Excellent Intentions

by Richard Hull

  “Somehow or another a bit of cotton waste had got sucked up and jammed in it. Directly I got the exhaust clear the car was in perfectly good order. If only Cargate had known, he need not have gone by train at all.”

  At that Miss Knox Forster shivered.

  “He drove very fast, you know. Supposing that his heart had failed while he was driving? The car might have gone anywhere. If it had been in a town, for instance, he might have killed any number of people.”

  It was on the tip of Fenby’s tongue to ask whether Cargate ever took snuff while he was driving. It sounded a little unlikely that he would, but he remembered in time that not everyone knew, or was supposed to know, how close was the relationship between Cargate’s snuff and his death. Instead, he asked what was the reason for the journey to town on that day.

  “I don’t know, for certain,” Miss Knox Forster answered, “except that he said he might possibly go and see you, Mr. Ley, if you were in. Yes, I know that he didn’t arrange an appointment—I think he hadn’t made up his mind. It was only a subsidiary point. The main thing, I believe, was something to do with his stamp collection. I think that Mr. Macpherson had told him that some of them were forgeries and he was going to find out some other expert to tell him about them. I think that he no longer quite trusted Macpherson. Or perhaps he just wanted a second opinion.”

  “Did he take them with him?”

  “No. I don’t think that he had got that far. He was only going to find out an expert and get him to come here. They’re rather bulky. He never liked letting them out of his hand. I think that he had a fear they might be stolen and besides they are very easily damaged. But I’m afraid that I don’t know very much about it, because I always thought that it was a peculiarly silly hobby.”

  “I suppose that some time I shall have to sell them and I haven’t the faintest notion how to do it,” Ley put in.

  “Public auction,” Fenby suggested. “And if any of them are forgeries, the auctioneer will probably tell you quickly enough.”

  “With books and pictures, yes; but I wonder if that is equally true of stamps? I don’t happen to have had a philatelist client before. Still, there’s no hurry.”

  “No,” Fenby agreed. As soon as he got Ley alone he intended to warn him against any precipitate action. Somehow he felt that there might be something yet to be discovered in one of the stamp albums. Then he turned to Miss Knox Forster and asked her if she happened to know of anyone other than Macpherson with whom Cargate had had dealings concerned with stamps.

  “Plenty of people,” was the answer, “but I don’t know which are experts. I’ll look up the addresses for you straightaway.”

  “I wish you would. It may save me trouble.”

  “No time like the present.” She turned with characteristic efficiency towards her own sitting-room to obtain the information at once. “Oh, by the way,” she said, “I suppose you don’t mind my throwing these roses away? They’re nearly dead now.”

  Fenby looked at them dully. There was something about them that he knew that he had intended to find out, but he had had a long day and he could not remember what it was. The length of the silence became so absurd that even Ley stared at the bowl. Eventually Fenby pulled himself together with a jerk.

  “The roses? Oh, I’m sorry, I was day-dreaming. By all means throw them away. They never last, do they?”

  “The table will look bare without any flowers on it, won’t it?” Ley of course had to say something and Fenby found his opinion of the solicitor going down, but Miss Knox Forster was always agreeable, perhaps even consciously agreeable to an irritating degree, and, with the comment that perhaps they would last till the next morning, she went off to get the addresses which she had just been going to fetch.

  “Do you mind handing that stamp collection over to me?” Fenby asked while she was away.

  Ley thought a minute.

  “I’m afraid I do. You see I am responsible for his property—to the nation apparently.”

  “And I might steal it?” Fenby for once lacked his usual urbanity.

  “No, but it is not the proper thing to do. I’m speaking professionally. Besides, if there are any forgeries in it, it might be awkward for you. I mean somebody might say that it was you who substituted them.”

  Fenby sighed. It sounded silly and he was quite willing to take the risk, but when a lawyer said that he was speaking professionally, he knew from past experience that to reason with him was a waste of time. All the same when, later on, he had interviewed Macpherson, it proved a slight nuisance because, though it was not vital to his case, he did want to know exactly what was the state of that sixpenny St. Vincent of a distinctive deep yellow-green colour, which had for a few moments been lying with its gum touching the mixture of snuff and (perhaps) potassium cyanide. It had, so Macpherson said, been remounted. Indeed, but for the chance that it had been the mount, not the stamp, which Macpherson had licked, a different person might have met his death and straightaway instead of the next morning. The procedure of sticking it in again might have removed all traces of any extraneous substance which might have adhered to the back of the stamp, but perhaps there was still some. You did not, Fenby remembered, put a stamp mount over the whole of the back of the stamp.

  “I had hoped,” Blayton began nervously to approach the (to him) tiresome subject of stamp collecting, “to have relieved the Court of the necessity of considering the events of that day not only after five o’clock, but after an even earlier hour. For it is admitted that at about 3.45 a particular stamp was placed for a while in the snuffbox—an odd receptacle for it, but I will explain later how that arose—and after some difficulty that actual stamp was obtained and submitted to some extent to analysis.

  “It was not an easy matter, since it was a sixpenny stamp issued by the island of St. Vincent and there were several of these, at least a dozen I am informed, in Henry Cargate’s collection which, to those of us who are not stamp collectors, would all look identically the same, or very nearly so. But to the trained philatelist who delights in minutiæ, there are differences, so that some are worth a few shillings and some a considerable number of pounds.

  “This particular one happened by an evil chance to be the most valuable of all. Indeed I am informed that if you were to go into the shop of the dealers who issue what is perhaps the generally accepted standard British catalogue, they would ask you to pay one hundred and ten pounds for it. It was possible, therefore to identify this particular specimen, but a stamp is a brittle thing and Mr. Ley, as Henry Cargate’s executor and in a sense as trustee for the nation owing to the peculiarities of the will which he had to administer, was naturally anxious—rightly, if I may say so—to see that this valuable property was not damaged, for he was told, and those who gave the opinion still adhere to it, that if any of the gum was removed from the back of the stamp, or the slightest thinning took place in the paper on which it was printed, that then the value of that stamp would be depreciated, not slightly, but by fifty per cent, or even seventy-five per cent, or perhaps by even more than that, even though the surface, which would to you and me appear to be all that was of moment, was undamaged. I find it hard to believe, but I am universally informed that that is true.”

  Blayton paused to let this sink in and then went on:

  “I tell you that simply to explain why Mr. Ley could not allow, from a professional point of view, so exhaustive an examination of that stamp as he would otherwise have granted, unless very strong reasons were given to him why this hundred and ten pound piece of paper should be damaged. And at the time it was not possible to provide him with those reasons.

  “Nor subsequently, I will admit, has it proved to be absolutely vital that that stamp should have been examined more closely. Had it been possible, we should have known definitely and certainly that the potassium cyanide had been blended with the snuff before 3.45, and it is part of my case th
at it was done by that hour, but since I can prove that it was not possible that it could be done after 5 p.m. I am not distressed that that examination could not be exhaustively performed.

  “Nevertheless, Mr. Ley did, though with reluctance, allow some processes to be carried out and in particular the mount, the small piece of transparent, adhesive paper which was used to affix the stamp to the album, was exhaustively examined. The analyst who carried out that test, will tell you that in his opinion there was the veriest shade of a trace of potassium cyanide on it. If that is so, and though he cannot be quite certain of it, he will tell you that it is highly probable, we need not worry to consider what happened after 3.45 p.m.

  “So then, gentlemen of the jury, we have those four periods, the few minutes around a quarter past eleven, in the morning, a further few from 11.30 to, say, 11.38, the long period between noon and a quarter to two, of which as I have explained to you only the five minutes directly after one o’clock and the five minutes before 1.45 are of importance; and fourthly we have the hour of half-past three.

  “And corresponding roughly with those four periods, but not exactly, are four people.”

  Part III

  Analysis

  Fenby was both a conscientious and a methodical man, and he very often found that to put things down on paper was of considerable assistance in helping to clear his brain.

  Certainly the case of Henry Cargate was one which was likely to benefit by being treated on those lines for it must resolve itself into a question of detail, perhaps of contradiction, certainly of analysis.

  Accordingly, he got out his scribbling-pad and put headings to a number of slips of paper. Then he went carefully through all the statements which had been made to him and put each of them into its relevant place. It was a tribute to his tact that everyone concerned had been quite gladly prepared to sign a document which omitted nothing that had been in Fenby’s notes and which he had considered to have any possibility of being relevant.

  “Position of snuffbox,” was his first heading. Gradually the paper filled up with such information as he had about it, noting the approximate time and the informant in each case. In the end it ran as follows:

  9.45 Being cleaned by Raikes.

  10.0 Put on table at Cargate’s left hand—Raikes.

  10.0 Put on table at Cargate’s right hand—Miss Knox Forster.

  10.45 or soon after—on table on left-hand side—

  (Cargate drew his attention to it)—Yockleton.

  11.30 Picked up by Cargate—Yockleton.

  2.30 On table. Initials right way up to anyone

  sitting at desk—Macpherson.

  3.30 On table. Initials reverse way up to any

  one sitting at desk—Macpherson.

  3.30 Picked up by Cargate. Stamp found

  inside it—Macpherson.

  The entries for ten o’clock involved a small contradiction by Miss Knox Forster or Raikes—probably the former—but it might well be that it had been moved and put back again. Fenby left the point and examined his second sheet.

  “Position of Bottle.”

  July 11th—bought in Great Barwick.

  Note. No information as yet obtained as to position until next morning, but whoever put the potassium cyanide into the snuff did so after 9.45 a.m. on July 12th. Since, however, the poison was bought previously this earlier period may have to be examined if the subsequent ones all prove blank.

  10.45 On table. Letter put on it when Yockleton

  arrived. Presumably resting against it

  is meant. Cargate said to have mentioned

  this by Raikes, and to have complained

  of letter being moved.

  10.45 Or soon after—on table. Cargate referred

  to it being quite close to snuffbox.

  (Yockleton’s account of interview with

  Cargate.)

  11.30 Or just before—on window-sill when

  went to fetch rose from bed outside—

  Miss Knox Forster.

  11.30 On window-sill when returned from

  seeing vicar off. Label facing him, Cargate,

  as reported by Raikes.

  11.39 (about) Cargate turns bottle round—

  Raikes.

  12.0 On window-sill. Label towards window—

  Hardy Hall.

  3.30 Right-hand side of window-sill. Label

  towards window—Macpherson.

  5.0 Window-sill. Label towards window—

  Hardy Hall again.

  Fenby whistled gently. Had somebody really been as hurried as all that? Or as incredibly careless? Had somebody been over-confident that death by heart failure would be certified with examination? He turned to the medical evidence which had now reached him.

  Undoubtedly the signs of death were entirely consistent with heart failure just as much as with poisoning by potassium cyanide. If it had not been for the sample of snuff which Dr. Gardiner had obtained, it would have been very hard to have suggested that death had been due to anything but natural causes but with it—well, it would take a good deal of explaining away provided that there was otherwise a fairly convincing case. It occurred to Fenby that his thoughts were wandering and that he must stick to his own job. He hoped that everything else would be as suggestive as the page he had completed, but he could hardly expect that it would.

  Sheets 3 and 4 contained a brief statement of the movements of Miss Knox Forster and of Raikes. They were rather meagre sheets, but before he even examined them it caught his attention that there was no sheet at all for Yockleton. Other than the period of his visit to Scotney End Hall, his time was entirely unaccounted for, and the vicarage was within easy walking distance of the hall. Fenby picked up the pad again and headed yet another sheet: “Further Enquiries”, under which he wrote: “1. Movements of Yockleton, rest of day,” then, though in a rather faint handwriting, to express his own doubts as to whether he would ever do it, he added: “2. Consider if Macpherson could have got from Larkingfield and back again to it earlier in the day.” Then he went back to sheets 3 and 4.

  The account of Miss Knox Forster’s movements was brief and to the point. “9.45. Library. Taking down letters. 10.45. Leaves library. Typing. Doing flowers. 11.30. In hall. Talks to Cargate and Raikes. Flowers. (About) 11.32. Picks rose from bed in front of house. Returns to hall as Raikes goes out. Goes to drawing-room, 11.38. 12, in hall as Cargate returns. 12 noon is summoned by Cargate, and goes with him to garden. 1.0 p.m. goes straight in with him to lunch—no interval. Lunch ends 1.45. Time afterwards unaccounted for except that she picks up Macpherson in Larkingfield and he keeps 2.30 appointment. 3.45. Drives Macpherson off. Spent most of afternoon trying to see why car was out of order.”

  There were gaps in it but mostly—except perhaps between 11.30 and 11.38—they were at times which were of no importance since Cargate himself had been in the library. Fenby put it down and returned to the information about Raikes.

  There was no doubt about it. There were discrepancies as to the eight minutes during which Cargate and Yockleton were looking at the wasps’ nest. Raikes, for instance, had entirely failed to hear Miss Knox Forster go out to get the rose. Of course there was the suggestion that the butler had himself put forward, that any sound she had made had been drowned by the noise of his own movements around the dining-room and in laying the table.

  Then again Miss Knox Forster thought that when she returned Raikes had just been going through the door towards the servants’ hall, whereas Raikes had said that when he went through that door, Miss Knox Forster was in the drawing-room. Almost certainly as to that, since Miss Knox Forster herself said she had been to the drawing-room, Raikes must be right. Fenby read through his notes again and very soon saw the explanation. What Miss Knox Forster
had seen was not Raikes going through the door at the far end of the hall, but the door closing behind Mrs. Perriman, whose call to him Raikes had ignored. That, too, explained why the cook had risked calling to him when Miss Knox Forster might have considered it bad manners. Mrs. Perriman had known what Raikes did not, namely, that Miss Knox Forster was not at that moment in the hall.

  That then was settled, and Fenby’s examination reached lunch time on July 12th quite happily. For a while his pen hovered. Then he briefly put down on the “Further Enquiries” sheet, the word “washing”, as the third item. He added a question mark, and went on to consider how Raikes had spent his afternoon.

  To his annoyance, he found that except for the words: “2.30, announces Macpherson. 4.30, brings tea,” he had no real information. Of course he had a good deal of information as to what happened at 4.30, but previous to that he really had nothing. He did not even really know why Raikes had had to announce Macpherson at all when, after all, Miss Knox Forster had brought him up and was presumably capable of taking him to Cargate’s library. On the whole he thought it seemed a reasonable guess to imagine that as this was the time when the car had first showed signs of being out of order, she had stayed to try to find out what the defect was, after, probably, contenting herself with passing on the stamp dealer to Raikes. It was a guess, but so likely, that Fenby did not think it worth while putting it down as enquiry number four.

  Instead he turned his attention to considering what doubts, if any, existed against all those who might be concerned, and what motive anybody had had for killing Cargate. That it was an excellent thing to have done, everybody except Raikes seemed to unite in agreeing, but it was one thing to think that someone might be better dead, and quite another to decide to murder that somebody. Yet that was exactly what had been done. Or at least so it appeared to Fenby.

  To commit a murder because it was A Good Thing. Well, that was a new idea and perhaps not a quite impossible one. Hamlet, for instance, regarded it as a duty, and, if he had killed his uncle, seemed to expect everyone to regard it as a necessary piece of justice. He would probably have been definitely pained at the suggestion that the fact that he would inherit a kingdom was more than a by-product of the act. Again, leaving the world of fiction, there was always Charlotte Corday, and she had invariably been regarded as a heroine. Perhaps, therefore, it was not such a new idea. But Fenby sincerely hoped that it was not going to become a common one. If Charlotte Corday was going at long last to have her imitators in private as well as in public life, it was going to be very tiresome, to say the least of it, to Scotland Yard.