Death in the House

by Anthony Berkeley

  ‘It was someone known to him,’ Lord Arthur pointed out.

  ‘Oh, obviously. It’s a pity Mansel didn’t mention his name when he shouted at him,’ sighed the Assistant Commissioner.

  ‘That must have been the actual attack. Curious that your listener-in should have heard it, to say nothing of Lacy. In fact, it’s curious that it should have been made at all during a telephone conversation.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Mr Willis-Carter demurred. ‘Very good opportunity, while Mansel’s back was turned and his attention engaged. And perhaps he was afraid Mansel might give something away over the telephone about his identity. That would have made it impossible for him to carry out the murder, you see.’

  ‘You think the visit was made with the deliberate intention of murder, then?’

  ‘Oh, I think so. That seems plain.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Lord Arthur said suddenly, ‘whether my own telephone conversation with Mansel had anything to do with his death. It followed so closely, and Mansel had almost promised me to talk a bit more freely when I was to see him this morning. Is there any possibility of that conversation having been overheard by these people-wires tapped, or something?’

  ‘That’s an idea,’ the Assistant Commissioner admitted. ‘I’ll have it followed up. We ought to be able to find out if the wires have been tapped by anyone besides ourselves. Yes, that’s certainly an idea. Well, I must be getting along. I just called in to give you the news. I’m meeting one of the Superintendents in a minute or two to pay a call on Lacy. He hasn’t told us yet why he wanted to see Mansel, and what it was that had struck him as queer.’

  ‘I think I can give you some idea of that,’ Lord Arthur said. ‘Lacy rang me up at No. 10 yesterday evening, and said much the same sort of thing. I told him I was just about to take it up with Mansel, but I suppose he thought I might have bungled it and wanted to have a try himself. I think you’ll find that it was the fact of the contents bill of Mansel’s Sunday paper having been printed before the explosion took place. I’ve told you Mansel’s explanation.’

  ‘And that it was he who rang us up. Yes, well… queer chap. The City won’t be the same without him. And I shouldn’t be surprised,’ opined the Assistant Commissioner, ‘if a sigh of relief doesn’t go up from a few of the orthodox offices, too. Well, I must be off.’

  As he rang for his man to show Willis-Carter out, Lord Arthur said:

  ‘And young Verreker?’

  ‘Returned to No. 10 without a stain – thank goodness!’

  ‘Then you’re as far off as ever from knowing who delivered the last letter?’

  ‘Farther,’ said the Assistant Commissioner dismally.

  Before the door opened Lord Arthur just had time to ask: ‘And that fellow you caught? Got anything out of him yet?’

  ‘Nothing. They’ve been working on him all night, and they’ll go on all the weekend; but if you ask me, short of lighting a fire on his chest, I doubt if they’ll get anything – and I’m afraid our Beamish wouldn’t stand for that. He’ll hang all right, but he’ll hang mum.’

  When his visitor had gone, Lord Arthur completed his dressing. He felt restless, and more disturbed than ever. The murder of Mansel, while not affecting him personally, seemed to him sinister in the extreme. It was obvious that the Terrorist organisation was prepared to observe no limits. How far would that realisation affect the weaker spirits in the Cabinet, only stiffened as they had been by the Prime Minister’s inflexibility? And if the Prime Minister himself should go the way of Wellacombe and Middleton…?

  Lord Arthur found a resolve, which had gradually been forming in his mind for the last twenty-four hours, suddenly harden and become fixed. Somehow the Prime Minister must be prevented from speaking and he, Lord Arthur, must take his place. It might mean death, but there was still more than twenty-four hours in which to save the situation – and himself.

  But what could he do that the police were not already doing better?

  Restlessly Lord Arthur took his hat and stick and went downstairs. His two attendants were there, chatting with the porter. They came towards him at once, and one inquired respectfully where he proposed to go.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lord Arthur confessed. He looked at them, two Scotland Yard men at his disposal: only detective constables, it was true, but keen and eager. Could he not make better use of them than this barren duty of guarding his own person?

  An idea came to him. ‘We’ll go over to the House. We shall have it to ourselves, and it’s a good opportunity to study the possibilities. Perhaps we could make out how Dr Ghaijana manipulated the thorns – if he did manipulate them at all.’

  The two men expressed approval and interest, and the trio set out. On the short walk Lord Arthur encouraged the detectives to talk and soon found that neither entertained any doubt that Dr Ghaijana had been the actual executive of the murders, though they admitted that he must have a powerful organisation behind him. Lord Arthur wished he could share their certainty.

  All the approaches to the Parliamentary buildings were closely guarded, but no difficulty was made in passing Lord Arthur inside. Still accompanied by his guardians, he walked quickly through the lobby, where scattered knots of plain-clothes men were lingering, ready for a call to any part of the building.

  The great hall of the House of Commons was empty. Lord Arthur paused for a moment beside the Speaker’s chair, populating the empty benches in his imagination with the persons who had occupied them on the two fatal afternoons. There Wellacombe had sat, and from the same place Middleton had risen; there he himself had been, just behind them, and there S P Mansel; and over there, away down below the gangway had sat Dr Ghaijana.

  ‘Sit there, Curtis,’ Lord Arthur said abruptly, pointing to the Government front bench. ‘You’re Mr Middleton.’

  ‘Here, my lord?’ One of the detectives seated himself in the position indicated.

  Lord Arthur frowned. It was difficult to fix the exact place when the benches were empty. He scrutinised the rather shabby upholstery. ‘No, a foot or two to your right; where that button’s missing; that’s right.’

  ‘Time they did the place up a bit,’ ventured the other man.

  ‘This is an economical Government,’ Lord Arthur smiled, a little absently. He walked down to the gangway and seated himself as nearly as he could judge where Dr Ghaijana had been. Curtis looked a long way away.

  Lord Arthur called the other detective to him. ‘Could you, however skilful you were, somehow propel three or four poisoned thorns at Curtis from here, and make sure of hitting him every time?’

  ‘It doesn’t look much like it, my lord, does it?’ admitted the man.

  ‘I should say it was out of the question. Besides,’ Lord Arthur remembered, ‘in Mr Middleton’s case there was a thorn at the back of his head. He might have turned towards the Speaker, of course, but even so… no, I think it’s impossible from here.’

  ‘Couldn’t it have been done from behind, my lord?’

  ‘I was sitting just behind, on the look-out for the slightest move. Still, we’ll see.’

  They circled about the sitting man, but from no point did it seem that the thorns could possibly have been despatched, even by a mechanical contrivance, without attracting attention. From the galleries, too, it appeared to be an impossible feat.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lord Arthur had to confess, after half an hour’s effort. ‘I suppose it must have been done somehow in the lobby, or behind the Chair.’

  ‘I fancy that’s what our people think,’ one of the detectives agreed.

  Lord Arthur shrugged his shoulders. ‘Goodness knows. There are plenty of objections to that, too, apart from the actual difficulty. For instance – Oh, hullo, Sir Angus!’

  The elderly Scotsman who held the responsible post of Senior Official Analyst to the Home Office did not remove his hands from the baggy pockets of his greatcoat as he nodded curtly in response to the other’s greeting. The detectives withdrew discreetly.
/>   ‘Ah, Linton! On the same quest as myself, no doubt.’

  ‘I was trying to see a glimmer of light somewhere. But surely your part of the business is simple enough, Sir Angus? Once you’ve established the poison, your job’s finished.’

  ‘Indeed and that it’s not,’ retorted Sir Angus MacFerris. ‘That’s only the beginning. There’s the very important question of quantity, ye see.’

  ‘Quantity?’

  ‘Aye.’ Sir Angus pulled at his short grey beard and looked at Sir Arthur from under shaggy brows. ‘There’s no exact quantitative test for an elusive alkaloid substance like curare. In fact, we can’t say much more than that it’s there or it isn’t there. And that makes things a wee bit difficult.’

  ‘Why difficult?’

  ‘Well, well… now you wouldn’t know what’s reckoned as the fatal dose of curare?’

  ‘Thirty milligrams,’ Lord Arthur replied glibly.

  ‘That’s so. Thirty milligrams. Well now, I’ve heard of wee birds not much larger than a pigeon being shot in flight by an arrow dipped in curare, and it didn’t kill them. Will you tell me, if that’s the case, how one thorn could kill a man like Wellacombe? No, no; you couldn’t get thirty milligrams on a thorn, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘But Middleton had three or four thorns in him.’

  ‘Maybe. But Wellacombe had but the one.’

  ‘They only found one,’ Lord Arthur corrected. ‘But wasn’t there another wound on the ball of his thumb that showed traces of the stuff?’

  ‘Aye, there was. But wouldn’t you say that if only one thorn was found, only one was used? Or do you think Lesley’s men overlooked two-three more lying about under their noses?’

  ‘No, I don’t think that,’ Lord Arthur said slowly. ‘But I can think of at least one good explanation of why only one should have been found.’

  ‘You mean, the murderer picked the others up in the confusion. Well, maybe, maybe. But even three-four thorns…’ Sir Angus shook his shaggy old head in a dissatisfied way.

  ‘How much is thirty milligrams?’ Lord Arthur demanded. ‘About as big as a small pea, I suppose?’

  ‘Gosh, man, no!’ Sir Angus sounded quite shocked at such ignorance. ‘Thirty milligrams is approximately half a grain, and a grain is – well, an ordinary pin weighs about a grain and a half.’

  ‘About a third of the weight of an ordinary pin,’ Lord Arthur meditated. ‘Not much bigger than a large pin’s head. You could get that amount on two or three thorns, surely?’

  ‘Maybe you could. Maybe. But I shouldn’t have said so. And then it would all have to be absorbed, ye see. No, I’m not satisfied.’

  ‘But isn’t it the theory that some other substance was mixed with the curare?’

  ‘I can find traces of no other substance,’ admitted Sir Angus gloomily. ‘Not a trace. But, mind you, that doesn’t say no other substance was employed. Some poisons are extremely volatile. In fact, I can think of two-three that are well-nigh untraceable. But they act quicker. There’s the time factor, ye see.’

  ‘But we don’t know when the thorns were inserted,’ Lord Arthur pointed out. ‘No one seems to have noticed them – not even the victims.’

  ‘Oh, they wouldn’t feel a wee prick like that. It’s surprising what a big prick will pass unnoticed if you don’t see it happening. But we have one point to fix the time by: the moment the victims entered this building. For it’s very sure the attacks weren’t made beforehand. That’s important, ye see, because the collapse in each case followed less than a quarter of an hour later. That means a fair-sized dose – more than thirty milligrams if anything. So I thought,’ concluded Sir Angus, ‘that I’d just take a walk round here this morning, to clear my brain a bit and see if I could make out how it was done.’

  ‘I thought the same. In fact, those two detectives and I have been trying to reconstruct the crime. But – ’

  ‘Ye haven’t seen the light?’

  ‘Not to say seen it. But I’m not at all sure,’ Lord Arthur said slowly, ‘that a sentence in this conversation of ours hasn’t given me an idea.’

  ‘Something I said to you?’ asked Sir Angus with interest.

  Lord Arthur smiled.

  ‘No. Curiously enough, something I said to you.’

  chapter nineteen

  A Minister Shows His Mettle

  Lord Arthur ate a solitary lunch, and thought a good deal.

  As he was sipping his coffee afterwards a diffident visitor arrived to see him. It was the clerk from the registry in the India Office who had searched vainly on the previous afternoon for any record of Lacy’s recent visit to India, and he brought with him the answer to Lord Arthur’s cablegram. The message was not in cypher; and having bade the young man be seated and ordered another cup to be brought for him-a proceeding which caused his visitor to alternate rapidly between a deep pink and a pale puce – Lord Arthur set himself to study the laconic wording.

  The result was disappointing. No particularly close watch had been kept on Lacy, and only a few of his more important interviews had been recorded. These were more or less what might have been expected of any politician of the Left visiting India, and the only name which caused Lord Arthur the least interest was that of the Maharajah of Barghiala.

  ‘So that’s where he got his information about Mansel’s activities,’ Lord Arthur thought to himself. ‘But not from the Maharajah himself, I’ll be bound. The old boy’s too foxy for that. Some underling must have given the game away.’

  ‘Humph!’ he said aloud. ‘Not much here, I’m afraid.’

  The young man, now almost mauve, produced a couple of folders from under his arm, nearly upsetting his coffee-cup in the process.

  ‘I th-thought you might like to see these,’ he stammered.

  ‘I had another look round this morning and came across them.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m afraid our activities were rather abruptly interrupted yesterday evening,’ Lord Arthur said, taking the folders. ‘Did you know that poor young fellow – Farly?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know him, not to speak to. Is it – is it true they were after you, my lord?’ asked the young man in a rush.

  Lord Arthur smiled. ‘I wish I could think I was so much in their way. No, I fancy that was just a coincidence. Let’s see, what are these?’

  ‘One’s a report on the railway accident, when Colonel and Mrs Lacy were killed in 1912. The other’s a file on Dr Ghaijana. I thought you might like…’

  ‘Yes, very thoughtful of you,’ said Lord Arthur courteously.

  In order not to disappoint the young man he ran quickly through the contents of each folder, little though he saw how they could help him.

  The first contained only information which in a general way he knew already. The accident had taken place in a deserted part of the country; the subsequent inquiry showed definitely that a deliberate attempt had been made to wreck the train, but fortunately the attempt had been half-hearted and the result had not been so serious as it might have been; by an unhappy chance there had in any case been a bare half-dozen passengers aboard in addition to the Lacy party, against whom the attempt had obviously been made; unhappily, a telegraph pole, which apparently had been intended to fall in the path of the engine, must have proved tougher than the wreckers expected, for it had fallen instead by an unhappy chance across the compartment occupied by Colonel and Mrs Lacy, killing them both. There was a coldly gruesome description of the head injuries which had caused their deaths, and accounts of various witnesses who had seen men running away from the scene of the accident. Needless to say, these men were never caught, though there was some suspicion that the engine-driver might have been privy to the attempt, since it seemed clear that the train must have slowed down as it approached the fatal place; this, however, the driver strongly denied, and his denials were corroborated by the fireman. The report hinted that both men were probably lying.

  The ayah had finished the journey with the baby alone, handed the infant Reg
inald over to the first Government official she could find, indulged in a fit of hysterics, apparently under the impression that she was to be blamed for the whole thing, and then incontinently vanished.

  Lord Arthur wondered idly what Freud or Adler or any other Continental psychologist might have found to say about the possible effect of all this on the infant mind, and whether they would have traced a direct line from the telegraph pole in 1912 to the enamel on young Lacy’s fingernails today. Lord Arthur thought they probably would.

  The other file had even less news to impart. Lord Arthur, already tolerably conversant with the details of Dr Ghaijana’s restless career, skimmed hastily through the tale of his activities almost from the time of his birth, in Benares, of obscure and respectable middle-class parents, to his election to Parliament two years ago.

  He handed the folders back with a word of thanks.

  The young man, having no further excuse for remaining, hastily gulped the dregs of his coffee and departed.

  Lord Arthur wondered what to do next: for do something he felt he must.

  The question was answered for him. A ring on the telephone was followed by the appearance of his man with the information that Mr Lloyd-Evans was on the line.

  Mr Lloyd-Evans was brief. Could Lord Arthur come round to Carlton House Terrace and see him, at once? Lord Arthur promised to be there in ten minutes, sleuths and all.

  He was there in nine.

  Lloyd-Evans was pale but calm.

  ‘It’s come, Linton,’ he said, as soon as they were alone. ‘I knew it would, and it has.’

  ‘What has?’ Lord Arthur asked patiently. He disliked drama in the home, but could not deny that Mr Lloyd-Evans had every excuse.

  Lloyd-Evans spread his hands. ‘Exposure. Ruin.’

  ‘Oh?’ Lord Arthur felt he was being inadequate. ‘You mean, you’ve heard something?’

  ‘I have. I was rung up half an hour ago. I don’t know by whom. It was a man, and he simply said that my… my secret would be made public in two days’ time. They know I’ve talked, already. I’ve written out my resignation.’