Authors: Gladys Mitchell
Death was due, the witness observed, to an overdose of a drug, and, in response to a further question from the coroner, testified that an autopsy had revealed traces of the drug called hyoscin-hydrobromide.
‘In a sufficient quantity for there to be no doubt that it was the cause of death?’ asked a juryman.
‘The amount of the drug recovered from the stomach was one and three-quarter grains.’
He went on to explain, in answer to a further question, that one quarter to one half a grain of the drug would constitute a fatal dose.
Inspector Boring gave it as his opinion that the drug had not been self-administered. He had been present, he said, when the body was discovered,
and had later searched the house for traces of poison.
‘Before or after you knew the result of the autopsy?’ the coroner inquired.
‘Immediately the body had been removed from the bathroom,’ Boring replied.
‘But what caused you to suspect poison?’ he was asked.
‘Well, sir,’ was the detective-inspector’s dry comment, ‘when there’s a corpse whose hair isn’t so much as damp, it would be a funny thing if she had been drowned.’
As the position of the body in the bath had already been minutely described by previous witnesses, the jury were not slow to appreciate the inspector’s point.
‘But why poison?’ asked a juryman.
‘Miss Bing had been laid up a day or so before, and had received medical attention. I particularly questioned the doctor as to the general state of her health, and he assured me he had never known a healthier person,’ Boring stolidly explained. ‘All the organs were in good order and everything about her was sound. Now, when the doctor examined the deceased he found no wound or other evidence of a violent death, so that left me with the idea that she might have been poisoned.’
‘The fact that the deceased died as a result of poisoning has been proved,’ said the coroner. ‘It remains for the jury to find whether the poison was administered by the deceased herself, and, if so, whether she took it in error or with intention
to commit suicide, or whether it was administered by another, person, and, if so, whether by accident, in error, or by design.’
The remainder of the inspector’s evidence confirmed the latter view. He reiterated that he had searched the house and had discovered, in the bedroom of the deceased, laudanum, witch-hazel, and a bottle of disinfectant, and he knew that the deceased had bought aspirin at various times. The poison which had caused death was not one of these, and, moreover, a further careful search, when he had been made acquainted with the doctors’ verdict, had failed to produce any trace of hyoscin. It was unlikely, the inspector led them to understand, that the deceased could have obtained possession of such a drug, and it was impossible, he asserted, for her so to have hidden the receptacle which had contained it that his methodical search had failed to bring it to light.
Recalled, the medical witness declared that death would have followed quickly upon the taking of so large a dose of the drug, and therefore that it was unlikely the deceased would have had time or opportunity to destroy all traces of the receptacle which had contained the poison.
The wineglass into which Mrs Bradley affirmed she had poured a sleeping-draught had been recovered from Eleanor’s bedroom, and a girl named Cobb, the second housemaid, observed that she had collected a used cup from the same small table.
‘How was it that you took up the cup and left the dirty wineglass?’ asked the coroner.
The girl replied that Miss Eleanor had always been ‘such a one to go on at us if we broke anything that I was afraid to take the wineglass away knowing as it was one of a set, so I left it where it was and hoped Florrie would see it when she dusted, and would take it down to the kitchen. But the police officer came before Florrie got around as far as that, and took it away with him. But the cup being only an ordinary white and gold common sort of a cup that the cook uses for breaking eggs into and such-like, I took it downstairs and it got washed up with the other things.’
‘Where is that wineglass now?’ asked the same juryman who had made the other inquiries.
Inspector Boring, appealed to, remarked that it had gone to have the residue of its contents analysed, and that he hoped to obtain the analyst’s report in a day or two.
Mrs Bradley was then called, and was put through a searching catechism as to her movements on the night of Eleanor’s death.
Her story of Eleanor’s freakish behaviour was corroborated by Carstairs and Bertie Philipson. Mrs Bradley admitted that she had administered a sleeping-draught to the deceased, and, keenly pressed, testified that it had consisted of a harmless bromide compound such as was usually prescribed for sufferers from insomnia.
She was then questioned about the cup of coffee.
She observed that the cup was a clean one, procured from the kitchen by Garde Bing (who,
later, confirmed this statement), and that she had poured out the coffee from her own thermos flask under the eyes of several witnesses.
The inquest was finally adjourned by the coroner, who remarked that it was impossible for the jury to give a verdict until the residue of the contents of the wineglass had been analysed, and the analyst’s report read.
By the time the proceedings were over, Inspector Boring was a keenly interested but distinctly puzzled man.
His first task was to interview the Chief Constable and inform him of all that had taken place.
The Chief Constable heard him to the end, and then remarked:
‘Mr Bing said Mrs Bradley gave the key of Eleanor’s door to him, and therefore he could not see how it was possible for his daughter to leave her bedroom and go into the bathroom that morning.’
‘Yes, Sir Joseph.’ The inspector nodded. The point had already occurred to him.
‘Well,’ said the Chief Constable, eyeing the inspector’s long, solemn face keenly, ‘I think I should go and ask Mr Bing for that key, if he still has it in his possession. You’ll find that key worth thinking about, Boring.’
Boring allowed his saturnine features to relax into a faint grin.
‘You mean, I suppose, sir, that I shall find——’
‘Not one key, Boring, but two keys; or, if only one key, then probably that it will not fit Miss
Eleanor Bing’s bedroom door; or, if it does fit, that it is not the key which Mrs Bradley handed over to Mr Bing; or, if it
is
the key which she gave him, and it
does
happen to fit, that nobody bothered to try the door to see whether she really locked it.’
‘You think, then, sir——’
‘Boring,’ said the Chief Constable, eyeing the ceiling and bringing the tips of his fingers together, ‘I don’t think—I am sure. But proof, Boring, proof is another matter.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Boring, preparing to take his leave. ‘I’ll find out about the keys. Thanks for the hint, sir. And I want an interview with that young girl who stayed the night—Storbin, I think her name is.’
‘I’ll manage that interview,’ interposed the Chief Constable firmly. ‘Just tell me what you want to ask her.’
‘Oh, chiefly, sir, where and how Mrs Bradley spent the night after she had given Miss Bing the coffee.’
‘Very well,’ said Sir Joseph, rising. ‘I have to see Sir Thomas Storbin on a matter of business, so I will take the opportunity of questioning Miss Pamela for you at the same time.’
Boring thoughtfully returned to Chaynings in the side-car of a motor-cycle combination driven by his sergeant.
‘Put me down just outside the gates,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk the rest. There’s no reason to announce the fact that I’m in the bosom of the family once more.’
The sergeant grinned comprehendingly, and drew
up where a growth of sturdy shrubs at a bend in the gravel drive would prevent their being seen from the house.
‘You’d better come back for me about five,’ the inspector observed. ‘Wait down the road a bit, not at the lodge. I may leave by the wall door. You know it? Good!’
He walked briskly towards the house, and the sergeant drove away.
The first person Boring encountered was Bertie Philipson. The young man greeted him with a rueful grin.
‘Well, inspector, got the handcuffs nicely polished?’ he said.
The inspector smiled.
‘Perhaps I have, sir. Perhaps I have. We shall see presently.’
‘I suppose the police know who did it?’ suggested Bertie still grinning, but with a tinge of anxiety of which the inspector was immediately aware.
‘Maybe they do, sir, and maybe not. Where can I find Mr Bing?’
‘Oh, I say! You’re not going to worry poor old Bing yet!’ cried Bertie. ‘Why, the unfortunate old lad is all to bits, you know. You ought to have more decency, inspector, than to come along harassing a man in his condition.’
Bertie’s indignation was not assumed. The inspector shrugged his shoulders.
‘Duty, sir, is duty,’ he sententiously remarked, ‘and I have to do mine. It’s no good shirking it because it’s unpleasant. And after all, you know,
although the old gentleman, I’m sure, is as cut up as you say, yet he’d be the first to want his daughter’s murderer discovered.’
‘Yes, but look here,’ broke in Bertie eagerly, ‘don’t you think the poor girl committed suicide? That’s our opinion, the whole lot of us, except——’
‘Except?’ said the inspector, quick to detect the note of hesitation.
‘Except Mrs Bradley,’ concluded Bertie. ‘She swears Eleanor must have been murdered.’
‘Oh? It’s rather interesting to me, sir, that Mrs Bradley should say that. What does she base it on? Or is it just one of the lady’s opinions, based on nothing but intuition?’ said the inspector, grinning sarcastically.
Bertie giggled.
‘She says Eleanor could never have got hold of such a poison, and that, anyway, she had enough poison in the house to kill herself twenty times if she wanted to commit suicide. Oh, and she talked a lot of psychological stuff about Eleanor not being the type that does away with itself, and quoted books and things, mostly by American and German authors, I believe, to prove her point. I know it sounded an awful lot of bosh to me, but then I can’t make head or tail of that sort of stuff.’
‘Nor me, either, sir,’ replied Boring. ‘Do you know whether Mrs Bradley has ever been in America, sir?’ he inquired suddenly.
‘Yes, I believe so,’ Bertie answered carelessly, ‘but I don’t really know anything about her, you know.’
‘I see. Well, I must be getting along,’ said Boring. ‘Are you coming back to the house, sir?’
‘As far as the garage,’ Bertie answered. ‘I thought I’d hop over to Storbin’s place and have a look at young Pamela. Probably stay for tea. No objection on the part of the police, I presume?’
‘You presume right, sir,’ the inspector half-humorously replied, ‘but I expect the police will know all that you do, and most of what you talk about, over there.’
‘Thanks for the hint,’ grinned Bertie, parting from him at the end of the terrace. ‘My lips will be sealed.’
Boring walked up to the French windows and peered in. Mrs Bradley was alone, and was deep in a book. The inspector walked away, and disappeared round a corner of the house.
‘Ha, ha!’ observed Mrs Bradley, not laughing, but pronouncing the two syllables in careful accordance with their spelling. ‘The eye of the law is upon us once more.’
She smiled, and went on reading. Inspector Boring, who fancied he had seen Alastair’s coattails disappearing round the angle of the house, found that he had not deceived himself.
‘Mr Bing, I want a word with you,’ he said.
Alastair turned his head, halted, and allowed the other to approach.
‘Oh, it’s you, inspector! Well, what is it? Be brief. I’m in no mood to be questioned.’
‘Of course not, sir,’ said the inspector smoothly.
‘I only wondered whether you’d still got that key Mrs Bradley gave you.’
‘Key?’ repeated Alastair, frowning. ‘What key? Oh, you say the one Mrs Bradley gave me? No, I haven’t. The fact is, inspector’—he coughed and glanced swiftly behind him—‘the fact is, I’m afraid I’ve mislaid it.’
‘Oh, that’s a pity, sir,’ replied the inspector, ‘because it’s going to take some of my precious time finding it. I wonder if you’d let the maids have a look for it, sir? I rather want that key.’
‘They
have
looked! They
have
looked!’ snarled Alastair, his temper, as usual, overcoming, or perhaps expressing, his emotion.
‘Oh, well, I must have a look myself, then,’ Boring casually observed; and, without another look or word, he walked into the house by the servants’ door.
‘Oh, cook!’
The buxom genius who presided over the Chaynings’ kitchen threw her eyes heavenwards.
‘For the land’s sake, inspector, you ain’t going to march me off to gaol, are you?’ she cried. ‘I never did it. Honest I didn’t.’
‘Not yet,’ said the inspector, with his sardonic grin. ‘Not just yet. I really want to see the two housemaids. Look here, you girls,’ he went on, addressing the scared and semi-hysterical maids, ‘I want to know where the key of Miss Eleanor Bing’s bedroom door is.’
Mabel, the younger, turned on Florrie, the older.
‘Go on, Florrie! You can be put in prison if you don’t tell!’
Thus enlightened, Florrie, dabbing her eyes, informed the world that she hoped no harm would come to the master through her, as he was a good enough master when he was not in one of his tantrums, but, as she was a born woman, she had seen him throw something, which chinked when he dropped it on the stone slabs, into the round pond, and that was this morning, as ever was, directly after the inquest.
‘Does he know you saw him do it?’ Boring asked.
Mabel, in spite of her terror of the police, giggled hysterically, but, under Boring’s quelling eye, hiccoughed and again dissolved into tears.
‘Oh, no, sir!’ cried Florrie. ‘Why, I shouldn’t be alive to tell the tale if he knew I see him! Such a
temper!
’ Words failed to express her conception of Alastair Bing’s temper, and she concluded with: ‘He’s got a devil in him, I do believe, when he’s roused!’
A short time later Boring was regarding with interest a medium-sized key. Sacrificing his personal dignity, he had lain on his stomach and salvaged the key from the round pond, an ornamental pool some ten inches deep and nine feet in diameter, after fifteen minutes of blasphemous groping on the mud-covered bottom.