Richard Dalby (ed)

by Crime for Christmas

  ‘And why did she wait for the children’s party to do the murder?’

  ‘Something may have happened there to rouse her jealousy.’

  ‘Something with one of the visitors?’ Reggie suggested. ‘I wonder.’ And then he laughed. ‘A party of the visitors went round the hospital, Lomas. They had access to surgical instruments.’

  ‘And were suddenly seized with a desire for homicide? They also went to the gymnasium and the kitchen. Did any of them start boiling potatoes? My dear Fortune, you are not as plausible as usual.’

  ‘It isn’t plausible,’ Reggie said. ‘I know that. It’s too dam’ wicked.’

  ‘Abnormal,’ Lomas nodded. ‘Of course the essence of the thing is that it’s abnormal. Every once in a while we have these murders in an orphanage or school or some place where women and children are herded together. Nine times out of ten they are cases of hysteria. Your young friend Miss Baker seems to be a highly hysterical subject.’

  ‘You know more than I do.’

  ‘Why, that’s in the evidence. And you saw her yourself half crazy with emotion after the murder.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ said Reggie. ‘Lomas, old thing, you do run on. Pantin’ time toils after you in vain. That girl wasn’t crazy. She was the most natural of us all. You send a girl in her teens into the room where the woman she is keen on is sitting with her throat cut. She won’t talk to you like a little lady. The evidence! Why do you believe what people tell you about people? They’re always lying—by accident if not on purpose. This matron don’t like the girl because she worshipped the lady doctor. Therefore the girl is called abnormal and jealous. Did you never hear of a girl in her teens worshipping a teacher? It’s common form. Did you never hear of another teacher being vicious about it? That’s just as common.’

  ‘Do you mean the matron was jealous of them both?’

  Reggie shrugged, ‘It hits you in the eye.’

  ‘Good Gad!’ said Lomas. ‘Do you suspect the matron?’

  ‘I suspect the devil,’ said Reggie gravely. ‘Lomas, my child, whoever did that murder cut the woman’s throat and then sat down in her easy chair and watched her die. I call that devilish.’ And he told of the bloodstains and the turned cushions.

  ‘Good Gad,’ said Lomas once more, ‘there’s some hate in that.’

  ‘Not a nice murder. Also it stopped the children’s party.’

  ‘You harp on that.’ Lomas looked at him curiously. ‘Are you thinking of the visitors?’

  ‘I wonder,’ Reggie murmured. ‘I wonder.’

  ‘Here’s the list,’ Lomas said, and Reggie came slowly to look. ‘Sir George and Lady Bean, Lady Chantry, Mrs Carroway’—he ran his pencil down—‘all well-known, blameless busy bodies, full of good works. Nothing doing.’

  ‘Crab Warnham,’ said Reggie.

  ‘Oh, Warnham: his wife took him, I suppose. She’s a saint, and he eats out of her hand, they say. Well, he was a loose fish, of course, but murder! I don’t see Warnham at that.’

  ‘He has an eye for a woman.’

  ‘Still? I dare say. But good Gad, he can’t have known this lady doctor. Was she pretty?’ Reggie nodded. ‘Well, we might look for a link between them. Not likely, is it?’

  ‘We’re catching at straws,’ said Reggie sombrely.

  Lomas pushed the papers away. ‘Confound it, it’s another case without evidence. I suppose it can’t be suicide like that Bigod affair?’

  Reggie, who was lighting a cigar looked up and let the match burn his fingers. ‘Not suicide. No,’ he said. ‘Was Bigod’s?’

  ‘Well, it was a deuced queer death by misadventure.’

  ‘As you say.’ Reggie nodded and wandered dreamily out.

  This seems to have been the first time that anyone thought of comparing the Bigod case to the orphanage murder. When the inquest on the lady doctor was held the police had no more evidence to produce than you have heard, and the jury returned a verdict of murder by some person or persons unknown. Newspapers strove to enliven the dull calm of the holiday season by declaiming against the inefficiency of a police force which allowed murderers to remain anonymous, and hashed up the Bigod case again to prove that the fall of Sir Humphrey Bigod into his chalk-pit, though called accidental, was just as mysterious as the cut throat of Dr Hall. And the Hon. Sidney Lomas cursed the man who invented printing.

  These assaults certainly did not disturb Reggie Fortune, who has never cared what people say of him. With the help of Joan Amber he found a quiet, remote place for the unhappy girl suspected of the murder (Lady Chantry was pretty angry with Miss Amber about that, protesting that she wanted to look after Edith herself), and said he was only in the case as a philanthropist. After which he gave all his time to preparing his house and Miss Amber for married life. But the lady found him dreamy.

  It was in fact while he was showing her how the new colours in the drawing-room looked under the new lighting that Dr Eden called him up. Dr Eden has a general practice in Kensington. Dr Eden wanted to consult him about a case: most urgent: 3 King William’s Walk.

  ‘But it’s Mrs Warnham!’ she cried.

  ‘May I take the car?’ said Reggie to Joan. ‘He sounds rattled. You can go on home afterwards. It’s not far from you either. I wonder who lives at 3 King William’s Walk?’

  ‘Oh, my aunt!’ said Reggie Fortune; and said no more.

  And Joan Amber did not call him out of his thoughts. She was as grave as he. Only when he was getting out of the car, ‘Be good to her, dear,’ she said gently. He kissed the hand on his arm.

  The door was opened by a woman in evening-dress. ‘It is Mr Fortune, isn’t it? Please come in. It’s so kind of you to come.’ She turned to the maid in the background. Tell Dr Eden, Maggie. It’s my little boy—and we are so anxious.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Warnham,’ Reggie took her hand and found it cold. The face he remembered for its gentle calm, was sternly set. What is the trouble?’

  ‘Gerald went to a party this afternoon. He came home gloriously happy and went to bed. He didn’t go to sleep at once, he was rather excited, but he was quite well. Then he woke up crying with pain and was very sick. I sent for Dr Eden. It isn’t like Gerald to cry, Mr Fortune. And—’

  A hoarse voice said, ‘Catherine, you oughtn’t to be out there in the cold.’ Reggie saw the gaunt face of Captain Warnham looking round a door at them.

  ‘What does it matter?’ she cried. ‘Dr Eden doesn’t want me to be with him, Mr Fortune. He is still in pain. And I don’t think Dr Eden knows.’

  Dr Eden came down in time to hear that. A large young man, he stood over them looking very awkward and uncomfortable.

  ‘I’m sure Dr Eden has done everything that can be done,’ said Reggie gently. I’ll go up, please.’ And they left the mother to her husband, that flushed, gaunt face peering round the corner as they kept step up the stairs.

  ‘The child’s seven years old,’ said Eden. ‘There’s no history of any gastric trouble. Rather a good digestion. And then this—out of the blue!’

  Reggie went into a nursery where a small boy lay huddled and restless with all the apparatus of sickness by his bed. He raised a pale face on which beads of sweat stood.

  ‘Hallo, Gerald,’ Reggie said quietly. ‘Mother sent me up to make you all right again.’ He took the child’s hand and felt for the pulse. ‘I’m Mr Fortune, your fortune, good fortune.’ The child tried to smile and Reggie’s hands moved over the uneasy body and all the while he murmured softly nonsense talk...

  The child did not want him to go, but at last he went off with Eden into a corner of the room. ‘Quite right to send for me,’ he said gravely, and Eden put his hand to his head. ‘I know, I know. It’s horrible when it’s a child. One of the irritant poisons. Probably arsenic. Have you given an emetic?’

  ‘He’s been very sick. And he’s so weak.’

  ‘I know. Have you got anything with you?’

  ‘I sent home. But I didn’t care to—’

 
‘I’ll do it. Sulphate of zinc. You go and send for a nurse. And find some safe milk. I wouldn’t use the household stuff.’

  ‘My God, Fortune! Surely it was at the party?’

  ‘Not the household stuff,’ Reggie repeated, and he went back to the child...

  It was many hours afterwards that he came softly downstairs. In the hall husband and wife met him. It seemed to him that it was the man who had been crying. ‘Are you going away?’ Mrs Warnham said.

  ‘There’s no more pain. He is asleep.’

  Her eyes darkened. ‘You mean he’s—dead?’ the man gasped.

  ‘I hope he’ll live longer than any of us, Captain Warnham. But no one must disturb him. The nurse will be watching, you know. And I’m sure we all want to sleep sound—don’t we?’ He was gone. But he stayed a moment on the doorstep. He heard emotions within.

  On the next afternoon Dr Eden came into his laboratory at St Saviour’s. ‘One moment. One moment.’ Reggie was bent over a notebook. ‘When I go to hell they’ll set me doing sums.’ He frowned at his figures. The third time is lucky. That’s plausible if it isn’t right. Well, how’s our large patient?’

  ‘He’s doing well. Quite easy and cheerful.’

  Reggie stood up. ‘I think we might say, Thank God.’

  ‘Yes, rather. I thought he was gone last night, Fortune. He would have been without you. It was wonderful how he bucked up in your hands. You ought to have been a children’s specialist.’

  ‘My dear chap! Oh, my dear chap! I’m the kind of fellow who would always ought to have been something else. And so I’m doing sums in a laboratory which God knows I’m not fit for.’

  ‘Have you found out what it was?’

  ‘Oh, arsenic, of course. Quite a fair dose he must have had. It’s queer how they always will use arsenic.’

  Eden stared at him. ‘What are we to do?’ he said in a low voice. ‘Fortune, I suppose it couldn’t have been accidental?’

  ‘What is a child likely to eat in which he would find grains of accidental arsenic?’

  ‘Yes, but then— I mean, who could want to kill that child?’

  ‘That is the unknown quantity in the equation. But people do want to murder children, quite nice children.’

  Eden grew pale. ‘What do you mean? You know he’s not Warnham’s child. Warnham’s his step-father.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Have you ever seen the two together?’

  Eden hesitated. ‘He—well he didn’t seem to take to Warnham. But I’d have sworn Warnham was fond of him.’

  ‘And that’s all quite natural, isn’t it? Well, well. I hope he’s in.’

  ‘What do you mean to do?’

  ‘Tell Mrs Warnham—with her husband listening.’

  Dr Eden followed him out like a man going to be hanged.

  Mrs Warnham indeed met them in her hall. ‘Mr Fortune’—she took his hand, she had won back her old calm, but her eyes grew dark as she looked at him—‘Gerald has been asking for you. And I want to speak to you.’

  ‘I shall be glad to talk over the case with you and Captain Warnham,’ said Reggie gravely. ‘I’ll see the small boy first, if you don’t mind.’ And the small boy kept his Mr Fortune a long time.

  Mrs Warnham had her husband with her when the doctors came down. ‘I say, Fortune,’ Captain Warnham started up, ‘awfully good of you to take so much trouble. I mean to say’—he cleared his throat—’I feel it, you know. How is the little beggar?’

  ‘There’s no reason why he shouldn’t do well,’ Reggie said slowly. ‘But it’s a strange case, Captain Warnham. Yes, a strange case. You make take it, there is no doubt the child was poisoned.’

  ‘Poisoned!’ Warnham cried out in that queer hoarse voice.

  ‘You mean it was something Gerald shouldn’t have eaten?’ Mrs Warnham said gently.

  ‘It was arsenic, Captain Warnham. Not much more than an hour before the time he felt ill, perhaps less, he had swallowed enough arsenic to kill him.’

  ‘I say, are you certain of all that? I mean to say, no doubt about anything?’ Warnham was flushed. ‘Arsenic—and the time—and the dose? It’s pretty thick, you know.’

  ‘There is no doubt. I have found arsenic. I can estimate the dose. And arsenic acts within that time.’

  ‘But I can’t believe it,’ Mrs Warnham said. ‘It would be too horribly cruel. Mr Fortune, couldn’t it have been accident? Something in his food?’

  ‘It was certainly in his food or drink. But not accident, Mrs Warnham. That is not possible.’

  ‘I say, let’s have it all out, Fortune,’ Warnham growled. ‘Do you suspect anyone?’

  ‘That’s rather for you, isn’t it?’ said Reggie.

  ‘Who could want to poison Gerald?’ Mrs Warnham cried.

  ‘He says some one did,’ Warnham growled. ‘When do you suppose he took the stuff, Fortune? At the party or after he came home?’

  ‘What did he have when he came home?’

  Warnham looked at his wife. ‘Only a little milk. He wouldn’t eat anything,’ she said. ‘And I tasted his milk, I remember. It was quite nice.’

  ‘That points to the party,’ Eden said.

  ‘But I can’t believe it. Who could want to poison Gerald?’

  ‘I’ve seen some of the people who were there,’ Eden frowned. ‘I don’t believe there’s another child ill. Only this one of the whole party.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. A strange case,’ said Reggie. ‘Was there anyone there with a grudge against you, Mrs Warnham?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s anyone with a grudge against me in the world.’

  ‘I don’t believe there is, Catherine,’ her husband looked at her. ‘But damn it, Fortune found the stuff in the child. I say, Fortune, what do you advise?’ ‘You’re sure of your own household? There’s nobody here jealous of the child?’

  Mrs Warnham looked her distress. ‘I couldn’t, I couldn’t doubt anybody. There isn’t any reason. You know, it doesn’t seem real.’

  ‘And there it is,’ Warnham growled.

  ‘Yes. Well, I shouldn’t talk about it, you know. When he’s up again take him right away, somewhere quiet. You’ll live with him yourself, of course. That’s all safe. And I—well, I shan’t forget the case. Goodbye.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Fortune—’ she started up and caught his hands.

  ‘Yes, yes, good-bye,’ said Reggie, and got away. But as Warnham let them out he felt Warnham’s lean hand grip into his arm.

  ‘A little homely comfort would be grateful,’ Reggie murmured. ‘Come and have tea at the Academies, Eden. They keep a pleasing muffin.’ He sank down in his car at Eden’s side with a happy sigh.

  But Eden’s brow was troubled. ‘Do you think the child will be safe now, Fortune?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I think so. If it was Warnham or Mrs Warnham who poisoned him—’

  ‘Good Lord! You don’t think that?’

  ‘They are frightened,’ said Reggie placidly. ‘I frightened ’em quite a lot. And if it was somebody else—the child is going away and Mrs Warnham will be eating and drinking everything he eats and drinks. The small Gerald will be all right. There remains only the little problem, who was it?’

  ‘It’s a diabolical affair. Who could want to kill that child?’

  ‘Diabolical is the word,’ Reggie agreed. ‘And a little simple food is what we need,’ and they went into the club and through a long tea he talked to Eden of rock gardens and Chinese nursery rhymes.

  But when Eden, somewhat dazed by his appetite and the variety of his conversation, was gone, he made for that corner of the club where Lomas sat drinking tea made in the Russian manner. He pointed a finger at the clear weak fluid. ‘ “It was sad and bad and mad” and it was not even sweet,’ he complained. ‘Take care, Lomas. Think what’s happened to Russia. You would never be happy as a Bolshevik.’

  ‘I understand that the detective police force is the one institution which has survived in Russia.’

  ‘Put down that repulsive concoction and
come and take the air.’

  Lomas stared at him in horror. ‘Where’s your young lady? I thought you were walking out. You’re a faithless fellow, Fortune. Go and walk like a little gentleman.’ But there was that in Reggie’s eye which made him get up with a groan. ‘You’re the most ruthless man I know.’

  The car moved away from the club and Reggie shrank under his rug as the January east wind met them. ‘I hope you are cold,’ said Lomas. ‘What is it now?’

  ‘It was nearly another anonymous murder,’ and Reggie told him the story.

  ‘Diabolical,’ said Lomas.

  ‘Yes, I believe in the devil,’ Reggie nodded.

  ‘Who stood to gain by the child’s death? It’s clear enough. There’s only Warnham. Mrs Warnham was left a rich woman when her first husband died, old Staveleigh. Everyone knew that was why Warnham was after her. But the bulk of the fortune would go to the child. So he took the necessary action. Good Gad! We all knew Crab Warnham didn’t stick at a trifle. But this—! Cold-blooded scoundrel. Can you make a case of it?’

  ‘I like you, Lomas. You’re so natural,’ Reggie said. ‘That’s all quite clear. And it’s all wrong. This case isn’t natural, you see. It hath a devil.’

  ‘Do you mean to say it wasn’t Warnham?’

  ‘It wasn’t Warnham. I tried to frighten him. He was frightened. But not for himself. Because the child has an enemy and he doesn’t know who it is.’

  ‘Oh, my dear fellow! He’s not a murderer because you like his face.’

  ‘Who could like his face? No. The poison was given at the party where Warnham wasn’t.’

  ‘But why? What possible motive? Some homicidal lunatic goes to a Kensington children’s party and picks out this one child to poison. Not very credible, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s diabolical. I didn’t say a lunatic. When you tell me what lunacy is, we’ll discuss whether the poisoner was sane. But the diabolical is getting a little too common, Lomas. There was Bigod: young, healthy, well off, just engaged to a jolly girl. He falls into a chalk-pit and the jury says it was misadventure. There was the lady doctor: young, clean living, not a ghost of a past, everybody liking her. She is murdered and a girl who was very fond of her nearly goes mad over it. Now there’s the small Gerald: a dear kid, his mother worships him, his stepfather’s mighty keen on him, everybody likes him. Somebody tries to poison him and nearly brings it off.’