The Wychford Poisoning Case

by Anthony Berkeley

  Gazing with unseeing eyes at the carpet, Roger allowed his mind full play.

  Suddenly he stiffened. Ah! But supposing that—

  The sound of the front-door opening and closing with a bang startled him out of his reverie. He heard light footsteps crossing the hall and held his breath. Mrs Saunderson must have returned, nearly an hour before she was expected; and Roger did not want very much to meet Mrs Saunderson just then.

  The footsteps passed the drawing-room door, and Roger sighed with relief. Evidently she was going straight upstairs. He would have plenty of time to get away, the precious photograph safe in his pocket.

  Then came an interruption. The footsteps ceased, and other footsteps, it seemed, drew near. There was the soft hum of feminine voices.

  ‘Damn!’ said Roger bitterly.

  The next moment the drawing-room door opened and Mrs Saunderson tripped in, a smile on her lips and both hands stretched eagerly forward. ‘Mr Sheringham!’ she fluted. ‘I thought you’d quite deserted me!’

  In the instant between his expression of regret and Mrs Saunderson’s entrance, Roger had taken a swift decision. He advanced to meet her and caught both her small hands in his.

  ‘Mrs Saunderson,’ he exclaimed, a little throatily, ‘I want to ask you just one question. You must forgive me—I can’t help myself!’

  ‘Oh, Mr Sheringham!’ murmured the little lady, dropping her eyes below the brim of her hat, and waited expectantly.

  ‘Does your income cease with your re-marriage?’

  Mrs Saunderson’s head jerked abruptly up. ‘Why, y-yes!’ she stammered, considerably taken aback.

  Roger dropped her hands and struck an attitude. ‘Then all is over between us!’ he exclaimed dramatically, and fled for his life.

  At the station he found that he had to wait ten minutes for a train. His desire to impart the information with which he was bursting drove him into a telephone-box. He gave Dr Purefoy’s number and, when the maid answered him, asked for Alec.

  ‘Alec!’ he exclaimed, directly that gentleman intimated his presence. ‘Tremendous news! I’ve found Brother W’s big motive. It’s positively romantic. He wants to marry Mrs S., and her income ceases on her re-marriage. What do you make of that?’

  ‘I say!’ Alec exclaimed quite enthusiastically. ‘Is that so? That alters matters.’

  ‘Intensifies them, you mean. Yes, rather! I’m as pleased as a dog with two tails. I think we’ve collected pretty well all we want now (I’ve got evidence of this new fact in my pocket, by the way), so I shall probably spend the evening writing out a statement, and we can lay one copy before the solicitor tomorrow and post the other off to Burgoyne, as I promised. Alec, this is a triumph!’

  ‘Rather!’

  ‘And look here, what about there being a bit more in it even than that? What about the lady having taken a hand herself?’

  ‘Good Lord! You don’t think that, do you?’

  ‘Well, it’s on the cards. Decidedly on the cards! Do you think he’d have had the guts all alone? I very much doubt it. That’s what struck me as so curious this afternoon, as well as the motive question. I don’t think he would have, you know. I’ve said so all along.’

  ‘But what about her? Is she capable of it?’

  ‘Capable of inciting, most certainly. And remember how very emphatic she was about the other lady. Oh, yes, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if there may not be some very interesting developments indeed!’

  ‘Well, I’m damned! I say, can I tell Sheila about this? She’s here now, simply burbling with curiosity.’ Sounds as of scuffling made themselves heard over the wire.

  ‘Yes, tell her by all means. Point out what a clever man her Uncle Roger is.’

  ‘You are a clever man, Uncle Roger!’ came an admiring feminine voice. ‘Do tell me what all the new excitement’s about. I’d much rather hear from you than Alec. He’s awfully stodgy to hear exciting things from.’

  As guardedly as he could, Roger told her. Ecstatic noises floated into his ear-piece.

  ‘The bad lad!’ Sheila exclaimed happily. ‘Must run in the family, mustn’t it? Well, well, well! Will all our names be in the papers, Roger? Can I have a photograph on back page? I’ll go to the photographer’s tomorrow; this is too good a chance to miss. “Detective Purefoy in her new green crepe marocain.” “Detective Purefoy, pinching her father’s two-seater for a joy-ride.” “Same lady with gloves on.” Oh, Roger, will Mrs Saunderson—’

  ‘Goodbye, Sheila!’ Roger exclaimed hastily. ‘Telephones have ears, you know.’ He hung up the receiver and made his way to the platform.

  During the journey up to London, Roger occupied himself with making copious notes for his forthcoming report, and enjoyed himself a good deal. He also spoilt a perfectly good page in his notebook in the following way:

  A BALLAD OF WYCHFORD GAOL

  ‘Yes, William’s my commonplace name, sir,

  And Arsenic’s the means I prefer;

  Maybe it’s not playing the game, sir,

  But—well, sir, I did it for her!

  ‘Yes, all for the love of a lady—

  That’s what has brought me to this;

  And maybe my conduct was shady,

  But I’d do it again—for her kiss!

  ‘Have you known what it can be to love, sir?

  Have you known how it comes up (de dee)

  Behind you and gives you a shove, sir?

  The Saunderson came and shoved me.’

  ? Work up for Spectator, Church

  Times, or Good Housekeeping.

  It was a few minutes before seven when Roger got back to the Purefoy’s house that evening. With a somewhat absent air he hung up his hat and coat and listened while the maid told him that Sheila and Alec were upstairs and would he join them as soon as he came in.

  Sheila flew to him the moment he opened the door of her room and grasped his sleeve. ‘Enter the conquering hero!’ she exclaimed. ‘Well, any more news?’

  ‘Yes,’ Roger answered. ‘I have. And I’m afraid something seems to have gone wrong a little with the conquering hero’s works. I showed Brother William’s photograph to the man at Warton’s and he swears blind that he isn’t the man who bought that arsenic!’

  CHAPTER XXIII

  FINAL DISCOVERIES

  ‘ISN’T the man?’ repeated Alec and Sheila in unison.

  Roger dropped into a chair by the fire. ‘No. Isn’t that annoying? Of course it’s just the sort of low trick one would expect Brother William to play.’

  ‘Is the chap quite sure?’ asked Alec in perturbation.

  ‘Absolutely. He says he never forgets a face, and he’s perfectly certain he’s never had dealings with Brother William’s.’

  ‘Oh!’ exclaimed Sheila. ‘But suppose he disguised himself?’

  ‘Yes, I thought of that.’

  ‘You did?’ said Sheila disappointedly. ‘What a nuisance you are, Roger! You think of everything.’

  ‘Not everything,’ Roger replied modestly. ‘Business cairds, for instance. No, but we did go into the question of disguise. I covered up bits of the face, chin and so on, in case he’d been wearing a false beard, forehead, all the rest of it. But it wasn’t any use; the little chap’s quite positive it wasn’t Brother William.’

  ‘This is a bit of a body-blow,’ Alec murmured. ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  ‘Well, I shall try him with photos of Brother Alfred, of course, and Allen, and anybody else I can think of. This does complicate the case rather infernally, though. You see, a business card isn’t necessarily the wonderful clue we first thought it. Anybody could get hold of the Bentleys’ business card, and it’s my belief that it’s rather a cunning blind. If the police had taken the trouble to get as far as we have, you see, the obvious inference for them, not knowing as much as we do, is that Bentley bought the stuff himself for some purpose connected with his business, took it home and had it stolen from him by his wife. That all goes to throw suspicion s
till farther away from the real culprit.’

  ‘And on to Mrs Bentley?’

  ‘Yes, as it happens. But I’m not saying that that was the culprit’s intention. I’m rather inclined to think that it’s just the way things have turned out. And there’s a little job for you again, Sheila. Can you get hold of photographs of those two for me? I want to spend tomorrow in town if I can?’

  Sheila wrinkled her forehead. ‘That’s a bit of a problem. I don’t know where—Oh, yes, I do! Good enough! I’ve got some old copies of the Daily Pictorial; kept them, in fact, because of the pictures. They’ve got photos of pretty well everybody in the whole case there. I’ll look them out for you now.’

  She went over to a drawer, pulled out half-a-dozen newspapers and began to turn the pages rapidly.

  ‘Here we are! “Mr Alfred Bentley, brother of the deceased man.” “Mr R. W. Allen, whose name has been mentioned in connection with the case.” Look! That the sort of thing you want?’ She spread them across Roger’s knee and leaned on the back of his chair as he looked at them.

  ‘Excellent,’ Roger approved. ‘Not a very good one of Allen, but quite good enough. Yes, that’s fine.’

  ‘I’ll cut them out for you,’ Sheila volunteered, and busied herself with doing so.

  Roger pulled out his pipe and began to fill it slowly.

  ‘There’s another thing about the purchase of this arsenic that’s struck me since I saw you last, Alec,’ he said slowly. ‘It was bought on the seventh of July. Well, if you consult that admirable little table of dates which I drew up, you’ll see that this was actually the Tuesday after the picnic. After Bentley’s first illness, in fact. Therefore, whatever it may have been due to, the first attack was not caused by the arsenic in the packet.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alec nodded. ‘I see that, of course.’

  ‘What did cause it, then? The police say it must have been caused by arsenic, because of arsenic being found subsequently in his hair and skin and so on; and I must say that does sound damned reasonable. But if it wasn’t arsenic from the packet, what was it?’

  ‘There’s only one other lot of arsenic we know anything about,’ Alec pointed out.

  ‘Yes, I know, bother it! It looks nasty, Alec; very nasty! I wonder if she really was trying to poison him all the time, and somebody stepped in and finished the job for her? Upon my word, it does begin to look uncommonly like it.’

  ‘He might have got it into him by accident, Roger,’ Sheila called out from the table by the window. ‘Supposing he thought the arsenic and lemon-juice was concentrated lemonade, or anything like that. He might have been thirsty, and mixed some with water. How about that?’

  ‘It’s possible, of course,’ Roger agreed. ‘And yet—! I don’t know. Lemonade in a medicine-bottle? And again, would she have left it lying about? It’s no good disguising it from ourselves, there are difficulties.’

  ‘I say, you’re not coming round to the idea of Mrs Bentley’s guilt after all, are you?’ Alec wanted to know.

  ‘Oh, no; I think we’ve proved that that’s out of the question. But I do think we ought to keep in view the possibility that she may at one time have had a guilty intention, whether she gave it up later or whether somebody else nipped in before she could carry it out. I don’t know that I think it’s altogether probable, mind you; but—well, I do find this question of how arsenic got into the skin and nails an uncommonly difficult one to answer.’

  ‘Isn’t there any way it might have got there without anyone having given him arsenic at all? Any natural way?’

  ‘Funny you should have mentioned that,’ Roger replied, holding a match over the bowl of his pipe. ‘There are one or two questions I want to ask the doctor about that very point after dinner this evening.’

  ‘And talking of dinner, there’s the gong,’ Sheila put in. ‘Damn—these papers have made my hands simply filthy! Here are the photos, Roger. I must fly.’

  After dinner Roger detained Dr Purefoy as he was about to follow the others out of the dining-room. ‘I say, just a minute before we go into the drawing-room, doctor. I want to ask you two more questions about arsenic.’

  Dr Purefoy smiled. ‘I shall have to begin thinking of a padlock for the surgery door if you go on like this, Sheringham.’

  ‘It is rather an obsession, isn’t it?’ Roger laughed, ‘But I think you know what I’m doing down here. I told Mrs Purefoy under pledge of the most terrific secrecy.’

  ‘For an artist in words,’ said Dr Purefoy mildly, ‘I think you might have put that a little better.’

  ‘It didn’t sound very well, did it?’ Roger admitted. ‘But one never expects a wife to have any secrets from her husband, however terrific; that’s understood. Rather neatly got out of, I fancy. Well, what I wanted to ask you was this; could one reasonably expect to discover arsenic in the nails and hair and skin of anybody who had died from—who had died a perfectly natural death?’

  ‘That depends,’ said the doctor cautiously. ‘One would want to know what sort of medicine he’d been taking, and that sort of thing.’

  ‘Well, let me put my question in a different way. Does the presence of arsenic in the extremities like that point decisively to an attempt at poisoning?’

  ‘Oh, dear, no! A sufficient quantity of any medicine containing arsenic would quite account for that. A little arsenic goes a very long way in the human body, you know.’

  ‘But it must have come from a medicine, you would say?’ Roger persisted.

  ‘In other words, the medicine Bentley had been taking didn’t contain arsenic, and is there any other way in which it could have got into his system? That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’

  ‘You read me like an open book,’ Roger murmured, and they both laughed. ‘I’m just worrying about the arsenic in the extremities for the moment; not the fatal dose in his tummy.’

  Dr Purefoy leaned against the back of a tilted chair and stroked his jaw thoughtfully. ‘Well, with an ordinary person I should say no; with Bentley, it’s impossible to say one way or the other. You see, one doesn’t know in the least whether the medicines prescribed for him were the only ones he took. He might have been dosing himself with a tonic containing arsenic of which there’s no record at all.’

  ‘Ah!’ Roger observed. ‘Arsenic is used in tonics, is it?’

  ‘Oh, very largely. Nearly all tonics contain arsenic or strychnine, and often both.’

  ‘That,’ said Roger, ‘is very interesting. I believe you’ve given me an idea.’

  In the drawing-room a few minutes later he bent over Sheila. ‘I say,’ he said in a low voice, ‘you might cut me out a photo of Bentley from those papers of yours too, will you? I think I can find a use for it as well tomorrow.’

  For the rest of the evening the Wychford Poisoning Case was allowed to rest silently on its laurels.

  Directly after breakfast the next morning Roger was conveyed once more to the station, Sheila again acting as chauffeuse. Having a busy but dull day in front of him, as he expected, he was going up alone, leaving Alec in the care of Sheila and her mother.

  At half-past six that evening he returned, weary but not ill-pleased with himself, to discover Alec sitting over the drawing-room fire with a book.

  ‘Hallo, Alexander,’ he said. ‘All alone? Where’s the other member of the trio?’

  ‘Goodness knows! Haven’t seen her since lunch-time. Some lad came round in a red car and wanted to take her out to golf, and that was that.’

  ‘Gross dereliction of duty!’ Roger said warmly. ‘She left you to look after yourself?’

  ‘Oh, well,’ Alec grinned, ‘they did ask me to go too, but they weren’t very pressing. Besides, I hate playing gooseberry. Well, any news?’

  ‘Yes and no.’ Roger replied, holding his hands to the fire. ‘Jolly parky tonight, isn’t it? That little compatriot of yours refused to acknowledge either Brother Alfred or Allen as the purchaser of the arsenic, and quite emphatic he was about it too.’

  Alec w
histled. ‘I say! And we know it wasn’t a woman, don’t we? That exhausts our whole list of suspects.’

  ‘Yes, it really is most awkward; and when we thought we were getting along so nicely too. Still, I’ve got a bit of good news to offset that. I’ve discovered how that arsenic got into Bentley’s hair and so on, and it wasn’t through the criminal administration of it on the part of anybody else.’

  ‘By Jove, that’s a good bit of work. Mrs Bentley’s cleared of that, then. Good! How did it come there?’

  Roger pulled a chair up to the fire and sat down. ‘Well, I asked the doctor-man a few questions last night, and he mentioned the word tonic. That set me thinking. Bentley had a poor physique, hadn’t he? But on the other hand, he was fond of his fling. What more natural, then, than that he should treat himself now and then to a tonic, such tonic containing in all probability arsenic? I’ve therefore been spending most of the day carting that photograph of him round to all the chemists in the neighbourhood of his office, and asking them whether they remember supplying tonics containing arsenic to that sort of face. And sure enough, in the end I struck oil! Quite a small shop, in a dingy little back-street. The proprietor told me that he knew the man by sight well, though he’d never heard his name (I’d taken good care to cut the name off the bottom of the photo, of course), and that he had been in the habit of coming into the shop quite often, at least three or four times a week and sometimes twice in a single day, and asking for a special pick-me-up of his own devising. That pick-me-up, I need hardly add, contained among other ingredients arsenic. The amount of arsenic he would have collected in his body in that way would amply account for its presence in his toenails and eyebrows. So there we are!’

  ‘I say!’ Alec exclaimed. ‘Could that be the cause of his death, do you think? A—a surfeit of arsenical pick-me-ups?’

  ‘Oh, Lord, no! There’d only be a tiny amount of arsenic in each. I went into that; about three-fiftieths of a grain. It’s a perfectly ordinary thing. No, there’s no question of anything like that. You’d have to drink something like fifty pick-me-ups straight on end to get a fatal dose that way. Its only interest is to show how he got the arsenic into his extremities.’