Speedy Death (31 page)

‘They said she was innocent! They—they acquitted her! The jury said Not Guilty!’ Dorothy’s voice was defiant.

‘And very nice too! I like the old girl, and I should be damned sorry if I thought she was going to dangle for putting old Eleanor’s light out,’ returned Garde, ‘for, between you and me, my sister was as mad as a hatter, darling. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Mad?’ Dorothy faltered.

‘Yes, mad,’ reiterated Garde curtly. ‘I’ll go a little further, and inform you that, if Mrs Bradley hadn’t
so kindly lifted the job off my hands, I was seriously thinking about laying Sis out myself.’

Dorothy gasped.

‘But why didn’t they say she was guilty if—if she was?’ she faltered. (‘Oh, look out for that little pig, Garde!’)

‘Well, it had to be proved,’ said Garde, missing the pig by inches. ‘And I doubt if it ever will be. The prosecution hadn’t a leg to stand on, poor devils. Especially with that Lestrange lad against them. Clever bloke, that one. And about as honest as a Dago dog!’

He turned the car in at the lodge gate of Chaynings, and drew up in front of the house.

‘After all,’ he added, as they walked into the great hall a moment or two later, ‘it was jolly sporting of Mrs Bradley. That’s my opinion, child. She took a big risk for other people’s sakes.’

But Dorothy shuddered.

‘Of course, Mother,’ said Ferdinand Lestrange, holding his glass to the light and pensively admiring the rich colour of the wine, ‘if
I’d
been prosecuting——!’

Mrs Bradley laughed good-humouredly. In the candle light she looked more like some ghoulish bird of prey than ever, in spite of the jewels which gleamed at her throat, and the flashing rings upon her claw-like hands.

‘Of course, you did do it?’ her son continued, setting down his glass and turning an inquiring gaze upon her.

‘Oh, yes,’ his mother admitted, in her curiously arresting voice, ‘of course I did it. One day I will tell you how.’

‘Tell me why,’ suggested the young advocate, with a connoisseur’s interest.

‘Tell you why? It is difficult to do that. I had no personal feeling in the matter, of course. It was what one might term a logical elimination of unnecessary, and, in fact, dangerous matter.’

Ferdinand nodded slowly.

‘I begin to realize whence I derive my own extraordinary abilities,’ he observed modestly.

Mrs Bradley cackled delightedly. ‘Yes,’ she continued. ‘I did not, in the everyday, newspaper, pot-house sense of the word murder Eleanor Bing. I merely erased her, as it were, from an otherwise fair page of the Bing family chronicle. It all simplified itself to this:

‘If I did not kill Eleanor, she would kill Dorothy, the girl Garde Bing has married.

‘Or, more possibly:

‘If I did not kill Eleanor, Garde himself might do so.

‘Or, more terribly:

‘If I did not kill Eleanor, Eleanor would kill Dorothy, and then Garde would kill Eleanor, and then the law would kill Garde.’

‘Or, more irritatingly:

‘If someone didn’t kill Eleanor, she would kill that quite inoffensive child Pamela.’

‘The law didn’t kill
you
,’ her son pointed out dryly.

‘I am rather an intelligent woman, darling,’ his fond mother reminded him, ‘and poor Garde and poor Bertie are rather unintelligent young men.’

Her son smiled sedately. The candle lit up his gleaming shirt-front, and shone on the thick, glossy smoothness of his hair.

Mrs Bradley sat still, smiling wisely into her glass, like an amused and mocking death’s-head at a strangely casual feast. Her son rose, glass in hand. Without a word, he lifted it high and bowed to her.

Mrs Bradley cackled with pleasure.

‘Thank you, my dear,’ she said. ‘It is nice to have one’s motives appreciated!’

Detective-Inspector Boring glared resentfully at his sleeping wife. As though aware of his annoyance, she opened one eye and gave the slight moan which, with her, was significant of a return to conscious life. She opened the other eye, and became aware of an unshaven and distinctly irritable face about twelve inches distant from her own.

‘Hullo, Herbert! Surely it isn’t time to get up?’ she moaned.

‘It’s after seven,’ barked Mr Boring, in the ill-tempered tone of one who has been awake for hours.

‘Is it? Still, it’s Sunday. No need to stir for a while yet,’ remarked the unfeeling and undutiful woman.

She turned over with a heave and a roll, drew
the bedclothes up to her chin, and immediately relapsed into slumber.

Detective-Inspector Boring looked and felt aggrieved.

‘Here’s me, with my whole future jeopardized, and that’s all you care,’ he apostrophized the back of his wife’s neck audibly.

His wife stirred and grunted.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ groaned the unfortunate police officer. ‘Go to sleep! Never mind
my
troubles! Never mind if your unfortunate husband has to send in his resignation because a lot of ——, ——, one-eyed, flap-eared police yokels and a dozen ——, ——, fat-headed, rubber-necked —— jurymen couldn’t tell a murderess when they’d got one stuck in the dock right under their —— ——noses!’

‘Herbert, dear,’ remonstrated his wife, now wide awake, ‘do hush! Remember both windows are open!’

Detective-Inspector Boring then described the open windows in no measured terms; in fact, with such appalling minuteness of detail that his partner arose, put on her dressing-gown, and went off to make the early morning cup of tea, observing that even a wife was not compelled by law to stay and listen to such language.

‘After all, poor old lady,’ she observed, ‘you wouldn’t like to think she was going to be hanged, even if she did do it. And she couldn’t have done it, or the jury would have said so.’

‘Couldn’t have done it!’ yelled Mr Boring, flinging himself about in the bed until it creaked and howled
in unavailing protest. ‘Couldn’t have done it, did you say?’ He laughed with an ironical bitterness which, in the whole course of a chequered career, even he had never previously equalled.

‘I
know
she did it!’ he shouted at his wife’s retreating footsteps. ‘And how do I know? Because I —— ——
do
know! That’s how!’

‘But it couldn’t be proved,’ his wife called back over her shoulder, ‘could it?’

‘Proved?’ howled her incensed spouse. ‘Proved, did you say? Well, prove to me black isn’t white! Go on! Let’s hear you prove that!’

‘Don’t be silly, dearie,’ said his wife fondly from the foot of the staircase.

Detective-Inspector Boring writhed in anguished bitterness.

‘Of course, I am very much relieved at the verdict,’ said Carstairs to Bertie Philipson, as the two sat in the grandstand at Twickenham one fine Saturday afternoon in November.

‘Rather,’ agreed Bertie absently. ‘Wonder why they always start the second half a minute or two late on this ground? Or is it my imagination?’

‘It wants another three minutes yet,’ said Carstairs. ‘She was lucky to get off, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Bertie. ‘Wonder who did kill old Eleanor, though, after all. Or do you think it was suicide?’

‘Suicide my hat!’ replied Carstairs, laughing. ‘No, it was murder, right enough, and Mrs Bradley did it!’

‘Oh, come now!’ said Bertie, all his apathy turning to interest. ‘What about the verdict?’

‘Would have been “Not proven” from a Scottish jury, I fancy,’ said Carstairs dryly.

‘Spin us the yarn,’ said Bertie. ‘What do you think happened that night?’

‘After Eleanor and the carving-knife had parted company,’ said Carstairs, ‘and Mrs Bradley had managed to get Eleanor into bed, I think Mrs Bradley went back to her own room and felt horribly worried.’

‘Wind up in case Eleanor should have a go at somebody else?’ suggested Bertie.

‘Exactly. In this state of mind I think she went to her secret store of hyoscin and poured the fatal dose of poison into the thermos flask, from which, as she confessed at the trial, she had already drunk half a cupful of coffee. With the poisoned draught at hand, she felt prepared for emergency. The sleeping-draught she had offered to Eleanor was refused by the poor young woman, or so I think. Possibly she scarcely relished the taste of the bromide solution administered to her by Mrs Bradley on the night of Dorothy’s lucky escape. She always hated any form of medicine. I think it was this refusal on the part of Eleanor which caused Mrs Bradley to poison the coffee. Had Eleanor taken the sleeping-draught, the chances were that she would not have shown her murderous tendencies again that night, but, as things were, with Eleanor wide awake and filled with jealous hatred of young Pamela Storbin, and probably with serious resentment towards yourself——’

Bertie nodded gloomily.

‘Mrs Bradley thought anything might happen. Yes, I can see how she would have felt,’ he said.

‘Yes. Here come the teams,’ said Carstairs.

‘Oh, go on,’ said Bertie. ‘Let’s have the yarn.’

‘Well, when we saw Mrs Bradley give Eleanor the cup of coffee, we were watching a murder take place,’ said Carstairs simply.

‘Then you think, if the police had found the coffee cup, as they found the wineglass which had contained the sleeping-draught——’ suggested Bertie, leaving the other to complete the sentence.

‘I think there would have been a rope for Mrs Bradley,’ said Carstairs. ‘As a matter of fact, that is the one bit of the crime which is a real puzzle to me. I cannot understand how Mrs Bradley could have been so frightfully careless as to leave that cup about. It isn’t like her to have run such a clumsy risk as that. An artistic risk—like getting the body to the bathroom—yes, she would enjoy taking a chance like that—but the cup no. The cup won’t fit into place.’

‘Yes, why did she take the body to the bathroom?’ asked Bertie. ‘And, by the way, I should think she had her work cut out to manage it. Eleanor was every bit of nine stone, and Mrs Bradley is a small, thin woman.’

‘With immense nursing experience, remember. Nurses get used to handling big helpless men, don’t they? And, besides, she had muscles of iron. As to why she put the body there, I think it was just her freakish sense of humour. Eleanor’s victim,
Mountjoy, was found dead in the bathroom, and Mrs Bradley decided that Eleanor should be found dead there also. She may have had some idea of confusing the investigators, too, or of misleading people as to the time of death. She ought to have pushed the head under water, though. It was a mistake to leave the hair dry and yet arrange the body face-uppermost.’

‘And did you think all this out before the trial?’ asked Bertie. ‘Oh, look! He’s scored! Good man! Just let’s see if he’ll convert it! Oh, well taken, sir! Very pretty!’

He turned to Carstairs with a smile.

‘Sorry, sir. Will you please go on?’

‘With pleasure. No, I did not think along these lines before the trial. It is true that I saw the facts looked bad for Mrs Bradley. For one thing, you see, there is no doubt that she could have obtained the hyoscin. She is a distinguished psycho-analyst, as we know, and she has been in America visiting mental institutions. I happen to know—although the defence took care to keep this fact very dark—that while in America she acted as assistant to a distinguished alienist in order to have an opportunity of treating some of his cases psycho-analytically. Now, under these circumstances, what was there to prevent her from obtaining what we will term a murderous quantity of this drug? It is a calmative drug, used fairly freely in our mental asylums and quite extensively in America. The alienist she worked with possessed a store—probably of several grains—and a quarter
to half a grain of the stuff, remember, is a fatal dose.

‘Very well, then. She could have obtained the poison. Mind, I don’t mean to imply for an instant that she obtained it for a criminal purpose. That is not my conception at all. She was supplied with a small quantity for professional purposes, I imagine, and simply saw no occasion for returning it. Then, when she realized how dangerous Eleanor was, the remembrance of this poison came to her. It was a quick and merciful form of death, as unerring and as free from cruelty as a properly constructed lethal chamber. What had she to do? Why, dissolve a microscopic amount of the crystals in alcohol—probably they were so dissolved already—and either dilute the liquid so formed with water, or drop a little of it into coffee or tea. It is tasteless in either.’

‘You said Eleanor didn’t drink the bromide sleeping-draught,’ remarked Bertie, ‘yet the glass was empty. What did Mrs Bradley do with the draught?’

‘Drank it herself, I expect,’ answered Carstairs, with his eyes on the players. ‘It was quite harmless, you see, and the empty glass played quite a part in helping to make the issue of the trial doubtful.’

‘I wonder whether she reckoned on Mabel leaving it for the police to find,’ grinned Bertie.

‘I shouldn’t be a bit surprised,’ chuckled Carstairs. ‘But that makes it all the more extraordinary that she ran such a foolish risk in leaving the coffee cup lying about.’

‘Knew the maid would be certain to collect up a common kitchen cup,’ said Bertie.

‘Maybe. But it was a risk,’ argued Carstairs. ‘And a risk I should have thought she would have avoided,’ he added, wrinkling his brow. ‘Of course, it was a piece of rare good luck, my finding that medicine-glass.’

‘Yes, but surely that was strong evidence in favour of supposing that Eleanor committed suicide,’ said Bertie. ‘What did poor old Boring think about it?’

‘He thought what I thought, and said as much,’ replied Carstairs, smiling.

‘And what was that?’

‘The medicine-glass was a red-herring,’ replied Carstairs. ‘Directly I had found it, so carefully placed where the police had already looked and were not likely to look again for some little time, and yet so easy to detect and so beautifully simple and convincing once anybody did look, I smelt a rat. Still, I was keen to save Mrs Bradley, and it was for the police, not me, to detect the odour of the rodent. To their credit, be it said, they did! But circumstances—and the complete absence of Mrs Bradley’s finger-prints—were too much for them. From that time onwards, especially during the progress of the trial, I put two and two together——’