Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery (22 page)

The inquest was duly opened the following morning, but though Roger attended in a spirit of pious hope nothing of the least importance transpired. Twelve solemn rustics viewed the body and then sat perspiring in the village schoolroom, and that was practically all that happened. Almost the only witness was the stout landlady, who was able to give evidence of identity and who also had been the last person to see the deceased alive. She agreed, in the time-hallowed formula, that he had then seemed in his usual health and spirits, and added, with more originality, that had he been there when she heard of his death the Coroner could have knocked her down with a feather. She was going on to add a good deal more, but was held with a testy hand.

Inspector Moresby deposed to finding the body, and Roger, somewhat to his surprise, was called to give corroborative evidence. As to who the dead man really was, the inspector preserved a strict silence; and whether the Coroner had been taken into the secret or not, the court was apparently content to accept the Rev. Meadows as a chance visitor to Ludmouth on a prolonged stay and made no inquiry into his antecedents. The whole proceedings had not lasted more than a quarter of an hour when, Dr Young being called and stating his inability to give the cause of death, the enquiry was adjourned for this to be ascertained and the Coroner formally ordered a post-mortem to be made.

Naturally the news of this second death increased the public interest in the Ludmouth Mystery, as it was now generally called, and in spite of Inspector Moresby’s careful reticence popular imagination was not slow to link the two tragedies together. Newspapers which had hitherto paid little attention to the affair made haste to send down their own representatives, and Roger had cause half a dozen times a day to congratulate himself on his foresight in preventing all other intruders from finding foothold in the Crown. To all enquirers the landlord, that mountainous man, presented an oxlike front of stolid imperturbability: they couldn’t have a room, for why? there wasn’t one, that was why. Even offers of double or treble the market price failed to move him. He seemed to have conceived a bovine affection for Roger (opposites, it has already been said, do sometimes make for a male friendship), and followed out his guest’s wishes to the letter, bewildered but faithful. By way of some return Roger felt compelled to drink as much beer as he could possibly contain.

Thereafter matters progressed for the next ten days or so, inasmuch as the actual case was concerned, not at all. Indeed so far as Roger could see the whole thing was over, bar the shouting. The finding of poison of some description in the body and the subsequent verdict (after Inspector Moresby had unfolded the real story) of suicide during temporary insanity was practically a foregone conclusion. Roger’s articles in the
Courier
grew shorter and shorter as he found it increasingly difficult to find anything new to say, and he would have given them up altogether had the editor not made it a personal favour that he should carry them up to the adjourned inquest in order to help the paper as much as possible over the slack season. And all the time Inspector Moresby gave a really first-class imitation of a sphinx, so far as any unusual happenings in Ludmouth were concerned.

During these days Roger converted for the most part what had been chiefly a duet during the proceeding week, into a trio. The original members made no audible protest, but whatever their real feelings on the point Roger saw no reason why, having brought Anthony for the express purpose of keeping him company, he should be callously abandoned to loneliness just because his susceptible cousin’s fancy in companionship happened to have strayed temporarily elsewhere – or so at any rate he phrased it to himself; for after all, one could hardly expect Roger to admit, even privately, to jealousy of a young man nearly a dozen years his junior. At other times he told himself seriously that it was no less than his duty to break up his cousin’s tête-à-têtes with a young woman of (when all was said and done) distinctly doubtful origin and antecedents; it might be an awkward thing, Roger pointed out earnestly to himself, were Anthony to become in any way
involved;
his mother would have a good deal to say about it, and she would certainly say it, and forcibly, to him. Roger continued to martyr himself to duty.

In the course of his devotion to this stern mistress, he observed Margaret closely. Now that she had been definitely cleared of the horrible suspicion of causing her cousin’s death, her demeanour had altered perceptibly. The iron self-control which she must have been exerting during that week was relaxed, and signs of a corresponding reaction were not infrequent. At one moment she would be more self-reliant than she had appeared before, and less dependent upon their strength; at another she would laugh almost hysterically and propose the maddest escapades on the spur of the moment. Anthony she kept continually upon tenterhooks of bewilderment, treating him one day as if she were seriously in love with him and the next as if he bored her beyond words.

Roger was convinced that there was really nothing of the coquette in her, that she was as straightforward and unguileful as he could wish a girl to be, so that he found himself at times seriously perturbed about her. The place, he felt sure, exercised a distressing effect upon her, and he continued to urge her to leave it, if only for a temporary holiday. Her manner of receiving these suggestions was on a par with the rest of her behaviour: one day she would say shortly that it was quite impossible for the moment, that she must stay and look after George till everything had quite blown over; on another she would jump eagerly at the idea and begin to discuss, quite seriously, the feasibility of flying over to Paris and embarking on a hectic European tour the very next day – yet when it came to the point of a final decision it was always the first mood which prevailed with her. In some vague way Roger felt a certain responsibility for her, and it worried him more than he would have cared to admit.

Inspector Moresby evidently also felt that the case was only marking time during these days, pending definite confirmation of the existence of poison in the body from Sir Henry Griffen, the Home Office analyst, for he took the opportunity of going over to Sandsea for a couple of days to resume his interrupted holiday with his wife and family. It seemed as if he was anxious not to lose touch with Ludmouth, however, for he only took two days when he might have taken five, and was back again at the inn considerably before Roger expected him.

As for Anthony, that young businessman began to feel seriously alarmed as the days went by that he would have to return to London before the adjourned inquest brought the case definitely to an end. He had only got three weeks’ holiday, and already two of them were gone. Careful though he had been to conceal any exuberant display of admiration, Anthony really had found himself profoundly impressed by Roger’s handling of the case and his laying bare of its hidden core which even such a tough bird as Inspector Moresby had failed to uncover, and it would have broken his heart to be compelled to leave before all the threads were finally unravelled and the last knots smoothed out.

Fortunately he was not called upon to do so. The Rev. Samuel had died on a Tuesday; on the following Friday the inspector had gone over to Sandsea, returning on Sunday evening; on the next Thursday, exactly a fortnight after his arrival in Ludmouth, Roger was sitting alone with the inspector after supper – and for once Inspector Moresby was not feeling quite so official as usual.

It happened like this:

“I wonder,” Roger had said, “when you’ll hear from Sir Henry about the cause of death.”

And the inspector replied, surprisingly: “Oh, I heard yesterday morning!” He may have felt tempted to bite his tongue out immediately afterward, but indubitably that is what Inspector Moresby replied.

“You did?” squeaked Roger. “Inspector, you – you taciturn devil!”

The inspector applied himself to such small remnants of beer as were still to be found at the bottom of his tankard. “Perhaps it was about time for me to be a little more taciturn than I have been sometimes,” he remarked with ominous application from its depths.

“But I’ve grovelled about that,” Roger said eagerly. “Simply grovelled. Also I’ve explained it all away. Nothing like that will ever occur again. Inspector, you – you
are
going to tell me what Sir Henry said, aren’t you?”

The inspector, having arrived at the regretful conclusion that his tankard really was empty this time, replaced it on the table. “No, Mr Sheringham, sir,” he said with a good deal of firmness. “I’m not.”

“Oh, you are!” Roger wailed. “Don’t you remember? Think again. You – you are, really.”

“I’m really not,” retorted the inspector still more firmly. They eyed one another in silence.

“Have some more beer!” said Roger helpfully.

“Are you trying to bribe me, sir?” asked the inspector sternly.

“Certainly I am,” Roger replied with dignity. “Do you want everything put into blatant words?”

“Then thank you, sir,” said the inspector. “I could do with another pint on a night like this.”

Roger went with alacrity to the door. “Not a quart?” he suggested. “Come, it’s a hot night as you say. What about a gallon? No? You’re no sportsman, I’m afraid.” He shouted out the order to the landlord and returned to his seat.

“Seriously, though, sir,” the inspector resumed, “I’m afraid I can’t say anything about Sir Henry’s report. You’ll have to wait for the inquest. It’ll all come out then.”

“And when’s that?”

“It was adjourned to today week, if you remember.”

“Oh, Lord!” Roger groaned. “I can’t possibly wait till then.”

“Looks as if you’d have to, doesn’t it?” said the inspector, with hypocritical sympathy.

The landlord brought in two pint tankards of beer and retired again, breathing heavily.

Roger raised his. “Well, here’s confusion to you,” he said with deep gloom.

“Best luck, sir,” returned the inspector politely.

They eyed one another above their respective rims. Then each set down his tankard and laughed.

“You were going to tell me all the time, weren’t you?” said Roger confidently.

“Well, I ought not to, you know, Mr Sheringham,” the inspector demurred. “Still, I mustn’t forget that it was you who put me on to the man in the first place, must I?”

“You must not,” Roger agreed with feeling.

“But this really isn’t for publication, mind. In fact I’d rather you undertook not to tell a single living soul. It’s only on that condition I can say anything to you.”

“Not even Anthony?”

“Not even Mr Walton.”

“Not even Anthony it is, then,” Roger said cheerfully. “Shoot! What was the poison?”

“Aconitine.”

Roger whistled. “Aconitine, was it? By Jove! That explains the rapidity, of course. But it’s not exactly a common one, by any means. Lamson’s specialty, eh? I wonder how Meadows got hold of it.”

“Exactly,” agreed the inspector laconically.

“Aconitine!” observed Roger in deep thought. “Well, well! Of course one of the merits of aconitine is the smallness of the fatal dose. Somewhere about one tenth of a grain, or less, isn’t it? But that doesn’t usually kill for three or four hours. This must have been a good deal more than a fatal dose to work so quickly.”

“It was. At least a grain, Sir Henry reckons.”

“Yes, probably all that. Always the way with the lay suicide, of course, to give himself about ten times as much as he needs. You know that better than I do, no doubt. But aconitine’s about the last thing I was expecting, I must say. I should have put my money on arsenic, or strychnine, or even prussic acid; something more easily procurable than aconitine, at any rate.”

“The symptoms showed it couldn’t be any of those three.”

“Yes, that’s right; they did, of course. Still aconitine is a bit unexpected. Weren’t you surprised?”

“I’m never surprised at anything, sir.”

“Aren’t you really?
Blasé
fellow! I am, and aconitine is one of the agents. I wonder how he
did
manage to get hold of it. Forged a medical prescription, I suppose. Have you any idea how he took it? In his breakfast coffee, or something like that?

“Sir Henry found no trace of it in any of the breakfast things.”

“Oh? Did he take it neat, then? Rather unpleasant. And not very safe either; a grain of the stuff wouldn’t be much larger than a big pin’s head.”

“Sir Henry found a considerable quantity of it,” said the inspector steadily, “mixed up with the contents of the tobacco jar.”

“The tobacco jar?” echoed Roger in incredulous tones.

“He also found it,” pursued the inspector, “in the pipe which Meadows had been smoking, particularly in the stem. He says there can be no doubt that that was the vehicle through which it entered his system. There was no trace of it in anything else.”

“His – his
pipe!
”
Roger stammered, staring at his companion with round eyes. “But – but in that case –!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Well – that seems to put suicide almost out of the question!”

“Exactly,” agreed the inspector blandly.

Roger continued to stare at him. “Good Heavens, you don’t mean –?”

“What, sir?”

“That – well, that somebody else poisoned him?”

“There can’t be a shadow of doubt about it,” said the inspector with the utmost cheerfulness. “The Rev. Samuel never committed suicide at all. He was murdered!”

It was some minutes before Roger would agree to abandon, once and for all time, his cherished theory of suicide. Suicide had smoothed all difficulties away; suicide had explained both deaths in the simplest possible terms, reduced them to a common denominator; in spite of superficial appearances surely in some way it
must
be suicide. Not until the inspector had patiently, and for half a dozen times in succession, pointed out that the very last place in which a voluntary consumer of aconitine would put the poison was among the contents of his tobacco jar, and the very last way he would choose of imbibing it was through the stem of his pipe, did Roger reluctantly admit that, hang it! yes, it really did begin to look as if the man had been murdered after all.