Death Knocks Three Times

by Anthony Gilbert

  “I had to have saccharine there,” acknowledged John.

  “Didn’t bring any back here, I hope?”

  “I threw the empty tube away last night as I came out of the drawing room, I shall have to get some more, though, if I’m going down again.”

  “Not you,” said Mrs. Pringle firmly. “You’ll take a nice supply of sugar with you. What you want, Mr. Sherren, is a woman to look after you.”

  Wrong, he thought, all wrong. What he wanted was a service flat and a gentleman’s gentleman. He wanted it so much he didn’t observe the odd expression on Mrs. Pringle’s face. She was thinking: There, drat it! Another hint and he’s taken no more notice than a babe unborn. Aloud she said with sudden fierceness: “Who’s this Miss Crewe that rang up?”

  “Oh, a buddy of Aunt Clara. A most alarming old woman. I must say if the Amazons looked like that I’m not surprised they defeated their enemies.” He finished his tea, ate one biscuit and hurried upstairs to change his coat for a seemly black one, and put some clean socks and handkerchiefs into a small case. When he came down there was a taxi at the door. He hurled himself into the taxi and was just in time to catch the Brakemouth train. It was a slow one, and he had plenty of time to think. Still, he had plenty to think about, so he didn’t find the journey too long.

  At the hotel the tension had increased. After hearing what Dr. Munster had to say, Mr, Hammond very reluctantly communicated with the police. A death in a hotel is unpopular, but a death that is probably going to turn out a suicide is definitely unlucky. For an instant Mr. Hammond thought he’d have preferred murder. There’s less superstition about it, anyway. When the police came they had a word with the doctor, who made it clear he had no time to lose, and had anyway nothing to add to his original blunt statement. He had not seen Miss Bond for nearly a year and presumably she had got no worse during that time since she hadn’t sent for him or any other medical practitioner. The Inspector next asked for John and was a little annoyed to find he wasn’t on the premises. Miss Pettigrew, however, was very competent and made it clear that she regarded the police as employees of the public, from whom reasonable service was to be expected. She told them about

  the letters (they found the envelope of the last, which was proof of something though not of what the message contained) and about last night’s bridge party, Mr. Marlowe’s visit, Mr. Sherren’s departure and his warning to her of a change in his aunt’s bearing which occasioned him anxiety.

  “You noticed the change yourself, Miss Pettigrew?”

  “I can’t say I did. Not particularly last night, I mean. For some time, ever since the letters started arriving, she has been more nervous, more apprehensive than of old. Then, too, I think her sister’s sudden death preyed on her mind, and of course she was by no means a young woman.”

  Asked, flat out, if she thought Miss Bond the type to commit suicide. Miss Pettigrew replied forcibly that she should have considered it most unlikely. Questioned about Marlowe, she referred them unhesitatingly to John.

  In John’s absence the police decided to examine Roger Marlowe and were considerably put about to find that he also was missing. Potter next came to the rescue with the information that he’d seen the feller go out a while ago. No, not carrying higgage, but looking as if he were in a bit of a hurry. Most hotels have their Commander Potter, who is a mine of the most trivial information concerning the movements and behavior of all the other guests.

  Potter was inclined to be upstage with the police, who seemed to blame him for not knowing more of Marlowe’s movements. After all, he protested, there was still a little freedom left in this damned democracy, and surely a chap could go for a walk without filling ij up a form. The police withdrew and called for Major Atkins, but he couldn’t help them much either. He hadn’t known the deceased well, he said, but she’d seemed to him much the same as usual on the previous night. She’d played a devilish good game of bridge and swept the board.

  By twelve o’clock Mr. Hammond was beginning to feel anxious. Marlowe had arranged to turn out of his room by midday andl when it came to packing Marlowe’s things, however, all thc| drawers were empty and the solitary shabby suitcase containec practically nothing. Hammond, a man of experience, realized at] once how things were and knew he’d have to cut his losses. Hel did, however, feel an odd twinge, remembering that it was the] dead woman who had, as he understood it, vouched for this scoundrel, and for the first time he began to wonder whether the inquest would be the comparatively simple affair he had at first anticipated. He trembled for the reputation of his beautiful hotel.

  John arrived immediately after lunch, having had a very expensive and not very satisfactory meal en route. He hoped for a quiet word with Twemlow, who would presumably have been sent for, and by the time he arrived, the police had their claws thoroughly into John, so that he wriggled like an impaled mouse. When he heard the cause of death he stared at them all in incredulous dismay.

  “Pheno-barbitone tablets?” he exclaimed. “Are you—are you sure?”

  “Dr. Munster and the police surgeon are in no doubt at all.”

  “I thought you could only get those things on a doctor’s prescription.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You mean, my aunt had a prescription?”

  “You didn’t know that, Mr. Sherren?”

  “My aunt was not exactly a confiding person. But I can tell you one thing: that is, if you’re interested in a psychological observation.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “If you’ve got any ideas in your head that this might be suicide, you can forget them. My aunt was a very religious woman. Anyway, so far as I’m aware, she had no motive, except, of course, the letters.”

  “Which letters would those be, sir?”

  “I thought Miss Pettigrew would have told you.”

  “There might be more than one set,” the Inspector pointed out.

  “By Jove, you’re right. There were.”

  “How do you know that?” The Inspector snapped into rigid attention.

  “I heard Marlowe—you’ve seen Marlowe, of course? No? That’s damned odd—I came into the drawing room last night in time to hear him say something about his offer remaining open till midday today and something about letters. He was engaged in a way to my Aunt Isabel, you know, but it never came to anything. I suppose he was referring to letters she had written to him.”

  “And that’s all you heard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Sherren, I understand your aunt asked you to stay with her last night when every one else had retired. Did she have anything special to tell you?”

  “She only said this might be her last opportunity. I asked her what she meant by that and she said that at her age and in her state of health it was never safe to count on the future, or words to that effect. No, I don’t recall that she told me anything of importance.”

  Questioned more closely, he described as well as he could remember the events of the late evening. “She was very sleepy and somehow seemed broken. I simply thought she’d stayed up too late, but …” He hesitated.

  “But you told Miss Pettigrew you expected some development?”

  “I asked her to keep in touch. I was Miss Bond’s only living relative.”

  “Quite so, Mr. Sherren. But of course you didn’t really anticipate that anything of this kind would happen?”

  “How should I?” demanded John quickly. “I’ve told you, she seemed to me very tired and not quite herself. I suppose she was feeling hazy and took an overdose of sleeping tablets—I suppose that’s what she had the stuff for—entirely by accident. Is there any way of checking up on how many she had?”

  “We’ve found the little phial in which she kept them. It was in her bag, quite empty.”

  “I suppose,” said John carefully, “she took them after she went into her room. She asked me for a glass of water.”

  “You didn’t see her take them?”

  “No.”

  �
��According to Miss Pettigrew she was one of those people who can’t swallow the smallest pill dry. She had to have water to wash them down. The obvious thing would be to put the pellets into the water and drink it off.”

  “Probably she did, then.” John was looking both puzzled and wary.

  “In that case there should be traces of the pheno-barbitone in the glass, but there are none. On the other hand, Mr. Sherren, thanks to the upset this affair has caused on the premises, the domestic routine is rather confused, and in consequence we were able to

  examine the tray of cups used by Miss Bond’s party for their tea last night. One of those cups contains a sediment that has been identified as pheno-barbitone.”

  John saw what the Inspector was driving at. He was a novelist to whom almost all things were possible, but even he drew the line at suggesting that a lady intending to commit suicide would take her fatal dose around a tea-table with three people looking on. And yet, wasn’t that just the sort of trick Aunt Clara might play? And how monstrous that on this night of all nights the cups should not have been washed? He said lamely: “It must have been an accident.”

  “A very queer sort of accident,” suggested the Inspector. His next question gave John a worse shock than ever. “Mr. Sherren, have you any pheno-barbitone in your possession?”

  “I?” John’s voice squeaked like a slate pencil. “Of course not. Why should I? I never require sleeping pills.”

  “Then do you know what it looks like? You’ve seen it, I dare say.”

  “No. No. Not so far as I recall.”

  “It’s a very small pill; it might by the careless or the uninitiated be confounded with saccharine.”

  “Saccharinel” John drew a deep breath. They’d got there now. Then he babbled eagerly: “Of course it was an accident. It’s easy to see now how it happened. She must have put it in her tea thinking it was saccharine …”

  But the Inspector countered that with a stern: “I understand Miss Bond always had sugar supplied by the management. She didn’t take it for herself.”

  “Don’t blame her,” muttered John. “I don’t have it unless I’m compelled.”

  “You had some saccharine with you last night, I believe?”

  “Just for emergencies.”

  “And—you offered some to your aunt to sweeten her tea?”

  “And got heartily cursed for my pains. How was I to know she had a supply of sugar in her bag for her own use?”

  “You brought your saccharine from London, Mr. Sherren?”

  “No. I never use it in London, but they are remarkably parsimonious with the sugar at my hotel here. I got it from one of the shops in the High Street.”

  “And doubtless you still have it on you?”

  “Well—no—as a matter of fact, I finished it last night. I threw the empty container into the waste-paper basket in the hall as we came out after playing bridge.”

  “I see.” The Inspector made a note to check up on that. John couldn’t think how a man with the Inspector’s unimaginative countenance could find so many new points to raise; and of course he was hampered by a sense of guilt and a terror of betraying what he knew. At last they let him go.

  “You’ll be remaining in Brakemouth for the next few days, of course, Mr. Sherren,” they said, and he, with an assumption of ease he was far from feeling, said cheerily, well, yes, he’d have to stay for the inquest, wouldn’t he? The last relation and the last person to see her alive. But the Inspector was evasive. They hadn’t got all the evidence yet. This chap Marlowe … And so, after a time they let him go, with the air of cats indulgently watching a mouse hurry ofiE toward its hole, knowing that before it reaches the woodwork a long curving paw will come out and scoop the poor little victim back to the prison it believes it has escaped.

  “Funny nobody mentioned finding the empty saccharine bottle in the waste-paper basket,” suggested the Sergeant.

  “The worst of amateur witnesses is you never can be sure where you are with them. They might have thrown out half a dozen bottles without thinking anything of it.”

  However, the contents of the waste-paper basket were still on the premises—another point an amateur witness might easily overlook—and there wasn’t a saccharine bottle or tube in any of them.

  17

  AS JOHN emerged from Mr. Hammond’s private room, where the inquiries were taking place, he discovered Mr. Twemlow sitting in the lobby cheek by jowl with Mr. Crook. They were both short men, but there the likeness ended. Mr. Twemlow looked as though he might have been carved out of a walnut shell; Crook looked like a huge advertisement for somebody’s succulent ham. Nevertheless, they seemed to be getting on remarkably well.

  John was so much surprised by this improbable juxtaposition that he exclaimed, without preamble: “I didn’t realize you had come, Mr. Twemlow,” And then to Crook: “So you’re still at Brakemouth. Between you, you ought to put the place on the map.”

  Twemlow looked as if such vulgarity was beneath his notice, but Crook didn’t take offense easily.

  “Called into consultation by Miss Pettigrew,” he said in insufferably smug tones. John was astounded, as the speaker had anticipated, and he sounded even more insufferable than Crook.

  “Miss Pettigrew? I wonder what she imagines she stands to lose.”

  “You must ask Mr. Twemlow that. He was your aunt’s man of affairs.”

  Mr. Twemlow looked outraged. “It is perhaps a little soon to be discussing the provisions of the will. That is usually left until after the funeral; but since Mr, Sherren is so anxious for information and I should be sorry to keep him in suspense, I may say that neither Miss Pettigrew nor anyone else stands to lose or win anything by Miss Bond’s death. I shall count myself exceedingly fortunate if the amount standing to my late client’s credit is sufficient to cover the expenses unfortunately inseparable from an event of this nature.”

  “I don’t understand,” John stammered. “I mean—my aunt was, I have always understood, very comfortably off.”

  Mr. Twemlow’s expression said that clearly he hadn’t understood much.

  “I dare say you know the provisions of the late Colonel Bond’s will,” encouraged Crook.

  John, who had sneaked into Somerset House some time ago in order to acquaint himself with his own expectations, muttered something unintelligible.

  “A very curiously worded will, as I am sure Mr. Sherren will agree,” said Mr. Twemlow, who could put even Miss Pettigrew in her place. “The Colonel provided that all of which he died possessed should go to his daughter, Clara, on the understanding that she made a home for her younger sister, Isabel. If, however, Isabel should marry, then she was to receive as her portion one-half of the capital then standing in Miss Bond’s name. You perceive the flaw, of course.”

  Crook did, even if John didn’t. “Miss B. bein’ left in full control of the capital? I get you. Nothing to prevent her selling out before the old man was cold in his grave, and settin’ up a racin’ stable on her own account.”

  Mr. Twemlow permitted himself to smile, still completely ignoring the hapless John. You might have thought that years of such treatment at the hands of every one except his landladies, who were never left in ignorance of the fact that one day he would be soundly independent, would have hardened him, but it hadn’t. He was as sensitive and ill at ease as he had been twenty years ago. Only as the lawyer’s story unfolded did he feel his heart, that had dropped into his stomach with Twemlow’s first words, sink into his neatly pointed, perfectly polished gent’s black shoes. Because the story Twemlow was now telling simply couldn’t be true. He could believe a good deal about his Aunt Clara, but not this, not that she had, so to speak, beggared herself and her sister for the sake of a comparative stranger, for the most rabidly sentimental reason any romantic novelist ever conceived.

  Yet that was what Mr. Twemlow actually was saying.

  “Aunt Clara quixotic?” gasped John. “You might as easily believe in Molotov becoming a regular Yes
-man.”

  “That’s what’s wrong with the world,” Crook reproved him. “No faith left. Don’t you believe in miracles, Mr. Sherren? I thought there was no end to what you writing chaps could stomach.”

  “If we might have some details,” whispered John, weak with distress and indignation. He’d seen the will himself. There had been no mention of any other name. So how could he or the Colonel or poor, deceived Isabel dream that when the old lady breathed her last there wouldn’t be any capital at all?

  Yet that was what Mr. Twemlow was telling them. “When the Colonel had his last illness, the doctor, in the teeth of Miss Bond’s objections, insisted on sending in a nurse. I didn’t meet the lady myself, but she was apparently not merely competent but sympathetic enough to attract the Colonel’s interest to an unusual extent. The first I knew of the situation was when I received a letter from the Colonel telling me he wished to make a fresh will, dividing his money equally between this lady on the one hand and his two daughters on the other. He said that, had circumstances been more propitious, he would have asked her to marry him, but since that was out of the question, he wanted to be sure that she would be provided for for the future. I never actually saw the lady, but I gather she was not exactly in the first bloom of her youth. Miss Bond would then be about thirty years of age, and this lady was probably her contemporary. I felt it my duty to point out to my client that such a suggestion was exceedingly unfair to his daughters and moreover would help the nurse less than he supposed, since when the information became public property, which would inevitably be the case, a good deal of gossip would attach itself to her name. It was even possible that Miss Bond would bring an action on the ground of undue influence.”

  “Did that move the old gentleman?” asked Crook, enchanted by this development, which was precisely his cup of tea.

  “It moved him to a still more precipitate action. He wrote that he appreciated my forethought for the lady—I regret that I do not recall her name—and in the circumstances he was arranging to go through the marriage ceremony, so that there should be no possibility of her being defrauded of what he chose to consider her rights.”