Below Suspicion (8 page)

"In the last three months," answered Denham, tapping the paper, "there have been nine unsolved deaths by poison. All in different parts of the country."

"Crimes of imitation, me boy!" Butler v^'as impatient. "It always happens."

"I said in the last three months. Most of them before Mrs. Taylor's death. Now listen!" Charles Denham wagged his head fonvard, eyebrows intent. "In not one of those cases—not one, Pat!—have the police been able to trace the purchase of any poison to any suspect. You know what that means."

Butler whistled. For the bu)ang of poison, no matter under what disguise or what false signature in the poison-book at the chemist's, is the factor which almost invariably trips up the murderer.

"Come off it, me boy!" scoffed Butler, a little angry that Charlie was again his normal self. "There's no doubt about where the poison came from in Mrs. Taylor's case."

"I wonder!" said Denham.

"What's that?"

"Tell me, Pat. Did you notice anything odd about that trial today?"

"Odd!" said Butler. "The man asks me," he addressed the coffee-room with some violence, "whether I noticed anything odd! Candidly, Charlie, I did. Mr. Justice Bloody Stoneman. . . ."

"No, no, not the judge! I meant the witnesses. In particular, that doctor."

"Dr. Bierce?"

"Yes," agreed Denham, running a nervous hand over his face. "He was tr)^ing to tell us something; and the rules of evidence wouldn't let him. But he said, you remember, that Mrs. Taylor's house wasn't healthy. He said it wasn't a good atmosphere for anybody as unsophisticated as Joyce."

Then Denham's tone changed, self-consciously.

"By the way," he added, "where is Joyce? I thought I saw her coming in here with you."

"She did."

"I was waiting in your car. I—I rather hoped. . . ."

"She didn't want to see you, Charlie. She told me so."

"Oh, Well. After all," and Denham smiled and tried hard to laugh, "there's no reason why she should want to see me. None at all." There was a pause. "You got her address, of course?"

"No, I'm afraid I didn't. And if you take my tip, Charlie, you'll keep away from that woman. Unless you want a dose of arsenic in your beer."

"So clever in your foolishness!" murmured Denham, after another pause. "So fooHsh in your cleverness!"

"Will you tell me," Butler inquired with restraint, "just what this has to do with the sinister poisoning of nine people? And with this woman Lucia Renshaw being accused of killing her husband? Had she any motive for killing him?"

Denham hesitated.

"It's true," he admitted, "that they didn't get on very well. . . ."

"That's not evidence, Charlie. It's merely a definition of maniage. Why do the police suspect her?"

"Because, apparently, Lucia's the only person who could have done it! And yet. . . ."

"What, exactly, do you want me to do?"

"I can't brief you officially, of course. We don't know which way the cat, meaning the police, will jump. But it's only five o'clock now. Could you possibly run out to Hampstead and talk to her before dinner?"

"I can," Butler assured him heartily. "I can, Charlie; and I'll do more than that. Give me five minutes' talk with the lady, and I'll tell you whether or not she's guilty."

"Pat," said the other, after a silence during which he put his head in his hands, "I owe more to you than I can ever pay back. No, wait; I mean that! But this last victory of yours—it's unhinged you! Do you set yourself up as God Almighty?"

"Not at all." Butler looked shocked. "It is merely," he explained with urbanity, as he picked up his hat, "that I am never wrong."

THE home of the late Richard Renshaw and his wife, called 'Abbot's House/ was in Cannon Row, Hampstead.

Sweeping up Haverstock Hill and Roslyn Hill, the limousine turned right at the traffic-light opposite Hampstead Underground Station, and up the steep, curving High Street which leads eventually to the Round-pond. But, only a little way up, there is an inconspicuous turning. Making several narrow turns in a short distance, the car emerged into sedate Cannon Row.

And Patrick Butler, jumping out impetuously, got his first shock.

"Good God, Charlie! This is—" And he stopped.

Under a blue-black sky, from which rain or sleet had ceased to fall, the house was set back some forty feet behind a fence of thin overlapping shingleboards painted brown.

Other houses in Cannon Row were mere dim outlines with dim-yellow lights. But this monstrosity, though not overly large, loomed up in whitish-grey blur because it was faced with stucco and built in that style called Victorian Gothic. On each side of an arched front door were two large full-length bow windows, set one above the other to match. Along the roof-edge ran miniature battlements, with a miniature sham tower at one comer.

"This is Mrs. Taylor's house," said Butler, with his memory full of ugly images. 'Til swear those are the same trees tapping the front windows on each side!"

"And why not?" asked Denham.

"\Vhy not?"

"Both houses," said Denham, "were built by Mrs. Taylor's grandfather in the middle 'sixties. One at Balham, which was then fashionable. One here, which is still fashionable. This one," he added, "also has a Grierson lock on the back door."

A raw wind scratched branches in thin tick-a-tack on window-glass. The two houses, at least, were not furnished alike inside. Butler saw this, with relief, when a young maidservant opened the front door.

But the atmosphere of hysteria, blowing out at them, was as palpable as the signs of disarrangement. Kitty Owen, the maidservant, was eighteen years old and would have been pretty if she had not been so thin. Kitty shied back in terror until Denham mentioned their names.

"I'm sorry, sir," the maid gulped. "I thought you was more people from the police. But Fm not sure whether you can see the madam. She's been having hysterics."

"Mrs. Renshaw invited us, you know," smiled Butler.

Kitty, for some reason, started perceptibly. She regarded Butler with a paralyzed look merging into deeper fear.

"I'll go and see," she managed to say. "Will you wait in there, please?"

The doorway she indicated led into a high Victorian drawing room, now richly furnished with somewhat soiled pre-war furniture and a number of good antiques. Shaded lamps shone down on an Aubusson carpet.

In the middle of the room, as though he had just left off pacing, stood Dr. Arthur Evans Bierce.

"Butler!" said Dr. Bierce, at the introductions. "We met in court, of course. I thought you were some relation of . . . but of course you looked different in wig and gown."

Seen close at hand, he exuded that same air—intensified—of curt, no-nonsense friendliness, tinged with the disillusionment of a g.p. who sees state-medicine approaching to wreck his initiative. His narrow bald skull, faintly freckled, loomed up like Shakespeare's. His handclasp was firm and bony.

"You—er—hadn't met before the courtroom?" Denham asked.

"No," said Butler. "I knew what I should get from this witness."

"You saved Miss Ellis's life," the doctor stated. "I am proud to make your acquaintance, sir."

"And I to make yours. Doctor," said Butler, towering with his most impressive eighteenth-century air. "You're Mrs. Renshaw's physician?"

"Hardly." Dr. Bierce spoke dryly. "Mrs. Renshaw, I believe, gets her medical advice from Harley Street or Devonshire Place." His brown eyes, under the sandy brows, grew wary. "But she 'phoned me late this

afternoon, in a somewhat frantic state, and asked me to come here as a friend."

"How is Mrs. Renshaw now?"

"I don't know. She won't see me. I think I had better be going."

"Tell me. Doctor. Do you consider this house 'unhealthy'?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"My young friend here," Butler referred to Charlie Denham as though the latter were about fourteen, "reminded me of something in your testimony. You said of Mrs. Taylor's: The whole house was unhealthy.' Can you say the same of this one?"

"Sir, I-"

This was the point at which Kitty, the maid, came flying in at the door.

"Only one of you's to go upstairs," Kitty reported. "Mr. Butler, please."

Butler hesitated, especially since Dr. Bierce seemed about to speak. But he followed Kitty.

She led him down the main passage, into a lofty back hall where a wooden staircase—ascending first along the left wall, then along the back wall—led up to a number of bedroom doors round a gallery with a balustrade. It was darkish here, due to fuel economy; several times Butler stumbled. Kitty tapped on the rear bedroom door, up the flight of stairs, at the right, and opened it.

"Yes?" said a woman's voice from inside.

Lucia Renshaw, in a heavy negligee of white lace, was sitting in an easy-chair at the far side of a portable electric-fire set against the grate. She rose to her feet, obviously shy and a little dazed.

And Patrick Butler, that cynical bachelor, received the shock of his hfe.

Vaguely he was aware that he stood in a high-ceilinged bedroom, whose high windows had old-fashioned shutters, and that one lamp burned on a little table between twin beds. At the back, slightly towards his left, he could see the white-tiled pallor of a modern bathroom.

For everything else

"Mr. Butler?" asked Lucia Renshaw in a low voice.

She had been crying bitterly. But of this there remained traces only in the faint red veins of the iris in her appealing blue eyes. Lucia's hair, heavy and dull-gold in this light, was unloosed and lay round her shoulders from a madonnaesque parting in the middle.

Lucia was rather tall, though to Butler she seemed middle-sized or even small. Such words as 'healthy' and 'wholesome/ though ordinarily they would have made Butler laugh, now struggled through his mind. The colour of her skin, a soft tawny-pink, was thrown into contrast by the white negligee. The thick lace of the negligee did not quite conceal the fact that—in her apparent haste and befuddlement—she wore under it only a brassiere and a pair of step-ins. There were pink satin slippers on her feet.

"Mr. Butler?" she repeated hesitantly.

It is a sober fact that Patrick Butler had to fight to control his voice, like a schoolboy.

"Yes, Mrs. Renshaw."

"They're all against me," said Lucia. "They all hate me. Will you help me?"

"I will do more than that. I will save you."

Butler's very real streak of eighteenth-century gallantry, which underlay all his bombast, saw nothing melodramatic in this speech, or in what followed: Impulsively Lucia extended her hand; and he, with the same gravity, bent over and kissed her hand. "By God!" he thought. "By God!"

"I knew you would," said Lucia. "When I heard you in court yesterday. ... Court!" She shuddered. "Won't you sit dovm?"

"Thank you."

She indicated another easy-chair on the opposite side of the orange-glowing electric-fire. With what grace, with what infinite grace in this age of clumsy movement, she sat down! Lucia shook back her heavy yellow hair. Her tawny-pink skin was again in contrast to the white negligee as she breathed deeply.

"I like things to be pleasant!" she said. "I enjoy life! I never lose my temper and be mde to people, even in these times. And now...."

"Your husband is dead. I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry too. But only for remembrance's sake." Lucia looked away, squeezing her eyes shut. "I asked Dick to give me a divorce last night. That's why I was in this room when he died."

Butler did not know why he felt obscurely startled.

"Your husband died in this room?"

"Yes. I. . . ." Lucia hesitated. She also was startled. Her blue eyes, with only a film of tears to mar the perfect beauty of the face, moved round the room. Then she shrank back timidly, as though under a threat.

"I shouldn't be sitting here, should I? But most of the time I've been so dreadfully upset and confused I simply haven't known where I was. Shall we go somewhere else?"

"No, of course not!" The fluent 'me dear' stuck in his throat. "What you did, Mrs. Renshaw, was perfectly natural."

"Oh, do you think so?"

"Of course. And if I'm to help you, Mrs. Renshaw, I must hear what happened. You say you asked your husband for a divorce?"

"Yes."

"What did you mean by adding, 'that's why I was in the room when he died'?"

"Sleeping here, I mean." Lucia lowered her eyes. "We'd occupied separate rooms for over a year. But last night I decided to sleep here "

"When you intended to ask him.... ?"

"Oh, not for the reason you're thinking!"

"I wasn't thinking—!"

Both of them stopped, fierily confused; and Butler, for one, was a liar. Yet in his sudden hatred of the deceased Richard Renshaw he could not help asking the question in his mind.

"What was your husband like?"

"That's the extraordinary thing. He was something like you."

"Like me?"

"Oh, I don't mean he looked much like you. Dick was very dark, almost swarthy; you're fair-complexioned and you've got light-brown hair. But his voice, and his way of carrying himself, and one or two gestures. . . ."

God rot the man! Butler, conscious that his wits were not at their best, had the sense to say only:

"Tell m.e your story, please."

Again Lucia sank back in the chair. Her heightened colour had faded.

"Dick," she went on, "had been away on a business trip. Yesterday afternoon, when I got home, there was a telegram to say he'd arrive by the train that gets to Euston at eleven o'clock. So I—I made up my mind. I told Kitty, that's the maid, to air the beds in this room, and fill the water-bottle, and get things ready."

Butler, while the voice flowed on, glanced surreptitiously round the room.

The twin beds were now trimly made, their yellowish coverlets smoothed out. Just between the beds, but higher up against the wall,

hung a rather large ivory crucifix. It surprised Butler, though he could not have said why. Of great antiquity, yellowish-tinged, the crucifix stood out against the brown panelling of the wall.

Underneath it, beside the lamp on the bedside table, gleamed a glass water-bottle. It was an ordinary night water-bottle, round and narrow-necked, with a drinking-glass inverted over the neck. It was only about a fifth full of water. Not until you scrutinized it closely did you see the faint smears on its surface: the dustings of 'grey' powder where the police had searched for fingerprints.