Poisoned Chocolates Case (16 page)

“Ah!” Roger nodded portentously.

“This conversation, when I recalled it,” pursued Mr. Bradley very seriously, "seemed to me significant in the extreme. I at once went to see my friend and asked him if he remembered it and was prepared to swear that it took place at all. He was. In fact he was able to add further details, more damning still. I was so impressed that I took a statement from him.

"Amplifying my notion (according to his statement), I had gone on to consider how it could best be carried out. The obvious thing, I had decided, was to select some figure of whom the world would be well rid, not necessarily a politician (I was at some pains to avoid the obvious, apparently), and simply murder him at a distance. To play the game, one should leave a clue or two, more or less obscure. Apparently I left rather more than I intended.

"My friend concluded by saying that I went away from him that evening expressing the firmest intention of carrying out my first murder at the earliest opportunity. Not only would the practice make such an admirable hobby, I told him, but the experience would be invaluable to a writer of detective - stories such as myself.

“That, I think,” said Mr. Bradley with dignity, “establishes my motive only too certainly.”

“Murder for experiment,” remarked Roger. “A new category. Most interesting.”

“Murder for jaded pleasure - seekers,” Mr. Bradley corrected him. “There is a precedent, you know. Loeb and Leopold. Well, there you have it. Have I proved my case, Mr. President?”

“Completely, so far as I can see. I can't detect a flaw in your argument.”

“I've been at some pains to make it a good deal more water - tight than I ever bother to do in my books. You could argue a very nasty case against me in court on those lines, couldn't you. Sir Charles? ”

“Well, I should want to go into it a little more closely, but at first sight, Bradley, I admit that so far as circumstantial evidence is worth (and in my opinion, as you know, it is worth everything), I can't see room for very much doubt that you sent those chocolates to Sir Eustace.”

“And if I said here and now that in sober truth I did send them?” persisted Mr. Bradley.

“I couldn't disbelieve you.”

"And yet I didn't. But given time, I'm quite prepared to prove to you just as convincingly that the person who really sent them was the Archbishop of Canterbury, or Sybil Thorndike, or Mrs. Robinson - Smythe of The Laurels, Acacia Road, Upper Tooting, or the President of the United States, or anybody else in this world you like to name.

“So much for proof. I built that whole case up against myself out of the one coincidence of my sister having a few sheets of Mason's notepaper. I told you nothing but the truth. But I didn't tell you the whole truth. Artistic proof is, like artistic anything else, simply a matter of selection. If you know what to put in and what to leave out you can prove anything you like, quite conclusively. I do it in every book I write, and no reviewer has ever hauled me over the coals for slipshod argument yet. But then,” said Mr. Bradley modestly, “I don't suppose any reviewer has ever read one of my books.”

“Well, it was a very ingenious piece of work,” Miss Dammers summed up. “And most instructive.”

“Thank you,” murmured Mr. Bradley, with gratitude.

“And what it all amounts to,” Mrs. Fielder - Flemming delivered a somewhat tart verdict, “is that you haven't the faintest idea who is the real criminal.”

“Oh, I know that, of course.” said Mr. Bradley languidly. “But I can't prove it. So it's not much good telling you.”

Everybody sat up.

“You've found some one else, in spite of the odds, to fit those conditions of yours?” demanded Sir Charles.

“I suppose she must,” admitted Mr. Bradley, “as she did it. But unfortunately I haven't been able to check them all.”

“She!” Mr. Chitterwick caught him up.

"Oh, yes, it was a woman. That was the most obvious thing about the whole case - and incidentally one of the things I was careful to leave out just now. Really, I wonder that's never been mentioned before.

Surely if there's anything evident about this affair at all it is that it's a woman's crime. It would never occur to a man to send poisoned chocolates to another man. He'd send a poisoned sample razor - blade, or whisky, or beer like the unfortunate Dr. Wilson's friend. Quite obviously it's a woman's crime."

“I wonder,” Roger said softly.

Mr. Bradley threw him a sharp glance. “You don't agree, Sheringham?”

“I only wondered,” said Roger. “But it's a very defendable point.”

“Impregnable, I should have said,” drawled Mr. Bradley.

“Well,” said Miss Dammers, impatient of these minor matters, “aren't you going to tell us who did it, Mr. Bradley?”

Mr. Bradley looked at her quizzically. “But I said that it wasn't any good, as I can't prove it. Besides, there's a small matter of the lady's honour involved.”

“Are you resuscitating the law of slander, to get you out of a difficulty?”

“Oh, dear me, no. I wouldn't in the least mind giving her away as a murderess. It's a much more important thing than that. She happens to have been Sir Eustace's mistress at one time, you see, and there's a code governing that sort of thing.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Chitterwick.

Mr. Bradley turned to him politely. “You were going to say something?”

“No, no. I was just wondering whether you'd been thinking on the same lines as I have. That's all.”

“You mean the discarded mistress theory?”

“Well,” said Mr. Chitterwick uncomfortably, “yes.”

“Of course. You'd hit on that line of research, too?” Mr. Bradley's tone was that of a benevolent headmaster patting a promising pupil on the head. “It's the right one, obviously. Viewing the crime as a whole, and in the light of Sir Eustace's character, a discarded mistress, radiating jealousy, stands out like a beacon in the middle of it. That's one of the things I conveniently omitted too from my list of conditions - No. 13, the criminal must be a woman. And touching on artistic proof again, both Sir Charles and Mrs. Fielder - Flemming practised it, didn't they? Both of them omitted to establish any connection of nitrobenzene with their respective criminals, though such a connection is vital to both their cases.”

“Then you really think jealousy is the motive? ” Mr. Chitterwick suggested.

“I'm absolutely convinced of it,” Mr. Bradley assured him. “But I'll tell you something else of which I'm not by any means convinced, and that is that the intended victim really was Sir Eustace Pennefather.”

“Not the intended victim?” queried Roger, very uneasily. “How do you make that out?”

“Why, I've discovered,” said Mr. Bradley, dissembling his pride, "that Sir Eustace had had an engagement for lunch on the day of the murder. He seems to have been very secretive about it, and it was certainly with a woman; and not only with a woman, but with a woman in whom Sir Eustace was more than a little interested. I think probably not Miss Wildman, but somebody of whom he was anxious that Miss Wildman shouldn't know. But in my opinion the woman who sent the chocolates knew. The appointment was cancelled, but the other woman might not have known that.

“My suggestion (it's only a suggestion, and I can't substantiate it in any way at all except that it makes chocolates still more reasonable) is that those chocolates were intended not for Sir Eustace at all but for the sender's rival.”

“Ah!” breathed Mrs. Fielder - Flemming. “This is quite a new idea,” complained Sir Charles.

Roger had been hastily conning over the names of Sir Eustace's various ladies. He had been unable to fit one before into the crime, and he was unable now; yet he did not think that any had escaped him. “If the woman you're thinking of, Bradley, the sender,” he said tentatively, “really was a mistress of Sir Eustace, I don't think you need worry about being too punctilious. Her name is almost certainly on the lips of the whole Rainbow Club in that connection, if not of every club in London. Sir Eustace is not a reticent man.”

“I can assure Mr. Bradley,” said Miss Dammers with irony, “that Sir Eustace's standard of honour falls a good deal short of his own.”

“In this case,” Mr. Bradley told them, unmoved, “I think not.”

“How is that?”

“Because I'm quite sure that apart from my unconscious informant, and Sir Eustace, and myself, there is nobody who knows of the connection at all. Except the lady, of course,” added Mr. Bradley punctiliously. “Naturally it would not have escaped her.”

“Then how did you find out?” demanded Miss Dammers.

“That,” Mr. Bradley informed her equably, “I regret that I'm not at liberty to say.”

Roger stroked his chin. Could there be another one of whom he had never heard? In that case, how would this new theory of his continue to stand up?

“Your so close parallel falls to the ground, then?” Mrs. Fielder - Flemming was stating.

“Not altogether. But if it does, I've got another just as good. Christina Edmunds. Almost the same case, with the insanity left out. Jealousy - mania. Poisoned chocolates. What could be better?”

“Humph! The mainstay of your last case, I gathered,” observed Sir Charles, “or at any rate the starting - point, was the choice of nitrobenzene. I suppose that, and the deductions you drew from it, are equally important to this one. Are we to take it that this lady is an amateur chemist, with a copy of Taylor on her shelves?”

Mr. Bradley smiled gently. “That, as you rightly point out, was the mainstay of my last case, Sir Charles. It isn't of this one. I'm afraid my remarks on the choice of poison were rather special pleading. I was leading up to a certain person, you see, and therefore only drew the deductions which suited that particular person. However, there was a good deal of possible truth in them for all that, though I wouldn't rate their probability quite as high as I pretended to do then. I'm quite prepared to believe that nitrobenzene was used simply because it's so easy to get hold of. But it's perfectly true that the stuff's hardly known as a poison at all.”

“Then you make no use of it in your present case?”

“Oh, yes, I do. I still think the point that the criminal not so much used it as knew of it to use, is a perfectly sound one. The reason for that knowledge should be capable of being established. I stuck out before for a copy of some such book as Taylor as the reason, and I still do. As it happens this good lady has got a copy of Taylor.”

“She is a criminologist, then?” Mrs. Fielder - Flemming pounced.

Mr. Bradley leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling. “That, I should think, is very much open to question. Frankly, I'm puzzled over the matter of criminology. Myself, I don't see that lady as an ' - ist' of any description. Her function in life is perfectly obvious, the one she fulfilled for Sir Eustace, and I shouldn't have thought her capable of any other. Except to powder her nose rather charmingly, and looked extremely decorative, but all that's part and parcel of her real raison d'etre. No, I don't think she could possibly be a criminologist, any more than a canary - bird could. But she certainly has a smattering of criminology, because in her flat there's a whole bookshelf filled with works on the subject.”

“She's a personal friend of yours, then?” queried Mrs. Fielder - Flemming, very casually.

“Oh, no. I've only met her once. That was when I called at her flat with a brand - new copy of a recently published book of popular murders under my arm, and represented myself as a traveller for the publisher soliciting orders for the book; might I have the pleasure of putting her name down? The book had only been out four days, but she proudly showed me a copy of it on her shelves already. Was she interested in criminology, then. Oh, yes, she simply adored it; murder was too fascinating, wasn't it? Conclusive, I think.”

“She sounds a bit of a fool,” commented Sir Charles.

“She looks like a bit of a fool,” agreed Mr. Bradley. “She talks like a bit of a fool. Meeting her at a tea - fight, I should have said she is a bit of a fool. And yet she carried through a really cleverly planned murder, so I don't see how she can be a bit of a fool.”

“It doesn't occur to you,” remarked Miss Dammers, “that perhaps she never did anything of the sort?”

“Well, no,” Mr. Bradley had to confess. "I'm afraid it doesn't. I mean, a comparatively recent discarded mistress of Sir Eustace's (well, not more than three years ago, and hope dies hard), who thinks no small champagne of herself and considers murder too fascinating for words. Well, really!

“By the way, if you want any confirmatory evidence that she had been one of Sir Eustace's lady - loves, I might add that I saw a photograph of him in her flat. It was in a frame that had a very wide border. The border showed the word 'Your' and conveniently cut off the rest. Not 'Yours,' notice, but 'Your.' I think it's a reasonable assumption that something quite affectionate lies under that discreet border.”

“I have it from his own lips that Sir Eustace changes his mistresses as often as his hats,” Miss Dammers said briskly. “Isn't it possible that more than one may have suffered from a jealousy - complex?”

“But not, I think, have possessed a copy of Taylor as well,” Mr. Bradley insisted.

“The criminological - knowledge factor seems to have taken the place in this case of the nitrobenzene factor in the last,” meditated Mr. Chitterwick. “Am I right in thinking that?”

“Quite,” Mr. Bradley assured him kindly. “That, in my opinion, is the really important clue. It's so emphasised, you see. We get it from two entirely different angles, the choice of poison and the reminiscent features of the case. In fact we're coming up against it all the time.”

“Well, well,” muttered Mr. Chitterwick, reproving himself as one might who had been coming up against a thing all the time and never even noticed it. There was a short silence, which Mr. Chitterwick imputed (quite wrongly) to a general condemnation of his own obtuseness.

“Your list of conditions,” Miss Dammers resumed the charge. “You said you hadn't been able to check all of them. Which does this woman definitely fulfil, and which haven't you been able to check?”

Mr. Bradley assumed an air of alertness. "No. 1, I don't know whether she has any chemical knowledge. No. 2, I do know that she has at least an elementary knowledge of criminology. No. 3, she is almost certain to have had a reasonably good education (though whether she ever learnt anything is quite a different matter), and I think we may assume that she was never at a public - school. No. 4, I haven't been able to connect her with Mason's notepaper, except in so far as she has an account at Mason's; and if that is good enough for Sir Charles, it's good enough for me. No. 5, I haven't been able to connect her with a Hamilton typewriter, but that ought to be quite easy; one of her friends is sure to have one.