The Problem of the Green Capsule (8 page)

Professor Ingram took a quick look through the double doors. His expression altered still more.

“I think so,” he said grimly.

“Well, there you are!” said Major Crow, with a gesture of rising argumentativeness. “Miss Wills has told us there was some jiggery-pokery intended.”

“Oh. You’ve seen her?”

“Yes. And, from what we can gather, this whole show was designed as a series of traps——”

“It was more than that,” said Professor Ingram, looking him straight in the eyes. “I happen to know it was designed to show how the chocolates at Mrs. Terry’s shop were poisoned without anyone seeing the murderer do it”

To hide the association of several new thoughts, Elliot walked into the office before anybody commented. He switched on the green-shaded lamp over the roll-top desk there, and turned off the Photoflood bulb on the table. By contrast the ordinary light seemed feeble, but it still showed Marcus Chesney huddled in his last chair.

“So? two days before he was murdered—according to Superintendent Bostwick—Marcus Chesney had been asking the police questions about the exact size of the chocolate-box at Mrs. Terry’s shop. A box of cheap chocolates lay on the table now, and had figured in the “show.” But how?

Elliot returned to the Music Room, where Major Crow was attacking the same problem.

“But how,” inquired the Chief Constable, “could he illustrate how somebody had poisoned the chocolates at Mrs. Terry’s by having the bogey-man—whoever it was—shove a green capsule into his mouth?

Professor Ingram lifted his shoulders slightly. His eyes remained strained when he glanced into the other room.

“I can hardly tell you that,” he pointed out. “But, if you want my guess, Chesney meant this green-capsule incident to be only a side-line; a part of the show; perhaps not even a necessary part of it. My guess is that the real incident we were to watch was something to do with a box of chocolates in there on the table.”

“I think,” said the Chief Constable, after a pause, “that I shall keep out of this. You carry on, Inspector.”

Elliot indicated one of the brocaded arm-chairs, and Professor Ingram sat down gingerly.

“Now, sir. Did Mr. Chesney tell you that the purpose of this performance was really to show how chocolates could be poisoned without anybody noticing it?”

“No. But he hinted at it.”

“When?”

“Shortly before the performance began. I taxed him with it. ‘Taxed him with it!’ There’s a phrase for you: it sounds like farce comedy.” Professor Ingram shuddered a little, and then his guileless look became shrewd. “Look here, Inspector. I knew at dinner there was something queer about Chesney’s sudden and headlong desire to give us a show. The subject seemed to be introduced casually, and to work up by an argument among us to his final challenge. But he meant to introduce that challenge all along. He meant it before ever we sat down at the dinner table. I could see that; and young Emmet was grinning like a wolf whenever he thought nobody saw him.”

“Well, sir?”

“Well! That is why I objected to his postponing the show until so late, and taking nearly three mortal hours after dinner before he was willing to get down to business. I will interfere with no man’s vanities, which I hold are sacred things: but that seemed to be carrying it too far. I said frankly, ‘What’s the game? Because there is one.’ He said to me privately, ‘Watch with care, and you may see how Mrs. Terry’s chocolates were poisoned, but I’m betting you won’t.’ ”

“He had a theory?”

“Evidently.”

“A theory which he was going to prove in front of all of you?”

“Evidently.”

“And,” asked Elliot casually, “he suspected who the poisoner was?”

Professor Ingram glanced up briefly. There was a thick shade of worry in his eyes; if the term had been applicable to so genial a face, you might almost have said that he looked haunted.

“That was the impression I gathered,” he admitted.

“But didn’t he tell you—give you any hint——?”

“No. Otherwise it would have spoiled the show.”

“And you think the poisoner killed him because he knew?”

“It. seems probable, yes.” Professor Ingram stirred in his chair. “Tell me, Inspector. Are you an intelligent man? A man of some understanding?” He smiled curtly. “One moment, please. Let me explain why I ask that. With all due deference to our good friend Bostwick, I hardly think that this affair so far has been handled in a way that will do any credit to him.”

Major Crow’s expression became bleak and stiff.

“The Superintendent,” he said slowly, “has been trying to do his duty——”

“Oh, stop that balderdash,” said Professor Ingram without offence. “Of course he has. God help us, so have all of us! But doing our duty doesn’t mean getting at the truth; sometimes it means just the reverse. I don’t say there is any police plot against Marjorie Wills. I know there isn’t, though it seems a pity that the niece of a friend of mine cannot even walk down the High Street without danger of having mud thrown in her face by the very children. What real effort has been made to solve the problem of those poisoned chocolates? What approach has been made to it? What kind of crime is it?
Why
were those chocolates poisoned at Mrs. Terry’s?”

He struck the arm of the chair.

“Superintendent Bostwick,” he went on, “supports the soothing, sweeping doctrine that loonies are loonies; and there you are. And to bolster up their accusation against Marjorie, they cite the parallel case—a fine parallel, by gad!—of Christiana Edmunds.”

Major Crow did not comment.

“Similar? There never were two cases more wildly dissimilar, on the only grounds that are important: motive. Christiana Edmunds was mad, if you like, but she had as sound a motive as most murderers. This young lady, in the Brighton of 1871, fell violently in love with a married doctor who gave her no encouragement. She first attempted unsuccessfully to poison the doctor’s wife with strychnine. It was discovered; she was forbidden the house, and went away in a frenzy. To show that she was innocent, as she claimed— to prove there was a poisoner at work in the town, who could not be Miss Christiana Edmunds—she conceived the idea of doctoring the chocolate creams in a sweet-shop, and killing people wholesale. Very well; where is the parallel? Has anything like that ever been suggested about Marjorie? In heaven’s name, where is the motive? On the contrary, her own
fiancé,
after coming to Sodbury Cross and hearing what is being said about her, is on the point of getting cold feet and slipping away.”

At this point Professor Ingram’s expression was what can only be called cherubically murderous, emphasised by the crackling of his shirt-front. He laughed a little, and grew more quiet.

“Never mind,” he said. “
You
were asking the questions.”

“Has Miss Wills,” Elliot asked unexpectedly, “ever been engaged to anybody before?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“Has she, sir?”

Again Ingram gave him that brief, indecipherable glance. “No, not that I am aware of. I believe Wilbur Emmet was and is intensely fond of her. But Wilbur’s red nose and his general—I am sorry—his general unattractiveness would hardly recommend him, even if Marcus had favoured it. I hope I am speaking in confidence?”

Here Major Crow intervened. “Chesney, I am told,”
he observed in a colourless voice, “used to discourage
all
possible suitors from coming here to see her.”

Professor Ingram hesitated.

“In a sense that is true. What he called caterwauling disturbed his smooth life. He didn’t exactly discourage them, but——”

“I was wondering,” said Major Crow, “why this boy Marjorie met abroad got Chesney’s approval so easily.”

“You mean,” the professor spoke bluntly, “you mean he was becoming anxious to get her off his hands?”

“I did not say that.”

“My friend, the devil you didn’t. In any case you’re wrong. Marcus liked young Harding; the boy has prospects; and his exaggerated deference towards Marcus may have helped. But may I ask why we are arguing about this? Whatever else is true or false in this world”—here Professor Ingram’s shirtfront gave a sharp crackle—“it is absolutely certain that Marjorie had nothing to do with killing her uncle.”

Again it was as though the temperature of the room altered. Elliot took charge.

“You know what Miss Wills thinks about it herself, sir?”

“Thinks about it?”

“That someone knocked out Mr. Emmet, played Mr. Emmet’s part, and used a poisoned capsule in the performance?”

Ingram looked at him curiously. “Yes. That seems the most feasible explanation, doesn’t it?”

“Consequently, some person overheard what plans Mr. Chesney and Mr. Emmet were making in this room after dinner? Some person outside the door or outside the windows?”

“I see,” murmured the professor.

For a moment there was a faint, fixed half-smile on his face. He was leaning forward, his plump fists on his knees and his elbows outspread like wings. He wore that oddly witless expression assumed by intelligent people when their thoughts turn inwards, and arrange facts with swift certainty into a pattern. Then he smiled again.

“I see,” he repeated. “Now let me ask your questions for you, Inspector!” He waved his hand in the air, mesmerically. “Your next question is, ‘Where were you between nine-fifteen and midnight?’ And, ‘Where were Marjorie and George Harding between nine-fifteen and midnight?’ But you’ll go further. ‘Where were all of you at the time the performance took place?’ That’s the important thing. ‘Is it possible that one of you spectators could have slipped out in the dark, and played the part of the sinister bogey in the top-hat?’ That’s what you want to know, isn’t it?’

Major Crow’s eyes narrowed.

“Yes,” he said.

“It is a fair question,” replied Professor Ingram comfortably. “And it deserves a fair answer, which is this. I will swear before any court in the world that not one of us left this room during the performance.”

“H’m. Pretty strong statement, isn’t it?”

“Not at all.”

“You know how dark it was in here?”

“I know perfectly well how dark it was. In the first place, with that Photoflood lamp blazing in the other room, not quite so dark as you seem to think. In the second place, I have other reasons, which I hope my companions will corroborate. In fact, we might ask them.”

He got up from his chair, and gestured towards the hall door like a showman, as Marjorie and George Harding came in.

And Elliot inspected the new
fiancé.

At Pompeii he had seen only the back of Harding’s head. And he was now vaguely irritated with the full view. George Harding could not have been more than twenty-five or twenty-six. He had a good-natured, straightforward, hearty manner; he was without self-consciousness, and moved among people as naturally as a cat among ornaments on a sideboard. He was rather handsome in a somewhat Southern European manner: black crinkled hair that looked wiry, broad face, and dark eyes of singular expressiveness. It was this appearance which Elliot found difficult to reconcile with his hearty minor-public-school manner. He was probably welcome company anywhere, and knew it.

Then Harding caught sight of Marcus Chesney’s body beyond the folding doors, and his air became full of solicitude.

“Could we have those doors closed?” he asked, taking Marjorie’s arm under his. “I mean, do you mind?”

Marjorie disengaged her arm, to his evident surprise.

“It’s quite all right,” she said, looking straight at Elliot nevertheless.

Elliot closed the doors.

“Marjorie told me you wanted to see me,” Harding went on, looking round in the friendliest possible way. His face clouded. “Just tell me what I can do to help. All I can say is that this is a rotten bad business, and—oh, you know!”

(Now we are seeing him through Elliot’s eyes, not necessarily as he actually was; and therefore it would be unfair to stress the sour impression made to Elliot by this straight-from-the-shoulder speech, and the straightforward gesture with which he accompanied it. To Major Crow and Superintendent Bostwick, who liked him, Harding sounded quite sincere.)

Elliot indicated a chair.

“You’re Mr. Harding?”

“That’s right,” agreed the other, now friendly as a puppy and anxious to please. “Marjorie says you want us all to tell what happened here when—well, when the poor old boy got his.”

“He wants more than that,” chuckled Professor Ingram.

“He suspects that you or Marjorie or I——”

“Just a moment, sir,” said Elliot sharply. He turned to the others. “Sit down, please.” A shade of uneasiness went through the room. “Yes, we shall want a statement, but I want to ask you some other questions, and the replies may be more valuable than any statement. You knew that Mr. Chesney had prepared a list of questions for you about this show of his?”

It was Marjorie who answered, after a pause.

“Yes, of course. I told you so.”

“If you were asked those same questions now, could you answer them accurately?”

“Yes, but look here,” said Harding. “I can do better than that, if you want to know what happened. I’ve got a film of it.”

“A colour-film?”

Harding blinked.

“Colour? Good Lord, no! Just the ordinary kind. A colour-film for indoor photography, particularly in that light, would be——”

“Then I’m afraid it won’t help us with some of our troubles,” said Elliot. “Where’s the film now’?’

“I shoved it inside that radio-gramophone over there when all the row started.”

He seemed disappointed by the way Elliot took his announcement, as though there were an anti-climax hovering somewhere. Elliot went to the gramophone and raised the lid. A leather camera-case, its flap open and the camera inside it, lay on the green-felt-covered disc of the gramophone. Behind him the three witnesses had taken chairs rather awkwardly, and were looking at him; he could see them reflected in the glass of a picture hanging on the wall over the gramophone. He also caught (in the glass) the puzzled, inquiring glance which Major Crow directed towards Superintendent Bostwick.