by John Kerr
Cecilia reddened and then finished her wine in a gulp. ‘Because,’ she said, ‘he wanted my money and my household and all its possessions.’ She paused and then said, ‘And also because he, too, had had an affair.’
‘An illicit affair?’
‘Yes, with some wench in Maidenhead. Even with a child. And so he said he’d forgive me, which of course was a lie.’
‘Which would explain his cruelty.’
‘Oh, yes. He was terribly cruel.’
‘Striking you and dismissing the household staff?’
‘Yes, he struck me in the face and sacked a number of the servants, and threatened to sack the rest.’
‘Including Griffiths, the stableman?’
Cecilia nodded and said, ‘I must say it made me furious. Poor Griffiths’ wife was expecting a baby. He was very bitter, but Charlie was unrelenting.’
‘And what about Mrs Clark? Did he intend to give her notice?’
‘What, Jane? Good heavens, no. I would never have allowed it.’
‘Why would she have been any different?’
‘Jane was no mere employee, sir. She is my dear friend and confidante.’
‘Let me return to Dr Gully,’ said Cameron. ‘Did your affair with him come to an end before meeting Charles Cranbrook?’
‘Yes.’ Cecilia reached for a silver bell and rang it to summon the butler, who appeared after a moment. ‘Bring me another glass of wine, Sawyers, if you please.’
‘Why did you end the affair with Gully?’ persisted Cameron. ‘He’d left his lucrative practice in Malvern, after all, to move to Balham to be near you.’
‘Because of scurrilous lies and innuendo spread by a man named Throckmorton and his sister about my relationship to the doctor. Throckmorton was my first husband’s solicitor. It was terribly damaging to my reputation, and Jane thought it best I end the affair.’
‘Did Mrs Clark dislike Dr Gully?’ Cameron paused as the butler returned and served Cecilia another goblet of wine from a salver.
When she and Cameron were alone again, Cecilia said, ‘Jane thought it unseemly that I was in love with a man of James’s age. He resented her intrusion, but sadly, Jane was right.’
‘And,’ said Cameron, ‘she arranged your introduction to Cranbrook?’
‘Yes. Her late husband had been employed by Charles’s stepfather in Jamaica.’
‘Was there anything else,’ said Cameron, ‘that influenced your decision to part with Dr Gully?’
Cecilia hesitated and took a swallow of wine. ‘No,’ she said at length. ‘Nothing.’
‘I understand,’ said Cameron, ‘that shortly before your husband’s death you suffered a miscarriage.’ Cecilia nodded. ‘And that afterward, Charles slept in the spare bedroom, where he died, and Mrs Clark shared your bedroom.’
‘Yes,’ said Cecilia. ‘I needed dear Jane at my side.’
‘Well,’ said Cameron, rising from his chair, ‘I very much appreciate your candour, and I’m terribly sorry for all that you’ve been through.’
‘You’re not going to ask me about the night Charles was stricken?’
‘No.’
‘I can’t believe that he took his own life,’ said Cecilia. ‘Nor that anyone could have poisoned him. It must have been an accident.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Cameron. ‘Good afternoon.’
The fact that Sawyers, the butler at Buscot Park, had accompanied Cecilia from The Priory had not escaped Cameron’s notice. And so, on the pretext of locating the WC, he accosted Sawyers, portly and bald, and asked if he could describe Charles Cranbrook’s condition on the evening before he collapsed.
‘Pale and weak,’ replied the butler. ‘So weak he had to be helped up the stairs.’
‘Would you say he was ill?’ enquired Cameron.
‘Oh, yes, indeed, sir. Quite ill.’
‘Not merely shaken by a ride on a runaway horse?’
‘Oh, no, sir.’
‘One last thing,’ said Cameron. ‘According to Mary Ann, the upstairs maid, you overheard Mr Cranbrook speaking privately to Mrs Clark, advising her he intended to give her notice.’
‘That is correct.’
‘Thank you, my good man,’ said Cameron. He returned to the drawing-room where he found Sir Richard Henderson, whom he thanked profusely for his co-operation but informed him that he’d changed his mind and would not be staying for dinner. Departing by the same rented carriage, he reached Swindon before dark, spending the night in a roadside inn and departing on the first train in the morning for London.
A former officer in the Royal Navy, James Clifton was accustomed to spending his leisure hours in public houses, relaxing over a glass of ale or whisky in the company of other similar men. In the day and a half he’d spent in Balham, he’d whiled away hours in the Wheatsheaf opposite the railway station, as well as the village’s other two pubs, the Rose and Crown and the Lambeth Arms. Though there had been no shortage of conversation about the celebrated Cranbrook case – everyone, it seemed, had a theory about who’d committed the crime and the motive – he’d thus far encountered no one who possessed any personal knowledge that might shed light on its solution. Seated at a scarred trestle table in the bar of the Rose and Crown, Clifton sipped his pint as the ruddy-faced man seated opposite him expounded his opinion: ‘It was the doctor who done it,’ he stated emphatically. ‘Why, the old blighter’s in love with this beautiful young thing, with all the money in the world, and then along comes this lad Cranbrook an’ steals her away. Same old story, eh? Slips a bit of poison in his beer, and no one’s the wiser.’
Clifton nodded amicably, having listened to dozens of variations on the same theme. He polished off his stout, bid the man good day, and made his way to the bar. ‘You don’t suppose,’ he asked the barman, ‘there’s somewhere else in the village, apart from the public houses, where a man might go to slake his thirst at the end of the day?’
‘Well, you might try the Bedford Hotel,’ the man suggested. ‘Some chaps prefer the lobby bar with its tiled floor and potted ferns, though I think it’s a bit posh.’
‘An excellent idea,’ said Clifton with a smile. ‘I’m much obliged.’ He tossed a shilling on the counter and made his way out of the dim, smoky room into the sunlit late-summer evening. Clifton was aware that the Bedford Hotel, located in the centre of town, had been the site of the coroner’s inquest. He seemed to recall a lithograph of the proceedings in the hotel ballroom in one of the pictorial newspapers. Entering the fusty lobby, he observed a bevelled glass door opposite the reception desk beneath a sign that said simply ‘Bar’. It was just as the man at the Rose and Crown described it, a high-ceilinged room with a black and white tiled floor, large enamelled pots planted with ferns, and gas-lit chandeliers. ‘Posh, indeed,’ mumbled Clifton to himself as he surveyed the room. Walking up to the long bar, he sat in a cane-back stool and hitched a boot on the brass railing.
‘Evening, guv’nor,’ said the barman, a plump man with a striped apron and handlebar moustache. ‘What’ll it be?’
Briefly consulting his watch, Clifton ordered gin with quinine water, a beverage he’d acquired a taste for during his naval service on the Indian subcontinent. Glancing around the room, he counted three tables occupied by other middle-aged men, office workers as opposed to tradesmen, judging from their dress. The man returned with Clifton’s drink and then resumed polishing the mahogany counter with a soft cloth. After finishing half his drink, Clifton struck up a conversation with him about the international cricket tournament then in progress, the New Zealand side having bested arch-rival Australia, and then turned to the subject of the Cranbrook coroner’s inquest.
‘Never in my life,’ said the man, ‘did I think we’d do so much business, but the lobby was crawling with newspapermen, and believe you me, they drink like fish, at all hours of the day and night.’
‘Must have been some spectacle,’ commented Clifton, as he thoughtfully sipped his gin. He was vaguely aware that several other men ha
d entered the bar and taken seats at a table behind him. ‘Do any of the principal witnesses patronize your establishment?’
‘Oh, well, the famous ones, the doctor, for instance, and the severe little woman, I forget the name, are all gone away, but some of the others, you know the ones who worked at the place, come in from time to time.’
‘I’m sure they’ve got a tale to tell,’ suggested Clifton.
‘Not that I know of,’ said the barkeep. ‘But I’m off on Wednesdays and Fridays. I heard tell from Higgins, the other barman, that this one fellow, don’t know the name, claimed to have worked for Cranbrook and had some very harsh words about him.’
Finishing his drink, Clifton said, ‘Oh really? Perhaps I’ll drop by tomorrow and see your man Higgins.’ Placing several coins on the counter, he slipped from his seat, walked past a nearby table, now empty, and into the hotel lobby. As it was a trifle too early for bed, and too late for the train into London, he decided to take a turn around the block in the cool night air. The dark sky was ringed with lavender as Clifton emerged from the hotel and began strolling the empty pavement. In the distance, a lamplighter stood on his ladder lighting the streetlights. Turning left at the corner, Clifton made his way in the dark shadows cast by buildings on both sides of the narrow street. Conscious of footsteps behind him, he quickened his pace. The footsteps grew louder, and Clifton stopped to look over his shoulder; a fatal error. A man lurking in a nearby doorway leapt out and brought down a cudgel on Clifton’s skull with a sickening thwack. Clifton groaned loudly, his knees gave way and he crumpled to the ground.
Something of a comic sight, with a large bandage on the back of his head tied under his chin, James Clifton sat in a comfortable armchair in Duncan Cameron’s study with his feet up on a stool, nursing a brandy and soda. ‘You have no recollection of your assailant?’ asked Cameron, holding the orange cat in his lap.
‘None whatsoever,’ replied Clifton. ‘Never saw a thing. Heard something, footsteps, turned to have a look, and then, smack and I was out like a light.’
‘Judging from the gash on your scalp,’ said Cameron, ‘he must have used something like this Irish shillelagh.’ He held up a sturdy oak staff with a knob on the end and slapped it in his palm. ‘Obviously had an accomplice, the man following behind you.’ Clifton nodded sourly and took a swallow of his drink. ‘What about the men in the bar of the hotel?’ asked Cameron. ‘Could you identify any of them?’
‘Not really. The men I saw were sitting away off. I overheard some fellows at a table behind me, but by the time I left they had gone.’
‘Presumably your assailants,’ said Cameron. ‘There must have been something in your conversation with the bartender that concerned them. Hence the knock on the head.’
‘Or else it was merely a cutpurse bent on theft.’
‘Except for the fact,’ said Cameron, placing his shillelagh on a shelf, ‘that you weren’t robbed. No, these men were intending to dissuade you from enquiring further into the singular clue you happened upon.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Clifton, ‘the former servant at The Priory who spoke harshly of Cranbrook with the other barman. Man named Higgins.’
‘Whom we shall interview in due course,’ said Cameron, ‘though it’s unsurprising that a man who lost his position would hold a grudge against his employer.’ He dropped the cat on the floor and then crossed his long legs. ‘On the other hand,’ Cameron continued, ‘based on my visit to Cecilia Cranbrook, an intriguing picture is beginning to take form.’
‘Do you mind?’ said Clifton, holding up his empty glass.
‘Not at all.’ Cameron rose and quickly poured Clifton another brandy. ‘What is most striking,’ said Cameron as he handed Clifton his drink, ‘is the fact that Cecilia was unaware that Cranbrook had advised Mrs Clark he intended to sack her. This is corroborated by two witnesses and yet it was never mentioned during the inquest. Had Cecilia known of Cranbrook’s intentions, no doubt she would have been furious, leading to another violent row.’
‘Yes,’ said Clifton after taking a sip, ‘but what’s your point?’
‘I can only think of one reason,’ said Cameron, ‘why Mrs Clark would have withheld this from Cecilia. That she intended to murder Cranbrook, and, unaware that Sawyers, the butler, had overheard Cranbrook declare his intention to dismiss her, she withheld the fact, which would otherwise reveal her motive for the crime.’
‘Ah,’ said Clifton. ‘How astute.’
‘But I believe she had another, more compelling motive for murder than the mere prospect of losing her position.’
‘Pray go on.’
‘That of the jealous lover,’ said Cameron.
‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me,’ said Clifton. ‘Jealous lover? Gully, you mean?’
‘No. Jane Clark.’
‘Lover?’ repeated Clifton with a befuddled expression. ‘Lover of whom?’
‘Why, of Cecilia. I believe it’s plausible they were lovers.’
‘But two women? How could they possibly…?’
‘You’re aware of homosexuality between men?’ asked Cameron.
‘Of course,’ said Clifton, reddening. ‘In the navy it’s referred to as buggery. Punishable by death, or was. But …’
‘Well, I’m sorry to shock you, Clifton, but homosexual relations have occurred between women since the days of the ancient Greeks.’
‘Good heavens.’
‘Here we know for a fact that Mrs Clark was sharing Cecilia’s bed. We also know that Cecilia is a sensual, nay promiscuous, young woman. I detected a quite strong emotional attachment, one might even say love, that Cecilia felt for Mrs Clark, whom she refers to as Jane or Janie.’ Cameron rose from his chair and began to pace. ‘Mrs Clark, Cecilia’s lover, observes her cruel mistreatment at the hands of her husband. For his part, Cranbrook, having no money of his own but great pretensions to wealth, would never consent to ending the marriage, or even to a legal separation. Cecilia is trapped. Mrs Clark, a very shrewd woman, resolves to poison him, but must take great care to conceal the fact that Cranbrook intends to sack her, which of course would cast suspicion on her.’
‘With poison supplied to her lodger by the old sod Gully,’ interjected Clifton.
‘And then,’ continued Cameron, ‘as Cranbrook lies dying, Mrs Clark appears to come to his rescue and contrives this cock-and-bull tale about Cranbrook admitting privately to her that he poisoned himself. Don’t tell Cecilia. Hah!’
‘Brilliant.’
‘But now,’ concluded Cameron, ‘we must connect the little lady to the poison.’
Chapter Seventeen
‘I FIND IT implausible,’ said Cameron over breakfast, ‘that Mrs Clark, on whom suspicion now squarely rests, should have deliberately chosen antimony with which to poison Cranbrook.’ They were seated under a vine-entangled pergola in the small garden at the back of Cameron’s flat, enclosed by high brick walls covered with pink climbing roses.
Spreading a slice of toast with marmalade, Clifton said, ‘I’m not sure I understand what you mean.’
‘She would have chosen a more conventional poison,’ explained Cameron, ‘less difficult to administer, like arsenic, easily combined with food or drink. I suspect she happened upon antimony in the possession of someone else, who presumably had a legitimate use for it.’
‘Such as?’ said Clifton between mouthfuls of toast.
‘The worming of horses, for example,’ said Cameron, as he carefully snipped off the end of his soft-boiled egg.
‘Curious,’ said Clifton as he poured himself more tea. ‘Worming of horses.’
‘Correct. I should like you to call on all the chemists in the vicinity of Balham and endeavour to ascertain to whom antimony, or tartar emetic, may have been sold for veterinary purposes.’
‘Very well.’
‘And, as you appear to have recovered from that knock on the head,’ said Cameron, ‘return to the bar at the hotel and question the other bartender. In the meantime, I intend to tr
avel to Malvern to call on the renowned Dr Gully, an interview I am quite looking forward to.’
Wearing a bowler hat to conceal the bandage on the back of his skull, James Clifton boarded the 4.10 at Victoria, having wired ahead for a room at the Bedford Hotel in Balham. Earlier in the day he’d spent an hour at the public library copying down the names and addresses of all chemists in the area of Balham and Streatham listed in the Directory of Services for Metropolitan London. Arriving at the station during a passing rain shower, he popped open his umbrella and walked the few streets to the hotel, suppressing the urge to glance over his shoulder to see if someone suspicious was following him. He arrived at the hotel at a quarter past five, finding the lobby bar empty except for the barman, a tall, thin man with ginger side-whiskers.
‘You must be Higgins,’ said Clifton as he pulled up a stool at the bar.
‘That’s right,’ said the bartender with a curious look. ‘Do I know you?’
‘Clifton’s the name. I was here the other evening chatting with your colleague. He happened to mention that you possessed some information concerning one of the former servants at The Priory.’
‘Oh, he did, did he?’ Higgins ceased polishing a glass and placed it on the shelf behind the bar.
‘Yes. A man who’d worked for Charles Cranbrook and had harsh words for him.’
‘And what’s your angle, mister? Another copper, or newspaperman?’
‘I say, Mr Higgins, why don’t you bring me a Scotch, and I’d be happy to explain.’ Once he had his drink before him, Clifton, with a genial smile, said, ‘I’m an assistant to the crime detective Duncan Cameron. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.’ Higgins gave Clifton a sceptical look. ‘At all events, we’re investigating the, ah, death of Mr Cranbrook. Now what was it, exactly, that this chap had to say about Cranbrook?’
‘Well,’ said Higgins after a moment, ‘one of the men who worked at The Priory was a regular customer of mine.’
