Tragedy at Law

by Cyril Hare

  He paused for dramatic effect.

  “… With immediate, and, I may say, startling results.”

  Another pause, which was evidently designed to be broken by the excited ejaculations of his audience. As these, however, were not forthcoming, he went on:

  “The substance hissed, sizzled and disintegrated before my eyes! A pungent and unmistakable odour arose. The application of water to the substance had produced no other than acetylene gas. In other words, the contents of this sweetmeat proved to be——”

  “Carbide?” said the Judge.

  Flack beamed. His audience, though less responsive than the chocolate, had at last shown signs of reaction.

  “No less,” he said. “Ordinary, or, as my dear wife would put it, common or garden carbide.”

  “But how very extraordinary,” said Hilda.

  “Remarkable, is it not? But naturally my researches did not stop there,” Flack went on hastily, determined to finish his story. “I proceeded to examine the remaining contents of the box (taking pains, needless to say, to avoid obliterating any finger-prints there might be upon them) with a view to ascertaining (a) the modus operandi of the individual who had tampered with them in this extraordinary fashion, and (b) the number which had been so treated. Taking (b) first—if I may be excused the departure from chronological order—I found that of the three layers contained in the box the uppermost alone had apparently been touched by any hand since they left the shop. I can guarantee that you will be perfectly safe, Lady Barber, in indulging your taste for confectionery so long as you confine your attentions strictly to what I may describe as the ground and first floors.”

  He smacked his lips in appreciation of his own witticism and continued:

  “It is in the attics alone that danger resides. Close examination—and this is not a matter demanding any chemical knowledge—it is perfectly visible to the unaided eye of Scotland Yard, or if you will, of a High Court Judge (which, personally, I should, if I may say so, rate far the higher of the two) close examination, I repeat, shows quite clearly—I am dealing with (a) now, Judge—that each of these chocolates has at some time been neatly bisected at the circumference by some sharp instrument (such as, for example, the humble but efficient razor blade which I employed myself) and that thereafter the two halves have been replaced, the resulting point of junction being secured by the application of sufficient heat at that point to make the union (or reunion, rather) binding. Do I make myself clear?”

  Silence being traditionally taken to mean consent, he went on.

  “When I say that the chocolate had been bisected, I must not be taken as meaning more than I literally say. I do not mean that the original interior—which was, I understand, of a hard and brittle nature, had also been divided. That would have been to impose upon the operator an arduous and unnecessary labour, besides entailing the risk of blunting the delicate instrument which I premise as having been employed. No! It was merely the carapace (if I may use the term, somewhat inaccurately, I admit, to describe a soft covering to a hard interior) that had in all probability been severed, thus reversing the operation of the original craftsman, who doubtless imposed upon his filling—as I believe it is termed—two hemispheres of chocolate, which, pressed together, united with each other to produce the complete article of commerce. The irresistible inference, in short, is that the malpractor in this case, having removed one half of the external covering in the way that I have described, extracted the edible core, and replaced it with the noxious substance which I have identified.”

  Flack mopped his brow, and bobbed to the Judge in the manner in which he invariably concluded his address in Court.

  Derek was the first to break the restful silence that succeeded Flack’s flow of words.

  “But why carbide?” he said. “It seems an odd choice for a poisoner.”

  “Why indeed? Odd, my young friend, is the word. So odd indeed, that we find ourselves confronted with the problem—which, I admit, is not strictly one for me, but perhaps I may be permitted to speak in this matter as amicus curiæ—is this a poisoner at all? Does this not rather bear the stigmata of a rather cruel and stupid practical joke?”

  “A joke?” said Hilda angrily.

  “Consider,” Flack went on, wagging a fat forefinger in her direction. “Consider. It is perhaps a matter for an expert toxicologist, such as I do not claim to be, to decide, but I should judge that swallowed whole, in the fashion of a pill taken medicinally, a quantity of carbide such as this might be attended with disagreeable, possibly even fatal results. I cannot say, but it is possible. I do not seek to put it higher than that. But who ever heard of anyone ingesting chocolates in this manner? The very raison d’être of such articles is the pleasure to the palate, which would be wholly circumvented by such a procedure. No! There are two methods only of consuming sweets. One, the procedure which I fancy you favour, Lady Barber, that of biting and munching—I apologise for the crudity of the phrase but I know no other way of expressing it—the other, the slower and gentler technique adopted by the Judge, namely that of sucking and slow absorption. Now it is clear from your own very unpleasant experience of last night (I trust you are quite recovered by the way? Forgive me for not having made the inquiry sooner) it is clear that at the very first moment of biting, the contact of the saliva with the carbide releases acetylene gas, the fraud is exposed and the intruder summarily ejected. On the sucking principle, on the other hand, discovery is slower, but none the less——” he shook his head solemnly “—none the less sure. Possibly before the moment of revelation and repudiation there would be time for a minute quantity of carbide to be absorbed into the system—enough I dare say to set up very unpleasant internal reactions, but not, I am convinced, sufficient to be a lethal dose. I repeat, as a medium for what is so strangely and inaptly termed a practical joke, carbide is all that could be desired. As a poison, it is simply not in the picture.”

  As though taken aback by his descent into colloquial English, Flack stopped abruptly, murmured, “I shall miss my train, I must be off,” and vanished.

  Chapter 8

  ON TO WIMBLINGHAM

  “So all it amounts to is this,” said the Judge placidly as he drank his tea that evening. “Somebody has chosen to play a rather ill-natured practical joke on me. Somebody else has written me a couple of abusive anonymous letters. Yet a third somebody who—who may be taken to have a grudge against me—is at large. There is not the slightest reason to suspect that any of these three facts are in any way connected. None of them, either separately or taken together, need cause the slightest alarm. I don’t propose to take any notice of them.”

  “I think you are wrong, William,” said his wife firmly.

  “My dear, I have thought this matter over very carefully since Flack’s exposition this morning—I know you are inclined to belittle him, but he is a sound person and I believe he knows what he is talking about—I have, I say, thought it over carefully——”

  “I could see that you were thinking about something on the bench this afternoon,” said Hilda tartly, “and I wondered what it was. But so far as I am concerned it is not a matter of thinking. I know that all these things are not mere coincidences. It is no good arguing about it. My instinct tells me——”

  “Instinct!” The Judge threw up his hands in polite mockery.

  “Instinct,” she repeated firmly. “I feel instinctively that from the very beginning of this circuit there has been an atmosphere of danger threatening you, and I think we ought to do something to combat it.”

  “It’s very difficult to combat an atmosphere, I should think,” Barber answered. “My own instinct, if that is the right word, leads me to precisely the opposite conclusion. I believe that the circuit from now on will be perfectly peaceful and normal—unless, of course, these air attacks people talk about so much do develop, which I don’t believe they will. Marshal, another cup of tea, if you please.”

  Derek poured out the cup, and took the occasion t
o suggest that the question might be left open for a little longer.

  “We are going to Wimblingham to-morrow,” he said. “So far, there has been a suspicious incident at each of two places. If anything happens at a third, then I think we can be fairly sure that it’s not a coincidence.”

  The Judge was loud in his approval of the suggestion.

  “By all means let us suspend judgment,” he said. “And if I rejoin you after Wimblingham safe and sound we shall hope that this spell of ill luck—as I regard it—is broken.”

  “Very well,” said Hilda. “But there is no question of rejoining you. I am coming on with you to Wimblingham.”

  Barber showed an astonishment which Derek did not at first understand.

  “You are coming to Wimblingham?” he said. “Surely you are not serious, Hilda. Surely you know that no judge’s wife ever comes there.”

  “I am coming to Wimblingham,” she repeated. “And to every other town on the circuit. I feel that it is my duty to look after you.”

  “I am flattered at your concern for my safety,” said her husband, “but I don’t think you realize what you are letting yourself in for. The Lodgings there are really——”

  “The Lodgings are lousy,” said her ladyship tersely. “That is notorious. None the less, I prefer to put up with a little discomfort to taking any risks where your safety is concerned.”

  Barber shrugged his shoulders.

  “Very well,” he said, “since you insist. But don’t say you haven’t been warned. Mercifully, we shall only be there for a very short time. Feeling as I do that there is nothing whatever behind these different occurrences, I am only sorry that you should disarrange your plans for nothing.”

  “There are no plans to disarrange. It isn’t as if there were any entertaining in London worth speaking of just now. I had intended to go to see Michael again, but that can wait. Which reminds me, I have had a letter from him, which I must discuss with you some time.”

  The hint was too broad to be disregarded, and Derek tactfully left the room shortly afterwards.

  Hilda followed the Marshal’s progress out of the room with her eyes, and as soon as he had gone produced a letter from her bag.

  “Michael has heard from Sebald-Smith’s people,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “He’s asking for fifteen thousand pounds.”

  “Fifteen thousand!” The Judge started so violently that he almost fell from his chair. “But this is preposterous!”

  “Obviously. The argument is, apparently, that he is maimed for life, and that his career as a pianist is at an end. Of course, Sebald’s fees of recent years have been——”

  “I dare say. But fifteen thousand——!”

  “I shall write to Michael, of course, and tell him that it is out of all reason. He wants to know what counter offer we should suggest.”

  Barber rubbed the top of his head in perplexity.

  “It’s a very difficult situation,” he said.

  “I know it is, but saying so doesn’t take us much further.” Then, as he remained in a dejected silence, she went on impatiently, “After all, William, you must have often had to advise clients in cases like this. Try and think of it as a case brought to you for an opinion. What would you advise?”

  The Judge shook his head mournfully.

  “It’s no good,” he groaned. “There has never been a case like this—never!”

  “Every litigant thinks that about his own troubles. I’ve often heard you say so.”

  “And that is perfectly true. But this case is different. After all, Hilda, I am a High Court Judge.”

  “I’ve heard you say, too,” she went on, pursuing her own line of thought, “that nobody is competent to advise in his own case. Why shouldn’t you get advice—from one of the other judges, for instance?”

  “No, no!” Barber almost shouted. “Don’t you understand, Hilda, that if once this matter becomes known I am lost? That is why this wretched pianist has me at his mercy. He knows that I can’t possibly afford to fight the claim, and he can fix the damages at any figure he pleases. The long and the short of it is that if he can’t be got to see reason, we are ruined.”

  “Then he must be made to see reason,” Hilda answered. She tried hard to imagine how Sebastian Sebald-Smith would react to the present situation. She had known him well enough once, but had never had to consider him as a prospective litigant. For an artist, she believed him to be a reasonable man, and that was something. Then her mind went to Sally Parsons, that most unreasonable woman, and her heart misgave her. But she went on bravely, “Obviously this is only a bargaining figure. Even Sebald-Smith’s earnings must be comparatively small during the war. Suppose we can beat him down to five thousand—a year’s income——”

  “Two years at least, with taxation at its present level, and it is certain to go higher.”

  “Well, two years if you like. We could arrange payment by instalments and”—her voice faltered—“live very simply….”

  The Judge shook his head.

  “You don’t appreciate the position, Hilda,” he said. “The moment that anything of this becomes public property, I shall be forced to resign. There will be no question of two years’ income or one. Sebald-Smith has only to issue a writ to make my position intolerable. And,” he added, “I have not earned my pension by ten years.”

  “They gave Battersby a pension, though he had only been on the bench four years,” Hilda remarked.

  “That was a different case. Battersby resigned merely because his health broke down.”

  “Why shouldn’t you resign for ill health too? After all, you had some nasty colds last winter and I’m sure Dr. Fairmile would say anything if I asked him to.”

  “Really, Hilda! Have you no conscience?”

  “Of course not, where this is concerned. And I shan’t allow you to have one either. William, I think I have found the solution. I shall write to Fairmile to-morrow. It will be a hideous strain trying to live on the pension, but it will be better than nothing, and after a decent interval to get better I dare say you could get some war work, or sit as Chairman of Commissions and things. Once you are safely resigned we can bargain with Sebald-Smith on more or less equal terms. If he does get a judgment against you, he can’t attach the pension, can he? I must look it up when I get home.”

  At this point Hilda became aware that her husband had been saying something several times over, which she had been too engrossed in her theme to attend to. As she paused to take breath he seized the opportunity to repeat it yet again.

  “Stop!” said the Judge. “Stop, stop, stop!”

  “What is the matter?”

  “The matter is that your scheme is hopelessly unpractical, besides being flagrantly dishonest. Even if Fairmile were prepared to jeopardize his professional reputation by assisting in such a fraud, I am quite certain that the Treasury would not sanction the payment of a pension that had not been earned at such a time as this. It would immediately put everyone on inquiry. There would be questions asked in the House.” Never having been a Member of Parliament, Barber was nervously sensitive to questions asked in the House. “And in any case,” he added, “you may take it that I could not possibly be a party to such a scheme.”

  “Really,” said Hilda, “you are most depressing. I cannot understand you, William. You make light of all these determined attempts on your life, but when it is a question of money you collapse entirely.”

  “That is because I see things in their proper perspective,” the Judge replied. “I do not believe that there have been any attempts on my life, determined or otherwise. But this is serious, and I confess that I am perturbed at it—gravely perturbed.”

  And he gloomily went upstairs to dress for dinner.

  *

  Derek wondered why, when that evening he happened to mention to Greene that Lady Barber was coming to Wimblingham, the latter greeted the news with such obvious disfavour. He said nothing, it was true—it was ha
rdly to be expected that he would—but his look was eloquent of disapproval, in which seemed blended a quite personal distress at the prospect. To probe the matter further, he tested the reactions of Savage to the same question, and found that normally gloomy individual positively sepulchral when the subject was touched upon. Beamish, however, without being approached, brought enlightenment. Rather to Derek’s embarrassment Beamish had elected to make something of a confidant of the Marshal. He seemed to regard him in the nature of a go-between, through whom his views could at need be discreetly conveyed to higher authority, and nothing that Derek could say or do could persuade him that he was not prepared to take his side in any domestic row that might be going. On this particular evening he buttonholed Derek when he was on his way to bed, drew him into the comfortable little sitting-room which he occupied on the ground floor, and settled down to a chat.

  “So we’re leaving Southington to-morrow, Marshal,” he began. “I dessay you’ll not be sorry to go either. I can’t say I care much for the place myself, for all the Under Sheriff is quite a decent gentleman. But things haven’t been too easy on the domestic side here, as you are aware. And I was looking forward to a little peace and quiet at Wimblingham.”

  Derek said nothing. Beamish smoked a pipe in short angry puffs for a moment or two. Obviously he was nursing a grievance, and presently it burst out.