“Oh, dear, that might start a fire!” I grabbed a half-empty cup of cold tea from my desk and poured it over cigarette and file folder. Looking at what I’d done, I put my hand to my mouth and picked up the ruined folder. “Oh, Mr. Fortier, I’m so sorry! I’m afraid I haven’t done your file a bit of good.”
Fortier was not at all amused. “Thank you, Mrs.—er—I believe I can do nicely without your help! If you’ll kindly step aside—”
The front door opened. Tom Anderson stepped inside, with a tall, lanky man behind him. I breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief and dropped both the file and my ditsy persona.
“Good,” I said crisply, nodding to the tall man, whose strong jaw was grimly set. “Mr. Fortier, I forgot to mention that Mr. Spragge would like to speak to you for a moment. If you would come this way, please?”
I thought he was going to bolt, but Tom and the tall man filled the doorway. With a scowl and a shrug, Fortier walked back into Evelyn’s office. I followed him, everyone else trailing after me.
“Evelyn, we need Mr. Spragge, please. This gentleman”—I indicated the tall man—“wishes to speak to him, quite urgently.”
This was the really tricky part. Evelyn was under no obligation to obey orders from me, of all people. But I put steel into my voice, the kind that any elementary school teacher knows how to use when necessary, and she picked up the phone and spoke into it. Mr. Spragge’s door opened, and he came out, and Tom put his fingers to his mouth and uttered a piercing whistle.
That brought everyone else out of their cubbyholes—Grey, Upton, Shore, Pierce. It was really rather crowded in the main office, and when, on his cue, Nigel walked in with Sneaky Pete in his arms, there was a small sensation. The cat ignored the crowd, came straight up to me, stropped itself against my ankles, and started to purr.
“That cat again!” said Evelyn. “Mrs. Wren, what is the meaning of—I know that cat,” she said, her voice suddenly rising. “He’s the one—oh! So it was you that night—”
“It was,” I said calmly. “Yes, I thought you would recognize poor old Pete eventually, though he’s a good deal handsomer than when you first saw him. But I think you might be more interested in this gentleman. He’s from America—from Multilinks, in fact. May I present Mr. Bill Monahan?”
Everyone was startled. Three mouths dropped open; fear entered three pairs of eyes. But only one scream sounded.
“No! No, he can’t be! No, he doesn’t look like that at all, and I put him in the river myself! No, it isn’t—make him go away!”
In the end it took two police constables to subdue Evelyn Forbes.
21
She was on the verge of a breakdown, anyway,” I said later as I sipped good bourbon and relaxed in Lynn’s living room. Walt Shepherd was closeted with the police. Messrs. Spragge and Fortier and Mrs. Forbes were cooling their heels at Her Majesty’s pleasure. The rest of the Multilinks staff were, presumably, out looking for jobs, except for Mr. Hammond, who was sitting with the Andersons and Nigel and me, tying up loose ends.
“I almost hated to do it to her,” I went on. “She was in many ways a very nice woman.”
“Nice!” Lynn gave a dramatic little shudder. “She killed two people!”
“Only one, strictly speaking, poor little Mr. Dalal. It was Fortier’s hand that administered the poison to Monahan, though I’m pretty sure Evelyn brewed it.”
“Brewed it? What do you mean?” Lynn was eager for all the details.
“I think she boiled it up herself. They obviously can’t do an autopsy when they haven’t got a body, but if it ever turns up, I’m betting they find nicotine.”
Terry looked at his just-lit cigarette and very casually stubbed it out.
“I know a little about poisons,” I said modestly. “Anybody who’s read as many mysteries as I have learns something over the years about how to kill people. Nicotine is about the only thing I can think of that fits the way Monahan died. He was perfectly all right, and then half an hour later he was dead—with a cup of coffee in front of him. Now, nicotine has a strong taste, but the coffee on English trains is bad enough to hide the taste of almost anything. Nicotine is also extremely lethal in very small doses, and even less if a person doesn’t smoke. And nicotine works extremely fast. If poor Bill had any kind of ulcer in his mouth or a cut on his lip, it would have started to kill him even faster than usual. Finally, nicotine is one of the easiest poisons to make at home. And no, I have no intention of telling you how. One of you might get ideas someday.”
“It’s guesswork,” objected Tom lazily.
“Not entirely. One of the books in Evelyn’s file drawer was a Dorothy Sayers, Hangman’s Holiday. I’ve read it many times. It’s a collection of short stories, one of which features nicotine as an efficient poison. And of course Evelyn may admit it.”
“What about Dalal? I suppose he stumbled onto something?” Terry sipped the scotch I’d had Lynn load with soda.
“I think she killed Dalal for the same reason she arranged Monahan’s death: He suspected something was wrong at Multilinks. You see, it all stems from her hero worship of Mr. Spragge. He was the great man, the god, the one who could do no wrong. So, of course, when he—with Fortier’s collaboration, we’ve established that now from the computer records—when they started pirating their own software and selling it to the third-world nations at a deep discount, and Evelyn found out about it, Spragge of course had to be protected at all costs.”
“But why did he do it?” Terry asked in exasperation. “That’s the part I find absolutely incredible.”
“I’m not sure even he knows that. He may have done it, or persuaded himself he was doing it, from humanitarian motives. I heard him tell one of the policemen that he knew a lot of his customers from way back, Oxford days. But eventually he fell prey to the lure of the money. His wife’s an invalid, you know, and specialized medical care costs a lot of money, even in this country. I think he was going to get out, though. Fortier I’m not so sure about. He says he was, but he showed every sign of skipping the country. You helped prevent that, Terry, and I’m so glad you agreed to cooperate.”
There was a long pause, then Lynn sighed. “That poor woman.”
“Yes,” I agreed sadly. “You know, if I’d been as smart as I sometimes think I am, I’d have guessed much earlier, just from her reading material. She loved John Buchan. I think she imagined herself a kind of Richard Hannay, brave and alone, fighting for Civilization As We Know It.”
We were all quiet then, until the silence was shattered by a strident feline demand. Pete had finished his supper—plebeian tuna fish this time, but laced with caviar—and wanted some attention. He strolled over and arched his back, demanding a caress, and when I stroked his back, collapsed onto the floor and rolled over so that I could pet his tummy.
I obliged, and then stroked it more purposefully to the accompaniment of loud purrs. I looked up at Nigel.
“Um, Nigel,” I said, making a little face, “you and Inga are definitely adopting this cat, yes?”
“Right. He’s a friendly little bloke, now that he’s got used to us, and getting more handsome by the minute as he puts on weight. Anyway, he helped unmask a murderer; he’s a very exceptional cat. Why?”
“Only that I hope you have some good friends who are as yet catless. Because he is a she, and she’s going to have kittens.” I poked gently at the wiggly little lumps under Pete’s belly fur. Nigel picked up the cat and felt for himself, and his face was a study in consternation.
The doorbell rang. Lynn sat up with a groan. “Who on earth?”
“The police, I suppose,” said Tom, sighing and getting to his feet. “They said they might still have some questions, although I thought they meant tomorrow. I’ll go.”
In a moment there was a basso rumble from the downstairs hall. I pricked up my ears unbelievingly, then scrambled from my deep chair and ran like a teenager down the stairs, my arms spread wide.
“Alan!”
Jeanne M. Dams, The Victim in Victoria Station
The Victim in Victoria Station Page 19
