Strong Poison

by Dorothy L. Sayers

  “Not at all, Lord Peter, not at all. I’m only too delighted to help you in any way, though really I’m afraid you have heard all I know. Naturally, I was very much taken aback by the result of the autopsy, and rather relieved, I must admit, to find that no suspicion was likely to be thrown on me, under the rather peculiar circumstances.”

  “Frightfully tryin’ for you,” agreed Wimsey. “But you seem to have taken the most admirable precautions at the time.”

  “Well, you know, I suppose we lawyers get into a habit of taking precautions. Not that I had any idea of poison at the time—or, needless to say, I should have insisted on an enquiry then and there. What was in my mind was more in the nature of some kind of food-poisoning; not botulism, the symptoms were all wrong for that, but some contamination from cooking utensils or from some bacillus in the food itself. I am glad it turned out not to be that, though the reality was infinitely worse in one way. I suppose, really, in all cases of sudden and unaccountable illness, an analysis of the secretions ought to be made as a routine part of the business, but Dr. Weare appeared perfectly satisfied, and I trusted entirely to his judgment.”

  “Obviously,” said Wimsey. “One doesn’t naturally jump to the idea that people are being’ murdered—though I dare say it happens more often than one is apt to suppose.”

  “It probably does, and if I’d ever had the handling of a criminal case, the suspicion might have occurred to me, but my work is almost entirely conveyancing and that sort of business—and probate and divorce and so on.”

  “Talkin of probate,” said Wimsey, carelessly, “had Mr. Boyes any sort of financial expectations?”

  “None at all that I know of. His father is by no means well off—the usual country parson with a small stipend and a huge Vicarage and tumble-down Church. In fact, the whole family belongs to the unfortunate professional middle-class—over-taxed and with very little financial stamina. I shouldn’t think there were more than a few hundred pounds to come to Philip Boyes, even if he had outlived the lot of them.”

  “I had an idea there was a rich aunt somewhere.”

  “Oh, no—unless you’re thinking of old Cremorna Garden. She’s a great-aunt, on the mother’s side. But she hasn’t had anything to do with them for very many years.”

  At this moment Lord Peter had one of those bursts of illumination which come suddenly when two unrelated facts make contact in the mind. In the excitement of hearing Parker’s news about the white paper packet, he had paid insufficient attention to Bunter’s account of the tea-party with Hannah Westlock and Mrs. Pettican, but now he remembered something about an actress with a name like “’Yde Park or something of that.”

  The readjustment made itself so smoothly and mechanically in his mind that his next question followed almost without a pause.

  “Isn’t that Mrs. Wrayburn of Windle in Westmorland?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Urquhart. “I’ve just been up to see her, as a matter of fact. Of course, yes, you wrote to me there. She’s been quite childish, poor old lady, for the last five years or so. A wretched life—dragging on like that, a misery to herself and everybody else. It always seems to me a cruel thing that one may not put these poor old people out of the way, as one would a favourite animal—but the law will not let us be so merciful.”

  “Yes, we’d be hauled over the coals by the N.S.P.C.A. if we let a cat linger on in misery,” said Wimsey. “Silly, isn’t it? But it’s all of a piece with the people who write to the papers about keepin’ dogs in draughty kennels and don’t give a hoot—or a penny—to stop landlords allowin’ a family of thirteen to sleep in an undrained cellar with no glass in the windows and no windows to put it in. It really makes me quite cross, sometimes, though I’m a peaceful sort of idiot as a rule. Poor old Cremorna Garden—she must be gettin’ on now, though. Surely she can’t last much longer.”

  “As a matter of fact, we all thought she’d gone the other day. Her heart is giving out—she’s over ninety, poor soul, and she gets these attacks from time to time. But there’s amazing vitality in some of these ancient ladies.”

  “I suppose you’re about her only living relation now.”

  “I suppose I am, except for an uncle of mine in Australia.” Mr. Urquhart accepted the fact of the relationship without enquiring how Wimsey came to know about it. “Not that my being there can do her any good. But I’m her man of business, too, so it’s just as well I should be on the spot when anything happens.”

  “Oh, quite, quite. And being her man of business, of course you know how she has left her money.”

  “Well, yes, of course. Though I don’t quite see, if you’ll forgive my saying so, what that has to do with the present problem.”

  “Why, don’t you see,” said Wimsey, “it just occurred to me that Philip Boyes might have got himself into some kind of financial mess-up—it happens to the best of men—and have, well, taken the short way out of it. But, if he had any expectations from Mrs. Wrayburn, and the old girl, I mean, the poor old lady, was so near shuffling off this mortal thingummy, why, then, don’t you know, he would have waited, or raised the wind on the strength of a post-obit or something or the other. You get my meaning, what?”

  “Oh, I see—you are trying to make out a case for suicide. Well, I agree with you that it’s the most hopeful defence for Miss Vane’s friends to put up, and as far as that goes, I can support you. Inasmuch, that is, as Mrs. Wrayburn did not leave Philip anything. Nor, so far as I know, had he the smallest reason to suppose she would do so.”

  “You’re positive of that?”

  “Quite. As a matter of fact,” Mr. Urquhart hesitated, “well, I may as well tell you that he asked me about it one day, and I was obliged to tell him that he hadn’t the least chance of getting anything from her.”

  “Oh—he did actually ask?”

  “Well, yes, he did.”

  “That’s rather a point, isn’t it? How long ago would that be?”

  “Oh—about eighteen months ago, I fancy. I couldn’t be sure.”

  “And as Mrs. Wrayburn is now childish, I suppose he couldn’t entertain any hope that she would ever alter the will?”

  “Not the slightest.”

  “No, I see. Well, I think we might make something of that. Great disappointment, of course—one would make out that he had counted a good deal upon it. Is it much, by the way?”

  “Pretty fair—about seventy or eighty thousand.”

  “Very sickening, to think of all that good stuff going west and not getting a look-in one’s self. By the way, how about you? Don’t you get anything? I beg your pardon, fearfully inquisitive and all that, but I mean to say, considering you’ve been looking after her for years and are her only available relation so to speak, it would be a trifle thick, what?”

  The solicitor frowned, and Wimsey apologised.

  “I know, I know—I’ve been fearfully impudent. It’s a failing of mine. And anyhow, it’ll all be in the papers when the old lady does pop off, so I don’t know why I should be so anxious to pump you. Wash it out—I’m sorry.”

  “There’s no real reason why you shouldn’t know,” said Mr. Urquhart, slowly, “though one’s professional instinct is to avoid disclosing one’s clients’ affairs. As a matter of fact, I am the legatee myself.”

  “Oh?” said Wimsey, in a disappointed voice. “But in that case—that rather weakens the story, doesn’t it? I mean to say, your cousin might very well have felt, in that case, that he could look to you for—that is—of course I don’t know what your ideas might have been—”

  Mr. Urquhart shook his head.

  “I see what you are driving at, and it is a very natural thought. But actually, such a disposal of the money would have been directly contrary to the expressed wish of the testatrix. Even if I could legally have made it over, I should have been morally bound not to do so, and I had to make that clear to Philip. I might, of course, have assisted him with casual gifts of money from time to time, but, to tell the truth, I shoul
d hardly have cared to do so. In my opinion, the only hope of salvation for Philip would have been to make his way by his own work. He was a little inclined—though I don’t like speaking ill of the dead—to—to rely too much on other people.”

  “Ah, quite. No doubt that was Mrs. Wrayburn’s idea also?”

  “Not exactly. No. It went rather deeper than that. She considered that she had been badly treated by her family. In short, well, as we have gone so far, I don’t mind giving you her ipsissima verba .”

  He rang a bell on his desk.

  “I haven’t got the will itself here, but I have the draft. Oh, Miss Murchison, would you kindly bring me in the deed-box labelled ‘Wrayburn’? Mr. Pond will show it to you. It isn’t heavy.”

  The lady from the “Cattery” departed silently in quest of the box.

  “This is all rather irregular, Lord Peter,” went on Mr. Urquhart, “but there are times when too much discretion is as bad as too little, and I should like you to see exactly why I was forced to take up this rather uncompromising attitude towards my cousin. Ah, thank you, Miss Murchison.”

  He opened the deed-box with a key attached to a bunch which he took from his trousers’ pocket, and turned over a quantity of papers. Wimsey watched him with the expression of a rather foolish terrier who expects a titbit.

  “Dear, dear,” ejaculated the solicitor, “it doesn’t seem to be—oh! of course, how forgetful of me. I’m so sorry, it’s in my safe at home. I got it out for reference last June, when the previous alarm occurred about Mrs. Wrayburn’s illness, and in the confusion which followed on my cousin’s death I quite forgot to bring it back. However, the gist of it was—”

  “Never mind,” said Wimsey, “there’s no hurry. If I called at your house tomorrow, perhaps I could see it then.”

  “By all means, if you think it important. I do apologise for my carelessness. In the meantime, is there anything else I can tell you about the matter?”

  Wimsey asked a few questions, covering the ground already traversed by Bunter in his investigations, and took his departure. Miss Murchison was again at work in the outer office. She did not look up as he passed.

  “Curious,” mused Wimsey, as he pattered along Bedford Row, “everybody is so remarkably helpful about this case. They cheerfully answer questions which one has no right to ask and burst into explanations in the most unnecessary manner. None of them seem to have anything to conceal. It’s quite astonishing. Perhaps the fellow really did commit suicide. I hope he did. I wish I could question him . I’d put him through it, blast him. I’ve got about fifteen different analyses of his character already—all different… It’s very ungentlemanly to commit suicide without leaving a note to say you’ve done it—gets people into trouble. When I blow my brains out—”

  He stopped.

  “I hope I shan’t want to,” he said. “I hope I shan’t need to want to. Mother wouldn’t like it, and it’s messy. But I’m beginning to dislike this job of getting people hanged. It’s damnable for their friends… I won’t think about hanging. It’s unnerving.”

  Chapter XI

  WIMSEY presented himself at Mr. Urquhart’s house at 9 o’clock the next morning, and found that gentleman at breakfast.

  “I thought I might catch you before you went down to the office,” said his lordship, apologetically. “Thanks awfully, I’ve had my morning nosebag. No, really, thanks—I never drink before eleven. Bad for the inside.”

  “Well I’ve found the draft for you,” said Mr. Urquhart pleasantly. “You can cast your eye on it while I drink my coffee, if you’ll excuse my going on. It exposes the family skeleton a little, but it’s all Ancient history now.”

  He fetched a sheet of typescript from a side-table and handed it to Wimsey, who noticed, mechanically, that it had been typed on a Woodstock machine, with a chipped lower case p, and an A slightly out of alignment.

  “I’d better make quite clear the family connection of the Boyeses and the Urquharts,” he went on, returning to the breakfast-table, “so that you will understand the will. The common ancestor is old John Hubbard, a highly respectable banker at the beginning of the last century. He lived in Nottingham, and the bank, as usual in those days, was a private, family concern. He had three daughters, Jane, Mary and Rosanna. He educated them well, and they ought to have been heiresses in a mild way, but the old boy made the usual mistakes, speculated unwisely, allowed his clients too much rope—the old story. The bank broke, and the daughters were left penniless. The eldest, Jane, married a man called Henry Brown. He was a schoolmaster and very poor and quite repellently moral. They had one daughter, Julia, who eventually married a curate, the Rev. Arthur Boyes, and was the mother of Philip Boyes. The second daughter, Mary, did rather better financially, though socially she married beneath her. She accepted the hand of one Josiah Urquhart, who was engaged in the lace-trade. This was a blow to the old people, but Josiah came originally of a fairly decent family, and was a most worthy person, so they made the best of it. Mary had a son, Charles Urquhart, who contrived to break away from the degrading associations of trade. He entered a solicitor’s office, did well, and finally became a partner in the firm. He was my father, and I am his successor in the legal business.

  “The third daughter, Rosanna, was made of different stuff. She was very beautiful, a remarkably fine singer, a graceful dancer and altogether a particularly attractive and spoilt young person. To the horror of her parents she ran away and went on the stage. They erased her name from the family Bible. She determined to justify their worst suspicions. She became the spoilt darling of fashionable London. Under her stage name of Cremorna Garden, she went from one disreputable triumph to another. And, mind you, she had brains—nothing of the Nell Gwyn business about her. She was the take-it-and-keep-it sort. She took everything—money, jewels, appartements meublés , horses, carriages, all the rest of it, and turned it into good consolidated funds. She was never prodigal of anything except her person, which she considered to be a sufficient return for all favours, and I daresay it was. I never saw her till she was an old woman, but before she had the stroke which destroyed her brain and body, she still kept the remains of remarkable beauty. She was a shrewd old woman in her way, and grasping. She had those tight little hands, plump and narrow, that give nothing away—except for cash down. You know the sort.

  “Well, the long and the short of it was that the eldest sister, Jane—the one who married the schoolmaster—would have nothing to do with the family black sheep. She and her husband wrapped themselves up in their virtue and shuddered when they saw the disgraceful name of Cremorna Garden billed outside the Olympic or the Adelphi. They returned her letters unopened and forbade her the house, and the climax was reached when Henry Brown tried to have her turned out of the Church on the occasion of his wife’s funeral.

  “My grand-parents were less straitlaced. They didn’t call on her and didn’t invite her, but they occasionally took a box for her performances and they sent her a card for their son’s wedding, and were polite in a distant kind of way. In consequence, she kept up a civil acquaintance with my father, and eventually put her business into his hands. He took the view that property was property, however acquired, and said that if a lawyer refused to handle dirty money he would have to show half his clients the door.

  “The old lady never forgot or forgave anything. The very mention of the Brown Boyes connection made her foam at the mouth. Hence, when she came to make her will, she put in that paragraph you have before you now. I pointed out to her that Philip Boyes had had nothing to do with the persecution, as, indeed, neither had Arthur Boyes, but the old sore rankled still, and she wouldn’t hear a word in his favour. So I drew up the will as she wanted it; if I hadn’t, somebody else would have done so, you know.”

  Wimsey nodded, and gave his attention to the will, which was dated eight years previously. It appointed Norman Urquhart as sole executor, and, after a few legacies to servants and to theatrical charities, it ran as follows:—

/>   “All the rest of my property whatsoever and wheresoever situated I give to my great-nephew Norman Urquhart of Bedford Row Solicitor for his lifetime and at his death to be equally divided among his legitimate issue but if the said Norman Urquhart should decease without legitimate issue the said property to pass to (here followed the names of the charities previously specified). And I make this disposition of my property in token of gratitude for the consideration shown to me by my said great-nephew Norman Urquhart and his father the late Charles Urquhart throughout their lives and to ensure that no part of my property shall come into the hands of my great-nephew Philip Boyes or his descendants. And to this end and to mark my sense of the inhuman treatment meted out to me by the family of the said Philip Boyes I enjoin upon the said Norman Urquhart as my dying wish that he neither give, lend or convey to the said Philip Boyes any part of the income derived from the said property enjoyed by him the said Norman Urquhart during his lifetime nor employ the same to assist the said Philip Boyes in any manner whatsoever.”

  “H’m!” said Wimsey, “that’s pretty clear, and pretty vindictive.”

  “Yes, it is—but what are you to do with old ladies who won’t listen to reason? She looked pretty sharply to see that I had got the wording fierce enough before she would put her name to it.”

  “It must have depressed Philip Boyes all right,” said Wimsey. “Thank you—I’m glad I’ve seen that; it makes the suicide theory a good deal more probable.”

  In theory it might do so, but the theory did not square as well as Wimsey could have wished with what he had heard about the character of Philip Boyes. Personally, he was inclined to put more faith in the idea that the final interview with Harriet had been the deciding factor in the suicide. But this, too, was not quite satisfactory. He could not believe that Philip had felt that particular kind of affection for Harriet Vane. Perhaps, though, it was merely that he did not want to think well of the man. His emotions were, he feared, clouding his judgment a little.