‘I don’t believe he was poisoned at the party,’ said Elizabeth. I still believe that someone, one of the doctors probably, has made a ghastly mistake.’
‘Nonsense,’ said her husband, who had heard her express this view before. ‘You’ve got to face facts, Elizabeth, and medical evidence of that nature counts as fact.’
‘Well, it oughtn’t to,’ argued Elizabeth. ‘Get hold of a few more doctors and I bet you could find a conflicting opinion. Have one little boy with you and you’ll be told the name of every aeroplane that flies over, have two little boys and there’ll be an argument over each one.’
‘How very right you are, Elizabeth,’ exclaimed Duggie. ‘Even though, in this case, I can’t entirely agree with you, I am prepared to admit a margin of error.’
‘Order, order,’ said Charlie. ‘The chairman’s wife is not to be encouraged. Our terms of reference do not; repeat not, permit discussion of the medical evidence.’
‘I’m interested in the method,’ said Steve. ‘The Chief Inspector seemed to think that we should have noticed someone fishing for a piece of cork or a dead fly in his drink.’
‘I resent that suggestion, I utterly refute it,’ exclaimed Charlie with assumed anger. ‘None of my guests would have dared to imply such a thing.’
‘Take the Chief Inspector up for slander,’ suggested Hilary.
‘Yes, actually he asked me that one too,’ said Antonia. ‘As far as I could make out he seemed to think the murderer would mix the poison in his own drink and, if he was seen, would pretend he was fishing for a piece of cork.’
‘And then he would swap the drinks,’ said Steve. ‘Which would make it more difficult for the people who weren’t drinking cocktails.’
‘Namely Mark, Antonia and Elizabeth,’ Charlie told him.
‘I think the Big Noise suspects Mark of having whipped up Clara’s drink and poisoned that,’ said Bob. ‘He’s been taking an outsize interest in it, or rather in the fact that she finished up the evening without a glass.’
‘Did she indeed?’ asked Charlie. ‘I knew the Chief Inspector was trying to find someone who had, but I’d no idea he’d done it. Perhaps he is getting somewhere then, in his own quiet way.’
‘Could Mark have taken Clara’s drink, poisoned it, and passed it on to Vickers?’ asked Steve.
‘No, of course he couldn’t,’ Hilary spoke with certainty. ‘He hadn’t nearly enough time. He only left the door end of the room when he went to find Clara. He would hardly have had time to pour poison into Guy’s glass, much less find Clara, get her glass and all the rest of it. You were talking to Guy during the time when Mark is supposed to have poisoned him,’ she went on, turning to Duggie. ‘Did you see anything?’
‘No. But in this company I’m bound to admit I wouldn’t have seen anything,’ Duggie answered her. ‘You see, I wasn’t looking towards the chimneypiece, I had my back to the fire.’
‘Guy’s glass wasn’t on the chimneypiece,’ said Hilary. ‘It was in his hand.’
‘If that was so it would have been more or less impossible to poison him,’ said Steve. ‘You’ve got to look at it like this, Hilary,’ he went on. ‘Vickers was poisoned, in front of us all. That’s the evidence, and, as your father says, we’ve got to accept it. If Vickers held his glass in his hand all evening, he couldn’t have been poisoned without his consent. By that I mean it’s just possible that someone said, “try one of these tablets, old man, they prevent hangovers”; or something equally unlikely. But, if that had happened, I’m perfectly certain he would have told us when he was dying. I asked him several questions about what he’d had to eat and drink, but he insisted that he’d taken no drugs, no medicines and eaten only his ordinary meals. And that was before they filled him up with dope; his mind was crystal clear. He must have put his glass down at sometime in the evening, and at that moment it was either poisoned or switched.’
‘He didn’t put it down while I was talking to him,’ said Hilary, unshaken by Steve’s arguments.
‘How many of us talked to him?’ asked Bob. ‘Hilary and Duggie have confessed that they did. I didn’t actually speak to him, but I suppose I could have switched the glasses when I collected Clara. Clara had plenty of opportunity, of course; anyone else?’
‘I didn’t speak to him until he felt sick,’ said Steve.
‘I talked to him for a few minutes at the beginning of the party,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But the conversation was general; I don’t think I could have slipped anything into his glass.’
‘I hope I’m not speaking out of turn,’ said Miss Chiswick-Norton, smiling toothily round the half-circle of faces in an attempt to ingratiate herself. ‘I mean, I know I wasn’t there or anything — on Friday night, I mean — and probably you’ll think I’m silly; but it seems to me that Commander Chadwick could have done it as easy as pie. Poisoned poor Mr. Vickers, I mean. He’d only got to take the shaker thing out to the kitchen and put one poisoned cocktail in it; give that to poor Mr. Vickers, go out again, wash the shaker thing, fill it up with an unpoisoned cocktail and come back. No one would have been any the wiser, if you see what I mean.’
‘Quite, quite,’ said Steve. ‘But the Commander hasn’t a motive.’
‘We’re not concerned with motives,’ Charlie told him. ‘You’re perfectly right, Miss Chiswick-Norton. I had by far the biggest opportunity. Actually Scotland Yard is well aware of that and I suspect my past has been probed fairly thoroughly. However, I am more than willing to head the list of suspects.’
‘And after you,’ said Miss Chiswick-Norton, her smile turning wolfish, ‘must come your daughter.’
‘I don’t see why,’ protested Elizabeth promptly.
‘I do,’ Hilary answered. ‘I talked to Guy much more than anyone else.’
‘That’s right, you see what I mean. You had plenty of time. You could have slipped the poison in when it was convenient; you wouldn’t have had to rush it like anyone else. You don’t mind my speaking frankly, do you? I mean that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? To find out all we can and you could have done it easily. Easily,’ she repeated, and there was something unpleasantly insinuating about her tone.
‘But I didn’t,’ said Hilary calmly.
‘No, of course you didn’t,’ Duggie Holmes-Waterford backed her up. ‘No one in their senses would dream of suggesting such a thing. You could have had no possible reason to poison Guy.’
‘However,’ said Charlie, ‘she did have the opportunity. We’ll put her second on the list. Now we want a candidate for third place. What about my wife?’ he asked, a little sarcastically.
‘No, she’s a hundred to one outsider,’ objected Bob. ‘Who else talked to Vickers?’
‘I did,’ answered Duggie; ‘and, of course, Clara.’
‘Clara could have bumped him off,’ said Bob. ‘But why? We can discuss her motive, Mr. Chairman, since she is beyond embarrassment or denial.’
‘Why indeed?’ asked Duggie.
‘I have a feeling that our policeman thinks Mark might have put her up to it,’ said Bob. ‘I don’t think it’s frightfully likely, myself.’
‘It’s an idiotic idea,’ said Elizabeth firmly.
‘Well, we’d better put Clara third and Duggie fourth on the list,’ said Charlie. ‘Now, what about the rest of you? If I were the murderer, I would have taken jolly good care not to be seen near my victim, so I’m more suspicious of those who haven’t admitted talking to Guy than I am of those who have. Which of you went anywhere near the fireplace?’
‘Me,’ answered Bob. ‘I went to collect Clara from Vickers. I keep pointing out that I could have popped the lethal dose in then.’
‘Mr. Broughton,’ said Antonia. ‘He went quite near, but I must say I never saw him put anything in.’
‘You were watching him closely?’ asked Duggie.
‘Not all that closely,' answered Antonia. ‘It was just that Colonel Clinkerton had told me about having a joint master and I wondered whether Mr. Broughton was g
oing to say anything about it to Guy Vickers. But he didn’t.’
‘That’s interesting,’ said Charlie. ‘It sounds to me as though you would have seen if Mark had attempted any funny stuff.’
‘Yes, but I wouldn’t like to swear to anything,’ Antonia told him. ‘I don’t feel certain about it, you see; not one way or the other.’
‘It looks as though Mr. Broughton did do it through his wife; the murder, I mean,’ said Miss Chiswick-Norton. ‘She would have been too gaga to know what she was doing, poor thing. I mean if she had known, it would have been obvious what his next step was — to kill her, I mean — and she would have had the sense not to start the ball rolling.’
‘You are suggesting that Mark told Clara that she was to poison Vickers because he was trying to gain control of the hounds, I take it?’ asked Duggie.
‘Yes, I mean that’s what he would have told her but, of course, we know that there was quite a different reason,’ said Norty, with a malicious glance at Hilary.
Charlie Chadwick said, ‘No motives, please,’ in an apparently unmoved voice. But the air was heavy with embarrassment and Hilary’s face set in stony lines.
Suddenly Sonia, who had hitherto taken no part in the discussion, came to life.
‘Oh!’ One hand fluttered to her throat as she gave a little cry of horror. ‘Did someone say that Clara gave Guy the poison? Because she offered me a cocktail. She mumbled something about not wanting it. She said that she hadn’t licked it. Oh, Steve, supposing I’d taken it? Then I should have died. But I thought, I don’t want anything you’ve touched; I wouldn’t fancy it, I might catch something.’
‘You’re sure about that, Sonia?’ asked Steve. ‘It might be very important, so you want to be quite certain of your facts.’
‘Yes, I’ve told you, haven’t I?’ Sonia sounded a little hysterical as the idea of her nearness to death sank in.
Charlie asked, ‘Does this put a new complexion on things, or are we still more or less where we were before?’ ‘Well, I suppose Clara could have gone right off her rocker,’ said Bob, ‘and just rushed round with an urge to poison someone. Alternatively, if Mark had put her up to poisoning Vickers she could have got a bit mixed up and offered it to Sonia first.’
‘It all sounds a lot too far fetched to me,’ said Charlie. ‘I don’t think Clara was “off her rocker” as Bob puts it, and I’m sure Mark wouldn’t have used her as a stooge.’
‘I entirely agree with you, Charlie,’ said Duggie warmly. ‘It sounds quite unlike Mark. I don’t want to seem crushing, but I doubt whether Mrs. Denton’s experience throws any new light on the matter. Have you told the police about it?’ he asked Sonia.
‘No, I’d quite forgotten about it until now.’
‘We’d better tell Flecker,’ said Charlie. ‘Then it’s up to him. Will you tell him, Steve? Or shall I?’
‘You’d better give him a report on the lot, and then he can follow it up or not, as he likes.’
‘You’ll have to wait until Monday,’ Bob broke in. ‘Mrs. Gordon tells me they’ve gone back to London.’
Steve said, ‘Well, we’ve discovered one or two things and if you agree, Mr. Chairman, and if everybody has exhausted their ideas on this matter, I suggest we have another drink and talk about something else.’
‘I can’t think about anything else,’ objected Sonia. ‘You don’t seem to realize, Steve; I mightn’t be here. I might be dead. You might have all gone to my funeral yesterday, instead of to Clara’s.’
‘If you ask me,’ said Antonia, ‘the police are barking up quite a different tree. They’ve been all round Langley asking for a Mrs. Basset who lived there years ago. I wondered if they’d stopped suspecting us when I heard about it.’
‘Perhaps Guy did have something to eat or drink before he came to the party then,’ said Elizabeth, her face brightening. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if in the end, it turned out to be nothing to do with any of us?’
‘Don’t forget there’s still Clara’s death to be accounted for,’ said Charlie.
But Elizabeth was not to be downcast. ‘Oh, I’d forgive the police anything,’ she said, ‘if they’d come round in the morning and tell us that this nightmare was over; that they’d caught the murderer, a man we’d never heard of, just a murderer; the sort one rather enjoys reading about in the Sunday papers.’
‘But even the Sunday paper murderers aren’t born to it,’ said Hilary. ‘They must have families and friends too. But still,’ she added, ‘the police do seem a bit less suspicious of Mark; apparently there hasn’t been a copper outside the house all day.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BOB BEWLEY WAS WRONG. Flecker and Browning were back in Lollington on Saturday night. Having traced the elusive Mrs. Basset to Manchester, they had handed over the search to the C.I.D. of that city and returned to Wintshire.
Charlie Chadwick telephoned the Dog and Duck on Sunday morning, intending to leave a message asking Flecker to come over to Hazebrook on his return; but, hearing that ‘he was just next door in the saloon bar,’ he asked Mrs. Gordon to fetch him.
Chadwick disapproved of the long gossipy telephone conversations in which his wife and daughter loved to indulge and believed in cutting the conventional niceties to nothing. Now, to Flecker, he said, ‘I want a word with you, Chief Inspector. Can you come round?’
‘Yes, of course,’ answered Flecker. ‘Shall I come right away?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie, replacing the receiver.
Flecker called to Browning, ‘They want us over at Hazebrook.’
‘What for?’ inquired Browning, joining him in the hall.
‘I’ve no idea,’ Flecker answered. ‘Old Chadwick must have served in the days when signals were sent by flags, and he didn’t want to hoist too many this morning. Just said he’d like a word with me.’
‘Well, he’s not one to get carried away by nothing,’ said Browning. ‘I’ll nip out and get the car.’
Elizabeth Chadwick let the detectives in. ‘This shows great devotion to duty,’ she said. ‘My husband didn’t expect to find you at Lollington; don’t the police ever have days off?’
‘The Chief Inspector’s a terrible slave-driver, madam,’ said Browning with a smile.
As they left their coats in the hall, Charlie Chadwick appeared at the drawing-room door.
‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘You didn’t take long to get here. I’m not sure that my information is worthy of such dispatch.’
‘Any information is gratefully received,’ Flecker told him.
‘Isn’t it wonderful to be warm again?’ said Elizabeth. ‘Or comparatively warm, anyway. I do hate the winter.’
‘We’ll have another freeze up in February, bound to,’ said Browning. ‘It’s no good you expecting the spring yet.’
Flecker looked at Chadwick, ‘Well, Commander?’
Last night,’ said Charlie carefully, ‘we were invited to drinks with the Dentons. It was agreed among us that we should discuss the murders, objectively, with a view to pooling our common experiences and helping the police. I was made chairman of the discussion and have been asked to report to you.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Flecker. ‘Carry on, sir.’
‘Nothing very startling transpired. The general idea seemed to be that Mrs. Broughton murdered Vickers either because she was mad or because her husband told her to. We were working those lines when Mrs. Denton remembered that Mrs. Broughton had offered her a cocktail during the party.’
‘Oh, she did, did she,’ said Flecker, without any sign of excitement.
The Chadwicks were disappointed. ‘Bob said you were very interested in Clara’s missing glass, that’s why we thought this might be important,’ Elizabeth explained. ‘But we heard you were looking for a Mrs. Basset now.’
‘Another salient fact which emerged,’ said Commander Chadwick, referring to some notes, ‘was that Antonia Brockenhurst was actually watching Mark when he passed by Vickers and she didn’t see him put anything i
n his glass.’
‘The Chief Inspector’s not interested in Mark any more,’ Elizabeth told her husband. ‘You know Hilary said there isn’t a policeman on guard or anything now.’
Flecker tugged distractedly at his forelock. ‘Don’t tell me you discussed all this at the Dentons’?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Charlie answered. ‘We found we knew quite a bit between us; we —’
‘Who was there?’ Flecker interrupted him.
‘The Dentons, three of us, Captain Bewley and Colonel Holmes-Waterford; oh, and Miss Brockenhurst brought her partner, that awful redheaded Chiswick-Norton woman,’ answered Elizabeth.
Flecker was on his feet before she had finished.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I think we’d better go.’ And Browning, recognizing the almost imperceptible signs of great urgency, shot by his chief, collected their overcoats and dashed down the garden path to the car.
‘Where to?’ he asked, as Flecker slipped in beside him.
‘The kennels.’
The Chadwicks, rather startled by the abrupt departure of the detectives, stood on their front doorstep and heard the car roar away up the road.
‘What on earth was that in aid of?’ asked Elizabeth.
‘Can’t imagine,’ answered Charlie. ‘Perhaps they’ve been going to American films.’
They were tearing down the high road before Browning ventured a question. ‘What’s up now, sir?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Flecker. ‘With any luck, nothing. But I’ll feel happier when I’ve made sure that Broughton is still at home. The idiocy of those people; don’t they realize that by the time you’ve done two murders you don’t think twice before committing your third?’
Browning accelerated. Sounding the horn almost continuously, he drove down the twisting road to Little Lapworth at a highly unsuitable speed. ‘Lucky it’s Sunday,’ he remarked, as he negotiated a corner entirely on the wrong side of the road. Flecker said nothing but sighed with relief as they turned from the road into the lane which led to the kennels. He was out of the car and doubling towards the front door before Browning had pulled up at the gate. Browning turned the car and then followed him into the house.
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