Thou Shell of Death

by Nicholas Blake

  ‘No, damn you, I wasn’t!’ shouted Knott-Sloman, goaded beyond endurance. ‘And I neither know nor care what Lucilla was doing.’

  ‘If you weren’t going to the hut to talk to O’Brien, for what purpose did you go?’ Blount pursued.

  ‘Well, if you must know, I wanted to recover that note of mine, in case he hadn’t destroyed it. It occurred to me, thinking it over, that the note might be misconstrued if anyone else found it.’

  ‘Just so. I take it, then, that you went to the hut, but failed to find the note. How do you account for its being amongst the letters you sent off the next day?’

  ‘God knows. Presumably Lucilla got hold of it somehow.’

  ‘Which suggests that she also went to the hut, either before or after you did. Did you know that she had made a written assignation with O’Brien there?’

  ‘No,’

  ‘When you failed to find the note in the hut, you went straight back to the house? You did not wait till O’Brien came out?’

  ‘I did NOT! Are you trying to plant this murder on me?’ Knott-Sloman’s voice rose and cracked. He was almost blubbering. Then with a great effort he controlled himself and said, ‘When I was in the hut, I thought I heard a noise near the house. I went out quickly and hid amongst some bushes to the right of the hut. I saw O’Brien cross the lawn and enter the hut. That’s all I saw. I went straight back into the house after that and to bed. Take it or leave it. It’s the truth. You won’t get any more out of me.’

  To everyone’s surprise Blount took him at his word and told him he could go. The object of this manoeuvre was at once apparent, for Blount asked the superintendent to fetch Lucilla Thrale in before she could have any conversation with the last witness.

  ‘Now, Miss Thrale,’ the inspector began without preamble, ‘you say you did not go out to the hut on the night of the murder?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t. I was in bed.’

  ‘In spite of having made an appointment there with O’Brien?’

  ‘How many more times do I have to repeat it? I didn’t go because Fergus had told me he didn’t want me to.’

  ‘Exactly. You gave a packet of letters yesterday to Mr Knott-Sloman, asking him to put them in a safe place for you. Was it your suggestion that he should address them to his club?’ Blount’s abrupt change of direction took Lucilla off her balance.

  ‘No. No, I … I didn’t know what he was going to do with them. Oh, God, you haven’t read them?’ she gasped, as realisation dawned on her. The rest was something like a rout. Lucilla strenuously but not very convincingly denied that the letters had been kept for the purposes of blackmail and had been disposed of because a general search was feared. She had handed them over to Knott-Sloman after lunch. Faced with the note that Knott-Sloman had written to O’Brien, she denied furiously that he had written it at her suggestion, called him no gentleman and a good deal worse for having said so, and refused to admit any knowledge of how it had come to be amongst the letters from Edward Cavendish. The inspector told her that she had been accused by Knott-Sloman of putting it there, and therefore presumably of having got it somehow from O’Brien. At this her indignation rose to fever pitch, and Blount thought it expedient to let her go.

  ‘She’ll only think up a lot of lies about Knott-Sloman in revenge; and we’ve got quite enough lies already in this case to drive us insane,’ Blount explained.

  ‘Well, you’ve certainly driven a good-sized wedge between the pair of them,’ said Nigel.

  ‘Yes. We’ll get something from them soon. They’re both thoroughly rattled; that’s when the criminal feels compelled to take some action. And that’s when he begins to make mistakes.’

  Action indeed followed fast enough, though it was not quite what the inspector had bargained for. At about six-thirty the maid, Lily Watkins, whom Lady Marlinworth had sent to replace Bellamy, entered Knott-Sloman’s room with a can of hot water. She was thinking of her young man and humming to herself. But, when she saw what was lying on the floor beyond the bed, her humming abruptly ceased. She dropped the hot-water can, screamed, and rushed out of the door screaming.

  X

  TOLD IN A —

  NIGEL AND INSPECTOR Blount were sitting in the study. They had been going over some of the salient points of the case, but the conversation had somehow or other turned to cricket and they were now discussing the new lbw rule. Into this academic dispute the cries from overhead dropped like a bomb. They sprang to their feet and tore upstairs, Bolter, who had been on guard at the front door, hard on their heels. On the landing they met Lily Watkins. She was sobbing convulsively and could only point to the door of Knott-Sloman’s bedroom. Blount hurriedly ordered Bolter to keep everyone downstairs, and ran into the room. The first thing they noticed was a smell of bitter almonds on the air; the next was the disarray of the bed; the eiderdown and top blanket seemed to have been dragged right over to one side. Then they saw the body. It was lying on its back, one hand convulsively clutching the bedclothes. The jaws were set hard, and there was froth at the corners of the mouth. But it was chiefly the wide, unwinking, atrocious stare of those pale-blue eyes that had sent Lily Watkins screaming from the room. Cyril Knott-Sloman was dead, beyond question or remedy.

  Blount gave him one swift glance, knelt to feel the heart, and snapped at Nigel: ‘Cyanide poisoning. We’re too late. Ring up a doctor.’ The local practitioner, as it happened, was out on a case, so Nigel got into touch with the police doctor at Taviston, who promised to come along at once. Nigel also had a few words with Bleakley, who had returned to Taviston that afternoon to clear up arrears of routine work. ‘So he’s gone and done it,’ Bleakley’s voice came over the wire. ‘Well, that looks like the end of this case, sir. Pity we let him slip through our fingers like that. Still, least said soonest mended. I’ll come along with Doctor Wills and bring the photographer.’

  When Nigel returned to Knott-Sloman’s room, he found Blount looking about him in a puzzled way.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Nigel.

  ‘I’m looking for something he could have drunk the stuff out of.’

  There were plenty of signs of eating in the room. Knott-Sloman did not apparently confine his vice of nut-eating to public performance. There was a plate of assorted nuts on the table beside his bed, and another plate on the dressing table containing broken shells. There were even a few fragments on the floor. But, except for the glass on the carafe, there seemed to be no possible receptacle for poison. Blount had already taken up this glass, using his handkerchief to grip it, but it had no smell and no visible mark of having been used recently.

  ‘This type of poison is generally taken in solution. One would expect to find a small phial, probably in splinters,’ he said, and began for the second time to scour the whole room. There was no trace of what he was looking for. Nigel, who had been indulging his propensity for snooping, thrust his head aimlessly into the wardrobe and began going through the pockets of Knott-Sloman’s clothes. Out of one he drew a flask. It was about half-full of brandy.

  ‘Could he have put the poison in this?’ he asked.

  ‘He could,’ replied Blount dryly, ‘but he could not have put it back in that pocket, I doubt. Cyanide poisons, when a lethal dose is taken, act like lightning, as a general rule. They result in almost immediate loss of muscular power.’

  ‘Mightn’t he have eaten some, then?’

  ‘I believe there have been cases of people eating potassium cyanide. But he wouldn’t have carried it about loose in his pocket, and I can’t find anything here he might have kept it in. The smell would betray it, if there was such a receptacle.’

  ‘Well, dash it all, he did take the stuff. There must be evidence somewhere. Suicides don’t bury their phials neatly in the back garden to avoid making litter.’

  The inspector’s eyes gleamed. ‘Exactly, Mr Strangeways. And that is why I am now going to lock this door and examine the other rooms. I am not as a general rule in favour of murders,’ he added cryptically
, ‘but your uncle will give me what-for if it’s proved that I’ve let a suspected murderer slip out of my hands. Now I want you to go and keep that crowd downstairs corralled up somewhere. Tell Bolter to send me the sergeant—he’s about the place—and then to telephone for a police matron. I’ve got to have those women searched. The sergeant can do the men. Until then, you’ve got to keep ’em amused. Find out when Knott-Sloman was last seen, and all that. But don’t let out there’s any doubt about suicide. If you can find out tactfully where the members of the household were from teatime onwards, it’ll be all to the good. But there’ll be plenty of time for that later.’

  The inspector’s calm authority and competence were refreshing to Nigel. His mind felt woolly and without initiative. Too much had been happening and far too rapidly in the last couple of days. He went downstairs and sent Bolter off on his errands. The party had been collected in the drawing room. Lucilla, Georgia, Edward Cavendish, Philip. Nigel involuntarily counted them off on his fingers. One, two, three, four. Lily Watkins, the kitchen-maid, Nell, and Mrs Grant were there, too, sitting bolt upright on hard chairs. The whole picture looked curiously like one of a Victorian household assembled for morning prayer. Mrs Grant, at any rate, had the right expression; her hands and lips were rigidly folded. She gazed severely straight ahead of her, manifestly disassociating herself from the representatives of the modern Babylon on her right hand, and the lower menials on her left. Nigel restrained an impulse to tell them all to kneel down—though, if the inspector’s suspicions were justified, there must be one person in the room who needed all their prayers.

  ‘I suppose Lily has told you about Knott-Sloman,’ he said. Six heads nodded. ‘He is dead, I’m afraid. Took poison.’

  Everyone stirred. Nigel, his nerves screwed up to their most sensitive, could feel a wave of relief sweep through the room, feel it almost physically, like a cool wind after a scorching summer day. Was it just relief from the uncertainty that they had all been living in, the realisation that Knott-Sloman had made a tacit confession of his guilt? Or was there mixed with this somebody’s far more passionate relief, because this time, at any rate, there was no question about suicide? Only Georgia Cavendish seemed untouched by the common emotion. She sat beside her brother, her sad mouth puckered up in some impenetrable perplexity and foreboding, her eyes still making reservations where all the others showed relief.

  ‘The inspector has asked me to find out when Knott-Sloman was last seen,’ Nigel said. That did not take long. He had had tea with the rest in the drawing room. He had seemed then unusually silent and preoccupied. When tea was over he had asked Lucilla to come for a short walk. She had refused even to answer him. The inspector’s wedge was evidently still firmly in place. Then he had gone out. That was at five minutes to five. About ten minutes later Lily Watkins had seen him open the back door quietly and look out. It was dark then, but not so dark that the figure of the constable stamping his feet in the yard was not visible. Knott-Sloman had muttered something to himself and gone back. He was not seen again. Nigel’s questions were answered without any apparent hesitance or emotion. Cyril Knott-Sloman had been a menace to at least one of the party and a nuisance to the rest. That was all the obituary he seemed likely to get; and the tawdry, stupid, overloud, over-brilliant and eternally dead excitement of the Fizz-and-Frolic Club would have to serve for his funeral games.

  ‘I suppose no one heard any sound from his room?’ Nigel asked. ‘He must have fallen to the floor pretty heavily.’

  ‘I certainly didn’t,’ said Cavendish. ‘But I was in the morning room after tea, and that’s not under his bedroom.’

  There was a short pause. Then Georgia seemed to remember something.

  ‘Why, we heard a thump just overhead—about half-past five, wasn’t it, Lucilla?’

  ‘I don’t remember it,’ Lucilla said indifferently.

  ‘I was working in my bedroom for an hour after tea,’ said Starling. ‘It’s next to his. I heard him enter it, about ten past five, I suppose it must have been, but nothing after that. Still, I was dealing with a damnfool note on the aorist imperative by Watson in this month’s Classical, so I wouldn’t be likely to hear much.’

  ‘The aorist imperative in one room and death in the next,’ murmured Georgia.

  Mrs Grant suddenly exclaimed, in her dourest tones: ‘The wages of sin is death.’

  Nell gave vent to an uncontrollable giggle, then clapped her hand to her mouth. It was clearly impossible to proceed with any inquiry, however tactful, after that. Before long Nigel saw the police car come up the drive. Movements were heard in the room overhead. Knowing what was happening, he was just as glad he was not there. More minutes passed. Then Bolter appeared and beckoned Nigel out. The inspector wanted to see him. As he went upstairs, he passed the sergeant on the staircase. ‘We shan’t be keeping them much longer now,’ the sergeant said. ‘Just waiting for the police matron.’

  Doctor Wills was standing, with his usual air of saturnine detachment, by the washbasin, drying his hands on a towel. The inspector looked as excited as a bank manager could ever succeed in looking. Knott-Sloman’s expression was fortunately not to be seen, as he was now covered over with a sheet.

  ‘Hydrocyanic acid,’ the inspector said to Nigel. ‘The quickest killer there is. Dr Wills says he could not have taken the whole dose intended—there were some drops spilt on his clothing; also the froth on the mouth apparently indicates that death was not instantaneous.’

  ‘I can’t give you much idea,’ said Dr Wills, ‘till we find the amount he took and in what form he took it. I suppose Bleakley will see the coroner about a post-mortem?’

  When the doctor had gone, Nigel passed on to Blount the meagre information he had collected downstairs. Blount had searched three of the upstairs rooms and Bleakley was now engaged with the rest of them. Nothing had been found so far.

  ‘It’s my belief,’ Blount said, ‘the murderer may have hidden the evidence somewhere in the rest of the house—out-of-doors even, perhaps. The sergeant is going to make a start on the ground floor now. The fact that we can find no receptacle for poison in the room indicates that it was not suicide. On the other hand, the murderer would want it to look like suicide, one supposes—and, if so, why should he trouble to remove the receptacle?’

  ‘I still don’t see how he pulled it off. Presumably he didn’t go up to Knott-Sloman and say, “Have a drink of this. It has a curious smell, but it’s really quite wholesome.” ’

  ‘Presumably not. He must have put the stuff into something that Knott-Sloman would be bound to drink sooner or later, and then removed the thing when Sloman had taken it.’

  ‘Which implies that he had to keep on popping in and out of this room to see whether Knott-Sloman had taken his medicine yet. Rather unsettling for Knott-Sloman that would be.’

  ‘Well,’ said the inspector, a little nettled, ‘perhaps you can give a better explanation.’ Nigel moved restlessly about the room, picking up objects and putting them down.

  ‘X might have wandered in with a couple of glasses or flasks or something, and asked Sloman to have a drink with him.’

  ‘Bringing in a branch of peach-blossom with him to account for the curious smell of one of the drinks,’ retorted Blount.

  ‘By Jove,’ exclaimed Nigel, striding excitedly across the room. ‘I’ve got it! A cocktail. You expect a cocktail to smell like anything on earth. Damn these bits of shell! One keeps treading on them.’ He gathered them up and put them in the wastepaper basket.

  ‘Yes,’ said Blount, ‘yes. That might have been it. And a couple of cocktail glasses are not so easy to dispose of. If he washed them and put them back in a cupboard, one of the servants may quite likely have seen him. I’ll get on to that.’

  At this point the sergeant came in to announce that the ambulance had arrived, and with it the police matron. Blount went downstairs with him to break to the household that they would have to be searched. Men came into the room and removed the remains
of Knott-Sloman, unwept, unhonoured and unsung. Then Nigel was left alone. He lit a cigarette, and as he did so became aware that the odour of bitter almonds, which had almost completely gone from the room, was suddenly much stronger again. He looked vaguely around. There seemed nothing to account for it. He put the cigarette to his lips again, and at once felt a slight chokiness in his throat. The smell was on the cigarette—and on his fingers, too, now. Had someone been poisoning his cigarettes? This was really too much like a shilling shocker. No, the stuff must have got on to his fingers first. What had he been touching lately? Certainly not the body. This was maddening. He must have had the instrument of death within his fingers a few minutes ago. He tried to remember what he had touched. Then his eyes lighted on the wastepaper basket. He went over and picked out of it the pieces of shell. Yes! That was it! They looked like walnut, but they smelt like bitter almonds.

  Nigel’s jubilation almost at once died down. The thing was fantastic. You might as well suggest that Knott-Sloman had been killed by a mamba or a hamadryad as by a walnut. He laid the pieces out carefully on his handkerchief, as though they were a jigsaw and by putting them together he could solve the puzzle. One thing struck him at once: the shell was, for a walnut, curiously thin. This was obvious to the eye, apart from the unusual number of pieces into which it had cracked. Then he noticed another thing. The lower edges of some of the fragments were remarkably straight: they called attention to themselves like the border pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Looking at these fragments through his magnifying lens, Nigel observed that their straight edges were coated with some substance. With a good deal of patience he contrived to build up a segment of the nut, and this made it quite evident that the nut had originally been sawn in half and its hemispheres joined together again with glue. Then he made a further discovery: a tiny hole had been drilled in the nut, and later filled in with putty.

  Half the problem was now solved. The murderer had sawn the nut in half, presumably to remove the kernel and sandpaper its interior surface, so that the nut was almost eggshell thin in some places. Why had he done this? Possibly to lighten it; its weight, with poisonous liquid inside, might otherwise have roused Knott-Sloman’s suspicion. The murderer, after scouring out the interior of the nut, had glued its halves together again, then bored a hole in the shell, injected the poison through a syringe, and filled up the hole again. So far, so good. But now Nigel came up against two mountainous obstacles. How could the murderer be certain that this particular nut would poison Knott-Sloman and not someone else? And how could it poison him, anyhow? When the nut was cracked, the liquid would presumably pour over one’s fingers; unless one had a cut on them, it couldn’t do any harm. The fumes of prussic acid were dangerous, of course, but surely not lethal in such a small quantity. Nigel thought and thought, but he couldn’t get round the problem. He was on the point of giving it up, when a picture suddenly came unbidden into his mind. In the lounge before lunch Knott-Sloman, his head thrown a little back, cracking walnuts between his teeth. Eureka! All the other points now began to be illuminated. Nigel remembered now that, although Knott-Sloman sometimes used nutcrackers at dinner, he always used his teeth on informal occasions, so to speak. The murderer would know this, and be sure that no one else would attempt to crack a walnut in such a way, so that—if the poisoned nut did happen to get to the wrong person—no damage would be done. He had presumably put this particular nut on the plate beside Knott-Sloman’s bed. After that, it was only a matter of time. This was another reason, too, for making the shell as thin as possible. If it was not very thin, the nut would be liable to split simply into its glued halves, and that might have called attention to it afterwards. Also, if it had been normally tough, it would not have shattered at one bite, and the bitter taste of the liquid would have made Knott-Sloman spit it out instantly. As it was, his strong jaws would crunch the weakened shell into fragments. His surprise at the lack of resistance would render him incapable of rejecting the liquid instantaneously, and the backward tilt of his head would send most of it down his throat. A very little of it, and the pieces of shell, he would then spit out. But that would be too late.