Bodies from the Library

by Tony Medawar

  A wearisome morning followed of routine investigation and formalities. Troot applied a little strategy and sneaked half an hour for lunch at home. But he wished he hadn’t! Mary had given up hope but two bright faces still shone with happy anticipation and in the garage Mary had been most nobly struggling with tins of yellow paint, and the little old second-hand car was as bright as a baby chick. A couple of hours on the internal economy of the chick and it would be ready to appear as planned on the morning of the holidays to the incredulous joy of the two little girls. But to what avail if Daddy wasn’t there to drive them away in their chariot of gold?

  Up at the Hall, Inspector Port pursued his unhurried enquiries. He had Timmy Jones in the toils when Sergeant Troot eventually arrived there, Mrs Waite and Gina sitting anxiously looking on. For a girl said to have so completely recovered, thought the Sergeant pausing in the doorway unobserved, Gina looked very sick and pale. Timmy was reiterating what he had quite evidently said already a hundred times. Yes, he had been fed up at Mr Waite’s interference in the matter of Gina’s marriage, and he didn’t care who knew it. Yes, he had perfectly appreciated that Mr Waite had been within an ace of winning his way—a public reference to the intended engagement would have forced Gina’s hand and Gina, he knew, had been—well, misled—and might well have given in. But no, he had known nothing before the party, or the proposed announcement: so why should he have come all prepared with a poisoned cigarette?—even if he had been able to possess himself of poison, which he couldn’t.

  ‘The fact remains,’ said Port, that you and you alone could have passed him that cigarette.’

  ‘I tell you, Dal Butler gave him the cigarette.’

  ‘Dal Butler is out of this. Dal Butler had no reason to give Mr Waite—his own father, as it turns out—a doctored cigarette. And the cigarette was doctored. Mr Waite said it tasted funny and chucked it into the fire.’

  ‘I daresay if you’ve just had a lethal dose of poison,’ said Timmy, ‘anything might taste funny.’

  ‘Mr Waite had not just had a lethal dose of poison. Whatever he took must have been administered within seven minutes of the time he died. But he’d eaten nothing that evening, his glass had not been tampered with, there was nothing else that could have affected him but the punch. And there was nothing wrong with the punch. All the guests drank it, the bowl was stirred a moment before he was served, a glass was filled for a guest after the bowl was stirred and it was my sergeant himself who poured out the drink for him. After that—’

  ‘Was his glass tested afterwards?’ said Timmy. ‘Because I don’t believe it was.’

  Sergeant Troot made himself as invisible as possible in his doorway. This was something of a sore point for in his acute anxiety at the time of Mr Waite’s death, he had certainly not immediately possessed himself of the glass. When he had looked round for it, several glasses had presented themselves, standing about, half-finished, on the marble mantelpiece and on a small table near at hand—as, at parties, glasses do. Several had borne the dead man’s fingerprints, among a confusion of others—he had, of course, handed glasses round among his guests. None bore his only, as one might have expected since he had declared that he’d ‘hung on to’ his glass all evening. On the other hand, no one could swear that in the confusion they had not picked up this glass or that to push it out of the way. ‘No poison was found in any glass,’ said Inspector Port stiffly. That would have to do for Master Jones. He put on a solemn face. ‘Timothy—er—what’s your second name?’

  ‘Edward,’ said Timmy, staring.

  ‘Timothy Edward Jones, I am going to take you into custody and you will later be charged with—’

  Sergeant Troot could stand there, an observer, no longer. Delighted though he would privately have been to allow his superior to make an ass of himself, loyalty and duty forbade. He stepped forward and the fine flow of Inspector Port’s warning was interrupted. ‘Well, Miss Gina?’ said Sergeant Troot. Poor kid, it was bad to have to startle her so, to see her jump and throw that anguished look at him and go even paler. ‘You can’t let this go on, Miss’ said the Sergeant, gently. ‘Not even to protect—well, anyone. Can you?’

  ‘Oh, Timmy!’ said Gina; and burst into tears.

  ‘Mr Timmy might go through with it, Miss—if he knew the reason. But I can’t let that happen, can I?’ Said Sergeant Troot, almost apologetically. ‘It wouldn’t be right. Mr Timmy had nothing to do with it. You know that.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Inspector Port in a voice of doom.

  ‘Because he wasn’t present when Mrs Waite’s first husband died,’ said Sergeant Troot.

  Inspector Port fluffled and flustered. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Miss Gina knows what I mean,’ said Troot. ‘It was she that called out when Mr Waite was taken ill. She called out, “Dal!” Well, that’s been explained. But then a minute later she screamed again and she called out, “Daddy!”’

  ‘She couldn’t have,’ said Mrs Waite, raising her head from where she had sat, sunk in a kind of terrified stupor. ‘She didn’t call her stepfather “Daddy”. She called him by a sort of nickname, “Papa”.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Troot. He looked at the white faced girl. ‘She had a bad couple of minutes then—two shocks one after the other. Her stepfather lost his high colour and she recognised his likeness to his son. But then as his condition got worse, as he grew glassy-eyed and began to clutch at his throat, not able to speak—well, then, a memory came up out of her childhood. She remembered when she had seen someone do that before; and she cried out, “Daddy”.’ He turned to Gina. ‘Your own father, Miss Gina—he died the same way, didn’t he? And all of a sudden, you realised. They had both been murdered.’

  Mrs Waite screamed out, ‘No!’ and slid fainting to the floor.

  The hours ticked by. You couldn’t question a woman who lay on her bed moaning and weeping, half conscious. Gina, under the steam-roller tactics of Inspector Port, wept and protested. ‘Of course I didn’t know. Of course Mummy didn’t know! Our doctor was at the party and he thought Daddy’d had a heart attack.’

  ‘Your father died at a party too?’

  ‘Yes, only it was a Christmas party. So I was afraid you’d’ think that Mummy—’ She broke off miserably. ‘I knew Timmy couldn’t really be suspected. My father died the same way, and he didn’t smoke.’

  ‘Why should you think we’d suspect your mother?’

  ‘Well …’ She said miserably: ‘Her marrying Waite so soon after.’ She flushed. ‘Oh, sorry—I called him Waite out of old habit.’

  And Troot recalled suddenly that faintly, faintly servile air that the man had had; remembered the odd dress in the photograph—the striped trousers worn with a white linen jacket. And the name of Waite’s own son had been …

  ‘Miss Gina,’ said Sergeant Troot. ‘Isn’t it true that after your father’s death your mother married—her own butler?’

  The tall handsome butler, so pleasant and civil-spoken; standing behind the bar in some other room at some other long ago party. A Christmas party.

  Standing behind the bar with one eye on the pretty, rich young widow-to-be, ladling out—a hot rum punch.

  FRIDAY

  Friday morning; and in twenty four hours it would be Saturday morning. And the little yellow car was ready: a couple of hours work on it and it could be round at the front door tomorrow morning. Sergeant Troot hoped at least that it would make up to the kids for the bitter disappointment of his not being able to go off with them to the sea. But it was surely hopeless now?

  Conferences, experts, fingerprints, measurements … Inspector Port had twenty four hours grace before Scotland Yard moved in. Get on with it, get on with it, clamoured Troot’s mind in respectful outward silence. At seven he crawled home to supper, at eight he was due again at the Hall. ‘We must promise them an outing later on,’ he said to Mary, over the two bright, innocent, pig-tailed heads. But it was all too dismal. ‘Even if we made an arrest tonight that wouldn’t be
the end of it.’ He went off bitterly depressed. All hope was over.

  Mrs Waite, very glamorous, very frail and unhappy, was with Inspector Port in the big drawing-room. ‘Let’s all have a drink, at least, if we’ve got to spend the whole evening discussing it.’ Mrs Bee brought a tray with whisky and soda and Sergeant Troot obliged by pouring out to specification. As she went out, Mrs Waite asked her: ‘Where’s Miss Gina?’

  ‘I believe she’s out in the garden with Mr Jones, Madam.’

  ‘Spooning,’ said Inspector Port bitterly. ‘I passed them as I came in. Looked to me like a proposal. The young gentleman seems quite bowled over.’ He had not forgiven Timmy for proving at the last minute, so dramatically not the culprit.

  Spooning in the garden … Quite bowled over …

  Miss Gina was spooning in the garden; and Mr Timmy seemed quite bowled over …

  Sergeant Troot looked up at the clock and the clock said half past eight; and suddenly the hands began to spin, round and round and there was a little yellow car at the centre and Sergeant Troot was going to get home to fix that car for tomorrow morning after all. If only … If only … He got up suddenly to his feet. ‘I’ll go and get her,’ he said abruptly, and opened the French window and went out into the garden.

  He was back in a little while. She wasn’t there. ‘But she must be found,’ said Sergeant Troot, very loudly and clearly, over-riding the outraged protests of his superior. He gave the Inspector a look that said: I can’t explain now but she simply must be found.

  ‘I’ll find her,’ said Port, meekly, and marched off purposefully towards the greenhouses; he evidently considered that having harboured one young man there, Gina might well ensconce herself there with another. Mrs Waite, apparently infected with the prevailing desire to lay hands at once on her daughter, declared that she was probably indoors all the time and hurried away, upstairs and downstairs, to see. Sergeant Troot departed through the French windows again, and in the pleasant twilight, the big drawing-room with its chintzes and china was for a little while deserted and silent.

  Or almost deserted; almost silent—save for the gurgle of liquid, the swish of soda, the tinkling of ice into glasses.

  They all met again ten minutes later. Gina had been discovered in the billiard room with Timmy—and please to go away and not disturb them; and now that she was known to be safely sitting there, Sergeant Troot apparently lost interest in her. He and the Inspector and Mrs Waite returned to their whiskys and sodas.

  You could hardly have a drink with a lady and at the same time get down to accusing her of murder. Inspector Port chatted civilly until he could turn back from guest into investigator. But after a little while, the Sergeant said to him a trifle anxiously: ‘are you feeling all right, sir?’

  ‘Me?’ said Port.

  ‘You look a bit … I feel rather queer myself,’ said Sergeant Troot. He shook his head muzzily, his eyes were fixed and staring. He said rather thickly: ‘The whisky—’

  ‘The whisky?’ said Inspector Port, staring back. He too had gone pale, beads of sweat stood on his brow.

  Sergeant Troot looked across at Mrs Waite. She sat bolt upright in her chair. She was very pale also and her hands were shaking. He opened his mouth, seemed to try to force out words, mumbled at last as, before him, a dying man had murmured a single word. Poison!

  ‘Poison?’ stammered Port. ‘The—the whisky?’ His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, on the arms of his chair his hands began to shake, sickeningly. He tried to say more but he could not, his throat was dry and constricted. He too stared at Mrs Waite. She sat swaying in her chair. She cried out, dry-mouthed: ‘Why are you both looking at me like that? You don’t think that I—’

  And gently the door inched open: and Mrs Bee came in.

  They gazed at her, glued to their chairs, pale faced, sweating, trembling: speechless, only their sick minds racing. It was Mrs Waite who gasped out at last: ‘You killed him!’

  ‘Yes.’ She stood there, a little faded woman, looking back steadily at them. She said: ‘He was my husband.’

  If by profession you are a butler, it is quite ridiculous that your name should be Butler. So you change your name. And when, under your new name, you murder your employer and inherit the wealthy widow—it is easy enough to conceal the existence of any previous Mrs Butlers. ‘All these years—playing second fiddle, him living here with this creature—’ she threw out a contemptuous hand to Mrs Waite—‘promising me that if I kept quiet and let him go through with it, we should be rich for life. And so we were rich: and what was the money spent on? All on the boy, every penny of it on the boy—bringing him up to have all that his father hadn’t. And then when my turn came—broke, finished, spent the lot and in terror of being found out the pair of them! They lay there trapped, unmoving, gazing on her as she stood lashing herself to fury, glorying in their helplessness to respond to her. ‘You come up to the Hall,’ he said, ‘I’ll fix you a job, at least you can live there in comfort.’ In comfort indeed!—as her housekeeper! So I left my little home but I thought, My lad, your hour is striking. I watched while they tried to foist Dal on to the girl to hush it all up. But that wasn’t going to work, she didn’t really care for him; sooner or later it was all going to come out. And then what? Prison sentences for them—and for me, after all these years of waiting …? Nothing. Nothing left. Or only one thing.’ And she turned upon Mrs Waite and spat out at her in gruesome imitation of her own oft-repeated words: ‘I’ve made him take out a simply huge insurance.’ She repeated slowly: ‘A simply huge insurance: in favour of—his wife.’

  Mrs Waite’s head fell forward, her eyes closed. Mrs Bee looked at her with cool interest. ‘And I am his wife,’ said Mrs Bee. ‘His legal wife. With him gone, Dal and I would have done all right on the insurance. But then the fool had to go and blurt it all out to Gina. And when he ran away …’ She mused over it. ‘He’s my son,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t let him kill her and get himself hanged for murder. I had to stop that.’ But there was no time for musing. She pulled herself together and from the pocket of her neat black housekeeper’s dress took a scrawled note and dropped it by Mrs Waite’s chair. ‘Your confession,’ she said. These two had found you out, believe it or not, dear, and so you silenced them with the same poison you used to murder both your husbands. And then I suppose it was all too much for your poor diseased brain and you killed yourself too.’ She smiled dreadfully, glancing at the clock: the poison took seven minutes to work, they hadn’t got much longer. ‘And they had found out,’ she said. She looked at the paralysed, gasping Troot. ‘I saw your face when he said those two phrases, this fat fool here: “Spooning in the garden; and quite bowled over.”’

  Sergeant Troot’s mouth opened and shut but no sound came. He lifted a leaden hand, and made a small, circular movement with his thumb.

  Mrs Bee laughed, another of her dreadful laughs. ‘Quite right,’ she said. ‘Move up to the top of the class. If you can move; but of course you can’t, can you? Yes—that’s how it was done. That’s how he did it—my husband, her ladyship’s butler—all those years ago. Just a wipe of poison round the bowl of the spoon as it’s passed across to some innocent: and the stuff’s washed off into the next glass served with it.’

  Into the chill, sick silence, the clock struck the quarter. She looked up at it. ‘Well, well—time’s passing. Cue to come in now, I think, and find the two poor victims, and their murderer, dead by her own hand. But before I go …’ She walked over to Mrs Waite, lying white and almost totally unconscious in her chair, and slapped her once, viciously, across the face. ‘That’s for all the years that you had with my precious husband!’ She moved across to Inspector Port. ‘And that’s for you—with your drivel about “spoon” and “bowl” that gave the idea to this oaf of a sergeant.’ She came over to Troot. ‘And that’s for you—’

  ‘And this is for you,’ said Troot, and jumped up and caught her and held her fast. He said to Mrs Waite: ‘You can come to now, Ma’am. A j
olly good show. You caught on like lightning when I winked at you.’ To the Inspector he said civilly: ‘Feeling better now, sir?’

  ‘Eh? What? No poison—?’ stammered Inspector Port.

  ‘I saw that she knew that I knew. I made the opportunity for her to come back and poison the whiskys. I was hiding out on the terrace. Then I nipped back and tipped the stuff out and poured in some fresh.’ He glanced up at the clock . Everything was going to be splendid. ‘Of course sir, you knew? You were just pretending?’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said Inspector Port hastily.

  ‘Some people do—I mean, some imaginations are so lively …’

  Mrs Bee had gone limp in his arms and ceased to struggle. The Inspector hurried out to the terrace and blew shrilly on his whistle for reinforcements. ‘You can hand her over, Troot. I’ll deal with it all.’ He too glanced at the clock. ‘You put up a splendid show. For myself I—I just thought it best to—to give you a free hand, to—to go on pretending …’

  ‘Quite so, sir,’ said Sergeant Troot doubtfully. He looked at the clock again.

  ‘So you hurry off home, my boy. Don’t worry any more about it. I’ll see to all the rest. You can leave it to me.’ He said to Mrs Waite, benignly: ‘A family man. Wants to get off on his holidays, you know, first thing tomorrow!’

  But Sergeant Troot was halfway to the door: in splendid time to put the last touches to the little yellow car and drive her round to the front door, all ready for the morning.

  CHRISTIANNA BRAND