Watson's Choice

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘As Toby’s far more likely to tell the truth than you are,’ said Gavin, ‘I’ll away to him at once. Behave yourself, if you can, until I return.’

  ‘To clap the handcuffs on me? I’m not one of those who come quietly!’

  Gavin did go to see Toby, and obtained a story which not only bore the stamp of truth but fitted the known facts.

  ‘Yes,’ said Toby, ‘it can’t do any harm to tell you the tale, since Brenda has admitted to introducing the dog into the party, so, here goes, for what it’s worth, although I can’t see what the devil it’s got to do with the murder. The dog was Brenda’s own idea, but, naturally, she didn’t want that to appear for fear Chantrey should take it amiss and get annoyed. I was to approach young Celia Godley to find out whether she knew of a likely animal whose owners lived in the neighbourhood and would be prepared to join in the joke. I said I didn’t see how the stunt was to work –’

  ‘But how did Mildren come into it?’ asked Gavin, although he believed Brenda’s answer to this question.

  ‘To do the character of a drunk, you know. Brenda felt that if it was obvious that she’d left the revels directly the dog had been seen it would look pretty fishy, and she didn’t want to upset Chantrey by appearing to guy his party. So the only thing was to provide a stooge who wouldn’t be expected to be among the revellers, and, Mildren being a character actor, he was the obvious choice. She found he was not at all averse to being “sweetened” – personally I thought ten quid was a bit steep, but it wasn’t my money – so there it was. He slipped out at the appointed hour and fetched the dog. Apparently amused himself by putting on a thick German accent to disguise his own voice. He’s been on the radio, you see. He got the large hound, took him into the summer-house, which is electrically lighted, dabbed a bit of luminous paint on him, and introduced him on to the terrace at the proper time. The fog had Brenda worried, though.’

  ‘Afraid Mildren might get lost?’

  ‘No, afraid the dog wouldn’t get to the house in time. You see, it would never have done for Mildren to have appeared to be plastered too early in the evening, so what with the fog and so on, he probably had to cut it rather fine. I suppose you noticed it was Brenda who went to the french windows that night, although I believe Grimston actually let the dog in.’

  ‘Right. Thanks,’ said Gavin, and rang the bell to ask whether Celia Godley could spare him a few minutes.

  ‘Look,’ he said when she appeared, ‘I don’t suspect you of the murder, but tell me all about the dog.’

  ‘What dog?’ the girl enquired. Gavin smiled at her.

  ‘Look, Miss Godley,’ he said, ‘I want you to answer my questions without hedging. Will you?’

  ‘Why, of course!’ said Celia, putting on a baby-face.

  ‘Right. I know you told the Dances about that dog which turned up at the Sherlock Holmes party, but how did you come to know that it had been put in that waiting-room? I am speaking of about a fortnight before Miss Campbell was killed.’

  Celia’s face changed. She looked scared.

  ‘If you think I know anything at all about Linda’s death –’ she began. Gavin interrupted her.

  ‘Never mind about protesting your innocence,’ he said curtly. ‘Just answer the question. Truthfully, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘But the dog had nothing to do with what happened to Linda!’

  ‘That is my business. Now, will you answer, or shall I take you along to the station and question you there?’

  ‘You can’t do that!’ wailed Celia, near to tears. ‘You’re just bullying me, Robert. You know you are.’

  ‘Be a sensible girl,’ said Gavin briskly. ‘Quite frankly, I don’t suspect you, but you must expect me to take a very dim view if you’re going to stall the minute I ask you a perfectly simple question, especially as you’ve already lied to us. Come on, now, be reasonable, do.’

  ‘All right, then. It was Brenda’s idea to have the dog at the party, but I don’t know whose idea it was to put it in the station waiting-room.’

  ‘How come that you went along and fed it there? The truth, please, this time. You didn’t see it from the train.’

  ‘I had a note.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Somebody put a typed notice under my bedroom door, telling me that the dog would be in the waiting-room and giving me directions how to get there in a roundabout sort of way because, it said, the joke would be spoilt if anybody else found out the dog was there.’

  ‘That sounds like somebody who knew the countryside pretty well. Who was the note from? Did you recognize the writing?’

  ‘No, because it was typed and there wasn’t a signature.’

  ‘Didn’t you think it might be a practical joke to send you on a fool’s errand?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, the joke about the Hound of the Baskervilles had gone off rather well, and I just thought this was another one.’

  ‘By the same people? – or, rather, by the same person?’

  ‘No, I didn’t think Brenda would think it funny to use the dog again. She isn’t like that. I thought she had put an idea into somebody else’s head.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘I thought it might be Manoel’s,’ said Celia, unwillingly and after a pause.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The note being typewritten. Foreigners don’t form their writing like English people, and I thought he’d typed it because his writing would give him away.’

  ‘And you were prepared to assist Mr Lupez by feeding the dog if he wanted you to?’

  ‘Yes, of course. We’re going to be married, I think.’

  ‘Really? I had no idea!’

  ‘He hasn’t, either, yet, but I admire him and I want to go to Spain and Mexico, and it would be a sensible plan if we could put our two legacies together when Boo dies, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘And that’s all you can tell me?’

  ‘Really and truly it is!’

  ‘Where’s the note?’

  ‘I burnt it. It said so.’

  ‘That’s helpful! Never mind. You couldn’t possibly have realized that it would ever be as important as this. Where can I find Sir Bohun? Have you any idea?’

  ‘I expect he’s in the library, and Manoel is with him, I think. They’ve become awfully thick lately. Manoel is taking such an interest in Sherlock Holmes, and in all those things that somebody keeps sending Boo, that he’s quite won Boo’s heart. I am more keen to marry him than ever. If I don’t, I may never get anything from Boo at all!’

  Gavin grunted, and let her go.

  CHAPTER 16

  NO SURFEIT OF ALIBIS

  ‘O where hae ye been, Lord Rendal, my son?

  O where hae ye been, my sweet pretty one?’

  Old Ballad – Lord Rendal

  *

  COLLINS WAS A determined but not an obstinate man. He realized that, so far as discovering the identity of Linda Campbell’s murderer was concerned, he had come to a dead end. He found himself hoping that he might soon be taken off the case.

  ‘Nobody’s got an alibi,’ he confided to Mrs Bradley, ‘except Mr Dance and the servants. They can all alibi one another, and I’ve never, in any case, suspected any of them. Of course, there’s Sir Bohun Chantrey and Mr Lupez – but – I don’t know!’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Bradley, who, because she liked Collins and because she did not want the killer to remain undetected, had thrown out some strong hints, ‘you know what I think, and, in your own mind, I believe you agree that there is more than a possibility that I may be right. Why don’t you push your enquiries hard in that direction and see what happens?’

  ‘Because, as you said yourself, there’s no proof, ma’am, and there is such a thing as Judges’ Rules. Besides, with three suspects like Mr Lupez, Mr Grimston, and Sir Bohun himself still in the picture, there’s no picking out one more than another, so far as I can see. No, ma’am, I’ve talked matters over and I’ve thought matters over,
and I only hope I can leave it to Mr Gavin. The job is much more in his line than it is in mine, and I dare say he’d like a free hand. As for me, there’s been some funny work in connexion with switching some lorries over at a place called Ponteston which I’d rather like to look into, and I can’t while I’m on this case. I’d much rather leave this job to Mr Gavin, and I dare say he’d like to be on his own to break it down.’

  ‘Well, the first thing, as I see it,’ said Gavin to Mrs Bradley when Collins had left, ‘is to break down a few more of these non-alibis. Dash it all, the rest of these people can’t all have lived only to themselves between three and five that afternoon! What’s the matter with them? Guilty little secrets or what? I’m going to tackle Brenda Dance again. I’m certain she didn’t do it, and I’m going to clear her once and for all, and send her home.’

  ‘But I can’t tell you any more, Robert darling,’ said Mrs Dance. ‘I expect I was just simply lying down in my room, as I said before.’

  ‘With whom?’ asked Gavin, masking, to some extent, this crudity with a confident, boyish grin. ‘Come clean. It doesn’t matter to us. All I want is for you to clear out and leave me with the people I really suspect. Be good, now, Brenda. Who was it?’

  Mrs Dance looked demure.

  ‘If you must know,’ she said, ‘it was with Toby.’

  ‘Toby? But I thought –’

  ‘You thought quite right, darling. But it was just one of those things that do happen in an ill-regulated world.’

  ‘But why didn’t you tell Collins right at the beginning?’ demanded Gavin, affecting to believe her.

  ‘Two reasons. First, he hasn’t your priceless nerve in asking really rude questions, and, secondly, I can trust you not to make use of the information in the wrong way. You see, we still want that divorce.’

  ‘Then you’re a fathead,’ said Gavin. ‘Toby is worth ten of anybody else you’d get.’

  ‘But he’s not worth ten times as much money.’

  Gavin laughed. Then he composed his face again and said severely:

  ‘Stop lying, Brenda! Who was with you? We know it wasn’t Toby. He was at Mr de Philippe’s flat that afternoon. They had a row. de Philippe confirms this.’

  ‘I know. I just like to annoy you. Honestly, Robert, dear, I would like to provide myself with an alibi, but I can’t. I really was alone and I don’t see who else can possibly tell you so.’

  ‘Hm!’ said Gavin. At this moment there came a violent crash against the door. Gavin stepped across to open it. Sir Bohun stood there. He appeared to be both angry and agitated.

  ‘Just had to get the doctor to Grimston,’ he explained. ‘Bell went up to talk to him for a bit, and found that the silly fellow had tried to poison himself. Bottle of laudanum and a half-glass of port on the table. Port doped with the stuff! Doctor has pulled him round, though, so you needn’t take official notice, I hope?’

  ‘Laudanum?’ said Gavin. ‘He tried it on the night of your Sherlock Holmes party. Miss Menzies spotted the bottle on a bathroom shelf while the competition was on. She did not realize its significance immediately. She thought it was one of the Holmes series of objects – to wit, the laudanum in the Silver Blaze case. It was only when she discovered the curry that she decided the laudanum was nothing to do with the competition.’

  ‘Um!’ commented Sir Bohun. He tapped the table with the nail of his right-hand index-finger. ‘In a bathroom? Could have been put there for medicinal purposes, couldn’t it? How did you connect it with Grimston?’

  ‘For one reason at the time; for another shortly afterwards; and for a third, of course, now. I suppose you have established that he administered the laudanum to himself? It wasn’t an accident or somebody else’s attempt to do away with him?’

  ‘He says he did it himself, and there’s no reason to disbelieve the silly fellow. He’s always been unbalanced, and, of course, Linda’s death hasn’t done him any good. I gather that you don’t suspect him of having committed the murder. I can’t understand it. I simply can’t. I should have thought the whole thing hung together. He was in love with the girl, and he did for her in a fit of jealousy when he heard she was engaged to me. He’s quite capable of any crazy action. Look at that rubbish he told about his dream!’

  ‘Quite,’ Gavin agreed. ‘Superintendent Collins had him for questioning, as you know. He thought him unbalanced, as you say, but he also formed the opinion that he didn’t kill the girl. Grimston was much too anxious to convince us that he did. He certainly has offered no alibi for the time of the murder. In fact, he confessed, but he got one or two details wrong.’

  ‘Sheer cunning, my dear Gavin. Grimston’s got plenty of brains – of a kind!’ said Sir Bohun, hastily and eagerly.

  ‘The police,’ Gavin replied, ‘have plenty of experience in sifting the stories of would-be newspaper head-liners. No, the fact – the obvious fact now – is that Grimston is a suicide type. He couldn’t find the nerve to do the job the way he’d planned it, so he thought that, by confessing to the murder, he’d get the public hangman to muck in.’

  ‘The way he’d planned it?’

  ‘Brings us back to the night of your party. He put the laudanum in a bathroom which was originally one of the rooms left within bounds for the purposes of the competition, and then put a notice on the door to keep people out. As it chanced, Miss Menzies and I both noticed what had happened, and she took the notice down and opened the door because she thought that one of the guests was playing unfairly, and had discovered a Holmes object in that bathroom which he did not intend that anyone else should see.’

  ‘Who did a dirty thing like that?’ Sir Bohun spoke excitedly.

  ‘Nobody. That’s what I’m explaining. That was only what Laura thought. It supplies her reason for removing the notice and opening the bathroom door. As she did so, she nearly cannoned into Grimston, who seemed unduly affected by the encounter and at seeing that the bottle of laudanum was in full view of anyone who happened to be passing.’

  ‘But, from what Linda told me during our brief engagement, the fellow waited until near the end of the evening, and then proposed to her,’ protested Sir Bohun. ‘That doesn’t sound as though he’d planned to commit suicide at the party.’

  ‘Mrs Bradley told us about the bit of argument she overheard on her way to her room, and Grimston agreed, when the Superintendent had him under observation, that he had decided to take another pop at pressing his claim because he regarded Laura’s discovery of the laudanum as a direct intervention of Providence and a sign that there was some hope for him after all. Unfortunately for both himself and Linda, it didn’t work out like that.’

  ‘For both of them?’

  ‘Certainly. If Linda Campbell had accepted Grimston, it is possible, don’t you think, that she would have been alive to-day?’

  ‘Why, then, you do mean the mad fellow killed her!’

  Gavin shook his head hopelessly and said:

  ‘I’ll see him when he’s quite recovered. Meanwhile, I’d better interview Mr Bell, although I don’t suppose it will help. Is the doctor still with Mr Grimston?’

  ‘No. He says the fellow will be all right now. Just thought I’d better let you know. Hope no action necessary on your part?’

  ‘Where is Grimston? Up in his room still?’

  ‘Yes. Second landing, third door along.’

  ‘Right. I’ll go along a bit later. Would you mind sending me Mr Bell?’

  Bell, his red hair standing up stiffly, had nothing to add.

  ‘He’d taken it, apparently, just before I got there,’ he said. ‘I saw the laudanum bottle, of course, and, knowing he’s a queer sort of stick, I challenged him and he admitted what he’d done, so I bunked off to the phone and called the doctor. Luckily he could come at once, so not much harm has been done. Will you need to take official action?’

  ‘I don’t know. It seems he’d done it before – put laudanum in his glass of port. Mr Dance seemed to know about that.’

 
; ‘Horrible taste, I should think! Of course, there isn’t a gas oven in this house!’

  ‘By the way,’ said Gavin, ‘to change the subject for a minute, can you tell me where you were and what you were doing between three o’clock and five on the eleventh of January?’

  ‘The eleventh of –? Oh, I see! I should suppose I was in the library. I’m re-cataloguing it when I get any spare time. No, wait a minute, though! I wasn’t in the house at all that day, come to think of it. I had leave of absence from Sir Bohun and went to see some friends at Easthill, and then went on to London.’

  ‘Your friends’ telephone number? I am most anxious to get this business cleared up, and I’m nowhere near it at present.’

  ‘Easthill X7. Shall I get through for you? It’s a trunk call.’

  ‘No, no, I’ll get it myself, thanks.’ He smiled. ‘Can’t be too careful, you know!’

  ‘Of course not. Is there anything else I can do?’

  ‘Yes. Tell me, how do these parcels of Sherlock Holmes stuff come to the house?’

  ‘By post.’

  ‘Invariably?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I have instructions to take each parcel straight to Sir Bohun. The butler doesn’t touch them. Sir Bohun’s tickled pink by the presents. Plays about with them all day.’

  ‘Childishly so, it appears.’

  ‘Well,’ said Bell, smiling, ‘it is hardly for me to agree. I’m a bit of a Holmes maniac myself.’ He went out, and, after staring thoughtfully at the closed door for a moment, Gavin went out after him to the telephone in the hall. He rang the number and waited to be connected. When connexion was established, a woman’s voice answered.

  ‘Who’s that speaking?’ she enquired.

  ‘A police officer, madam. Mr Bell, who has given us your number, visited you on the afternoon of the eleventh of January last, I am informed.’

  ‘Oh, dear! I knew there would be trouble with that motor-cycle!’ the woman exclaimed. ‘Was anybody hurt?’

  ‘Yes. A young woman was killed, madam.’

  ‘Oh, dear! How dreadful! Did he do it on his way home?’