Excellent Intentions

by Richard Hull

  But if it was not something of that class, what could it be? Supposing that someone was not quite so altruistic as he pretended to be? For instance there was Macpherson. It might be possible to work up a theory that he was genuinely anxious to help to preserve the trade of which he was a member. There was no doubt, for instance, that his thoughts were constantly fixed on stamps and that he viewed everything, even the initials on the snuffbox, in terms of stamps. Also it was perfectly true that the existence of a forger of any appreciable skill was a real danger to all collectors and dealers. It might be that he felt that so strongly that he regarded anyone whom he knew to be one, as a venomous snake to be extirpated at the earliest possible opportunity.

  But that begged a number of questions. First, was Cargate a forger at all—or was he a dupe? If he was dishonest, was Macpherson really unable to prove it? Because to demonstrate it publicly would be to draw the snake’s fangs in part; but only in part, since though every stamp that emanated from him would be suspect by those who knew, there would often be a suspicion that the innocent might be unintentional intermediaries. Still to justify so drastic an action as murder, it seemed necessary to assume that there was an intermediate state when Macpherson was morally certain but had no proof that he could publish to the world.

  That was possible, but it was equally conceivable that an exactly opposite state of affairs existed, and that the forger was not Cargate but Macpherson himself. In that case the presence of forgeries in Cargate’s collection was easily accounted for. They would have been supplied by Macpherson, and Fenby remembered that Cargate had in fact implied such a thing with regard to the no-accent variety of the block of Irish ten shillings.

  Fenby began to consider the points in Macpherson’s story which struck him as being doubtful. He had first of all had an undoubted opportunity though a very short one. He knew quite a remarkable amount about the position of the snuffbox and the bottle, neither of which in the least concerned him. He had even commented on the weight of the snuffbox. Then, when Cargate had accused him of stealing the stamp, he had been far too willing to be searched; he knew where the sixpenny St. Vincent had got to, and he carefully avoided licking it himself. Perhaps too much weight ought not to be attached to that last point, since to moisten the mount was, after all, the usual method. All the same, the fact remained.

  Then he wanted to buy Cargate’s collection. Fenby could well believe that if it was full of forgeries which could in any way be traced to Macpherson himself—and the possibility of tracing individual stamps Fenby had gathered, though very difficult, was not always absolutely out of the question in the case of items of extreme and unusual variety—then it would be essential for him to get the collection back into his hands. Finally Fenby remembered that Macpherson seemed to have known that the box contained snuff without having ever had any legitimate opportunity of obtaining that knowledge, and, lastly, there was that rather grim remark of Cargate’s that he was “lucky still to have the box”.

  Yes, Macpherson could not be ruled out. But was he the type of man who would commit a murder?

  On the whole Fenby thought that he was. He was impetuous, quick to take offence, a fanatic in the excessive interest which he took in his business; he had a mind sufficiently quick and alert to have conceived the plan, and ruthless enough to have executed it, and though the two possible sets of motives could not be both concurrently in being, either of them would be a powerful incentive to him.

  But it was not fair to concentrate upon him alone. For instance, if it was suspicious that Macpherson was ready to be searched, it might just as well be said that it was even more suspicious that Yockleton had refused to be; and if Macpherson had wanted to defend the stamp trade, or himself, the vicar equally wanted to protect the village and its corporeal and spiritual needs. Moreover, there was again the same alternative. Supposing that he had in fact attempted to steal the emerald? Supposing that his account of what Cargate had said to him was coloured so as to represent Cargate’s action as that of attempting to plant the emerald on him, whereas in fact it had been to recover the stone without too great a scandal? Yockleton had said that everyone knew that he was the last person who would ever do such a thing and that, therefore, he could face the accusation with equanimity, but supposing that they knew nothing of the kind? Again, it was equally true that anyone in his position ought never to allow himself to be suspected, and that an accusation was almost as bad as a proof.

  He too had had his opportunity, and had also been peculiarly aware of the position of the snuffbox and the poison. For instance, in the case of the bottle, it was undoubtedly on the table when he arrived and it was equally certainly on the window-sill soon after he left, and moreover it must have been moved about that time, because when Cargate returned at 11.38, it was in a position which caught his attention and annoyed him.

  Fenby picked up his “further enquiry” sheet, and put down: “4. Just when was bottle removed from table to window-sill and by whom?”

  As he wrote the words, the face of the vicar, bald and blue-eyed, seemed to be before him. Undoubtedly a man of strong personality and quick brain, and moreover perfectly prepared to make a martyr of himself if he considered the cause sufficiently good. Besides it had not escaped Fenby’s attention that there was evidently something on Yockleton’s conscience. He seemed to be glad that Cargate was dead, but ashamed to be so. “As,” thought Fenby, “he ought. But you never know quite where you are with these religious chaps. They mix up doing what is right with reaching the right end, or is that confined to the Jesuits and such-like only?”

  A moment’s consideration made him realize that when he had to deal with matters of theology he was definitely ignorant. “But anyhow,” he went on, “when it comes to a question of snakes, they can be completely ruthless and persuade themselves that they are right to be so. Though I must confess that if he did do it, from what I have seen of him, he would probably confess it at once with apparent humiliation but real pride. He’s just the stuff of which martyrs are made. Now Miss Knox Forster isn’t that sort. She would be quite capable of killing anyone cheerfully in between typing a letter and doing the flowers, but she wouldn’t confess to it. She’d cover it up if she could. Efficiently too. And yet I don’t know. She gets things done, but she does them in a slapdash way. She’s rather in too much of a hurry it seems to me. Those tall, clumsy women are always falling over their own feet metaphorically as well as literally.”

  If it was going to be an inside job, it had to be Raikes or her so far as he could make out. Now Raikes was the only person who had expressed any regret that Cargate was dead. It was an upside-down paradoxical business, and perhaps that was a train of thought that he ought to follow up. Was it, for instance, true? Was Raikes really able to treat in so cavalier a fashion the dismissal that he had received? He was not, so Fenby judged by appearances, a young man and it might be very hard for him to get another position, especially if there was any possibility that the emerald had been stolen, and that Raikes was in fact a thief. He had said that he had been given the sack before and he knew all about Cargate’s trick of accusing people of stealing things. Supposing that some of those thefts had been real and that they had been committed by Raikes, and that Cargate had forgiven him time after time, and that finally on July 12th he had fallen again and wasted the absolutely last chance that had been given to him? In that case he would go without a character, perhaps even to jail. Was it by any chance in connection with that that Cargate had intended to see Ley on that Friday, July 13th? Or was it in connection with Macpherson? Only Cargate knew, and it was quite useless to try to guess.

  Still, Raikes’s conduct did look a little different now. He was on the verge of being sacked, and he suspected that he might find himself either in the street without a reference or in prison, whereas, if Cargate were dead, he would still preserve his reputation. He might even have hoped that something was left to him in Cargate’s will. People often
did reward long service and only Miss Knox Forster and Ley apparently had known Cargate’s odd testamentary dispositions.

  They were peculiar enough. Even the will was couched in terms of sarcasm, Fenby now knew. Cargate had apparently expressed a wish that his carefully acquired money should be spent on something perfectly useless; he had indicated subways as an example, because, as he expressed it, “nobody can ever be induced to use them, and, therefore, they do no good to anyone except the man who has to clean them”.

  On that Fenby seemed to see Miss Knox Forster shaking her head with a puzzled expression and saying that it was entirely beyond her; she, at any rate, seemed to think that Cargate’s money was going to be useful for the first time in its existence.

  Just for a moment a wild idea flitted through Fenby’s mind. Was it absolutely certain that Cargate had not committed suicide just in order to be a nuisance? It really seemed as if a man capable of such odd economic theories might even have done that, especially if he thought that his heart was even worse than it was or if he was suffering from a fit of depression due to realizing how justly unpopular he was.

  Really the more Fenby thought of it the harder it was to exclude so grotesque a possibility. Nobody could more easily have added the crystals to the snuff. Nobody was more likely to have adopted in grim humour so inconvenient a place and so irritating a time when suspicion could fall on several people. But if it was done to annoy, it ruled out the fit of depression or fear of a heart attack since Cargate would have been in no mood to joke and with that, all possible motive for causing his own death vanished.

  Besides, now that Fenby thought about it again, not even Cargate was capable of regarding his own death as an ironic piece of humour; for one thing he would not be able to be present to appreciate it. And for another he would have placed himself on the level of a nest of wasps—and he would never have done that. No, on the whole, the wild possibility could safely be left out.

  But all this was getting far away from the point and, with a jerk, Fenby brought himself back to the details before him. He looked at the amount of time available for Macpherson, for Yockleton, for Miss Knox Forster, and for Raikes, to take the potassium cyanide crystals out of the bottle and mix them with the snuff. The very mention of the word “crystals” brought back to his mind an idea which had been in the back of it all the time, and which he had forgotten to investigate fully. Those crystals were too large to be put in the snuff just as they were. They must have been broken up or pounded in some way or another, so that primarily they would not be obvious and secondly they would be more readily absorbed in the mucous membrane and so act more efficiently and rapidly.

  So far, though he had searched, there had been no signs of anything in the library in which such a process had definitely taken place, but there was nothing conclusive in that. It might have been done, for instance, in an ash-tray with the stopper of the bottle, and the contents quickly put into the snuffbox and the ash-tray dusted or—nasty thought—put in the pocket of a man who would not consent to be searched.

  It was a very long shot, and Fenby disliked long shots. Nevertheless, he wrote down: “Is there an ash-tray or anything of that sort missing?”

  But, to be fair, he had to admit, though only to himself, that he had not given sufficient thought to this question of the grinding-down of the crystals. It did undoubtedly give both Yockleton and Macpherson very little time indeed in which to act. Also it made into almost certainly too short a period the minute and a half during which, with Miss Knox Forster picking her rose in the garden or looking at the flowers in the drawing-room, Raikes had the library available to himself alone. Unless—and this was an idea—he had taken the crystals while she was in the garden, ground them down in the dining-room and slipped back when he knew Miss Knox Forster was in the drawing-room. Of course then that was the reason why he could not have answered Mrs. Perriman when she called to him, because his voice would have come, not from the dining-room but from the library! That, too, would be why he would not admit that he had heard Miss Knox Forster go out, and the great hurry that he was in would account for the really colossal blunder that he had made, namely that he had put the bottle down on the window-sill instead of on the table. For there was no doubt that it had been moved at that time. Fenby stopped suddenly. It might just as well have been moved by Yockleton a little earlier in similar circumstances.

  Moreover, now he came to think of it, to go into the library at all, was a frightful risk for Raikes to run because Miss Knox Forster was just outside the window and she might very well have seen him. Also he could not possibly have known that she would go into the drawing-room afterwards.

  But perhaps though the potassium cyanide was taken from the bottle at that time, it was not put into the snuff until much later? Was there really no moment when Raikes could have got to the library for a minute or two between twelve and one-forty-five? Fenby looked through his notes carefully. Just for a minute he hoped that he had found a discrepancy, for Miss Knox Forster happened to mention that she and Cargate had gone straight into lunch from the garden—she had rather resented the fact on the grounds of normal cleanliness—but Raikes had said that they had settled down to lunch in “just the ordinary time”, which seemed to imply something longer than a direct walk from lawn to dining-room. It was a very tiny point and not even really substantiated as a discrepancy; nevertheless Fenby marked it off as number six of his points for enquiry. Then he nearly crossed it out again. Mrs. Perriman’s statements as to the soundness of Raikes’s alibi at that period would be very hard to break down.

  Still the point must remain as a detail that was wrong. It might be the small detail for which he was looking and which would eventually enable him to find out why Henry Cargate had died in the train. In the train? That reminded him. That exhaust pipe getting stuffed up had seemed to him peculiar. Was it just possible that it was choked on purpose? Perhaps by someone who very much disliked the idea of a dead man at the wheel of a fast-going vehicle since, as Miss Knox Forster had said, that might involve risk to third parties who were quite unconnected with Cargate or anyone who knew him. He must get a little expert advice on the point. Down it went as point number seven.

  Then suddenly an idea occurred to him and he looked with feverish excitement through all the analysis that he had made. If just one remark made to him by the person who had caused Cargate’s death was a lie, then it allowed everything else to fit into place and he thought that he had got the explanation of everything and that, moreover, he would, with a little good fortune, be able to prove it.

  To his list of enquiries he added the words: “8. Roses? 9. Bowl really scratched?” If he got to those questions the answers that he expected, and if his other points, especially the sixth, worked out as he was confident that they would, then he would know. As to that sixth point, though, he noticed that a second lie was necessary, but by the same person, all of whose evidence now he was beginning to suspect. He must get back to Scotney End as fast as he could, and this time he would not content himself with taking written statements.

  “For those reasons, members of the jury” (for the answers to Fenby’s questions had been as he anticipated and Blayton had explained them carefully in their right place), “the prosecution ask for your verdict against the accused.”

  “I don’t think that they will get mine,” thought Ellis to himself. “All the same it depends on the evidence, and if they put the accused in the box a good deal will depend on that. But I think that if I was counsel for the defence—” Then he looked at his fellow jurymen. Judging by their expressions, they were nine-tenths convinced already. Was it fair he wondered, to the accused, to allow the prosecution to put their case first? In these superficial days, was it not possible that the preconceived opinion was even stronger than the last word?

  Mr. Justice Smith took the opportunity to adjourn the Court. The opening speech had been to his mind long, rather too long, and he was
not sure that it was wise to have dealt with hypothetical lines of defence so early on. But it had been eminently fair, and on the whole he had to admit that, though he had taken a personal dislike to Anstruther Blayton’s rather pompous, fussy methods, it had been a clear and convincing bit of work. If Blayton ever succeeded to the Bench—a by no means improbable event—he thought that he would make a good Judge. Perhaps a better Judge than counsel.

  Part IV

  Defence

  “We are going to take a lot of trouble about this case,” Vernon pulled a pipe out of his pocket and addressed his junior; “not only on general principles, but because from what you’ve told me, it’s a damned shame that anyone should be hanged for murdering a verminous bit of work like Cargate. It was done with the most excellent intentions and, if you ask my quite unofficial opinion, plenty of people richly deserve to be murdered nowadays and far too few of them actually get bumped off. Consequently we shall fight every point. And I rather think that we ought to win. Really our chief trouble is going to be our actual client. Far too transparently honest for my liking, and just the sort of person who would confess to the crime in the box out of pure mental honesty.”

  Oliver grinned. He knew the strong, if eccentric character of his leader. It was exactly like Vernon to talk of people deserving to be murdered. In reality he would never hurt anyone in the slightest degree. “We shall have to chance it, I suppose,” he said. “It creates a lot of prejudice if you don’t put the accused in the box. And I don’t think that you need be afraid of too much honesty. If innocent, as we think, so much the better, but if, after all, the prosecution’s story is right, there have been two hearty lies already. In fact the trouble is that they are almost proved.”