitterwick smiled back. “Oh, I know that.”

  “What !” exclaimed five voices in chorus.

  “I know that, of course,” said Mr. Chitterwick modestly. “You’ve practically told me that yourselves. Coming last of all, you see, my task was comparatively simple. All I had to do was to sort out the true from the false in everybody else’s statements, and—well, there was the truth.”

  The rest of the Circle looked their surprise at having told Mr. Chitterwick the truth without knowing it themselves.

  Mr. Chitterwick’s face took on a meditative aspect. “Perhaps I may confess now that when our President first propounded his idea to us, I was filled with dismay. I had had no practical experience of detecting, I was quite at a loss as to how to set about it, and I had no theory of the case at all. I could not even see a starting-point. The week flew by, so far as I was concerned, and left me exactly where I had been at its beginning. On the evening Sir Charles spoke he convinced me completely. The next evening, for a short time, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming convinced me too.

  “Mr. Bradley did not altogether convince me that he had committed the murder himself, but if he had named any one else then I should have been convinced; as it was, he convinced me that his—his discarded mistress theory,” said Mr. Chitterwick bravely, “must be the correct one. That indeed was the only idea I had had at all, that the crime might be the work of one of Sir Eustace’s—h’m!—discarded mistresses.

  “But the next evening Mr. Sheringham convinced me just as definitely that Mr. Bendix was the murderer. It was only last night, during Miss Dammers’s exposition, that I at last began to realise the truth.”

  “Then I was the only one who didn’t convince you, Mr. Chitterwick?” Miss Dammers smiled.

  “I’m afraid,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick, “that is so.”

  He mused for a moment.

  “It is really remarkable, quite remarkable, how near in some way or other everybody got to the truth of this affair. Not a single person failed to bring out at least one important fact, or make at least one important deduction correctly. Fortunately, when I realised that the solutions were going to differ so widely, I made copious notes of the preceding ones and kept them up to date each evening as soon as I got home. I thus had a complete record of the productions of all these brains, so much superior to my own.”

  “No, no,” murmured Mr. Bradley.

  “Last night I sat up very late, poring over these notes, separating the true from the false. It might perhaps interest members to hear my conclusions in this respect?” Mr. Chitterwick put forward the suggestion with the utmost diffidence.

  Everybody assured Mr. Chitterwick that they would be only too gratified to hear where they had stumbled inadvertently on the truth.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  MR. CHITTERWICK consulted a page of his notes. For a moment he looked a little distressed. “Sir Charles,” he began. “Er—Sir Charles …” It was plain that Mr. Chitterwick was finding difficulty in discovering any point at all on which Sir Charles had been right, and he was a kindly man. He brightened. “Oh, yes, of course. Sir Charles was the first to point out the important fact that there had been an erasure on the piece of notepaper used for the forged letter. That was—er—very helpful.

  “Then he was right too when he put forward the suggestion that Sir Eustace’s impending divorce was really the mainspring of the whole tragedy. Though I am afraid,” Mr. Chitterwick felt compelled to add, “that the inference he drew was not the correct one. He was quite right in feeling that the criminal, in such a clever plot, would take steps to arrange an alibi, and that there was, in fact, an alibi in the case that would have to be circumvented. But then again it was not Lady Pennefather’s.

  “Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,” continued Mr. Chitterwick, “was quite right to insist that the murder was the work of somebody with a knowledge of criminology. That was a very clever inference, and I am glad,” beamed Mr. Chitterwick, “to be able to assure her that it was perfectly correct. She contributed another important piece of information too, just as vital to the real story underlying this tragedy as to her own case, namely that Sir Eustace was not in love with Miss Wildman at all but was hoping to marry her simply for her money. Had that not been the case,” said Mr. Chitterwick, shaking his head, “I fear, I very much fear, that it would have been Miss Wildman who met her death instead of Mrs. Bendix.”

  “Good God!” muttered Sir Charles; and it is perhaps as great a tribute as Mr. Chitterwick was ever to receive that the K.C. accepted this startling news without question.

  “That clinches it,” muttered Mr. Bradley to Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “Discarded mistress.”

  Mr. Chitterwick turned to him. “As for you, Bradley, it’s astonishing how near you came to the truth. Amazing!” Mr. Chitterwick registered amazement. “Even in your first case, against yourself, so many of your conclusions were perfectly right. The final result of your deductions from the nitrobenzene, for instance; the fact that the criminal must be neat-fingered and of a methodical and creative mind; even, what appeared to me at the time just a trifle far-fetched, that a copy of Taylor would be found on the criminal’s shelves.

  “Then beyond the fact that No. 4 must be qu
alified to ‘must have had an opportunity of secretly obtaining a sheet of Mason’s notepaper,’ all twelve of your conditions were quite right, with the exception of 6, which does not admit of an alibi, and 7 and 8, about the Onyx pen and Harfield’s ink. Mr. Sheringham was right in that matter with his rather more subtle point of the criminal’s probable unobtrusive borrowing of the pen and ink. Which is exactly what happened, of course, with regard to the typewriter.

  “As for your second case—well!” Mr. Chitterwick seemed to be without words to express his admiration of Mr. Bradley’s second case. “You reached to the truth in almost every particular. You saw that it was a woman’s crime, you deduced the outraged feminine feelings underlying the whole affair, you staked your whole case on the criminal’s knowledge of criminology. It was really most penetrating.”

  “In fact,” said Mr. Bradley, carefully concealing his gratification, “I did everything possible except find the murderess.”

  “Well, that is so, of course,” deprecated Mr. Chitterwick, somehow conveying the impression that after all finding the murderess was a very minor matter compared with Mr. Bradley’s powers of penetration.

  “And then we come to Mr. Sheringham.”

  “Don’t!” implored Roger. “Leave him out.”

  “Oh, but your reconstruction was very clever,” Mr. Chitterwick assured him with great earnestness. “You put a new aspect on the whole affair, you know, by your suggestion that it was the right victim who was killed after all.”

  “Well, it seems that I erred in good company,” Roger said tritely, with a glance at Miss Dammers.

  “But you didn’t err,” corrected Mr. Chitterwick.

  “Oh?” Roger showed his surprise. “Then it was all aimed against Mrs. Bendix?”

  Mr. Chitterwick looked confused. “Haven’t I told you about that? I’m afraid I’m doing this in a very muddle-headed way. Yes, it is partially true to say that the plot was aimed against Mrs. Bendix. But the real position, I think, is that it was aimed against Mrs. Bendix and Sir Eustace jointly. You came very near the truth, Mr. Sheringham, except that you substituted a jealous husband for a jealous rival. Very near indeed. And of course you were entirely right in your point that the method was not suggested by the chance possession of the notepaper or anything like that, but by previous cases.”

  “I’m glad I was entirely right over something,” murmured Roger.

  “And Miss Dammers,” bowed Mr. Chitterwick, “was most helpful. Most helpful.”

  “Although not convincing,” supplemented that lady drily.

  “Although I’m afraid I did not find her altogether convincing,” agreed Mr. Chitterwick, with an apologetic air. “But it was really the theory she gave us that at last showed me the truth. For she also put yet another aspect on the crime, with her information regarding the—h’m!—the affair between Mrs. Bendix and Sir Eustace. And that really,” said Mr. Chitterwick, with another little bow to the informant, “was the foundation-stone of the whole business.”

  “I didn’t see how it could fail to be,” said Miss Dammers. “But I still maintain that my deductions from it are the correct ones.”

  “Perhaps if I may just put my own forward?” hesitated Mr. Chitterwick, apparently somewhat dashed.

  Miss Dammers accorded a somewhat tart permission.

  Mr. Chitterwick collected himself. “Oh, yes; I should have said that Miss Dammers was quite right in one important particular, her assumption that it was not so much the affair between Mrs. Bendix and Sir Eustace that was at the bottom of the crime, as Mrs. Bendix’s character. That really brought about her own death. Miss Dammers, I should imagine, was perfectly right in her tracing out of the intrigue, and her imaginative insight into Mrs. Bendix’s reactions—I think that is the word?” Mr. Chitterwick inquired diffidently of authority. “Mrs. Bendix’s reactions to it, but not, I consider, in her deductions regarding Sir Eustace’s growing boredom.

  “Sir Eustace, I am led to believe, was less inclined to be bored than to share the lady’s distress. For the real point, which happened to escape Miss Dammers, is that Sir Eustace was quite infatuated with Mrs. Bendix. Far more so than she with him.

  “That,” pronounced Mr. Chitterwick, “is one of the determining factors in this tragedy.”

  Everybody pinned the factor down. The Circle’s attitude towards Mr. Chitterwick by this time was one of intelligent expectation. Probably no one really thought that he had found the right solution, and Miss Dammers’s stock had not been appreciably lowered. But certainly it seemed that the man had at any rate got something to offer.

  “Miss Dammers,” proceeded the object of their attention, “was right in another point she made too, namely that the inspiration of this murder, or perhaps I should say the method of it, certainly came from that book of poisoning cases she mentioned, of which her own copy (she tells us) is at present in Sir Eustace’s rooms—planted there,” added Mr. Chitterwick, much shocked, “by the murderess.

  “And another useful fact she established. That Mr. Bendix had been lured (really,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick, “I can use no other word) to the Rainbow Club that morning. But it was not Mrs. Bendix who telephoned to him on the previous afternoon. Nor was he sent there for the particular purpose of receiving the chocolates from Sir Eustace. The fact that the lunch appointment had been cancelled was altogether outside the criminal’s knowledge. Mr. Bendix was sent there to be a witness to Sir Eustace receiving the parcel; that was all.

  “The intention was, of course, that Mr. Bendix should have Sir Eustace so connected in his mind with the chocolates that if suspicion should ever arise against any definite person, that of Mr. Bendix would be directed before long to Sir Eustace himself. For the fact of his wife’s intrigue would be bound to come to his knowledge, as indeed I understand privately that it has, causing him naturally the most intense distress.”

  “So that’s why he’s been looking haggard,” exclaimed Roger.

  “Without doubt,” Mr. Chitterwick agreed gravely. “It was a wicked plot. Sir Eustace, you see, was expected to be dead by then and incapable of denying his guilt, and such evidence as there was had been carefully arranged to point to murder and suicide on his part. That the police never suspected him (that is, so far as we know), simply shows that investigations do not always take the turn that the criminal expects. And in this case,” observed Mr. Chitterwick with some severity, “I think the criminal was altogether too subtle.”

  “If that was her very involved reason for ensuring the presence of Mr. Bendix at the Rainbow Club,” agreed Miss Dammers with some irony, “her subtlety certainly overreached itself.” It was evident that not only on the point of psychology did Miss Dammers not find herself ready to accept Mr. Chitterwick’s conclusions.

  “That, indeed, is exactly what happened,” Mr. Chitterwick pointed out mildly. “Oh, and while we are on the subject of the chocolates, I ought to add that the reason why they were sent to Sir Eustace’s club was not only so that Mr. Bendix might be a witness of their arrival, but also, I should imagine, so that Sir Eustace would be sure to take them with him to his lunch-appointment. The murderess of course would be sufficiently conversant with his ways to know that he would almost certainly spend the morning at his club and go straight on to lunch from there; the odds were enormous that he would take the box of Mrs. Bendix’s favourite chocolates with him.

  “I think we may regard it as an instance of the criminal’s habitual overlooking of some vital point that is to lead eventually to detection, that this murderess completely lost sight of the possibility that the appointment for lunch might be cancelled. She is a particularly ingenious criminal,” said Mr. Chitterwick with gentle admiration, “and yet even she is not immune from this failing.”

  “Who is she, Mr. Chitterwick?” ingenuously asked Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.

  Mr. Chitterwick answered her with a positively roguish smile. “Everybody else has withheld the name of the suspect till the right moment. Surely I may be allowe
d to do so too.

  “Well, I think I have cleared up most of the doubtful points now. Mason’s notepaper was used, I should say, because chocolates had been decided on as the vehicle and Mason’s were the only chocolate manufacturing firm who were customers of Webster’s. As it happened, this fitted very well, because it was always Mason’s chocolates that Sir Eustace bought for his—er—his friends.”

  Mrs. Fielder-Flemming looked puzzled. “Because Mason’s were the only firm who were customers of Webster’s? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, I am explaining all this badly,” cried Mr. Chitterwick in much distress, assuming all blame for this obtuseness. “It had to be some firm on Webster’s books, you see, because Sir Eustace has his notepaper printed at Webster’s, and he was to be identified as having been in there recently if the purloined piece was ever connected with the sample book. Exactly, in fact, as Miss Dammers did.”

  Roger whistled. “Oh, I see. You mean, we’ve all been putting the cart before the horse over this piece of notepaper?”

  “I’m afraid so,” regretted Mr. Chitterwick with earnestness. “Really, I’m very much afraid so.”

  Insensibly opinion was beginning to turn in Mr. Chitterwick’s favour. To say the least, he was being just as convincing as Miss Dammers had been, and that without subtle psychological reconstructions and references to ‘values.’ Only Miss Dammers herself remained outwardly sceptical; but that, after all, was only to be expected.

  “Humph!” said Miss Dammers, sceptically.

  “What about the motive, Mr. Chitterwick?” nodded Sir Charles with solemnity. “Jealousy, did you say? I don’t think you’ve quite cleared up that yet, have you?”

  “Oh, yes, of course.” Mr. Chitterwick actually blushed. “Dear me, I meant to make that clear right at the beginning. I am doing this badly. No, not jealousy, I’m inclined to fancy. Revenge. Or revenge at any rate so far as Sir Eustace was concerned, and jealousy as regards Mrs. Bendix. From what I can understand, you see, this lady is—dear me,” said Mr. Chitterwick, in distress and embarrassment,” this is very delicate ground. But I must trespass on it. Well—though she had concealed it successfully from her friends, this lady had been very much in love with Sir Eustace, and become—er—had become,” concluded Mr. Chitterwick bravely, “his mistress. That was a long time ago.