Watson's Choice
Page 22
‘Not another of those Sherlock gadgets?’ said Sir Bohun, obviously reluctant to have the parcel opened.
‘It looks like it, Sir Bohun,’ said Bell. ‘This is like all the other labels I’ve seen, and, now I come to look, the postmark’s the same.’
‘Is it? What is the postmark?’ demanded Sir Bohun. He took the wrapping-paper and studied it carefully. ‘Blest if I can make it out. What do you say it is, Beatrice?’
Mrs Bradley took out her small magnifying glass.
‘Difficult to say,’ she replied, studying the label and then the wrapping-paper. ‘What do you make of it, Mr Bell?’
‘Wapping,’ said Bell. ‘You can’t see it at all clearly on this parcel but it is just the same as all the others. Shall I open the box, Sir Bohun, or, as you have it here, do you prefer to de-box it yourself?’
‘No, no, go ahead,’ replied Sir Bohun, who was still puzzling over the postmark and had borrowed Mrs Bradley’s magnifying glass as an aid to further study.
‘Good Lord! The fellow’s becoming ambitious!’ said Bell, withdrawing a bust of Napoleon Bonaparte from the box. ‘Plaster, but not a bad copy! I wonder how Doctor Bradley guessed!’
He placed the bust on the table. Mrs Bradley picked it up and said casually:
‘You’ll have to break it, you know. That’s what Holmes did.’
‘Eh?’ said Sir Bohun. ‘Oh, yes, of course! Might hit on the black pearl of the Borgias, eh? Go on, Bell. Might as well get some amusement out of the thing. Go and ask in the kitchen for a tablecloth – one of those large ones the servants use themselves. And bring back a hunting-crop with you from the harness-room.’
Bell hesitated.
‘I trust you’re not going to destroy the bust, Sir Bohun,’ he said. ‘It looks quite a good piece to me.’
‘It’s Sir Bohun’s property and he must do as he likes with it,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘But perhaps it will make rather a mess if we break it up in here, you know,’ she added. ‘Why not let Mr Bell take it into the kitchen garden and toss it lightly against a wall?’ As she said this she turned to Sir Bohun. Sir Bohun looked at her enquiringly. She grinned in a fiendish manner and without mirth, and nodded vigorously.
‘All right,’ said Sir Bohun, whose rubicund face had gone grey. ‘There you are, Bell. Go out and break it. Be careful.’
The secretary picked up the bust, looked wildly from one to the other of them, and then dashed out of the room.
‘After him!’ cried Mrs Bradley. Sir Bohun caught her by the sleeve.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘What’s the matter with that bust?’
‘Come along and see,’ said Mrs Bradley, jerking herself free with some impatience. ‘Look! There he goes!’
Bell had shot past the french windows. He was holding the bust in both hands like a Rugby football three-quarter about to lob back a pass. Mrs Bradley darted to the french windows and opened them. Immediately she pursued Bell, but he had a fair start and was running well. She lost sight of him as he darted into a shrubbery. It was quite certain that he was not making for the kitchen garden, but for the road. She dropped into a saunter. Sir Bohun came up with her.
‘What’s come over the fellow?’ he panted. ‘Why doesn’t he go and chuck the damn thing at a wall?’
‘For a very good reason, I should say,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘What would you have done with the bust if I had not interfered?’
‘Same as the great detective did with his,’ Sir Bohun replied, stepping out smartly because of the freezing cold. ‘Tablecloth, hunting-crop, and all. Why?’
‘I wondered. You have a truly remarkable knowledge of the Sherlock Holmes stories, have you not?’
‘There would hardly be my equal,’ replied Sir Bohun with self-satisfaction. ‘The only person whose knowledge is perhaps as great as my own is this silly fellow we’re chasing now. What the devil does he think he’s going to do with the bust, confound him? Has he gone mad?’
‘It would be too much of a coincidence for two young men in your employment to render themselves suspect in such a way, surely?’
‘Well, what is Bell up to, then?’
‘I think he is getting rid of the bust.’
‘Getting rid of it? But why?’
‘Because it contains something which he knows would not please you.’
‘Stop talking in riddles, Beatrice! Anyone would think the bally thing contained a bomb!’
‘Well, it does,’ said Mrs Bradley quietly.
CHAPTER 18
THE EVIDENCE OF A WIG
‘Well, I will undertake it. What beard were
I best to play it in?’
SHAKESPEARE – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
*
‘THE OBJECT, MADAM,’ said George, Mrs Bradley’s irreproachable chauffeur, ‘is at present in the river under the little stone bridge as you go towards the heath. It is easily recoverable, I think, should you require it.’
‘Mr Gavin shall recover it,’ Mrs Bradley observed. ‘It will be needed in evidence. And young Mr Bell?’
‘Mr Gavin should have picked him up by now, madam. Yes, here comes Mr Gavin’s car.’
A white-faced Bell was between Gavin and a plain-clothes detective on the back seat of a police car. Gavin’s sergeant was driving. Sir Bohun, who was looking haunted, opened the french windows and let them all in. He offered chairs to everybody. The wretched Bell sank into his without a word, and buried his face in his hands.
‘Mr John Turner!’ said Sir Bohun dryly. ‘It’s too late to be sorry for your sins, my boy. Lucky for you you didn’t get your own way with me, that’s all.’
‘And very unlucky for him that he did get his own way with Linda Campbell,’ said Mrs Bradley.
‘He didn’t kill Linda?’
‘Indeed he did, and in the manner that I foreshadowed.’
‘That’s enough, you old hag!’ shouted Bell, suddenly lifting his head. ‘But for you, it would all have come off!’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Bradley, eyeing him with a glint of pity. ‘But for me, it would all have come off. I will not recapitulate in front of you, because that would add insult to injury.’
She glanced at Gavin, who nodded. He cautioned Bell in an impersonal, not unfriendly manner, and placed him under arrest. Bell made no reply in response to the charge, and Gavin took him away.
Mrs Bradley asked Sir Bohun for the use of the telephone, and rang up Laura.
‘You may like to know all the details now,’ she said. Laura came over directly.
‘There was really no evidence until the bust of Napoleon turned up,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘After that, it was all plain sailing.’
‘But how did you jump to the conclusion that the bust contained a bomb?’ demanded Laura.
‘Well, when all these mysterious Sherlock Holmes gifts continued to arrive, it seemed to me that, sooner or later, one of them would be lethal.’
‘I don’t see why. I should have thought it was someone’s idea of a joke, that’s all.’
‘Yes, but who was the joker? That was what interested me. There were various possibilities. First, Mrs Dance, who had set the ball rolling, so to speak, by producing the Hound of the Baskervilles; second, the unknown person (clearly neither Mrs Dance nor Mr Mildren, since the description was of a young man) who had introduced the Hound into the waiting-room of the disused railway station and who, by doing so, had encompassed the death of Linda Campbell; third, Sir Bohun himself.’
Sir Bohun swelled.
‘Whatever next? Really!’ he protested. ‘Why should I think of such a thing?’
‘To make a mystery. You have a great deal of time on your hands and don’t do very much with it,’ said Mrs Bradley rudely. ‘If you had thought at all, you would have realized, when you feared for your life, that Bell was dangerous. At any rate, he was suspect, and, of course, so was Mr Grimston. It was at the last two that I looked the hardest. At first there seemed little to choose between them. Both were young, both might have ha
d good reason first to love Linda Campbell and then to hate her –’
‘Both? But we’ve never known of any connexion between Bell and Linda!’ protested Laura.
‘True, but it was noticeable that on the day of the murder they were both out of the house; also it was an established fact that Linda could not leave any man alone. It is therefore axiomatic that she did not leave Bell alone. Besides, Bell has red hair.’
‘Well?’ asked Laura, puzzled. ‘Temper, do you mean?’
‘The young man who called to hire the dog from Miss Galbraith was wearing a wig,’ Mrs Bradley explained.
‘Oh? – oh, yes, I see!’
‘Yes. Once I heard about the wig from an ex-actress who would be certain to distinguish between a wig and natural hair, I realized that Bell had come into the picture. Therefore I began to think about Bell. His knowledge of the Sherlock Holmes stories equalled, if it did not excel, the knowledge of Sir Bohun himself. Together they had worked out the characters for the Sherlock Holmes party. For both of them Linda Campbell was The Woman. Sir Bohun went in fear of his life. He suspected Grimston, but Bell, who had known him and worked for him very much longer, was, to my mind, a more likely enemy. Sir Bohun’ – she looked at him indulgently – ‘is not popular.’
‘Yes, it would be Bell who thought of using the harpoon to murder Linda,’ said Laura. ‘I can see that. But why did he draw attention to it by throwing it away? And what a coincidence that it happened when the boys were exploring the island!’
‘Oh, Bell didn’t throw away the harpoon. That was done by Manoel Lupez,’ said Mrs Bradley.
‘Manoel? Oh, but why?’
‘Manoel is a very intelligent man. He realized, very early on, that his plan to murder his father was doomed to be stillborn.’
‘But – ?’
‘Manoel worked out as quickly as I did that Sir Bohun’s fears for his life were only too well-founded. He realized, too, that it was not himself of whom his father was afraid. He summed up Linda – accurately, as Latins are wont to sum up women – and then he waited and watched and used his efficient brains. When he was sure, he acted. He took down the harpoon, trailed the little boys, and made certain that the harpoon would be found. He knew it would be taken to the farm. He knew that, from there, it would come into my hands, and he was extremely interested, I expect, to see how I should react, for upon my reactions, he calculated, the murderer’s next move would depend. That move was to produce the bust containing the bomb, and that before he had intended to – that is, days before I left the neighbourhood. The result we know.’
‘Well, I’m glad it’s all over,’ said Laura, ‘and I think Linda deserved what she got. I suppose she was with Bell those nights she didn’t come home.’
‘Yes. Nobody appeared to notice that Bell also was absent from the house except, of course, the watchful, logical Lupez, although Robert also recognized the fact when he questioned Mr Bell. Robert, however, thought little of it at the time, for Bell himself pointed it out.’
‘Gavin is losing his grip. I’d better hurry up and marry him and goad him into action. What made Bell decide to kill Sir B., though?’ demanded Laura.
‘He had intended to kill him as soon as he knew that Linda proposed to become engaged to him. Red-haired people are naturally impulsive, but Bell’s training as a secretary, especially as secretary to such a trying person as Sir Bohun, acted as a brake. Damped-down fires can be dangerous, however, and Bell was particularly dangerous both to Linda and to Sir Bohun because he had studied them carefully and knew them well. He had no difficulty, I feel sure, in enticing Linda to that railway station. She was sufficiently a nymph to betray any man with another for the sheer naughtiness of it. As for the Sherlock Holmes presents Bell sent to Sir Bohun, there he overreached himself.’
‘It was quite cunning, though, to send all those harmless things first. And, of course, he’d know that, left to himself, Sir Bohun wouldn’t have been able to resist smashing that Napoleon just to see if there was anything inside it. And again, of course, it didn’t come by post, I suppose,’ said Laura.
‘None of the things came by post, child. It was a most significant thing that Bell was the only person who had ever declared that they did!’
‘There’s only one thing that I don’t follow,’ said Laura thoughtfully. ‘Why did you say a minute ago that Manoel realized that his plan to kill his father was doomed to be stillborn?’
‘Oh, because he realized, before he had been in Sir Bohun’s house a week, that they loved one another. It is not an uncommon relationship between father and son, whatever the Oedipus enthusiasts may say.’
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