‘Miss Bergmann had none?’
‘No, she left the table early. I remember now. It was something she had to do for Mrs Waterhouse.’
‘But I thought you told the Coroner just now that there was no dish partaken of by one person alone.’
‘I – I forgot about the lemon sponge, sir,’ stammered the girl. ‘I forgot Miss Bergmann wasn’t there when I served it.’
‘But you remember now?’
Mr Bellew sat down with a significant look at the Coroner, who avoided it.
‘Clarence Ventnor,’ he called.
Mr Ventnor, a dapper, dry little stick of a man, agreed that he was the late Mr John Waterhouse’s legal representative and gave a business address in Bedford Row. He then proceeded, in a perfectly undramatic manner, to produce a dramatic moment even more surprising than that with which Frances had already startled us.
‘Mr Ventnor,’ the Coroner asked, ‘would you describe your late client as a wealthy man?’
Mr Ventnor stroked his chin.
‘At the time of his death,’ he replied precisely, ‘certainly not. He had been a wealthy man, but for the last few years he had been drawing on his capital freely – I might even say recklessly. At the time of his death he had very few investments left. He was, in fact, a comparatively poor man.’
This bombshell, which left us all breathless with astonishment, appeared not to startle the Coroner.
‘Poor enough at any rate,’ he pursued, ‘to keep up the heavy premiums on his life insurance policy only with difficulty?’
‘So poor,’ corrected Mr Ventnor, ‘as not to be able to keep them up at all.’
We looked at each other uneasily. The inference was quite painfully obvious. What else, I wondered, had Mr Ventnor to divulge?
chapter nine
Scotland Yard Is Not So Dumb
The Coroner continued placidly with his questions: so placidly that I knew he was acting, and indeed his occasional surreptitious glances at the busy Press tables gave him away.
‘Do you know why Mr Waterhouse had been drawing on his capital to this extent?’
‘He had expensive hobbies and liked to gratify them. Mr Waterhouse,’ added the solicitor with disapproval, ‘seemed incapable of distinguishing between capital and income. I considered it my duty to remonstrate with him over the way in which he drew on his capital for current expenses, but his reply was always the same: that he would be able to make more money when necessary. In the meantime, he pointed out, his wife was amply covered in the event of his death by his life insurance policy.’
‘But not if he were unable to keep up the premiums,’ commented the Coroner. ‘But we shall come to that in a minute. Did you agree that Mr Waterhouse could make more money when needed?’
‘I consider it doubtful whether anyone can make money at will,’ replied Mr Ventnor dryly. ‘In the case of Mr Waterhouse it is my opinion that toward the end he had lost even the will.’
‘Can you explain that, please?’
‘Certainly. I saw Mr Waterhouse a fortnight before his death, in my office. He seemed in low spirits and told me he wished to make an alteration in his testamentary dispositions. I understood that it was as a result of a communication made to him by his wife.’
‘He asked you to draw up a new will? What were his instructions?’
‘He informed me that he intended to cut down the amount of his life insurance. He had maintained a policy to bring in the very large sum of one hundred thousand pounds at death, in order that his wife should be left with an income approximately equivalent to the annual sum which they had been enjoying together, and thus suffer no diminution of the standard of her living by his death. Mr Waterhouse intended to cut this down to one tenth of the amount. This sum was to be left to Mrs Waterhouse outright; there were no stipulations about remarriage.’
‘Did Mr Waterhouse give you any idea whether he had divulged this change of intention to any other person?’
‘He did not. I have no ideas on the question.’
‘It would, however, not be too much to say that his death happened very opportunely for the principal beneficiary under his existing will?’
‘I agree.’
We had been listening with all our ears. When Mr Bellew rose, there was not a sound to be heard.
‘When was this new will to be signed, Mr Ventnor?’
‘I can’t say. I had not completed the draft. Other questions might have arisen. Perhaps a fortnight, perhaps a month.’
‘Mr Waterhouse never gave you the slightest idea that he had told his wife about this new will and the change in his life insurance?’
‘He did not.’
‘As a matter of fact I believe the present policy has some months yet to run?’
‘It expires on the twenty-third of May next.’
‘Exactly. You agreed with the suggestion, Mr Ventnor, that Mr Waterhouse’s death happened very opportunely for the principal beneficiary under his old will – that is to say, without mincing matters, his wife. Did Mr Waterhouse say anything to you about the possibility of his wife’s marrying again, should she become free either through divorce or any other way?’
‘He did.’
‘He appeared to you to expect such a thing?’
‘One might put it as strongly as that, yes.’
‘But under his existing will if Mrs Waterhouse remarries, she loses half her legacy of the insurance money?’
‘That is so.’
‘That half goes, I believe, to Mr Maurice Waterhouse. So would it not be equally fair to say that Mr Waterhouse’s death happened just as fortuitously for the secondary beneficiary under the old will, who would not have appeared in the new will at all, as it did for the principal beneficiary?’
‘Undoubtedly that is so,’ agreed Mr Ventnor courteously.
Mr Bellew sat down; the Coroner nodded Mr Ventnor away.
‘The court will now adjourn,’ he said. ‘I am sorry we have not been able to conclude the proceedings in one day, but in the circumstances that has been impossible. We will meet again tomorrow morning, at ten-thirty sharp. All witnesses will please attend at that hour.’
We bustled out of the little schoolroom in a bunch. ‘The nasty work’s begun,’ observed Glen to me – not, I am afraid, without relish.
‘I noticed that the Coroner seemed to bend a formidable eye on that young man sitting on the bench behind us, when he said that bit about witnesses tomorrow morning,’ remarked Frances on my other side. ‘There he is – the young man, I mean: just ahead. Who is he? Do you know, Rona?’
‘Yes,’ said Rona. ‘That is Philip Strangman.’
2
‘Well,’ said Glen, ‘that appears to sum the case up to date.’
We had persuaded the Broughams to come back to a late tea with us; and since it was a Wednesday, and Glen had no surgery on that day, they were able to linger; though Rona had given Angela a promise that she would return to Oswald’s Gable for dinner. I, at any rate, felt that it was almost a physical necessity to go over the evidence we had heard with other people whose understanding was possibly subtler than mine, and find out if they had read anything more into it than I had – though goodness knows I had read enough.
‘Sums up the case?’ I repeated.
‘Yes.’ Glen lounged back in his chair and stretched his feet out to the fire. Needless to say he had occupied without hesitation the most comfortable chair in the room (mine). The women were seated on the couch opposite the fire, as is their incomprehensible way; a couch has always seemed to me quite the most uncomfortable of all seating arrangements, and why women prefer them to the soothing embrace of a well-designed armchair is a problem I have never been able to solve.
Frances had snatched a minute while taking her hat off upstairs to explain to me her action over the medicine bottle.
; ‘Well, it’s no good pretending,’ she said with an unwontedly shamefaced smile. ‘When I heard the Coroner asking all those questions about it, I got frightened. I didn’t want to drag you into it, darling, so I told them you knew nothing about it. Glen really decided me, before lunch, when he said the best thing is to tell the truth and let them make what they like of it. After all, it was only him I was trying to shield, and if he feels that way, why shouldn’t I?’
‘I’m sure it was the best thing to do,’ I told her. ‘And damned sporting of you to shield me, too. I wouldn’t have let you if I’d known.’
Frances kissed me. ‘I knew you wouldn’t, you silly old man. That’s why I didn’t let you know. Now let’s go down and hear what Glen has to say about it.’
Glen had a good deal to say, and he said it pithily. He was not in the least grateful to Frances for trying to protect him, being convinced there was nothing to protect, rated her for suspecting him of being such a rotten doctor as to mix up arsenic with soda bicarbonate, and pointed out that she had done him only harm instead of good because while the bottle was still absent people had been able to suspect him. He told her that she was an interfering little busybody and what she needed was to be put across some grown-up person’s knee and given six of the best with a hairbrush, to teach her to mind her own business. Frances expressed due contrition; admitted that she needed six of the best but wasn’t going to take them from him, while I had not the moral stamina required by a successful wife-beater; and begged that the incident might now be considered closed. Glen agreed, with the reservation of the right to cite it in evidence against her should she ever be guilty of officiousness again; and the conversation then became more serious.
‘I mean it sums up the case against Angela,’ Glen continued now. ‘And a pretty poor case it is. I don’t see how the police can arrest her, unless this jury brings in murder against her; and they’re not going to do that.’
‘You think not?’ said Rona. ‘They might. You know what juries are.’
‘I know what Cullom is,’ retorted Glen. ‘And Hay, and Colwill, and Turner, and Oke, and all the rest of them. Not they. They’ve got more sense.’
‘Well, I hope you’re right,’ said Rona.
‘Why, look what’s happening already,’ Glen amplified. ‘Dirt flying everywhere. Young Maurice Waterhouse shown to have a motive, that fellow Bellew suggesting the cook shoved arsenic in the limonspong.’
‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised,’ put in Frances. ‘According to Angela the woman’s quite mad, and hasn’t the first idea about cooking.’
‘The country’s flooded with Austrian cooks who haven’t the first idea about cooking,’ Rona agreed gloomily. ‘Any Austrian who wants a nice trip to England, with three times as much to eat as she gets in her native country and four times as high wages, has only to call herself a cook and she can get into this country without question. There’s an agency that specialises in getting over women like that and foisting them on unfortunate employers here at preposterous wages under the pretence that they’re trained cooks. Why our Ministry of Labour doesn’t insist on some kind of professional qualification I can’t understand. I know of one case –’
‘Now then, no politics,’ interrupted Glen. ‘Keep the party peaceful.’
‘It’s not a case of politics. It’s economics.’
‘All the worse,’ retorted Glen. ‘So you think it’s another case of Eliza Fenning, do you, Frances?’
‘Eliza Fenning?’
‘Another cook, who was convicted of trying to polish off a whole family with arsenic. As a matter of fact she didn’t even try, but they hanged her all right.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It was Angela this woman had her grudge against. If you’re right about the arrested mental development, she wouldn’t have tried to kill John. And you heard her admit she thought Angela had been making the limonspong for herself alone. If it was she at all, she aimed at Angela and hit John.’
Rona looked at me. ‘That’s a very shrewd observation, my friend.’
I began to feel a little pleased with myself.
‘Not so shrewd,’ Glen hastened to deflate me. ‘That limonspong was finished up in the kitchen by Pritchard and Maria.’
‘But they both denied it,’ I protested feebly.
‘Ah, blah,’ said Glen. ‘Give me another cup of tea, Frances.’
Rona helped herself with an absent air from the plate of cakes I was holding out to her.
‘Need it have been murder at all?’ she said quietly.
‘Oh,’ Frances cried impulsively, ‘I do hope it wasn’t.’
‘There’s no evidence that it was,’ I pointed out.
‘And none that it wasn’t. And not much either way,’ Glen observed. ‘Or too much. As for the Coroner trying to pin me down to a time for swallowing the stuff, it can’t be done. There’s evidence that John had a pain before lunch. But he’d been having pains for the last month. We don’t know whether that one was natural or arsenical. And consequently we don’t know whether he had the stuff before lunch or at it. It can’t have been later, but between ourselves it might have been any time between 9 a.m. and one-thirty – that is, from the beginning of breakfast to the end of lunch.’
‘What about the mysterious package that came by the parcel post?’ asked Frances.
‘Samples of winter suitings,’ said Glen contemptuously.
‘Samples of what?’
‘Or wallboards, if you like. Or some patent new cement. Or asbestos batons. That’s most likely. Why, the man must have been getting dozens of parcels of samples, every day.’
Glen broke off to light a cigarette, which he waved at us largely.
‘Look here, it’s like this. Some fellow dies – any fellow, anywhere. If you ferret round enough, you’ll find two or three people who are not sorry he’s dead. It doesn’t matter who you hit on. Take a point in anyone’s life, any point, and you’ll get the same result. And of course you’ll get things, too, like a cook under notice, a parcel of samples by the morning post, a glass of cider when no one else in the house had a glass of cider, and so on and so forth. That’s just ordinary life. But assume murder, and these things take on a totally different complexion. The people who for one reason or another aren’t sorry the man’s dead then have a motive for killing him; the parcel of samples (which John probably threw in the fire) becomes a sinister package, the cook puts arsenic in the limonspong, and the parlourmaid puts poison in the porridge.’
‘Well?’ asked Frances.
‘Well, my point is, it’s all nonsense. Suppose John had swallowed arsenic by mistake and we all knew it, suppose he’d left a letter behind him to say he’d committed suicide: well, all these things would fall into their proper perspective – trifles, with no importance to them at all. And that’s just what I maintain they are.’
‘And John’s death?’ asked Rona quietly.
‘Either murder by some person or persons as yet unknown, for a reason that we have no idea of; or else accidental. Probably the latter, knowing John as we all do. Certainly not murder by Angela. Probably not suicide, but in view of what we heard this morning that can’t be ruled out. In any case I believe you hit it on the head at lunchtime, Rona: there’s a lot behind this death of John’s that as yet we know nothing about. We may never know it. Probably we shan’t.’
‘I don’t like not knowing things,’ Frances complained.
Rona looked at her in her level, rather disconcerting way. ‘I prefer that sometimes to knowing them,’ she said,
3
Harold was right, as usual: Scotland Yard had been called in. Two of them came to see me not ten minutes after Glen and Rona had left, and with only a bare quarter of an hour before dinner-time. Under pretence of summoning Frances, who was upstairs changing her frock, I sent a hurried message out to the kitchen to hold dinner back indefinitely. Scotland Yard or
no Scotland Yard, domestic details come first.
The two men introduced themselves with the utmost courtesy. They gave me their names, but of course I never gathered them; I did realise, however, that one was a detective chief inspector and the other a detective sergeant.
They were quite unlike what I should have expected from Scotland Yard, and still more unlike the local police officers. The chief inspector was round-faced and gave an impression of tubbiness, though presumably his height must have conformed with official requirements. The sergeant was tall and slender and rather elegant. Both spoke in cultivated voices, but with a manner in which blandness seemed to have been carried too far, almost to the point of obsequiousness. Quite five minutes were wasted in their apologies for troubling me and my protestations that it was no trouble. Would they like to see my wife? Well, if it really wouldn’t be too much inconvenience, they would be grateful for the opportunity. Would they like to see her alone, or with me? That was just as I, and she, preferred. Would they have a glass of sherry? Why, that was exceedingly kind, almost too kind of me, but they found it better not to drink on duty. But I was just going to have a glass of sherry myself; and it was awkward to drink alone. Oh well, in that case they would come to the rescue – but only just a drain in the bottom of the glass, really. Ha-ha. Yes, yes. Dear, dear.
Having been regaling myself lately with a selection of American detective stories from Evesham’s library in Torminster, I marvelled. The bullying, hectoring, loudmouthed, exceedingly unpleasant detective of American fiction would have considered these men almost imbecile in their softness; yet presumably they got results.
The interview lasted half an hour and was conducted in the same charming spirit throughout. Frances joined us in ten minutes or so, and the proceedings were more in the nature of an informal chat than a police interrogation. In point of fact Frances and I did chat, quite garrulously. A question from one or other of our visitors would produce not merely an answer, but a confirmation, an allusion, an anecdote, all manner of divergencies. I think that secretly Frances and I felt that the two men, so far from being frightening, were so pleasant, and so much at sea, and so rather helpless, that we became doubly talkative in a kind of subconscious effort to help them out.
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