Sudden death, p.26
Sudden Death, page 26
The words ceased as if Edith suddenly found she had no power to go on. She seemed on the verge of a collapse as she sat staring piteously at Anne. Then once more she burst into those awful sobs. ‘A drink,’ she cried faintly.
It was what Anne wanted herself. Without a word she poured out the tea—the two cups just as she would have done had things remained normal. It had grown black from standing, and she stooped again over the fireplace to get the kettle to add water. But Edith would not wait. When Anne raised herself she was pouring in the cream and she at once began swallowing down hers in great gulps.
Anne added water to her cup, but it was still bitter, and again she added water. All this water from the boiling kettle made it too hot, and she sat waiting for it to cool, while Edith continued to enlarge on her terrible tale.
Anne shrank appalled from what was to follow. She would have to ring up the police. How could she bring herself to do it?
Just then there came a knock at the door. Gladys came in. She seemed flurried and upset. She explained that Inspector French had rung up that he was coming out at nine that night and that she had completely forgotten to mention it. And now he was here and was asking for Miss Cheame.
‘Yes, Miss Cheame,’ said a voice, and French himself appeared at the door, a uniformed constable looming in the corridor behind, ‘I’m sorry to say I have a very unpleasant duty to perform—’
Edith, a look of ghastly terror on her face, stared at him like a trapped animal. Then she screamed. Anne thought she would never get the sound of that scream out of her ears. Before anyone could move, Edith had swung round, seized Anne’s cup of tea, and drained it at a draught.
‘Stop her!’ yelled French, leaping across the room. ‘My God, we’re too late!’
Edith looked at him with a sort of despairing defiance. ‘Potassium cyanide. Got it for killing wasps. I’ve carried it for weeks.’ She nodded at Anne and tried to speak, but couldn’t.
French swung round on Anne. ‘Have you drunk any, Miss Day? Hold Miss Cheame,’ he cried to the constable, and dashed out. A moment later Anne heard him telephoning urgently for the doctor.
Then Anne collapsed and everything merged into a confused dream. Edith disappeared. People came in and out. Someone gave her a mustard emetic. She was deadly sick. She lost consciousness. She was in bed. The doctor appeared at intervals. She was desperately ill; she was dying. She lay helpless it seemed for days and weeks. Then gradually she grew better. She was going to live.
It was not until she was convalescent that she learned the remaining details of the tragedy. When she was considered able to see him, French called to get her statement of that last dreadful conversation with Edith.
‘You had a pretty narrow escape, Miss Day,’ he said. ‘Another couple of sips would have done it. There was enough poison in that cup of tea to have killed a dozen men.’
‘And Miss Cheame?’ Anne faltered.
French shook his head. ‘What happened was best for the poor lady,’ he said gently. ‘We tried to save her, but the dose was too strong.’
For a moment Anne remained silent. Then, ‘How did you find out?’ she asked, and French, contrary to his usual custom, explained.
His idea was evolved from that difficulty about the lights in the corridor which he had noticed in Edith’s story. He had realised on thinking the matter over, that the light-coloured wall in front of Grinsmead could not suddenly have been lit up by Edith’s torch, as Grinsmead would then have noticed it, but must have been previously illuminated by Grinsmead’s own torch, the only other source of light available. From this he had deduced that the table on which Grinsmead’s torch was placed must have been, not where he had usually observed it, outside Sybil’s door, but on the opposite side of the corridor, beside Edith’s door. That at first had seemed to meet the difficulty. But on thinking still further over it, he had seen that the light shining thus from behind Grinsmead would have left his hands in shadow. Instinctively the man would have turned round, or partially round, the better to see what he was doing. But if he had turned even a little way round, he would have noticed Edith’s torch.
At first sight the matter looked like a misunderstanding, but as French considered it he found himself forced to the conclusion that Edith’s statement did not clearly cover the facts.
Had Edith then lied? To French it began to look as if the whole episode might be an invention in which Edith had made a mistake in one of the details.
Reserving judgment on the point, French went on to see how such a suggestion would work in with the remainder of the case. Then suddenly another idea occurred to him. If Edith had invented the episode, how did she know about the cord?
Here at once was a fundamental point. Edith knew about the cord. Therefore one of two things followed; either her statement about Grinsmead was the exact truth and he, French, had misunderstood her about the light, or else she herself must be guilty of Sybil’s murder.
This was an entirely new viewpoint. At first French did not take the idea seriously, but as he turned it over in his mind, suspicious details began to occur to him. Edith might well have been the purchaser of the clock spring. She was of the right height and build. Yes, and Edith—French cursed himself for not having thought of it before—Edith might have been the woman Hersey saw. Again she was the right height and build. Edith moreover would have known of the barrel as a good place to hide the spring. Yes, and Edith—
Suddenly French saw another point, a point which lit up the whole dreadful tragedy as the turning on of electric lights illumines a dark room. Edith, and only Edith, could have shot Grinsmead! She was the only person who could have done it without passing out through those locked doors!
It was at this stage that French had had his burst of optimism about the chief inspectorship, after which he settled down to put on paper his new view of the crime.
Though the case as he had himself reconstructed it proved fairly correct, a few details had to be modified as a result of the statement which Edith Cheame had made to Anne before she died. Finally it stood as follows:
Edith, unhappily for all those at Frayle, had fallen desperately in love with Grinsmead and she imagined, mistakenly as it turned out, that he loved her. She had early begun to scheme to marry him. But Sybil stood in the way, and Sybil she decided must die.
Cold-bloodedly Edith had made her plan. Her work with her father had given her the necessary knowledge to evolve it, as well as the mechanical ability to carry it out. Then she had got together her apparatus. In buying the clock spring she had made herself up as an old woman, probably only as a safeguard, but possibly that if suspicion were aroused it would fall on Mrs Grinsmead.
On the fatal evening she had lit the fire in Sybil’s room and in some unknown way—the only part of her plan which never came out—had got Sybil to turn it off again. Before taking her hand at bridge she had shut the windows, fixed the pad and spring in the gas fire, turned on the gas tap with a pair of pincers, led the cord out of the room beneath the door, and left the end under the mat in the corridor. She had faked the headache to account for her leaving her room during the night, should this become known.
First it was necessary to make sure that Sybil really had been given a sleeping draught. If Sybil were to awake and smell gas it would mean the end for Edith. This Edith managed by asking Anne for a draught for herself and pumping her as to whether she had given one to Sybil. Next she must be certain that the windows had not been opened, and she slipped out and examined them with her torch, incidentally being seen by Hersey. Then she ate the food in the pantry to back up her tale of the headache. She pulled the cord out from under Sybil’s door, thus allowing the gas to escape. The cord she afterwards burnt; the spring she threw into the barrel. All she had then to do was to keep quiet and to register the proper horror and surprise next morning.
So much for the murder of Sybil.
Next had come Grinsmead’s repulse of Edith’s advances, her sudden hatred of him and her desire to destroy him. She made up the tale about seeing him in the corridor and intended to volunteer it to French. French’s interrogation, however, enabled her to get it in without running this risk.
Matters then came suddenly to a head by Grinsmead’s suspicion of her guilt. On that terrible night his questions showed her that her secret was hers no longer. She saw that his immediate death was her only hope.
She had worked her plan out beforehand lest the emergency should arise. Knowing by this time of Grinsmead’s relations with Irene, she decided to use Irene as a scapegoat, should suspicion be aroused. Naturally she hated Irene almost as much as she hated Grinsmead. Accordingly she sent her message making the appintment at the clump. She still lowered her already deep voice and said she was Grinsmead’s partner, whose voice she hoped Irene would not know.
Next she prepared the alibi of the bath. Then putting on her dressing-gown, she went down again to Grinsmead. She had told him that she could prove the identity of the murderer if he would give her quarter of an hour to prepare her statement.
She tricked Grinsmead into leaving his desk by telling him that Sybil had been killed with an ‘ollophote,’ and when he asked what that was, suggesting that he should consult his encyclopædia. He got up to do so, thus enabling her to obtain the pistol, which, as part of her general preparation for emergencies, she had made sure was loaded. The existence of this pistol, Anne remembered, was admitted by Grinsmead at the dinner party at which burglaries had been discussed.
As Grinsmead turned back towards his desk Edith shot him. She locked the door—this was evidently what Anne had heard when coming downstairs—wiped the pistol, pressed his fingers on it, laid it at his hand, and placed herself behind the door. She knew she would be hidden between the door and the cabinet. It was then that she heard Anne’s exclamation, which her overwrought nerves afterwards led her to reveal so disastrously. When the door was burst open and the others were staring spellbound at Grinsmead, she simply ran forward from behind the door. As she had foreseen, none of them noticed that she had not come through it.
The statements of Irene and Randal Holt-Lancing thus proved true in every particular. Irene had believed the message was indirectly from Grinsmead and had gone to the rendezvous. Randal, arriving home and learning that she had gone out as the result of a call from Grinsmead, was filled with bitter hate. He had followed with the intention of giving Grinsmead the best beating he had ever had in his life, but as already explained, had stopped short at the study window as the result of what he saw through the curtains.
As French later reviewed the case, he thought what a particularly miserable and sordid one it had turned out. And he, French, had not himself shone as he had hoped to do. Through his slowness to realise the truth, he had let the criminal escape the law. Altogether a disastrous case.
But when he reached the Yard he revised his opinion. Sir Mortimer Ellison had him in and congratulated him on his exploits, and to this was shortly added an autograph letter in the same strain from the Chief Constable of Ashbridge.
Some weeks later the case was unexpectedly brought back to French’s mind. Sent on business to Frome, he met in the main street no less a person than Anne Day. During the inquiry he had formed a high opinion of her, and it was therefore with something more than a casual interest that he learned that she had obtained a congenial job. Old Mrs Grinsmead had been a good deal broken down by the tragic death of her son, and she had implored Anne to go and live with her as her companion and friend. Anne had thankfully agreed, and the very next day, unknown to Anne, Mrs Grinsmead had sent for her solicitor and altered her will so as to include Anne among her legatees.
French’s congratulations on her new home were both respectful and hearty.
Footnote
* * *
11. Investigation
fn1. For sketch. see here.
Back to text
* * *
By the same author
Inspector French’s Greatest Case
At the offices of the Hatton Garden diamond merchant Duke & Peabody, the body of old Mr Gething is discovered beside a now-empty safe. With multiple suspects, the robbery and murder is clearly the work of a master criminal, and requires a master detective to solve it. Meticulous as ever, Inspector Joseph French of Scotland Yard embarks on an investigation that takes him from the streets of London to Holland, France and Spain, and finally to a ship bound for South America …
‘Because he is so austerely realistic, Freeman Wills Croft is deservedly a first favourite with all who want a real puzzle’
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
By the same author
Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery
When young Maxwell Cheyne discovers that a series of mishaps are the result of unwelcome attention from a dangerous gang of criminals, he teams up with a young woman who is determined to help him outwit them. But when she disappears, he finally decides to go to Scotland Yard for help. Concerned by the developing situation, Inspector Joseph French takes charge of the investigation and applies his trademark methods to track down the kidnappers and thwart their intentions …
‘Freeman Wills Crofts is among the few muscular writers of detective fiction. He has never let me down.’
DAILY EXPRESS
About the Author
Freeman Wills Crofts (1879–1957), the son of an army doctor who died before he was born, was raised in Northern Ireland and became a civil engineer on the railways. His first book, The Cask, written in 1919 during a long illness, was published in the summer of 1920, immediately establishing him as a new master of detective fiction. Regularly outselling Agatha Christie, it was with his fifth book that Crofts introduced his iconic Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Joseph French, who would feature in no less than thirty books over the next three decades. He was a founder member of the Detection Club and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1939. Continually praised for his ingenious plotting and meticulous attention to detail—including the intricacies of railway timetables—Crofts was once dubbed ‘The King of Detective Story Writers’ and described by Raymond Chandler as ‘the soundest builder of them all’.
Also in this series
Inspector French’s Greatest Case
Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery
Inspector French and the Starvel Hollow Tragedy
Inspector French and the Sea Mystery
Inspector French and the Box Office Murders
Inspector French and Sir John Magill’s Last Journey
Inspector French: Sudden Death
Inspector French: Death on the Way
Inspector French and the Mystery on Southampton Water
Inspector French and the Crime at Guildford
Inspector French and the Loss of the ‘Jane Vosper’
Inspector French: Man Overboard!
By the same author
The Cask
The Ponson Case
The Pit-Prop Syndicate
The Groote Park Murder
Six Against the Yard*
The Anatomy of Murder*
*with other Detection Club authors
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada
www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201 301, India
www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
Freeman Wills Crofts, Sudden Death
