Cyanide With Compliments

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  ‘Yes,’ said Drusilla decisively. ‘Then we can go home, I suppose?’

  ‘Certainly. Only let the police know if you go away from home, in case we want to contact you. I needn’t keep you any longer now.’

  As he watched them go out of the room they struck him again as young and defenceless. Then his misgivings returned.

  ‘What do you make of all that?’ he asked Toye.

  Toye looked up from screwing the top on to his pen. ‘You’d hardly think those two had done it, would you? But after all, it’s facts that tell, and there’s a proper build-up, isn’t there?’

  ‘There is,’ Pollard agreed, sitting on the edge of the table with his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘Let’s recap. They could have gone to the Honeydew shop and bought the chocolates on Tuesday afternoon. Mrs Lang could have brought cyanide back from the labs at the Tech on Wednesday evening. There was all night for doctoring the chocolates and packing ’em up, and on Thursday Lang goes up to London on perfectly legitimate business. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘What’s getting you, sir?’ asked Toye.

  Pollard frowned, balancing the heel of his right shoe on the toe of the left. ‘It’s so damned obvious,’ he said at last, ‘and they’re anything but fools, Lang especially. As you’ll have noticed, he’s got there, and realizes that they’re potentially in a spot. The girl may have a higher IQ, but she’s emotionally immature, and so steamed up at the moment that she doesn’t seem to see what it’s all adding up to. Unless she’s a first-class actress, that is… Of course, as far as the obviousness goes, it could be a double bluff. Then there’s the question of motive. The money’s one’s first reaction. But if Vickers was the sort to dash into action the moment she’d made up her mind about something, the Langs were a bit leisurely, don’t you think? And honestly, Toye, do you see those two committing murder for the sake of revenge, because I can’t? Even if the girl felt like it because of the things Vickers has said about her husband, she couldn’t have brought it off without his help because of posting the parcel in London on Thursday.’

  ‘We’ve only her word for where she was all Thursday,’ Toye objected.

  ‘I’ll grant you that, and we’ll have to do some checking up in Fulminster, but she’d never be such a fool as to lie about being at the Tech. It could be disproved in a moment… Well, as I said just now, the next step’s to see if I can get hold of this Partridge chap today. I expect he’s playing golf or sailing, the lucky devil.’

  Abandoning his balancing act, Pollard went in search of a telephone.

  5

  It transpired that Mr Edward Partridge, solicitor to the late Audrey Vickers, was neither golfing nor sailing, but mowing the lawn of his house in Marton, a village between Redbay and Highcastle. Over the telephone he sounded puffed and suggested that Pollard should call in with an alacrity which implied that a break would be welcome.

  Pollard cast an envious eye on the house as he drew up on the gravel sweep outside the front door. Two, or possibly three cottages had been amalgamated to form a long low building, pink-washed and newly thatched, with fascinating straw topknots on the ridge of the roof. The garden was beautifully kept, and the scent of wallflowers, lilac and cut grass filled the air. A large electric mower had been abandoned in the middle of the lawn. As he got out of the car Mr Partridge emerged from the house, bearing the signs of a hasty toilet. His large face was flushed from manual labour under the hot sun.

  ‘Superintendent Pollard? How d’ye do? Come along and have a spot of something, won’t you? It’s cooler inside.’

  ‘I’m sorry to break in on your sabbath,’ Pollard said, shaking hands, ‘but you know what time means on a job like this.’

  ‘Sabbath be blowed,’ Mr Partridge grumbled, leading the way across the hall. ‘Call it a day of rest! This damn grass is getting me down. Grows like wildfire. The chap who said the Greeks got where they did because they hadn’t any grass to cope with had got something. In here. We shan’t be disturbed.’

  Pollard followed him into a comfortably furnished study.

  ‘Sit down,’ said his host, indicating large leather-covered armchairs. ‘What’ll you drink?’

  When the cans of beer, tankards, cigarettes and tobacco jar had been collected, he lowered his considerable bulk into one of the chairs and eyed Pollard.

  ‘Well, Superintendent, what can I do for you?’

  ‘To begin with,’ Pollard replied, ‘I want you to tell me what sort of a person your late client was. Build her up in the round, so to speak. You’ve known her for some time, I take it?’

  ‘Not all that long. Roughly ten years.’

  ‘Is that ever since she settled in Redbay?’

  ‘No. She’d lived there for about seventeen years. Originally she employed another local solicitor, and a very good chap he was, too, but she fell out with him and transferred her business to us.’

  ‘Rows and drastic steps seem to have been characteristic of the lady,’ Pollard remarked. ‘To save time, I’d better explain that I’ve seen Mrs Lang, and had her back history and the reactions of Mrs Vickers to her marriage.’

  Mr Partridge took a little time over lighting his pipe and getting it to draw to his satisfaction.

  ‘My relationship with Mrs Vickers was purely professional,’ he said. ‘As a client she certainly wasn’t easy, although a sensible woman in some ways — over money matters, for instance. The trouble was in herself. In the modern jargon she suffered from a sense of insecurity, perhaps as the result of her early widowhood. I don’t know the details, but I understand that she married in the first months of the war, and that her husband was killed shortly afterwards. At all events, she was perpetually on the defensive, and on the lookout for threats to her well-being and security. She’d work herself into a frenzy about something, and want to take legal action. For instance, on one occasion she heard a rumour that the road she lived in was going to be widened by a slice being taken off the gardens. She rushed in to see me in a frantic state, wanting to apply for an injunction against the County Council. There wasn’t a grain of truth in it.’

  ‘We’re naturally very interested in any personal enmities that she had aroused,’ Pollard remarked.

  ‘Surprisingly, perhaps, in the light of what I’ve just said, I don’t think I can help you there,’ Mr Partridge replied. ‘She had various rows with her neighbours about parking and bonfires and what-have-you, and used to turn up gunning for somebody at intervals, but I always managed to head her off taking whoever it was to court. Anyway, it was all quite trivial, and used to subside in due course. Nothing more than that.’

  ‘No longstanding family or other feuds as far as you know?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Re Mrs Lang,’ Pollard went on after a short pause, ‘I gather that Mrs Vickers was highly possessive?’

  ‘This is the thing. She positively flaunted their relationship as though she was demonstrating to the world that she and Drusilla were all in all to each other. It had a pathetic side.’

  ‘It must have been appallingly bad for the girl.’

  ‘It was. Drusilla used to be brought to see me at intervals, sensibly, as I was her aunt’s executor, and it always struck me how immature she was, in spite of her undoubted intelligence. She was smothered by all the excessive care and interest and the demanding affection, of course.’

  ‘Then she went up to Oxford, grew up overnight, and the inevitable happened?’ queried Pollard.

  ‘Exactly. Tension soon began to develop, but I must say I didn’t expect the balloon to go up quite so dramatically. My God, I shall never forget Mrs Vickers arriving at the office the morning she got the letter from Drusilla saying that she was married.’

  ‘I suppose the Langs are married? I wondered if Mrs Vickers somehow found out that they were merely living together, and it was this which sparked off the final row. I thought they were unconvincing about the reason for it when I talked to them just now.’

  Mr Partridge looked inte
rested. ‘It’s an idea. When Mrs Vickers was being hysterically vindictive on Friday morning, I began to wonder if by any chance Drusilla was actually her child. Illegitimate, of course.’

  ‘We’ll be able to clear up both points,’ Pollard told him. ‘I’ve set enquiries going on the whole party. I’ll let you know the outcome.’

  ‘Thanks. Have another beer. Whether the Langs are married or not,’ Mr Partridge resumed when the glasses were refilled, ‘Mrs Vickers had something up her sleeve which seems likely to have been connected with them. At the end of our interview on Friday she instructed me to find her a reliable private enquiry agent.’

  ‘Without telling you what she wanted the chap for?’

  ‘Yes. She made it clear that she’d no intention of letting me in on it. My stock was low at that point. She’d just blown her top, actually.’

  Pollard seized the opportunity of broaching a delicate subject. ‘Can I take it that she was annoyed with you because of your reaction to the proposed alteration to her will? Mrs Lang told me just now that she’d been disinherited.’

  There was a pause. ‘Under the circumstances,’ Mr Partridge said, ‘I’m prepared to give you any information you ask for about my late client’s testamentary dispositions. On Friday morning she instructed me to draw up a fresh will for her, leaving her entire estate to charities.’

  ‘Did you do this on the spot?’ asked Pollard, with a sense of approaching the heart of the matter.

  ‘I did not. I thought it an outrageous step on her part. I attempted to discuss it, which merely resulted in her threatening to take her business to someone else. I then decided on delaying tactics, and said I would look up suitable charities before drafting the new will, and would let her know when it was ready for her to come in and sign. In the end she accepted this, but wasn’t best pleased. She was the kind of client who always wanted everything done at top speed. Like yourself, I felt that there was no convincing explanation of what had caused the explosion, and I hoped that things might calm down.’

  ‘So,’ said Pollard thoughtfully, ‘Mrs Lang still inherits under the existing will?’

  ‘She does.’

  ‘Is it a substantial estate?’

  ‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ replied Mr Partridge cautiously, ‘if it comes out eventually at something between fifty and sixty thousand pounds. Net, of course.’

  ‘I asked Mrs Lang how she could know for a fact that Mrs Vickers had disinherited her,’ Pollard resumed without comment, ‘and she admitted that she was assuming that her aunt did what she had said she was going to do — contact yourself and alter her will immediately she got home. Did she try to make an appointment earlier than last Friday? From what both you and Mrs Lang say the delay seems hardly in character.’

  ‘Yes, she did. She rang the office just before we closed on Tuesday evening. According to my secretary she was very agitated, and said she must see me urgently. When she heard I was away, I gather she hit the roof. She flatly refused to see either of my partners, though, and insisted on being given the first appointment on Friday morning, the day I was expected back.’

  ‘Will there be a record of that telephone call?’ Pollard asked. ‘It could be important.’

  Mr Partridge gave him a shrewd look. ‘I can see that,’ he said drily. ‘Yes, there’ll be a record.’

  On leaving Marton Pollard drove on to Highcastle for a hurried snack. He then called in at police headquarters to ask if any message had come through from the Yard. None had, and on learning that a local youth was helping with enquiries into the stabbing case, he took to the road again, feeling envious of Dart’s rapid progress.

  He soon found himself in a long stream of leisurely Sunday afternoon drivers making for Redbay, resigned himself to crawling, and began to mull over the morning’s interviews. Audrey Vickers could hardly have got back to her home on Tuesday much before she rang Partridge’s office, say, just on five-thirty pm. So she certainly hadn’t wasted much time in setting about making a new will. This lent credibility to Drusilla Lang’s alleged belief that she had been disinherited with extreme promptitude, but only up to a certain point. Had she really believed that Partridge would rush through a new will virtually on demand? She knew something of the old boy, and might very well have surmised that he’d play for time. And if she were guilty, she was quite sharp enough to realize the value of eliminating the obvious motive for her aunt’s murder.

  At this point the road widened sufficiently to allow Pollard to overtake the cars immediately ahead, but he soon arrived at the tail of another bunch, and had to slow down once more.

  It was interesting, he thought, that Partridge, too, had been struck by the absence of a convincing explanation of that last catastrophic row between Audrey Vickers and the Langs. It was true that the former wasn’t far off being unbalanced at times, and hadn’t been feeling well in Athens, but surely there simply must have been more to it than her being hipped at the young couple going off sightseeing on their own.

  Pollard literally sat up, and hastily stepped on the brake as the car shot forward several yards. Of all the fools, he thought… Why on earth hadn’t Olivia Strode occurred to him right away?

  For a brief moment he was back in his worrying case at Affacombe some years earlier. He was facing Olivia Strode across the tea-table in her cottage at Affacombe, a village about twenty miles from Highcastle. She was answering his questions with intelligence and composure. Then, quite suddenly, her habit of observation stimulated by her interest in local history had resulted in her giving him, quite unconsciously, that tiny vital clue…

  This could be it, he thought, reverting to the present. Drusilla Lang had said that Olivia Strode was around when Mrs Vickers was taken ill on the Acropolis, offered to help, and got slapped down for her pains. This was bound to have aroused her interest in the trio, and anyway the incident would have become a talking point on the ship. He’d ring her, and ask if he might run over to Affacombe. There was a sporting chance that she would be able to throw some light on what had happened between Audrey Vickers and the Langs. Better not mention the idea to Dart, though. Pollard grinned to himself, remembering the suspicion and resentment with which the latter had regarded Olivia’s involuntary involvement in the Affacombe affair.

  A few minutes later he drew up outside Lauriston, dispersing a group of ghoulish sightseers. Pointedly ignoring them, he strode up the garden path and was admitted to the house by Toye.

  ‘Any luck?’ Pollard asked, as the front door closed behind them.

  ‘Nothing useful so far,’ Toye told him, indicating neat little heaps of papers on the dining-room table. ‘That lot’s out of the bureau. Everything in good order and clipped together: she was business-like all right. Just receipts, things like her telly licence, minutes of some local committees, a lot of stuff about the cruise, and one or two personal letters of the trivial sort. I’ve checked through the address book and the list of telephone numbers she’d made, but none of the names match up with anybody on the passenger list. There was a good stock of stationery and stamps, and that’s the lot. I’ve been through the rest of the ground-floor rooms, and there’s nothing for us there either, unless you count a sort of sidelight on the lady’s state of mind. Take a look at these, sir.’

  Pollard followed him across the hall to the oak chest, where a pile of dusty framed photographs of Drusilla Lang had been stacked.

  ‘Found ’em at the back of the cupboard under the stairs,’ Toye explained.

  Pollard studied them with interest. The sequence recorded Drusilla’s evolution from small child to schoolgirl, and on to adolescent and undergraduate. Some were studio portraits and others enlarged snapshots. Several showed her with her aunt. Pollard picked out one of these.

  ‘This one would look perfectly right pinned up in a glass showcase outside a theatre,’ he remarked. ‘Mrs Audrey Vickers playing the devoted aunt in We Belong Together. Judging from the dust I should think the whole lot were weeded out and dumped in the cupb
oard some time ago. Probably at the time of the Lang marriage last summer. Rejection retorts to rejection, I suppose. Have you had a look round upstairs yet? If only the woman had kept a diary or all her old letters.’

  ‘Not yet, sir. I was on my way up when I heard the car.’

  It was Pollard who discovered the locked deed-box in the linen-cupboard. After experimenting with various keys from the keyring in Audrey Vickers’ handbag they opened it hopefully, but the contents were disappointing. There were some pieces of good old-fashioned jewellery, a passport, a bank statement showing a very comfortable credit balance, and a copy of her will. Pollard had just begun to read this when the telephone rang. Toye answered it, and reported that it was Highcastle with a message from the Yard.

  Pollard took the call on the extension in Audrey Vickers’ bedroom, making notes. His eyebrows went up suddenly. Finally he thanked his informant and swung round to Toye.

  ‘So what?’ he demanded with some excitement. ‘In October 1939 Audrey Vickers — Hurst, as she was then — married a chap called Donald Vickers described as being a member of HM’s armed forces. According to Partridge she let it be understood that he’d been killed early on in the war, but there’s no record of his death, either in this country or on active service, and he was never reported missing.’

  ‘Walked out on her after he was demobbed, and changed his name, and she was too proud to let on?’ Toye suggested.

  ‘Look here,’ Pollard said, ‘it’s just possible we’re on to something. I haven’t finished telling you everything I got from Partridge this morning. When Audrey Vickers went to see him last Friday morning about changing her will, she asked him to find her a reliable private dick.’