He pushed the thought away from him and tried, as an hour ago, to concentrate on trifles. That P-shaped tear was still just as it had been, but the loose button had been dragged off by Lloyd-Evans’ sliding weight; Lord Arthur bent and retrieved it from under the bench. As he straightened up, his hand, still in the gloom under the bench, knocked against some obstruction and he was conscious of a sharp prick.
For once in his life Lord Arthur gave way to something like panic. For a moment he stared stupidly at a tiny speck of blood on his thumb: then, remembering in a flash what Sir William had said about the curious properties of curare, he began feverishly to suck at the spot.
One of his neighbours grasped the situation.
‘Sir Hubert!’ he shouted. ‘Here – quick!’
The reader is now in possession of all the clues which enabled the Commissioner of Police, five minutes after the events narrated, to make an arrest.
Readers are invited to answer the following questions:
1 Who killed the murdered ministers?
2 How did the poisoned thorns reach the victims?
3 What were the hidden facts behind the murders?
These questions were set to those who read the book in serial form. In spite of a very large number of entries, no fully correct set of answers was received. Readers of this book may like to amuse themselves by pausing at this point, and reflecting what answers they might have sent in.
chapter twenty-one
Postscript to Politics
‘I was wrong,’ the new Secretary of State for India admitted, handsomely. ‘Utterly and completely wrong.’
‘It was a brilliant idea, though, darling,’ consoled his fiancée. ‘And I was even more wrong than you.’
‘No, no,’ the new Secretary for India demurred. ‘I was the wronger – I mean, the more wrong.’
They had only been engaged for twenty-four hours, and were still in the maudlin stage.
His fiancée selected a lock of the new Secretary for India’s hair and rolled it with considerable care into one of the new sausage curls. She poised the curl on the top of the Secretary’s head and regarded it with loving admiration.
‘You look sweet like that,’ she pronounced.
The Secretary for India kissed her.
‘I should never make a detective,’ he resumed, some moments later. From his tone one might have gathered that to make a detective had always been his real ambition; the India Office was only a stop by the way.
‘You would make a detective, darling,’ retorted his fiancée with indignation.
‘I was too clever.’
‘But you are clever.’
‘I ought to have listened to the experts. Both MacFerris and Greene couldn’t understand those thorns. They told me dozens of times that they didn’t see how a fatal dose of curare could be injected even by three or four thorns. I ought to have tumbled to it that the thorns were a blind.’
‘If Scotland Yard didn’t, why should you?’ demanded his fiancée hotly. ‘I think you did awfully well, Arthur, and you would make a detective.’
Lord Arthur smiled up at her. Even he found difficulty in recognising in this delightfully affectionate, clinging person the old self-sufficient Isabel. He thanked his stars for the thousandth time that he had had the wit to realise at last who was the right man for Isabel, and had wasted no time in telling her. The wonder still was that Isabel should have agreed. Love makes altruists of us all.
It was just one week since the final scene in the House, and by a series of emergency measures which had left the old Parliamentarians gasping, the India Bill had received the Royal Assent that same morning and was now law. Lord Arthur had been rewarded for his share with the vacant Secretaryship, and was now finding himself, to his bewilderment, the most popular man in the country. The Government press agents were confident, too, that they could maintain him in that position for a whole week, till a visiting American film star who could dance the tango with unusually sinuous lusciousness was unfortunately due to arrive.
Lord Arthur had come that afternoon from a final conference at Scotland Yard in which the last threads of the mystery had been unravelled and the full body of evidence at last assembled. He had already made a brief report to the Prime Minister and now, over an early glass of sherry, was making a much fuller one to his fiancée.
Isabel suddenly began to giggle. Lord Arthur had never even guessed that she was capable of giggling.
‘That shriek of mine in the House. I shall never forget it. Nor, I should think, will the House.’
Lord Arthur smiled, then looked serious. ‘If we’d been right, it might have saved my life.’
‘You really forgot about your tie?’
‘Completely. I never thought I could get so carried away by my own oratory.’
‘And you thought that there might be thorns in your tie all the time? Darling, how awful. What did it feel like? You were terribly brave.’
Lord Arthur thought. ‘No, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t see how there possibly could be. They wouldn’t have been expecting me to speak, for one thing. No, I’m afraid I wasn’t really so brave.’
‘You were. Terribly.’ Isabel changed her position on the arm of his chair. ‘So it’s really all cleared up at last. I can hardly believe it. Even about poor Mr Lloyd-Evans?’
‘Yes. Most probably hydrocyanic acid. Apparently almost indetectible.’
Isabel shivered. ‘And it was meant for father! I shall never be able to forget that when… when there’s a discussion about the death penalty again. I know it’s all wrong, but the personal aspect does affect one’s views.’
There was a little silence. Then:
‘How were the police able to eliminate Mr Frith?’ Isabel asked. ‘Eric was on the other side of Mr Lloyd-Evans…’
‘The button was there before he came into the House,’ Lord Arthur put in. ‘I saw it myself, though, of course, I didn’t know what I was looking at.’
‘Yes, but how did they know Mr Frith hadn’t put it there? He was sitting beside Lord Wellacombe and Mr Middleton, too, you see.’
‘Oh, I don’t think there was ever any suspicion on Frith. He was much too cut up over Wellacombe. Besides… no, except for that one point there were no grounds against him at all.’
‘They certainly took everyone in with thorns,’ Isabel mused. The button idea, after all, was so much simpler.’
‘A tiny hypodermic syringe made up as a button, just holding the right amount and, of course, acting through the pressure when anyone sat on it. Yes, it was clever. But for all that I ought to have realised that the exact place to be occupied by the intended victim was important. Lloyd-Evans told me as much, but neither of us realised what it meant. And I saw for myself that there was a button missing from the seat where both Wellacombe and Middleton had sat.’
‘The police had searched the benches beforehand?’
‘Oh, of course. A permanent arrangement would have been detected at once. The button was simply plugged in each time just in advance. It’s been established now that Lacy was in his seat each time before questions, crossed the floor to speak to Lloyd-Evans in a pause just as he did to me, and then went out into the lobby, to follow the speaker in quite innocently.’
‘If the police had searched people before the speeches instead of after, they’d have caught him.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Lord Arthur objected. ‘He only had to plug the button in beside his own place. No one would have noticed it.’
‘Mr Lacy!’ Isabel murmured. ‘It’s extraordinary that we never suspected him. It’s so obvious now that he must have put that last letter in the box downstairs when he went down to get that Indian newspaper.’
‘Well, you know, I did vaguely suspect him. I admit I forgot all about the newspaper: it was so natural and ordinary it simply didn’t register. But I’d always thought there was something queer about the fellow. I can’t say I’d ever realised that he really is an Indian, but I should never have
been surprised to learn it.’
‘It’s astonishing. He admitted it in the end?’
‘He exulted in it. Of course, we ought to have spotted it. I felt at the time that there was something fishy about that accident in 1912, with only Colonel and Mrs Lacy killed and the ayah disappearing directly afterwards. Of course, they were murdered. What a plan, with twenty years to wait before it could even begin to work!’
‘It really was planned as long ago as that?’
‘According to Lesley, it must have been. The substitution for the Lacy infant of another child of North Indian stock, which is white enough to pass as a European so long as no suspicion is aroused; the means taken to ensure that the child would be brought up as an Englishman; and then the revelation which must have been made to him round about his twenty-first birthday of the purpose for which he had been chosen and the duty that had fallen on him.’
‘The duty being to work for the independence of India by any means in his power?’
‘Exactly.’ Lord Arthur paused. ‘The evidence is plain enough, now we know. Lacy did undergo a remarkable change when he was twenty-one. From that time he worked for nothing but a position in our political system which would enable him to push ahead with his plans. It’s funny how the blood persisted, in spite of his upbringing: scent and all that. And from the way he enamelled his fingernails, obviously to cover the dark half-moons, he must have been terrified all the time of being found out.’
‘He really did feel strongly about his own country,’ Isabel put in. ‘You remember how bitterly he spoke that afternoon here.’
‘Certainly he did, poor devil. And he never doubted that the end justified any means. You understand his motive, don’t you? He was anxious to stop the passage of the Bill, which would certainly have been a big block to the Separatist campaign, but he also hoped to push on a Labour Government here which would mean the India Office for himself. As Secretary he could do vastly more for his people than as a mere member of the Opposition. He came within an ace of it, too.’
‘But India as a whole doesn’t want Separation.’
‘That doesn’t matter. Lacy’s lot wanted it. And so do people like the Maharajah of Barghiala.’
‘By the way, what was Lacy’s connection with the Maharajah?’
‘There’s no evidence of any, so far as I know. Lacy visited Barghiala in his travels, and certainly he learned of the platinum deposits there, but I don’t know of any other connection.’
Isabel was still considering the personal side.
‘Did he really intend to marry Sheila Lloyd-Evans, Arthur?’
‘I dare say. She’d have been of great use to him. The fact that Lloyd-Evans wouldn’t hear of it accounts for Lacy’s enmity and the attempts to incriminate Lloyd-Evans with the box of thorns and the delivery of the Brown Hand letter.’
‘Mr Lacy delivered that letter himself, in disguise?’
‘Oh, no. He wasn’t the same build at all. The police have got hold of some seedy actor who admits having done it, for a pretty substantial reward. People like that will be turning up. Lacy had a big organisation, as we knew he must have, and plenty of money at his disposal. Probably half the people working for him didn’t know what they were doing. It will all disintegrate quietly now. Scotland Yard believe the foreigners have skedaddled already.’
‘It’s extraordinary that he never gave himself away,’ Isabel commented.
‘Well, he did in a way, to me,’ Lord Arthur had to admit. ‘Either he got careless, or he didn’t think I mattered. Over Ghaijana’s birthplace, for instance,’ Lord Arthur went on, disregarding his fiancée’s snort of indignation. ‘He told me that Ghaijana was born in Barghiala, but I’ve seen his birth certificate and the place was Benares. And do you remember how he said to us, “Once a native always a native”? He was talking about the Native States, but it held all right. I don’t think it was he who spoke to Lloyd-Evans on the telephone; that would have been an unnecessary risk; but Lloyd-Evans recognised something familiar about the voice, though he couldn’t place it. It was the intonation, of course. Lacy had the Indian’s rather high voice.’
‘Poor Mr Lloyd-Evans!’
Lord Arthur nodded. ‘I dare say it was the best thing that could have happened. No one will, know his secret now, whatever it was.’
‘Mr Lacy – I must still call him that – got on the track of it through Sheila?’
‘That seems obvious, though no doubt Sheila has no idea of it herself. It would be some discrepancy in dates or something like that no doubt, which gave Lacy his clue; and he was astute enough to follow it up.’
‘And Dr Ghaijana had nothing to do with it?’
‘Nothing at all. Lacy’s motive there was obvious. Ghaijana had actually begun to suspect him; and where could Ghaijana do less harm than in prison, where all that he said about Lacy would be disbelieved? Actually, everything he said was true. Lacy did plant the thorns in his room.’
‘Those thorns! How they took us all in.’
‘There was no excuse,’ Lord Arthur maintained, honestly. ‘We were told again and again that even four thorns couldn’t hold thirty milligrams of curare. I admit I thought of Lacy in connection with the thorns, but there was no possibility of him planting them on Wellacombe and Middleton in the lobbies; they were much too well guarded. And, of course, any attempt to do so across the floor of the House itself would have been seen instantly. Lacy started the hare of sleight-of-hand in the lobby for his own purposes, but even at the time I thought it impossible, and so did the police.’
‘Well, you were right there, darling,’ Isabel said, fondly.
‘On one point, yes,’ Lord Arthur smiled. ‘Not a very good bag. I even saw Middleton give a kind of start when he sat down on the needle, but that never registered either.’
‘You mean, he felt the prick?’
‘Well, it was probably a reflex action. The doctors say he wouldn’t have consciously felt the prick, not expecting it – any more than they themselves found the puncture.’
‘They should have found it, surely?’
‘They say it would be almost impossible. It’s not a smooth-skinned part of the body, you see. And, naturally, they were concentrating on the exposed parts.’
‘I shall never forgive our ingenious idea for not being right,’ Isabel said.
‘That the poison was introduced from the thorns through the characteristic gestures on the part of the speakers – Wellacombe pulling at his lapels, Middleton stroking the back of his head, and so on. Yes, it was ingenious. But it still left us with the worse problem of how the thorns could have been fixed so conveniently in the right place under the eyes of the police; and, of course, that was impossible. By the way, it was something MacFerris said that gave me the idea. He referred to a curare-smeared scratch on the ball of Wellacombe’s thumb. Why, I wondered, just there? And, of course, I remembered how Wellacombe always used to tug at his lapels.’ Lord Arthur meditated a moment. ‘There are still one or two curious points. Why that scratch on Wellacombe’s thumb after all? There was only one thorn found in his case, you remember. Yes, and for that matter why only one thorn?’
‘Do you know,’ Isabel exclaimed, ‘I believe we were meant to think that, about the gestures. To put us off the scent. That’s why the thorns were at the back of Mr Middleton’s neck.’
‘You’ve hit it, my darling,’ agreed Lord Arthur. He looked at her with fond admiration. Isabel could see farther with one eye than he could with two. ‘Of course, that’s it. And I tumbled plump into the trap.’
‘And I shouldn’t be surprised,’ Isabel went on, ‘if they left only one thorn in the first case out of sheer ignorance. After the ball of the thumb had been scratched with it, of course. When the doctors began making a fuss about the size of the fatal dose, the number of thorns was increased.’
Lord Arthur considered the point.
‘Yes, that’s possible. On the other hand, I’ve always suspected that they didn’t intend to kill Wellac
ombe, only to frighten him; but he was an oldish man, and a dose that might not have proved fatal in other cases was too much for him. That certainly would explain Mansel’s participation better.’
‘I haven’t really grasped yet how Mr Mansel did come into it. You know I’ve hardly seen you this last week.’
‘Except for a couple of minutes I snatched to propose to you,’ Lord Arthur smiled. ‘Well, the Mansel connection puzzled me at first, but I think it’s fairly clear now.
‘The essential thing to remember about Mansel is that he wasn’t a crook financier. His companies were honest, and he did really feel a big responsibility to his shareholders. He told me so himself more than once, and I believed him. That, combined with his knowledge of the platinum deposits in Barghiala, was his sole motive for mixing himself up in the plot.
‘He was in touch with the Terrorists, we knew, and somehow he got on to Lacy. They laid the plot together; but I’m quite sure Mansel never intended murder. Lacy led him up the path there.
‘Mansel, you must remember, was desperate. His huge organisation in India was wrecked; he must have known some of his small shareholders were in despair. If the Company had to be wound up, there would be a crop of suicides, just as there has been since his death, and any number of worthy people would be ruined. Mansel was ready to go to pretty far lengths to stop that happening. I don’t know, he may even have been reconciled to the murder of a Minister or two, setting it as a lesser evil than the suicide of a dozen humbler folk. But I think he only meant to frighten the Government out of the Bill. So he and Lacy concocted this plot by which Lacy should be responsible for the button which really did the work, while Mansel should plant the misleading thorns on the victims in the rush and confusion afterwards; and, of course, we know that Mansel was one of the first to reach both Wellacombe and Middleton.
‘Whether they were equal partners, whether Lacy was the dominant one and double-crossed Mansel by killing instead of paralysing and then using Mansel’s connivance to blackmail him into helping with the next case, whether Mansel all the time was no more than Lacy’s tool, we shall probably never learn. It doesn’t really matter very much. But what brought about Mansel’s death was almost certainly his reluctance to kill your father. He was terribly upset over Middleton’s death; and he signed his own death warrant when he refused to co-operate in your father’s. I’d worked on him a bit, you know, and I’d actually brought him to the point of talking. I don’t know what he’d have told me at that interview we arranged, but probably quite a lot. What I can never forgive myself for is the fact that it was I who tipped Lacy off about Mansel’s intention to spill the beans.
Death in the House Page 21
