Strong Poison

by Dorothy L. Sayers

  He went back home and read the proofs of Harriet’s novel. Undoubtedly she could write well, but undoubtedly she knew only too much about the administration of arsenic. Moreover, the book was about artists who lived in Bloomsbury and an ideal existence, full of love and laughter and poverty, till somebody kindly poisoned the young man and left the young woman inconsolable and passionately resolved to avenge him. Wimsey ground his teeth and went down Holloway Gaol, where he very nearly made a jealous exhibition of himself. Fortunately, his sense of humour came to the rescue when he had cross-examined his client to the verge of exhaustion and tears.

  “I’m sorry,” he said; “the fact is, I’m most damnably jealous of this fellow Boyes. I oughtn’t to be, but I am.”

  “That’s just it,” said Harriet, “and you always would be.”

  “And if I was, I shouldn’t be fit to live with. Is that it?”

  “You would be very unhappy. Quite apart from all the other drawbacks.”

  “But, look here,” said Wimsey, “if you married me I shouldn’t be jealous, because then I should know that you really liked me and all that.”

  “You think you wouldn’t be. But you would.”

  “Should I? Oh, surely not. Why should I? It’s just the same as if I married a widow. Are all second husbands jealous?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s not quite the same. You’d never really trust me, and we should be wretched.”

  “But damn it all,” said Wimsey, “if you would once say you cared a bit about me it would be all right. I should believe that. It’s because you won’t say it that I imagine all sorts of things.”

  “You would go on imagining things in spite of yourself. You couldn’t give me a square deal. No man ever does.”

  “Never?”

  “Well, hardly ever.”

  “That would be rotten,” said Wimsey, seriously. “Of course, if I turned out to be that sort of idiot, things would be pretty hopeless. I know what you mean. I knew a bloke once who got that jealous bug. If his wife wasn’t always hanging round his neck, he said it showed he meant nothing to her, and if she did express her affection he called her a hypocrite. It got quite impossible, and she ran away with somebody she didn’t care twopence for, and he went about saying that he had been right about her all along. But everybody else said it was his own silly fault. It’s all very complicated. The advantage seems to be with the person who gets jealous first. Perhaps you could manage to be jealous of me. I wish you would, because it would prove that you took a bit of interest in me. Shall I give you some details of my hideous past?”

  “Please don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to know about all the other people.”

  “Don’t you, by Jove? I think that’s rather hopeful. I mean, if you just felt like a mother to me, you would be anxious to be helpful and understanding. I loathe being helped and understood. And, after all, there was nothing in any of them—except Barbara, of course.”

  “Who was Barbara?” asked Harriet, quickly.

  “Oh, a girl. I owe her quite a lot, really,” replied Wimsey, musingly. “When she married the other fellow, I took up sleuthing as a cure for wounded feelings, and it’s really been great fun, take it all in all. Dear me, yes—I was very much bowled over that time. I even took a special course in logic for her sake.”

  “Good gracious!”

  “For the pleasure of repeating ‘Barbara celarent darii ferio baralipton.’ There was a kind of mysterious romantic lilt about the thing which was somehow expressive of passion. Many a moonlight night have I murmured it to the nightingales which haunt the gardens of St. Johns—though, of course, I was a Balliol man myself, but the buildings are adjacent.”

  “If anybody ever marries you, it will be for the pleasure of hearing you talk piffle,” said Harriet, severely.

  “A humiliating reason, but better than no reason at all.”

  “I used to piffle rather well myself,” said Harriet, with tears in her eyes, “but it’s got knocked out of me. You know—I was really meant to be a cheerful person—all this gloom and suspicion isn’t the real me. But I’ve lost my nerve, somehow.”

  “No wonder, poor kid. But you’ll get over it. Just keep on smiling, and leave it to Uncle Peter.”

  When Wimsey got home, he found a note awaiting him.

  DEAR LORD PETER, As you saw, I got the job. Miss Climpson sent six of us, all with different stories and testimonials, of course, and Mr. Pond (the head-clerk) engaged me, subject to Mr. Urquhart’s approval.

  I’ve only been here a couple of days, so there isn’t very much I can tell you about my employer, personally, except that he has a sweet tooth and keeps secret stores of chocolate cream and Turkish delight in his desk, which he surreptitiously munches while he is dictating. He seems pleasant enough.

  But there’s just one thing. I fancy it would be interesting to investigate his financial activities. I’ve done a good bit one way and another with stockbroking, you know, and yesterday in his absence I took a call for him which I wasn’t meant to hear. It wouldn’t have told the ordinary person anything, but it did me, because I knew something about the man at the other end. Find out if Mr. U. had been doing anything with the Megatherium Trust before their big crash.

  Further reports when anything turns up.

  Yours sincerely,

  JOAN MURCHISON.

  “Megatherium Trust?” said Wimsey. “That’s a nice thing for a respectable solicitor to get mixed up with. I’ll ask Freddy Arbuthnot. He’s an ass about everything except stocks and shares, but he does understand them, for some ungodly reason.”

  He read the letter again, mechanically noting that it was typed on a Woodstock machine, with a chipped lower case p, and a Capital A that was out of alignment.

  Suddenly he woke up and read it a third time, noticing by no means mechanically, the chipped p and the irregular capital A.

  Then he sat down, wrote a line on a sheet of paper, folded it, addressed it to Miss Murchison and sent Bunter out to post it.

  For the first time, in this annoying case, he felt the vague stirring of the waters as a living idea emerged slowly and darkly From the innermost deeps of his mind.

  Chapter XII

  WIMSEY was accustomed to say, when he was an old man and more talkative even than usual, that the recollection of that Christmas at Duke’s Denver had haunted him in nightmares, every night regularly, for the following twenty years. But it is possible that he remembered it with advantages. There is no doubt that it tried his temper severely. It began inauspiciously at the tea-table, when Mrs. “Freak” Dimsworthy fluted out in her high, overriding voice: “And is it true, Lord Peter dear, that you are defending that frightful poisoning woman?” The question acted like the drawing of a champagne cork. The whole party’s bottled-up curiosity about the Vane case creamed over in one windy gust of stinging froth.

  “I’ve no doubt she did it, and I don’t blame her,” said Captain Tommy Bates; “perfectly foul blighter. Has his photograph on the dust-cover of his books, you know,—that’s the sort of squit he was. Wonderful, the rotters these highbrow females will fall for. The whole lot of ’em ought to be poisoned like rats. Look at the harm they do to the country.”

  “But he was a very fine writer,” protested Mrs. Featherstone, a lady in her thirties, whose violently compressed figure suggested that she was engaged in a perpetual struggle to compute her weight in terms of the first syllables of her name rather than the last. “His books are positively Gallic in their audacity and restraint. Audacity is not rare—but that perfect concision of style is a gift which—”

  “Oh, if you like dirt,” interrupted the Captain, rather rudely.

  “I wouldn’t call it that,” said Mrs. Featherstone. “He is frank, of course, and that is what people in this country will not forgive. It is part of our national hypocrisy. But the beauty of the writing puts it all on a higher plane.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have the muck in the
house,” said the Captain, firmly. “I caught Hilda with it, and I said, ‘Now you send that book straight back to the library.’ I don’t often interfere, but one must draw the line somewhere.”

  “How did you know what it was like?” asked Wimsey, innocently.

  “Why, James Douglas’ article in the Express was good enough for me,” said Captain Bates. “The paragraphs he quoted were filthy, positively filthy.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing we’ve all read them,” said Wimsey. “Forewarned is forearmed.”

  “We owe a great debt of gratitude to the press,” said the Dowager Duchess, “so kind of them to pick out all the plums for us and save the trouble of reading the books, don’t you think, and such a joy for the poor dear people who can’t afford seven-and-sixpence, or even a library subscription, I suppose, though I’m sure that works out cheaply enough if one is a quick reader. Not that the cheap ones will take those books for I asked my maid, such a superior girl and so keen on improving her mind, which is more than I can say for most of my friends, but no doubt it is all due to free education for the people and I suspect her in my heart of voting labour though I never ask because I don’t think it’s fair, and besides, if I did, I couldn’t very well take any notice of it, could I?”

  “Still, I don’t suppose the young woman murdered him on that account,” said her daughter-in-law. “From all accounts she was just as bad as he was.”

  “Oh, come,” said Wimsey, “you can’t think that, Helen. Damn it, she writes detective stories and in detective stories virtue is always triumphant. They’re the purest literature we have.”

  “The devil is always ready to quote scripture when it pays him to do so,” said the younger Duchess, “and they say the wretched woman’s sales are going up by leaps and bounds.”

  “It’s my belief,” said Mr. Harringay, “that the whole thing is a publicity stunt gone wrong.” He was a large, jovial man, extremely rich and connected with the City. “You never know what these advertising fellows are up to.”

  “Well, it looks like a case of hanging the goose that lays the golden eggs this time,” said Captain Bates, with a loud laugh. “Unless Wimsey means to pull off one of his conjuring tricks.”

  “I hope he does,” said Miss Titterton. “I adore detective stories. I’d commute the sentence to penal servitude on condition that she turned out a new story every six months. It would be much more useful than picking oakum or sewing mail-bags for the post-office to mislay.”

  “Aren’t you being a bit previous?” suggested Wimsey, mildly. “She’s not convicted yet.”

  “But she will be next time. You can’t fight facts, Peter.”

  “Of course not,” said Captain Bates. “The police know what they’re about. They don’t put people into the dock if there isn’t something pretty shady about ’em,”

  Now this was a fearful brick, for it was not so many years since the Duke of Denver had himself stood his trial on a mistaken charge of murder. There was a ghastly silence, broken by the Duchess, who said icily: “Really, Captain Bates!”

  “What? eh? Oh, of course, I mean to say, I know mistakes do happen sometimes, but that’s a very different thing. I mean to say, this woman, with no morals at all, that is, I mean—”

  “Have a drink, Tommy,” said Lord Peter, kindly. “You aren’t quite up to your usual standard of tact today.”

  “No, but do tell us, Lord Peter,” cried Mrs. Dimsworthy, “what the creature is like . Have you talked to her? I thought she had rather a nice voice, though she’s as plain as a pancake.”

  “Nice voice, Freakie? Oh, no,” said Mrs. Featherstone. “I should have called it rather sinister. It absolutely thrilled me, I got shudders all the way down my spine. A genuine frisson . And I think she would be quite attractive, with those queer, smudgy eyes, if she were properly dressed. A sort of femme fatale , you know. Does she try to hypnotise you, Peter?”

  “I saw in the papers,” said Miss Titterton, “that she had had hundreds of offers of marriage.”

  “Out of one noose into the other,” said Harringay, with his noisy laugh.

  “I don’t think I should care to marry a murderess,” said Miss Titterton, “especially one that’s been trained on detective stories. One would be always wondering whether there was anything funny about the taste of the coffee.”

  “Oh, these people are all mad,” said Mrs. Dimsworthy. “They have a morbid longing for notoriety. It’s like the lunatics who make spurious confessions and give themselves up for crimes they haven’t committed.”

  “A murderess might make quite a good wife,” said Harringay. “There was Madeleine Smith, you know—she used arsenic too, by the way—she married somebody and lived happily to a respectable old age.”

  “But did her husband live to a respectable old age?” demanded Miss Titterton. “That’s more to the point, isn’t it?”

  “Once a poisoner, always a poisoner, I believe,” said Mrs. Featherstone. “It’s a passion that grows upon you—like drink or drugs.”

  “It’s the intoxicating sensation of power,” said Mrs. Dimsworthy. “But, Lord Peter, do tell us—”

  “Peter!” said his mother, “I do wish you’d go and see what’s happened to Gerald. Tell him his tea is getting cold. I think he’s in the stables talking to Freddy about thrush or cracked heels or something, so tiresome the way horses are always getting something the matter with them. You haven’t trained Gerald properly, Helen, he used to be quite punctual as a boy. Peter was always the tiresome one, but he’s becoming almost human in his old age. It’s that wonderful man of his who keeps him in order, really a remarkable character and so intelligent, quite one of the old sort, you know, a perfect autocrat, and such manners too. He would be worth thousands to an American millionaire, most impressive, I wonder Peter isn’t afraid he’ll give warning one of these days, but I really believe he is positively attached to him, Bunter attached to Peter, I mean, though the other way on would be true too, I’m sure Peter pays more attention to his opinion than he does to mine.”

  Wimsey had escaped, and was by now on his way to the stables. He met Gerald, Duke of Denver, returning, with Freddy Arbuthnot in tow. The former received the Dowager’s message with a grin.

  “Got to turn up, I suppose,” he said. “I wish nobody had ever invented tea. Ruins your nerves and spoils your appetite for dinner.”

  “Beastly sloppy stuff,” agreed the Hon. Freddy. “I say, Peter, I’ve been wanting to get hold of you.”

  “Same here,” said Wimsey, promptly. “I’m feelin’ rather exhausted with conversation. Let’s wander through the billiard-room and build our constitutions up before we face the barrage.”

  “Today’s great thought,” said Freddy, enthusiastically. He pattered happily after Wimsey into the billiard-room, and flung himself down in a large chair. “Great bore, Christmas, isn’t it? All the people one hates most gathered together in the name of goodwill and all that.”

  “Bring a couple of whiskies,” said Wimsey to the footman. “And, James, if anybody asks for Mr. Arbuthnot or me, you rather think we have gone out. Well, Freddy, here’s luck! Has anything transpired, as the journalists say?”

  “I’ve been sleuthing like stink on the tracks of your man,” said Mr. Arbuthnot. “Really, don’t you know, I shall soon be qualified to set up in your line of business. Our financial column, edited by Uncle Buthie—that sort of thing. Friend Urquhart has been very careful, though, bound to be—respectable family lawyer and all that. But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.”

  “Are you sure, Freddy?”

  “Well, not to say sure. But this man, you see, owes me one, so to speak, for having warned him off the Megatherium before the band began to play, and he thinks, if he can get hold of the chappie that knows, not the fellow that told him, you understand, but the other one, that he might be able to get something out of him, don’t you see, es
pecially if I was able to put this other chappie in the way of something or the other, what?”

  “And no doubt you have secrets to sell.”

  “Oh, well, I daresay I could make it worth this other chappie’s while, because I’ve got an idea, through this other fellow that my bloke knows, that the chappie is rather up against it, as you might say, through being caught short on some Airways stock, and if I was to put him in touch with Goldberg, don’t you see, it might get him out of a hole and so on. And Goldberg will be all right, because, don’t you see, he’s a cousin of old Levy’s, who was murdered, you know, and all these Jews stick together like leeches and as a matter of fact, I think it’s very fine of them.”

  “But what has old Levy got to do with it?” asked Wimsey, his mind running over the incidents in that half-forgotten murder-episode.

  “Well, as a matter of fact,” said the Hon. Freddy, a little nervously, “I’ve—er—done the trick as you might say. Rachel Levy is—er, in fact—going to become Mrs. Freddy and all that sort of thing.”

  “The devil she is,” said Wimsey, ringing the bell. “Tremendous congratters and all that. It’s been a long time working up, hasn’t it?”

  “Why, yes,” said Freddy. “Yes, it has. You see, the trouble was that I was a Christian—at least, I was christened and that, though I pointed out I wasn’t at all a good one, except, of course, that one keeps up the family pew and turns out on Christmas Day and so on. Only it seems they didn’t mind that so much as my being’ a Gentile. Well that, of course, is past prayin’ for. And then there was the difficulty about the kids—if any. But I explained that I didn’t mind what they counted them as—and I don’t, you know, because, as I was saying, it would be all to the little beggars’ advantage to be in with the Levy and Goldberg crowd, especially if the boys were to turn out anything in the financial way. And then I rather got round Lady Levy by sayin’ I had served nearly seven years for Rachel—that was rather smart, don’t you think?”