by Otto Penzler
“Has it indeed, sir? I’m sure it’s the one as I put here at the end of this row. Somebody must have been and changed it.”
“But—” said the inspector. He stopped in mid-speech, as though struck by a sudden thought. “I think you’d better let me have those cellar keys of yours, Craven, and we’ll get this cellar properly examined. That’ll do for the moment. If you’ll just step upstairs with me, Mr. Egg, I’d like a word with you.”
“Always happy to oblige,” said Monty agreeably. They returned to the upper air.
“I don’t know if you realise, Mr. Egg,” observed the inspector, “the bearing, or, as I might say, the inference of what you said just now. Supposing you’re right about this bottle not being the right one, somebody’s changed it on purpose, and the right one’s missing. And, what’s more, the person that changed the bottle left no finger-prints behind him—or her.”
“I see what you mean,” said Mr. Egg, who had indeed drawn this inference some time ago, “and what’s more, it looks as if the poison had been in the bottle after all, doesn’t it? And that—you’re going to say—is a serious look-out for Plummet & Rose, seeing there’s no doubt our seal was on the bottle when it was brought into Lord Borrodale’s room. I don’t deny it, inspector. It’s useless to bluster and say ‘No, no,’ when it’s perfectly clear that the facts are so. That’s a very useful motto for a man that wants to get on in our line of business.”
“Well, Mr. Egg,” said the inspector, laughing, “what will you say to the next inference? Since nobody but you had any interest in changing that bottle over, it looks as though I ought to clap the handcuffs on you.”
“Now, that’s a disagreeable sort of an inference,” protested Mr. Egg, “and I hope you won’t follow it up. I shouldn’t like anything of that sort to happen, and my employers wouldn’t fancy it either. Don’t you think that, before we do anything we might have cause to regret, it would be a good idea to have a look in the furnace-room?”
“Why the furnace-room?”
“Because,” said Mr. Egg, “it’s the place that Craven particularly didn’t mention when we were asking him where anybody might have put a thing he wanted to get rid of.”
The inspector appeared to be struck by this line of reasoning. He enlisted the aid of a couple of constables, and very soon the ashes of the furnace that supplied the central heating were being assiduously raked over. The first find was a thick mass of semi-molten glass, which looked as though it might once have been part of a wine bottle.
“Looks as though you might be right,” said the inspector, “but I don’t see how we’re to prove anything. We’re not likely to get any nicotine out of this.”
“I suppose not,” agreed Mr. Egg sadly. “But”—his face brightened—“how about this?”
From the sieve in which the constable was sifting the ashes he picked out a thin piece of warped and twisted metal, to which a lump of charred bone still clung.
“What on earth’s that?”
“It doesn’t look like much, but I think it might once have been a corkscrew,” suggested Mr. Egg mildly. “There’s something homely and familiar about it. And, if you’ll look here, I think you’ll see that the metal part of it is hollow. And I shouldn’t be surprised if the thick bone handle was hollow, too. It’s very badly charred, of course, but if you were to split it open, and if you were to find a hollow inside it, and possibly a little melted rubber—well, that might explain a lot.”
The inspector smacked his thigh.
“By Jove, Mr. Egg!” he exclaimed, “I believe I see what you’re getting at. You mean that if this corkscrew had been made hollow, and contained a rubber reservoir, inside, like a fountain-pen, filled with poison, the poison might be made to flow down the hollow shaft by pressure on some sort of plunger arrangement.”
“That’s it,” said Mr. Egg. “It would have to be screwed into the cork very carefully, of course, so as not to damage the tube, and it would have to be made long enough to project beyond the bottom of the cork, but still, it might be done. What’s more, it has been done, or why should there be this little hole in the metal, about a quarter of an inch from the tip? Ordinary corkscrews never have holes in them—not in my experience, and I’ve been, as you might say, brought up on corkscrews.”
“But who, in that case—?”
“Well, the man who drew the cork, don’t you think? The man whose finger-prints were on the bottle.”
“Craven? But where’s his motive?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Egg, “but Lord Borrodale was a judge, and a hard judge too. If you were to have Craven’s finger-prints sent up to Scotland Yard, they might recognise them. I don’t know. It’s possible, isn’t it? Or maybe Miss Waynfleet might know something about him. Or he might just possibly be mentioned in Lord Borrodale’s memoirs that he was writing.”
The inspector lost no time in following up this suggestion. Neither Scotland Yard nor Miss Waynfleet had anything to say against the butler, who had been two years in his situation and had always been quite satisfactory, but a reference to the records of Lord Borrodale’s judicial career showed that, a good many years before, he had inflicted a savage sentence of penal servitude on a young man called Craven, who was by trade a skilled metal-worker and had apparently been involved in a fraud upon his employer. A little further investigation showed that this young man had been released from prison six months previously.
“Craven’s son, of course,” said the inspector. “And he had the manual skill to make the corkscrew in exact imitation of the one ordinarily used in the household. Wonder where they got the nicotine from? Well, we shall soon be able to check that up. I believe it’s not difficult to obtain it for use in the garden. I’m very much obliged to you for your expert assistance, Mr. Egg. It would have taken us a long time to get to the rights and wrongs of those bottles. I suppose, when you found that Craven had given you the wrong one, you began to suspect him?”
“Oh, no,” said Mr. Egg, with modest pride, “I knew it was Craven the minute he came into the room.”
“No, did you? You’re a regular Sherlock, aren’t you? But why?”
“He called me ‘sir,’ ” explained Mr. Egg, coughing delicately. “Last time I called he addressed me as ‘young fellow’ and told me that tradesmen must go round to the back door. A bad error of policy. ‘Whether you’re wrong or whether you’re right, it’s always better to be polite,’ as it says in the Salesman’s Handbook.”
A TRAVELLER’S TALE
IN COLLABORATION WITH Mary Monica Pulver Kuhfeld (1943–), an established mystery writer, Gail Lynn Frazer (1946–2013) created the joint pseudonym Margaret Frazer to produce six medieval detective novels about a Benedictine nun, Dame Frevisse. After the writing partners amicably separated, Gail Frazer continued the adventures, which now number seventeen novels, on her own. The successful series has been nominated for two Edgar Awards, one for The Servant’s Tale (1993) and the other for The Prioress’s Tale (1997). Born in Kewanee, Illinois, Frazer worked as a librarian, secretary, gift shop manager, and assistant matron at an English girls’ school before beginning her writing career.
Sister Frevisse, a nun at St. Friedswide’s Abby and the granddaughter of Geoffrey Chaucer, made her first appearance in The Novice’s Tale (1992), which offered accurate historical insights into such far-ranging subjects as medieval medicine, the Hundred Years War, and the attitude of the English people toward Joan of Arc. The series has been lavishly praised for the careful attention the author has placed on research to ensure that the portrayals of large historical events, as well as the tiniest details of daily life, are authentically described. It should be noted that the author deliberately named the vehicle in the following story inaccurately. In medieval England it would have been called a chariot but Frazer was willing to sacrifice authenticity in favor of clarity for the modern reader.
“A Traveller’s Tale” was first published in The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes, e
dited by Mike Ashley (London, Robinson, 2000).
MARGARET FRAZER
When that April with his showers sweet
The drought of March has pierced to the root …
Then long folk to go on pilgrimages …
DAMN. He hated that verse.
Not hated, Thomas amended. Was only brutally tired of it, having heard it a few too many times in his life to want it wandering through his head at odd moments. Besides, this wasn’t April and he was on no pilgrimage: it was definitely January and he was simply going home after rather too long a time at Westminster, where he’d only gone because he was needed to make a little peace between his cousins Hal and Gloucester, and if ever there was a thankless task in the world, that was it because the only peace either of them wanted was the other one out of his way—forever and in every way, for choice.
Ah, well. He had done what he could for now. They wouldn’t kill each other this month, likely, and he’d be home by supper if the weather held and nobody’s horse threw a shoe on the ice-set road.
Thomas eyed the grey, lowering sky and judged there was good chance the snow would hold off for the few hours more of riding he needed. January’s trouble was that the days were so short. And cold. He huddled his cloak more snugly around his shoulders and was glad of his fur-lined boots and that he had given pairs for New Year’s gifts to Giles and Ralph. They were riding behind him now without the displeasure that servants as good as they seemed able to make known without sound or gesture, when they did not approve of whatever their master had dragged them into—such as the long ride from London into Oxfordshire in a cold January with snow threatening—when there was no real need except that Thomas wanted to be home and with his books and family. And although whether those in service to him liked him or not, came second to whether or not they served him well, for choice he preferred to have people around him whom he liked and who, though he could live without it, at least somewhat liked him, too. Hal—otherwise my Lord Bishop of Winchester and son of a royal duke—had been known to tease him that such concern came from his somewhat low-born blood, to which Thomas invariably answered in return that it came from his good common sense and Hal ought to try it some time, thank you very much. Then they would laugh together.
Why was it he could talk and laugh and enjoy Hal’s company, and talk and laugh and enjoy Gloucester’s company, and all that Hal and Gloucester could do with each other was hate their respective guts? It was tedious of them and more tedious that they needed him to sort them out. Maud would say so over and over when he reached home, until he had given her kisses enough and her present from London—a pretty gold and enameled brooch this time—to make her feel she had been missed while he was gone, and then she would begin to tell him all that had happened the week and a half he’d been away and everything would be back to where it had been before he had left.
The road slacked downward and curved left and he knew that around the curve, beyond this out-thrust of trees, the Chiltern Hills fell steeply away to the lowlands that reached westward for miles upon miles, an open vastness that on a clear summer’s day at this hour would be filled with westering sunlight like a bowl full of gold, but today would be all dull shades of lead and grey. But Thomas had seen it from here in every season and weather and loved it every time and way, and besides, from here there were not many miles left to home, though it was further than it seemed because the steep, long drop from the Chilterns had to be managed first and …
With a slight sinking of spirits Thomas saw trouble ahead. A carriage stopped right at the crest above the first long downward drop of the road; and by the scurrying of three men around it and the woman standing to one side, wringing her hands and wailing, it was halted for more than the necessary checking of harness and wheels before the start of the treacherous way down.
With wanhope that it was not as bad as it looked, Thomas raised a gloved hand out of the sheltering folds of his cloak and gestured Giles to go forward and ask what the trouble was and if they might be of help, little though he wanted to be; and while Giles heeled his horse into a jog past him, Thomas put his hand back under his cloak, loosened dagger and sword in their sheaths, and then, as he and Ralph drew nearer the carriage, pushed back his cloak to leave his sword-arm free, on the chance this was after all a waylaying rather than simply someone else’s trouble.
Just for a moment then the possibility of robbery took stronger hold as Giles, after a brief word with the men there, drew his horse rapidly around and headed back with more haste than a carriage’s breakdown warranted, shouting well before he was back to Thomas’s side. “There’s some people dead here!”
Suddenly not minded to go closer, drawing rein and putting hand to sword-hilt openly, as Ralph moved closer up on his flank, Thomas asked, “I beg your pardon?”
“There’s people dead,” Giles repeated, stopping beside him. “You know William Shellaston? A merchant from Abingdon?”
“By name.” Thomas urged his horse forward. “It’s him?”
“And his wife and son, looks like.”
“All of them dead? How?”
“There’s none of that lot knows. It’s only just happened. Or they only just noticed. It’s odd, like.”
Thomas supposed it was, if three people were dead and their servants had “only just noticed.” But he was to them now, clustered beside the carriage, the woman still sobbing for the world to hear.
“I told them who you are,” Giles whispered at Thomas’s side. “That you’re a coroner and all.”
“In London,” Thomas pointed out, annoyed. For no reason anyone could explain, the office of Chief Butler to the King included the office of Coroner of London, and by that, yes, he was a coroner but, “I’ve no jurisdiction here.”
“They don’t need to know that,” Giles replied. “What they need is someone to settle them and tell them what to do.”
And here he was and had to do it, Thomas supposed, and summoned up what he had heard of William Shellaston. A wine merchant whose wines were never of the best, a bad-humoured man, heavy-handed, not given to fair-dealing if he could help it, with a mind to join the landed gentry and the purchase of a manor lately near Henley to help his ambition along. Exactly the sort of man Thomas avoided like the plague because the only interest that sort had in his acquaintance was how much he could do for them.
Well, there wasn’t much to be done for him now, if he was dead, Thomas thought, dismounting beside the servants and the carriage that was of the common kind—long-bodied, with low wooden sides, closed in by canvas stretched over metal half-hoops, and high-wheeled to keep it clear of muddy roads. The richer sort were painted, sides and canvas both, but this was all brown wood and bare canvas, nothing to make it remarkable except, Thomas noted, it was solidly built, the only expense spared seeming to have been to decorate it for the eye.
The servants had all begun to talk as soon as his feet were on the ground. “Be quiet,” he said, so used to being obeyed it did not surprise him when they fell silent; then said to the man he had singled out as babbling the least at him, “What’s in hand here?”
“They’re dead. All three of them! We stopped to tell Master Shellaston we were about to start down. He hates to be surprised by the sudden drop and we’ve orders to always stop to tell him. Only when I called in, no one answered and when I looked in to see why, they were all …” He swallowed as if holding down his gorge. “… dead.”
“That’s all you know?”
The man nodded, tight-lipped over apparent gut-sickness.
“That’s all any of you know?”
More nods all around.
“No outcry? Nothing? No sign of how they’re dead?”
“Nothing,” the woman answered, her voice rising shrilly. “They’re just dead and it’s awful and …”
“I’ll see for myself,” Thomas said curtly, less because he wanted to see anything and more to stop her carrying on. He moved to the carriage’s rear, the usual way in. The chain meant to g
o across the gap to make falling out less easy had been unfastened at one end and looped aside, the last link dropped into the hook on the other side, and the heavy canvas curtain meant to keep draughts out strapped aside, out of the way, giving him a clear view of the long tunnel of the carriage’s inside. He stepped up on a chest that had been taken out and set down on the ground for a step—its usual use, to judge by its dried-muddy bottom and the footmarks on its top—and ducked inside. Or as clear a view as the shadows and grey light allowed him; the flaps over the window on each side of the carriage, meant for air and light and a sight of the countryside in better weather, were closed and it took a few moments for his eyes to get used to the gloom.
His sense of smell worked faster. There was a reek to the place that said death, and he pulled a fold of his cloak over his mouth and nose before he ventured further in, able to see well enough now not to tread on … anything … before he reached the windows. Thomas held his breath while dropping his cloak’s fold long enough to roll up and tie the window flaps out of the way to give better light and eventually, he hoped, better air.
In the meanwhile, pressing his cloak over his nose and mouth again, he looked around and saw he had been right: there was nothing here he wanted to see, though it interested him that the inside of the carriage was nothing like its outside. Close-woven green wool lined the canvas cover for colour and comfort, there was well-stuffed padding on the wooden side-walls and woven carpets covered as much of the floor as he could see, for the high-piled cushions of all sizes, meant to make for comfortable sitting against the jounce and lurch of travel, with willow-woven hampers, lidded and strapped to the carriage sides near the entrance, the only other furnishing because anything of wood would be an invitation to bruising in this small carriage.