The Wychford Poisoning Case

by Anthony Berkeley

  ‘Nellie Green, you mean?’ supplied Roger, who was sitting beside Sheila on the front seat. ‘Why, what about her?’

  ‘Well, you made such a fuss about seeing Mary Blower. Oughtn’t you to see the other one as well?’

  ‘And the cook,’ Roger said thoughtfully. ‘Well, strictly speaking, I suppose I ought. But their evidence before the magistrates didn’t strike me as affecting the case one way or the other; just about the Bentleys’ home life, and corroborating Mary Blower’s story of the fly-papers and that sort of thing. No, I don’t really think I need bother about them.’

  ‘Well, if either of them turns out to have done it, don’t say I didn’t tell you,’ said Sheila. ‘And what about the Saunderson? I suppose you’ve dropped her like a red-hot coal now you’ve got all you wanted out of her.’

  ‘I have!’ returned Roger heartily. ‘And that reminds me. I believe I’m supposed to be going there to tea today. Will you ring her up at about four o’clock and tell her I’ve been called off suddenly to see a woman about a cat in Singapore or Cape Cod or somewhere equally plausible.’

  ‘I will,’ Sheila undertook with enthusiasm. ‘And I’ll add that you therefore won’t be staying any longer in Wychford to see a cat about a woman, that mission having already been most successfully accomplished, shall I?’

  ‘You can tell her anything you jolly well like,’ Roger said generously.

  At lunch Roger remembered something that he had been intending to ask the doctor. In view of the way in which the case had developed during the last twenty-four hours, it no longer held quite the same importance as before, but Roger preferred to have everything cut and dried.

  ‘By the way, doctor,’ he remarked, ‘has arsenic any value as a cosmetic?’

  The doctor’s eyes twinkled. ‘Are you forecasting Mrs Bentley’s defence, Sheringham?’

  ‘Part of it, yes. I expect you’ve read of the Madeleine Smith case, haven’t you? That was the defence set up for the possession of arsenic there, you know, and it’s been put forward in other cases since then. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Mrs Bentley does the same. Is there anything in it?’

  ‘Oh, there is, undoubtedly. Arsenic is prescribed internally in certain cases where the skin is affected; it makes the skin softer and would eradicate pimples or anything like that. It’s good for the complexion too, I believe, but don’t let Sheila hear me say that, or she’ll be the next one to buy fly-papers.’

  ‘Thank you, father. I’m perfectly satisfied with my schoolgirl complexion as it is.’

  ‘It does wear pretty well,’ Alec said critically, ‘considering the amount of paint and muck you wear over it.’

  Under cover of the resulting wrangle, Roger pursued his inquiries further. ‘Internally, you said. And would it be any good applied externally instead?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I think so. It isn’t the sort of thing one could order, of course, because of the danger; but I should say that Mrs Bentley would have no difficulty in making out a perfectly legitimate case for its use in that way.’

  ‘I see,’ said Roger with satisfaction. ‘Yes, that was my idea too.’

  Shortly after lunch Roger announced his intention of running up to town for an hour or two. Sheila offered to drive him down to the station, and Alec once more accommodated himself in the dickey.

  ‘Though this is absolutely the last time,’ he said plaintively. ‘I’m so sore already that I can hardly sit down. It’s your turn next, Roger.’

  ‘One sore person in a household is generally quite enough,’ Roger pointed out. ‘I don’t think you ought to be unreasonable, Alec.’

  ‘So you’re going to tackle Brother Alfred, are you?’ Sheila asked, when they were under way. ‘I think you’ll find him a rather tougher nut to crack than Mr Allen.’

  ‘I’m afraid I shall. And I’ve really got nothing to crack him with, like I had Allen.’

  ‘How are you going about it?’

  ‘Well, I don’t see what else I can do except send in my name as the Courier’s representative. He’s given one or two interviews already, so I may have luck.’

  ‘But what do you want to find out from him?’

  ‘Oh, there’s nothing exactly that I want to find out from him; no information, or anything like that. I just want to get an impression of the man himself.’

  ‘To see whether he’s capable of murdering his own brother?’

  ‘If you like to put it so bluntly, yes.’

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if he did. He sounds just like the sort of man you’re always saying a poisoner usually is—hard and cold and calculating and all that.’

  ‘Yes, I must admit that’s how he struck me too.’

  ‘Better buy a pair of handcuffs before you get there,’ Sheila advised, bringing the car round in a broad sweep in front of the station-entrance.

  Alfred Bentley, as Roger had already discovered, was the manager of a big paper-manufactory in the south of London. He had begun at the very bottom of the business when he was eighteen years old and worked up to the position he now held. His age was thirty-six.

  Roger gave his name at the little pigeon-hole marked ‘Inquiries,’ mentioned that he represented the Daily Courier and made his request for an interview.

  Three minutes later the girl who had taken his message came back with his answer. ‘Mr Bentley is very sorry, but he is not seeing any more interviewers.’

  Roger was not unprepared. ‘Will you tell him that I have some very important information not yet known to the police which I should like to discuss with him,’ he said with a bland smile.

  The girl disappeared again.

  This time Roger’s strategy was rewarded. ‘Mr Bentley can give you two minutes, sir. Will you come through, please.’

  She led the way down a short corridor and tapped deferentially on a door. ‘Mr Sheringham, sir,’ she said, opening it in response to a curt summons to enter. Roger stepped past her into the room.

  Mr Alfred Bentley looked younger than his years. His face was lean and clean-shaven, his hair short and dark, his eyes a peculiar shade of light blue—‘flinty’ was the epithet which sprang at once into Roger’s mind. He did not rise.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Sheringham,’ he said, in curt, brisk tones. ‘Sit down, will you? I had not intended to see any more interviewers, but you say that you have information of special importance not yet known to the police?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Bentley,’ Roger said easily, seating himself in a chair by the big desk. ‘I have.’

  ‘I can conceive of nothing important which the police do not already know. May I ask you to tell me what it is? But please remember that I am a busy man and I can’t spare you more than the two minutes I mentioned.’

  ‘That will be ample. This is my information—that your sister-in-law and Allen were not, as we understand the phrase, in love with each other.’

  Roger had been watching his man closely as he spoke, but Alfred Bentley did not change countenance; only a very faintly contemptuous expression appeared on his impassive face. ‘That must be a matter of opinion,’ he said shortly. ‘Really, if that is all you have to tell me—!’

  ‘My information is reliable.’

  Bentley’s mouth closed in a hard line. ‘I’m afraid I must decline to discuss the question with you. The interest is of a purely personal nature. In any case, your information is clearly mistaken.’

  ‘I don’t think you quite appreciate the importance of it, Mr Bentley,’ Roger said, leaning forward a little. ‘The interest is not purely personal. The question affects the basis of the whole case. It destroys entirely the motive imputed to Mrs Bentley for the crime of which she is accused.’ He paused for a moment. ‘It really makes one wonder whether she is guilty!’ he added deliberately.

  If Roger had expected to read any dramatic revelation in Bentley’s face at this doubtless startling statement, he was disappointed. The only emotion registered there was a slight impatience.

  ‘She hasn’t b
een tried yet, I might remind you,’ he said laconically. ‘If there is anything in this information of yours, no doubt you will lodge it with its proper recipient and it will receive any attention due to it at the trial. In any case, I must repeat that I cannot discuss it with you, I’m sorry.’ He rose to his feet and held out his hand. ‘Good afternoon.’

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Roger, and quitted the presence.

  In the passage outside he glanced at his watch. ‘Two minutes and three seconds,’ he murmured. ‘A methodical gentleman, Brother Alfred; and evidently a man of his word as well.’

  He emerged into the street and stood for a moment on the pavement in thought. It was nearly half-past four, his watch had told him. Coming to a sudden decision he hailed a passing taxi and gave an address to the driver.

  The offices of Thomas Bentley and Sons, Ltd., Import and Export Mchts., as their door-plate put it, were situated in the neighbourhood of Gracechurch Street, where land is worth goodness knows how many thousand pounds a square foot. Thomas Bentley and Sons, Ltd., occupied one large and two smaller rooms on a first floor, and no doubt they paid extremely highly for the privilege. Twenty-five minutes after shaking hands with Brother Alfred, Roger was again lifting the flap of a little porthole labelled ‘Inquiries’ and sending a message to Brother William. This time, however, he played his card of important information in the first round instead of the second.

  When Brother Alfred had not denied himself, who was Brother William to do so? ‘Mr Bentley will see you, sir,’ said the girl in the words of her predecessor. ‘Will you come this way?’ Roger followed her.

  Whereas Brother Alfred had been lean to the point of cadaverousness, Brother William was plump, very nearly stout; his hair was thinner than his brother’s and decidedly greyer; his eyes were blue, but it was a paler blue, a watery, indeterminate, uneasy blue; in place of the other’s air of dry, hard impassivity he wore a petulant look of resentful dissatisfaction with the world in general. He was the sort of person whom one might expect to cherish, instead of bees, a swarm of grudges in his bonnet.

  He rose with obvious reluctance as Roger entered the little room. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Sheringham,’ he said in a peevish voice. ‘I was expecting you.’

  The devil you were! observed Roger to himself in considerable astonishment. Aloud, he repeated surprisedly, ‘You were expecting me, Mr Bentley?’

  ‘Yes, and I must tell you at once that I must decline to discuss this—er—this information you say you have obtained.’

  ‘But I haven’t told you what it is yet!’

  ‘That is—er—immaterial. Certain information has already reached me that—er—that—In any case, I do not wish to discuss it. I might have refused to see you—I was very strongly tempted to do so—except that I should like to put a question to you myself. Where—er—that is, from what source did you obtain this precious information of yours?’

  Roger looked at him with growing amazement. William Bentley was obviously ill-at-ease. His hands were trembling as he rested them on his desk, and his face was flushed; he had clearly been picking his words with considerable care, and, to Roger’s eyes at any rate, the expression on his face indicated a barely concealed anxiety. Roger decided swiftly to see whether he could force him to show his hand a little more plainly.

  ‘Well, Mr Bentley,’ he said slowly, ‘if you decline to discuss the matter with me, I hardly see that I can tell you where I obtained my information.’

  Bentley’s attitude seemed to become tenser. ‘I must tell you, Mr Sheringham,’ he said with obvious constraint, ‘that we—that I, have a particular reason for asking this. I am not prompted by idle curiosity. I have—er—a particular reason for asking.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have to refuse, Mr Bentley,’ Roger said courteously, ‘but I hardly see how I could tell you without betraying somebody else’s confidence, and that I am not prepared to do.’

  ‘But damn it, man!’ Bentley snapped. ‘We’re the lady’s brothers-in-law, aren’t we? We’re more closely concerned than anybody else. If anybody is spreading stories about her or pretending to supply information about her, we have a right to know who it is, haven’t we?’

  ‘That, I’m afraid,’ replied Roger gravely, ‘must be a matter of opinion.’

  Bentley sank into his chair. ‘Sit down, Mr Sheringham,’ he said testily. ‘Sit down. Let’s talk the matter over. I know perfectly well what this information of yours is. I wanted to know where you got it from in order that I could judge whether there may be any truth in it or not. But if you think you have a right to withhold that, it’s obviously no good pursuing the matter.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Roger murmured.

  ‘Well, what do you propose to do about it? Are you going to publish it?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet’

  ‘Because I must tell you at once that there isn’t a vestige of truth in it. Can’t be! I only wish I could think otherwise; perhaps in that case my sister-in-law might not have—er—acted as she did. As things are—well, it stands to reason. You must understand that I am influenced only by consideration for my poor brother’s memory. This case is terrible for us—terrible!’

  ‘I can believe that,’ Roger put in sympathetically.

  ‘I am only anxious to stop the source of any further scandals connected with his good name, you must quite understand that. This is the particular reason for asking you the question to which I referred just now. There has been enough publicity given to the actual facts of the whole dreadful business, without adding anything further in the way of sheer baseless rumour. Both my brother and myself are quite agreed upon that. We have to take those facts as—er—as they are, but we are determined to take every step to prevent my sister-in-law’s case from being prejudiced by completely untruthful—er—tittle-tattle—every step in our power!’

  ‘But would my information have that effect?’ asked Roger with considerable surprise.

  ‘Ask yourself, Mr Sheringham! Ask—er—ask yourself! Her position is bad enough as things are. What would it be if you inform the police of this idea? From a—h’m—a morally guilty wife, but with the excuse of a guilty passion, she becomes nothing less than a—er—h’m!—an ordinary loose woman. That is a thing which my brother and myself will combat with all the means in our power against a member of our own family—for, having married into our family, we accept her as a member of it. Whether she is or is not guilty of the terrible crime for which she is to be—er—tried, we are determined to set our faces against the stirring up of any more—any more moral mud, so to speak, in connection with her.’

  ‘What you mean is, if the Allen motive is destroyed, other motives of a similar description might be brought to light?’ Roger asked quickly.

  Bentley’s jaw dropped slightly. ‘Certainly not!’ he said loudly. ‘Nothing of the sort. I must decline to discuss the matter with you further, sir.’

  ‘Or perhaps you meant,’ Roger remarked chattily, following the other’s lead in rising to his feet, ‘that the mud might not be so much concerned with your sister-in-law, as with a male member of the family instead?’

  Bentley stepped back a pace, struck the back of his knee against the seat of his chair and sat down heavily, gasping like a fish out of water. His watery eyes stared at Roger from a white face. Roger followed up his advantage. It was rather like hitting a fallen man, but fallen men had to be sacrificed in the interests of truth.

  ‘You are afraid, I take it, that something might be unearthed to show that Mrs Bentley’s husband had been carrying on an intrigue under her very nose with somebody very inferior to himself in station?’

  The effect of his words was curious. The unmistakable fear in Bentley’s face gave place, first to equally unmistakable relief and then to anger. His flush returned and he jumped to his feet once more, pointing a quivering finger at the door.

  ‘Now then, you—you get out, see?’ he cried shrilly. ‘You get out, and take your filthy lies with you. And if you have the im
pudence to publish a word or—or hint of them in your beastly rag, I’ll—we’ll—I’ll have you up for libel, see? Criminal libel! Get out, damn you!’

  Roger got out with what dignity he might.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ observed Mr Roger Sheringham, self-elected detective for the defence. Which was apparently no less than the truth. Mr William Bentley had already attended to that point.

  Roger had another very thoughtful journey back to Wychford an hour or so later.

  CHAPTER XX

  MR SHERINGHAM SUMS UP

  IT was not until after dinner that evening that Roger had a chance of laying his new discoveries before his colleagues. Sheila gave him the opportunity.

  ‘I’m going to take Roger and Alec upstairs now, mum,’ she announced soon after they had returned to the drawing-room. ‘We’re going to smoke cigarettes and discuss life for an hour. Then I’ll bring them downstairs again to talk like little gentlemen to you and father.’

  ‘Very well, dear,’ Mrs Purefoy aquiesced, with a smile at Roger.

  And so it was.

  ‘Now, then,’ Sheila demanded, as soon as they were settled round the fire in her cosy little room. ‘Now then, what had Brother Alfred to say for himself?’

  ‘I thought you were going to keep quiet about Mrs Bentley and Allen not being in love,’ Alec remarked, when he had finished.

  ‘Well, I did intend to; but I had to put something pretty startling up to the man to watch whether he blanched or paled or did anything interesting like that, and that was the only really startling thing I could remember. Unfortunately not a blanch resulted.’

  ‘But what did you think of him, Roger?’ Sheila wanted to know.

  ‘I think,’ Roger replied with some care, ‘that Brother Alfred is a very exceptional man. He gave nothing away to me by so much as a bat of an eyelash. Whether that was because he had nothing to give or whether it was because he is a very exceptional man, is one of the chief points we shall have to consider. The only definite thing I can tell you is that he showed no eagerness at all to receive news which might go some way to exonerate his sister-in-law, and perfectly conflicting conclusions can be drawn from that. Brother William, on the other hand, was decidedly more communicative.’