The Poisoned Chocolates Case

by Anthony Berkeley

  “Sir Eustace was very much in love with her too, and though he used to amuse himself with other women it was understood by both that this was quite permissible so long as there was nothing serious. The lady, I should say, is very modern and broad-minded. It was understood, I believe, that he was to marry her as soon as he could induce his wife (who was quite ignorant of this affair) to divorce him. But when this was at last arranged, Sir Eustace found that owing to his extreme financial stringency, it was imperative that he should marry money instead.

  “The lady was naturally very disappointed, but knowing that Sir Eustace did not care at all for—er—was not really in love with Miss Wildman and the marriage would only be, so far as he was concerned, one of convenience, she reconciled herself to the future and, quite seeing Sir Eustace’s necessity, did not resent the introduction of Miss Wildman—whom indeed,” Mr. Chitterwick felt himself compelled to add, “she considered as quite negligible. It never occurred to her to doubt, you see, that the old arrangement would hold good, and she would still have Sir Eustace’s real love with which to content herself.

  “But then something quite unforeseen happened. Sir Eustace not only fell out of love with her. He fell unmistakably in love with Mrs. Bendix. Moreover, he succeeded in making her his mistress. That was quite recently, since he began to pay his addresses to Miss Wildman. And I think Miss Dammers has given us a true picture of the results in Mrs. Bendix’s case if not in that of Sir Eustace.

  “Well, you can see the position then, so far as this other lady was concerned. Sir Eustace was getting his divorce, marriage with the negligible Miss Wildman was now out of the question, but marriage with Mrs. Bendix, tortured in her conscience and seeing in divorce from her husband and marriage with Sir Eustace the only means of solving it—marriage with Mrs. Bendix, the real beloved, and even more eligible than Miss Wildman so far as the financial side was concerned, was to all appearances inevitable. I deprecate the use of hackneyed quotations as much as anybody, but really I feel that if I permit myself to add that hell has no fury like——”

  “Can you prove all this, Mr. Chitterwick?” interposed Miss Dammers coolly on the hackneyed quotation.

  Mr. Chitterwick started. “I—I think so,” he said, though a little dubiously.

  “I’m inclined to doubt it,” observed Miss Dammers briefly.

  Somewhat uncomfortable, under Miss Dammers’s sceptical eye, Mr. Chitterwick explained. “Well Sir Eustace, whose acquaintance I have been at some pains to cultivate recently. …” Mr. Chitterwick shivered a little, as if the acquaintance had not been his ideal one. “Well, from a few indications that Sir Eustace has unconsciously given me. … That is to say, I was questioning him at lunch to-day as adroitly as I could, my conviction as to the murderer’s identity having been formed at last, and he did unwittingly let fall a few trifles which …”

  “I doubt it,” repeated Miss Dammers bluntly.

  Mr. Chitterwick looked quite nonplussed.

  Roger hurried to the rescue. “Well, shelving the matter of proof for the moment, Mr. Chitterwick, and assuming that your reconstruction of the events is just an imaginative one. You’d reached the point where marriage between Sir Eustace and Mrs. Bendix had become inevitable.”

  “Yes; oh, yes,” said Mr. Chitterwick, with a grateful look towards his saviour. “And then of course, this lady formed her terrible decision and made her very clever plan. I think I’ve explained all that. Her old right of access to Sir Eustace’s rooms enabled her to type the letter on his typewriter one day when she knew he was out. She is quite a good mimic, and it was easy for her when ringing up Mr. Bendix to imitate the sort of voice Miss Delorme might be expected to have.”

  “Mr. Chitterwick, do any of us know this woman?” demanded Mrs. Fielder-Flemming abruptly.

  Mr. Chitterwick looked more embarrassed than ever. “Er—yes,” he hesitated. “That is, you must remember it was she who smuggled Miss Dammers’s two books into Sir Eustace’s rooms too, you know.”

  “I shall have to be more careful about my friends in future, I see,” observed Miss Dammers, gently sarcastic.

  “An ex-mistress of Sir Eustace’s eh?” Roger murmured, conning over in his mind such names as he could remember from that lengthy list.

  “Well, yes,” Mr. Chitterwick agreed. “But nobody has any idea of it. That is— Dear me, this is very difficult.” Mr. Chitterwick wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, and looked extremely unhappy.

  “She’d managed to conceal it?” Roger pressed him.

  “Er—yes. She’d certainly managed to conceal the true state of matters between them, very cleverly indeed. I don’t think anybody suspected it at all.”

  “They apparently didn’t know each other?” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming persisted. “They were never seen about together?”

  “Oh, at one time they were,” said Mr. Chitterwick, looking in quite a hunted way from face to face. “Quite frequently. Then, I understand, they thought it better to pretend to have quarrelled and—and met only in secret.”

  “Isn’t it time you told us this woman’s name, Chitterwick?” boomed Sir Charles down the table, looking judicial.

  Mr. Chitterwick scrambled desperately out of this fire of questions. “It’s very strange, you know, how murderers never will let well alone, isn’t it?” he said breathlessly. “It happens so often. I’m quite sure I should never have stumbled on the truth in this case if the murderess had only left things as they were, in accordance with her own admirable plot. But this trying to fix the guilt on another person. … Really, from the intelligence displayed in this case, she ought to have been above that. Of course her plot had miscarried. Been only half-successful, I should say. But why not accept the partial failure? Why tempt Providence? Trouble was inevitable—inevitable——”

  Mr. Chitterwick seemed by this time utterly distressed. He was shuffling his notes with extreme nervousness, and wriggling in his chair. The glances he kept darting from face to face were almost pleading. But what he was pleading for remained obscure.

  “Dear me,” said Mr. Chitterwick, as if at his wits’ end. “This is very difficult. I’d better clear up the remaining point. It’s about the alibi.

  “In my opinion the alibi was an afterthought, owing to a piece of luck. Southampton Street is near both the Cecil and the Savoy, isn’t it? I happen to know that this lady has a friend, another woman, of a somewhat unconventional nature. She is continually away on exploring expeditions and so on, usually quite alone. She never stays in London more than a night or two, and I should imagine she is the sort of woman who rarely reads the newspapers. And if she did, I think she would certainly not divulge any suspicion they might convey to her, especially concerning a friend of her own.

  “I have ascertained that immediately preceding the crime this woman, whose name by the way is Jane Harding, stayed for two nights at the Savoy Hotel, and left London, on the morning the chocolates were delivered, for Africa. From there she was going on to South America. Where she may be now I have not the least idea. Nor, I should say, has any one else. But she came to London from Paris, where she had been staying for a week.

  “The—er—criminal would know about this forthcoming trip to London, and so hurried to Paris. (I am afraid,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick uneasily, “there is a good deal of guess-work here.) It would be simple to ask this other lady to post the parcel in London, as the parcel postage is so heavy from France, and just as simple to ensure it being delivered on the morning of the lunch-appointment with Mrs. Bendix, by saying it was a birthday present, or some other pretext, and—and—must be posted to arrive on that particular day.” Mr. Chitterwick wiped his forehead again and glanced pathetically at Roger. Roger could only stare back in bewilderment.

  “Dear me,” muttered Mr. Chitterwick distractedly, “this is very difficult.—Well, I have satisfied myself that——”

  Alicia Dammers had risen to her feet and was unhurriedly picking up her belongings. “I’m afraid,” she said, �
��I have an appointment. Will you excuse me, Mr. President?”

  “Of course,” said Roger, in some surprise.

  At the door Miss Dammers turned back. “I’m so sorry not to be able to stay to hear the rest of your case, Mr. Chitterwick. But really, you know, as I said, I very much doubt whether you’ll be able to prove it.”

  She went out of the room.

  “She’s perfectly right,” whispered Mr. Chitterwick, gazing after her in a petrified way. “I’m quite sure I can’t. But there isn’t the faintest doubt. I’m afraid, not the faintest.”

  Stupefaction reigned.

  “You—you can’t mean …?” twittered Mrs. Fielder-Flemming in a strangely shrill voice.

  Mr. Bradley was the first to get a grip oh himself. “So we did have a practising criminologist amongst us after all,” he drawled, in a manner that was never Oxford. “How quite interesting.”

  Again silence held the Circle.

  “So now,” asked the President helplessly, “what the devil do we do?”

  Nobody enlightened him.