‘That’s a point,’ said the chief constable. ‘I may say it had already occurred to us. But he must have taken the poison in something.’
‘Well, I only say, bear that in mind – that, and the foolishness of the murder, if it was done the way the jury brought it in. But now about this lead-foil capsule. I can tell you something about that. I didn’t intrude myself at the inquest, because I hadn’t got the facts, but I’ve got them now and here they are. You know, gentlemen, it stands to reason, if a capsule was taken off a bottle that day in the study, there must have been a bottle belonging to it. And where is it? It’s got to be somewhere. A bottle’s a bottle, when all’s said and done.
‘Now, gentlemen, Mr Whipley dealt with my employers, Plummett & Rose, for over fifty years. It’s an old-established firm. And that capsule was put out by a firm of French shippers who went into liquidation in 1900; Prelatier & Cie was their name, and we were their agents in this country. Now, that capsule came off a bottle of Noyeau sent out by them – you can see the last two letters of the word on the stamp – and we delivered a bottle of Prelatier’s Noyeau to Mr Whipley, with some other samples of liqueur, on June 14, 1893.’
‘Noyeau?’ said the coroner, with interest.
‘I see that means something to you, doctor,’ said Mr Egg.
‘It does, indeed,’ said the coroner. ‘Noyeau is a liqueur flavoured with oil of bitter almonds, or peach-stones – correct me if I’m wrong, Mr Egg – and contains, therefore, a small proportion of hydrocyanic acid.’
‘That’s it,’ said Monty. ‘Of course, in the ordinary way, there isn’t enough of it to hurt anybody in a single glassful, or even two. But if you let a bottle stand long enough, the oil will rise to the top, and the first glass out of an old bottle of Noyeau has been known to cause death. I know that, because I read it in a book called Foods and Poisons, published a few years ago by Freeman & Toplady.’
‘Cedric Whipley’s firm,’ said the inspector.
‘Exactly so,’ said Monty.
‘What, precisely, are you suggesting, Mr Egg?’ inquired the chief constable.
‘Not murder, sir,’ said Monty. ‘No, not that – though I suppose it might have come to that, in a way. I’m suggesting that after Mr Raymond had left the study, the old gentleman got fidgety and restless, the way one does when one’s been through a bit of an upset. I think he started to drink up his cold coffee, and then wanted a spot of liqueur to take with it.
‘He goes to the cabinet – doesn’t seem to fancy anything, roots about, and comes upon this old bottle of Noyeau that’s been standing unopened for the last forty years. He takes it out, removes the capsule and throws it into the fire and draws a cork with his corkscrew, as I’ve seen him do many a time. Then he pours off the first glass, not thinking about the danger, drinks it off as he’s sitting in his chair and dies without hardly having time to call out.’
‘That’s very ingenious,’ said the chief constable. ‘But what became of the bottle and the corkscrew? And how do you account for the crème de menthe in the glass?’
‘Ah!’ said Monty, ‘there you are. Somebody saw to that, and it wasn’t Mr Raymond, because it would have been all to his advantage to leave things as they were. But suppose, round about half-past eleven, when Mrs Minchin was tidying her room and the other servants were in bed, another party had gone into the study and seen Mr Whipley lying dead, with the bottle of Noyeau beside him, and had guessed what had happened.
‘Supposing this party had then put the corkscrew back into the cupboard, tipped a few drops of crème de menthe from Mr Raymond’s glass into the dead gentleman’s, and carried the Noyeau bottle away to be disposed of at leisure. What would it look like then?’
‘But how could the party do that, without leaving prints on Mr Raymond’s glass?’
‘That’s easy,’ said Monty. ‘He’d only to lift the glass by taking the stem between the roots of his fingers. So. All you’d find would be a faint smudge at the base of the bowl.’
‘And the motive?’ demanded the chief constable.
‘Well, gentlemen, that’s not for me to say. But if Mr Raymond was to be hanged for murdering his father, I fancy his father’s money would go to the next of kin – to that gentleman who published the book that tells you all about Noyeau.
‘It’s very unfortunate,’ said Mr Egg, ‘that my firm should have supplied the goods in question, but there you are. If accidents happen and you are to blame, take steps to avoid repetition of same. Not that we should admit any responsibility, far from it, the nature of the commodity being what it is. But we might perhaps insert a warning in our forthcoming Catalogue.
‘And à propos, gentlemen, let me make a note to send you our New Centenary History of the House of Plummett & Rose. It will be a very refined production, got up regardless, and worthy of a position on any library shelf.’
False Weight
A MONTAGUE EGG STORY
‘HULLO!’ SAID MR MONTAGUE Egg.
He knew the Royal Oak, at Pondering Parva, and it was not, in a general way, a place he would have chosen to stop at. It did but little business, its food was bad, its landlord surly, and it offered few opportunities to an enterprising traveller in high-class wines and spirits. But to find it at half-past eight in the morning the centre of an interested crowd, with a police car and an ambulance drawn up before the door, was a challenge to any man’s curiosity. Mr Egg took his foot from the accelerator, and eased the car to a standstill.
‘What’s up here?’ he asked a bystander.
‘Somebody killed … Old Rudd’s cut ’is missus’s throat … no, he ain’t – George done it … that ain’t right, neither, it was thieves and they’ve gone off with the till … George, he come down and found the blood running all over the floor … hear that? that’s Liz Rudd a-hollerin’ … she got highsterics … thought you said ’e’d cut ’er throat … no, I didn’t, Jim said that, he don’t know nothin’. I tell you ’tis George … Ah! here’s the Inspector a-comin’ out; now we’ll hear summat …’
Mr Egg was already out of the car and approaching the bar entrance. A uniformed Inspector of police met him on the doorstep.
‘Now then, you can’t come in here. Who are you, and what do you want?’
‘My name’s Montague Egg – travelling for Plummett & Rose, wines and spirits, Piccadilly. I’ve come to see Mr Rudd.’
‘Well, you can’t see him now, so you’d better buzz off. Wait a minute. You say you’re a commercial traveller. This your regular district?’
Mr Egg replied that it was.
‘Then you might be able to give us some information. Come in, will you?’
‘Wait while I fetch my bag,’ said Monty. He was interested, but not to the point of forgetting that a traveller’s first duty is to his samples and credentials. He fetched the heavy case from the car and carried it into the inn, to the accompaniment of cries from the crowd: ‘That’s the photographer, see his camera?’ Setting it down inside the door, he looked round the bar of the Royal Oak. At a table near the window sat a police-constable, writing in a notebook. A large, pug-faced man, whom Monty recognised as Rudd, the landlord, was leaning back against the bar in his shirt-sleeves. He was unshaven, and looked as though he had dressed hurriedly. A tousle-headed young fellow, with immense muscles and no forehead to speak of, stood scowling beside him. From a room somewhere at the back came a noise of feminine shrieking and sobbing. That was all, except that a door on the right, labelled ‘Bar-parlour’, stood open, and through it could be seen the back of a man in an overcoat, who was bending over something on the floor.
The Inspector took Mr Egg’s papers, looked them through and returned them.
‘You’re on the road early,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Monty. ‘I meant to get through to Pettiford last night, but the fog held me up at Madgebury. I’m making up for lost time. I slept at the Old Bell – they can tell you all about me there.’
‘Ah!’ said the Inspector, with a glanc
e at the constable. ‘Well, now, Mr Egg. I believe all you commercial gentlemen know each other pretty well, as a rule. We’d like to see if you can identify this man in here.’
‘I’ll try,’ said Monty, ‘though of course I don’t know every traveller on the road. But surely his name will be on his papers.’
‘That’s just it,’ replied the Inspector. ‘His papers must have been in his sample case, and that’s gone. He’s got some letters on him, but they don’t – well, we’ll go into that later on. This way, please.’
He marched into the room on the right. Monty followed him. The stooping man stood up.
‘No doubt about this, Birch,’ he observed. ‘Head battered in. Dead eight to ten hours. Couldn’t possibly have done it himself, or by accident. Weapon probably that bottle over there. Better try it for finger-prints. Anything else you want to know? Because, if not, I’ll be getting back to my breakfast. I’ll leave word with the coroner as I go, if you like.’
‘Thanks, doctor. Eight to ten hours, eh? That fits Rudd’s story all right Now, Mr Egg, come and have a look at this, will you?’
The doctor stepped aside, and Monty saw the dead body of a man. He was a small man, dressed in a neat blue serge suit. His hair was sleek and black, and he wore a small tooth-brush moustache. The blood from an open wound on the temple had run down and caked on his smooth cheek. He appeared to be about thirty-five or forty years of age.
‘Oh, yes, I know him,’ said Monty. ‘I know him quite well, as a matter of fact. His name is Wagstaffe, and he travels – travelled – for Applebaum & Moss, the big cheap jewellers.’
‘Oh did he?’ said Inspector Birch, with emphasis. ‘That case of his would contain jewellery then, I suppose.’
‘Yes – and watches, and that sort of thing.’
‘Humph!’ said the Inspector. ‘And can you tell me why he should be carrying letters about in his pocket addressed to a number of other people? Here’s one – Joseph Smith, Esq. Here’s another – Mr William Brown. And here’s a very touching one – Harry Thome, Esq. Hot stuff, that one is.”
‘Do you need any telling, Inspector?’ inquired Mr Egg, softly.
‘I don’t know that I do, if it comes to that. Ah! you commercial gentlemen are all alike, aren’t you? A wife in every port of call, eh?’
‘Not me, Inspector. No wedding-bells for Monty Egg. But I’m afraid it’s true about poor Wagstaffe. Well, he seems to have got what was coming to him, doesn’t he?’
‘You’re right. He put up a bit of a struggle, though, from the looks of it.’ Inspector Birch glanced round the bar-parlour. It was a small room, and every piece of furniture in it seemed to have suffered violence. A small round table before the fireplace had been knocked over, and a broken whisky-bottle had distributed its contents in an odorous stream across the linoleum. Chairs had been pushed back and overturned, the glass front of a what-not was starred as though by a blow from a threshing foot, and a grandfather clock, standing near the fire-place, had been canted over sideways, so that only the edge of the mantelpiece kept it from falling. Mr Egg’s eyes wandered to the clock-face, and the Inspector’s followed them. The hands stood at ten minutes past eleven.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Birch. ‘And unless he’s a liar, we know pretty well when this happened and who did it. Do you know anything about a commercial called Slater?’
‘I’ve heard of an Archibald Slater,’ said Monty. ‘Travels in lingerie.’
‘That’s the man. Is he in a good way of business? Good screw, I mean? Comfortable, and all that?’
‘I should think so. He works for a good firm.’ Monty named it. ‘But I don’t know him personally. He used to work Yorkshire and Lancashire, I believe. He’s taken over old Cripps’s district.’
‘You can’t say if he’d be likely to murder another chap and pinch his samples?’
Monty protested. The last thing any commercial would be likely to do. There was a freemasonry of the road.
‘Hum!’ said the Inspector. ‘Now, listen here. We’ll get Rudd’s story again, and have it taken down.’
The landlord’s account was clear enough. The first traveller – now identified as Wagstaffe – had arrived at 7.30. He had meant, he said, to push on to Pettiford, but the fog was too thick. He had ordered dinner, and had afterwards gone in to sit in the bar-parlour, which was empty. The Royal Oak did very little high-class hotel business, and there was nobody in that night except some labourers in the four-ale bar. At half-past nine, Slater had turned up, also alleging the fog as the reason for breaking his journey. He had already dined, and presently joined Wagstaffe in the bar-parlour. On entering, he had been heard to say to Wagstaffe ‘in a nasty sort of voice’, ‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ After that, the door had been shut, but presently Wagstaffe had knocked upon the hatch between the parlour and the bar and asked for a bottle of Scotch. At half-past ten, the bar being closed and the glasses washed up, Rudd had gone in and found the two men talking beside the fire. They both seemed flushed and angry. Rudd said that he and his wife and the barman were going to bed, as they had to get up early. Would the guests please put out the light when they came upstairs?
Here the landlord broke off to explain that there were no bedrooms over the bar-parlour – only a large, empty room running over the whole front of the house and used for meetings of parish societies, and so forth. The sleeping accommodation all ran out at the back, and you could not hear, from the bedrooms, anything that went on in the ground-floor part. He then went on:
‘It would be about twenty past eleven when I heard someone come up and knock at our bedroom door. I got out of bed and opened it, and there was Slater. He looked very queer and upset. He said that the weather had cleared and he’d made up his mind to push on to Pettiford. It seemed funny to me, but I looked out of the window and saw that the fog had gone and there was a sharp frost and moonlight. I said he’d have to pay for his room, and he didn’t make no bones about that. I put on a dressing-gown and went with him down the back stairs into the office. That’s behind the bar. I made out his bill and he paid it, and then I let him out the back way into the garage. He took his bags with him –’
‘How many bags?’
‘Two.’
‘Did he bring two with him when he came?’
‘Couldn’t say, I’m sure. I never see them to notice. He planked all his stuff down in the bar-parlour when he come, and when I come out of the office with his change he was standing ready with them in the passage, with his hat and coat on. I didn’t go out into the yard with him, because it was bitter cold, and I weren’t none too pleased to be fetched out of my bed; but I heard the car drive out a few minutes later. Then I went back to bed again, and I noticed through the office window that the light was still on in the bar-parlour, so that the door must have been open. See what I mean? There’s the back door of the parlour leading into the office, and when that’s open, you can see the light from the yard, through the office window. So I thinks, that other fellow’s still sitting up – I’ll charge him extra for burning all that light. And I goes to bed.’
‘You didn’t go in and see that he was still there?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ said Mr Rudd. ‘It was too perishing cold to be hanging about. I went to bed and to sleep.’
‘That’s a pity. Did you go to sleep at once?’
‘Yes, I click.’
‘You didn’t hear Wagstaffe come upstairs at all?’
‘I didn’t hear a thing. But Mrs Rudd was awake till midnight, and he hadn’t come up then. And it stands to reason he never come up at all, don’t it?’
‘It looks that way,’ agreed the Inspector cautiously. ‘And how about George?’
The barman confirmed Rudd’s story, and added a little to it. He said that he had gone into the bar-parlour between 9.30 and 10 o’clock and had interrupted the two men in what looked like a violent quarrel. Slater had been saying, ‘You little rat – I’ve a good mind to break every bone in your body.’ He thought they were both drun
k. He had said nothing to them, but made up the fire and gone away. He had heard no more quarrelling. After Rudd had gone up at 10.30, he had looked in again, and they were then talking quietly and appeared to be reading some letters. He had then gone to bed, and been wakened by the sound of footsteps and the departure of the car.
‘And after that?’ asked Inspector Birch.
George’s eyes were lowered sullenly.
‘Mr Rudd came upstairs again.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, that’s all. I went to sleep.’
‘You didn’t hear anybody else moving about?’
‘No. I went to sleep, I tell you.’
‘What time did Mr Rudd come up?’
‘Dunno. I didn’t trouble to look.’
‘Did you hear twelve strike?’
‘I didn’t hear nothing. I was asleep.’
‘How many bags did this man Slater bring with him?’
‘Only one.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘Well, I think so.’
‘And the other man – Wagstaffe – did he have a bag?’
‘Yes, he had a bag. Took it into the parlour with him.’
‘Did these men sign the register?’
‘Slater did when he arrived,’ said the landlord. ‘Wagstaffe didn’t. I meant to remind him in the morning.’
‘Then Slater wasn’t premeditating anything when he arrived,’ said Birch. ‘Looks like it was a casual meeting. All right, Rudd. I’ll see your wife later. Now carry on, and don’t go shooting your mouth off too much. We’ve got the number of Slater’s car,’ he added, to nobody in particular. ‘If he’s really gone to Pettiford, they’ll pull him in.’
‘Just so,’ said Monty. ‘I suppose,’ he added, tentatively, ‘that clock’s telling the truth?’
‘Thinking he might have been put back, eh?’ said the Inspector. ‘Like in that play they’ve got on in town?’