Speedy Death (28 page)

Carstairs sighed.

‘It is easy to see who desired that tragically terminated engagement,’ he said to himself.

The announcement of the engagement itself followed in due course, and was recorded with a sober, and, as it seemed to Carstairs, a reverent pen. It was followed by these words: ‘This solves all my difficulties.’

This seemed nothing less than the truth, for the next few entries were again devoted to details of the house-keeping.

From the date August 2nd onwards (the last entry, significantly enough, being under August 12th, the day preceding Mountjoy’s death) the diarist seemed to have lost her calmed outlook, and to have been plunged into doubt and suspicion.

One entry read:

‘We are engaged, but Everard has made no reference to marriage ever since. Perhaps he thought me bold in forcing him to speak.’

‘That’s illuminating,’ thought Carstairs. ‘She “forced him to speak.” In other words, she proposed to Mountjoy rather than the other way about.’

‘It is torture,’ another entry read, ‘to be with my
dear Everard as much as I am, and to know that he has no desire to caress me. One should be content, I suppose’ (this entry took the whole of the next day’s space as well as its own) ‘with his beautiful platonic love, but sometimes strange desires come into my mind. I scarcely like to confess them, even to myself. I said to him something about leaving his tennis-shirt open at the neck as Garde and Bertie do, but he mumbled something, and kept it fast buttoned. He looked like that stupid curate we had three years ago. I want Everard to be manly and sunburnt.’

‘Deuced awkward for Everard. I wonder why on earth she ever consented to become engaged to Eleanor,’ mused Carstairs.

At the last entry he blinked, and closed the book with a snap. There was a fire burning in the room. He walked over to it, and consigned Eleanor’s diary to the flames.

‘The freedom of the modern girl,’ said Carstairs, ‘has its good points. I should say that poor Eleanor was making up for the self-imposed repressions of twenty-odd years when she wrote that last entry.’ He blushed as he recalled it.

‘Settles the Mountjoy murder right enough,’ he muttered. ‘After all that, to find that Mountjoy was a woman simply turned the poor girl’s brain. Mrs Bradley was right—Eleanor killed Mountjoy—but who the devil killed Eleanor? Well, let’s start a systematic search, and see what we can find.’

He determined to inspect first the bedroom that
Mrs Bradley had occupied during her visit, and then the room which had belonged to Eleanor.

Careful and methodical was the search, disappointing the result. At last, however, his eyes brightened.

He was exploring the recesses of the small medicine cupboard in Eleanor’s room, and near the back of the bottom shelf, which was about on a level with his shoulder, he dis covered a medicine-glass. Curiously enough, for Eleanor was a careful person, it contained a drop or two of liquid.

‘Suicide?’ said Carstairs, scarcely daring to breathe the word.

Without touching the glass, he went in search of Garde.

‘Phone the inspector, and ask him to see about getting the contents analysed,’ said Garde. ‘Of course, it will turn out to be ammoniated tincture of quinine, or something, but, still, anything is worth trying.’

The inspector himself came over. He grinned with humorous resignation at Carstairs.

‘What’s this, sir? The usual red herring?’ he said.

Carstairs smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

‘I’ve a friend in durance vile, inspector,’ he said, ‘and I’m not missing any chances. I suppose you’ll test this glass for finger-prints?’

‘You suppose right, sir,’ replied the inspector, ‘and I’ll promise to let you know the result. Good day.’

‘And suppose the stuff in the glass is hyoscin,
and the finger-prints are those of Mrs Bradley, how do we go then?’ asked Garde.

‘I have more faith in Mrs Bradley’s common sense than to suppose anything of the kind,’ grinned Carstairs.

MRS BRADLEY WAS
enjoying herself. She had enjoyed being arrested. It was a new experience, and she had made special note of her psychological reactions to it, and had planned to incorporate them in her next book. She had enjoyed the talks she had had with her lawyer about the conducting of her defence, and she had enjoyed his intense exasperation when she resolutely declined, in spite of all his arguments and pleadings, to make a statement before the trial.

‘I am reserving my defence,’ she would tell the perplexed man, and, expostulate as he might, she would expose her teeth in a cat-like grin, and refuse to budge from what he called her ‘criminally foolish attitude.’

‘It looks so bad,’ he explained to her more than once. ‘I know it used to be considered the right thing to do, but it has gone out of fashion nowadays. The jury are certain to be influenced by it, either unconsciously or under instruction from the Crown
counsel. You see if I am not right. It is certain to go against you at the trial.’

‘Perhaps I want it to go against me,’ was Mrs Bradley’s cryptic answer.

She enjoyed the first day of the trial more than she had ever enjoyed anything. Her interests were mainly intellectual, and, although she was in danger of being hanged for wilful murder on the verdict of twelve ‘good men and true,’ she was able to set aside that aspect of the matter, and devote herself to a serious study of the psychology of the leading counsel for the Crown and his witnesses.

The court was crowded with people, and, as she let her eyes roam casually over the assembly, she picked out mechanically a dipsomaniac and two drug fiends, and was proceeding to classify the first two rows of spectators in greater detail when she was aware that the jury were being sworn in.

The leading counsel for the Crown was fat. She disliked fat men. Fat women were normal, healthy, good-tempered, well-balanced people, but fat men were an offence against nature. She hoped he would lose his case.

She glanced round the court again. She was pleased to see a full house!

Ferdinand Lestrange, her son, the leading counsel for the defence, looked distinguished, she thought. Nobody there knew she was his mother. Ferdinand wouldn’t care a hang whether she were convicted or not, except in so far as his professional reputation was concerned, but he would take care not to let that suffer!

She looked at the fat prosecuting counsel and again at her son.

‘Ferdinand will get me off,’ she thought comfortably. ‘Clever boy!’

She had thought of asking if she might take written notes during the trial, but decided that it might not be quite in order. Anyway, her memory, she thought, would serve her.

The voice of the clerk of the court, addressing her, once again cut short her musings.

‘Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, you are indicted and also charged with the wilful murder of Eleanor Millicent Bing on the eighteenth August last. Are you guilty or not guilty?’

Mrs Bradley gazed at him benignly.

‘Not guilty, my lord,’ she answered, transferring her glance to the judge.

His lordship was a good chap. She had met him at Cowes one year, she recollected. The wig and robes suited him. She was glad she had made Ferdinand choose the bar. He would probably be a judge some day, too.

The leading counsel for the Crown, in a booming, plum-like voice which associated well with his girth, commenced his opening speech. It dealt chiefly with Mrs Bradley’s past life, and she learned some things which surprised her.

‘This man will make me blush in a minute,’ she thought, as the learned counsel referred to her for the fourth time as this ‘deservedly famous woman.’

‘I suppose psycho-analysis is still new to some of
these people,’ she thought. Her attention wandered to the jury. There was one, she felt certain, who possessed all the mental characteristics of the Emperor Caligula. The man fourth from the end was a neurotic type, with sadistic traits, perhaps. She wondered if it would be in order to object to his being on the jury.

‘Still, if the other eleven want to let me off, he isn’t the type to stick it out, that’s one comfort,’ she told herself.

She looked again at the crowded court. That woman at the end was Cora Mason, the society medium. A clever woman in her own line, Mrs Bradley reflected. Must have amassed a considerable fortune, too.

A rustle of interest betrayed the fact that the prosecuting counsel was coming to what Garde Bing would term the ‘meat in the sandwich.’ Might as well listen to what the little tub was saying, she decided. Interesting to see how he got his shots home with the jury.

‘This woman, then,’ the learned counsel asserted heavily, ‘well educated, gifted beyond the majority of her sex, planned a dark and awful deed.’

Mrs Bradley nodded imperceptibly. This was undoubtedly a master. He had the correct cinematograph style of diction! It suited his audience. ‘Dark and awful deed’ was good!

‘In spite of the fat,’ she said to herself, ‘I recognize in this man a psychologist and a brother. Carry on, friend!’

With increasing amusement she listened to a
masterly libelling of her own character, which reached its climax when the learned counsel accused her before the jury of plotting to remove Eleanor Bing from this world so that she might usurp her place as mistress of Chaynings. Eleanor, the loving daughter, having been removed from the scene of operations, the coast was clear for Mrs Bradley to become Alastair’s wife.

‘At this point,’ said the next day’s newspapers, in heavy type, ‘the prisoner astonished the whole court by laughing loudly and with obvious enjoyment.’

Ferdinand Lestrange took advantage of the stir caused by his mother’s unseemly laughter to whisper to his junior:

‘Clever woman! That’s had its effect on the jury!’

The first witness for the prosecution was called and sworn. It was Carstairs. He was asked to describe the finding of Eleanor’s body in the bathroom.

‘Had you any suspicion of foul play?’ he was asked next.

‘Well, yes, of course,’ answered Carstairs, raising his eyebrows at what seemed to him a pointless question.

There was a flutter of interest. The audience had become rather bored with the fat little counsel for the prosecution, but this thin, hatchet-faced man promised better.

‘Oh? You did suspect foul play? Will you please tell the court why?’

‘Well, Miss Bing always seemed to me a strong, healthy young woman. I could not imagine her
fainting and so getting drowned in the bath, so I took it that she had been murdered—that is, that somebody had drowned her,’ replied Carstairs, without hesitation.

‘Had you any reason for thinking so?’

‘Yes. She was lying in a bath full of water,’ said Carstairs innocently.

It had annoyed him to find he had been called as a witness for the Crown, but he intended to give the prosecution as little help as he could within the strict terms of his oath.

The titters were not very easily repressed, and the counsel glanced towards the judge. His lordship, however, made no comment, and the questioning proceeded.

‘I understand that, of course, I mean, why should you suppose anyone in the house had met with foul play?’

‘We had had one person drowned in the bath during the same week, and another would have been violently killed as she lay in bed, but for the substitution——’

‘Yes, yes! We will come to that later. Keep to the point, if you please!’

‘What can one think of a man who bullies his own witnesses?’ thought Mrs Bradley, with her sardonic grin. ‘Poor Mr Carstairs! He is afraid he’ll say something to my disadvantage in a minute. I expect he will, too!’

‘I was answering your question,’ observed Carstairs mildly. ‘I thought you asked me——’

‘This is no place for thinking,’ said the prosecuting
counsel. At this point in the proceedings a person at the back of the court who cried ‘Hear! Hear!’ was ejected, and the counsel continued his examination of Carstairs in peace, but elicited nothing further except some precise information as to the position of Eleanor’s body when Carstairs, with others, had forced their way into the bathroom.

He was cross-questioned by the defending counsel at this point, and the court learned that it was Alastair Bing who had feared foul play when his daughter did not appear at breakfast on another occasion, the reference being, of course, to Bertie Philipson’s attempt to drown her.

‘Alastair Bing? That is the father of the dead woman, is it not?’ purred Ferdinand in his silky voice.

The witness agreed that this was so.

‘The man whom it is suggested the prisoner wished to marry?’

Carstairs again agreed.

‘Where is he now?’

The question came with such startling force that the court sat up with a jerk.

‘On his way to Tibet. He may have arrived there by now, for all I know,’ replied Carstairs, perceiving the drift of this interrogation.

‘He is not in court?’

Once again the whip-crack question.

‘No,’ answered Carstairs.

At this point the prosecuting counsel raised formal objection to these questions, but his lordship allowed the cross-examination to proceed.