“I’m surprised that this point doesn’t seem to have struck either of my predecessors. The really interesting thing is that so few people know nitrobenzene as a poison at all. Even the experts don’t. I was speaking to a man who got a Science scholarship at Cambridge and specialised in chemistry, and he had actually never heard of it as a poison. As a matter of fact I found I knew a good deal more about it than he did. A commercial chemist would certainly never think of it as among the ordinary poisons. It isn’t even listed as such, and the list is comprehensive enough. Well, all this seems most significant to me.
“Then there are other points about it. It’s used most extensively in commerce. In fact it’s the kind of thing that might be used in almost any manufacture. It’s a solvent, of quite a universal kind. We’ve been told that its chief use is in making aniline dyes. That may be the most important one, but it certainly isn’t the most extensive. It’s used a lot in confectionery, as we were also told, and in perfumery as well. But really I can’t attempt to give you a list of its uses. They range from chocolates to motor-car tyres. The important thing is that it’s perfectly easy to get hold of.
“For that matter it’s perfectly easy to make too. Any schoolboy knows how to treat benzol with nitric acid to get nitrobenzene. I’ve done it myself a hundred times. The veriest smattering of chemical knowledge is all that’s wanted, and nothing in the way of expensive apparatus. Or, so far as that goes, it could be done equally by somebody without any chemical knowledge at all; that is, the actual process of making it. Oh, and it could be made quite secretly by the way. Nobody need even guess. But I think just a little chemical knowledge at any rate would be wanted, ever to set one about making it at all. At least, for this particular purpose.
“Well, so far as the case as a whole was concerned, this use of nitrobenzene seemed to me not only the sole original feature but by far the most important piece of evidence. Not in the way that prussic acid is valuable evidence for the reason that prussic acid is so hard to obtain, because once its use was determined anybody could get hold of or make nitrobenzene, and that of course is a tremendous point in favour of it from the would-be murderer’s point of view. No, what I mean is that the sort of person who would ever think of employing the stuff at all ought to be definable within surprisingly narrow limits.”
Mr. Bradley stopped a moment to light a cigarette, and if he was secretly pleased that his fellow-members showed the extent to which he had engaged their interest by not uttering a word until he was ready to go on, he did not divulge the fact. Surveying them for a moment as if inspecting a class composed entirely of half-wits, he took up his argument again.
“First of all, then, we can credit this user of nitrobenzene with a minimum at any rate of chemical knowledge. Or perhaps I ought to qualify that. Either chemical knowledge, or specialised knowledge. A chemist’s assistant, for instance, who was interested enough in his job to read it up after shop-hours would fit the bill for the first case, and a woman employed in a factory where nitrobenzene was used and where the employees had been warned against its poisonous properties would do for an example of the second. There are two kinds of person, it seems to me, who might think of using the stuff as a poison at all, and the first kind is subdivided into the two classes I’ve mentioned.
“But it’s the second kind that I think we are much more probably dealing with in this crime. This is a more intelligent sort of person altogether.
“In this category the chemist’s assistant becomes an amateur dabbler in chemistry, the girl in the factory a woman-doctor, let us say, with an interest in toxicology, or, to get away from the specialist, a highly intelligent lady with a strong interest in criminology particularly on its toxicological side—just, in fact, like Mrs. Fielder-Flemming here.” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming gasped indignantly and Sir Charles, though momentarily startled at the unexpected quarter from which was dealt his tit for the tats he had lately suffered at the gasping lady’s hands, emitted the next instant a sound which from anybody else could only have been described as a guffaw. “All of them, you understand,” continued Mr. Bradley with complete serenity, “the kind of people who might be expected not only to keep a Taylor’s Medical Jurisprudence on their shelves but to consult it frequently.
“I agree with you, you see, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, that the method of this crime does show traces of criminological knowledge. You cited one case which was certainly a remarkable parallel, Sir Charles cited another, and I am going to cite yet a third. It is a regular jumble of old cases, and I am quite sure, as you are, that this is something more than a mere coincidence. I’d arrived at this conclusion myself, of criminological knowledge, before you mentioned it at all, and I was helped to it as well by the strong feeling that whoever sent those chocolates to Sir Eustace possesses a Taylor. That is a pure guess, I admit, but in my copy of Taylor the article on nitrobenzene occurs on the very next page after cyanide of potassium; and there seems to me food for thought there.” The speaker paused a moment.
Mr. Chitterwick nodded. “I think I see. You mean, anybody deliberately searching the pages for a poison that would fulfil certain requirements …?”
“Exactly,” Mr. Bradley concurred.
“You lay great stress on this matter of the poison,” Sir Charles remarked, almost genial. “Do you tell us that you think you’ve identified the murderer by deductions drawn from this one point alone?”
“No, Sir Charles, I don’t think I can go quite so far as that. I lay so much stress on it because, as I said, it’s the only really original feature of the crime. By itself it won’t solve the problem, but considered in conjunction with other features I do think it should go a long way towards doing so—or at any rate provide such a check on a person suspected for other reasons as to turn suspicion into certainty.
“Let’s look at it for instance in the light of the crime as a whole. I think the first thing one realises is that this crime is the work not only of an intelligent person but of a well-educated one too. Well, you see, that rules out at once the first division of people who might be expected to think of using nitrobenzene as the poisoning agent. Gone are our chemist’s assistant and our factory-girl. We can concentrate on our intelligent, well-educated person, with an interest in criminology, some knowledge of toxicology, and, if I’m not very much mistaken (and I very seldom am), a copy of Taylor or some similar book on his or her shelves.
“That, my dear Watsons, is what the criminal’s singular choice of nitrobenzene has to tell me.” And Mr. Bradley stroked the growth on his upper lip with an offensive complacency that was not wholly assumed. Mr. Bradley took some pains to impress on the world how pleased he was with himself, but the pose was not without its foundation in fact.
“Most ingenious, certainly,” murmured Mr. Chitterwick, duly impressed.
“So now let’s get on with it,” observed Miss Dammers, not at all impressed. “What’s your theory? That is, if you’ve really got one.”
“Oh, I’ve got one all right.” Mr. Bradley smiled in a superior manner. This was the first time he had succeeded in provoking Miss Dammers to snap at him, and he was rather pleased. “But let’s take things in their proper order. I want to show you how inevitably I was led to my conclusion, and I can only do that by tracing out my own footsteps, so to speak. Having made my deductions from the poison itself, then, I set about examining the other clues to see if they would lead me to a result that I could check by the other. First of all I concentrated on the notepaper of the forged letter, the only really valuable clue apart from the poison.
“Now this piece of notepaper puzzled me. For some reason, which I couldn’t identify, the name of Mason’s seemed to strike a reminiscent note to me. I felt sure that I’d heard of Mason’s in some other connection than just through their excellent chocolates. At last I remembered.
“I’m afraid I must touch here on the personal, and I apologise in advance, Sir Charles, for the lapse of taste. My sister, before she married, was a shorthand typist.” Mr. Bradley’s e
xtreme languor all of a sudden indicated that he felt this connection needed some defence and was determined not to give it. The next instant he gave it. “That is to say, her education put her on rather a different level from the usual shorthand-typist, and she was, in point of fact, a trained secretary.
“She had joined an establishment run by a lady who supplied secretaries to business firms to take the places temporarily of girls in responsible positions who were ill, or away on holiday, or anything like that. Including my sister there were only two or three girls at the place, and the posts they went to only lasted as a rule for two or three weeks. Each girl would therefore have a good many such posts in the course of a year. However, I did remember distinctly that one of the firms to which my sister went while she was there was Mason’s, as temporary secretary to one of the directors.
“This seemed to me possibly useful. It wouldn’t be likely that she could throw a sidelight on the murder, but at any rate she might be able to give me introductions to one or two members of Mason’s staff if necessary. So I went down to see her about it.
“She remembered quite well. It was between three and four years ago, and she liked being there so much that she had thought quite seriously of putting in for a permanent secretaryship with the firm, should one be available. Naturally she hadn’t got to know any of the staff really well, but quite enough to give me the introductions if I wanted them.
“‘By the way,’ I happened to say to her casually, ‘I saw the letter that was sent to Sir Eustace with the chocolates, and not only Mason’s name but the actual paper itself struck me as familiar. I suppose you wrote to me on it while you were there?’
“‘I don’t know that I ever did that,’ she said, ‘but, of course, the paper was familiar to you. You’ve played paper-games here often enough, haven’t you? You know we always use it. It’s such a convenient size.’ Paper-games, I should explain, have always been a favourite thing in our family.
“It’s funny how a connection will stick in the mind, but not the actual circumstances of it. Of course I remembered then at once. There was quite a pile of the paper, in one of the drawers of my sister’s writing-table. I’d often torn it into strips for our paper-games myself.
“‘But how did you get hold of it?’ I asked her.
“It seemed to me that she answered rather evasively, just saying that she’d got it from the office when she was working there. I pressed her, and at last she told me that one evening she was just on the point of leaving the office when she remembered that some friends were coming in after dinner at home. We should almost certainly play a paper-game of some kind, and we had run out of suitable paper. She hurried up the stairs again back to the office, dumped her attaché-case on the table and opened it, hastily snatched up some paper from the pile beside her typewriter, and threw it into the case. In her hurry she didn’t realise how much she’d taken, and that supply, which was supposed to tide us over one evening, had actually lasted for nearly four years. She must have taken something like half a ream.
“Well, I went away from my sister’s house rather startled. Before I left I examined the remaining sheets, and so far as I could see they were exactly like the one on which the letter was typed. Even the edges were a little discoloured too. I was more than startled: I was alarmed. Because I ought to tell you that it had already occurred to me that of all the ways of going about the search for the person who had sent that letter to Sir Eustace, the one that seemed most hopeful was to look for its writer among the actual employees, or ex-employees, of the firm itself.
“As a matter of fact this discovery of mine had a more disconcerting side still. On thinking over the case the idea had struck me that in the two matters of the notepaper and the method itself of the crime it was quite possible that the police, and every one else had been putting the cart before the horse. It had been taken for granted apparently that the murderer had first of all decided on the method, and then set about getting hold of the notepaper to carry it out.
“But isn’t it far more feasible that the notepaper should have been already there, in the criminals’ ownership, and that it was the chance possession of it which actually suggested the method of the crime? In that case, of course, the likelihood of the notepaper being traced to the murderer would be very small indeed, whereas in the other case there is always that possibility. Had that occurred to you for instance, Mr. President?”
“I must admit that it hadn’t,” Roger confessed. “And yet, like Holmes’s tricks, the possibility’s evident enough now it’s brought forward. I must say, it strikes me as being a very sound point, Bradley.”
“Psychologically, of course,” agreed Miss Dammers, “it’s perfect.”
“Thank you,” murmured Mr. Bradley. “Then you’ll be able to understand just how disconcerting that discovery of mine was. Because if there was anything in that point at all, anybody who had in his or her possession some old notepaper of Mason’s, with slightly discoloured edges, immediately became suspect.”
“Hr-r-r-r-mph!” Sir Charles cleared his throat forcibly by way of comment. The implication was obvious. Gentlemen don’t suspect their own sisters.
“Dear, dear,” clucked Mr. Chitterwick, more humanly.
Mr. Bradley went on to pile up the agony. “And there was another thing, which I could not overlook. My sister before she went in for her training as a secretary, had played with the idea of becoming a hospital nurse. She went through a short course in nursing as a young girl, and was always thoroughly interested in it. She would read not only books on nursing itself, but medical books too. Several times,” said Mr. Bradley solemnly, “I’ve seen her studying my own copy of Taylor, apparently quite absorbed in it.”
He paused again, but this time nobody commented. The general feeling was that this was getting really too much of a good thing.
“Well, I went home and thought it over. Of course it seemed absurd to put my own sister on the list of suspects, and at the very head of it too. One doesn’t connect one’s own circle with the idea of murder. The two things don’t mix at all. Yet I couldn’t fail to realise that if it had been anybody else in question but my sister I should be feeling quite jubilant over the prospect of solving the case. But as things were, what was I to do?
“In the end,” said Mr. Bradley smugly, “I did what I thought my duty and faced the situation. I went back to my sister’s house the next day and asked her squarely whether she had ever had any kind of relations with Sir Eustace Pennefather, and if so what. She looked at me blankly and said that up till the time of the murder she had never heard of the man. I believed her. I asked her if she could remember what she had been doing on the evening before the murder. She looked at me still more blankly and said that she had been in Manchester with her husband at that time, they had stayed at the Peacock Hotel, and in the evening had been to a cinema where they had seen a film called, so far as she could recall, Fires of Fate. Again I believed her.
“As a matter of routine precaution however I checked her statements later and found them perfectly correct; for the time of the posting of the parcel she had an unshakable alibi. I felt more relieved than I can say.” Mr. Bradley spoke in a low voice, with pathos and restraint, but Roger caught his eye as he looked up and there was a mocking glint in it which made the President feel vaguely uneasy. The trouble with Mr. Bradley was that one never quite knew with him.
“Having drawn a blank with my first ticket, then, I tabulated the conclusions I’d formed to date and set about considering the other points in the case.
“It then struck me that the Chief Inspector from Scotland Yard had been somewhat reticent about the evidence that night he addressed us. So I rang him up and asked him a few questions that had occurred to me. From him I learnt that the typewriter was a Hamilton No. 4, that is, the ordinary Hamilton model; that the hand-printed address on the cover was written with a fountain-pen, almost certainly an Onyx fitted with a medium-broad nib; that the ink was Harfield’s Fountain-Pen Ink;
and that there was nothing to be learned from the wrapping-paper (ordinary brown) or the string. That there were no finger-prints anywhere we had been told.
“Well, I suppose I ought not to admit it, considering how I earn my living, but upon my soul I haven’t the faintest idea how a professional detective goes about a job of work,” said Mr. Bradley with candour. “It’s easy enough in a book, of course, because there are a certain number of things which the author wants found out and these he lets his detective discover, and no others. In real life, no doubt, it doesn’t pan out quite like that.
“Anyhow, what I did was to copy my own detective’s methods and set about the business in as systematic a way as I could. That is to say, I made a careful list of all the available evidence, both as to fact and to character (and it was surprising how much there was when one came to tabulate it), and drew as many deductions as I could from each piece, at the same time trying to keep a perfectly open mind as to the identity of the person who was to hatch out from my nest of completed conclusions.
“In other words,” said Mr. Bradley, not without severity, “I did not decide that Lady A or Sir Somebody B had such a good motive for the crime that she or he must undoubtedly have done it, and then twist my evidence to fit this convenient theory.”
“Hear, hear!” Roger felt constrained to approve.
“Hear, hear!” echoed in turn both Alicia Dammers and Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick.
Sir Charles and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming glanced at each other and then hastily away again, for all the world like two children in a Sunday-school who have been caught doing quite the wrong thing together.
“Dear me,” murmured Mr. Bradley, “this is all very exhausting. May I have five minutes’ rest, Mr. President, and half a cigarette?”
The President kindly gave Mr. Bradley an interval in which to restore himself.
CHAPTER XI
“I HAVE always thought,” resumed Mr. Bradley, restored, “I have always thought that murders may be divided into two classes, closed or open. By a closed murder I mean one committed in a certain closed circle of persons, such as a house-party, in which it is known that the murder is limited to membership of that actual group. This is by far the commoner form in fiction. An open murder I call one in which the criminal is not limited to any particular group but might be almost any one in the whole world. This, of course, is almost invariably what happens in real life.
The Poisoned Chocolates Case Page 11
