The Mistletoe Murder

by P. D. James

  But this was hardly a point of view he could put forward comfortably to his present companion.

  Canon Hubert Boxdale was Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh’s godfather. Dalgliesh’s father had been his Oxford contemporary and lifelong friend. He had been an admirable godfather: affectionate, uncensorious, genuinely concerned. In Dalgliesh’s childhood, he had always been mindful of birthdays and imaginative about a small boy’s preoccupations and desires.

  Dalgliesh was very fond of him and privately thought him one of the few really good men he had known. It was only surprising that the Canon had managed to live to seventy-one in a carnivorous world in which gentleness, humility and unworldliness are hardly conducive to survival, let alone success. But his goodness had in some sense protected him. Faced with such manifest innocence, even those who exploited him, and they were not a few, extended some of the protection and compassion they might show to the slightly subnormal.

  “Poor old darling,” his daily woman would say, pocketing pay for six hours when she had worked five and helping herself to a couple of eggs from his refrigerator. “He’s really not fit to be let out alone.” It had surprised the then young and slightly priggish Detective Constable Dalgliesh to realise that the Canon knew perfectly well about the hours and the eggs, but thought that Mrs. Copthorne, with five children and an indolent husband, needed both more than he did. He also knew that if he started paying for five hours she would promptly work only four and extract another two eggs, and that this small and only dishonesty was somehow necessary to her self-esteem. He was good. But he was not a fool.

  He and his wife were, of course, poor. But they were not unhappy; indeed it was a word impossible to associate with the Canon. The death of his two sons in the 1939 war had saddened but not destroyed him. But he had anxieties. His wife was suffering from disseminated sclerosis and was finding it increasingly hard to manage. There were comforts and appliances which she would need. He was now, belatedly, about to retire and his pension would be small. A legacy of fifty thousand pounds would enable them both to live in comfort for the rest of their lives and would also, Dalgliesh had no doubt, give them the pleasure of doing more for their various lame dogs. Really, he thought, the Canon was an almost embarrassingly deserving candidate for a modest fortune. Why couldn’t the dear, silly old noodle take the cash and stop worrying? He said cunningly: “Great Aunt Allie was found Not Guilty, you know, by an English jury. And it all happened nearly seventy years ago. Couldn’t you bring yourself to accept their verdict?”

  But the Canon’s scrupulous mind was totally impervious to such sly innuendos. Dalgliesh told himself that he should have remembered what, as a small boy, he had discovered about Uncle Hubert’s conscience—that it operated as a warning bell and that, unlike most people, Uncle Hubert never pretended that it hadn’t sounded or that he hadn’t heard it or that, having heard it, something must be wrong with the mechanism.

  “Oh, I did, while she was alive. We never met after my grandfather’s death, you know. I didn’t wish to force myself on her. After all, she was a wealthy woman. My grandfather made a new will on his marriage and left her all he possessed. Our ways of life were very different. But I usually wrote briefly at Christmas and she sent a card in reply. I wanted to keep some contact in case, one day, she might want someone to turn to, and would remember that I am a priest.”

  And why should she want that, thought Dalgliesh. To clear her conscience? Was that what the dear old boy had in mind? So he must have had some doubts from the beginning. But of course he had; Dalgliesh knew something of the story, and the general feeling of the family and friends was that Great Aunt Allie had been extremely lucky to escape the gallows.

  His own father’s view, expressed with reticence, reluctance and compassion, had not in essentials differed from that given by a local reporter at the time: “How on earth did she expect to get away with it? Damned lucky to escape topping if you ask me.”

  “The news of the legacy came as a complete surprise?” Dalgliesh asked the Canon.

  “Indeed, yes. I saw her just once at that first and only Christmas, six weeks after her marriage when my grandfather died. We always talk of her as Great Aunt Allie but in fact, as you know, she married my grandfather. But it seemed impossible to think of her as a step-grandmother.

  “There was the usual family gathering at Colebrook Croft at the time I was there with my parents and my twin sisters. I was barely four and the twins were just eight months old. I can remember nothing of my grandfather or of his wife. After the murder—if one has to use that dreadful word—my mother returned home with us children, leaving my father to cope with the police, the solicitors and the newsmen. It was a terrible time for him. I don’t think I was even told that my grandfather was dead until about a year later. My old nurse, Nellie, who had been given Christmas as a holiday to visit her own family, told me that, soon after my return home. I asked her if grandfather was now young and beautiful for always. She, poor woman, took it as a sign of infant prognostication and piety. Poor Nellie was sadly superstitious and sentimental, I’m afraid. But I knew nothing of Grandfather’s death at the time and certainly can recall nothing of that Christmas visit or of my new step-grandmother. Mercifully, I was little more than a baby when the murder was done.”

  “She was a music-hall artist, wasn’t she?” asked Dalgliesh.

  “Yes, and a very talented one. My grandfather met her when she was working with a partner in a hall in Cannes. He had gone to the South of France, with his man-servant, for his health. I understood that she extracted a gold watch from his chain and, when he claimed it, told him that he was English, had recently suffered from a stomach ailment, had two sons and a daughter, and was about to have a wonderful surprise. It was all correct except that his only daughter had died in childbirth leaving him a granddaughter, Marguerite Goddard.”

  “That was all easily guessable from Boxdale’s voice and appearance,” said Dalgliesh. “I can only suppose the surprise was the marriage?”

  “It was certainly a surprise, and a most unpleasant one for the family. It is easy to deplore the snobbishness and the conventions of another age and, indeed, there was much in Edwardian England to deplore, but it was not a propitious marriage. I think of the difference in background, education and way of life, the lack of common interests. And there was the disparity of age. Grandfather had married a girl just three months younger than his own granddaughter. I cannot wonder that the family were concerned, that they felt that the union could not, in the end, contribute to the contentment or happiness of either party.”

  And that was putting it charitably, thought Dalgliesh. The marriage certainly hadn’t contributed to their happiness. From the point of view of the family, it had been a disaster. He recalled hearing of an incident when the local vicar and his wife, a couple who had actually dined at Colebrook Croft on the night of the murder, first called on the bride. Apparently old Augustus Boxdale had introduced her, saying: “Meet the prettiest little variety artiste in the business. Took a gold watch and notecase off me without any trouble. Would have had the elastic out of my pants if I hadn’t watched out. Anyway, she stole my heart, didn’t you, sweetheart?”

  All this was accompanied by a hearty slap on the rump and a squeal of delight from the lady who had promptly demonstrated her skill by extracting the Reverend Arthur Venable’s bunch of keys from his left ear.

  Dalgliesh thought it tactful not to remind the Canon of this story.

  “What do you wish me to do, Sir?” he enquired.

  “It’s asking a great deal, I know, when you’re so busy. But if I had your assurance that you believed in Aunt Allie’s innocence, I should feel happy about accepting the bequest. I wondered if it would be possible for you to see the records of the trial. Perhaps it would give you a clue. You’re so clever at this sort of thing.”

  He spoke without flattery but with an innocent wonder at the strange vocations of men. Dalgliesh was, indeed, very clever at this sort of thin
g. A dozen or so men at present occupying security wings in HM prisons could testify to Chief Superintendent Dalgliesh’s cleverness, as, indeed, could a handful of others walking free whose defending counsel had been in their own way as clever as Chief Superintendent Dalgliesh. But to re-examine a case over sixty years old seemed to require clairvoyance rather than cleverness. The trial judge and both learned counsels had been dead for over fifty years. Two world wars had taken their toll. Four reigns had passed. It was highly probable that, of those who had slept under the roof of Colebrook Croft on that fateful Boxing Day night of 1901, only the Canon still survived. But the old man was troubled and had sought his help, and Dalgliesh, with a day or two’s leave due to him, had the time to give it.

  “I’ll do what I can,” he promised.

  —

  The transcript of a trial which had taken place sixty-seven years ago took time and trouble to obtain even for a Chief Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police. It provided little comfort for the Canon. Mr. Justice Bellows had summed up with that avuncular simplicity with which he was wont to address juries, regarding them as a panel of well-intentioned but cretinous children. And the facts could have been comprehended by any child. Part of the summing up set them out with lucidity:

  “And so, gentlemen of the jury, we come to the night of December twenty-sixth. Mr. Augustus Boxdale, who had perhaps indulged a little unwisely on Christmas Day, had retired to bed in his dressing room after luncheon, suffering from a recurrence of the slight indigestive trouble which had afflicted him for most of his life. You will have heard that he had taken luncheon with the members of his family and ate nothing which they, too, did not eat. You may feel you can acquit luncheon of anything worse than over-richness.

  “Dinner was served at eight p.m. promptly, as was the custom at Colebrook Croft. There were present at that meal Mrs. Augustus Boxdale, the deceased’s bride; his elder son, Captain Maurice Boxdale, with his wife; his younger son, the Reverend Henry Boxdale, with his wife; his granddaughter Miss Marguerite Goddard; and two neighbours, the Reverend and Mrs. Arthur Venables.

  “You have heard how the accused took only the first course at dinner, which was ragout of beef, and then, at about eight-twenty, left the dining room to sit with her husband. Shortly after nine o’clock she rang for the parlour maid, Mary Huddy, and ordered a basin of gruel to be brought up to Mr. Boxdale. You have heard that the deceased was fond of gruel, and indeed as prepared by Mrs. Muncie, the cook, it sounds a most nourishing dish for an elderly gentleman of weak digestion.

  “You have heard Mrs. Muncie describe how she prepared the gruel according to Mrs. Beaton’s admirable recipe and in the presence of Mary Huddy in case, as she said, ‘The master should take a fancy to it when I’m not at hand and you have to make it.’ After the gruel had been prepared, Mrs. Muncie tasted it with a spoon and Mary Huddy carried it upstairs to the main bedroom together with a jug of water to thin the gruel if it were too strong. As she reached the door, Mrs. Boxdale came out, her hands full of stockings and underclothes. She has told you that she was on her way to the bathroom to wash them through. She asked the girl to put the basin of gruel on the washstand by the window and Mary Huddy did so in her presence. Miss Huddy has told us that at the time she noticed the bowl of flypapers soaking in water and she knew that this solution was one used by Mrs. Boxdale as a cosmetic wash. Indeed, all the women who spent that evening in the house, with the exception of Mrs. Venables, have told you that they knew that it was Mrs. Boxdale’s practice to prepare this solution of flypapers.

  “Mary Huddy and the accused left the bedroom together and you have heard the evidence of Mrs. Muncie that Miss Huddy returned to the kitchen after an absence of only a few minutes. Shortly after nine o’clock, the ladies left the dining room and entered the drawing room to take coffee. At nine-fifteen p.m., Miss Goddard excused herself to the company and said that she would go to see if her grandfather needed anything. The time is established precisely because the clock struck the quarter-hour as she left and Mrs. Venables commented on the sweetness of its chime. You have also heard Mrs. Venables’ evidence and the evidence of Mrs. Maurice Boxdale and Mrs. Henry Boxdale that none of the ladies left the drawing room during the evening, and Mr. Venables has testified that the three gentlemen remained together until Miss Goddard appeared about three-quarters of an hour after to inform them that her grandfather had become very ill and to request that the doctor be sent for immediately.

  “Miss Goddard has told you that, when she entered her grandfather’s room, he was just finishing his gruel and was grumbling about its taste. She got the impression that this was merely a protest at being deprived of his dinner rather than that he genuinely considered there was something wrong with the gruel. At any rate, he finished most of it and appeared to enjoy it despite his grumbles.

  “You have heard Miss Goddard describe how, after her grandfather had had as much as he wanted of the gruel, she took the bowl next door and left it on the washstand. She then returned to her grandfather’s bedroom and Mr. Boxdale, his wife and his granddaughter played three-handed whist for about three-quarters of an hour.

  “At ten o’clock Mr. Augustus Boxdale complained of feeling very ill. He suffered from griping pains in the stomach, from sickness and from looseness of the bowels. As soon as the symptoms began Miss Goddard went downstairs to let her uncles know that her grandfather was worse and to ask that Doctor Eversley should be sent for urgently. Doctor Eversley has given you his evidence. He arrived at Colebrook Croft at ten-thirty p.m., when he found his patient very distressed and weak. He treated the symptoms and gave what relief he could but Mr. Augustus Boxdale died shortly before midnight.

  “Gentlemen of the jury, you have heard Marguerite Goddard describe how, as her grandfather’s paroxysms increased in intensity, she remembered the gruel and wondered whether it could have disagreed with him in some way. She mentioned this possibility to her elder uncle, Captain Maurice Boxdale. Captain Boxdale has told you how he handed the bowl with its residue of gruel to Doctor Eversley with the request that the doctor should lock it in a cupboard in the library, seal the lock and keep the key. You have heard how the contents of the bowl were later analysed and with what results.”

  An extraordinary precaution for the gallant captain to have taken, thought Dalgliesh, and a most perspicacious young woman. Was it by chance or by design that the bowl hadn’t been taken down to be washed up as soon as the old man had finished with it? Why was it, he wondered, that Marguerite Goddard hadn’t rung for the parlour maid and requested her to remove it? Miss Goddard appeared the only other suspect. He wished he knew more about her.

  But, except for those main protagonists, the characters in the drama did not emerge very clearly from the trial report. Why, indeed, should they? The British accusatorial system of trial is designed to answer one question: is the accused guilty beyond reasonable doubt of the crime charged? Exploration of the nuances of personality, speculation and gossip have no place in the witness box. The two Boxdale brothers came out as very dull fellows indeed. They and their estimable, respectable, sloping-bosomed wives had sat at dinner in full view of each other from eight until after nine o’clock (a substantial meal, that dinner) and had said so in the witness box, more or less in identical words. The ladies’ bosoms might have been heaving with far from estimable emotions of dislike, envy, embarrassment or resentment of the interloper. If so, they didn’t tell the court.

  But the two brothers and their wives were clearly innocent, even if a detective of that time could have conceived of the guilt of a gentlefolk so well respected, so eminently respectable. Even their impeccable alibis had a nice touch of social and sexual distinction. The Reverend Arthur Venables had vouched for the gentlemen, his good wife for the ladies. Besides, what motive had they? They could no longer gain financially by the old man’s death. If anything, it was in their interests to keep him alive in the hope that disillusion with his marriage or a return to sanity might occur to cause him to
change his will. So far Dalgliesh had learned nothing that could cause him to give the Canon the assurance for which he hoped.

  It was then that he remembered Aubrey Glatt. Glatt was a wealthy amateur criminologist who had made a study of all the notable Victorian and Edwardian poison cases. He was not interested in anything earlier or later, being as obsessively wedded to his period as any serious historian, which indeed he had some claim to call himself. He lived in a Georgian house in Winchester—his affection for the Victorian and Edwardian age did not extend to its architecture—and was only three miles from Colebrook Croft. A visit to the London Library disclosed that he hadn’t written a book on the case but it was improbable that he had totally neglected a crime close at hand and so in period. Dalgliesh had occasionally helped him with the technical details of police procedure. Glatt, in response to a telephone call, was happy to return the favour with the offer of afternoon tea and information.

  Tea was served in his elegant drawing room by a parlour maid wearing a frilly cap with streamers. Dalgliesh wondered what wage Glatt paid her to persuade her to wear it. She looked as if she could have played a role in any of his favourite Victorian dreams and Dalgliesh had an uncomfortable thought that arsenic might be dispensed with the cucumber sandwiches. Glatt nibbled away and was expansive.

  “It’s interesting that you should have taken this sudden and, if I may say so, somewhat inexplicable interest in the Boxdale murder; I got out my notebook on the case only yesterday. Colebrook Croft is being demolished to make way for a new housing estate and I thought I would visit it for the last time. The family, of course, haven’t lived there since the 1914–18 war. Architecturally, it’s completely undistinguished but one grieves to see it go. We might drive over after tea if you are agreeable.