Collected works of j s f.., p.804
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 804
“You’re not going to poison the dog?” exclaimed Charlesworth. “Poor old — —”
“If what we surmise is correct,” said Holmes, “he’ll never know anything or feel anything! — and we shall learn a great deal. See here! — this scrap of meat is impregnated with the stuff out of that bottle — you know which — in the cabinet. Now watch — and I’m afraid, wait!”
The three men watched and waited after the old dog had swallowed the morsel of meat — watched him as he slept again in the sun. It seemed a long time. Suddenly he gave a deep sigh, stretched his limbs, lay still. Holmes pulled out his watch.
“Exactly fifty-seven minutes after swallowing it!” he muttered. “No spasm — no pain. Well — now we know!”
CHAPTER VIII. WHO STANDS TO GAIN?
THE TWO DOCTORS went away and Charlesworth returned to the house, wondering. Bedford met him in the hall.
“Would you care to join me in a cup of tea, Mr. Charlesworth?” he said. “Refreshing, sir — after all this worry. What’s going to come of it, Mr. Charlesworth?” he continued as he led his guest into the butler’s pantry and drew forward an easy chair. “Do the medical gentlemen really think Sir Charles was poisoned, now?”
“I don’t think there’s much doubt about that, Bedford!” replied Charlesworth. “I’m afraid it’s certain! But as to who administered the poison — that’s another question. There’s a good deal of mystery in this case.”
Bedford poured out the tea and handed a cup over.
“Been a good deal of mystery altogether about this house, sir, of late,” he said. “Of course, it’s not for me to speak, but between you and me, seeing that you’re a police officer — —”
“I wish you’d tell me anything you can,” interrupted Charlesworth. “It’s strictly between ourselves, of course. You were going to say —— ?”
“I was going to say, sir, that of late there’s been something — well, something in the general atmosphere that’s shown me there was unpleasantness afoot, all round,” said Bedford. “It hasn’t needed half an eye to see that relations were strained, very strained indeed, between the master and mistress. They haven’t been what you’d call friendly for some time, and except when there’s been a dinner party they’ve never had a meal together for weeks. Sir Charles, for some days before his death, had been in an uncommon bad temper — with everybody, though as a rule he was popular with the servants. Everything seemed to be going wrong — he was snappish and irascible. Only yesterday morning, before he went off to town in his car, I heard him having an awful row with Miss Fawdale in the study. The door was slightly open — I couldn’t help hearing, though I didn’t wait to catch anything particular — I was passing the study at the time. But when Sir Charles had gone I saw Miss Fawdale in tears — he’d an awful temper when roused, Mr. Charlesworth, Sir Charles had!”
Charlesworth sipped his tea in silence for a while.
“Bedford!” he said at last. “You’ve been in Sir Charles’ employ some time, eh?”
“Twelve years, sir.”
“Before his marriage?”
“Oh, yes, sir — some years before that!”
“This wasn’t a second marriage, was it?”
“Oh, no, sir — Sir Charles had been a bachelor until he married Miss Howison.”
“Well, look here! — you heard what Lady Stanmore said about her husband and Miss Fawdale? That Miss Fawdale had been his mistress before he married Lady Stanmore and was so still? Do you think that’s true? — was it so? — is it so?”
Bedford gave his guest an enigmatical smile and shrugged his shoulders.
“Can’t say, Mr. Charlesworth, can’t say at all, sir! How should I know? From what I’ve seen and heard, you’ll say? Well, I wouldn’t say — positively — from anything I’ve heard or seen. I know, sir — just what I do know!”
“And — how much does that amount to?” asked Charlesworth, smiling. “You’ve had opportunities, you know!”
“Not so many opportunities, sir, as you’d think,” replied Bedford. “Sir Charles was one of those men, open enough on one side, but close as the devil on the other. I couldn’t say anything, for certain. Of course, there were things that some people would have drawn conclusions from. But then, Mr. Charlesworth, as you know, some people make mountains out of molehills. And you remember what Shakespeare says — I read Shakespeare a good deal when I’ve time —
” ’Trifles light as air,
Are to the jealous confirmation strong
as proofs of Holy Writ.’
Wise man, Shakespeare, sir — if there ever was such a person!”
“What were the things that some people would have drawn conclusions from?” asked Charlesworth.
Bedford replenished his guest’s cup and his own and passed over the buttered toast.
“Oh, well, sir, little things!” he said. “Miss Fawdale, sir, came here first about two years before Sir Charles was married. She was then, as near as I could guess, about eighteen years of age — very pretty girl. She came as Sir Charles’ private secretary. From the first she had a suite of rooms here — the suite she had till this morning — and a maid to attend to her. As I said in Lady Stanmore’s presence, and yours, I witnessed the agreement between her and Sir Charles. But that salary, sir, was — nominal! Miss Fawdale got a good deal more than that. In fact, you might say she’d everything she wanted. And — she did precious little work!”
“Was this going on when Sir Charles married Miss Howison?” asked Charlesworth.
“It was, sir. But after Sir Charles and Lady Stanmore came home from their honeymoon, there was a change. Miss Fawdale went to live in London — I believe she’s a flat somewhere in the West End, but I don’t know where. After that she was sometimes here, and sometimes in town. Of course, I could see that Lady Stanmore never liked her or her presence from the very first — but she had to put up with it; Sir Charles Stanmore, Mr. Charlesworth, was a man who never allowed any interference with his pleasure from anybody, not even his wife! Between you and me, sir, Lady Stanmore was a cypher in this house.”
“You could gather something from Sir Charles’ general behaviour towards Miss Fawdale,” remarked Charlesworth. “How did he treat her? — in public?”
“He treated her, sir, as if she were one of the family — she might have been a younger sister, or something of that sort,” replied Bedford. “To my mind, that would exactly explain his attitude. In fact, I’ve often wondered, sir, if she was some relation that Sir Charles was providing for. He made a great companion of her — she amused him, I think. Lady Stanmore didn’t — cold, proud woman, Lady Stanmore, sir. But of course, she’d her reasons — and her troubles.”
“Perhaps more than we know of,” agreed Charlesworth. He remained silent a while, and then confronted the butler with a sudden question. “Bedford!” he said. “Do you know anything about that box, usually kept in an old-fashioned book-case in the drawing-room and called — —”
“The Borgia Cabinet, sir?” broke in Bedford. “Lord! — there’s none of us — the upper servants in this house, at any rate — that doesn’t. Box full of the deadliest poisons, sir, collected in the East, chiefly in India, by Lady Stanmore’s father, Colonel Howison, and left to her. We couldn’t fail to know all about it, Mr. Charlesworth. There was never a house-party, or a dinner-party, here but Sir Charles used to pull out that cabinet, show it, and tell his guests that there was stuff in there sufficient to poison all London — it was a grim joke of his. Oh, yes — but Sir Charles always took care to keep the key of that cabinet himself, sir. I remember that when it and the books in the Chippendale case came, Lady Stanmore wanted to have the cabinet and its contents destroyed there and then — in fact, she’d given me strict orders to burn the lot myself. But Sir Charles stepped in and wouldn’t hear of it. For some queer reason or other he was proud of that cabinet — might say, fond of it. Odd! — but he was. He was a bit eccentric, you know, Mr. Charlesworth.”
“Well,” observed Charlesworth, “the doctors have examined that cabinet, Bedford, and its contents, and from certain facts that came to light, they think that Sir Charles was poisoned by something taken from one of the bottles. Now who could have got at the cabinet? When we examined it just now, it was not locked, nor was the old book-case.”
Bedford shook his head.
“Beyond me, sir! I’m wondering — wondering — do you know, sir, it’s crossed my mind two or three times to-day — I wonder if, for some reason we know nothing of, Sir Charles took his own life? What do you think, Mr. Charlesworth?”
Charlesworth reflected. He had at first scouted the idea of suicide because there was no evidence of it in Sir Charles Stanmore’s bedroom. But since witnessing the experiment on the old dog he had seen that the suicide theory was quite admissible. It had taken exactly fifty-seven minutes for the poison to work its fatal effect, and when the end had come it had been startlingly sudden, swift, painless. Charlesworth saw now how, if he wished to put an end to his life, Sir Charles, after parting with his visitor, could have gone to the drawing-room, got what he wanted from the cabinet, poured it into his whisky, drunk it off, replaced the little bottle in the cabinet, gone to bed and to sleep — and to die.
“Don’t know what to think, Bedford,” he said, rising. “But I’ve got to find out — somehow. Well, I must get back to town — see you to-morrow at the inquest.”
“Long affair, I’m afraid that will be, sir,” said Bedford. “Days and days, no doubt.”
“Not to-morrow,” replied Charlesworth. “Mere formal proceedings to-morrow. Just the opening and adjournment.”
He went away late, and eventually back to headquarters. And after making a report there and holding a consultation with some of his superiors, he went out again — to seek the saloon of a certain tavern in a street off Whitehall, where, by means of a telephone message from Aldersyke Manor, sent earlier in the afternoon, he had fixed up a meeting with a man from Fleet Street. The man was there when he entered, and in five minutes he and Charlesworth, with glasses in front of them, were in a quiet corner.
“. . . . and if it isn’t a complete scoop for you, you, at any rate, have got the stuff first-hand from me,” concluded Charlesworth after telling the reporter all that he at that moment wished to tell about the Aldersyke Manor affair. “There have been one or two of your kidney — local press, you know — hanging round during the day, and they may have got a few tips from the servants, and possibly from the local police, but you’ve got authoritative information. You’ll make a big feature of it in to-morrow’s issue?”
“Sure!” said the Fleet Street man. “Couple of columns, anyway — leave that to me!”
“Well, here’s more I want you to do,” continued Charlesworth. “This man who called for Stanmore at the club, who went with him to the garage, and drove away with him from there: I must get hold of him. Now listen! — he may have gone to the Continent. Can you get this stuff, some of it, anyhow, into the Paris papers, and say the Amsterdam papers, to-morrow morning? Can you, at any rate, get in a paragraph in those papers, begging this man, whoever he is, if he sees it, to come forward at once?”
“Nothing easier!” declared the Fleet Street man. “It shall be in every Parisian morning paper, and in every English paper in Paris, too, first thing to-morrow, and in the principal Continental papers as well. Again, leave that to me. And I say — keep me posted from day to day, or, better still, hour to hour. Press and police together, eh, Charlesworth? Admirable combination! Big case and great opportunity this for you, my boy! Good luck to you!”
Charlesworth agreed that the case was big and the opportunity great, and after dining in a Strand restaurant he went home to his modest bachelor flat in Bloomsbury to think things calmly over. But as he settled down over a pipe there came in to him one Robinshaw, a retired detective who, living close by, often dropped in of an evening for a talk. And to Robinshaw, as a man of experience, Charlesworth set forth, in detail, all his doings of the day.
“What do you make of it?” he asked, in conclusion. “What’s your opinion?”
Robinshaw wagged his grey head.
“Ah!” he said. “Now you’re asking me something! Well, there seems to be no doubt that this man was poisoned and by the stuff out of that cabinet. Now — is it suicide, or is it murder? It might be suicide. There may have been reasons for that — reasons that may come out yet. But if it’s murder, you want to seek for the motive — the murderer’s motive. From all you tell me, the wife had a motive — she was fed up with him and she has a lover. What more do you want?”
“But — the doctor, Beck, insisted that she was going to free herself by other means,” pointed out Charlesworth. “That meant, of course, divorce.”
“Maybe! But perhaps she got impatient. Perhaps she’s one of these vindictive women who want revenge and aren’t particular how they get it. There are such — plenty of ’em. And she’d the means at hand in that cabinet, and she knew, too, that it would be stiff work for anybody to prove her guilt. See?”
“Why?” demanded Charlesworth.
“Nothing but circumstantial evidence that I know of — from your account. Strong enough, no doubt, but no direct proof. From all you tell me, this Stanmore was notoriously careless about that cabinet — —”
“Yes, but how the devil could some of that stuff get into his whisky unless it was put there on purpose!” exclaimed Charlesworth. “Come — come!”
“How do you know it was in his whisky? You don’t — you’re only supposing it was. What’s more, in spite of what the doctors say, it mayn’t have been that particular stuff, for all that the bottle was sticky and so on. You don’t know anything except that he was poisoned. It’s just supposition to say that the poison came out of that cabinet! Though — I daresay it did!”
“I’ll bet it did — and out of that bottle, too!” muttered Charlesworth. “And it must have been somebody who knew all about the cabinet who made use of the stuff — I’ll bet on that, too!”
“Well,” said Robinshaw, “murders spring out of all sorts of things. This is the sort of murder — if it is murder — that’s been planned. Now when murders are planned, the folks who plan them have some ulterior object. And so I’ll give you a piece of sound advice, my lad! Find out if anybody, and if so, who, stands to gain by Stanmore’s death!”
When Robinshaw had gone, Charlesworth, reflecting, realized how excellent was this counsel.
CHAPTER IX. WHAT’S IN THE WILL?
WITH THE OLD detective’s advice fresh in his mind, Charlesworth went round to Stanmore & Gilford’s office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields next morning and got an interview with Gilford. Gilford, as seemed to be usual with him, was irritable and grumpy: the sudden and mysterious death of his senior partner appeared to have thoroughly upset him.
“Well, what do you want?” he demanded when Charlesworth was shown in to him. “Found out anything?”
“Nothing of any great importance, Mr. Gilford,” replied Charlesworth. “I’ve come to you for some information — information which, at this juncture, probably nobody but you can give and which we consider it’s highly necessary to have.”
“What information?” asked Gilford, testily. “I don’t know of anything that I can tell you — I want to hear something from you!”
“We’ll keep you posted, sir,” said Charlesworth. “But there are things we can’t get at — things you know all about, most likely. And what we want to know at present, believing it may throw a good deal of light on this affair, is this: who benefits by Sir Charles Stanmore’s death?”
Gilford began shifting the papers about on his desk. He shook his head, with a variety of meanings.
“Why, as to that — do you mean financially?”
“Just what I do mean!” replied Charlesworth.
“Well, a good many people! Some of ’em substantially.”
“He left a will, I suppose, Mr. Gilford?”
“He did!”
“Is it, may I ask, in your possession?”
“It is!”
“It would be a great help to us, Mr. Gilford, if you’d tell me exactly what its provisions are. May I know?”
“Is that what your superiors want? Are they asking about it at Headquarters?”
“It’s been suggested to me that I should find out, from you, Mr. Gilford. You see, if there are people who, as you say, will benefit substantially by Sir Charles Stanmore’s death, we’d like to know who these people are.”
Gilford considered this proposition for a while in silence. Then he got up from his desk, produced a bunch of keys, and unlocked a safe.
“Well,” he said, “of course, the will must be proved before long, and after that you or anybody else can get a copy of it at Somerset House. So I see no objection to giving you the information you want, Charlesworth. But for the present, it’s to be kept secret, you understand?”
“Oh, certainly, Mr. Gilford,” replied Charlesworth. “What we want is to know if we can get any clue from it.”
Gilford swung open the heavy door of the safe and presently returned to his chair with a document tied about with red tape.
“This is the will!” he said. “It was made, in this office, about eighteen months ago. Now, again, all this, for the present, is between you and me, Charlesworth. To begin with, my late partner was a very rich man — the Exchequer will have a nice haul out of his death duties! He was not a millionaire, but he wasn’t far off — worth, I should say, between eight and nine hundred thousand pounds: his father, the first baronet, was, of course, a very wealthy man. So you see, Stanmore had a lot to dispose of.”
He began to turn over the sheets of the will, glancing here and there as he went along; Charlesworth waited in expectancy.
“I’m not going to inflict all the legal phraseology of this on you,” said Gilford. “It will answer your purpose if I tell you the main contents, won’t it? Well, before we get on to that, I may as well tell you that quite apart from anything bequeathed to her in this will, Lady Stanmore has a marriage settlement which secures to her £2,000 a year. You understand that? — a settlement made before their marriage. Well, in this will Sir Charles Stanmore leaves her £5,000 in cash, and £1,000 a year for life or until she marries again.”
