by Ruth Rendell
The defence tried to shift the blame to Frank Fenton, at least to suggest a conspiracy with Florence, but it was no use. The jury were out for only forty minutes. They pronounced her guilty, the judge sentenced her to death, and she was hanged just twenty-three days later, this being some twenty years before the institution of a Court of Appeal.
After the execution Frank and Ada Fenton emigrated to the United States and settled in New England. Fenton’s reputation had gone before him. He was never again able to practise as a doctor but worked as the travelling representative of a firm of pharmaceutical manufacturers until his death in 1932. He never married. Ada, on the other hand, surprisingly enough, did. Ephraim Hurst fell in love with her in spite of her sickly constitution and withered leg. They were married in the summer of 1902 and by the spring of 1903 Ada Hurst was dead in childbirth.
By then Paraleash House had been re-named The Limes and lime trees planted to conceal its forbidding yet fascinating façade from the curious passer-by.
The parcel from Carlyon Brent arrived in the morning with a very polite covering letter from Amyas Ireland, grateful in anticipation. Wexford had never before seen a book in this embryo stage. The script, a hundred thousand words long, was bound in red, and through a window in its cover appeared the provisional title and the author’s name: Poison at Paraleash, A Reappraisal of the Winchurch Case by Kenneth Gandolph.
‘Remember all that fuss about Gandolph?’ Wexford said to Dora across the coffee pot. ‘About four years ago?’
‘Somebody confessed a murder to him, didn’t they?’
‘Well, maybe. While a prison visitor, he spent some time talking to Paxton, the bank robber, in Wormwood Scrubs. Paxton died of cancer a few months later, and Gandolph then published an article in a newspaper in which he said that during the course of their conversations, Paxton had confessed to him that he was the perpetrator of the Conyngford murder in 1962. Paxton’s widow protested, there was a heated correspondence, MPs wanting the libel laws extended to libelling the dead, Gandolph shouting about the power of truth. Finally, the by then retired Detective Superintendent Warren of Scotland Yard put an end to all further controversy by issuing a statement to the press. He said Paxton couldn’t have killed James Conyngford because on the day of Conyngford’s death in Brighton Warren’s sergeant and a constable had had Paxton under constant surveillance in London. In other words, he was never out of their sight.’
‘Why would Gandolph invent such a thing, Reg?’ said Dora.
‘Perhaps he didn’t. Paxton may have spun him all sorts of tales as a way of passing a boring afternoon. Who knows? On the other hand, Gandolph does rather set himself up as the elucidator of unsolved crimes. Years ago, I believe, he did find a satisfactory and quite reasonable solution to some murder in Scotland, and maybe it went to his head. Marshall, Groves, Folliott used to be his publishers. I wonder if they’ve refused this one because of the Paxton business, if it was offered to them and they turned it down?’
‘But Mr Ireland’s people have taken it,’ Dora pointed out.
‘Mm-hm. But they’re not falling over themselves with enthusiasm, are they? They’re scared. Ireland hasn’t sent me this so that I can check up on the police procedural part. What do I know about police procedure in 1900? He’s sent it to me in the hope that if Gandolph’s been up to his old tricks I’ll spot what they are.’
The working day presented no opportunity for a look at Poison at Paraleash, but at eight o’clock that night Wexford opened it and read Gandolph’s long introduction.
Gandolph began by saying that as a criminologist he had always been aware of the Winchurch case and of the doubt which many felt about Florence Winchurch’s guilt. Therefore, when he was staying with friends in Boston, Massachusetts, some two years before and they spoke to him of an acquaintance of theirs who was the niece of one of the principals in the case, he had asked to be introduced to her. The niece was Ada Hurst’s daughter, Lina, still Miss Hurst, seventy-four years old and suffering from a terminal illness.
Miss Hurst showed no particular interest in the events of March 1900. She had been brought up by her father and his second wife and had hardly known her uncle. All her mother’s property had come into her possession, including the diary which Ada Fenton Hurst had kept for three years prior to Edward Winchurch’s death. Lina Hurst told Gandolph she had kept the diary for sentimental reasons but that he might borrow it and after her death she would see that it passed to him.
Within weeks Lina Hurst did die and her stepbrother, who was her executor, had the diary sent to Gandolph. Gandolph had read it and had been enormously excited by certain entries because in his view they incriminated Frank Fenton and exonerated Florence Winchurch. Here Wexford turned back a few pages and noted the author’s dedication: In memory of Miss Lina Hurst, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, without whose help this reappraisal would have been impossible.
More than this Wexford had no time to read that evening, but he returned to it on the following day. The diary, it appeared, was a five-year one. At the top of each page was the date, as it might be I April, and beneath that five spaces each headed 18 . . . There was room for the diarist to write perhaps forty or fifty words in each space, no more. On the i January page in the third heading down, the number of the year, the eight had been crossed out and a nine substituted, and so it went on for every subsequent entry until March 6, after which no more entries were made until the diarist resumed in December 1900, by which time she and her brother were in Boston.
Wexford proceeded to Gandolph’s first chapters. The story he had to tell was substantially the same as Hallam Saul’s, and it was not until he came to chapter five and the weeks preceding the crime that he began to concentrate on the character of Frank Fenton. Fenton, he suggested, wanted Mrs Winchurch for the money and property she would inherit on her husband’s death. Far from encouraging Florence to seek a divorce, he urged her never to let her husband suspect her preference for another man. Divorce would have left Florence penniless and homeless and have ruined his career. Fenton had known that it was only by making away with Winchurch and so arranging things that the death appeared natural, that he could have money, his profession and Florence.
There was only his word for it, said Gandolph, that he had spoken to Florence of botulism and had warned her against these particular canned herrings. Of course he had never seriously expected those cans to infect Winchurch, but that the fish should be eaten by him was necessary for his strategy. On the night before Winchurch’s death, after dining with his sister at Paraleash House, he had introduced strychnine into the port decanter. He had also, Gandolph suggested, contrived to bring the conversation round to a discussion of food and to fish dishes. From that it would have been a short step to get Winchurch to admit how much he had enjoyed Filets de hareng marinés à la Rosette and to ask Florence to have them served again on the following day. Edward, apparently would have been highly likely to take his doctor’s advice, even when in health, even on such a matter as what he should eat for the fourth course of his dinner, while Edward’s wife did everything her lover, if not her husband, told her to do.
It was no surprise to Frank Fenton to be called out on the following evening to a man whose spasms only he would recognize as symptomatic of having swallowed strychnine. The arrival of Dr Waterfield was an unlooked-for circumstance. Once Winchurch’s symptoms had been defined as arising from strychnine poisoning there was nothing left for Fenton to do but shift the blame on to his mistress. Gandolph suggested that Fenton attributed the source of the strychnine to Anstruther’s chemist’s shop out of revenge on Anstruther for calling in Waterfield and thus frustrating his hopes.
And what grounds had Gandolph for believing all this? Certain entries in Ada Hurst’s diary. Wexford read them slowly and carefully.
For 27 February 1900, she had written, filling the entire small space: Very cold. Leg painful again today. FW sent round the carriage and had John drive me to Pomfret. Compton says rats in the
cellars and the old stables. Dined at home with F who says rats carry leptospiral jaundice, must be got rid of. 28 February: Drove in FW’s carriage to call on old Mrs Paget. FW still here, having tea with F when I returned. I hope there is no harm in it. Dare I warn F? 29 February: F destroyed twenty rats with strychnine from his dispensary. What a relief! 1 March: Poor old Mrs Paget passed away in the night. A merciful release. Compton complained about the rats again. Warmer this evening and raining. There was no entry for 2 March. 3 March: Annie gave notice, she is getting married. Shall be sorry to lose her. Would not go out in carriage for fear of leaving FW too much alone with F. To bed early as leg most painful. 4 March: My birthday. 26 today and an old maid now, I think. FW drove over, brought me beautiful Indian shawl. She is always kind. Invited F and me to dinner tomorrow. There was no entry for 5 March, and the last entry for nine months was the one for 6 March: Dined last night at Paraleash House, six guests besides ourselves and the Ws. F left cigar case in the dining room, went back after seeing me home. I hope and pray there is no harm.
Gandolph was evidently basing his case on the entries for 29 February and 6 March. In telling the court he had no strychnine in his dispensary, Fenton had lied. He had had an obvious opportunity for the introduction of strychnine into the decanter when he returned to Paraleash House in pursuit of his mislaid cigar case, and when he no doubt took care that he entered the dining room alone.
The next day Wexford re-read the chapters in which the new information was contained and he studied with concentration the section concerning the diary. But unless Gandolph were simply lying about the existence of the diary or of those two entries – things which he would hardly dare to do – there seemed no reason to differ from his inference. Florence was innocent, Frank Fenton the murderer of Edward Winchurch. But still Wexford wished Burden were there so that they might have one of their often acrimonious but always fruitful discussions. Somehow, with old Mike to argue against him and put up opposition, he felt things might have been better clarified.
And the morning brought news of Burden, if not the inspector himself, in the form of a postcard from Agios Nikolaios. The blue Aegean, a rocky escarpment, green pines. Who but Burden, as Wexford remarked to Dora, would send postcards while on his honeymoon? The post also brought a parcel from Carlyon Brent. It contained books, a selection from the publishing house’s current list as a present for Wexford, and on the compliments slip accompanying them, a note from Amyas Ireland. I shall be in Kingsmarkham with my people at the weekend. Can we meet? AI. The books were the latest novel about Regency London by Camilla Barnet; Put Money in Thy Purse, the biography of Vassili Vandrian, the financier; the memoirs of Sofya Bolkinska, Bolshoi ballerina; an omnibus version of three novels of farming life by Giles de Coverley; the Cosmos Book of Stars and Calendars, and Vernon Trevor’s short stories, Raise me up Samuel. Wexford wondered if he would ever have time to read them, but he enjoyed looking at them, their handsome glossy jackets, and smelling the civilized, aromatic, slightly acrid print smell of them. At ten he phoned Amyas Ireland, thanked him for the present and said he had read Poison at Paraleash.
‘We can talk about it?’
‘Sure. I’ll be at home all Saturday and Sunday.’
‘Let me take you and Mrs Wexford out to dinner on Saturday night,’ said Ireland.
But Dora refused. She would be an embarrassment to both of them, she said, they would have their talk much better without her, and she would spend the evening at home having a shot at making a coil pot on her own. So Wexford went alone to meet Ireland in the bar of the Olive and Dove.
‘I suppose,’ he said, accepting a glass of Moselle, ‘that we can dispense with the fiction that you wanted me to read this book to check on police methods and court procedure? Not to put too fine a point on it, you were apprehensive Gandolph might have been up to his old tricks again?’
‘Oh, well now, come,’ said Ireland. He seemed thinner than ever. He looked about him, he looked at Wexford, made a face, wrinkling up nose and mouth. ‘Well, if you must put it like that – yes.’
‘There may not have been any tricks, though, may there? Paxton couldn’t have murdered James Conyngford, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t tell Gandolph he did murder him. Certainly the people who give Gandolph information seem to die very conveniently soon afterwards. He picks on the dying, first Paxton, then Lina Hurst. I suppose you’ve seen this diary?’
‘Oh, yes. We shall be using prints of the two relevant pages among the illustrations.’
‘No possibility of forgery?’
Ireland looked unhappy. ‘Ada Hurst wrote a very stylized hand, what’s called a ronde hand, which she had obviously taught herself. It would be easy to forge. I can’t submit it to handwriting experts, can I? I’m not a policeman. I’m just a poor publisher who very much wants to publish this reappraisal of the Winchurch case if it’s genuine – and shun it like the plague if it’s not.’
‘I think it’s genuine.’ Wexford smiled at the slight lightening in Ireland’s face. ‘I take it that it was usual for Ada Hurst to leave blanks as she did for March 2nd and March 5th?’
Ireland nodded. ‘Quite usual. Every month there’d have been half a dozen days on which she made no entries.’ A waiter came up to them with two large menus. ‘I’ll have the bouillabaisse and the lamb en croûte and the médaillon potatoes and french beans.’
‘Consommé and then the parma ham,’ said Wexford austerely. When the waiter had gone he grinned at Ireland. ‘Pity they don’t do Filets de hareng marinés à Ia Rosette. It might have provided us with the authentic atmosphere.’ He was silent for a moment, savouring the delicate tangy wine. ‘I’m assuming you’ve checked that 1900 genuinely was a Leap Year?’
‘All first years of a century are.’
Wexford thought about it. ‘Yes, of course, all years divisible by four are Leap Years.’
‘I must say it’s a great relief to me you’re so happy about it.’
‘I wouldn’t quite say that,’ said Wexford.
They went into the dining room and were shown, at Ireland’s request, to a sheltered corner table. A waiter brought a bottle of Château de Portets 1973. Wexford looked at the basket of rolls, croissants, little plump brioches, miniature wholemeal loaves, Italian sticks, swallowed his desire and refused with an abrupt shake of the head. Ireland took two croissants.
‘What exactly do you mean?’ he said.
‘It strikes me as being odd,’ said the chief inspector, ‘that in the entry for February 29th Ada Hurst says that her brother destroyed twenty rats with strychnine, yet in the entry for March 1st that Compton, whom I take to be the gardener, is still complaining about the rats. Why wasn’t he told how effective the strychnine had been? Hadn’t he been taken into Fenton’s confidence about the poisoning? Or was twenty only a very small percentage of the hordes of rats which infested the place?’
‘Right. It is odd. What else?’
‘I don’t know why, on March 6th, she mentions Fenton’s returning for the cigar case. It wasn’t interesting and she was limited for space. She doesn’t record the name of a single guest at the dinner party, doesn’t say what any of the women wore, but she carefully notes that her brother had left his cigar case in the Paraleash House dining room and had to go back for it. Why does she?’
‘Oh, surely because by now she’s nervous whenever Frank is alone with Florence.’
‘But he wouldn’t have been alone with Florence, Winchurch would have been there.’
They discussed the script throughout the meal, and later pored over it, Ireland with his brandy, Wexford with coffee. Dora had been wise not to come. But the outcome was that the new facts were really new and sound and that Carlyon Brent could safely publish the book in the spring. Wexford got home to find Dora sitting with a wobbly looking half-finished coil pot beside her and deep in the Cosmos Book of Stars and Calendars.
‘Reg, did you know that for the Greeks the year began on Midsummer Day? And that the Chinese an
d Jewish calendars have twelve months in some years and thirteen in others?’
‘I can’t say I did.’
‘We avoid that, you see, by using the Gregorian Calendar and correct the error by making every fourth year a Leap Year. You really must read this book, it’s fascinating.’
But Wexford’s preference was for the Vassili Vandrian and the farming trilogy, though with little time to read he hadn’t completed a single one of these works by the time Burden returned on the following Monday week. Burden had a fine even tan but for his nose which had peeled.
‘Have a good time?’ asked Wexford with automatic politeness.
‘What a question,’ said the inspector, ‘to ask a man who has just come back from his honeymoon. Of course I had a good time.’ He cautiously scratched his nose. ‘What have you been up to?’
‘Seeing something of your brother-in-law. He got me to read a manuscript.’
‘Ha!’ said Burden. ‘I know what that was. He said something about it but he knew Gandolph’d get short shrift from me. A devious liar if ever there was one. It beats me what sort of satisfaction a man can get out of the kind of fame that comes from foisting on the public stories he knows aren’t true. All that about Paxton was a pack of lies, and I’ve no doubt he bases this new version of the Winchurch case on another pack of lies. He’s not interested in the truth. He’s only interested in being known as the great criminologist and the man who shows the police up for fools.’
