The Poisonous Seed (41 page)

‘Er – yes, of course,’ said Sharrock, looking less than enlightened. ‘But perhaps – in your own words …?’

‘Mr Garton suffered from indigestion and he was about to go to dinner. What more natural than he take his medicine with him? He cut the string and unwrapped the bottle, but it was not after he returned home, as we have supposed, but before he departed, and then he slipped it into his pocket. But the cork was firmly seated, and the bottle would not have leaked unless he uncorked it to take a dose of medicine. Remember that Mr Garton was seen drinking from a bottle as the carriage was drawing away. We all assumed that he was drinking from his brandy flask as that was the only bottle we knew to be there, but what if it was not the brandy, but his medicine? If he failed to securely re-cork the bottle, some of the contents may have leaked into his pocket.’ Frances turned to the servant. ‘Mr Edwards. I believe it was you who saw Mr Garton drink when he was in the carriage?’

‘Yes, I did,’ he agreed.

‘Did you see what kind of bottle or flask he drank from?’

‘I am afraid I did not, it was far too dark. But of course, Mrs Garton was in the carriage with him and would, I am sure, be able to enlighten you.’

Sharrock furrowed his brow. ‘Well that will be all, Mr Edwards,’ he said quickly. ‘Make sure we know your new address if we need to speak to you again.’

Edwards looked regretfully at the cloak.

‘Don’t worry; you’ll have it back when it’s no longer evidence.’

After the manservant had departed, Sharrock strode up and down deep in thought. Frances had half expected she would also be dismissed but he seemed to be content for her to remain. She realised that it was the mention of Mrs Garton’s name and the suspicion that the lady had not been entirely truthful about some events – at least on the night of her husband’s death – that had led to the abrupt ending of the interview with Mr Edwards.

‘Now then, what did Mrs Garton say about her husband drinking in the carriage?’ said Sharrock. He glanced at Wilfred, who obligingly burrowed into the heaped papers and extracted a folder, which he opened and perused. The constable shook his head. ‘She said she was too upset to remember anything,’ he said.

‘But wait a minute,’ exclaimed Sharrock, ‘he
couldn’t
have drunk the medicine in the carriage or he’d have been taken ill at the Keanes’ house.’

‘Yes he could!’ exclaimed Frances. ‘He could have drunk the medicine with impunity if there was no poison in it.’

Sharrock stared at her.

‘Don’t you see?’ she went on. ‘The poison was put in later.’

He folded his arms and narrowed his eyes. ‘And when exactly do you think that happened?’

‘Well,’ said Frances, ‘if the bottle remained in the cloak pocket, and the cloak was hung in the hall cupboard at Mr Keane’s house, there was an interval between the bottle being opened and Mr Garton taking the fatal dose when the bottle was left unattended for some five hours.’

‘That may be true,’ said Sharrock, dubiously, ’but how did this supposed murderer even know that the bottle was there?’

‘Only three people knew that the bottle was there,’ said Frances. ‘Mr Garton, who, I think we agree, did not take his own life, Mrs Garton, and one other – the person who took the cloak and who might have noticed the weight of the bottle in the pocket.’

‘And who just happened to have a lethal amount of strychnine about their person?’ said Sharrock sarcastically.

Frances paused, her eye suddenly caught by a picture on the desk that had been uncovered by Wilfred’s search. It was the head and shoulders portrait of Guy Berenger, the upper part of the head partly obscured by an overlapping sheet of white paper. Why had she never seen the resemblance before?

‘I assume the Keanes’ house is closed up now,’ she said regretfully.

‘I think Mr Morgan is over there arranging for the sale of the contents,’ said Wilfred.

‘What about the servants?’ exclaimed Frances.

‘I think some of them are still there.’

Frances rose to her feet. ‘Then we need to go there at once,’ she said, ‘there’s just a chance.’

‘A chance of what?’ said Sharrock.

‘Don’t you see?’ she said, gesturing at the portrait of Berenger. When that brought about no enlightenment, she put the sheet of white paper over it folded in the shape of a maid’s cap.

‘Oh,’ said Sharrock suddenly, then ‘
Oh!
’ He looked up at Wilfred. ‘Well constable, what are you waiting for? Order up a cab. You’d better come with us Miss Doughty. You’ve a lot of explaining to do, and you’d better begin right away.’

As the four-wheeler rattled its way towards Craven Hill, Frances had barely time to arrange her thoughts. When she began to speak she was extremely gratified to see that both the Inspector and the constable were listening with wrapt attention.

‘The important thing,’ she said, ‘and I have both documentary proof and witnesses who will swear to it – is that the man who was living in Bayswater with Henrietta Garton as her husband was not Percival Garton at all.’

‘Then who the Dev— I mean, who was he?’ exclaimed Sharrock.

‘I believe,’ said Frances, ’that he was Lewis Cotter.’

‘Lewis who?’

‘Liverpool case, Sir. 1869,’ said Wilfred, promptly. ‘He was a bank clerk involved in a forgery case – murdered his accomplice, a Mr Truin, and then ran off.’

‘I see,’ said Sharrock in astonishment. ‘But wait a minute – didn’t Mr Garton’s brother identify the body? How come he didn’t spot it was a different man? Or is he involved in some way?’

‘Cedric Garton is very much younger than Percival,’ said Frances. He was just a child when his brother left Italy for England. Cedric next saw his brother – or the man he thought was his brother – when he came to London last year, an interval of twenty-three years from their last meeting. When he made the identification it was on the basis of the man he had met only a year ago.’

Sharrock frowned. ‘And you don’t suspect him? He seems like a rum sort to me.’

Frances smiled. ‘Indeed, but he is not a murderer. All this time, I had been wondering who would have wanted to murder Mr Garton, but now I believe he was killed because the murderer knew that he was Lewis Cotter. I was misled because Cotter was ten years younger than Garton. No wonder the false Mr Garton always seemed less careworn than a man of forty-eight. He was really thirty-eight, under a great deal of whiskers.’

Sharrock looked more confused than before. ‘But how did the killer know Garton was Cotter? And where did the strychnine come from?’

‘I think this murder has been planned for many years,’ said Frances. ‘It was just a matter of waiting for the opportunity. To us it seems mysterious and improbable because we see it as the work of a moment, but once we realise that there was a carefully laid plan it is not so remarkable after all.’

Outside the villa in Craven Hill, a man was pasting up a sign announcing the sale by auction of the contents. Frances and the two policemen marched boldly up to the door and rang the bell-pull. Ettie answered the door. She looked dusty and unhappy. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed seeing the policemen, then gaped in bewilderment to see Frances.

‘Is Mr Morgan at home?’ demanded Sharrock, abruptly.

Ettie looked at the two policemen standing on the doorstep, then her face crumpled and she burst into tears.

Frances hurried in at once and comforted the maid, quickly. ‘It’s all right, Ettie it’s not what you think; the police just want to talk to him, that’s all.’

Ettie sniffed. ‘I’m so sorry – only I – do come in Sir, – if you’d just like to wait in the front parlour, I’ll tell Master you’re here.’

As Ettie conducted the policemen to the parlour, Frances said, ‘Ettie, I can’t explain now, but I must know. On the night of Mr Garton’s death, when he arrived – who took his cloak?’

Sharrock nodded. ‘Answer the question now, there’s a good girl.’

Ettie blinked through damp eyes. ‘Well – let me see – I was laying the table and Mr Harvey was seeing to the wine. I suppose it must have been Ellen.’

‘As I thought,’ said Sharrock, as if the idea had been his, ‘and where is Ellen now?’

‘I don’t know, sir. She’s packed her bags and left.’

‘If you ever locate Guy Berenger,’ Frances told Sharrock, ‘they may well be together. I am sure they are brother and sister. There is a look about the eyes which is so similar as to suggest they are related.’

Mr Morgan, a weary-looking man of about sixty, entertained his unexpected visitors in the front parlour which was already festooned with dustsheets. The auctioneer’s men, who had been milling about taking notes, were persuaded to go to another room. Mr Morgan was unable to help the police a great deal. He had no information about where Ellen had gone, and knew nothing of her origins. When introduced to Frances he did have one admission to make; his daughter had confessed to him that her evidence at the inquest was untrue, something for which she blamed her husband. He promised that he would make a formal statement to that effect.

On the way back to the station, Frances was deep in thought. She was beginning now to see how everything had happened and why, and even the tiny fragments of fact which had puzzled her were being explained. ‘Once I realised that Mr Garton was not Mr Garton at all, almost everything became clear,’ she said.

‘Clear as mud to me,’ said Sharrock, ‘but go on – if you can make sense of this, I’m prepared to listen.’

‘In 1862, Mr and Mrs Garton were married and went to live in a village called Tollington Mill in Gloucestershire,’ said Frances, feeling as if she was about to tell a story.

‘When you say “Mr Garton?”’ queried Sharrock.

‘The
real
Percival Garton. He came to England from Italy in 1856 in order to manage his grandfather’s shipping business in Bristol. In June 1869 a man came to live in Tollington Mill. He called himself John Wright, but he was really Lewis Cotter. After he murdered Mr Truin in April he hid for a time. He then took a new identity and leased the house in Tollington Mill.’

‘Didn’t you think that Mr Keane was Lewis Cotter?’ said Wilfred.

‘Yes, and I was wrong, but very close. I think James Keane was Samuel Cotter, Lewis’ younger brother. Keane was not as clever as his brother, and when he took a new name he assumed that of someone he had probably known and who had died as a youth. It was a careless thing to do, and his brother was not pleased with him. If Lewis Cotter was John Wright then he was a very talented artist. I think he committed the Liverpool forgeries and used Mr Truin to gain access to the bank papers. After the murder he planned to live quietly in the country for a time, and eventually establish himself in London. His brother Samuel had gone ahead to London as a part of that plan. But then the unexpected happened. Lewis Cotter met Henrietta Garton and they fell in love. He stayed on in the country and had even decided to settle there, and then in June or July 1869 Henrietta found that she was going to have a child. She must have told Cotter then that this would mean discovery. I doubt if Cotter had known it before, but Mr Garton had been told by his doctor that he could not be a father.’

‘How do you know all this?’ exclaimed Sharrock suddenly.

‘By asking the right questions of the right people,’ said Frances. ‘I believe that Cotter and Henrietta decided to murder Mr Garton and make it look as if John Wright had been murdered. Then Cotter could go to London with Henrietta as her husband. There were a number of difficulties – while Garton and Cotter were of a similar build they looked quite different – Cotter’s hair was darker and Garton had whiskers whereas Cotter was clean shaven. It was part of the plan that Cotter should go to London as Garton to establish an alibi for the death of John Wright. He probably didn’t want to risk going about wearing false whiskers, which would have given him away if anyone had noticed, so he left Tollington Mill for a month until they were grown. Then he returned, and killed Garton. Garton was dressed in John Wright’s clothing, his face was shaved and his hair dyed black. Then Cotter planted the bottle of dye in the house to make it look as if Wright had always dyed his hair.’

‘It’s a bit of a melodrama if you don’t mind my saying it,’ said Sharrock.

‘I can give you a witness who will say that the bottle of dye was never there when the house was closed up,’ said Frances. ‘And she told the story to the police at the time, and they wouldn’t believe her. Perhaps it’s still in the notes they took.’

Sharrock raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

‘Cotter planted a notebook on the body to make it look as if Wright was still alive on 30 July,’ Frances continued, ‘but he was actually killed some days before, then Cotter went to London and kept appointments to establish an alibi. Since no one thought Wright was missing there was no search, so the murderers felt sure that the body, left in an abandoned quarry, would probably not be found for some time. It was the only chance they took and it paid off. The body wasn’t found for two weeks, and the summer heat had ensured that it would be identified by clothing alone.’

‘But what about the sister who said Wright was insane?’ said Wilfred. ‘She must have been telling the truth as she knew about the stitches in his coat.’

Frances thought about the slender lady she had seen coming out of the cemetery in the deep mourning appropriate for a brother. ‘I think that she may have been Cotter’s sister, Eleanor. If he had stayed with her during the month he was away from Tollington Mill, she might well have mended his coat then. He must have been hoping that the police inquiries into the identity of John Wright would slow down, but they were continuing more vigorously than he wanted and he decided to put an end to them, so he asked his sister to go the police and tell a story that would explain the mystery. Her story also placed John Wright with her in Bristol at the same time as Lewis Cotter was in Liverpool, thus averting possible suspicion that they were one and the same man, and reinforced the suggestion that John Wright dyed his hair. I suggest you make enquiries to find out where the lady was living in 1870. I would be very surprised if she was not then in Bristol.’