Poisoned Chocolates Case (12 page)

“Oho!” murmured Mr. Bradley. “What has our worthy President got up his sleeve?”

“I therefore propose, as a formal motion,” Roger concluded, disregarding the somewhat sour looks cast on him by Mrs. Fielder - Flemming, “that we shelve the question regarding Sir Charles entirely, for discussion or report either inside or outside this room, for one week from today, when any member who wishes may bring it up again for decision, failing which it passes into oblivion for good and all. Shall we vote on that? Those in favour?”

The motion was carried unanimously. Mrs. Fielder - Flemming would have liked to vote against it, but she had never yet belonged to any committee where all motions were not carried unanimously and habit was too strong for her.

The meeting then adjourned, rather oppressed.

ROGER sat on the table in Moresby's room at Scotland Yard and swung his legs moodily. Moresby was being no help at all.

“I've told you, Mr. Sheringham,” said the Chief Inspector, with a patient air. “It's not a bit of good you trying to pump me. I've told you all we know here. I'd help you if I could, as you know” - Roger snorted incredulously - “but we're simply at a dead end.”

“So am I,” Roger grunted. “And I don't like it.”

“You'll soon get used to it, Mr. Sheringham,” consoled Moresby, “if you take on this sort of job often.”

“ I simply can't get any further,” Roger lamented. “In fact I don't think I want to. I'm practically sure I've been working on the wrong tack altogether. If the clue really does lie in Sir Eustace's private life, he's shielding it like the very devil. But I don't think it does.”

“Humph!” said Moresby, who did.

“I've cross - examined his friends, till they're tired of the sight of me. I've cadged introductions to the friends of his friends, and the friends of his friends of his friends, and cross - examined them too. I've haunted his club. And what have I discovered? That Sir Eustace was not only a daisy, as you'd told me already, but a perfectly indiscreet daisy at that; the quite unpleasant type, fortunately very much rarer than women suppose, that talks of his feminine successes, with names - though I think that in Sir Eustace's case this was simply through lack of imagination and not any natural caddishness. But you see what I mean. I've collected the names of scores of women, and they all lead - nowhere! If there is a woman at the bottom of it, I should have been sure to have heard of her by this time. And I haven't.”

“And what about that American case, which we thought such an extraordinary parallel, Mr. Sheringham?”

“That was cited last night by one of our members,” said Roger gloomily. “And a very pretty little deduction she drew from it.”

“Ah, yes,” nodded the chief inspector. “That would be Mrs. Fielder - Flemming, I suppose. She thinks Sir Charles Wildman is the guilty party, doesn't she?”

Roger stared at him. “How the devil did you know that? Oh! The unscrupulous old hag. She passed you the wink, did she?”

“Certainly not, sir,” retorted Moresby with a virtuous air, as if half the difficult cases Scotland Yard solves are not edged in the first place along the right path by means of 'information received.' “She hasn't said a word to us, though I'm not saying it wouldn't have been her duty to do so. But there isn't much that your members are doing which we don't know about, and thinking too for that matter.”

“We're being shadowed,” said Roger, pleased. “Yes, you told me at the beginning that we were to have an eye kept on us. Well, well. So in that case, are you going to arrest Sir Charles?”

“Not yet, I think, Mr. Sheringham,” Moresby returned gravely.

“What do you think of the theory, then? She made out a very striking case for it.”

“I should be very surprised,” said Moresby, with care, “to be convinced that Sir Charles Wildman had taken to murdering people himself instead of preventing us from hanging other murderers.”

“Less paying, certainly,” Roger agreed. “Yes, of course there can't be anything in it really, but it's a nice idea.”

“And what theory are you going to put forward, Mr. Sheringham?”

“Moresby, I haven't the faintest idea. And I've got to speak tomorrow night, too. I suppose I can fake up something to pass muster, but it's a disappointment.” Roger reflected for a moment. “I think the real trouble is that my interest in this case is simply academic. In all the others it has been personal, and that not only gives one such a much bigger incentive to get to the bottom of a case but somehow actually helps one to do so. Bigger gleanings in the way of information, I suppose. And more intimate sidelights on the people concerned.”

“Well, Mr. Sheringham,” remarked Moresby, a little maliciously, “perhaps you'll admit now that we people here, whose interest is never personal (if you mean by that looking at a case from the inside instead of from the outside), have a bit of an excuse when we do come to grief over a case. Which, by the way,” Moresby added with professional pride, “is precious seldom.”

“I certainly do,” Roger agreed feelingly. “Well, Moresby, I've got to go through the distressing business of buying a new hat before lunch. Do you feel like shadowing me to Bond Street? I might afterwards walk into a neighbouring hostelry, and it would be nice for you to be able to shadow me in there too.”

“Sorry, Mr. Sheringham,” said Chief Inspector Moresby pointedly, “but I have some work to do.” Roger removed himself. He was feeling so depressed that he took a taxi to Bond Street instead of a 'bus, to cheer himself up.

Roger, having been in London occasionally during the war - years and remembering the interesting habits cultivated by taxi - drivers during that period, had never taken one since when a 'bus would do as well. The public memory is notoriously short, but the public prejudices are equally notoriously long.

Roger had reason for his depression. He was, as he had told Moresby, not only at a dead end, but the conviction was beginning to grow in him that he had actually been working completely on the wrong lines; and the possibility that all the labour he had put into the case had simply been time wasted was a sad one. His initial interest in the affair, though great, had been as he had just realised only an academic one, such as he would feel in any cleverly planned murder; and in spite of the contacts established with persons who were acquainted with various of the protagonists he still felt himself awkwardly outside the case. There was no personal connection somehow to enable him really to get to grips with it. He was beginning to suspect that it was the sort of case, necessitating endless inquiries such as a private individual has neither the skill, the patience nor the time to prosecute, which can really only be handled by the official police.

It was hazard, two chance encounters that same day and almost within an hour, which put an entirely different complexion on the case to Roger's eyes, and translated at last his interest in it from the academic into the personal.

The first was in Bond Street. Emerging from his hat - shop, the new hat at just the right angle on his head, he saw bearing down on him Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer. Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer was small, exquisite, rich, comparatively young, and a widow, and she coveted Roger. Why, even Roger, who had his share of proper conceit, could not understand, but whenever he gave her the opportunity she would sit at his feet (metaphorically of course; he had no intention of giving her the opportunity to do so literally) and gaze up at him with her big brown eyes melting in earnest uplift. But she talked. She talked, in short, and talked, and talked. And Roger, who rather liked talking himself, could not bear it.

He tried to dart across the road, but there was no opening in the traffic stream. He was cornered. With a gay smile that masked a vituperative mind he spoilt the angle of his beautiful new hat.

Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer fastened on him gladly. “Oh, Mr. Sheringham! Just the very person I wanted to see. Mr. Sheringham, do tell me. In the strictest confidence of course. Are you taking up this dreadful business of poor Joan Bendix's death? Oh, don't - don't tell me you're not.” Roger tried to tell her that he had hoped to do so, but she gave him no chance. “Oh, aren't you really? But it's too dreadful. You ought, you know, you really ought to try and find out who sent those chocolates to Sir Eustace Pennefather. I do think it's naughty of you not to.”

Roger, the frozen grin of civilised intercourse on his face, again tried to edge a word in; without result.

“I was horrified when I heard of it. Simply horrified.” Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer registered horror. “You see, Joan and I were such very close friends. Quite intimate. In fact we were at school together. - Did you say anything, Mr. Sheringham?” Roger, who had allowed a faintly incredulous groan to escape him, hastily shook his head. “And the awful thing, the truly terrible thing is that Joan brought the whole thing on herself. Isn't that appalling, Mr. Sheringham?”

Roger no longer wanted to escape. “What did you say?” he managed to insert, again incredulously.

“I suppose it's what they call tragic irony.” Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer chattered happily. “Certainly it was tragic enough and I've never heard of anything so terribly ironical. You know about that bet she made with her husband, of course, so that he had to get her a box of chocolates and if he hadn't Sir Eustace would never have given him the poisoned ones but would have eaten them and died himself, and from all I hear about him good riddance? Well, Mr. Sheringham - - ” Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer lowered her voice to a conspirator - like whisper and glanced about her in the approved manner. “I've never told any one else this, but I'm telling you because I know you'll appreciate it. You are interested in irony aren't you?”

“I adore it,” Roger said mechanically. “Yes?”

“Well - Joan wasn't playing fair!”

“How do you mean?” Roger asked, bewildered.

Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer was artlessly pleased with her sensation. “Why, she ought not to have made that bet at all. It was a judgment on her. A terrible judgment of course, but the appalling thing is that she did bring it on herself, in a way. I'm so terribly distressed about it. Really, Mr. Sheringham, I can hardly bear to turn the light out when I go to bed. I see Joan's face simply looking at me in the dark. It's awful.” And for a fleeting instant Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer's face did for once really mirror the emotion she professed: it looked quite haggard.

“Why oughtn't Mrs. Bendix to have made the bet?” Roger asked patiently.

“Oh! Why, because she'd seen the play before. We went together, the very first week it was on. She knew who the villain was all the time.”

“By Jove!” Roger was as impressed as Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer could have wished. “The Avenging Chance again, eh? We're none of us immune from it.”

“Poetic justice, you mean?” twittered Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer, to whom these remarks had been a trifle obscure. “Yes it was, in a way, wasn't it? Though really, the punishment was out of all proportion to the crime. Good gracious, if every woman who cheats over a bet is to be killed for it, where would any of us be?” demanded Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer with unconscious frankness.

“Umph!” said Roger tactfully.

Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer glanced rapidly up and down the pavement, and moistened her lips. Roger had an odd impression that she was talking not as usual just for the sake of talking, but in some recondite way to escape from not talking. It was as if she was more distressed over her friend's death than she cared to show and found some relief in babbling. It interested Roger also to notice that fond though she had probably been of the dead woman, she now found herself driven as if against her will to hint at blame even while praising her. It was as though she was able thus to extract some subtle consolation for the actual death.

“But Joan Bendix of all people! That's what I can't get over, Mr. Sheringham. I should never have thought Joan would do a thing like that. Joan was such a nice girl. A little close with money perhaps, considering how well - off she was, but that isn't anything. Of course I know it was only fun, and pulling her husband's leg, but I always used to think Joan was such a serious girl, if you know what I mean.”

“Quite,” said Roger, who could understand plain English as well as most people.

“I mean, ordinary people don't talk about honour, and truth, and playing the game, and all those things one takes for granted. But Joan did. She was always saying that this wasn't honourable, or that wouldn't be playing the game. Well, she paid herself for not playing the game, poor girl, didn't she? Still, I suppose it all goes to prove the truth of the old saying.”

“What old saying?” asked Roger, almost hypnotised by this flow.

“Why, that still waters run deep. Joan must have been deep after all, I'm afraid.” Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer sighed. It was evidently a grave social error to be deep. “Not that I want to say anything against her now she's dead, poor darling, but - well, what I mean is, I do think psychology is so very interesting, don't you, Mr. Sheringham?”

Quite fascinating,“ Roger agreed gravely. Well, I'm afraid I must be - - ”

“And what does that man. Sir Eustace Pennefather, think about it all? ” demanded Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer, with an expression of positive vindictiveness. “After all, he's as responsible for Joan's death as anybody.”

“Oh, really.” Roger had not conceived any particular love for Sir Eustace, but he felt constrained to defend him against this charge. “ Really, I don't think you can say that, Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer.”

“I can, and I do,” affirmed that lady. “Have you ever met him, Mr. Sheringham? I hear he's a horrible creature. Always running after some woman or other, and when he's tired of her just drops her - biff! - like that. Is it true?”

“I'm afraid I can't tell you,” Roger said coldly. “I don't know him at all.”

“Well, it's common talk who he's taken up with now,” retorted Mrs. Verreker - le - Mesurer, perhaps a trifle more pink than the delicate aids to nature on her cheeks would have warranted. “ Half - a - dozen people have told me. That Bryce woman, of all people. You know, the wife of the oil man, or petrol, or whatever he made his money in.”