Grave Mistake

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘I made absolutely certain there was no possibility of recovery. I then called up our resident nurse. We employed a stomach pump. The results were subsequently analysed and a quantity of barbiturates was found.’ He hesitated and then said, ‘I would like, sir, if this is an appropriate moment, to add a word about Greengages and its general character and management.’

  ‘By all means, Dr Schramm.’

  ‘Thank you. Greengages is not a hospital. It is a hotel with a resident medical practitioner. Many, indeed most, of our guests are not ill. Some are tired and in need of a change and rest. Some come to us simply for a quiet holiday. Some for a weight-reducing course. Some are convalescents preparing to return to normal life. A number of them are elderly people who are reassured by the presence of a qualified practitioner and a registered nurse. Mrs Foster had been in the habit of coming from time to time. She was a nervy subject and a chronic worrier. I must say at once that I had not prescribed the barbiturate tablets she had taken and have no idea how she had obtained them. When she first came I did, on request, prescribe phenobarbiturates at night to help her sleep but after her first week they were discontinued as she had no further need of them. I apologize for the digression but I felt it was perhaps indicated.’

  ‘Quite. Quite. Quite,’ chattered the complacent Coroner.

  ‘Well then, to continue. When we had done what had to be done, I got in touch with another doctor. The local practitioners were all engaged or out but finally I reached Dr Field-Innis of Upper Quintern. He very kindly drove over and together we made a further examination.’

  ‘Finding?’

  ‘Finding that she had died of an overdose. There was no doubt of it at all. We found three half-dissolved tablets at the back of the mouth and one on the tongue. She must have taken the tablets, four or five at a time and lost consciousness before she could swallow the last ones.’

  ‘Dr Field-Innis is present, is he not?’

  ‘He is,’ Basil said, with a little bow in the right direction. Dr Field-Innis bobbed up and down in his seat.

  ‘Thank you very much, Dr Schramm,’ said the Coroner with evident respect.

  Dr Field-Innis was called.

  Verity watched him push his glasses up his nose and tip back his head to adjust his vision just as he always did after he had listened to one’s chest. He was nice. Not in the least dynamic or lordly, but nice. And conscientious. And, Verity thought, at the moment very clearly ill-at-ease.

  He confirmed everything that Basil Schramm had deposed as to the state of the room and the body and the conclusion they had drawn and added that he himself had been surprised and shocked by the tragedy.

  ‘Was the deceased a patient of yours, Dr Field-Innis?’

  ‘She consulted me about four months ago.’

  ‘On what score?’

  ‘She felt unwell and was nervy. She complained of sleeplessness and general anxiety. I prescibed a mild barbiturate. Not the proprietary tranquillizer she was found to have taken that evening, by the way.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘I suggested that she should have a general overhaul,’ he said.

  ‘Had you any reason to suspect there was something serious the matter?’

  There was a longer pause. Dr Field-Innis looked for a moment at Prunella. She sat between Gideon and Verity who thought, irrelevantly, that like all blondes, especially when they were as pretty as Prunella, mourning greatly became her.

  ‘That,’ said Dr Field-Innis, ‘is not an easy question to answer. There were, I thought, certain possible indications, very slight indeed, that should be followed up.’

  ‘What were they?’

  ‘A gross tremor in the hands. That does not necessarily imply a conspicuous tremor. And – this is difficult to define – a certain appearance in the face. I must emphasize that this was slight and possibly of no moment but I had seen ‘something of the sort before and felt it should not be disregarded.’

  ‘What might these symptoms indicate, Dr Field-Innis? A stroke?’ hazarded the Coroner. ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I say this with every possible reservation. But yes. Just possibly – Parkinson’s disease.’

  Prunella gave a strange little sound, half cry, half sigh. Gideon took her hand.

  The Coroner asked, ‘And did the deceased, in fact, follow your advice?’

  ‘No. She said she would think it over. She did not consult me again.’

  ‘Had she any idea you suspected –?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Dr Field-Innis said loudly. ‘I gave no indication whatever. It would have been most improper to do so.’

  ‘Have you discussed the matter with Dr Schramm?’

  ‘It has been mentioned, yes.’

  ‘Had Dr Schramm remarked these symptoms?’ The Coroner turned politely to Basil Schramm. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘we may ask?’

  He stood up. ‘I had noticed the tremor,’ he said. ‘On her case-history and on what she had told me I attributed this to the general nervous condition.’

  ‘Quite,’ said the Coroner. ‘So, gentlemen, we may take it, may we not, that fear of this tragic disease cannot have been a motive for suicide? We may rule that out?’

  ‘Certainly,’ they said together and together they sat down. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Verity thought.

  The resident nurse was now called, Sister Jackson, an opulent lady of good looks, a highish colour and an air of latent sexiness, damped down, Verity thought, to suit the occasion. She confirmed the doctors’ evidence and said rather snootily that of course if Greengages had been a hospital there would have been no question of Mrs Foster having a private supply of any medicaments.

  And now Prunella was called. It was a clear day outside and a ray of sunlight slanted through a window in the parish hall. As if on cue from some zealous stage-director it found Prunella’s white-gold head and made a saint of her.

  ‘How lovely she is,’ Gideon said quite audibly. Verity thought he might have been sizing up one of his father’s distinguished possessions. ‘And how obliging of the sun,’ he added and gave her a friendly smile. This young man, she thought, takes a bit of learning.

  The Coroner was considerate with Prunella. She was asked about the afternoon visit to Greengages. Had there been anything unusual in her mother’s behaviour? The Coroner was sorry to trouble her but would she mind raising her voice, the acoustics of the hall no doubt were at fault. Verity heard Gideon chuckle.

  Prunella gulped and made a determined attempt to become fully vocal. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Not unusual. My mother was rather easily fussed and – well – you know. As Dr Schramm said, she worried.’

  ‘About anything in particular, Miss Foster?’

  ‘Well – about me, actually.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘About me,’ Prunella shrilled and flinched at the sound of her own voice. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘About you?’

  ‘Yes. I’d just got engaged and she fussed about that, sort of. But it was all right. Routine, really.’

  ‘And you saw nothing particularly unusual?’

  ‘Yes. I mean,’ said Prunella, frowning distressfully and looking across at Dr Field-Innis, ‘I did think I saw something – different – about her.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, she was – her hands – like Dr Field-Innis said were trembly. And her speech I thought – you know – kind of dragged. And there was – or I thought there was – something about her face. As if it had kind of, you know, blanked out or sort of smoothed over, sort of – well – slowed up. I can’t describe it. I wasn’t even sure it was there.’

  ‘But it troubled you?’

  ‘Yes. Sort of,’ whispered Prunella.

  She described how she and Gideon took her mother back to the house and how she went up with her to her room.

  ‘She said she thought she’d have a rest and go to bed early and have dinner brought up to her. There was something she wanted to see on te
levision. I helped her undress. She asked me not to wait. So I turned the box on and left her. She truly seemed all right, apart from being tired and upset about – about me and my engagement.’ Prunella’s voice wavered into inaudibility, and her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Miss Foster,’ said the Coroner, ‘just one more question. Was there a bottle of tablets on her bedside table?’

  ‘Yes, there was,’ Prunella said quickly. ‘She asked me to take it out of her beauty box, you know, a kind of face box. It was on the table. She said they were sleeping-pills she’d got from a chemist ages ago and she thought if she couldn’t go to sleep after her dinner she’d take one. I found them for her and put them out. And there was a lamp on the table, a book and an enormous box of petits-fours au massepain. She gets – she used to get them from that shop the “Marquise de Sévigné” – in Paris. I ate some before I left.’

  Prunella knuckled her eyes like a small girl and then hunted for her handkerchief. The Coroner said they would not trouble her any more and she returned to Gideon and Verity.

  Verity heard herself called and found she was nervous. She was taken over the earlier ground and confirmed all that Prunella had said. Nothing she was asked led to any mention of Bruce Gardener’s and Claude Carter’s arrival at Greengages and as both of them had been fended off from meeting Sybil she did not think it incumbent on her to say anything about them. She saw that Bruce was in the hall, looking stiff and solemn as if the inquest was a funeral. He wore his Harris tweed suit and a black tie. Poor Syb would have liked that. She would have probably said there was ‘good blood there’ and you could tell by the way he wore his clothes. Meaning blue blood. And suddenly and irrelevantly there came over Verity the realization that she could never believe ridiculous old Syb had killed herself.

  She had found Dr Field-Innis’s remarks about Sybil’s appearance deeply disturbing, not because she thought they bore the remotest relation to her death but because she herself had for so long paid so little attention to Sybil’s ailments. Suppose, all the time, there had been ominous signs? Suppose she had felt as ill as she said she did? Was it a case of ‘wolf, wolf’? Verity was miserable.

  She did not pay much attention when Gideon was called and said that he had returned briefly to Mrs Foster’s room to collect Prunella’s bag and that she had seemed to be quite herself.

  The proceedings now came to a close. The Coroner made a short speech saying in effect that the jury might perhaps consider it was most unfortunate that nothing had emerged to show why the deceased had been moved to take this tragic and apparently motiveless step, so out of character according to all that her nearest and dearest felt about her. Nevertheless, in face of what they had heard they might well feel that the circumstances all pointed in one direction. However – at this point Verity’s attention was distracted by the sight of Claude Carter, whom she had not noticed before. He was sitting at the end of a bench against the wall, wearing a superfluous raincoat with the collar turned up and feasting quietly upon his fingernails.

  ‘– and so,’ the Coroner was saying, ‘you may think that in view of the apparent absence of motive and notwithstanding the entirely appropriate steps taken by Dr Schramm, an autopsy should be carried out. If you so decide I shall, of course, adjourn the inquest sine die.’

  The jury, after a short withdrawal, brought in a verdict along these lines and the inquest was accordingly adjourned until after the autopsy.

  The small assembly emptied out into the summery quiet of the little village.

  As she left the hall Verity found herself face to face with Young Mr Rattisbon. Young Mr Rattisbon was about sixty-five years of age and was the son of Old Mr Rattisbon who was ninety-two. They were London solicitors of eminent respectability and they had acted for Verity’s family and for Sybil’s unto the third and fourth generation. His father and Verity’s were old friends. As the years passed, the son grew more and more like the father, even to adopting his eccentricities. They both behaved as if they were character-actors playing themselves in some dated comedy. Both had an extraordinary mannerism – when about to pronounce upon some choice point of law they exposed the tips of their tongues and vibrated them as if they had taken sips of scalding tea. They prefaced many of their remarks with a slight whinny.

  When Mr Rattisbon saw Verity he raised his out-of-date city hat very high and said, ‘Good morning’ three times and added, ‘Very sad, yes,’ as if she had enquired whether it was or was not so. She asked him if he was returning to London but he said no, he would find himself something to eat in the village and then go up to Quintern Place if Prunella Foster found it convenient to see him.

  Verity rapidly surveyed her larder and then said, ‘You can’t lunch in the village. There’s only the Passcoigne Arms and it’s awful. Come and have an omelette and cheese and a glass of reasonable hock with me.’

  He gave quite a performance of deprecating whinnies but was clearly delighted. He wanted, he said, to have a word with the Coroner and would drive up to Keys when it was over.

  Verity, given this start, was able to make her unpretentious preparations. She laid her table, took some cold sorrel soup with cream from the refrigerator, fetched herbs from the orchard, broke eggs into a basin and put butter in her omelette pan. Then she paid a visit to her cellar and chose one of the few remaining bottles of her father’s sherry and one of the more than respectable hock.

  When Mr Rattisbon arrived she settled him in the drawing-room, joined him in a glass of sherry and left him with the bottle at his elbow while she went off to make the omelette.

  They lunched successfully, finishing off with ripe Stilton and biscuits. Mr Rattisbon had two and a half glasses of hock to Verity’s one. His face, normally the colour of one of his own parchments, became quite pink.

  They withdrew into the garden and sat in weather-worn deckchairs under the lime trees.

  ‘How very pleasant, my dear Verity,’ said Mr Rattisbon. ‘Upon my word, how quite delightful! I suppose, alas, I must keep my eye upon the time. And, if I may, I shall telephone Miss Prunella. I mustn’t overstay my welcome.’

  ‘Oh, fiddle, Ratsy!’ said Verity, who had called him by this Kenneth Grahameish nickname for some forty years. ‘What did you think about the inquest?’

  The professional change came over him. He joined his fingertips, rattled his tongue and made his noise.

  ‘M’nah,’ he said. ‘My dear Verity. While you were preparing our delicious luncheon I thought a great deal about the inquest and I may say that the more I thought the less I liked it. I will not disguise from you, I am uneasy.’

  ‘So am I. What exactly is your worry? Don’t go all professionally rectitudinal like a diagram. Confide. Do, Ratsy, I’m the soul of discretion. My lips shall be sealed with red-tape, I promise.’

  ‘My dear girl, I don’t doubt it. I had, in any case, decided to ask you. You were, were you not, a close friend of Mrs Foster?’

  ‘A very old friend. I think perhaps the closeness was more on her side than mine, if that makes sense.’

  ‘She confided in you?’

  ‘She’d confide in the Town Crier if she felt the need, but yes, she did quite a lot.’

  ‘Do you know if she has recently made a Will?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Verity, ‘is that your trouble?’

  ‘Part of it, at least. I must tell you that she did in fact execute a Will four years ago. I have reason to believe that she may have made a later one but have no positive knowledge of such being the case. She – yah – she wrote to me three weeks ago advising me of the terms of a new Will she wished me to prepare. I was – frankly appalled. I replied, as I hoped, temperately, asking her to take thought. She replied at once that I need concern myself no further in the matter with additions of a – of an intemperate – I would go so far as to say a hostile, character. So much so that I concluded that I had been given the – not to put too fine a point upon it – sack.’

  ‘Preposterous!’ cried Verity. ‘She couldn’t!
’

  ‘As it turned out she didn’t. On my writing a formal letter asking if she wished the return of the Passcoigne documents which we hold, and, I may add, have held since the barony was created, she merely replied by telegram.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘It said “Don’t be silly”.’

  ‘How like Syb!’

  ‘Upon which,’ said Mr Rattisbon, throwing himself back in his chair, ‘I concluded that there was to be no severance of the connection. That is the last communication I had from her. I know not if she made a new Will. But the fact that I – yah – jibbed, might have led her to act on her own initiative. Provide herself,’ said Mr Rattisbon, lowering his voice as one who speaks of blasphemy, ‘with a Form. From some stationer. Alas.’

  ‘Since she was in cool storage at Greengages, she’d have had to ask somebody to get the form for her. She didn’t ask me.’

  ‘I think I hear your telephone, my dear,’ Mr Rattisbon said.

  It was Prunella. ‘Godma V,’ she said with unusual clarity, ‘I saw you talking to that fantastic old Mr Rattisbon. Do you happen to know where he was going?’

  ‘He’s here. He’s thinking of visiting you.’

  ‘Oh, good. Because I suppose he ought to know. Because, actually, I’ve found something he ought to see.’

  ‘What have you found, darling?’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Prunella’s voice escalated to a plaintive squeak, ‘it’s a Will.’

  When Mr Rattisbon had taken his perturbed leave and departed, bolt upright, at the wheel of his car, Prunella rang again to say she felt that before he arrived she must tell her godmother more about her find.

  ‘I can’t get hold of Gideon,’ she said, ‘so I thought I’d tell you. Sorry, darling, but you know what I mean.’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Sweet of you. Well. It was in Mummy’s desk in the boudoir, top-drawer. In a stuck-up envelope with “Will” on it. It was signed and witnessed ten days ago. At Greengages, of course, and it’s on a printed form thing.’

  ‘How did it get to Quintern?’

  ‘Mrs Jim says Mummy asked Bruce Gardener to take it and put it in the desk. He gave it to Mrs Jim and she put it in the desk. Godma V, it’s a stinker.’