The Measure of Malice

by Martin Edwards

  Police-constable Mills was the unhappy cause of bringing it before him. Early on a summer morning—that is to say, about eight o’clock—Mr. Fortune was waked to dislike the world by a telephone message asking him to go and see a policeman in the Langdon Hospital.

  Sitting up in bed, he moaned into the receiver. “Who is speaking? Underwood? Have you a heart? No. You used to have some intelligence. What’s the matter with the man?”

  “The hospital won’t give us anything definite. They say it might be some sort of stroke, or it might be concussion—blow on the head, you know. We’d got that far by ourselves. And, you see, we want to know good and quick which it was. If the poor chap was attacked, we’ve got to get busy.”

  “Horrible necessity. Well, well. What are the facts, if any?”

  “Constable went out on his beat last night quite fit. Nothing known of him after that, till a milk van nearly ran over him this morning. He was lying in the road, helmet off, sort of groaning, the milkman says, but practically unconscious, and he’s been like that ever since.”

  Langdon is one of the outlying suburbs of London, but most of it was built last century. Then it attracted men who were making comfortable, third-class fortunes. The result is that it consists chiefly of genteel villas, each in its own piece of ground, which have tried hard to be unlike one another with contortions of inconvenience. Some of these are still inhabited by the survivors or descendants of those who put them up. Others have been converted by the forces of progress into modern ugliness as blocks of flats offering modern comfort to those who do without babies.

  Breakfastless and pallid, Reggie came to the hospital built in the lowest, dampest situation which the hills of Langdon provide.

  Police-constable Mills had been put in a private room. He lay unconscious. The bulk of his body raised the bed-clothes to a long mound through which no tremor of movement came, so faintly life struggled in him with a gurgle of labouring breath.

  “He had some spasms when he first came in,” the doctor explained. “Only slight. He’s been much like this for two hours—continuous and deepening coma.”

  “Yes. Collapse of central nervous system,” Reggie murmured. He felt a feeble, irregular pulse, he bent over the patient…

  In vigour Constable Mills must have been the popular ideal of a long-service policeman. But the cheeks, which ought to have been dark red, were livid behind the network of tiny purple veins; his unseeing eyes had sunk back into their puckered wrinkles; from the unknown into which his mind had passed the face reported pain and dread…

  “That’s a big bruise on the back of his head,” the doctor pointed out.

  “Yes, I did notice it. Yes,” Reggie murmured. He was looking close into the moustache.

  “He’s a heavy fellow,” the doctor continued to instruct. “It might have been made by a fall, if you assume he had a stroke, and he’s the age and the habit of body to make that possible. Or he may have been slogged from behind. Anyhow I’m taking it as a case of concussion.”

  “Been sick, hasn’t he?” Reggie murmured.

  “Not since he came in. I should say he had been. There was some muck on his clothes. You often find sickness after concussion, don’t you?”

  “Yes, that is so. However. Try an apomorphine injection. Want to clean out the stomach if you can. And then give him dialysed iron.”

  “My Lord,” the doctor exclaimed. “I never thought—”

  “No. Don’t blame you. Very bafflin’, these cases of collapse. Get on with it now.”

  The doctor got on…

  Over the hospital telephone Reggie spoke to Inspector Underwood. “He’s gone, poor chap. As near as no matter. Not a chance left. No. He hasn’t said anything. Never conscious. What? Yes, bad luck. Very bad luck.”

  “You think somebody did him in, sir?” Underwood said eagerly.

  “Oh, yes. Yes. That is indicated. Not a natural death.”

  “Knocked on the head, was he?”

  “Only by himself. As he fell. Bruise on the head irrelevant. Cause of death, irritant poisoning. Some analysis required, but no doubt the usual arsenic.”

  “Good Lord!” Underwood ejaculated.

  “Yes. As you say. But human action is also indicated. Come on.”

  When Underwood reached the hospital, he found Reggie in the matron’s room, eating buttered toast and drinking tea.

  “Well, well.” Reggie looked up at him and sighed. “A sad world. A horrible breakfast. And he’s dead.”

  Underwood nodded gloomily. “Ah, it’s a bad business, sir. Did he suffer much?”

  “In the last hours—no. Quite a lot before. Not a nice game, the arsenic game.” Reggie pushed back his chair, gazed at his toast with dislike, and lit his pipe.

  “I never heard of a case like it,” said Underwood.

  “No. You wouldn’t. In the nature of things. Dose of arsenic, followed by collapse, passes for a stroke or concussion, and the operator gets a nice, quiet burial of the victim. Same like this operator would have got, if you hadn’t dragged me in to interfere with him. Bold operator. Takin’ a risk, but a good risk. A big dose may go to the nervous system quick and omit the desirable, betrayin’ symptoms. Boldness, and again boldness, is the motto for the murder industry. Quite a lot of arsenic poisonin’ the police never hear of. Comfortin’ thought. And every case you don’t hear of leads to others. Your poisoner goes marchin’ on—from victory to victory. However. We have heard of this case. We might catch the poisoner before there’s another victim.” He gazed at Underwood with dreamy, closing eyes. “Quite a novelty for the police force to avert a murder or two, very improbable novelty. We shall have to be very clever,” he drawled. “Are you feelin’ clever, Underwood. I am not. Oh, my hat, I am not.” He looked with loathing at the congealed remains of his toast. “Question for you is the history of Constable Mills—with full and particular details of his last afternoon and evening here upon earth. Get on to it. You’re the lucky man. I have to examine his remains.”

  That evening Mr. Fortune attended a conference at Scotland Yard. He came to it late. He found it already in session—Underwood and Superintendent Bell presided over by the Hon. Sidney Lomas, the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department.

  “Well, what are you going to tell us?” Lomas asked.

  “Tell you I told you so.” Reggie sank into a chair. “That’s all. Arsenic. Large dose. The customary arsenic trioxide. As from rat-killer, weed-killer, or what not.”

  “That’s all very well,” Lomas frowned. “But I never had a case like this—a constable poisoned out on his beat.”

  “No. Circumstances of case rare and bafflin’.”

  “I suppose it might have been suicide?”

  “Possible theory. Not an attractive theory. Not likely a man arrangin’ to poison himself should choose the hours he was walkin’ his regular night beat to do the job. However. Try every hypothesis. Any reason to suspect suicide?”

  “No, there isn’t,” said Bell, with some vehemence. “Underwood was just saying Mills’s record is first class. Not brainy, but an honest ox of a man. They know him inside out at Langdon. He’d been there most of his time. Almost due for pension. Widower these ten years. No children. Lodged with an old woman who keeps house for her son, a jobbing gardener. The three of ’em all had the same meal yesterday evening before Mills went out on night duty—meat pie and tea, and the old girl and her son are fit and well. Besides, they’re well known and respectable, and all they get by his death is losing their lodger. After he went out, I haven’t found anybody who saw him. When do you reckon he had the poison, Mr. Fortune?”

  “No certainty. Probably before midnight. Probably not many hours before. I should say he had it after goin’ on duty. That’s the medical evidence. Apply the higher intelligence, Lomas. What are you going to do about it?”

  “What the devil can we
do?” Lomas snapped. “There’s nothing to work from. If he’d been knocked on the head, we could put it down to a burglar he’d come up against. But you don’t ask me to believe in criminals who go round carrying arsenic and persuade the innocent constable to eat it out of their hands.”

  “I don’t know so much,” said Bell. “You’re making it sound ridiculous, sir. It needn’t be, though. Say there was a job planned and Mills had to be got out of the way, so one of the gang stood him a drink with a dose in it. That’s all right.”

  “Haven’t heard of any job, have we?” Lomas shrugged. “And it’s a big job that’s worth a preliminary murder.”

  “It might be coming,” said Bell stubbornly. “Suppose Mills had got on to something that would give it away?”

  “Judging by his record, he never got on to anything. And if he did he’d have run to his sergeant. This is mare’s nesting, Bell. You can’t make the case rational however you take it. The most probable explanation is, the poor devil was sick of life. You get that when men are just due to retire.”

  “Yes. It could be,” Reggie murmured. “But not probable. As aforesaid. Other possibilities worth considering. Private possibilities. The deceased was the old-style constable. Kind of constable who is popular with the female servant, what? At home in many hospitable kitchens. Not a grave offence, Bell, what?”

  Bell shook his disciplined head. “I wouldn’t say. It all depends. He didn’t ought to have gone into a kitchen, if that’s what you mean. But, of course, constables do.”

  “I don’t know whether he went indoors,” Reggie sighed. “I have my limitations. But I think somebody gave him a little homely meal. Say cake and cocoa. Includin’ arsenic trioxide.”

  Bell and Underwood stared at him. “Ah. That’s getting us somewhere,” said Bell.

  “Is it?” Lomas exclaimed. “Damme, what does it come to? A wicked cook poisoned the man—because he was carrying on with the cook next door, I suppose. And what then? Are we to make a house-to-house visitation of Mills’s beat to find out what cooks loved him?”

  “No. Not necessary. No. We can narrow it down,” Reggie murmured. “Underwood—is the widow lady Mills lodges with a Londoner?”

  “Yes, sir. Thoroughbred Cockney.”

  “Good. That simplifies things. If you can find a house on Mills’s beat where they’re west-country people, I think we might get on.”

  “The devil you do!” said Lomas. “What’s this theory, Reginald?”

  “Not a theory. Rational inference. The late Constable Mills had been eating saffron cake. The last thing he did eat. The arsenic was in that. Saffron cake isn’t a common confection. But much cherished in the western counties. This had cream and currants in it. What they call revel cake, or revel buns, in Devonshire. Because it’s the stuff to give the company at a wake, funeral feast, or revel. Constable Mills had some revel cake for his own funeral. However. That may be an unintended irony. The inference stands—he was fed on poison from a house that knew something about west-country cooking.”

  “My oath!” Bell muttered, and looked reverently at his Mr. Fortune. “That’s clever, sir.” He turned to Underwood. “Now it’s up to you, young fellow.”

  “Yes, that’s given me a line all right,” Underwood chuckled.

  “Has it!” said Lomas. “If you make anything of it, I shall be surprised. Damme, Fortune, what do you think it means? A cook set herself to poison this middle-aged widower of a policeman—why?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Reggie mumbled.

  “It’s fantastic.” Lomas made contemptuous noises.

  “Oh, yes. Yes. As it stands. It don’t stand on anything. Bit of the top of a crime visible, and a bit of the bottom, without anything in between. Fantastic, impossible structure. Like a crag supported on mist, with a lake poking out underneath. Crag is nevertheless real. And Constable Mills is dead by poison. So there is a poisoner somewhere about, Lomas. Whether the poisonin’ of Mills was intended or not.”

  There was a moment of silence. “Good Gad!” said Lomas. “Confound your variations. Why can’t you talk straight? Mills got what was meant for someone else. That’s your real opinion, is it?”

  “Oh, no. No. Haven’t any opinion. Not enough facts. Death of Mills may not have been according to plan. It could be. I wonder.” He gazed at Lomas with dreamy eyes. “You’re so irrelevant. Evadin’ the true point. Which is that a bold poisoner is now operatin’ in Langdon. Poisoners seldom stop at one victim. Thus demonstratin’ the efficiency of the police force. Good night.”

  In his frequent comments on the case Mr. Fortune is apt to insist that its chequered course was determined by the unreliability of people’s taste in eating. If everyone could be trusted to like what they ought to like, he will point out, its results might have been even more unjust. In this he finds sad proof of the mystery of evil…

  The inquest on Constable Mills was opened and warily adjourned without any evidence to warn the world that the police knew he had been poisoned.

  Some days afterwards, Underwood talked to Mr. Fortune over the telephone. “About that clue of yours, the saffron cake, sir. Well, I’ve pretty well combed out Mills’s beat for west-country people, and I can only find one set. There’s an old lady living in Belair Avenue—Miss Pearse by name. She’s a Devonshire woman, and makes a bit of fuss about it. Pair of old Devonshire servants too. But I’ve had a talk with them, and they won’t own to knowing Mills at all. I should say they’re telling the truth. Keep themselves to themselves sort of women. So it looks like petering out.”

  “You think so?” Reggie murmured.

  “I do. Pity. It seemed a real good line. But there you are.”

  “Oh, no. Not anywhere,” Reggie murmured. “Miss Pearse, an old lady of Devon. Well, well.” He became musical:

  Tom Pearse, Tom Pearse, lend me your, grey mare,All along, out along, down along lee—

  “What’s that, sir?” said Underwood.

  Wi’ Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy,Dan’l Whiddon, Harry Hawk, Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all.

  Reggie concluded the Devonian ballad. “Where are you speakin’ from? Langdon? The police station? All right I’ll come out. We’ll call on Miss Pearse of Belair Avenue.”

  “If you say so—” Underwood conveyed doubt and disapproval.

  “Oh, my dear chap! Quite in order. I’m the medical man investigatin’ Mills’s death, introduced by Inspector Underwood, in charge of the case. Did she happen to know the poor man, his habits and what not and so forth? And we’ll see what we can get.”

  You may now behold Inspector Underwood and Mr. Fortune walking from the police station of Langdon to the home of Miss Pearse, The Nest, Belair Avenue. Langdon is a suburb of hills, and the determination of Mr. Fortune to walk surprised Underwood. The reason given was a desire to get the atmosphere.

  No part of the world is more peaceful than the umbrageous streets of Langdon in the afternoon. The superlative of their somnolence may be found in Belair Avenue. It climbs along the shoulder of one of the highest hills. The houses in it, some fifty years old, exhibit the opulent fancy of that period. The Nest is built in stone, and dowdily resembles a castle in a German fairy-tale. Next door to it, Bellagio is a tall conglomeration of purple brick, with oriel windows and a pagoda top. And so on.

  A grey-haired maid, who sniffed at Underwood, let them into The Nest, left them on the mat, and, reappearing in time, conducted them up a narrow staircase which twisted mediaevally to a room smelling of potpourri and lavender, and decorated with chintz, silhouettes, and miniatures. Two small lancet windows admitted some light, but no air. They seemed not made to open.

  Reggie looked out on a garden descending in steps of lawn, so steeply the ground fell away behind the house, with flower-beds containing nothing but geraniums, calceolarias, and lobelia. He moaned at it. He looked beyond to the garden of Bel
lagio.

  That at least was different. There the ground dropped still more steeply. From a little terrace behind the house a tall flight of steps led down to a rectangle paved with tiles, in which was a pool where dark water gleamed between lily leaves. All was uncared for, dirty, moss-grown, weed-grown. But it had been elaborate. Funereal shrubs grew out of the tiles. There were awful objects of art upon them: china dwarfs of German manufacture; at the foot of the steps leered, greenish-yellow, a china toad.

  “Oh, my hat!” Reggie groaned, and directed his suffering eyes to look beyond.

  The rest of the Bellagio garden sloped away into an artificial wilderness of shrubbery through which, on either side the path vanishing down the hill, loomed more images in crockery or plaster. Along the path a woman moved. She seemed to be tidying the unkempt shrubs, and weeding the path in spasms, without steady purpose. She was not beautiful. She wore a drab woollen coat and a cotton skirt faded into a dingy confusion of colour, and she seemed to have no more definite shape than these old clothes. She was lank and ungainly. In her tangle of hay-coloured hair no grey appeared, but her long face looked aged—it shone sallow, it was worried, fretful, dreamily earnest. She fussed out of sight.

  Reggie’s eyes came back to contemplate, with new horror, the terrace and the toad.

  “You wished to see me?” said a small prim voice. And he turned, and seemed to be a child again meeting his grandmother. So imposing was the presence of Miss Pearse. She was a small woman; she was all black to her white hair and parchment face—a face little and meek and pretty, but with the perfect assurance of authority in this world and the next.

  “It is about the poor policeman?” she went on. “Pray sit down. I shall be happy to give you any help which is possible.” Her composure, her condescension, let them infer that she expected to be asked for help and was prepared. She surveyed them with pale blue eyes which were without expression.

  After a moment the quiet voice spoke again. She had known Mills for many years; she discoursed on the proper relations of the police to ladies of importance, lamented his demise, and passed on to indicate her unique position in Langdon… It appeared that she was of its oldest and bluest blood, by divine right the leader of its society…