Hobby of Murder (8 page)

He had taken it at the time as merely a sign that perhaps she did not get as much praise for her work as was due to her from Ian, whose interests were all outdoor ones, and who perhaps thought embroidery an uninteresting, female sort of occupation. But later Andrew had heard that all Mollie’s designs had been supplied by Brian, taken from photographs from the electron microscope at the Institute.
It had not meant anything to Andrew at the time, but now the memory of the strange brightness of her face when he spoke of her designs thrust itself into his mind and in spite of himself took on a possibly distressing meaning. For it would distress him if it should turn out that her marriage to Ian was not a satisfactory one. Andrew liked people to be happily married.

But how stupid he was being, perhaps just because of the Madeira and the heavy food and the noise that engulfed him in the room, and a story that Mrs Delano was telling him about the pregnancy of her cleaning woman, such a nice, quiet respectable young woman, who would shortly have to give up her work, leaving Mrs Delano with no help in the house.

‘And that, at my age, is a serious matter,’ she said. ‘I’ve very kind neighbours who I’m sure will help me, but I don’t like to impose on people, just because I’m old. Already my shopping is often done for me. Do you know Mr Singleton? Brian Singleton, the brother of the author. He generally drives me once a week into Rockford to the supermarket and pushes my trolley round for me inside and brings me home again. He’s so kind and good-natured. I often wonder why he’s never got married. But for all one knows these days he’s got a girlfriend, who’s got a job of her own, and they just don’t bother about marriage. I sometimes wonder what I’d have done myself if things had been different when I was young. I married at nineteen. My husband was a young surgeon, who became very successful and who was ten years older than me. I had a voice, you know, I might have done something with it. But during the war years we saw so little of one another that I sometimes wondered if being married was really such an advantage. He died of a stroke, poor man, fifteen years ago, working to the end …’

Her talk drifted away from the subject of marriage to the activities of an amateur operatic society in the village and
Andrew stopped worrying about Mollie and Brian, except to wonder a little at himself for ever asking himself the question he had about their relationship.

Coffee came at last. A good deal of the food that had been brought into the dining-room had been taken back to the kitchen, but still it had been an outstanding meal, one to remember. When the remnants of it had been cleared away the Bartlett sisters came round with coffee cups, and with the coffee which they poured into them. Cream and sugar were put on the table.

In a low tone, the vicar said to Andrew, ‘When Sam and Anna appear, one of us ought to give a vote of thanks. If no one else has been appointed to do it, I’ll take it on myself. Do you think that would be appropriate?’

‘I’m sure it would,’ Andrew replied. ‘And I quite agree with you that someone should do it.’

‘They must have worked for days, you know, to give us this extraordinary feast. Not that I’m not certain they’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I know that Sam was planning something of the sort at some time and only delayed it as long as he did because he didn’t feel sure of the reception of something which, of course, is a little eccentric. But I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds—’

He broke off as an extraordinary noise came from further down the table. It began as a kind of cry, then came a choking sound, then a coffee cup fell on the table and coffee splashed over the beautifully embroidered cloth. Then a chair fell over backwards with someone in it who went into violent convulsive seizures. It was Luke Singleton.

Nearly everyone at the table pushed their chairs back, standing up to try to discover what was happening, but Inspector Roland and Felicity Mace had immediately knelt down on either side of the fallen man, who appeared to be unconscious, whose jaws were clenched and who had some fine foam coming out from between his lips.

‘A fit,’ the vicar murmured in Andrew’s ear. ‘Poor chap. I’d never heard he was epileptic.’

Felicity was feeling Luke Singleton’s pulse, the Inspector was lifting one of his eyelids; Eleanor Clancy reached out to set the spilled coffee cup the right way up.

Seeing what she was about to do, Roland shouted at her, ‘Don’t touch it!’

She drew her hand sharply back, frightened at his tone.

Brian Singleton had raced round the table and stooped, white-faced, over his brother, but most people drew a little back, making a circle round the group on the floor. The Bartlett sisters fled together to the kitchen, to tell Sam and Anna how their party had ended.

The Inspector gave a deep sigh and stood up. He bent over the table where the coffee had been spilled and sniffed it.

‘Cyanide, Doctor, you agree?’ he said to Felicity.

‘No doubt of it at all,’ she answered.

At that moment Sam Waldron came running into the room. He looked wild with anxiety. Anna was a little way behind him. She looked strangely calm, which might be how she would always react to disaster, but was very pale.

‘What’s happened?’ Sam cried out. ‘Those Bartlett women talked about someone being taken ill—oh God!’ He had seen Luke Singleton on the floor, still now, the seizures having come to an end. ‘What’s the matter with him, Roland?’

‘Death,’ the Inspector said. ‘That’s what’s the matter with him.’

Sam strode forward. ‘You don’t mean it!’ But he stood still a yard or two away from the terribly still figure and drew a few deep breaths, trying to gain control of himself. ‘But how? When?’

‘I’m not making any official statement,’ the Inspector said, ‘but my guess is that he was poisoned a few minutes
ago with cyanide, which somehow got into the coffee he drank. You can smell the bitter almond smell, and his symptoms are typical, rapid loss of consciousness, dilated pupils non-reactive to light, an irregular pulse, jaws tightly clenched and froth at the mouth, convulsive seizures, and death following almost immediately.’

‘He’s dead. You’re really sure he’s dead?’ Sam demanded.

Roland gave a grave glance at Felicity, who nodded.

‘Here—poisoned—after my dinner!’

The habit of quotation that had such power over Andrew’s consciousness asserted itself now, bringing to his mind the reaction of Lady Macbeth, when she hears from Macduff that Duncan has been murdered, and cries out, ‘What, in our house!’

But Sam seemed to recognize immediately how inappropriate his cry had been, for he laid a hand on Brian’s shoulder and said, ‘Brian, I’m sorry—damnably sorry! I don’t begin to understand what can have happened. No one else has suffered. But that this should have happened to your brother, of all people, your gifted brother … Roland, what do you want us to do? You’re in charge here.’

‘I think it would help if everyone would go into the other room, where we were before coming in here for dinner,’ Roland replied. ‘And then I would like the use of a telephone.’

‘Certainly, certainly!’ Sam said. He turned to the people grouped near the dead man and those still at the table. ‘Did you all hear that? Inspector Roland would like us all to go into the room across the hall.’

‘And I would be grateful if no one leaves the house for the moment,’ Roland added. ‘I’m sorry if it’s an inconvenience for you.’

‘No one could think it an inconvenience at such a time,’ the vicar said. ‘We’ll of course do what you ask.’

Sam seemed suddenly to lose his self-control again. ‘But it isn’t possible, it simply isn’t possible! How could he be given cyanide at my table?’

No one tried to answer him, and the move towards the other room began. People trod slowly and quietly on the soft, deep carpet, as if they felt that unless they took due care they could disturb the man they had left behind them. Mostly they avoided meeting each other’s eyes, looking down at the floor. But for a moment Andrew met the eyes of Ernest Audley. It was only for a moment, and afterwards Andrew would not have been ready to swear that he had seen what he thought that he had, but very briefly it seemed to him that there was a smile on the man’s face.

It was half past one before the Davidges and Andrew got home. A lot had happened in the Waldrons’ house before, one by one, having been briefly questioned by Inspector Roland, with a young sergeant present in the room, the guests had been allowed to leave. The questioning took place in a small room beside the dining-room. It had little in it but a big desk, a table, some bookcases and a few chairs. Andrew supposed, when he saw it, that Sam Waldron must use it as a study. But before Andrew’s turn there came, the house seemed to have filled with busy, often loud-voiced men, tramping about, some with cameras, some presently with a stretcher, and it sounded as if there was a frequent coming and going of cars in the courtyard in front of the house.

As they waited in the room where they had had drinks before the dinner, Sam pressed his guests to have brandy, but very few accepted the offer. Perhaps there was something not very inviting about the thought of drinking in a house where poisoning by cyanide had just taken place. Sam himself, divested of his apron and hat, was the first to be called to his study. He was gone some time, and while he was gone there was almost silence in the room that he had left. Then, when he returned, there was a long pause before anyone else was asked to follow him.

He explained it. ‘They’re questioning the Bartlett sisters. That seems crazy, doesn’t it, two innocent souls like them, but really it makes quite good sense. They were serving the coffee. If anyone had a chance of seeing how this impossible thing was done, it might be them. It is just possible, I suppose, that they could have seen something that didn’t
strike them as meaning anything at the time, but which will mean something to that policeman. No, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it really happened at all, unless, of course, it was suicide. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.’

No one made any response to this suggestion, and after a while Brian Singleton was called out of the room.

He did not return to it, so it seemed likely that he had either been allowed to return to his home, or perhaps had left in the ambulance that had taken away his brother’s body, though there would have been nothing that he could have done for him, and seeing him settled into the morgue would not have been anything but a very distressing experience.

After him, Felicity Mace had been questioned. She had come into the room where all the other guests were waiting some time later than any of them, for she had been kept in the dining-room until the police surgeon from Rockford had arrived. Then it was Eleanor Clancy’s turn. Then, strangely enough, it was Mollie’s. But the reason for this was quite simple. She had been sitting almost opposite Luke Singleton and although the elaborate flower arrangement with which the table was decorated had been between them, she was one of the people who might have seen anything strange that had happened about the way that the coffee was served to him, or that had been done to it immediately afterwards. When she came back and sat down beside Ian she was very white and as he was the next to be called away she turned to Andrew.

‘I didn’t see anything,’ she murmured. ‘I wasn’t even looking at him. Brian had just picked a carnation out of those flowers on the table and given it to me, and I was telling him he ought not to have done such a thing, but he insisted on my slipping it in behind this brooch I’m wearing,
and then that awful noise began …’ She gave a gulp to stop herself sobbing.

Andrew noticed that the carnation was gone.

‘What have you done with the flower?’ he asked.

‘The police kept it,’ she answered, ‘I don’t know why. And they kept on and on asking me if I hadn’t seen anything that could explain how the cyanide got into the coffee, but I hadn’t, I really hadn’t. Oh, Andrew, how awful to have brought you down here for this.’

‘That’s a fairly minor part of the trouble,’ he assured her. ‘But I think you can be glad that Roland’s in charge. He’s an intelligent man.’

Andrew’s own interrogation came some time later. As he entered Sam Waldron’s office, the Inspector gave him a grim sort of smile and as he invited him to take one of the chairs at the table he observed, ‘It seems to be our lot, Professor, to meet under distressing circumstances. Sometimes I think we should make an arrangement to meet where crime really cannot occur, such as the middle of a Highland moor or in a boat on some very quiet lake somewhere or other.’

‘The Highlands have seen plenty of crime in their day,’ Andrew answered, ‘and we might find a body or two in the lake. But perhaps we might one day meet, say, for tea at the Ritz. I have a feeling we could safely develop our relationship there in peace and quiet.’

‘You’re probably right,’ Roland said. ‘And I’m sure we should find we had a good deal of interest to tell one another. Meantime, however, we have work to do. We’ll begin, I think, with my asking you what brought you to Lower Milfrey at just this time?’

‘I came because I’d been invited to come by my old friends, the Davidges. I’d known them for years when they lived in London. Ian Davidge was my accountant long ago, while his first wife was still alive, and mine too. I think it
was partly because the two women met and became very good friends that Davidge and I drifted into friendship. My visit had no special purpose except to spend a pleasant week with him and Mollie Davidge. The time we chose for it had no special significance.’

Roland nodded, and the sergeant who was sitting in a corner of the room jotted something down in his notebook.

‘Is this your first visit here, then?’ Roland asked.

‘Yes,’ Andrew answered.

‘Had you ever met any of the other people here before this evening?’

‘Before this visit? No. But I met several of them a few evenings ago at a small party the Davidges gave. And I spent most of the morning with Miss Clancy, being photographed.’

‘Ah, you’ve had that experience. Do you know, she asked me this evening if I’d allow her to photograph me. She said I had a splendid head. However, we settled nothing, and I have a feeling she may not be as anxious to pursue the matter now—though you never know. What’s happened this evening, and the fact that I was sitting next to the victim, might add a special sense of excitement to the experience. You never know where you are with these enthusiasts. But do I understand that you know very little about the relationships among the people you met?’