Serpents in Paradise

by Martin Edwards

  “That’s right,” agreed Chief Inspector Moresby. “It’s most irregular, but we don’t seem to be able to resist Mr Sheringham at the Yard whenever he’s set his heart on anything, Miss Meadows.”

  “And Jimmy?” breathed the excited girl. “My brother?”

  “He’ll be at liberty this afternoon. Just a few formalities to go through first. Well, I must be getting along. See you later, Mr Sheringham, at the station? Good-bye, Miss Meadows.” He disappeared into the dwindling crowd at the barrier.

  “Who was the man, Mr Sheringham?” demanded Claire.

  Roger looked at his watch. “I’m not allowed to tell you that for exactly two hours and twenty-three minutes.”

  “Mr Sheringham! Why ever not?”

  “Because at that time he’ll be under arrest, or in the act of being arrested. So in the meantime, are you going to lunch here with me in Dorchester, or am I going to lunch with you at Manor Regis?”

  It was decided that they should run over to Manor Regis to lunch, because Claire had so many things to ask.

  But ask as she might, Roger refused with the utmost resolution to answer a single one of them. It was not until lunch was finished and they were sitting in the drawing room over their coffee that he would say anything about the case at all, and then at last he gave her the story she had been demanding.

  “Frankly, at first,” said Roger, “I was absolutely at a loss.”

  He explained how he had been convinced that Jimmy Meadows was speaking the truth, and yet how impossible it had seemed to overcome such positive evidence on the part of so many witnesses, touching upon the theory of amnesia to which at one time he had been driven.

  “And then,” he went on, “I tried to look at it this way: direct evidence is notoriously open to danger; these witnesses undoubtedly believed they were speaking the truth, but was there any way in which they might have made an honest mistake? So I went through all that business of photographing you and Grierson at the scene of the murder in order to try and look at the thing with their eyes instead of my own; and I soon realised that every one of them was near enough to be able to detect a general resemblance, but nobody was near enough to be able to pick out any minute points of difference.

  “That was a step in the right direction, and the next thing I did was to ask myself: was there anything peculiar about the murder itself? Well, of course there was. Several things. The first one was the scene of it. Why shoot Mrs Greyling under the noses of all those witnesses? It could not have been necessary, and to lose one’s head to that extent was to verge on sheer insanity. But the murderer had not lost his head; not, that is, unless he carried a revolver as part of the tool-kit of his car. The presence of that revolver argued to me not a crime on the spur of the moment but a premeditated one.

  “But the most curious thing of all was the way the murderer shouted. Not content with shooting the woman under all those eyes which happened to be looking, he shouted at the top of his voice, with the inevitable result of drawing any other eyes which might not have been on him already. And he did not shout words: he just shouted incoherently. Indeed he was deliberately doing all those very things which a man about to commit a premeditated murder would be most anxious to avoid. He even delayed shooting her till a car came round the corner behind him and the occupants could see him do it. Unless he was a sheer lunatic, then, he was doing all this with a purpose. What purpose? Obviously to call very particular attention to the crime. With what object? So that there would be a dozen witnesses to swear that Mr James Meadows, sitting in his own car, with the correct number-plates, had deliberately murdered Mrs Greyling.”

  “You mean—somebody was impersonating Jimmy?”

  “Exactly. Now consider. Your car is a blue Morris Oxford saloon. There are hundreds of blue Morris Oxford saloons, thousands. To all intents and purposes, one blue Morris Oxford saloon can be distinguished from another only by the number. What could be easier than to hire a blue Morris Oxford saloon, mount it with faked number-plates, and carry on?

  “Then consider your brother. What are his most obvious characteristics? A shock of untidy black hair, a thin, white face, and horn-rimmed spectacles. A black wig, a little French chalk, another pair of horn-rimmed spectacles—why, the thing was child’s-play. So I went up to London to identify a man who had bought a black wig at a fairly recent date. And if I didn’t find him in London, I was prepared to go all over the country looking for him; it was only a question of time before I found him.”

  “And you did find him?”

  “I did. I already knew whom I was looking for, you see. Because I had already had the luck (or if you call it the wit, I won’t dispute it) to identify a man who had hired a blue Morris Oxford saloon on that Tuesday, at a garage not twenty miles from here. They recognised him at once from his photograph, and—”

  “Oh, you’d got hold of a photograph of him? It was someone you suspected, then?”

  “Yes, I’d got hold of a photograph of him; though as a matter of fact I didn’t begin to suspect him till after I’d got it.”

  “Oh, Mr Sheringham, what was his name?”

  “Baker,” Roger grinned. “Mr Edward Baker.”

  “Edward Baker?” echoed the girl, in mystified tones. “Who on earth—?”

  “Well, that’s what they knew him as at the garage. And they knew him quite well too. He’d often dropped in to hire a Morris Oxford saloon. He preferred a Morris Oxford saloon to any other kind of car. He’d told them so, frequently.”

  “But I don’t understand. What does it mean?”

  “Why,” Roger explained, “this man who called himself Baker had been preparing the ground very carefully in advance; that’s what it means. But he hadn’t prepared it quite carefully enough.”

  “But who is he? Oh, do tell me, Mr Sheringham?”

  Roger glanced at his watch. “Yes, they’ll be arresting him just about now. Why, Claire, haven’t you already guessed? Think! You said your brother had no enemies, but he had; one. Who was known to be of a madly jealous disposition? Who was so terribly anxious not to have his photograph published in the paper, in case it might be recognised as the photograph of somebody with a totally different name? Who found out that your brother was safely tucked away from observation at Tommy Deaton’s Hole and was in a position to ensure Mrs Greyling’s presence, on some pretext or other, on that particular piece of road at that particular time? Who was trying to kill, very literally, two birds with one stone—an unfaithful wife, as he supposed, and her lover? A quick, merciful death for one, and a long-drawn-out agony for the other? Who, in short—”

  “Mr Greyling!”

  “Exactly,” Roger agreed gravely. “Mr Greyling.” He glanced at his watch again. “And now, what about running back into Dorchester? We should be just in time to catch your brother on the threshold of his cell, so to speak.”

  Inquest

  Leonora Wodehouse

  Leonora Wodehouse was the step-daughter of P.G. Wodehouse, who in 1914 married her mother, the twice-widowed actress and dancer Ethel Rowley. Wodehouse adopted Leonora, who was ten years old at the time of the wedding, and called her by the nickname “Snorky”. She later became his “confidential secretary and adviser”, before marrying the racehorse trainer Peter Cazalet in 1932, and having two children. Her sudden death in May 1944 left the novelist distraught.

  P.G. Wodehouse loved detective fiction, and was friendly with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Anthony Berkeley. Leonora seems to have shared his enthusiasm for the genre, and contributed this story (which he described as “marvellous”) to the Strand Magazine, under the pen-name “Loel Yeo” in 1932. Its quality is such that it is a pity her untimely death put paid to any chance that she might develop her literary career.

  ***

  Memory is an odd thing. I can always remember to perfection a mass of unimportant details. So many men stretched
end on end would encircle the earth; the exact number is 23,549,115. Thirty and a quarter square yards equal one square rod, pole, or perch. These things and many more I never forget. Yet on the occasional days I can snatch to go up to London (and I being a country doctor they are rare enough), I never fail to leave my shopping list behind. It is only as the train pulls out of London that I remember the instruments I meant to buy.

  I overtook the Stanton express as it was grumbling out of the station, and flung myself on to somebody’s lap. My apologies were accepted. He was elderly and inconspicuous and neat, and I knew I had seen him before, but though I still knew rice, sago, and pepper to be the chief exports of North Borneo, I couldn’t remember where we had met.

  People who live the same sort of lives grow to look alike. Thirty years of the same office, the same suburb, the same daily papers, and they end with the same face. Thin and a little anaemic. Eyes the faded blue of much-washed laundry. In summer and winter always a raincoat and an evening paper.

  It was a chilly, foggy evening, the typical raw January day which the inconsequence of the English climate always produces in the middle of October; the window-panes were steaming with the heat of the compartment, and I lay back recovering my breath, wondering where I had seen the man opposite me before. A high white collar held his chin erect. He sat upright on the edge of the seat.

  Suddenly he coughed. It was more of a mannerism than a cough, you felt it did his throat no good at all. And I remembered that we had last met on the afternoon of the coroner’s inquest two years ago at Langley Abbey.

  As one noticed little things in the midst of great excitement during the occasional silences in the dining-room on that day, I remember watching the shadow of the elms stretch themselves across the lawn, hearing the cawing of the rooks, and in the room the creaking of the constable’s boots and the dry little cough of the solicitor’s clerk who gave his unimportant but necessary evidence clearly and concisely.

  ***

  The only thing about Langley that suggests an Abbey is the stainedglass window of the bathroom, otherwise it is just one of those solid square Georgian houses. Its gardens and park are lovely. I was practically brought up there with the Neville boys, so I know the place backwards. When they were both killed in 1917 old Sir Guy Neville sold it as it stood to John Hentish.

  It’s funny how the character of a place changes with its owner. Under the Nevilles, Langley had been a friendly house. The park gates stood open and so did the doors and windows of the house itself, muslin curtains swinging gaily in the breeze. There were village fêtes in the park, and the Abbey was part of the life and conversation of all the villages round.

  With John Hentish there came a change. Sir Guy was asked to inform the county that the future tenants disliked society, and hoped people would not give themselves the trouble of calling. The park gates were shut and stayed shut. The windows were tightly closed and the muslin curtains hung straight and lifeless behind them. The house developed a thin-lipped, austere look. The only people who gave themselves the trouble of calling were the postman and the tradesmen. And gradually Langley Abbey dropped out of the annals and conversation of the county.

  As for me, the house that had been so much a part of my life having shut me out, for ten years as I drove over to Maddenly to prescribe for Miss Taunton’s varicose veins or dose Master Willie Twinger, I averted my eyes from the park gates as one would passing a friendly dog whose temper had become changed and uncertain. And then one afternoon four years ago I found a message in my consulting room asking me to go up to the Abbey at once.

  After that I went there regularly, at least three times a week. Practically the whole house, I found, presumably through lack of interest, had been left exactly as it was bought from the Nevilles. The hall was large and ran the width of the house, that is French windows opening on to the lawn faced the front door. The floor had a higher polish than I remembered, and there were fewer lights. The furniture was ugly but solid, mostly Victorian. Two long tables, an oak chest, some stiff chairs, and a Burmese gong. There were several pairs of antlers on the walls, some lithographs of the early Christian martyrs, Saint Sebastien looking extraordinarily fit and cheerful with about forty arrows through his body, a twenty-pound trout Sir Guy had caught in Scotland, and one fairly good tapestry.

  Old Hentish had converted what had been Lady Neville’s morning-room into a bedroom and bathroom. Off the bedroom, what we had known as the drawing-room had been made into a very beautiful library. Both rooms were large, with high ceilings, and had French windows opening on to the lawn. He lived almost entirely in this suite and seldom left it.

  Hentish, though he had faith in me as a doctor, disliked me as he consistently disliked everyone. He was, without exception, the most unpleasant, disagreeable old swine I have ever met. Practically the only pleasure I ever received in his company was derived from jabbing the needle into his arm. He soon exhausted the supply of London nurses, and finally I persuaded Miss Mavey from Maddenly village to take the post, she having nursed an invalid mother for fifteen years who could have given even old Hentish points for unpleasantness. No man, of course, could live long in John Hentish’s condition, for, besides heart-trouble, he had advanced cirrhosis of the liver, but because death frightened him he listened to me, and so with electrical treatments, diet, and drugs, his general health improved.

  ***

  Some women are eerie. Miss Taunton has been bedridden for years, yet she’s one of those women whose cousin always knew the murdered man’s aunt. This time her sister-in-law’s maid’s niece had married the son of the overseer of the Hentish Paper Mills in Ontario. Like all women, Miss Taunton had a profound contempt for detailed accuracy, but fundamentally her facts are always correct. Hentish, apparently, during the first forty years of his life had spent seven separate fortunes; the figures are Miss Taunton’s. He had been the most dissolute man in London, also in Buenos Aires, where the standard is higher and competition keener. He was hard, grasping, and avid for power; there wasn’t a man in his paper mills or his gold mine that wouldn’t be glad to see him boiled in oil. ‘And that,’ said Miss Taunton, impressively, ‘I got more or less straight from the lips of his own overseer.’

  Miss Taunton’s attitude to God is rather that of a proud aunt; she sees all the motives so clearly and is often a jump ahead of the game. When John Hentish’s health failed, her attitude was that of one whose advice had been taken, for she was a firm believer in the wages of sin. Her own varicose veins she knew had been sent to test her—take the well-known case of Job—she took them rather as a compliment than otherwise, applauded God’s attempt at impartiality, and forgave him frequently.

  I never knew whether old Hentish had any affection for his nephew or not. William was his heir and they quarrelled, of course—over money, among other things—but I think more than disapproval he enjoyed the sense of power it gave him to see his nephew flush as he threatened to stop his allowance, which was a generous one. William’s specialities were women and horses. I suppose he was good-looking in a dark, sinister sort of way; he had inherited all his uncle’s unpleasantness and developed it with some ideas of his own. He used to motor down to Langley occasionally for two or three days at a time.

  •••

  So life drifted on placidly and uneventfully. Sometimes after I had seen old Hentish I used to wander down to the boathouse, for the lawn sloped down to a lake fringed with red willow, and I would sit there thinking out beautiful unappetizing diets for the old man. Then one afternoon my telephone rang. It was Miss Mavey.

  ‘Dr Mellan? Oh, Dr Mellan, will you please come down at once. Mr Hentish is dead!’

  •••

  John Hentish had died from an overdose of morphia taken in a glass of sal volatile. The inquest was held that same evening in the Abbey dining-room. Mr Duffy, the coroner, sat with Police-constable Perker at the table, the rest of the household at the end of the
room. Mr Duffy blew his nose, and the Vapex on his handkerchief mingled with the smell of leather and pickles. He turned a watery eye on Croucher, the butler.

  ‘Is everybody here?’

  ‘Everyone with the exception of Mr William Hentish, sir. He has not yet returned home.’

  ‘Thank you. Call Dr Mellan.’

  My testimony did not take long. History of John Hentish’s illness, cause of death, etc. Miss Mavey was called next, and under the impression that she was on trial for her life, opened with a magnificent defence, giving seven distinct alibis for the afternoon.

  ‘You say,’ the coroner asked her, ‘that the morphia with which you sometimes had occasion to inject the deceased in order to relieve intense pain was kept on the top shelf of a medicine cupboard, clearly labelled “morphia”?’

  ‘I do,’ said Miss Mavey, looking like the Trial of Mary Dugan. ‘Anyone else will say the same.’

  ‘The cupboard has a glass door, I understand. The sal volatile and a glass were placed on a small table beneath the cupboard containing the morphia. Is that correct, Miss Mavey?’

  Miss Mavey paled, knowing that all she said would be used in evidence against her.

  ‘In a sense, yes.’

  ‘In a sense?’

  ‘A spoon was also kept on the table,’ said Miss Mavey, determined to conceal nothing.

  ‘This medicine, this sal volatile, did the deceased take it at regular hours?’

  Miss Mavey turned this over. A trap?

  ‘No, sir, only to relieve the pain if it came on sudden,’ she said, guardedly.

  ‘When Dr Mellan gave his opinion that death was not due to natural causes, but to an overdose of morphia, you looked in the bathroom. You found the phial, which when you went off duty was in the cupboard and had contained twenty grains of morphia, lying empty on the table beside the sal volatile. Is that correct?’