Speedy Death (32 page)

‘And made five,’ giggled Bertie. ‘I’m sorry to butt in, but, you see, jolly interesting as your reconstruction is, it leaves out the one big point on which the prosecution really tripped themselves up. Where is the hyoscin? I mean, dash it, the
bottle, or whatever contained the stuff, has just vanished into thin air. It hasn’t been traced to anybody. Because of that fact alone they couldn’t prove Mrs Bradley did it. Good thing too! I think that if that old woman did do Eleanor in, then she deserves to be regarded as a benefactor of the human race!’

‘I am afraid the law would not take the same charitable view of her conduct,’ said Carstairs dryly. ‘However, as I am going round to her hotel this evening to felicitate her on the happy result of the trial, I will tell her what you say.’

The whistle blew for time, and the two men parted at the gate of the football ground.

True to his word, Carstairs called at the hotel where Mrs Bradley was staying for a few days before she started on her American tour, and solemnly congratulated her on her escape from the clutches of the law.

They sat silent for several minutes after he had concluded his rather formal felicitations, and then Mrs Bradley suddenly and startlingly hooted with laughter.

‘Poor Inspector Boring!’ she said, in answer to Carstairs’ surprised smile. ‘That man worked really hard, and very intelligently. He deserved to win his case if ever a policeman did. I admired that man’s quality. He had a solid, unimaginative, exhaustive way of going about things which I can never sufficiently commend.’

‘You mean?’ said Carstairs, biting back the remark that was on the tip of his tongue.

Mrs Bradley smiled her reptilian smile. Carstairs had seen boa-constrictors at the Zoological Gardens with the same expression on their wide, thin mouths, and he shuddered involuntarily at the recollection of it.

‘You may ask your question, my friend,’ she said, with her uncanny knack of reading his thoughts.

Carstairs, who, through familiarity with it, had become inured to this phenomenon, shrugged his shoulders very slightly, and then laughed.

‘On your own head be it, then!’ he said.

‘How very unchivalrous of you!’ mocked Mrs Bradley. ‘But never mind. Fire away!’

‘Well,’ said Carstairs, with pardonable hesitation, ‘I was rather curious to know how you managed to hide the hyoscin bottle. I mean, that was the crux of the matter at the trial, wasn’t it? Although the prosecution tried to gloss over the fact that the poison could not be traced to anybody, I noticed that the defence made rather a point of it.’

‘Yes, that, and the apparent absence of motive on my part,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘formed very formidable obstacles to the prosecution; not to mention the clever way in which you found the dirty medicine-glass.’

‘But if they could have traced the hyoscin to you?’ Carstairs gently insisted.

‘Ah, but that, my friend, was what they could never do,’ said Mrs Bradley, with her eldritch screech of laughter. ‘You see, I hadn’t it in my possession after I was arrested, and neither had I hidden it anywhere.’

‘Then I don’t see——’ began Carstairs, beginning to wonder whether all his theories were wrong, and whether the shrivelled little human macaw in front of him was entirely innocent of the crime after all.

‘I’ll tell you who has the hyoscin,’ said Mrs Bradley, lowering her vibrant voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘It will surprise you. Yes, you will receive a shock, my dear friend. It is yourself, and yourself only, who have hidden the hyoscin bottle so well! But you must return it to me now. I shall commit no more murders with it, I promise you, but I must have it, for it is useful to me in my work as an alienist.’

‘But I don’t understand! Surely you are amusing yourself at my expense!’ cried Carstairs. ‘Do you, or do you not, admit that you poisoned Eleanor Bing?’

‘Since I cannot be tried twice for the same offence,’ said Mrs Bradley equably, ‘I will confess to you that I did poison Eleanor Bing deliberately, and as the law quaintly expresses it, by my wilful act. The poison, as, no doubt, you have determined for yourself, I administered in the coffee which I gave to Eleanor instead of the sleeping-draught. I waited until I knew she was dead, then I hid her body in the wardrobe, got into her bed, and answered the girl Cobb (who is verging on mental deficiency) when she called Eleanor next morning. The dangerous part of the business lay in getting the body to the bathroom, and in returning to Eleanor’s room without being seen. However, luckily for me,
Eleanor was a remarkably early riser, and there was little chance of meeting any of you at that hour of the morning. As for the hyoscin, you know better than I where it is. What did you do with the little dark-green bottle of lavender water I asked you to return to Dorothy Bing?’

‘The—the lavender water?’ cried Carstairs, his eyes nearly starting out of his head. ‘Why—why—oh, so
that’s
what it was! Dorothy had her own bottle, of course, and returned me yours. I expect it is still in the pocket of that same suit, which, by the way, I haven’t worn since.’

‘Well,’ remarked Mrs Bradley calmly, ‘I think you had better find out whether Dorothy returned you the right bottle. Hyoscin-hydrobromide isn’t very safe stuff to leave in the hands of the general public. My bottle had a tiny label on the bottom, so it can be distinguished easily enough.’

‘Then it is yours I have,’ said Carstairs. ‘I imagined it was the maker’s label, and did not trouble to decipher it.’

‘Just as well,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘That little formula means the same thing all over Europe, I presume.’

‘But,’ said Carstairs, chuckling in spite of himself, ‘why was I chosen for the honourable role of accessory after the fact?’

‘Well, you see, the inspector loved you so!’ said Mrs Bradley, cackling with glee. ‘Don’t you remember telling me how much both he and the Chief Constable doted on you? I recollect your exact words. You said if every one of us was
murdered and you were the only one left alive to tell the tale, the police wouldn’t have the heart to arrest you. So I thought they would hardly imagine that you were hiding the cat in the bag so nicely for me. But I had one very hard piece of luck, Mr Carstairs. I am sure I shall have your sympathy when I tell you what it was. I took a great deal of trouble to wash out that coffee cup and flask in the bathroom after I laid out poor dear Eleanor in the bath, and I ran a dreadful risk by stealing downstairs to obtain the dregs of the coffee which Bing’s servants always seem to leave in the coffee-pot. If only the good Boring could have come to the house a little sooner, he would have had the joy of sending the dirty coffee cup to be analysed, and he would have discovered that it contained—coffee! When I found that my intelligent anticipation of his movements had been ruined by the zealous Mabel (thank heaven she had the sense to leave the wineglass alone), I was obliged to lay another trail. I put a weak solution of the hyoscin into Eleanor’s medicine-glass, then, with the aid of my penknife, I slid a fish-slice underneath the bottom. Thus I managed to carry the glass without touching it with my fingers, and so imposing my own prints upon those made by Eleanor, when she drank the sal-volatile after having been nearly drowned by darling Bertie that morning. I locked up the medicine-glass in Eleanor’s own medicine cupboard, and hoped for the best.’

‘What the devil is a fish-slice?’ asked Carstairs.

Mrs Bradley rang the bell for her maid.

‘Bring me a fish-slice, Celestine,’ she said. Then she turned again to Carstairs.

‘What would you have used, then?’ she asked, cackling harshly.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he replied, half-humorously falling in with her mood. ‘A bricklayer’s trowel, I suppose.’

‘Yes, quite good. But, whereas bricklayers’ trowels are hard to come by, the humble fish-slice resides in every well-conducted home,’ said Mrs Bradley, hooting with mirth.

MARGERY ALLINGHAM

Mystery Mile

Police at the Funeral

Sweet Danger

Flowers for the Judge

The Case of the Late Pig

The Fashion in Shrouds

Traitor’s Purse

Coroner’s Pidgin

More Work for the Undertaker

The Tiger in the Smoke

The Beckoning Lady

Hide My Eyes

The China Governess

The Mind Readers

Cargo of Eagles

E. F. BENSON

The Blotting Book

The Luck of the Vails

NICHOLAS BLAKE

A Question of Proof

Thou Shell of Death

There’s Trouble Brewing

The Beast Must Die

The Smiler With the Knife

Malice in Wonderland

The Case of the Abominable Snowman

Minute for Murder

Head of a Traveller

The Dreadful Hollow

The Whisper in the Gloom

End of Chapter

The Widow’s Cruise

The Worm of Death

The Sad Variety

The Morning After Death

EDMUND CRISPIN

Buried for Pleasure

The Case of the Gilded Fly

Holy Disorders

Love Lies Bleeding

The Moving Toyshop

Swan Song

A. A. MILNE

The Red House Mystery

GLADYS MITCHELL

Speedy Death

The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop

The Longer Bodies

The Saltmarsh Murders

Death and the Opera

The Devil at Saxon Wall

Dead Men’s Morris

Come Away, Death

St Peter’s Finger

Brazen Tongue

Hangman’s Curfew

When Last I Died

Laurels Are Poison

Here Comes a Chopper

Death and the Maiden

Tom Brown’s Body

Groaning Spinney

The Devil’s Elbow

The Echoing Strangers

Watson’s Choice

The Twenty-Third Man

Spotted Hemlock

My Bones Will Keep

Three Quick and Five Dead

Dance to Your Daddy

A Hearse on May-Day

Late, Late in the Evening

Fault in the Structure

Nest of Vipers

Read on for a taste of the next Mrs Bradley mystery:
THE MYSTERY OF A BUTCHER’S SHOP

IT WAS MONDAY.
Little requires to be said about such a day.

Charles James Sinclair Redsey, who, like Mr Milne’s Master Morrison, was commonly known as Jim, sat on the arm of one of the stout, handsome, leather-covered armchairs in the library of the Manor House at Wandles Parva, and kicked the edge of the sheepskin rug.

Mr Theodore Grayling, solicitor, sat stewing in an uncomfortably hot first-class smoking-compartment on one of England’s less pleasing railway systems and wondered irritably why his client, Rupert Sethleigh, had seen fit to drag him down to an out-of-the-way spot like Wandles Parva when he could with equal ease have summoned him to his offices in London.

Mrs Bryce Harringay, matron, lay prone upon her couch alternately sniffing languidly at a bottle of smelling-salts and calling peevishly upon her gods for a cool breeze and her maid for more eau-de-Cologne.

Only the very young were energetic. Only the rather older were content. The very young, consisting of Felicity Broome, spinster, dark-haired, grey-eyed, red-lipped, aged twenty and a half, and Aubrey Harringay, bachelor, grey-eyed, brown-faced, wiry, thin, aged fifteen and three-quarters, played tennis on the Manor House lawn. The rather older, consisting of Mrs Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, twice widowed, black-eyed, claw-fingered, age no longer interesting except to the more grasping and avaricious of her relatives, smiled the saurian smile of the sand lizard and basked in the full glare of the sun in the charming old-world garden of the Stone House, Wandles.

The train drew up at Cuiminster station, and Theodore Grayling alighted. There would be a luxurious limousine to meet him outside the station, he reflected happily. There would be tea under the trees or in the summer-house at the Manor. There might possibly be an invitation to stay to dinner. He had eaten Rupert Sethleigh’s dinners before. They were good dinners, and the wine was invariably above criticism. So were the cigars.

The road outside the station was deserted except for a decrepit hansom cab of an early and unpromising vintage. Theodore Grayling clicked his tongue, and shook his head with uncompromising fierceness as the driver caught his eye. He waited, screwing up his eyes against the glare of the sun, and tapping his stick impatiently against the toe of his boot. He waited a quarter of an hour.