Strong Poison (12 page)

“We’ll scoot off,” said Marjorie. “Never mind about saying goodbye. Nobody marks you. It’s good luck about Sylvia, because she’ll be at home and can’t escape us. I sometimes wish they’d all sprain their ankles. And yet, you know, nearly all those people are doing very good work. Even the Kropotky crowd. I used to enjoy this kind of thing myself, once.”

“We’re getting old, you and I,” said Wimsey. “Sorry, that’s rude. But do you know, I’m getting on for forty, Marjorie.”

“You wear well. But you are looking a bit fagged tonight, Peter dear. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing at all but middle-age.”

“You’ll be settling down if you’re not careful.”

“Oh, I’ve been settled for years.”

“With Bunter and the books. I envy you sometimes, Peter.”

Wimsey said nothing. Marjorie looked at him almost in alarm, and tucked her arm in his.

“Peter – do please be happy. I mean, you’ve always been the comfortable sort of person that nothing could touch. Don’t alter, will you?”

That was the second time Wimsey had been asked not to alter himself; the first time, the request had exalted him; this time, it terrified him. As the taxi lurched along the rainy Embankment, he felt for the first time the dull and angry helplessness which is the first warning stroke of the triumph of mutability. Like the poisoned Athulf in the Fool’s Tragedy, he could have cried, “Oh, I am changing, changing, fearfully changing.” Whether his present enterprise failed or succeeded, things would never be the same again. It was not that his heart would be broken by a disastrous love – he had outlived the luxurious agonies of youthful blood, and in this very freedom from illusion he recognised the loss of something. From now on, every hour of lightheartedness would be, not a prerogative but an achievement – one more axe or case bottle or fowling-piece, rescued, Crusoe fashion, from a sinking ship.

For the first time, too, he doubted his own power to carry through what he had undertaken. His personal feelings had been involved before this in his investigations, but they had never before clouded his mind. He was fumbling – grasping uncertainly here and there at fugitive and mocking possibilities. He asked questions at random, doubtful of his object, and the shortness of the time, which would once have stimulated, now frightened and confused him.

“I’m sorry, Marjorie,” he said, rousing himself, I’m afraid I’m being damned dull. Oxygen-starvation, probably. D’you mind if we have the window down a bit? That’s better. Give me good food and a little air to breathe and I will caper, goat-like, to a dishonourable old age. People will point me out, as I creep, bald and yellow and supported by discreet corsetry, into the night-clubs of my greatgrandchildren, and they’ll say, ‘Look, darling! that’s the wicked Lord Peter, celebrated for never having spoken a reasonable word for the last ninety-six years. He was the only aristocrat who escaped the guillotine in the revolution of 1960. We keep him as a pet for the children.’ And I shall wag my head and display my up-to-date dentures and say, ‘Ah, ha! They don’t have the fun we used to have in my young days, the poor, well-regulated creatures!’ ”

“There won’t be any night-clubs then for you to creep into, if they’re as disciplined as all that.”

“Oh, yes – nature will have her revenge. They will slink away from the Government Communal Games to play solitaire in catacombs over a bowl of unsterilised skim-milk. Is this the place?”

“Yes; I hope there’s someone to let us in at the bottom, if Sylvia’s bust her leg. Yes – I hear footsteps. Oh, it’s you Eiluned; how’s Sylvia?”

“Pretty all right, only swelled up – the ankle, that is. Coming up?”

“Is she visible?”

“Yes, perfectly respectable.”

“Good, because I’m bringing Lord Peter Wimsey up, too.”

“Oh,” said the girl. “How do you do? You detect things, don’t you? Have you come for the body or anything?”

“Lord Peter’s looking into Harriet Vane’s business for her.”

“Is he? That’s good. Glad somebody’s doing something about it.” She was a short, stout girl with a pugnacious nose and a twinkle. “What do you say it was? I say he did it himself. He was the selfpitying sort, you know. Hullo, Syl – here’s Marjorie, with a bloke who’s going to get Harriet out of jug.”

“Produce him instantly!” was the reply from within. The door opened upon a small bed-sitting room, furnished with the severest simplicity, and inhabited by a pale, spectacled young woman in a Morris chair, her bandaged foot stretched out upon a packing-case.

“I can’t get up, because, as Jenny Wren said, my back’s bad and my leg’s queer. Who’s the champion, Marjorie?”

Wimsey was introduced, and Eiluned Price immediately inquired, rather truculently:“Can he drink coffee, Marjorie? Or does he require masculine refreshment?”

“He’s perfectly godly, righteous and sober, and drinks anything but cocoa and fizzy lemonade.”

“Oh! I only asked because some of your male belongings need stimulating, and we haven’t got the wherewithal, and the pub’s just closing.”

She stumped over to a cupboard, and Sylvia said:

“Don’t mind Eiluned; she likes to treat ’ em rough. Tell me, Lord Peter, have you found any clues or anything?”

“I don’t know,” said Wimsey. “I’ve put a few ferrets down a few holes. I hope something may come up the other end.”

“Have you seen the cousin yet – the Urquhart creature?”

“Got an appointment with him for tomorrow. Why?”

“Sylvia’s theory is that he did it,” said Eiluned.

“That’s interesting. Why?”

“Female intuition,” said Eiluned, bluntly. “She doesn’t like the way he does his hair.”

“I only said he was too sleek to be true,” protested Sylvia. “And who else could it have been? I’m sure it wasn’t Ryland Vaughan; he’s an obnoxious ass, but he is genuinely heart-broken about it all.”

Eiluned sniffed scornfully, and departed to fill a kettle at a tap on the landing.

“And whatever Eiluned thinks, I can’t believe Phil Boyes did it himself.”

“Why not?” asked Wimsey.

“He talked such a lot,” said Sylvia. “And he really had too high an opinion of himself. I don’t think he would have wilfully deprived the world of the privilege of reading his books.”

“He would,” said Eiluned. “He’d do it out of spite, to make the grownups sorry. No, thanks,” as Wimsey advanced to carry the kettle, “I’m quite capable of carrying six pints of water.”

“Crushed again!” said Wimsey.

“Eiluned disapproves of conventional courtesies between the sexes,” said Marjorie.

“Very well,” replied Wimsey, amiably. “I will adopt an attitude of passive decoration. Have you any idea, Miss Marriott, why this over-sleek solicitor should wish to make away with his cousin?”

“Not the faintest. I merely proceed on the old Sherlock Holmes basis, that when you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.”

“Dupin said that before Sherlock. I grant the conclusion, but in this case I question the premises. No sugar, thank you.”

“I thought all men liked to make their coffee into syrup.”

“Yes, but then I’m very unusual. Haven’t you noticed it?”

“I haven’t had much time to observe you, but I’ll count the coffee as a point in your favour.”

“Thanks frightfully. I say – can you people tell me just what was Miss Vane’s reaction to the murder?”

“Well -” Sylvia considered a moment. “When he died – she was upset, of course -”

“She was startled,” said Miss Price, “but it’s my opinion she was thankful to be rid of him. And no wonder. Selfish beast! He’d made use of her and nagged her to death for a year and insulted her at the end. And he was one of your greedy sort that wouldn’t let go. She was glad, Sylvia – what’s the good of denying it?”

“Yes, perhaps. It was a relief to know he was finished with. But she didn’t know then that he’d been murdered.”

“No. The murder spoilt it a bit – if it was a murder, which I don’t believe. Philip Boyes was always determined to be a victim, and it was very irritating of him to succeed in the end. I believe that’s what he did it for.”

“People do do that kind of thing,” said Wimsey, thoughtfully. “But it’s difficult to prove. I mean, a jury is much more inclined to believe in some tangible sort of reason, like money. But I can’t find any money in this case.”

Eiluned laughed.

“No, there never was much money, except what Harriet made. The ridiculous public didn’t appreciate Phil Boyes. He couldn’t forgive her that, you know.”

“Didn’t it come in useful?”

“Of course, but he resented it all the same. She ought to have been ministering to his work, not making money for them both with her own independent trash. But that’s men all over.”

“You haven’t much opinion of us, what?”

“I’ve known too many borrowers,” said Eiluned Price, “and too many that wanted their hands held. All the same, the women are just as bad, or they wouldn’t put up with it. Thank Heaven, I’ve never borrowed and never lent – except to women, and they pay back.”

“People who work hard usually do pay back, I fancy,” said Wimsey, “- except geniuses.”

“Women geniuses don’t get coddled,” said Miss Price, grimly, “so they learn not to expect it.”

“We’re getting rather off the subject, aren’t we?” said Marjorie.

“No,” replied Wimsey, “I’m getting a certain amount of light on the central figures in the problem – what journalists like to call the protagonists.” His mouth gave a wry little twist. “One gets a lot of illumination in that fierce light that beats upon a scaffold.”

“Don’t say that,” pleaded Sylvia.

A telephone rang somewhere outside, and Eiluned Price went out to answer it.

“Eiluned’s anti-man,” said Sylvia, “but she’s a very reliable person.”

Wimsey nodded.

“But she’s wrong about Phil – she couldn’t stick him, naturally, and she’s apt to think -”

“It’s for you, Lord Peter,” said Eiluned, returning. “Fly at once – all is known. You’re wanted by Scotland Yard.

Wimsey hastened out.

“That you, Peter? I’ve been scouring London for you. We’ve found the pub.”

“Never!”

“Fact. And we’re on the track of a packet of white powder.”

“Good God!”

“Can you run down first thing tomorrow? We may have it for you.”

“I will skip like a ram and hop like a high hill. We’ll beat you yet, Mr. Bleeding Chief-Inspector Parker.”

“I hope you will,” said Parker, amiably, and rang off.

Wimsey pranced back into the room.

“Miss Price’s price has gone to odds on,” he announced. “It’s suicide, fifty to one and no takers. I am going to grin like a dog and run about the city.”

“I’m sorry I can’t join you,” said Sylvia Marriott, “but I’m glad if I’m wrong.”

“I’m glad I’m right,” said Eiluned Price, stolidly.

“And you are right and I am right and everything is quite all right,” said Wimsey.

Marjorie Phelps looked at him and said nothing. She suddenly felt as though something inside her had been put through a wringer.

By what ingratiating means Mr. Bunter had contrived to turn the delivery of a note into the acceptance of an invitation to tea was best known to himself. At half-past four on the day which ended so cheerfully for Lord Peter, he was seated in the kitchen of Mr. Urquhart’s house, toasting crumpets. He had been trained to a great pitch of dexterity in the preparation of crumpets, and if he was somewhat lavish in the matter of butter, that hurt nobody except Mr. Urquhart. It was natural that the conversation should turn to the subject of murder. Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of comfortable horrors within. The heavier the lashing of the rain and the ghastlier the details, the better the flavour seems to be. On the present occasion, all the ingredients of an enjoyable party were present in full force.

“ ’Orrible white, he looked, when he came in,” said Mrs. Pettican the cook. “I see him when they sent for me to bring up the ’ot bottles. Three of them, they ’ad, one to his feet and one to his back and the big rubber one to ’is stummick. White and shiverin’, he was, and that dreadful sick, you never would believe. And he groaned pitiful.”

“Green, he looked to me, Cook,” said Hannah Westlock, “or you might perhaps call it a greenish-yellow. I thought it was jaundice a-coming on – more like them attacks he had in the Spring.”

“He was a bad colour then,” agreed Mrs. Pettican, “but nothink like to what he was that last time. And the pains and cramps in his legs was agonising. That struck Nurse Williams very forcible – a nice young woman she was, and not stuck-up like some as I could name. ‘Mrs. Pettican,’ she said to me, which I call it better manners than callin’ you Cook as they mostly do, as though they paid your wages for the right of callin’ you out of your name – ‘Mrs. Pettican,’ said she, ‘never did I see anythink to equal them cramps except in one other case that was the dead spit of this one,’ she said, ‘and you mark my words, Mrs. Pettican, them cramps ain’t there for nothin’.’ Ah! little did I understand her meanin’ at the time.

“That’s a regular feature of these arsenical cases, or so his lordship tells me,” replied Bunter. “A very distressing symptom. Had he ever had anything of the sort before?”

“Not what you could call cramps,” said Hannah, “though I remember when he was ill in the spring he complained of getting the fidgets in the hands and feet. Something like pins-and-needles, by what I understood him to say. It was a worrit to him, because he was finishing one of his articles in a hurry, and what with that and his eyes being so bad, the writing was a trial to him, poor thing.

“From what the gentleman for the prosecution said, talking it out with Sir James Lubbock,” said Mr. Bunter, “I gathered that those pins-and-needles, and bad eyes and so on, were a sign he’d been given arsenic regularly, if I may so phrase it.”