The Wychford Poisoning Case

by Anthony Berkeley

  ‘I want to see your manager,’ said Roger, quivering with excitement.

  The manager was unenthusiastic. To Roger’s introduction of himself as a special correspondent of the Daily Courier he was politely inquiring; to Roger’s request to be informed at once whether a two-ounce packet of arsenic had been sold over the counter during the last fortnight in June or at the beginning of July he was courteously blank; in answer to Roger’s entreaty to be allowed to see the poisons’ book for that period the manager replied a little proudly that Warton’s was a wholesale house, not a retail chemist. The manager then began to hint ever so politely that he was a very busy man and what about good afternoon?

  ‘Damn all managers!’ said Roger impartially as he emerged into the passage once more.

  ‘Quite so,’ Alec agreed. ‘What about trying at the counter ourselves?’

  The ground floor of Warton’s covered a large area. It was like a shop and yet curiously unlike a shop. Broad, low counters ran about like long fat snakes in all directions and men in long dull-yellow overalls stood about very occasionally behind them. There was an air of repose over the whole place which was not unpleasing.

  Roger tackled one of the men in the long dull-yellow overalls. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said brightly. ‘I want to make some inquiries about arsenic.’

  ‘Over there, sir,’ said the man, pointing to a distant counter. ‘Just to the right of that pillar. No, not that one—the one on the left of the clock.’

  With some difficulty Roger presented himself at the right counter.

  ‘Arsenic, sir?’ said the elderly assistant, in a marked Scotch accent; he was a little dried-up man with a straggling grey beard and gold-rimmed spectacles. ‘Would it be the pure arsenic or the commaircial ye’re wanting?’

  ‘Are you the man who looks after all the sales of arsenic here?’ Roger asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. I attend to all the orders for arsenic.’

  ‘And I suppose you sell it in buckets, so to speak?’

  ‘We sometimes sell a verra large quorntity at a time,’ the little old man admitted in a somewhat puzzled voice.

  ‘But if one wanted to buy a sample, just a couple of ounces say, you could let a customer have that over the counter?’

  ‘Weel, I should want yere business card, of course, sir. Ye’ll understand that we only supply the trade here. Or maybe ye want it for a manufactory process?’

  ‘I don’t want it at all,’ Roger said confidentially. ‘As a matter of fact I’m acting for the Daily Courier and I want to ask you some questions about a small packet of arsenic which was bought here a short time ago.’

  The assistant looked dubious. ‘I doot ye’d best see Mr Graves, sir,’ he said. ‘He’s the manager. Or maybe one of the directors. I misdoot whether I ought to tell ye myself.’

  ‘Well, I’d much rather see you, because you must be the man who sold it. And also,’ Roger added cunningly, ‘if you can give me the information I want (which I’ll undertake to treat quite confidentially if you prefer), the Courier would be prepared to pay very handsomely for it indeed.’

  The little old man brightened visibly. ‘After all, perhaps there wouldn’t be any harm in me just hearing yere questions, sir. What would it be ye were wanting to know?’

  ‘Either during the last fortnight of June or the first fortnight of July, probably the latter, somebody came in here and bought two ounces of arsenic. Now, does that convey anything to your memory?’

  The man shook his head regretfully. ‘Is that all ye can tell me, sir? There’s a terrible lot of people come in here for sma’ samples like that.’

  ‘Well, now, supposing it was a woman—would you remember then? Did you serve any woman with two ounces of arsenic during that period?’

  ‘It wusna a wumman, sir; I can tell ye that. I don’t mind that I’ve served a wumman with arsenic for twelve months or mair.’

  Roger exchanged glances with Alec.

  ‘You’re quite positive of that?’ he asked.

  ‘Pairfectly! I can take my oath it wasna a wumman.’

  ‘Lay you doon and dee, eh?’ said Roger happily. ‘Well, that’s something anyhow. Now, how are we to get at who it was? Do you keep any sort of a record of these small sales?’

  ‘Oh, aye. I enter them all up in ma cash-buke. But not the names, ye see.’

  ‘Well, what about having a glance through your cash-book and seeing how many two ounces of arsenic you sold at that time? You never know; there might only be this one, and then seeing it in the book might help you to remember the circumstances.’

  ‘It’s not verra probable, I must tell ye,’ muttered the little old man, but produced a bulky ledger nevertheless and began to run his finger down its columns.

  A customer arrived, and Roger stood aside; the customer departed, and the search continued.

  Three customers later the little Scotchman closed the ledger and laid a slip of paper in front of Roger. ‘Five times, between the fifteenth of June and the fifteenth of July, sir,’ he said. ‘Two of them I mind, on the twenty-thirrd of June and the fifth of July; customers I know. The ither three might have been onnybody.’

  Roger pounced on one of the dates. ‘July the seventh! That’s our man. July the thirteenth is too late, and June the seventeenth probably too early.’ He pulled out his pocket-book and extracted his copy of the time-table of the case which he had made out the evening before leaving for Wychford. ‘Yes, July the seventh—look, Alec! See?’ He stubbed excitedly with his finger at the items immediately below and pushed it into the other’s hand. ‘That was a Tuesday,’ he said, turning back to the counter. ‘Now then, can’t you remember who bought that two ounces of arsenic on Tuesday, July the seventh? What he looked like or—or whether he wore glasses or anything like that?’

  The little Scotchman turned his eyes dutifully up to the ceiling and proceeded evidently to rack his brains, while Roger watched him in an agony of anxiety.

  ‘Ah doot ma mind’s a pairfect blarnk!’ he said at last, turning them down again.

  They gazed at each other in dismay.

  ‘Try again!’ Roger urged, and up went the eyes once more.

  With difficulty Roger refrained from dancing with impatience.

  ‘It’s nae use at a’,’ confessed the assistant, his accent becoming broader every minute as he saw the Courier’s generosity eluding his clutches. ‘Ah canna mind onnything at a’ aboot it.’

  ‘But this is awful!’ Roger groaned. ‘We’ve got our finger right on the crux of things. We must hoick it out of him. Alec, try the effect of his native language, and see whether that jabs his memory.’

  Alec and the assistant eyed one another Scotchly.

  Then Alec gave tongue. He said, quite calmly:

  ‘Didn’t you say something just now about business cards? Couldn’t you get a hint from that?’

  Roger sank on to the counter. ‘I resign!’ he moaned. ‘The death of Superintendent Sheringham. Superintendent Grierson, I hand it to you.’

  ‘Would he be a chemist, this gentleman?’ the assistant wanted to know.

  ‘Go on, Alec,’ said Roger. ‘You answer him. I’m not here any longer.’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t,’ Alec replied. ‘He’d be—What would he be, Roger?’

  ‘God knows!’

  The little old Scotchman was burrowing happily under the counter. ‘If he’s not a chemist, I’d have his caird, ye see,’ his voice floated up. ‘Chemists’ cairds I juist have a luke at, but if the customer isna a chemist I keep his caird and mak’ a note on it of the sample he bocht, so that we can follow up wi’ a le’er la’er on if we don’t get an orrder from him, ye see. I thocht a’ the time that yere gentleman maybe was a chemist. Here’s the cairrrds!’

  He reappeared with a cardboard box in which little bundles of business-cards were held together with elastic bands. With maddening deliberation he at last selected one of these, pulled off the band and began to turn over the cards. Roger watched him breathlessly, and even
Alec looked decidedly interested.

  ‘Here we aire!’ said the assistant with much satisfaction at last, holding one of the cards up to his spectacles and looking at it intently. ‘Two ounces of best white arsenic, on the seventh of July, wanted for a manufactory process in connection wi’—I canna richtly read for the moment what—’

  ‘L-let me have a look at it!’ Roger interrupted unsteadily, stifling an insane desire to hurl himself upon the bleating little old man, and tear the card out of his grasp.

  But that individual was not a Scotch business man for nothing. With an unmistakable gesture of caution he stepped back from the counter arid regarded Roger over the top of his spectacles.

  ‘Wull I get the Courier’s money if I show you this cairrd?’ he asked carefully.

  ‘You wull,’ Roger choked. ‘By the nine gods I swear it. And I’ll name a trysting day if you like. Only for heaven’s sake hand it over!’

  ‘Hoo much?’

  ‘Oh—oh, whatever you like!’

  ‘Five poonds?’

  ‘Five poonds? Lord, yes, I’ll see you get five poonds. Honest to goodness, I will. Oh, tell me a Scotch deity to swear by, Alec!’

  ‘Ah’ll get five poonds if I let you tak’ a luke at this cairrrd?’ repeated the assistant, who clearly preferred things quite cut and dried.

  Roger leaned over the counter. ‘You’ll get five pounds if you let us look at that card; and if you don’t hurry up, you won’t need it, because you’ll be dead.’

  ‘Then Ah’ll tak’ it noo,’ said the assistant with simple dignity.

  Roger tremblingly counted out five pound notes. A moment later the precious card was in his hands. He stared at it with bulging eyes, while Alec peered over his shoulder. Printed upon it plain for all men to read were these words: ‘Thomas Bentley & Sons, Ltd., Import and Export Merchants.’

  ‘Well, I’m damned!’ said Roger.

  ‘Good Lord!’ said Alec.

  In silence they turned their eyes upon the little old assistant.

  ‘Do you ever read the newspapers?’ Roger asked him reverently.

  ‘Aye. Whiles I do.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Aye. Whiles. I hae the Peebles Gazette sent on to me maist every week by ma dochter. But I dinna always read it, ye ken; I dae verra little licht reading.’

  In silence Roger and Alec turned their eyes back to each other. In silence they turned on their heels and marched out of the barn-like place.

  ‘Hey! Hech!’ cried the little old assistant after them, rendered since the receipt of his five pounds almost incoherently Caledonian. ‘Hooch! Ah wornt thart cairrrrrd barck!’

  They paid no heed. It is doubtful whether they even heard him.

  On the pavement outside they halted and faced one another.

  ‘The Wychford Poisoning Mystery is solved,’ said Roger in hushed tones.

  ‘Who’d have thought it of the blighter?’ grunted Alec.

  ‘Brother William!’ intoned Roger and Alec in unison.

  CHAPTER XXII

  ENTER ROMANCE

  ‘BUT what an ass!’ exclaimed Roger for the tenth time. ‘To do it under his own trade card! I can’t get over it. What on earth’s the use of tearing off the label, if he leaves his business card behind to be identified by? Well, I said right at the beginning, if you remember, that Brother William was an ass, and my hat, he is!’

  They were sitting in a little tea-shop, discussing their tremendous discovery over a very early cup of tea. The next move had not been decided. Alec was for laying their case before Mrs Bentley’s solicitor, holding that they had now done all that might be reasonably expected of them; but now it was Roger who demurred at this. Moral certainty, he pointed out, is not the same thing as legal proof; and it was legal proof he wanted before he allowed the conduct of affairs to pass out of his hands.

  Alec’s next question bore on this matter. ‘Well, what’s the next move?’ he asked. ‘Can we do anything more today?’

  ‘What’s the time?’ said Roger, glancing at his watch. ‘Five past four. Yes, I can just do it. The next step, obviously, is to get William properly identified by that compatriot of yours, and the only way we can do that is with a photograph. Now, Alexander, let me test your powers of observation. Where have you seen a photograph of Brother William lately?’

  ‘I never have seen one,’ Alec replied promptly. ‘Haven’t the least idea what the blighter looks like.’

  ‘For a detective-constable, you’re singularly unobservant,’ Roger said, shaking his head reprovingly. ‘There’s a photograph of Brother William, excellent Alexander, in Mrs Saunderson’s drawing-room, as you ought very well to have noticed. One to me, I fancy.’

  ‘Wait a bit!’ Alec retorted. ‘I’ve never been inside the place, curse you!’

  ‘Oh!’ said Roger, somewhat taken aback. ‘I was forgetting that.’

  ‘For a detective-superintendent,’ observed Alec nastily, ‘you’ve a rotten memory.’

  ‘I am humbled and abashed,’ Roger murmured. ‘And for the second time during the last hour, too. It’s getting quite a habit. Well, shelving the question of my humility and abashment for the moment, this is what I propose to do—scud back to Wychford; find out by telephone whether the Saunderson is in; if she isn’t, scud round and feloniously steal, purloin and illegally confiscate her portrait of Brother William; scud back to town again, and get it identified before Warton’s close. Then, having obtained our legal proof, we can spend this evening discussing pleasantly what to do about it.’

  ‘And if the Saunderson is in?’

  ‘Then I shall have to wait my opportunity tomorrow morning. Anyhow, get your hat down and let’s make a move.’

  They passed into the street and turned in the direction of the nearest underground station.

  ‘What rather beats me,’ Roger observed thoughtfully as they walked along, ‘is the question of motive.’

  ‘I thought you decided ages ago that Brother William had a motive?’

  ‘Oh, yes; he had. To get his brother’s share of the business. But dash it all, that hardly seems a big enough motive for murdering one’s own brother, does it? It isn’t even as if he were hard up; he must have had a perfectly comfortable income for a bachelor.’

  ‘But if William had a screw loose?’

  ‘Yes, there is that,’ Roger admitted, though not in very satisfied tones. ‘But it would have to be a jolly big screw, and I must say that my impression of the man didn’t go as far as that at all; he might be eccentric and badly balanced, even cranky, but he certainly didn’t strike me as a criminal lunatic—and that’s how he seems to be emerging. Still, we shall certainly have to accept that motive, in the absence of any stronger one.’

  By a stroke of good luck a train was on the point of leaving for Wychford when they arrived at Charing Cross, and they just managed to catch it. Roger talked a good deal on the way down. Arrived at Wychford Station, he entered a telephone booth and rang up Mrs Saunderson’s house.

  ‘She’s out,’ he announced, rejoining Alec a moment later, ‘and not expected back till after six, so that’s all right. I didn’t give my name, of course, so I shall go round there right away, express consternation and sorrow at hearing the maid’s news, and ask to write a note in the drawing-room; for a person of my criminological education, the rest will be easy.’

  ‘And what do you want me to do?’

  ‘You can go home and enjoy yourself with breaking the news to Sheila. I shall fly back here to catch the next train for London, but there’s no earthly need for you to come up as well. It’s only a formality. I shall be back for dinner. So long!’

  They went their respective ways.

  A quarter of an hour later Roger’s strategy was being rewarded, and Mrs Saunderson’s drawing-room door was in the act of shutting respectfully behind Mrs Saunderson’s parlourmaid. Roger waited till the sound of her retreating footsteps had disappeared: then he made for the photograph of Brother William which reposed in a ch
aste silver frame on Mrs Saunderson’s grand piano (Mrs Saunderson was one of those people who keep photograph-frames and silver vases on the tops of their pianos).

  ‘Not that I’m really a thief,’ he murmured, as he extracted it from its frame, ‘for I fully intend at present to send somebody to restore it when I’ve finished with it; and after all, intention is everything.’

  He replaced the frame on the piano and stood for a moment examining the portrait. It was a good likeness, and the photographer had not only caught something of Brother William’s expression of peevish resentment but had even refrained from eliminating it in the touching-up process. Before slipping it into his pocket and making good his escape, Roger turned the thing over and glanced idly at the back. The next moment he started visibly and uttered a single expletive, not unconnected with life after death; for on the back of the photograph was written, ‘For my own darling Mona, from her William.’

  ‘Good Heavens!’ exclaimed Roger aloud, ringing a change on the same topic.

  He dropped into a chair and stared at the words, his brain racing madly.

  How did it affect the situation? That it did in some way Roger felt as sure as that he and Alec had that afternoon solved their main problem. Brother William and Mrs Saunderson! Did they intend to marry? There was not the least rumour coupling their names together; if there had been, it would certainly have come to Roger’s ears in the course of these exhaustive inquiries, either directly or, more probably, through Sheila. Why, then, were they keeping their affection so dark?

  Did they intend to marry? Surely! But if so, didn’t that go a very long way towards removing William’s motive for his brother’s death? Mrs Saunderson was a wealthy woman. Even without William’s income from his business, she must have an ample sufficiency for two people. How in the world, then, could this matter of marriage make it necessary for William so largely to increase his own resources? It could hardly be that he disliked so intensely the idea of living on his wife’s money: Brother William was not that sort. And to dislike it to the extent of murdering his own brother in order to obviate it! Oh, no; out of the question. What, then? It must be something connected with the project of marrying Mrs Saunderson, and it must be something connected with money. How could these two be made to combine?