Death of a Delft Blue (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Well, grandpapa took me into his confidence, so my mamma and I talked turkey to him. My Dutch sense of justice took precedence, for once, over my Jewish instinct for hanging on to a good thing so long as it was honestly come by. Mamma was particularly forthright, and was heavily backed by uncles Derde and Sweyn. Florian, of course, is popular in the family.”

  Gavin looked up from the roast beef and Yorkshire he had chosen.

  “With every member of it?” he asked. Bernardo smiled and addressed himself to saddle of mutton and brussels sprouts.

  “Well, with every member except, possibly, my aunt Ruby, my papa and myself,” he said. “Why?”

  “Because it seems fairly certain that while he was in exile in Derbyshire, somebody attempted to poison him with a piece of chocolate-cream which, the evidence indicates, was sent to him from Holland.”

  “I see,” said Bernardo. He sipped his wine. “Yes, indeed.”

  “You read about the two unfortunate girls who were handed the fatal dose?”

  “Yes. Yes, I did.”

  The two men ate and drank without speaking during the next few minutes. Gavin was wondering how best to frame another question. He glanced at the Byronic profile and decided upon the direct approach. Bernardo was no hysterical Narcissus, but a well-balanced worldling, older in poise and maturity than his twenty-six years might suggest.

  “Well, it’s like this,” he said. “I have details of Mr. van Zestien’s latest will. It is clear that if young Colwyn-Welch could be liquidated, more than one member of the family would stand to gain a pretty substantial sum.”

  Bernardo, forestalling the waiter, topped up the wine-glasses.

  “Yes,” he admitted. “Even, let us say, an eighth share of grandpapa’s worldly goods would be well worth having. So you think Grandaunt Binnen or Aunts Opal and Ruby, or, failing them, Uncle Derde and/or Uncle Sweyn, sent poor old Florian a lethal dose, do you?”

  “Such things have been known before,” said Gavin. There was a longer pause this time. They cleared their plates.

  “Yes,” said Bernardo, leaning back, “but there’s one thing you’ve left out of your calculations. I’ll have pheasant,” he added to the waiter. “Same for you, Gavin?”

  Gavin thanked him, and then said”

  “I think I know what you mean. You mean that the position of those members of the family you have mentioned would be exactly the same if you, and not Colwyn-Welch, were liquidated.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Which brings me to my next point. Have you ever had any reason to suppose that an attempt, however misdirected, has been made on your life?”

  Bernardo inspected his portion of pheasant and pushed aside the game chips with which it was garnished. He poured out more wine.

  “No,” he said. “For one thing, I’ve never thought about it, so, of course, I haven’t suspected anything. But I’m perfectly certain I’ve never been in the slightest danger. Apart from anything else, you see, to do me in would be to deprive poor little Binnie of the chance of becoming wife to a comparatively wealthy man. My parents and my very formidable grandmother are far from poor, and what with my expectations there, and a half-share in grandpapa’s leavings—if you see what I mean—”

  “Yes, I do see. What else do you deduce?”

  “Well,” said Bernardo, “all I can see is that the money may have nothing to do with it. I suppose . . .” he hesitated.

  “You’re going to suggest to me that perhaps the deaths of those two girls were not, after all, accidental, aren’t you? You’ve been wondering whether the poisoned chocolate-cream went where it was intended to go. But that would implicate Colwyn-Welch to the hilt. He admits he gave them the sweet-stuff.”

  “I’ve always thought Florian had nine lives,” said Bernardo, with apparent irrelevance, “but I can’t see him doing in barmaids and such, unless he’d got them into trouble. He hadn’t, had he?”

  “Nobody had. The post-mortem settled that.”

  “Odd, in these indiscriminate, lax and experimental times. Well, where has the conversation got us?” He polished off the last of the pheasant, again pushed the game chips aside and added, “Why will they serve up these nasty little bits of wooden potato? Does anybody bother to eat them?”

  “I don’t think the conversation has got us very far,” said Gavin. “We can’t even be sure, beyond possibility of doubt, that the chocolate-cream wasn’t purchased over here. Plenty of Dutch chocolate is imported. We tried all the local shops about and around the area—a pretty wide area, too—but, of course, it could have been bought in London.”

  “London? I see. That could bring my immediate family into the picture, and, of course, myself.”

  “Or you could have bought the stuff in Amsterdam or Rotterdam and sent it to Colwyn-Welch in Derbyshire. You visit Holland pretty frequently in connection with your job?”

  “I do, yes.” He looked politely interested and not at all apprehensive.

  “Did you—were you accustomed to visit Mrs. Colwyn-Welch and her daughters when you were there?”

  “Oh, I usually looked in on them. They expected it, you know.”

  “Did you ever see a cylinder from a barrel-organ lying about in their apartment?”

  “A cylinder from a barrel-organ?”

  “Yes, one of those things with holes in them (I think) which makes the tunes when the fellow turns the handle, or, in this case (so my wife tells me), the big wheel.”

  “Oh, so that’s what it was!”

  “What what was?”

  “Why, the last time I was there, Aunt Ruby pushed a cardboard box on to me and asked me to throw it into the canal. She said she had broken something belonging to Aunt Opal (of whom, as I’ve always known, she’s scared stiff). She said that, if time elapsed before Aunt O discovered her loss, it would be all right, but if the sad remains were left lying about waiting to be disposed of by the authorities, there might be the devil to pay. She mentioned a tigress bereft of her cubs, I remember—all this in Dutch, which my mamma has brought me up to speak and to understand, but the speed of Aunt R’s delivery made mostly nonsense of her arguments. Still, I got the main points.”

  “And where is the cylinder now? Did you throw it into the canal?”

  “I did not. I shouldn’t think the authorities encourage people to throw their rubbish into the canals. Anyway, I didn’t risk it. I left it under a seat at the airport. It may be there still, for all I know.”

  “And you didn’t know what was in the parcel?”

  “No. Aunt Opal’s household goods wouldn’t interest me. I walked out with the parcel under my arm and nobody asked any questions, so that was that. Why, is the cylinder important?”

  “I don’t know. My wife and Dame Beatrice seemed to think it had some kind of special significance, but I don’t pretend to guess what kind it would be, if any.”

  “Going back a bit—” said Bernardo—“I’ll have cheese and celery, waiter. What for you, Gavin? A sweet or an ice or something?”

  “Angels on horseback, please. Yes, going back a bit?”

  “This suggestion that one of us may have bought the chocolate-cream in London. Well, I admit we could have done, but I don’t think any of us knew that Florian had gone into Derbyshire.”

  “According to my information, Professor Derde or Professor Sweyn van Zestien must have known, and it is possible that Miss Opal Colwyn-Welch knew it, too—or even Miss Ruby.”

  “Oh, did they?” said Bernardo. He selected a piece of celery with considerable care. “Did they?” he repeated. “So, if all four of them knew, one of them could have told me. Is that it? And now, what shall we drink with our coffee?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The She-Bear Defends Her Grand-Cub

  “I think I am pretty well conversant with your present condition. I don’t want you to consider me impertinent but I do want you to let me help you if I can.”

  Guy Boothby

 
“So there is my Bernie!” screamed Rebekah. “My Bernie that fights for his life against your secret police!”

  “Do come in, Mrs. Rose,” said Laura, who had gone into the hall when Célestine, obviously disapproving, had announced the visitor. “I expect you’d like to talk to Dame Beatrice.” She conducted Rebekah into a large, book-lined room on the first floor of the tall house in Kensington and indicated an armchair. Rebekah ran a hand over it before she sat down.

  “Tottenham Court Road,” she pronounced, with a sniff, “and is not matching in a suite. Job lots, I tell you. You have been cheated.”

  “Well, it’s a comfortable chair, anyway,” retorted Laura. “What shall I say about you to Dame Beatrice? She’s got a patient at the moment, so you’ll have to wait a bit, I’m afraid.”

  “To wait is nothing, if it shall save my Bernie’s life.”

  “Why, what’s Bernardo been up to?—Half a minute, while I get contact.” She achieved this on the house blower and announced to Dame Beatrice that Mrs. Rebekah Rose was among those present. She listened for a moment to Dame Beatrice’s reply and then turned again to Rebekah.

  “Would you excuse me? I have some letters to answer. There are magazines on the side table and sherry and some glasses in that cupboard.”

  “Biscuits?” enquired Rebekah. As soon as Laura had gone, she prowled about the room, assessing the value of the furnishings in a growling undertone and occasionally clicking her tongue or giving a disparaging flip of the fingers at some intrinsically worthless object. She investigated the contents of the cupboard, took out the sherry and a couple of glasses, opened a tin of biscuits and selected the plainest she could find. This she munched with a martyred air and was ready for Dame Beatrice when the latter came in with a formal apology for keeping her waiting.

  “You are strained,” said Rebekah grandly. “I shall give you a glass of sherry. You should buy cheaper. This is too good for customers. Me, I give customers at sixteen shillings and sixpence a bottle, retail, less wholesale from Julius Honerweg, distant connection. I do not offer South African sherry, although at a better price. So is my opinion of apartheid.”

  She poured out two glasses of sherry and, with a royal gesture, presented one of them to Dame Beatrice, who pledged her with a solemnity that Laura would have admired.

  “And now,” said Dame Beatrice, setting down her glass, “you wanted to see me. As I know that your time is valuable, it is something of importance, I infer.”

  “Of the first importance. It is my Bernie. He loses his life to your secret police.”

  “Dear me! I have heard from Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin, who interviewed him yesterday, and I do not think you have any cause for alarm.”

  “Where are the police is always cause for alarm. Why they are talking to Bernie?”

  “Look, Mrs. Rose,” said Dame Beatrice, seriously, “if I tell you something in confidence—in the strictest confidence, mind!—”

  “I can keep secrets. Not long is one in business who cannot keep secrets.”

  “All right, then. A very damaging accusation has been made against Mr. Bernardo Rose and it must be investigated in order that his innocence may be proved.”

  “An accusation?”

  “Yes, and, as I say, of a very serious nature. It has been said that he sent a package of poisoned chocolate-cream to his cousin, Mr. Florian Colwyn-Welch.” To her astonishment, Rebekah received this news in silence and took another sip of her sherry. “Of course, nobody believes this,” Dame Beatrice continued, on a cheerful note, “but to disprove it may take a little time.”

  “Bernie told his father, my son Sigismund, that the policeman is showing Bernie could have known where Florian was, to send him this poison.”

  “Chocolate-cream seems an unusual sort of present for one young man to send to another. Does Mr. Colwyn-Welch like chocolate-cream?”

  “Chocolate-cream, heroin, purple hearts, all those poisonous snow, the young people take them all, and there are no questions,” said Rebekah.

  “Mrs. Rose, you are not being helpful.”

  “How to keep my Bernie from the gallows?”

  “Even if he were found guilty—which, I assure you, he cannot be—he would receive life imprisonment, not a hanging. He has robbed nobody.”

  “Is Joan of Arc accepting life imprisonment?”

  “According to George Bernard Shaw, no,”

  “So what is there in it?”

  “For you? To go on believing in your grandson’s innocence, in the sure faith that it can be proved.”

  “It is known,” said Rebekah, doubtfully, “that there was a fight.”

  “What of it? Young men are made that way. Besides, Mr. Colwyn-Welch got the worst of it.”

  “This wine-glasses,” said Rebekah, fingering her own, “are not too bad. You have a dozen?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “I offer—let me see, now. Is there a decanter?”

  “Yes, there is.”

  “Then I offer ten pounds. There is no sale for cut-glass decanters. And the sideboard. Is fumed oak. You will throw it in?”

  “No, I do not think so. It is useful, in its way. But you may have the glasses and the decanter as a gift, if you would like them.”

  “A gift? What is it, this gift?” asked Rebekah, suspiciously.

  “An expression of goodwill and an assurance that Mr. Bernardo Rose will not be hanged, transported or imprisoned.”

  “We shall take another glass of my good sherry,” said Rebekah.

  “I offered you the glasses and the decanter, but not the sherry,” said Dame Beatrice. Rebekah looked amazed.

  “Nothing to put in the glasses?” she demanded.

  “At a price, yes.”

  “Mean dealing! Not so make my friends.”

  “I cannot help that. You must take it or leave it. I can replace the glasses, but I cannot replace the sherry. It was a gift from the Spanish government.”

  “You are telling lies!”

  “Yes, of course I am,” Dame Beatrice equably agreed. “But, if you want the glasses and the decanter, you must buy the sherry.”

  “And the price?”

  “One hundred and twenty-five pounds.”

  Rebekah laughed, her chins wobbling with mirth.

  “Now,” she said, when she could speak, “we are understanding one another.” She took up the decanter. “This is fake. Suppose I give you one hundred twenty-five including cellar full of sherry, and I find you genuine decanter, same year of date, you buy back at five hundred?”

  “Two hundred.”

  “Two hundred fifty.”

  “Done.”

  “And you save my Bernie from your gallows?”

  “Why do you think he is guilty?”

  At this, Rebekah looked troubled.

  “I do not think so, but what else is there to think? And Florian does like chocolate-cream, so why is he giving it away to unknown girls?”

  “That, indeed, does give food for thought.”

  Before there was time to digest this food, Célestine appeared. Bernardo Rose had called. He desired an audience of Dame Beatrice.

  “Mine Bernie!” shrieked Rebekah. “I embrace him all quick!”

  “Show Mr. Rose in,” said Dame Beatrice. Bernardo was shown in. He regarded his grandmother with a disfavour which was off-set by an impudent wink at Dame Beatrice.

  “Hullo, Grandmamma,” he said. “Are you engaged upon queering my pitch, as usual?”

  “I am saving your neck from pieces of rope, no?”

  “Well, I should rather imagine that you’re mulcting my exchequer of pieces of eight, Grandmamma. Anyway, what goes on?”

  “Dame Beatrice is telling you what goes on. She is employed by me to establish your chocolate-cream lark, isn’t it? How is it you are sending chocolate-cream to that creep?”

  “He likes it, Grandmamma.”

  “So?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “This chocolate-crea
m,” said Rebekah, turning confidentially to Dame Beatrice, “is with me to clog the intestine.”

  “Drink orange juice,” advised Bernardo.

  “Have some of my good sherry,” said his relative. Bernardo eyed Dame Beatrice, who waved a yellow hand. He helped himself, but was pursued by the lamentations of Rebekah.

  “So lavish!” she moaned. “So is the glass so full! I pay one hundred fifty pounds for this sherry, and you drink it like water.”

  “I don’t drink water,” said Bernardo. “Now, then, why did you come here?”

  “To save your neck, you ungrateful!”

  “I still don’t see the point.”

  “You are poisoning Florian, isn’t it?”

  “Willingly—if I could do it without being caught. I don’t like the beautiful boy. He’s a headache.”

  “And to you?” screamed Rebekah.

  “To me? I knocked his ribs in once, and I can do it again.”

  “So?”

  “So I didn’t murder those silly girls. Why not write that in your memoirs?”

  “You paid too much for that suit!”

  “No, I did not. What will you give me for it?”

  “Twenty-five pounds.”

  “Nothing doing. I like this suit.”

  “You do?”

  “What’s more, what on earth do you think you’re doing here, ruining my reputation with Dame Beatrice?”

  “She is not believing,” she said, assessing the reactions with accuracy.

  “Of course she isn’t. You’d better let me take you out for a nice ride in my car, with dinner to follow.”

  “Where we are going?”

  “Wherever you like. You say, and that’s where we go.”

  “Marlow?”

  “All right.”

  “No,” said Rebekah, with decision. “I go to where you murdered those pretty girls down in Derbyshire.”

  “O.K., then. Perhaps you’ll tell me where you got the poison, because I didn’t kill them, you know.”

  His relative laughed. It was relaxed, delightful laughter and she surrendered herself to it. Dame Beatrice looked sympathetic.

  “So what is it, this laughing?” demanded Rebekah, coming to. “You . . .” she pointed to Dame Beatrice, “you are psychiatrist, isn’t it? Why am I laughing at a broken heart?”