Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery (23 page)

“But you don’t think he was under the impression that aconitine was a narcotic and that he could smoke it like opium and so have an easy passage?” he suggested as a final gleam of hope.

“I do not,” said the inspector, briskly extinguishing the gleam. “A man who’s going to use a drug like aconitine at all is going to know something about it; and the very least he’d know is that it isn’t a narcotic. No, sir, there’s no other conclusion at all. Meadows was murdered.”

“Curse the man, then!” Roger observed with feeling. “He’d simply got no right to be, that’s all I can say. Now we’re put right back to the beginning again. Well, who murdered him, Inspector? Perhaps you’ll tell me that too?”

The inspector tugged at his moustache. “I was hoping you’d be able to tell me that, Mr Sheringham.”

“I see,” Roger said bitterly. “I might have known you weren’t pouring out all this confidential information for nothing. You want to pick my magnificent brains again, I suppose?”

“Well, if you like to put it that way, sir,” remarked the inspector in deprecating tones.

“I do. I hate calling a pickaxe an ‘agricultural implement’. All right, pick away.”

The inspector drank a little beer with a thoughtful air. “Let’s begin with a motive, then. Now can you see anyone in the case with a motive for Meadow’s death?”

“Wait a minute. You still think his death is mixed up with Mrs Vane’s? You’re taking that as a starting point?”

“Well, we can always keep the other possibility before us, but it seems a fair enough assumption, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes; the balance of probability is certainly in favour of it. But I don’t think we ought to forget that Meadows (we’ll call him Meadows; it’s easier) was quite possibly a blackmailer, among his other activities; and once we admit blackmail the field is enormously widened.”

“Oh, yes, sir; I’m not forgetting that. But you must remember that he was certainly down here for some specific purpose to do with his wife – the coincidence otherwise would be so great that I think we can wash it out altogether; so if he
was
blackmailing, it was either his wife or somebody very closely connected with his wife.”

“Such as her husband?”

“Such as Dr Vane,” said the inspector meticulously. “Well, you see what I mean. It seems to me we can take it for granted that his death
is
due to somebody already mixed up with the case.”

“Yes,” Roger agreed. “I think you’ve clinched that point.”

“So that brings us back to what I asked you first of all: can you see anyone in the case with a motive for getting him out of the way?”

“Plenty!” said Roger promptly. “And the one with the biggest motive of all was Mrs Vane herself.”

“Excluding her, I was really meaning,” the inspector amplified, with quite exemplary patience.

“Well, confining ourselves for the moment to the blackmail motif, I suppose Dr Vane’s the next on the list. He’d have plenty of reason to get rid of his wife’s real husband, especially if he was threatening to give the whole show away – as he probably was.”

“Even after his wife was dead? What would it matter to the doctor then?”

“Everything! Nobody likes to be shown up as a credulous fool, imposed upon by a clever and unscrupulous woman. Besides, there are bound to be reasons there that we don’t know anything about, wheels within wheels. How do we know, for instance, that she hadn’t somehow made him an accessory to some real breach of the law? It would be a useful weapon for a woman in such a precarious position as she was. And Meadows might have got wind of it.”

“Very ingenious, sir,” the inspector approved. “Yes, you make out quite a pretty case against the doctor; though how you’re going to prove it is a different matter. And now cutting out the blackmail idea – or rather, taking another aspect of it. Who after all, whether it was Dr Vane or not, would have the greatest incentive to put Meadows out of the way – to ensure his mouth being shut for ever, if you like?”

Roger nodded slowly. “I see. Yes; of course. And we know Meadows was on the spot at the time; I was forgetting that. Yes, certainly that’s the strongest motive of all.”

“That’s how I look at it, anyway,” said the inspector cheerfully. “In fact, the way I see it is this. Meadows was in that little cave at the time, probably waiting to keep an appointment with his wife. Along she comes, but – with somebody else; not alone. Naturally he lies low; doesn’t want his name connected with hers at all; that might be killing the goose with the golden eggs. And while he’s waiting, the other person pushes his wife over the cliff – 
and he knows who that other person is
.”

“A masterly reconstruction,” Roger commented. “So although the original goose is killed, the gander that did it has delivered himself into his hands; and contrary to all the laws of nature, that gander is going to be made to shell out golden eggs just as fast as a sausage machine!”

“That’s one way of putting it,” the inspector smiled. “But the gander thinks differently, and –”

“As Samuel is promptly despatched to fresh meadows and pastures new! Well, yes, Inspector, one must admit that’s a sound enough theory, and very cogently stated.”

“Doesn’t it seem to you the only reasonable theory, sir? Or at any rate, the most reasonable?”

“I suppose it does,” Roger said thoughtfully. “Yes, the most reasonable, without doubt. So now we come back to the good old problem, which I solved so extremely neatly last week – who killed Mrs Vane?”

“We do, sir. And as to that, do you see one big fact in this second case which is going to give us a valuable pointer to the identity of the double murderer?”

“This is as good as a correspondence course,” Roger murmured: ‘ “How to Be a Detective’ in three lessons – yes, teacher, I do. Aconitine.”

“That’s right, sir. It must have been somebody who had access to aconitine; I think we can take
that
for granted. I shall make enquiries at the chemist’s in Sandsea and elsewhere, of course, as a matter of form; but I don’t fancy they’ll lead to anything. The murderer knew all about poisons; that’s obvious. Something was wanted that would act quickly, so the choice was practically limited to prussic acid, strychnine, aconitine and currare. Prussic acid smells too strong, so the man could hardly be induced to take it unsuspectingly; with strychnine he’d shout out and make too much fuss; curare won’t act except on an open wound; aconitine (a
big
dose of aconitine, that is) was just what was wanted.”

“Humph!” Roger said seriously, stroking his chin. “I see what you’re getting at, of course. But do you really think he –”

“Hullo, you two!” said a voice from the door. “Still yapping? Hope you’ve got something to drink up here. I’ve got a throat like a mustard plaster after walking along that road in this heat.”

“Anthony,” said his cousin with not unjustified annoyance, “you’re gross.”

The conversation swerved abruptly from matters criminal.

Lying in bed that night, Roger did not get to sleep very quickly. Apart from this fresh development of the case which in itself was enough to prolong his meditations well into the small hours, he had another problem to engage his attention scarcely less closely – 
why
had the inspector emerged, practically unbidden, from his shell of reticence and volunteered this startling information? The pretext of picking his amateur colleague’s brains was of course only an empty excuse, for in the subsequent discussion it was the inspector who had taken the lead, pointed out the possibilities and established a workable theory; Roger had contributed nothing of any value to it. Why, in other words, had the inspector gone out of his way to drop unmistakable hints that the author of both crimes was Dr Vane himself? It was only as he was dropping off to sleep that an illuminating answer occurred to him – the inspector had done this because this is what he had wished Roger to think: his real theory was something entirely different!

Shaving the next morning, Roger pursued this train of thought. That certainly was the explanation of the inspector’s otherwise inexplicable conduct. Laughing maliciously up his sleeve, he had been trying to head the officious journalist, against whom he already had a score to pay, not toward the truth but away from it. Roger grinned at his reflection in the mirror: very well, but two could play at that game. Likewise, forewarned was forearmed. He began to ponder a plan of campaign which should end in extracting the wind from the inspector’s sails.

Obviously the only thing to do was to go straight ahead with his investigations as if nothing had been said. It was possible of course that Dr Vane really was the murderer, although the inspector clearly did not think so. Nor for that matter did Roger himself. Not that Dr Vane struck him as likely to shrink from murder if murder should be necessary, but somehow he did not
feel
him as the murderer of his wife – he could put it no more reasonably than that; the eliminator of Meadows, yes, quite possibly; but not the other.

And in that connection, was it so unlikely that the two deaths should have been brought about by different agents? The inspector had pretended to think so and had certainly made out a strong case to support his hypothesis, but did that now point out all the more strongly to the opposite conclusion? The inspector had been at some pains even to labour the point; all the more reason therefore to suspect that his real opinion was just the opposite. Well, well, things did seem to be getting really involved. The only way to straighten them out was to keep a clear head, forget no possibilities and yet allow none to bias him unduly – and might the best sleuth win!

Roger brushed his hair with his usual care, put on his coat and walked demurely down to breakfast.

The inspector was already halfway through his meal, and Anthony had not put in an appearance. For ten minutes the two exchanged platitudes, the topic bulging largest in both of their minds being as if by common consent avoided. The inspector mumbled something about having a busy day in front of him and took his departure. Almost simultaneously Anthony entered the room.

Roger helped himself to marmalade and watched Anthony scoop the remainder of the dish of bacon and eggs on to his plate. He had devoted some earnest thought between platitudes during the last ten minutes to the promise the inspector had extracted from him the evening before, and while deprecating any temptation to break it even in the circumstances, fancied that he had found a blameless way round it. “Anthony,” he began with some care, “you’re on duty this morning.”

“Right-ho!” said Anthony with equanimity. “But what’s the idea? Nothing for us to do, is there?”

“Well, yes,” Roger said, with elaborate carelessness. “At least, nothing
necessary;
just something I’d rather like to play about with. To tell you the truth, Anthony, I’m getting a little tired of this enforced idleness, so I’ve propounded a neat little puzzle to myself. It’s this: suppose Meadows turned out after all not to have committed suicide, but to have been murdered!”

“Suppose the moon turned into pink cheese too,” responded Anthony jocularly. “All right, I’ll suppose that. What about it?”

“Well, you know, it
is
a possibility,” Roger said, with an air of trying to convince himself against his reason. “We ought not to lose sight of it just because it seems improbable. And it would be remarkably interesting if we could make out some sort of case to support it, wouldn’t it?”

“Is that what you want to do?” Anthony asked, cutting himself a second slice of bread. “Seems a bit of a waste of time to me. However, I’m game if you want to amuse yourself. Things have been a bit quiet lately, haven’t they?”

Roger glanced at his cousin in some surprise, but tactfully forebore to comment on this remarkable statement. It had been his impression that things had not been at all quiet lately, so far as Anthony and his affairs were concerned. “You haven’t fixed anything up with Margaret for this morning, then?” was all he said.

“No,” said Anthony very airily. “She’s got to go into Sandsea, I believe. Shopping, or some rot. I shan’t be seeing her till tomorrow, if then.”

Again Roger, with almost superhuman tact this time, refrained from comment. It was on the tip of his tongue to say, “What have you quarrelled about now, you pair of idiots?” but he didn’t. For one thing he had no wish to be accompanied all the morning by a glowering and resentful Anthony.

“That’s all right then,” he remarked briskly, as if for Anthony and Margaret not to meet during a whole twenty-four hours was quite the most ordinary thing in the world. “Well, I’ll tell you what we’ll do, I think it would be rather fun, to assume for one day that Meadows
was
murdered (poisoned, of course) and see if we can collect any evidence in support of the notion. What do you say?”

“Frightful fun,” Anthony agreed mechanically.

“That’s the spirit,” said Roger with great heartiness. “Very well, then; hurry up with your breakfast, and we’ll see what the queen will send us.”

Roger and Anthony stood in the sitting-room that had been occupied by the Rev. Meadows, while the stout landlady entertained them with a ceaseless flow of reminiscences concerning her late guest. Anthony’s face was already feeling the strain of keeping an expression of polite interest held firmly toward this stream of verbiage; Roger was blatantly paying not the slightest attention. Anthony began to realise why his cousin had been so anxious to bring him.

“Never was a one for making a fuss, neither,” the stout landlady assured Anthony with considerable emphasis. “Not never, he wasn’t! Always got a pleasant word for me when I bring his meals in or come to ask him if he wanted anything, like. Make a little joke too, he would as often as not. Very fond of his little joke, the Rev. Meadows was. Sometimes I couldn’t help but laugh at him, he’d say such comical things. Seems dreadful to think of now, doesn’t it, sir, with the poor gentleman lying stiff and cold in his grave, as you might say?” She paused momentarily for breath.

“Very dreadful,” Anthony agreed, casting a harassed eye at a pink china pig on the mantelpiece.