Death At The Bar ra-9

by Ngaio Marsh

  “Your manners, my dear Alleyn,” he said, “are, as always, worthy of a Chesterfield. I am pinked on the very point of a compliment. The wrong man? Indeed? Then I must be ludicrously at fault. I have made some Gargantuan error. My entire sequence of deductions—”

  “No, no, sir. Your case against Parish is supported by facts, but not by all the facts. Parish might so nearly have murdered Watchman, by either of the two methods you’ve described…”

  “Then… Well!”

  “The circumstance that excludes Parish, excludes his only means of murder. If he did it, it was by poisoning the brandy, and he couldn’t tell which glass would be used. Not possibly. But we’ll come to that in a minute. Our case, and I’m afraid it’s a dubious one at the moment, is that there are one or two scraps of evidence that fit into the pattern only if they are allowed to point in one direction, and that is not towards Parish.”

  “What are they?… More beer, I implore you.”

  “To begin with,” said Alleyn, filling Colonel Brammington’s glass, “the two iodine bottles…”

  “What!”

  “Shall we take them, sir, as they turn up?”

  “Let us, for God’s sake.”

  “You, sir, ended with Sebastian Parish. I shall begin with him. If Parish was a murderer, how lucky he was! How all occasions did inform against Watchman and favour Parish! It was on the evening after his decision that the brandy was produced, so that was pure luck. He didn’t know Legge would wound Watchman, he only hoped that under the influence of brandy, he might miss his mark. When it so fell out, he had to make up his mind very rapidly and plan a series of delicate and dangerous manœuvres. And how oddly he behaved! He risked his own immunity by handling the darts, and this, when his whole object was that Legge should seem to be the poisoner. After the accident, instead of putting cyanide in the brandy glass and moving away from it, he stood beside it, in a position that was likely to be remembered. And again, how could he tell that Miss Moore would use that glass? There were seven other glasses about the room. She might have taken a clean glass. Parish made no attempt to force that glass upon her. She chose it. More stupendous luck. Now, with the exception of Miss Moore, this objection applies to the supposition that any of them put cyanide in the brandy-glass. They couldn’t be sure it would be used. Only Miss Moore could be sure of that, for she chose it.”

  “You surely don’t… Go on,” said Colonel Brammington.

  “I entirely agree that, ruling out Legge, — and assuming that the whole arrangement of the business was an attempt to implicate Legge, — Cubitt, Miss Darragh, Will Pomeroy and Miss Moore must be counted out, since they have all declared that Legge was unable to meddle with the darts. Our case rests on a different assumption.”

  “Here, wait a bit,” cried the Colonel. “No. All right. Go on.”

  “Abel Pomeroy and Parish were the only ones openly to accuse Legge. Abel Pomeroy was particularly vehement in his insistence that Legge deliberately killed Watchman. He came up to London to tell me about it.”

  “Old Pomeroy was my earlier choice.”

  “Yes, sir. To return to the brandy. For the reason I have given you, and for reasons that I hope to make clear, we are persuaded that there was no cyanide in the brandy. We are certain that cyanide was put on the dart after, and not before, it pierced Watchman’s finger. Otherwise it would have been removed by the trial throw into the cork board or, if there was any trace left, possibly washed off by the blood that flowed freely from Watchman’s finger and with which the dart was greatly stained. The cyanide was found on the point of the dart. Watchman, we think, was poisoned, not by the dart nor by the brandy. How, then?”

  “But my dear fellow, there was no cyanide in the iodine bottle. They found the bottle. There was no cyanide.”

  “None. Now here, sir, we have a bit of evidence that is new to you. I feel sure that if you’d had it earlier to-day, it would have made a difference in your view of the case. We have found out that within a few hours of the murder, a bottle of iodine disappeared from the bathroom cupboard upstairs.”

  Colonel Brammington stared a little wildly at Alleyn, made as if to speak, and evidently thought better of it. He waved his hand.

  “The bottle of iodine that was originally in the down-stairs first-aid box,” Alleyn continued, “was an entirely innocent bottle, with Abel’s prints on it and only his. Legge’s prints were added when he borrowed this bottle to doctor a cut on his chin. Abel gave it to him. Now that innocent and original bottle is, I consider, the one that was found under the settle. All that is left of the bottle Abel Pomeroy used, when he poured iodine into Watchman’s wound, is represented, or so we believe, by the surplus amount of glass Mr. Harper swept up from the floor and by the small misshapen fragments we found in the ashes.”

  “Hah!” ejaculated the Colonel. “Now I have you. A lethal bottle, taken from the bathroom and infected, was substituted for the innocent bottle in the first-aid box. Only Abel Pomeroy’s prints were found on the cupboard door and so on. Abel Pomeroy himself took the bottle from the box and himself poured the iodine into the wound. Splendid!”

  “Exactly, sir,” said Alleyn.

  “Well, Alleyn, I readily abandon my second love. I return, chastened, to my first love. How will you prove it?”

  “How indeed! We hope that an expert will be able to tell us that the fragments of glass are, in fact, of the same type as that used for iodine bottles. That’s not much, but it’s something, and we have got other strings to our bow.”

  “What’s his motive?”

  “Whose motive, sir?”

  “Old Pomeroy’s.”

  Alleyn looked at him apologetically.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I hadn’t followed you. Abel Pomeroy had no motive, as far as I know, for wishing Watchman dead.”

  “What the hell d’you mean.”

  “I didn’t think Abel Pomeroy was strictly your first love, sir. May I go on? You see, once we accept the iodine theory, we must admit that the murderer knew Watchman would be wounded by the dart. Nobody knew that, sir, but Legge.”

  ii

  It took the second half of the last bottle of Treble Extra to mollify the Chief Constable, but he was mollified in the end.

  “I invited it,” he said, “and I got it. In a sense, I suppose I committed the unforgivable offence of failing to lead trumps. Legge was trumps. Go on, my dear Alleyn. Expound. Is it Locke who says that it is one thing to show a man he is in error and another to convince him of the truth? You have shown me my error. Pray reveal the whole truth.”

  “From the first,” said Alleyn, “it seemed obvious that Legge was our Man. Mr. Harper realized that, and so, sir, did you. This afternoon I told Harper that Fox and I had arrived at the same conclusion. You asked me not to give you our theory before, but before and after you came into Illington, we discussed the whole thing. Harper was for arresting him there and then, and I, mistakenly perhaps, thought that we should give him more rope. I thought that on our evidence, which rests so much upon conjecture, we would not establish a prima-facie case.”

  “What is your evidence beyond the tedious — well, go on.”

  “As we see it,” said Alleyn, “Legge planned the whole affair to look like accident. No doubt he hoped that it would go no further than the inquest. His behaviour has been consistent with the theory of accident. He has shown us a man overwrought by the circumstance of having unwittingly killed someone. That describes his behaviour after Watchman died, at the inquest, and subsequently. He chanced everything on the accident theory. It is easy, now, to say he took an appalling risk, but he very nearly got away with it. If old Abel hadn’t raised such a dust about the good name of his public house, and if Mr. Nark and others had not driven Harper, here, to fury, you might very well have got no further. Legge’s motive was the one we have recognized: It harks back to the days when he was Montague Thringle and stood his trial for large-size embezzlement, and all the rest of it. At least three, of the enormous
number of people he ruined, committed suicide. There was the usual pitiful list of old governesses and retired clerks. A shameful affair. Now, in defending Lord Bryonie, Watchman was able to throw almost the entire blame on Legge, or Thringle as I suppose we must learn to call him. Let him be Legge for the moment. Watchman made a savage attack on Legge, and it was in no small measure due to him that Legge got such a heavy sentence. He had an imperial and moustaches in those days, and had not turned grey. His appearance was very greatly changed when he came out of gaol. After various vicissitudes in Liverpool and London, he came down here, suffering from a weak chest and some complaint of the ear, for which he uses a lotion and a dropper. Harper found the dropper when he searched Legge’s room on the morning after Watchman died. It’s not there now.”

  “That’s right,” said Harper heavily.

  “Legge got on well in Illington and Ottercombe. He’d got his philatelic job, and he was treasurer to a growing society. We shall inspect the books of the Coombe Left Movement. If he has not yet fallen into his old ways, on a smaller scale, it is, I am sure, only because the funds at his disposal are not yet large enough. All was going like clockwork until, out of a clear sky, came Watchman in his car. That collision of theirs must have given Legge an appalling shock. Watchman didn’t recognize him, though, and later while Legge sat unseen in the tap-room, he overheard Watchman tell Parish of the collision and say, as Parish admitted he said, that he did not know the man who ran into him. But before Legge could go out that night, Watchman came across and tried to make friends with him. Legge doesn’t seem to have been very responsive but he stuck it out. The rat-poisoning party returned and Legge’s skill with darts was discussed. Legge took up Watchman’s bet and won. I think it must have amused him to do that. Now, it was soon after this that Watchman began to twit Legge about his job and his political opinions. I’ve gone over the events of this first evening with the witnesses. Though they are a bit hazy, they agree that Watchman’s manner was offensive. He ended by inviting Legge to a game of Round-the-Clock and the manner of the invitation was this: he said, ‘Have you ever done time, Mr. Legge?’ I think that throughout the whole evening Watchman, having recognized Legge, played cat-and-mouse with him. I knew Watchman. He has a curious feline streak of cruelty in him. I think it must have been then that Legge made up his mind Watchman had recognized him. Legge went into the public bar for a time. I believe he also went into the garage and sucked up cyanide in the little dropper he used for his lotion. Just, as they say, ‘in case’!”

  “Damned ingenious,” said Colonel Brammington, “but conjectural.”

  “I know. We are only halfway through the case. It has changed its complexion with Oates’s arrest of Legge for assault. We’ve only been here some thirty hours, you see. If we can check the time Legge appeared in the public bar with the time he left the private one, and all that dreary game, we shall be a step nearer. But dismiss all this conjecture and we still have the facts. We still know that only Legge controlled the flight of the dart.”

  “Yes.”

  “The next day was the fatal one. Legge stayed out of sight all day. Late in the afternoon, he left it as late as possible, and just before the others came in, he went down to the bar with a razor-cut on his chin and asked Abel for some iodine. Abel got the box out of the corner cupboard and gave it to Legge. Legge returned it a few minutes later. He had dabbed iodine on his chin. He had also substituted, for the iodine bottle in the box, the iodine bottle he had taken from the bathroom. This he had doctored with prussic acid from the rat-hole. By this really neat manœuvre he got Abel to do the dirty work and accounted for any prints of his own that might afterwards be found on the bottle. In the evening Legge had a perfectly genuine appointment in Illington. At about five o’clock the storm broke, and I think that, like a good villain, Mr. Legge made plans to the tune of thunder off-stage. The storm was a fair enough reason for staying indoors. The failing lights were propitious. The Pomeroys both told him he couldn’t get through the tunnel. When Will Pomeroy went up to Legge’s room in the evening, he found him rather thoughtful. However, he came down and joined the party in the bar. I think he had made up his mind that, if Watchman suggested the trick should be done that night, he would wound Watchman. Abel, so keen on antisepsis, would produce the first-aid set from the cupboard. So it worked out. Two points are interesting. The first is the appearance and the consumption of the brandy. That was an unexpected development but he turned it to good account. He sat in the inglenook and appeared to get quietly and thoroughly soaked. That would account nicely for his missing with the trick. In the wood-basket beside his seat we found a newspaper into which liquid had been poured. The newspaper had been there since that night. Fox and I think we can detect a trace of the fruitful vine in the stains. But he must have watched the others anxiously. Would they be too tight to remember he had no chance to monkey with the darts? Luckily for him Will, Abel, Miss Darragh, and Miss Moore all remained sober. That brings us to the second point. Legge’s great object was to provide himself with an alibi for doctoring the darts. That was why he fell in with Abel’s suggestion that he should use the new darts. Legge stood under the central light and waited for the darts to be handed to him. He was in shirt-sleeves and they were rolled back like a conjurer’s. Parish, Will, Abel and Watchman all handled the darts. When Legge got them he at once threw them one by one into the board as a trial. That was his first mistake, but it would have looked odd for him not to do it. Watchman spread out his hand and the sequel followed. There were six people ready to swear Legge had done nothing to the darts.”

  Alleyn paused.

  “I’m afraid this is heavy going,” he said. “I won’t be much longer. Watchman, when hit, pulled out the dart and threw it into the floor. When Oates called for the dart Legge obligingly found it on the floor behind the table, but not before Oates — who’s a sharp fellow, Nick — has, as he says, spotted it alaying there. You throw those darts down as often as you like and I’ll guarantee they stick in. And moreover we’ve statements from them all that it did stick in. All right. The lights had been wavering on and off throughout the evening. Before Watchman died they went off. There was a horrid interval during which Watchman made ghastly noises, everybody tramped about on broken glass, and Cubitt felt somebody’s head butt against his legs. Miss Moore, she told me, heard somebody click the light to make sure it would stay off. He then dived down to find the tell-tale iodine bottle and plant the innocent one under the bench. He must, as you say, have found the bottom of the bottle hard to smash and have thrown it in the fire. You remember he called out that he would throw wood on the fire in order to get a little light. Just as he did that, the lights went on. There’s a second switch in the inglenook, you know. He’d done another job of work in the dark. He’d picked up the dart and infected it with the cyanide. The dart was sticking in the floor, well away from the others. He had only to feel for the table and then find the dart. Here he made the fatal mistake of adding a fancy touch. We’ve proved that the dart was infected after the accident. Legge’s fingerprints are all over it. If anyone else had pulled it out of the floor they would either have left prints of their own or smudged his. He should have left the dart alone, and we would have concluded that if it was ever poisoned the stuff was washed off by blood or had evaporated.”

  “I cannot conceive,” said the Colonel. “why he’d wanted to anoint the dart. Why implicate himself? Why?”

  “In order that we should think exactly what we did think. ‘Why,’ we cried, ‘there was Legge, finding the dart, with every opportunity to wipe it clean, and he didn’t! It couldn’t be Legge!’ Legge’s plan, you see, depended on the theory of accident. He made it clear that he could have done nothing to the dart beforehand.”

  “Then,” said the Colonel, “if the rest of this tarradiddle, forgive me my dear fellow, is still in the air, we yet catch him on the point of the dart.”

  “I think so. I explained to Harper this afternoon that I thought it bett
er not to make an arrest at once. We realized that our case rested on a few facts and a mass of dubious conjecture. Fox and I pretended to despise conjecture and we hoped to collect many more bits of evidence before we fired point-blank. We still hope to get them before Legge comes up for assault and battery. We hope, in a word, to turn conjecture into fact. Until this evening I also hoped to get more from Legge himself, and, by George, I nearly got a dose of prussic acid. He must have slipped into the tap-room and put his last drop of poison in the decanter. He must also have had that last drop hidden away in a bottle somewhere, ever since he murdered Watchman. Not on his person for he was searched, and not in his room. Perhaps in his new room at Illington, perhaps in a cache somewhere outside the pub. Some time after Harper had searched his room, Legge got rid of a small glass dropper with a rubber top. If he used it to draw prussic acid from the rat-hole, he must have cleaned and filled it with his lotion, emptied it, and restored it to its place on his dressing-table. If he also used it to do his work with the decanter, he got rid of it this afternoon together with whatever vessel housed the teaspoonful of prussic acid. We’ll search for them both.”

  Alleyn paused and looked round the circle of attentive faces. He raised a long finger.

  “If we could find so much as the rubber top of that dropper,” he said, “hidden away in some unlikely spot, then it would be good-bye conjecture and welcome fact!”

  iii

  “A needle,” cried Colonel Brammington, after a long pause, “a needle in a haystack of gigantic proportions.”

  “It’s not quite so bad as that. It rained pretty heavily during the lunch-hour. Legge hasn’t changed his shoes and he hasn’t been out in them. They’re slightly stained and damp. He crossed the yard several times, but he didn’t get off cobblestones. The paths and roads outside the pub are muddy. He’s therefore either thrown the bottle and dropper from the window or got rid of them in the house or garage.