The Thirteen Problems-The Tuesday Night Club

by Agatha Christie

  'Good,' said Sir Henry. 'I see Sir Ambrose. Now the girl Sylvia - what did you say her name was?'

  'Sylvia Keene. She was pretty - really very pretty. Fair haired, you know, and a lovely skin. Not, perhaps, very clever. In fact, rather stupid.'

  'Oh! come, Dolly,' protested her husband.

  'Arthur, of course, wouldn't think so,' said Mrs Bantry drily. 'But she was stupid - she really never said anything worth listening to.'

  'One of the most graceful creatures I ever saw,' said Colonel Bantry warmly. 'See her playing tennis - charming, simply charming. And she was full of fun - most amusing little thing. And such a pretty way with her. I bet the young fellows all thought so.'

  'That's just where you're wrong,' said Mrs Bantry. 'Youth, as such, has no charms for young men nowadays. It's only old buffers like you, Arthur, who sit maundering on about young girls.'

  'Being young's no good,' said Jane. 'You've got to have SA.'

  'What,' said Miss Marple, 'is SA?'

  'Sex appeal,' said Jane.

  'Ah! yes,' said Miss Marple. 'What in my day they used to call "having the come hither in your eye".'

  'Not a bad description,' said Sir Henry. "The dame de compagnie you described, I think, as a pussy, Mrs Bantry?'

  'I didn't mean a cat, you know,' said Mrs Bantry. 'It's quite different. Just a big soft white purry person. Always very sweet. That's what Adelaide Carpenter was like.'

  'What sort of aged woman?'

  'Oh! I should say fortyish. She'd been there some time - ever since Sylvia was eleven, I believe. A very tactful person. One of those widows left in unfortunate circumstances with plenty of aristocratic relations, but no ready cash. I didn't like her myself - but then I never do like people with very white long hands. And I don't like pussies.'

  'Mr Curie?'

  'Oh! one of those elderly stooping men. There are so many of them about, you'd hardly know one from the other. He showed enthusiasm when talking about his musty books, but not at any other time. I don't think Sir Ambrose knew him very well.'

  'And Jerry next door?'

  'A really charming boy. He was engaged to Sylvia. That's what made it so sad.'

  'Now I wonder - ' began Miss Marple, and then stopped.

  'What?'

  'Nothing, dear.'

  Sir Henry looked at the old lady curiously. Then he said thoughtfully:

  'So this young couple were engaged. Had they been engaged long?'

  'About a year. Sir Ambrose had opposed the engagement on the plea that Sylvia was too young. But after a year's engagement he had given in and the marriage was to have taken place quite soon.'

  'Ah! Had the young lady any property?'

  'Next to nothing - a bare hundred or two a year.'

  'No rat in that hole, dithering,' said Colonel Bantry, and laughed.

  'It's the doctor's turn to ask a question,' said Sir Henry. 'I stand down.'

  'My curiosity is mainly professional,' said Dr Lloyd. 'I should like to know what medical evidence was given at the inquest - that is, if our hostess remembers, or, indeed, if she knows.'

  'I know roughly,' said Mrs Bantry. 'It was poisoning by digitalin - is that right?'

  Dr Lloyd nodded.

  'The active principle of the foxglove - digitalis - acts on the heart. Indeed, it is a very valuable drug in some forms of heart trouble. A very curious case altogether. I would never have believed that eating a preparation of foxglove leaves could possibly result fatally. These ideas of eating poisonous leaves and berries are very much exaggerated. Very few people realize that the vital principle, or alkaloid, has to be extracted with much care and preparation.'

  'Mrs MacArthur sent some special bulbs round to Mrs Toomie the other day,' said Miss Marple. 'And Mrs Toomie's cook mistook them for onions, and all the Toomies were very ill indeed.'

  'But they didn't die of it,' said Dr Lloyd.

  'No. They didn't die of it.' admitted Miss Marple.

  'A girl I knew died of ptomaine poisoning.' said Jane Helier.

  'We must get on with investigating the crime,' said Sir Henry.

  'Crime?' said Jane, startled. 'I thought it was an accident.'

  'If it were an accident,' said Sir Henry gently, 'I do not think Mrs Bantry would have told us this story. No, as I read it, this was an accident only in appearance - behind it is something more sinister. I remember a case - various guests in a house party were chatting after dinner. The walls were adorned with all kinds of old-fashioned weapons. Entirely as a joke, one of the party seized an ancient horse pistol and pointed it at another man, pretending to fire it. The pistol was loaded and went off, killing the man. We had to ascertain in that case, first, who had secretly prepared and loaded that pistol, and secondly who had so led and directed the conversation that that final bit of horseplay resulted - for the man who had fired the pistol was entirely innocent!'

  'It seems to me we have much the same problem here. Those digitalis leaves were deliberately mixed with the sage, knowing what the result would be. Since we exonerate the cook - we do exonerate the cook, don't we? - the question arises: Who picked the leaves and delivered them to the kitchen?'

  'That's easily answered,' said Mrs Bantry. 'At least the last part of it is. It was Sylvia herself who took the leaves to the kitchen. It was part of her daily job to gather things like salad or herbs, bunches of young carrots - all the sort of things that gardeners never pick right. They hate giving you anything young and tender - they wait for them to be fine specimens. Sylvia and Mrs Carpenter used to see to a lot of these things themselves. And there was foxglove actually growing all amongst the sage in one comer, so the mistake was quite natural.'

  'But did Sylvia actually pick them herself?'

  'That, nobody ever knew. It was assumed so.'

  'Assumptions,' said Sir Henry, 'are dangerous things.'

  'But I do know that Mrs Carpenter didn't pick them,' said Mrs Bantry. 'Because, as it happened, she was walking with me on the terrace that morning. We went out there after breakfast. It was unusually nice and warm for early spring. Sylvia went alone down into the garden, but later I saw her walking arm-in-arm with Maud Wye.'

  'So they were great friends, were they?' asked Miss Marple.

  'Yes,' said Mrs Bantry. She seemed as though about to say something, but did not do so.

  'Had she been staying there long?' asked Miss Marple.

  'About a fortnight,' said Mrs Bantry.

  There was a note of trouble in her voice.

  'You didn't like Miss Wye?' suggested Sir Henry.

  'I did. That's just it. I did.'

  The trouble in her voice had grown to distress.

  'You're keeping something back, Mrs Bantry,' said Sir Henry accusingly.

  'I wondered just now,' said Miss Marple, 'but I didn't like to go on.'

  'When did you wonder?'

  'When you said that the young people were engaged. You said that that was what made it so sad. But, if you know what I mean, your voice didn't sound right when you said it - not convincing, you know.'

  'What a dreadful person you are,' said Mrs Bantry. 'You always seem to know. Yes, I was thinking of something. But I don't really know whether I ought to say it or not'

  'You must say it,' said Sir Henry. 'Whatever your scruples, it mustn't be kept back.'

  'Well, it was just this,' said Mrs Bantry. 'One evening - in fact the very evening before the tragedy - I happened to go out on the terrace before dinner. The window in the drawing-room was open. And as it chanced I saw Jerry Lorimer and Maud Wye. He was - well - kissing her. Of course I didn't know whether it was just a sort of chance affair, or whether - well, I mean, one can't tell. I knew Sir Ambrose never had really liked Jerry Lorimer - so perhaps he knew he was that kind of young man. But one thing I am sure of: that girl, Maud Wye, was really fond of him. You'd only to see her looking at him when she was off guard. And I think, too, they were really better suited than he and Sylvia were.'

  'I am going to ask a questio
n quickly, before Miss Marple can,' said Sir Henry. 'I want to know whether, after the tragedy, Jerry Lorimer married Maud Wye?'

  'Yes,' said Mrs Bantry. 'He did. Six months afterwards.'

  'Oh! Scheherezade, Scheherezade,' said Sir Henry. 'To think of the way you told us this story at first! Bare bones indeed - and to think of the amount of flesh we're finding on them now.'

  'Don't speak so ghoulishly,' said Mrs Bantry. 'And don't use the word flesh. Vegetarians always do. They say, "I never eat flesh" in a way that puts you right off your little beefsteak. Mr Curie was a vegetarian. He used to eat some peculiar stuff that looked like bran for breakfast. Those elderly stooping men with beards are often faddy. They have patent kinds of underwear, too.'

  'What on earth. Dolly,' said her husband, 'do you know about Mr Curie's underwear?'

  'Nothing,' said Mrs Bantry with dignity. 'I was just making a guess.'

  'I'll amend my former statement,' said Sir Henry. 'I'll say instead that the dramatis personae in your problem are very interesting. I'm beginning to see them all - eh, Miss Marple?'

  'Human nature is always interesting, Sir Henry. And it's curious to see how certain types always tend to act in exactly the same way.'

  'Two women and a man,' said Sir Henry. 'The old eternal human triangle. Is that the base of our problem here? I rather fancy it is.'

  Dr Lloyd cleared his throat

  'I've been thinking,' he said rather diffidently. 'Do you say, Mrs Bantry, that you yourself were ill?'

  'Was I not! So was Arthur! So was everyone!'

  'That's just it - everyone,' said the doctor. 'You see what I mean? In Sir Henry's story which he told us just now, one man shot another - he didn't have to shoot the whole room full.'

  'I don't understand,' said Jane. 'Who shot who?'

  'I'm saying that whoever planned this thing went about it very curiously, either with a blind belief in chance, or else with an absolutely reckless disregard for human life. I can hardly believe there is a man capable of deliberately poisoning eight people with the object of removing one amongst them.'

  'I see your point,' said Sir Henry, thoughtfully. 'I confess I ought to have thought of that'

  'And mightn't he have poisoned himself too?' asked Jane.

  'Was anyone absent from dinner that night?' asked Miss Marple.

  Mrs Bantry shook her head.

  'Everyone was there.'

  'Except Mr Lorimer, I suppose, my dear. He wasn't staying in the house, was he?'

  'No; but he was dining there that evening,' said Mrs Bantry.

  'Oh!' said Miss Marple in a changed voice. 'That makes all the difference in the world.'

  She frowned vexedly to herself.

  'I've been very stupid,' she murmured. 'Very stupid indeed.'

  'I confess your point worries me, Lloyd,' said Sir Henry.

  'How ensure that the girl, and the girl only, should get a fatal dose?'

  'You can't,' said the doctor. 'That brings me to the point I'm going to make. Supposing the girl was not the intended victim after all?'

  'What?'

  'In all cases of food poisoning, the result is very uncertain. Several people share a dish. What happens? One or two are slightly ill, two more, say, are seriously indisposed, one dies. That's the way of it - there's no certainty anywhere. But there are cases where another factor might enter in. Digitalin is a drug that acts directly on the heart - as I've told you it's prescribed in certain cases. Now, there was one person in that house who suffered from a heart complaint. Suppose he was the victim selected? What would not be fatal to the rest would be fatal to him - or so the murderer might reasonably suppose. That the thing turned out differently is only a proof of what I was saying just now - the uncertainty and unreliability of the effects of drugs on human beings.'

  'Sir Ambrose,' said Sir Henry, 'you think he was the person aimed at? Yes, yes - and the girl's death was a mistake.'

  'Who got his money after he was dead?' asked Jane.

  'A very sound question, Miss Helier. One of the first we always ask in my late profession,' said Sir Henry.

  'Sir Ambrose had a son,' said Mrs Bantry slowly. 'He had quarrelled with him many years previously. The boy was wild, I believe. Still, it was not in Sir Ambrose's power to disinherit him - Clodderham Court was entailed. Martin Bercy succeeded to the title and estate. There was, however, a good deal of other property that Sir Ambrose could leave as he chose, and that he left to his ward Sylvia. I know this because Sir Ambrose died less than a year after the events I am telling you of, and he had not troubled to make a new will after Sylvia's death. I think the money went to the Crown - or perhaps it was to his son as next of kin - I don't really remember.'

  'So it was only to the interest of a son who wasn't there and the girl who died herself to make away with him.' said Sir Henry thoughtfully. 'That doesn't seem very promising.'

  'Didn't the other woman get anything?' asked Jane. 'The one Mrs Bantry calls the Pussy woman.'

  'She wasn't mentioned in the will,' said Mrs Bantry.

  'Miss Marple, you're not listening,' said Sir Henry. 'You're somewhere far away.'

  'I was thinking of old Mr Badger, the chemist,' said Miss Marple. 'He had a very young housekeeper -

  young enough to be not only his daughter, but his grand-daughter. Not a word to anyone, and his family, a lot of nephews and nieces, full of expectations. And when he died, would you believe it, he'd been secretly married to her for two years? Of course Mr Badger was a chemist, and a very rude, common old man as well, and Sir Ambrose Bercy was a very courtly gentleman, so Mrs Bantry says, but for all that human nature is much the same everywhere.'

  There was a pause. Sir Henry looked very hard at Miss Marple who looked back at him with gently quizzical blue eyes. Jane Helier broke the silence.

  'Was this Mrs Carpenter good looking?' she asked.

  'Yes, in a very quiet way. Nothing startling.'

  'She had a very sympathetic voice,' said Colonel Bantry.

  'Purring - that's what I call it,' said Mrs Bantry. 'Purring!'

  'You'll be called a cat yourself one of these days, Dolly.'

  'I like being a cat in my home circle,' said Mrs Bantry. 'I don't much like women anyway, and you know it. I like men and flowers.'

  'Excellent taste,' said Sir Henry. 'Especially in putting men first'

  'That was tact,' said Mrs Bantry. 'Well, now, what about my little problem? I've been quite fair, I think. Arthur, don't you think I've been fair?'

  'Yes, my dear. I don't think there'll be any inquiry into the running by the stewards of the Jockey Club.'

  'First boy,' said Mrs Bantry, pointing a finger at Sir Henry.

  'I'm going to be long winded. Because, you see, I haven't really got any feeling of certainty about the matter. First, Sir Ambrose. Well, he wouldn't take such an original method of committing suicide - and on the other hand he certainly had nothing to gain by the death of his ward. Exit Sir Ambrose. Mr Curie. No motive for death of girl. If Sir Ambrose was intended victim, he might possibly have purloined a rare manuscript or two that no one else would miss. Very thin and most unlikely. So I think that, in spite of Mrs Bantry's suspicions as to his underclothing, Mr Curie is cleared. Miss Wye. Motive for death of Sir Ambrose - none. Motive for death of Sylvia pretty strong. She wanted Sylvia's young man, and wanted him rather badly - from Mrs Bantry's account. She was with Sylvia that morning in the garden, so had opportunity to pick leaves. No, we can't dismiss Miss Wye so easily. Young Lorimer. He's got a motive in either case. If he gets rid of his sweetheart, he can marry the other girl. Still it seems a bit drastic to kill her - what's a broken engagement these days? If Sir Ambrose dies, he will marry a rich girl instead of a poor one. That might be important or not - depends on his financial position. If I find that his estate was heavily mortgaged and that Mrs Bantry has deliberately withheld that fact from us, I shall claim a foul. Now Mrs Carpenter. You know, I have suspicions of Mrs Carpenter. Those white hands, for one thing, an
d her excellent alibi at the time the herbs were picked - I always distrust alibis. And I've got another reason for suspecting her which I will keep to myself. Still, on the whole, if I've got to plump, I shall plump for Miss Maude Wye, because there's more evidence against her than anyone else.'

  'Next boy,' said Mrs Bantry, and pointed at Dr Lloyd.

  'I think you're wrong, dithering, in sticking to the theory that the girl's death was meant I am convinced that the murderer intended to do away with Sir Ambrose. I don't think that young Lorimer had the necessary knowledge. I am inclined to believe that Mrs Carpenter was the guilty party. She had been a long time with the family, knew all about the state of Sir Ambrose's health, and could easily arrange for this girl Sylvia (who, you said yourself, was rather stupid) to pick the right leaves. Motive, I confess, I don't see; but I hazard the guess that Sir Ambrose had at one time made a will in which she was mentioned. That's the best I can do.'

  Mrs Bantry's pointing finger went on to Jane Helier.

  'I don't know what to say,' said Jane, 'except this: Why shouldn't the girl herself have done it? She took the leaves into the kitchen after all. And you say Sir Ambrose had been sticking out against her marriage. If he died, she'd get the money and be able to marry at once. She'd know just as much about Sir Ambrose's health as Mrs Carpenter would.'

  Mrs Bantry's finger came slowly round to Miss Marple.

  'Now then, School Marm.' she said.

  'Sir Henry has put it all very clearly - very clearly indeed,' said Miss Marple. 'And Dr Lloyd was so right in what he said. Between them they seem to have made things so very clear. Only I don't think Dr Lloyd quite realized one aspect of what he said. You see, not being Sir Ambrose's medical adviser, he couldn't know just what kind of heart trouble Sir Ambrose had, could he?'

  'I don't quite see what you mean. Miss Marple,' said Dr Lloyd.

  'You're assuming - aren't you? - that Sir Ambrose had the kind of heart that digitalin would affect adversely? But there's nothing to prove that that's so. It might be just the other way about.'

  'The other way about?'

  'Yes, you did say that it was often prescribed for heart trouble?'