Buffet for Unwelcome Guests

by Christianna Brand

  ‘Was the tin of cyanide on the hall table then?’

  ‘Yes, because she said thank goodness Bill seemed to have got it for her and saved her more trouble with Father.’

  ‘No one else was in the house at this time?’

  ‘No, Bill had gone on to the church with my father.’

  ‘O.K. Well, send this Bill to me, will you, Theo? And tell him to bring his passport with him.’

  He was ten years older than his step-brother; well into his thirties: blond headed, incisive, tough, an ugly customer probably on a dirty night; but rather an engaging sort of chap for all that. Cockie turned over the pages of the passport. ‘You haven’t been in this country since you were a boy?’

  ‘No, they shipped me out as a kid, my new papa didn’t want me and my mother doesn’t seem to have put up too much of a fight for me. So I wasn’t all that crazy to come rushing home on visits.’

  ‘Not even when she died?’

  ‘At that time I was—prevented,’ he said briefly.

  ‘By what, if I may ask?’

  ‘By four stone walls,’ said Step-son Bill, ruefully. ‘Which in my case, Inspector, did a prison make. In other words, I was doing time, sir. I got into a fight with a guy and did six months for him. I only got out a few weeks ago.’

  ‘A fight about what?’

  ‘About my wife, if you have to know,’ he said, sullenly, ‘I was bumming around, I admit it, and I guess he got her on the rebound. Well, bum or not, I took and chucked her out and that was the end of her. And I took and pulled him in, and that was the end of him—in the role of seducer, anyway.’

  ‘You divorced your wife?’

  ‘Yeh, I divorced her.’ He looked at Inspector Cockrill and the hard, bright eyes had suddenly a look almost of despair. ‘I think now I made some pretty bad mistakes,’ he said.

  ‘At any rate, having got out, you learned that your stepfather was marrying the nurse; that your mother’s money was in jeopardy, perhaps? So you came across hot foot, to look the lady over?’

  And having looked her over… Another drone, drawn, willy-nilly—the more so for having been for long months starved of the company of women, for having been deprived of the wife whom he still loved—into the mass flight after the virgin queen. ‘It was you, I believe, who brought the poison into the house?’

  ‘Yes, I did. The old man was furious with Elizabeth because she hadn’t ordered it. How could she, poor girl, when she wasn’t here half the time? So I went down and fetched it, just to save her more trouble, and put it on the hall table so he’d think she’d got it.’

  ‘But she was in London: how could she?’

  ‘Oh, heck, he couldn’t care: if it wasn’t there, she was responsible.’

  ‘And after all this alleged fuss and urgency, it never got used?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?—it was only to make more trouble for Elizabeth. He was a man that just loved to find fault.’

  ‘I see. Well, we agree it was you who introduced the cyanide. Was it not also you who handed a plate of cold meat to your step-father?’

  ‘Was it I who—? For heaven’s sakes, Inspector! Those old ladies were running around like a lot of decapitated hens, snatching plates out of our hands, dumping them down in front of just anyone who’d accept them.’

  ‘You might, however, have said specifically to one of them, “This plate is especially for Mr. Caxton.” ’

  ‘I might at that,’ said Bill, cheerfully. ‘Why don’t you ask around and find her: she’ll tell you.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, what does it matter? The poison wasn’t on the meat, was it? It had been put on the peach.’

  ‘If it had,’ said Cockie, ‘it had been put there by someone very clever.’ He dwelt on it. ‘How could it have been placed there so that the whole dose—to all intents and purposes—was on the one mouthful that he happened to take? The first mouthful?’

  And he sent Step-son Bill away and summoned Dr. Ross. ‘Well, doctor—so we have it. Only one mates; and he dies in the process.’

  ‘You’re referring to the thing about the hornets?’ said Dr. Ross rather stiffly.

  ‘That’s right: to the thing about the hornets. But nobody could call you a drone, doctor. So busy with that little bag of yours that you had it with you out in the hall, all ready to hand.’

  ‘At intervals of about one week,’ said Dr. Ross, ‘policemen like yourself exhort us not to leave our medical bags in unattended cars.’ He fixed Inspector Cockrill with a dark and very angry eye. ‘Are you suggesting that it was I who murdered my own patient?’

  ‘Will you declare yourself outside the mass flight, Dr. Ross? You must have seen a good deal of our little queen in the sick-room of the late Mrs. Caxton.’

  ‘I happen to have a little queen of my own, Inspector. Not to mention several little drones, not yet ready for flighting.’

  ‘I know,’ said Cockie. ‘It must have been hell for you.’ He said it very kindly. He added: ‘I accuse you of nothing.’

  Disarmed, he capitulated, immediately, wretchedly. ‘I’ve never so much as touched her hand, Inspector. But it’s true—there’s something about her… And to think of that filthy old brute….’

  ‘Well, he’s gone,’ said Cockie. ‘Murdered under your nose—and mine. And talking of noses—’

  ‘I smelt it on his breath. Oh, gosh, the faintest whiff—but there was something. I thought it must be just the Kirsch—the Kirsch on the peaches.’

  ‘Such a curious meal!’ said Inspector Cockrill, brooding over it. ‘He was the bridegroom: you’d think somebody would be falling over themselves to please him. But no: he didn’t like oysters, but he has to have oysters, he hated cold meat but all there is, is cold meat, he was violently teetotal but he’s given peaches with liqueur on ’em.’ He sat with his chin on his hand, his bright eyes gazing away into nothingness. ‘There has been a plan here, doctor: no simple matter of a lick of poison scraped out of a fortuitous tin, smeared on to a fortuitous peach-in-liqueur; but a very elaborate, deep laid, long-thought-out, absolutely sure-fire plan. But who planned it, who carried it out and with what ultimate motive…’ He broke off. He said at last, slowly: ‘Of course whatever’s in the will, as the law goes now she will still be a rich widow; more agreeable to her, presumably, than being a rich wife.’

  ‘You don’t honestly think that Elizabeth—?’

  ‘Elizabeth had nothing to do with the preparation of the food; she hasn’t been in the house for the past three days, except for that brief interlude when she and Theo came in on their way to the church. Each of them was alone for a period of a minute or two—Elizabeth probably for less. Not nearly enough time to have chanced prising open the tin, scooping out the stuff, doctoring the peaches (which anyway were still in sealed bottles) or the cold meat or oysters. On the other hand—Elizabeth is a trained nurse…’ He mused over it. ‘He had a bad cold. Could she have persuaded him to take some drug or other? On the way back from the church, for example.’

  ‘He was a man who wouldn’t touch medicines. He got these colds, the place was stiff with pills and potions I’d prescribed for him, but he’d never even try them. Besides,’ he insisted, as Bill had before him, ‘the stuff was on the peach?’ And it was that fat slob Theo who had been responsible for the peach. Not that he wanted to suggest, he added rather hurriedly, that Theo would have murdered his own father. But…‘You needn’t think I haven’t seen him gooping at her.’

  ‘You needn’t think I haven’t seen you all gooping at her.’

  ‘I’ve made up my mind,’ said the doctor, quietly and humbly, ‘if I can get out of this business with my family still safe and sound, never, so long as I can help it, to see Elizabeth again.’

  ‘You are a worker,’ said Cockie. ‘Not a true drone. It will be easier for you. Bill is a drone; he admits it—only he calls it a bum.’

  And so was fat Theo a drone. Bill, Theo, the doctor…

  But the doctor had a family of his own, whom he had had no intention, ever,
of deserting for Elizabeth the Virgin Queen. And for that matter, so had Bill a wife of his own, whom, even now, even knowing Elizabeth, he cared for. And Theo was sufficient unto himself and would go no further than a little yearning, a little mooning, an occasional sentimental somersaulting of the fatty heart. Only one of them mates… Of the four, mass flighting after the queen, only one in fact had been a potential mate; and sure enough had died.

  Of the three remaining—which might be capable of murder, only to prevent that mating?

  Investigation, interrogation—the messages to Harrod’s, to Fortnum’s, to the chemist’s shop in the village; the telephone calls to Mr. Caxton’s lawyers, to Step-son Bill’s few contacts in America, to the departed domestic staff… The afternoon passed and the light summer evening came; and he stood with the four of them, out on the terrace of the big, ugly, anything-but-desirable residence which must now be Elizabeth’s own. ‘Elizabeth—Mrs. Caxton—and you three gentlemen… In this business there is only one conceivable motive. Money doesn’t come into it. The new will had been signed, Mr. Caxton’s death now or later made no difference to its contents. None of you appears to have been in any urgent financial need. So there’s only one motive, and therefore only one question: who would commit murder to prevent Cyrus Caxton from ever holding Elizabeth in his arms?’

  Stout Theo?—who might yet have keen enough feelings, whose sick revulsion might be the more poignant because his own father had been involved. Or Step-son Bill?—who for this same unendurable thought of the beloved in the arms of another, could half-kill a man and cast off for ever the woman he still loved. Or the doctor?—who, of them all, had most closely known Elizabeth; who, as Cyrus Caxton’s medical adviser, knew only too intimately the gross body and crude appetites of the conquering male…

  Theo, Bill, Dr. Ross. Out of these three… Softly, softly catchee monkey, said Inspector Cockrill to himself. Aloud he said: ‘This murder was a planned murder; nothing would have been left to chance. So why, I go on asking myself, should his first mouthful of peach have been the fatal one? And I answer myself: “Think about that spoon!” ’

  ‘You mean the spoon Theo was using to dish out the peaches?’ said Elizabeth quickly. ‘But no, because Theo didn’t hand the plate to his father. He couldn’t know which peach he’d get.’

  ‘Unless he directed a special plate to his father?’ suggested Bill, casting a quizzical glance at Inspector Cockrill. He reassured a suddenly quacking Theo. ‘O.K. pal, take it easy. We’ve already worked through that one.’

  ‘In any event, it wouldn’t account for the first mouthful being the poisoned one. And Elizabeth,’ said Inspector Cockrill severely, ‘please don’t go trying to put me off! That was a red-herring—to draw my attention away from the other spoon: the spoon handed directly to your husband by Master Bill here.’

  She began to cry, drearily, helplessly, biting on the little white screwed-up ball of her handkerchief. ‘Inspector, Cyrus is dead, all this won’t bring him back. Couldn’t you—? Couldn’t we—?’ And she burst out that if it was all because of her, it was so dreadful for people to be in all this trouble….

  ‘But your husband has been murdered: what do you expect me to do, let it go at that, just because his murderer had a sentimental crush on you?’ He came back to the spoon. ‘If that spoon had been smeared with poison—’

  She stopped crying at once, raised her head triumphantly. ‘It couldn’t have been. Cyrus looked at it to see that it was polished clean; he always did after the servants left, he said that I…’ The lower lip began to wobble again. ‘I know he’s dead; but he wasn’t very kind,’ she said.

  Not Theo then: who could not have known that the poisoned peach would reach his father. Not Bill, who could not have poisoned the peach at all. ‘And so,’ said Dr. Ross, ‘you come to me?’

  It was very quiet out there on the terrace; the sun had gone down now and soon the stars would be out, almost invisible in the pale evening sky. They stood, still and quiet also, and for a little while all were silent. Elizabeth said slowly: ‘Inspector—Dr. Ross has a wife of his own; and children.’

  ‘He still might not care for the vision of you in the arms of “that filthy old brute” as he has called him.’

  ‘That went for us all,’ said the doctor.

  ‘But it was you that went for Mr. Caxton, doctor—wasn’t it? Or to him, if you prefer. Went to him and put down his throat a finger protected by a rubber finger-stall.’

  A finger-stall—thrust down the throat of a man having an everyday choking fit. A finger-stall dabbled in advance in a tin of poison.

  ‘You don’t believe this?’ said Dr. Ross, staring aghast. ‘You can’t believe it? Murder my own patient!’ Elizabeth caught his arm, crying out, ‘Of course he doesn’t mean it!’ but he ignored her. ‘And murder him in such a way! And anyway, how could I have known he would have a choking fit?’

  ‘He was always having choking fits,’ said Cockie.

  ‘But Dr. Ross couldn’t have got the poison,’ said Elizabeth. ‘It wasn’t he who fetched the bag from the hall.’ She broke off. ‘Oh, Theo, I didn’t intend—’

  ‘I got the bag,’ said Theo. ‘But that doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘It could mean it was you who dabbled the finger-stall in the poison.’

  Theo’s round face lost colour. ‘Me, Inspector? How could I have? How could I know anything about it? I don’t know what they use finger-stalls for and what they don’t.’

  ‘Anyway, he wouldn’t have had time,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Not to think it all out, undo the poison tin, find the finger-stall in the bag. Fingerstalls are kept in a side pocket, not floating about at the top of a medical bag.’

  But in fact that was just where it had been: floating about at the top of the medical bag. Bill, crouching beside the doctor over the heaving body, had located it immediately and handed it to him. ‘I had used it on a patient just before I came to the church,’ said Dr. Ross patiently. ‘You can check if you like. I threw it into boiling water, dried it and chucked it back into the bag. I was in a hurry to come to the wedding.’

  In a hurry—to come to Elizabeth’s wedding. ‘So the finger-stall was in the fore-front of your mind then, doctor?—when you brought in your medical bag and put it down on the chair and your eye fell on that tin of poison. Everyone is milling about, just back from the ceremony, not thinking of anyone except the bride and bridegroom. You take a little scoop of the poison, using the finger-stall—just in case occasion arises. And occasion does arise. What a bit of luck!’

  ‘Inspector Cockrill,’ said Elizabeth steadily, ‘this is all nonsense. Dr. Ross smelt the stuff on Cyrus’s breath, long before he put the finger-stall down his throat. You saw him yourself, like I said, sort of—snuffing…’

  ‘Sort of snuffing at nothing,’ said Cockie. ‘There was nothing to snuff at, was there, doctor?—not yet. But it placed the poison, you see, in advance of the true poisoning with the finger-stall. The man chokes, the doctor leans over him, pretends to be suspicious. Then the finger-stall down the throat; and this time there is something to snuff at. And when the finger-stall is later examined, the fact of its having been down the man’s throat will account for traces of cyanide on it. Now all that remains is to pin-point the earlier source of the poison. Well, that’s easy: he wipes off the finger-stall on the napkin; and then, so innocently!—places the napkin over the peach.’ His bright eyes, bird-like, looked triumphantly round upon them.

  They all stood rigid, staring at the doctor: horrified, questioning. Elizabeth cried out: ‘Oh, it isn’t true!’ but on a note of doubt.

  ‘I don’t think so, no,’ said Cockie. ‘This isn’t a crime where anything was left to chance. And this is based on the chance that the old man might have a choking fit.’

  She went over to the doctor, put her two little hands on his arm, laid her forehead for a moment against his shoulder in a gesture devoid of coquetry. ‘Oh, thank God! He frightened me.’

  ‘He didn’
t frighten me,’ said Dr. Ross stoutly; but he looked all the same exceedingly pale. To Cockrill he said: ‘He got these choking fits, yes: but—once or twice in a year. You couldn’t risk all that on the chance of his having one.’

  ‘So that brings us back to you, Theo,’ said Inspector Cockrill blandly. ‘Who gave him peaches in Kirsch and made him have one.’

  Theo looked as likely as his father had ever done, to have a choking fit. ‘I made him have one?’

  ‘My dear Theo! A man is a rabid teetotaller. You provide him with a peach in a thick syrup of Kirsch—observing that he has a heavy cold and won’t smell the liqueur in advance. He takes a great gulp of it and realises that he’s been tricked into taking alcohol. You knew your father: he would go off into one of his spluttering rages and if he didn’t choke on the peach, he’d choke on his own spluttering. And it isn’t true, is it? that you didn’t know about choking fits, and how the air-passages may be freed with a finger, covered with a finger-stall. You must have seen your father in these attacks at least once or twice; he’d been having them for years.’

  He began to splutter himself. ‘I couldn’t have done it. Gone out into the hall, you mean, to get the bag, and put the stuff on the finger-stall then? Elizabeth showed that earlier; I wouldn’t have had time.’

  ‘We were all preoccupied, getting your father out of his chair and lowered on to the floor. The seconds pass quickly.’

  But she couldn’t bear it for Theo, either. ‘Don’t listen to him, Theo, don’t be frightened! This is no more true than the other theory. He’s—he’s sort of teasing us; needling us, trying to make us say something. If Theo did it, Inspector, what about Dr. Ross? Why should he have sniffed at Cyrus’s breath, when he was lying back in the chair? There would have been nothing to smell, yet. You say he was pretending; but if it was Theo who put the poison on the fingerstall—why should the doctor have pretended? Unless…’ She broke off, clapped her hand to her mouth; took it away immediately, began to fiddle unconcernedly with the handkerchief. Inspector Cockrill said: ‘Yes, Elizabeth? Unless—?’