The Poisoned Chocolates Case

by Anthony Berkeley

  The fact of his wife’s death was kept from him in his doubtful condition and he was questioned solely upon his own experience, for it was already clear that the two cases were bound up together and light on one would equally clarify the other. The Inspector told Bendix bluntly that he had been poisoned and pressed him as to how the stuff could have been taken: could he account for it in any way?

  It was not long before the chocolates came into Bendix’s mind. He mentioned their burning taste, and he mentioned having already spoken to Sir Eustace about them as the possible cause of his illness.

  This the inspector already knew.

  He had spent the time before Bendix came round in interviewing such people as had come into contact with him since his return to the club that afternoon. He had heard the porter’s story and he had taken steps to trace the taxi-man; he had spoken with the members who had gathered round Bendix in the lounge, and Sir Eustace had reported to him the remark of Bendix about the chocolates.

  The inspector had not attached very much importance to this at the moment, but simply as a matter of routine had questioned Sir Eustace closely as to the whole episode and, again as a matter of routine, had afterwards rummaged through the waste-paper basket and extricated the wrapper and the covering-letter. Still as a matter of routine, and still not particularly impressed, he now proceeded to question Bendix on the same topic, and then at last began to realise its significance as he heard how the two had shared the chocolates after lunch and how, even before Bendix had left home, the wife had eaten more than the husband.

  The doctor now intervened, and the inspector had to leave the sick-room. His first action was to telephone to his colleague at the Bendix home and tell him to take possession without delay of the box of chocolates which was probably still in the drawing-room; at the same time he asked for a rough idea of the number of chocolates that were missing. The other told him, nine or ten. The inspector, who on Bendix’s information had only accounted for six or seven, rang off and telephoned what he had learnt to Scotland Yard.

  Interest was now centred on the chocolates. They were taken to Scotland Yard that evening, and sent off at once to be analysed.

  “Well, the doctor hadn’t been far wrong,” said Moresby. “The poison in those chocolates wasn’t oil of bitter almonds as a matter of fact, it was nitrobenzene; but I understand that isn’t so very different. If any of you ladies or gentlemen have a knowledge of chemicals, you’ll know more about the stuff than I do, but I believe it’s used occasionally in the cheaper sorts of confectionery (less than it used to be, though) to give an almond-flavour as a substitute for oil of bitter almonds, which I needn’t tell you is a powerful poison too. But the most usual way of employing nitrobenzene commercially is in the manufacture of aniline dyes.”

  When the analyst’s preliminary report came through Scotland Yard’s initial theory of accidental death was strengthened. Here definitely was a poison used in the manufacture of chocolates and other sweets. A terrible mistake must have been made. The firm had been employing the stuff as a cheap substitute for genuine liqueurs and too much of it had been used. The fact that the only liqueurs named on the silver wrappings were Maraschino, Kümmel and Kirsch, all of which carry a greater or lesser flavour of almonds, supported this conception.

  But before the firm was approached by the police for an explanation, other facts had come to light. It was found that only the top layer of chocolates contained any poison. Those in the lower layer were completely free from anything harmful. Moreover in the lower layer the fillings inside the chocolate cases corresponded with the description on the wrappings, whereas in the top layer, besides the poison, each sweet contained a blend of the three liqueurs mentioned and not, for instance, plain Maraschino and poison. It was further remarked that no Maraschino, Kirsch or Kummel was to be found in the two lower layers.

  The interesting fact also emerged, in the analyst’s detailed report, that each chocolate in the top layer contained, in addition to its blend of the three liqueurs, exactly six minims of nitrobenzene, no more and no less. The cases were a fair size and there was plenty of room for quite a considerable quantity of the liqueur-blend besides this fixed quantity of poison. This was significant. Still more so was the further fact that in the bottom of each of the noxious chocolates there were distinct traces of a hole having been drilled in the case and subsequently plugged up with a piece of melted chocolate.

  It was now plain to the police that foul play was in question.

  A deliberate attempt had been made to murder Sir Eustace Pennefather. The would-be murderer had acquired a box of Mason’s chocolate liqueurs; separated those in which a flavour of almonds would not come amiss; drilled a small hole in each and drained it of its contents; injected, probably with a fountain-pen filler, the dose of poison; filled the cavity up from the mixture of former fillings; carefully stopped the hole, and re-wrapped it in its silver-paper covering. A meticulous business, meticulously carried out.

  The covering letter and wrapper which had arrived with the box of chocolates now became of paramount importance, and the inspector who had had the foresight to rescue these from destruction had occasion to pat himself on the back. Together with the box itself and the remaining chocolates, they formed the only material clues to this cold-blooded murder.

  Taking them with him, the Chief Inspector now in charge of the case called on the managing director of Mason and Sons, and without informing him of the circumstances as to how it had come into his possession, laid the letter before him and invited him to explain certain points in connection with it. How many of these (the managing director was asked) had been sent out, who knew of this one, and who could have had a chance of handling the box that was sent to Sir Eustace?

  If the police had hoped to surprise Mr. Mason, the result was nothing compared with the way in which Mr. Mason surprised the police.

  “Well, sir?” prompted the Chief Inspector, when it seemed as if Mr. Mason would go on examining the letter all day.

  Mr. Mason adjusted his glasses to the angle for examining Chief Inspectors instead of letters. He was a small, rather fierce, elderly man who had begun life in a back street in Huddersfield, and did not intend any one to forget it.

  “Where the devil did you get this?” he asked. The papers it must be remembered, had not yet got hold of the sensational aspect of Mrs. Bendix’s death.

  “I came,” replied the Chief Inspector with dignity, “to ask you about your sending it out, sir, not tell you about my getting hold of it.”

  “Then you can go to the devil,” replied Mr. Mason with decision. “And take Scotland Yard with you,” he added, by way of a comprehensive afterthought.

  “I must warn you, sir,” said the Chief Inspector, somewhat taken aback but concealing the fact beneath his weightiest manner, “I must warn you that it may be a serious matter for you to refuse to answer my questions.”

  Mr. Mason, it appeared, was exasperated rather than intimidated by this covert threat. “Get out o’ ma office,” he replied in his native tongue. “Are ye druffen, man? Or do ye just think you’re funny? Ye know as well as I do that that letter was never sent out from ’ere.”

  It was then that the Chief Inspector became surprised. “Not—not sent out by your firm at all?” he hammered. It was a possibility that had not occurred to him. “It’s—forged, then?”

  “Isn’t that what I’m telling ye?” growled the old man, regarding him fiercely from under bushy brows. But the Chief Inspector’s evident astonishment had mollified him somewhat.

  “Sir,” said that official, “I must ask you to be good enough to answer my questions as fully as possible. It’s a case of murder I’m investigating, and”—he paused and thought cunningly—“and the murderer seems to have been making free use of your business to cloak his operations.”

  The cunning of the Chief Inspector prevailed. “The devil ‘e ’as!” roared the old man. “Damn the blackguard. Ask any question thou wants, lad; I’ll answer
right enough.”

  Communication thus being established, the Chief Inspector proceeded to get to grips.

  During the next five minutes his heart sank lower and lower. In place of the simple case he had anticipated it became rapidly plain to him that the affair was going to be very difficult indeed. Hitherto he had thought (and his superiors had agreed with him) that the case was going to prove one of sudden temptation. Somebody in the Mason firm had a grudge against Sir Eustace. Into his (or more probably, as the Chief Inspector had considered, her) hands had fallen the box and letter addressed to him. The opportunity had been obvious, the means, in the shape of nitrobenzene in use in the factory, ready to hand; the result had followed. Such a culprit would be easy enough to trace.

  But now; it seemed, this pleasant theory must be abandoned, for in the first place no such letter as this had ever been sent out at all; the firm had produced no new brand of chocolates, if they had done so it was not their custom to dispense sample boxes among private individuals, the letter was a forgery. But the notepaper on the other hand (and this was the only remnant left to support the theory) was perfectly genuine, so far as the old man could tell. He could not say for certain, but was almost sure that this was a piece of old stock which had been finished up about six months ago. The heading might be forged, but he did not think so.

  “Six months ago?” queried the Inspector unhappily.

  “About that,” said the other, and plucked a piece of paper out of a stand in front of him. “This is what we use now.” The Inspector examined it. There was no doubt of the difference. The new paper was thinner and more glossy. But the heading looked exactly the same. The Inspector took a note of the firm who had printed both.

  Unfortunately no sample of the old paper was available. Mr. Mason had a search made on the spot, but not a sheet was left.

  “As a matter of fact,” Moresby now said, “it had been noticed that the piece of paper on which the letter was written was an old one. It is distinctly yellow round the edges. I’ll pass it round and you can see for yourselves. Please be careful of it.” The bit of paper, once handled by a murderer, passed slowly from each would-be detective to his neighbour.

  “Well, to cut a long story shorter,” Moresby went on, “we had it examined by the firm of printers, Webster’s, in Frith Street, and they’re prepared to swear that it’s their work. That means the paper was genuine, worse luck.”

  “You mean, of course,” put in Sir Charles Wildman impressively, “that had the heading been a copy, the task of discovering the printers who executed it should have been comparatively simple?”

  “That’s correct, Sir Charles. Except if it had been done by somebody who owned a small press of their own; but that would have been traceable too. All we’ve actually got is that the murderer is someone who had access to Mason’s notepaper up to six months ago; and that’s pretty wide.”

  “Do you think it was stolen with the actual intention of putting it to the purpose for which it was used?” asked Alicia Dammers.

  “It seems like it, madam. And something kept holding the murderer up.”

  As regards the wrapper, Mr. Mason had been unable to help at all. This consisted simply of a piece of ordinary, thin brown paper, such as could be bought anywhere, with Sir Eustace’s name and address hand-printed on it in neat capitals. Apparently there was nothing to be learnt from it at all. The postmark showed that it had been despatched by the nine-thirty p.m. post from the post office in Southampton Street, Strand.

  “There is a collection at 8.30 and another at 9.30,” Moresby explained, “so it must have been posted between those two times. The packet was quite small enough to go into the opening for letters. The stamps make up the right value. The post office was shut by then, so it could not have been handed in over the counter. Perhaps you’d care to see it.” The piece of brown paper was handed gravely round.

  “Have you brought the box too, and the other chocolates?” asked Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.

  “No, madam. It was one of Mason’s ordinary boxes, and the chocolates have all been used for analysis.”

  “Oh!” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was plainly disappointed. “I thought there might be finger-prints on it,” she explained.

  “We have already looked for those,” replied Moresby without a flicker.

  There was a pause while the wrapper passed from hand to hand.

  “Naturally, we’ve made inquiries as to any one seen posting a packet in Southampton Street between half-past eight and half-past nine,” Moresby continued, “but without result. We’ve also carefully interrogated Sir Eustace Pennefather to discover whether he could throw any light on the question why any one should wish to take his life, or who. Sir Eustace can’t give us the faintest idea. Of course we followed up the usual line of inquiry as to who would benefit by his death, but without any helpful results. Most of his possessions go to his wife, who has a divorce suit pending against him; and she’s out of the country. We’ve checked her movements and she’s out of the question. Besides,” added Moresby unprofessionally, “she’s a very nice lady.

  “And as to fact, all we know is that the murderer probably had some connection with Mason and Sons up to six months ago, and was almost certainly in Southampton Street at some time between eight-thirty and nine-thirty on that particular evening. I’m very much afraid we’re up against a brick wall.” Moresby did not add that so were the amateur criminologists in front of him too, but he very distinctly implied it.

  There was a silence.

  “Is that all?” asked Roger.

  “That’s all, Mr. Sheringham,” Moresby agreed.

  There was another silence.

  “Surely the police have a theory?” Mr. Morton Harrogate Bradley threw out in a detached manner.

  Moresby hesitated perceptibly.

  “Come along, Moresby,” Roger encouraged him. “It’s quite a simple theory. I know it.”

  “Well,” said Moresby, thus stimulated, “we’re inclined to believe that the crime was the work of a lunatic, or semi-lunatic, possibly quite unknown personally to Sir Eustace. You see …” Moresby looked a trifle embarrassed. “You see,” he went on bravely, “Sir Eustace’s life was a bit, well, we might say hectic, if you’ll excuse the word. We think at the Yard that some religious or social maniac took it on himself to rid the world of him, so to speak. Some of his escapades had caused a bit of talk, as you may know.

  “Or it might just be a plain homicidal lunatic, who likes killing people at a distance.

  “There’s the Horwood case, you see. Some lunatic sent poisoned chocolates to the Commissioner of Police himself. That caused a lot of attention. We think this case may be an echo of it. A case that creates a good deal of notice is quite often followed by another on exactly the same lines, as I needn’t remind you.

  “Well, that’s our theory. And if it’s the right one, we’ve got about as much chance of laying our hands on the murderer as—as——” Chief Inspector Moresby cast about for something really scathing.

  “As we have,” suggested Roger.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE Circle sat on for some time after Moresby had gone. There was a lot to discuss, and everybody had views to put forward, suggestions to make, and theories to advance.

  One thing emerged with singular unanimity: the police had been working on the wrong lines. Their theory must be mistaken. This was not a casual murder by a chance lunatic. Somebody very definite had gone methodically about the business of helping Sir Eustace out of the world, and that somebody had behind him an equally definite motive. Like almost all murders, in fact, it was a matter of cherchez le motif.

  On the exposition and discussion of theories Roger kept a firmly quelling hand. The whole object of the experiment, as he pointed out more than once, was that everybody should work independently, without bias from any other brain, form his or her own theory, and set about proving it in his or her own way.

  “But oughtn’t we to pool our facts, Sheringham?” boom
ed Sir Charles. “I should suggest that though we pursue our investigations independently, any new facts we discover should be placed at once at the disposal of all. The exercise should be a mental one, not a competition in routine-detection.”

  “There’s a lot to be said for that view, Sir Charles,” Roger agreed. “In fact, I’ve thought it over very carefully. But on the whole I think it will be better if we keep any new facts to ourselves after this evening. You see, we’re already in possession of all the facts that the police have discovered, and anything else we may come across isn’t likely to be so much a definite pointer to the murderer as some little thing, quite insignificant in itself, to support a particular theory.”

  Sir Charles grunted, obviously unconvinced.

  “I’m quite willing to have it put to the vote,” Roger said handsomely.

  A vote was taken. Sir Charles and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming voted for all facts being disclosed: Mr. Bradley, Alicia Dammers, Mr. Chitterwick (the last after considerable hesitation) and Roger voted against.

  “We retain our own facts,” Roger said, and made a mental note of who had voted for each. He was inclined to guess that the voting indicated pretty correctly who was going to be content with general theorising, and who was ready to enter so far into the spirit of the game as to go out and work for it. Or it might simply show who already had a theory and who had not.

  Sir Charles accepted the result with resignation. “We start equal as from now, then,” he announced.

  “As from the moment we leave this room,” amended Morton Harrogate Bradley, rearranging the set of his tie. “But I agree so far with Sir Charles’s proposition as to think that any one who can at this moment add anything to the Chief Inspector’s statement should do so.”