Ngaio Marsh - Death At The Bar

by Ngaio Marsh

  "On the whole I preferred Pomeroy senior. There seemed no reason to doubt young Pomeroy's violent defence of Legge. He would not have thrown suspicion on Legge and then vehemently defended him. Old Pomeroy, on the other hand, detests Legge and has, from the first, accused him of the murder. But I was determined to look with an equal eye upon the field of suspects.

  I turned, with I hope becoming reluctance, to the ladies.

  On Miss Darragh I need not dwell. Harper has told me of your discovery of her link with Legge, and it is obvious that she merely took what may be described as a family interest in him. The family tree in this instance being unusually shady. Ha I But Miss Moore, if Nark is to be believed, cannot be so dismissed. There had been amorous passages between Miss Moore and Watchman.

  Miss Moore denied this in the course of your interview.

  Could love have turned into the proverbial hatred?

  What happened when those ambiguous heelmarks were printed in the turf behind the furze bush? A quarrel?

  Was she afraid her lover would betray her to her fiance?

  And opportunity? Could she have introduced poison into the glass? Who better, since she poured out the brandy?

  But here, as with young Pomeroy, I had to pause. Whoever poisoned Watchman took peculiar pains to implicate Legge, but, ever since the investigation began. Miss Moore has been ardent to the point of rashness in her defence of Legge. She has braved everything for Legge, and there is a ring of urgency in her defence that bears the very tinct of sincerity. I dismissed Miss Moore. I turned, at last, to Sebastian Parish and Norman Cubitt.

  Here it was impossible to ignore motive. Motive in the form of handsome inheritances was as conspicuous as a pitchfork in Paradise. What of fact? Cubitt did not handle the darts but, on my second alternative, he could have tainted the poisoned dart after Watchman threw it down. But if the dart was a blind and didn't kill Watchman, what did? The brandy? We are told that criminals repeat the manner of their crimes and this attempt upon you and Fox supports the theory. The murderer had killed Watchman by the method of putting cyanide in his brandy? The murderer hoped to kill you by putting cyanide in your sherry? To return. The fingerprint and rat-hole objection applies to Cubitt and Parish as it does to everyone but Pomeroy senior. Of course it is possible that the murderer drew the poison off with some instrument and without touching the vessel. This brings me to Parish." Colonel Brammington darted a raffish glance at Alleyn and accepted a fresh cigarette.

  "To Parish,"he repeated. "And here we must not ignore a point that I feel is extremely important. Parish purchased the cyanide solution. It was he who suggested, to the certifiable Noggins, that it should be gingered up, as he put it. It was he who carried it back to the inn.

  Old Pomeroy said that the wretched Noggins' sealingwax was unbroken when Parish gave him the bottle. Is it possible to substitute one drop of sealing-wax by another?

  And if this had been done, why the interference with the rat-hole? But suppose the wrapping and seal were intact. Suppose that Parish made sure of obtaining a strong enough poison, delivered the bottle, sealed as he had received it, and later went to the rat-hole ; why then he would be acting more wisely, he would be removing suspicion one step away from himself. His defence would be : ' If I had intended to use this damnable poison surely I would have taken the opportunity to extract it from the bottle when it was actually in my hands.' I began to think I had got on the trail at last. I inspected tlie notes made by our man, Oates, when the memory of the night's events were still fresh, or as fresh as the aftermath of Courvoisier would allow. It was Parish, equally with Watchman, who suggested they should have the brandy, Parish who applauded and encouraged the suggestion that Legge should try the experiment with the darts. I began to wonder if this was an opportunity Parish had awaited, if he had the cyanide concealed about him in readiness for use. Could he have reasoned that Legge, full of brandy, was likely to make a blunder in throwing the darts and that, if he did blunder, here was Parish's opportunity to bring off his plan? This was purely conjectural, my dear Alleyn, but before long I came upon a thumping fact. Up to the moment when Miss Moore poured out the brandy that failed to restore Watchman, Parish, and only Parish, had an opportunity of putting anything in Watchman's glass. Parish knew that if Legge wounded Watchman, Watchman would turn queasy. Parish encouraged the brandy-drinking and dart-throwing.

  Parish stood near the glass until it was used." Colonel Brammington thumped the arm of his chair and pointed a hairy finger at Alleyn.

  "Above all,"he shouted, "Parish has done nothing but murmur against Legge. Suspicions, Bacon remarked, that are artificially nourished by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings. This, Parish foresaw. This he hoped would prove true. My case against Parish is that lie took cyanide from the rat-hole as soon as he could after Abel Pomeroy put it there. Or, I offer it as an alternative, that he took cyanide from the original bottle, replaced the small amount with water, and contrived to rewrap and seal the bottle ; and, as a blind, upset the vessel in the rat-hole without disturbing Pomeroy's prints, and filled it with water. This suggests a subtlety of reasoning which may or may not appeal to you. But to the burden of my tale. Parish had, that very evening, heard of Watchman's idiosyncrasy for cyanide, he had been reminded of Watchman's habit of turning faint at the sight of his own blood, he had heard Watchman baiting Legge and Legge's offer to perform his trick with Watchman's hand, he had heard Watchman half-promise to let him try. The following night, when the brandy was produced and drunk, he saw his chance. He encouraged the drinking and the projected experiment. When Legge wounded Watchman and Watchman turned faint, Parish stood near the glass. He had the cyanide about him. Brandy was suggested. Parish put his poison in the glass. The lights went out. Parish groped on the floor, bumped his head against Cubitt's legs, found the dart and infected it. He then ground whatever phial he had about him into powder together with the broken tumbler on the floor, and finding a more solid piece under his heel threw it into the fire. And from then onwards, gentlemen, I maintain that everything the fellow did or said is consistent with the theory that he murdered his cousin. I plump for Parish." Colonel Brammington stared about him with an unconvincing air of modesty tinged with a hint of anxiety.

  "Well,"he said, "there you are. An essay in Watsoniana. Am I to be set down? Shall I perceive my mentor wafting his eyes to the contrary and falling a lip of much contempt? " "No, indeed,"said Alleyn. "I congratulate you, sir.

  A splendid marshalling of facts and a magnificent sequence of deductions." If so large and red a man could be said to simper, Colonel Brammington simpered.

  "Really,"he said. "I have committed no atrocious blunder? My deductions march with yours? " "Almost all the way. We shall venture to disagree on one or two points." "I make no claim to infallibility,"said the chief constable. "What are the points? Let us have them? " "Well,"said Alleyn apologetically and with an uncomfortable glance at Harper and at Fox, "there's only one point of any importance. I—in our view of the case you've—you've hit on the wrong man."

  CHAPTER TWENTY CONJECTURE INTO FACT

  for a second or two Alleyn wondered if there would be an explosion or, worse, a retreat into heavy silence. Fearing that the expression of gloating delight upon Harper's face might turn the scales, Alleyn had placed himself between the chief constable and his superintendent. But Colonel Brammington behaved admirably. He goggled for a moment, he became rather more purple in the face, and he made a convulsive movement that caused his shirtfront to crackle sharply, but finally he spoke with composure.

  "Your manners, my dear Alleyn,"he said, "are, as always, worthy of a Chesterfield. I am pinked on the very point of a compliment. The wrong man? Indeed? Then t must be ludicrously at fault. I have made some Gargantuan error. My entire sequence of deductions----" "No, no, sir. Your case against Parish is supported by facts, but not by all the facts. Parish might so nearly have murdered Watchman, by either of the two methods you've described." "Then---- Well? " "The
circumstance that excludes Parish, excluded his only means of murder. If he did it, it was by poisoning the brandy, and he couldn't tell which glass would be used. Not possibly. But we'll come to that in a minute.

  Our case, and I'm afraid it's a dubious one at the moment, is that there are one or two scraps of evidence that only fit into the pattern if they are allowed to point in one direction, and that is not towards Parish." "What are they? More beer, I implore you." "To begin with,"said Alleyn, filling Colonel Brammington's glass, "the two iodine bottles." "What 1 " "Shall we take them, sir, as they turn up? " "Let us, for God's sake." "You, sir, ended with Sebastian Parish. I shall begin with him. If Parish was a murderer how lucky he was 1 How all occasions did inform against Watchman and favour Parish 1 It was on the evening after his decision that the brandy was produced, so that was pure luck. He didn't know Legge would wound Watchman, he only hoped that under the influence of brandy, he might miss his mark. When it so fell out, he had to make up his mind very rapidly and plan a series of delicate and dangerous manoeuvres. And how oddly he behaved 1 He risked his own immunity by handling the darts, and this, when his whole object was that Legge should seem to be the poisoner. After the accident, instead of putting cyanide in the brandy glass and moving away from it, he stood beside it, in a position that was likely to be remembered.

  And again, how could he tell that Miss Moore would use that glass? There were seven other glasses about the room. She might have taken a clean glass. Parish made no attempt to force that glass upon her. She chose it.

  More stupendous luck. Now, with the exception of Miss Moore, this objection applies to the supposition that any of them put cyanide in the brandy-glass. They couldn't be sure it would be used. Only Miss Moore could be sure of that for she chose it." "You surely don't---- Go on,"said Colonel Brammington.

  "I entirely agree that, ruling out Legge and assuming that the whole arrangement of the business was an attempt to implicate Legge; Cubitt, Miss Darragh, Will Pomeroy, and Miss Moore, must be counted out, since they have all declared that Legge was unable to meddle with the darts. Our case rests on a different assumption." "Here, wait a bit."cried the colonel. "No. All right.

  Go on." "Abel Pomeroy and Parish were the only ones openly to accuse Legge. Abel Pomeroy was particularly vehement in his insistence that Legge deliberately killed Watchman.

  He came up to London to tell me about it." "Old Pomeroy was my earlier choice." "Yes, sir. To return to the brandy. For the reason I have given you, and for reasons that I hope to make clear, we are persuaded that there was no cyanide in the brandy. We are certain that cyanide was put on the dart after, and not before, it pierced Watchman's finger.

  Otherwise it would have been removed by the trial throw into the cork board or, if there was any trace left, possibly washed off by the blood that flowed freely from Watchman's finger and with which the dart was greatly stained.

  The cyanide was found on the point of the dart. Watchman, we think, was poisoned, not by the dart nor by the brandy. How, then? " "But, my dear fellow, there was no cyanide in the iodine bottle. They found the bottle. There was no cyanide." "None. Now here, sir, we have a bit of evidence that is new to you. I feel sure that if you'd had it earlier today it would have made a difference to your view of the case.

  We have found out that within a few hours of the murder, a bottle of iodine disappeared from the bathroom cupboard upstairs." Colonel Brammington stared a little wildly at Alleyn, made as if to speak, and evidently thought better of it.

  He waved his hand.

  "The bottle of iodine that was originally in the downstairs first-aid box,"Alleyn continued, "was an entirely innocent bottle, with Abel's prints on it and only his.

  Legge's prints were added when he borrowed this bottle to doctor a cut on his chin. Abel gave it to him. Now that innocent and original bottle is, I consider, the one that was found under the settle. All that is left of the bottle Abel Pomeroy used when he poured iodine into Watchman's wound, is represented, or so we believe, by the surplus amount of glass Mr. Harper swept up from the floor and by the small misshapen fragments we found in the ashes." "Hah 1 "ejaculated the colonel. "Now I have you.

  A lethal bottle, taken from the bathroom and infected, was substituted for the innocent bottle in the first-aid box. Only Abel Pomeroy's prints were found on the cupboard door and so on. Abel Pomeroy himself took the bottle from the box and himself poured the iodine into the wound. Splendid I " "Exactly, sir,"said Alleyn.

  "Well, Alleyn, I readily abandon my second love.

  I return, chastened, to my first love. How will you prove it? " "How indeed I We hope that an expert will be able to tell us that the fragments of glass are, in fact, of the same type as that used for iodine bottles. That's not much but it's something and we have got other strings to our bow." "What's his motive? " "Whose motive, sir? " "Old Pomeroy's." Alleyn looked at him apologetically.

  "I'm sorry, sir. I hadn't followed you. Abel Pomeroy had no motive, as far as I know, for wishing Watchman dead." ;; What the hell d'you mean? " "I didn't think Abel Pomeroy was strictly your first love, sir. May I go on? You see, once we accept the iodine theory, we must admit that the murderer knew Watchman would be wounded by the dart. Nobody knew that, sir, but Legge." n

  It took the second half of the last bottle of Treble Extra to mollify the chief constable, but he was mollified in the end.

  "I invited it,"he said, "and I got it. In a sense, I suppose I committed the unforgivable offence of failing to lead trumps. Legge was trumps. Go on, my dear Alleyn. Expound. Is it Locke who says that it is one thing to show a man he is in error and another to convince him of the truth? You have shown me my error. Pray reveal the whole truth." "From the first,"said Alleyn,"it seemed obvious that Legge was our man. Mr. Harper realised that, and so, sir, did you. This afternoon I told Harper that Fox and I had arrived at the same conclusion. You asked me not to give you our theory, but before and after you came into Illington we discussed the whole thing. Harper was for arresting him there and then, and I, mistakenly perhaps, thought that we should give him more rope. I thought that on our evidence, which rests so much upon conjecture, we would not establish a primd facie case." "What is your evidence beyond the tedious--well, go on." "As we see it,"said Alleyn, "Legge planned the whole affair to look like accident. No doubt he hoped that it would go no further than the inquest. His behaviour has been consistent with the theory of accident. He has shown us a man overwrought by the circumstance of having unwittingly killed someone. That describes his behaviour after Watchman died, at the inquest, and subsequently.

  He chanced everything on the accident theory. It is easy, now, to say he took an appalling risk, but he very nearly got away with it. If old Abel hadn't raised such a dust about the good name of his public-house, and if Mr.

  Nark and others had not driven Harper, here, to fury, you might very well have got no further. Legge's motive was the one we have recognised. It harks back to the days when he was Montague Thringle and stood his trial for large-sized embezzlement, and all the rest of it. At least three of the enormous number of people he ruined committed suicide. There was the usuaT pitiful list of old governesses and retired clerks. A shameful affair. Now, in defending Lord Bryonie, Watchman was able to throw almost the entire blame on Legge, or Tbringle as I suppose we must learn to call him. Let him be Legge for the moment. Watchman made a savage attack on Legge, and it was in no small measure due to him that Legge got such a heavy sentence. He had an imperial and moustaches in those days and had not turned grey. His appearance was very greatly changed when he came out of gaol. After various vicissitudes in Liverpool and London, he came down here suffering from a weak chest and some complaint of the ear, for which he uses a lotion and a dropper. Harper found the dropper when he searched Legge's room on the morning after Watchman died. It's not there now." "That's right,"said Harper heavily.