Gin and Murder

by Josephine Pullein-Thompson

  ‘Dr. Skindle,’ said Nan. ‘Mrs. Broughton’s always gone to him ever since she come to this ’ouse.’

  ‘Now,’ said Hollis when he had entered the doctor’s name in his notebook. ‘Have you any poisons in your possession? I’m thinking especially of arsenic, which many households keep in the form of a weedkiller.’

  ‘God knows what we’ve got,’ answered Mark. ‘Codding does the garden so you’d better ask him about the weedkiller. Miss Hatch here looks after the human medicine chest and Philips, the stud groom, is in charge of the horse one. Haines, the first whip and kennel huntsman, has enough hound remedies over at the kennels to poison an army.’

  ‘There’s no arsenic in my cupboard,’ said Nan firmly. ‘I don’t believe in keeping no poisons about, only camphorated oil for Deborah’s chest when she gets that terrible cough of hers — I moistens the cotton wool with it, just like old Dr. Canning said.’

  ‘All right, Nan,’ Mark said. ‘No one’s accusing you of anything.’

  ‘I should think not,’ Nan told him indignantly. ‘I’ve done nothing to get mixed up with the police. Thirty years I worked for her ladyship and never a word of complaint. I’ve never been used to the sort of houses where the police come with their poking and prying —’

  ‘Miss Hatch,’ said Hollis sternly, ‘a crime has been committed and it is the duty of every citizen to help the police in their investigations.’ He turned to Mark. ‘Is the man who does the gardening available?’

  ‘Codding? Yes, I expect so.’ Mark looked at his watch. ‘He has a room over the stables, he’ll be there unless he’s gone to the local. I’ll come across with you.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary. I saw the stables as I came in.’

  ‘Oh. All right — but Codding’s an elderly man and not very easy to handle.’

  ‘In the police we are trained to handle all sorts without assistance,’ said Hollis.

  ‘Very well, Inspector. Then perhaps you’ll let me get on with my work?’

  ‘I may require additional information when I’ve seen Codding,’ remarked Hollis unpleasantly, and in the tone of one who holds the whip hand.

  Mark, who had been keeping his temper with difficulty, left the room without another word.

  ‘A very disagreeable man,’ said Nan as the door closed behind him. ‘A very disagreeable man indeed. If it hadn’t been for her I’d have given in my notice many a time. Those children aren’t much better either — ungrateful little things.’

  Hollis seized his opportunity. ‘Well, Miss Hatch,’ he said. Perhaps you can help me. Do you know anything about this hunt quarrel?’

  ‘Quarrel? They’re always a-quarrelling. Mr. Broughton would quarrel with that wall. Mud all over his clothes, mud all over the house and all his time spent out there in them stables. There she is, left alone day in, day out; but she won’t have a word against him — not a word.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Hollis. ‘But it’s facts I want. Well, I won’t waste any more time. I’ll go and see this Codding.’

  ‘You won’t get nothing out of him, he’s a regular old fool.’ Nan gave a contemptuous sniff. ‘Thinks the world of Mr. Broughton, Codding does. Can’t see no further than the end of his nose.’

  Since the death of his wife, seven years before, Fred Codding had made the avoidance of draughts the prime purpose of his existence. From his little garret above the forage rooms all air was rigorously excluded. At Hollis’s knock he extricated himself from shawl and rug, rose stiffly from his chair beside the oil stove and freed the door from its thick fustian curtain and the roll of newspaper which guarded the crack below. Looking like an elderly tortoise, he peered out at Hollis, who was momentarily overcome by the blast of hot air and the reek of oil which met him.

  ‘Weedkiller?’ repeated Codding stupidly, when Hollis had stated his business. ‘Weedkiller? Whatever do the police want that for? There’s no law against ’aving weedkiller.’

  ‘It’s none of your business what we want it for; but it’s in connection with a murder inquiry. Now have you any weedkiller?’

  ‘Perhaps I ’ave and perhaps I ’aven’t. We’ll ’ave to go down to the shed to see. Come on in and shut that door, while I gets my overcoat. I don’t want this room like an ice ’ouse.’

  ‘It’s more like an oven,’ said Hollis, looking round with a disparaging eye.

  ‘I can’t stand draughts, I can’t. Only got to sit in one a couple of minutes and I gets a terrible pain all down my leg. Sciatica, Dr. Skindle reckons it is, but ’e don’t seem able to do nothing for it.’

  Hollis ignored the old man’s chatter as he followed him across the stableyard, through a wicker gate and down a gravelled path between box hedges. The bitterness of the wind seemed to have increased and it whipped round the garden, tearing at the frozen hedges and the rows of stiff, bedraggled brussels sprouts. Codding fumbled with the door of the potting shed which opened at last with a creak and a groan. He shone his torch on a shelf cluttered with paint pots, some half full, some empty. Hollis added his more powerful beam. Slowly the old man put up a shaking hand, shifted a few pots, and then, one by one, lifted them down until the shelf was bare. Now his face looked grey and a little frightened as he turned to the detective. ‘’E’s gone!’ he said. That’s where I keeps ’im. Someone’s ’ad ’im.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HOLLIS, himself an aggressive agnostic, was afraid that he would find the Chadwicks at church when he drove through the village of Hazebrook on Sunday morning and heard the bells and saw a considerable part of the population converging on the church, just visible from the road through the boughs of the frost-rimed trees. However, he found such of the family as he wanted at home. Hilary, boyish in corduroys and sweater, was mucking out the two horses; Elizabeth Chadwick’s head called ‘Good morning,’ from the kitchen window and the commander appeared round the corner of the cottage carrying a basket of logs. They seemed pleased to see Hollis; abandoning their occupations, they ushered him into the drawing-room, where a newly-lit fire burned feebly.

  ‘Any news?’ asked Elizabeth Chadwick.

  ‘The investigation is proceeding satisfactorily,’ Hollis told her.

  ‘Does that mean that you do suspect someone?’ asked Charlie Chadwick.

  ‘We’ve narrowed down the field a good deal. More than that I’m not at liberty to tell you.’

  ‘I don’t see who you can suspect,’ objected Hilary. ‘At least not among the people who were at the party.’

  ‘Well, you’re hardly trained in police work, miss, so perhaps you wouldn’t know where to begin.’

  ‘I don’t believe that it was murder at all,’ said Mrs. Chadwick. ‘Superintendent Fox said it was arsenic that killed Guy. Well, look at the people who get poisoned by it quite accidentally. There was that woman diplomat, she absorbed it from a ceiling, and there was a man who got it off the greens playing golf. Has anyone tested the ceilings at Catton Hall? That’s what I want to know. The police are going to look silly if they hold a full scale murder inquiry and then it turns out that all they needed was a little common sense.’

  ‘The police are quite capable of conducting a murder enquiry, madam,’ said Hollis coldly, and Charlie Chadwick, trying to keep the peace, added — ‘My dear Elizabeth, neither of your examples took a lethal dose of arsenic. As far as I remember, they suffered from repeated bouts of sickness and vague pains and cramps. Poor Guy was in perfect health one minute and dead the next.’

  ‘In any case,’ said Hollis, ‘we have discovered the absence of a tin of arsenical poison and it seems possible that the murderer had access to it.’

  ‘Oh,’ Elizabeth sounded shocked, ‘then you mean we really have got a murderer in our midst?’ And she began to search among her acquaintances for a suspect.

  ‘I still don’t believe it was anyone at the party,’ said Hilary. ‘It couldn’t have been.’ She turned to Hollis. ‘Do you think someone could have doctored Guy’s glucose tablets? He was always eating them for extra
energy and everyone knew that he did.’

  Elizabeth said, ‘There you are, Inspector, there’s a suggestion and it sounds much more likely than your theory that one of our guests poisoned Mr. Vickers.’

  ‘Who’s minus their weedkiller, Inspector?’ asked her husband. ‘Or is that still on the secret list?’

  Hollis’s irritation at the chatter suddenly burst forth.

  ‘I would like to ask you a few questions, Commander,’ he snapped. ‘Is there another room available?’

  Chadwick nodded. ‘Yes, of course. We’ll go into the dining-room.’

  ‘What a horrible ’tec,’ said Elizabeth as the door closed behind the two men. ‘I much prefer Superintendent Fox and those funny constables we had yesterday; not that they seemed the least likely to solve anything.’

  Hilary mused. ‘I wonder whom he suspects? Isn’t it a horrible thought that one of those people may have murdered Guy? But I don’t believe it; none of them had a reason.’ She stood for a few moments fiddling with the ornaments on the chimneypiece and then she said, ‘Well, if he doesn’t want me I’ll go and finish mucking out.’ Elizabeth looked after her anxiously. Did her daughter love Guy, or didn’t she? she wondered. Do other people’s children confide in them?

  Hollis said, ‘Now, sir, you gave the Superintendent a very full report of this party, but there are one or two points I should like to clear up. Mr. Broughton, for instance. You state that he stayed by the door throughout the party and didn’t speak to Mr. Vickers who kept to the fireplace end of the room.’

  ‘Quite correct,’ said Chadwick.

  ‘Rather unusual behaviour, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, not really. Mr. Broughton isn’t what they call a socialite.’

  ‘He stood close to the table on which the wines, spirits, etc., were set out?’

  ‘Well, the glasses were set out there and some of the food, but I was carrying round the cocktail shaker and the sherry decanter most of the time.’

  ‘Mr. Broughton didn’t help you at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No one helped you to dispense the drinks? Not even your wife and daughter?’

  ‘No, I’m not a great conversationalist and I like to have something to do at these parties. So, unless my son happens to be at home, I deal with the drinks and my wife and daughter look after the introductions and the things to eat.’

  ‘I see. Now what was your opinion of Mrs. Broughton’s state?’

  ‘She seemed much the same as she has been for the last few years. I imagine you’ve been told that she drinks.’

  Hollis grunted noncommittally. ‘Yes. Mr. Broughton was evasive about it, but I gathered that much.’

  ‘She’s been in and out of homes a good deal, I believe, but they don’t seem able to help her. Very sad.’

  ‘I wonder that she attends parties if that’s the way of it,’ said Hollis. ‘It must be embarrassing for the other guests.’

  ‘Embarrassing for the hosts too, sometimes,’ said Chadwick ruefully. ‘But, when you’ve known people a long time you have to accept their changing fortunes. A lot of people have dropped them, though, and they never go to large parties. We usually ask them when we’re just having a few friends.’

  ‘I see. Now about this hunt quarrel. Mr. Vickers was in the wrong, I understand; but presumably he would have been made welcome by a large number of hunt supporters, due to the fact that he was a wealthy man?’ Commander Chadwick took out his case and lit another cigarette before he answered. Then he said: ‘This “hunt quarrer as you call it, was a molehill, Inspector. You can’t make a mountain out of it. Mr. Broughton was annoyed with Mr. Vickers, but he was top dog. He’s done too much for the hunt for there to be any likelihood of the committee going against his wishes. He’s lived for the pack since he took it over. There was hardly a hound worth having after the war and he’s built up a pack that would do the Shires credit.’

  ‘I see,’ said Hollis. ‘Now, Commander, in your statement you say that you saw only Miss Chadwick, Mrs. Broughton and Colonel Holmes-Waterford actually talking to Mr. Vickers. But did you at any time see anyone near enough to slip anything into his glass?’

  ‘Nasty question,’ said Charlie Chadwick. ‘Well, obviously, my wife, my daughter and myself had the most opportunity. At the beginning of the evening, when there were only a few of us, we were closer together and so I suppose either Antonia Brockenhurst or Bob Bewley might have had a chance. Apart from that, I wouldn’t like to say.’

  ‘But you are still of the opinion that Mr. Broughton never approached Mr. Vickers at any time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thankyou. Now I’d like to see Mrs. Chadwick for a few minutes.’

  ‘I’ll fetch her.’

  Elizabeth Chadwick, used to fighting the domestic battles of the world from a column in one of the glossier magazines for women, was not to be intimidated by a policeman of Hollis’s calibre. Under his handling she soon became contentious. No, she hadn’t been watching her guests with lynx-like eyes. She had no more expected them to murder each other than she had expected them to steal the silver. She had watched for the empty hand in order to offer it an eatable, but hadn’t registered to whom the hand belonged. She had watched for signs of boredom and for people with no one to talk to, but they had been few, for everyone had known everyone else.

  Yes, it was true that her daughter had talked to Guy Vickers and probably for the greater part of the evening. The young people had been friendly for some time; in fact, during the party they had arranged to go out together on Saturday night. ‘An understanding?’ Hollis had asked, but Elizabeth was not to be drawn. If there was anything they had kept it to themselves.

  ‘Has Miss Chadwick any other admirers?’ asked Hollis. ‘Could her friendship with Mr. Vickers have been causing jealousy in other quarters?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. And certainly not among our guests that night,’ Elizabeth answered without the tremor of an eyelid.

  Hollis said, ‘I’d better have a word with the young lady herself. If she knew Mr. Vickers well she may be able to throw some new light on the matter.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Elizabeth, ‘but I’ll see if I can find her for you; she thought you didn’t want her so she’s gone back to the stables.’ And she left the room, hoping that Hilary had vanished on some expedition.

  ‘Oh, Charlie, he wants to talk to Hilary now,’ she said, finding her husband standing at the drawing-room window.

  ‘She’s mucking out; shall I fetch her?’

  ‘I don’t see why he has to ask her all these sordid questions. We’ve answered them already; why should Hilary be involved?’

  ‘She was there and she’s not a child. You needn’t worry, she’s taking it all very calmly.’

  Men never understand, thought Elizabeth. They don’t feel this desire to protect and spare, they don’t realize that it goes on and on long after one’s children are grown-up.

  Hilary joined Hollis in the dining-room.

  ‘Just a few questions, miss.’ He spoke with a snap, not caring for her casual dress, her air of assurance or the tang of the stable which came in with her. ‘I understand that you were friendly with Mr. Vickers, so no doubt you’ll be anxious to help me in every way you can. I want you to think back to Friday night. First of all can you remember whether Mr. Vickers held his glass in his hand while you were talking to him or whether he put it down on some table?’

  Hilary screwed up her face in an effort to recapture the scene. ‘I’m almost certain he held it,’ she answered. ‘If he put it down it would have been on the chimneypiece — there were no tables near enough. But I’m almost sure he held it.’

  ‘I see. Now, you talked to Mr. Vickers right from the commencement of the party until when?’

  ‘Until Mrs. Broughton came to speak to him. I knew that I was neglecting the other guests and had a guilty conscience about it; so I seized the opportunity and fled.’

  ‘I see, and to whom did you speak nex
t?’

  ‘To Mr. Broughton.’

  ‘Oh, he was close at hand then?’

  ‘No, he was at the other end of the room. But I could see he had no one to talk to so, naturally, I went across.’

  ‘And for how long did you remain in conversation with him?’

  ‘Not very long. Not more than about five minutes, anyway. Then he said he must find his wife and go.’

  ‘And so he went across to his wife, who was talking to Mr. Vickers,’ said Hollis, unable to keep a gleam out of his eyes.

  ‘No, she’d stopped talking to him. Mr. Vickers was talking to Colonel Holmes-Waterford. I don’t know where Mrs. Broughton was, I didn’t see her.’

  ‘But Mr. Broughton walked round the room looking for his wife,’ insisted Hollis.

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ said Hilary, conscious that she was being pushed into something.

  ‘Well then, we’ll say that he left his position by the door?’

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted reluctantly.

  ‘Thank you, miss,’ said Hollis, shutting his notebook. “That’ll be all for now.’

  When Hollis had gone they compared notes.

  ‘He's gunning for Mark all right,’ said Charlie Chadwick. ‘I imagine they’ve lost the weedkiller at the kennels and the motive is what the Inspector calls “the hunt quarrel”. Too ridiculous. As if Mark or anyone else, would murder for that.’

  ‘Just how silly can the police get?’ asked Elizabeth. ‘Really, you know, they’re only fit to hound motorists; no wonder there are so many unsolved crimes. Anyway I didn’t tell him much, I still think it’s those ceilings at Catton Hall.’

  Her husband laughed, ‘I foxed him,’ he said. ‘I swore that Mark never moved from the door.’

  Hilary looked uneasy. ‘I’m afraid he was cleverer with me. I had to give a recital of all my conversations and unfortunately it ended with Mark saying that he must go and find his wife.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But he didn’t go near Guy, did he?’

  ‘Well, actually, he did, but I had the sense not to admit that.’