A Death in Two Parts (11 page)

“It's as certain as that?”

“Plain as the nose on your face. I feel almost sorry for the girl in a way. You wouldn't think anyone could have been so stupid. College educated, too. I'm glad I didn't let my girls fool around with any of that stuff. Educates their minds at the expense of their common sense, that's all it does. Look at this one. The old lady took a fancy to her and left her all her money – plenty of it, too, by the look of things. You wait till you see the house: not my cup of tea, you understand, but very fancy stuff, very fancy indeed. But, as I was saying, the old girl left her the lot – pretty near broke, she was, when she came to them, too. Just the other day, that was. She was some sort of cousin they found starving and took in.”

“Is that so?” Crankshaw was gladder than ever that he had said nothing about knowing Patience.

“Yes; flat broke, poor girl, so when she got left this packet and heard that the old lady never let a will stand for more
than a week or so she decided she'd better do something about it. Oh, and I forgot, she tried a spot of forgery first – just couldn't wait for the cash, apparently.”

“Forgery?”

“Yes; forged the old girl's signature to a cheque for fifty pounds and tried to cash it in the Black Stag in Leyning on Christmas Eve. The poor fool couldn't think of a likelier story than that the old lady had asked her to cash it for her on account of having always gone there. Of course she'd never had a thing from there – all her wines and so on came straight down from town – so there wasn't anything doing. Naturally when the news of the murder came out, they remembered and came along to us pretty quick. And, would you believe it, it turned out that old Mrs Ffeathers had missed the cheque from her book already and stopped it at the bank! There wasn't much got past her, by the sound of it.”

“They remembered the number of the cheque at the Black Stag, then?”

“Well, no” – he was momentarily checked in his enthusiasm – “but the old lady had stopped one, and this one turned up: you'd bet they were the same, wouldn't you?”

“Yes, I suppose one would. What does Miss Smith say about it?”

“Sticks to her story that the old lady asked her to cash it. She must be crazy. The old thing had made her lawyer bring her down fifty pounds in cash when he made the new will; she still had forty-five pounds of it when she died. No reason in the world why she should have wanted another fifty over the holiday.”

“Blackmail?” Crankshaw threw it in almost for luck.

“Paying it? Not her. She was more likely to be squeezing
it out of other people, by the sound of her. A proper old tartar, her family make her sound.”

“Do they? All of them?” Crankshaw put each question casually, wondering how much longer he would get away with the cross-examination, but Harris was only too delighted to expatiate on so successful a case. This question slowed him down for a minute.

“It's a funny thing,” he said, “they all tried to do the bereaved bit, but it was a pretty thin show. The only one who really did sound sorry was our Miss Smith – well, I suppose it might set her back a bit to find she really had killed the old lady. I know her kind; they build a lot of castles in the air but if one of them really materialises, they're struck all of a heap.”

As an analysis of Patience, it seemed to Crankshaw singularly wide of the mark, but he let it pass. “You don't make them sound a very attractive family,” he said.

“They're all right, as families go. You don't tend to see people at their best in our line of business. And you can't blame them for being upset about the money. She had it all, you know, every blessed penny.”

“And she left the whole lot to Miss Smith?”

“Two hundred a year to each of the others for life; annuities for the servants; all that kind of thing done quite regularly; and all the rest to Miss Smith. It was a regular thing with her, apparently. The form of the will was always the same, it was just the main beneficiary she kept changing.”

“Who had it been before Miss Smith came on the scene?”

“Some nonsense about a fifty-two letter alphabet, I believe. No wonder the family were sick.”

“Was it a long time since anyone else in the family had been left it all?”

“I don't know.” Harris was beginning to sound bored with this line of discussion. “But I expect Protheroe will be able to tell you. He's the family lawyer: capable man, very, and most helpful. He's another cousin, by the way, but he wasn't there on the night of the crime, so you don't have to bother too much about him.”

Contrarily, Crankshaw at once resolved to bother extensively about Mr Protheroe. But there was too much ground to be covered before they got to the house. He turned to another point. “How about alibis?” he asked. “Could you eliminate most of the family right away? It was a most remarkably quick arrest, surely?”

“Detention,” Harris corrected him, pride dripping through his tone. “No, as a matter of fact, the servants were pretty clearly out of it, but, aside from them, pretty well any member of the house party could have done it. In a way, that is; of course when we started to look at it closely there was a good deal more to it than that.”

“Naturally.” Crankshaw was all respectful attention.

“You see” – Harris was well away now – “the old lady always had an evening drink of Bovril – everyone knew it, and everyone knew that if she was extra tired or excited for any reason she had one or two sleeping pills in it. And some brandy to take the taste away.”

“Brandy and Bovril and sleeping pills,” said Crankshaw. “Good Lord.”

“Yes; you can see she was a tough old customer. Anyway, she was a bit wrought up, it being Christmas Eve and all, and she told Miss Smith she'd have two pills in the Bovril.
I should have explained that the whole lot of them were in her room by this time; filling Christmas stockings or some nonsense of that kind. It was latish – eleven o'clock or so – they'd been playing charades earlier in the evening.”

“Sounds a happy party.”

“Yes” – he sounded doubtful – “it sounds cheerful enough, doesn't it, but somehow it didn't seem to have been, to hear them talk about it. Still that's natural enough, really, when you think what happened later.”

“Nothing untoward happened earlier in the evening then?”

“Untoward? No. Not unless you count Miss Smith's trying to cash her dud cheque that afternoon, and laying in an extra bottle of Mrs Ffeathers' sleeping pills on a forged prescription.”

“She forged a prescription, too, did she?” Never, for one moment, would he believe it.

“Yes; quite a good imitation of Dr Findlayson's hieroglyphics; it fooled the chemist completely, but of course when we came to check up we discovered that the old lady had had a new bottle from her own chemist just the week before. It's a funny thing: the girl went to all the trouble of forging the prescription and then never used that lot of pills after all; we found the full bottle tucked in among her nylons. She just took some out of the bottle in Mrs Ffeathers' bathroom; there were a lot missing from there. She used enough, all right; far more than were necessary, the doctor said. It's amazing the old lady didn't notice the taste, but she had her Bovril black and strong, apparently, and what with that and the brandy – well, there you are.”

“And your idea is that instead of putting in two pills, Miss
Smith shoved in a round dozen or so, is it? She always made the Bovril, did she?”

“Not exactly. The cook made it downstairs, and then Andrews, the parlour maid, brought it up when she served the after-dinner coffee and left it ready on a gas ring in Mrs Ffeathers' bathroom. But I think we can assume the stuff was all right when it was put in Mrs Ffeathers' bathroom. I've checked and rechecked on that, and it seems clear enough that no one was alone with it till then. It was a busy night in the kitchen, the cook was making coffee, the kitchen maid brewed up the Bovril on the stove right beside her. I suppose she
might
have slipped some pills in under the cook's nose, but she'd have been lucky if she'd got away with it; and I'm damned if I can think up a motive for her. Then she gave the saucepan to Andrews, who put it on the coffee tray and took it upstairs, accompanied by the butler who held the door of Mrs Ffeathers' bathroom open for her and watched her put the saucepan on the gas. If you ask me, they then paused for a spot of flirtation, but that doesn't invalidate their evidence.”

“Not necessarily. But the Bovril was then left in an empty room?”

“No. That was our first real stroke of luck. Someone had spilt a great patch of ink in Mrs Ffeathers' room and after she served the coffee Andrews went back there – still accompanied by the faithful butler – and worked at getting it out until the party came upstairs. Again, I think you could prove that they took rather longer over it than was necessary, but you can't for a minute convince me they spent the time putting pills into the Bovril.”

“No; I admit it's an unlikely occupation for a courting couple. And when the party came up?”

“They all came together” – Harris was warming to his climax – “and no one – I tell you no one – went into that bathroom till Miss Smith went to get the Bovril.”

“Could she be seen from the room?”

“No, she was behind the open door. I've tried, of course, with them all where they sat that night, and no one could possibly have seen her, except, perhaps, Miss Priscilla Ffeathers, but she was busy pouring tea and says she didn't notice a thing.”

“Tea? I thought you said coffee.”

“That was earlier. The tea was by way of a night cap; and to judge by some of their expressions, not too popular a one.”

“They indulged in tea while the old lady swigged away at her brandy and Bovril. Did she drink it at once, by the way?”

“No, it was on the table beside her for quite a bit – in fact, when she did drink it, she complained it was cold. But you're not going to tell me anyone dropped in a handful of pills in the middle of that crowded room are you? The only person who had a ghost of a chance was Miss Priscilla Ffeathers who sat by the old lady pouring tea, but she had nowhere she could have carried them; the ladies were all in evening dress.”

“Hadn't she a bag?”

“No, she hadn't. I got the impression she was a bit hard up – Mrs Ffeathers kept some of them pretty short of cash – and just hadn't got an evening one. The girl who searched her room said she hadn't a thing she could have carried with the dress she wore.”

“Nobody else went near the cup?”

“I wouldn't put it quite so strongly as that. Various people went over to talk to the old lady in the course of the evening: Joseph Ffeathers, Mrs Brigance, her son Mark Brigance and Seward Ffeathers, but so far as I can work it out somebody was watching each of them all the time. It stands to reason the old lady would be the centre of attention and anyone who went over to talk to her would be watched – casually, you know, but they wouldn't have had a chance of doctoring her drink. Besides, what about her? Everyone agrees she was sharp as they come – don't you think she'd have noticed?”

“Yes.” Crankshaw's heart sank within him. Not, he hastened to reassure himself, that there was the slightest chance Patience could have done it, but she had certainly managed to get herself into an extraordinarily uncomfortable position.

“You could see at once
they
all thought she'd done it,” Harris was summing up triumphantly. “They didn't want to say anything, but I got it out of them gradually. You know how it comes, a bit here and a bit there. I was pretty sure, really, before there was anything you could call evidence at all. There was the motive, large as life. Money, poor girl, and lots of it. Oh, they tried to keep it quiet about her being broke; Mrs Brigance, who'd hired her, kept going on about what a favour she'd done them by coming, but – well, I won't pretend I was surprised when I heard about the forged prescription and cheque. Pleased, yes – I've seldom had a case so tidy – but not surprised.” He slowed the car to turn off the main road. “But here we are. I hope I've given you a bit of an idea of what it's all about.”

“You certainly have. I hardly feel I need to come here at all, I've got it all so clearly in my head.”

“That's fine, but mind you feel free to run around and ask all the questions you please, to fill in the background. It's not often we get help from the Yard like this, and I want to do right by you.”

Crankshaw thanked him with an inward quirk of conscience at the thought of how far from right by Harris his own intentions were.

The car had passed through wrought iron gates hung from high pillars, each with its ornamental granite ball, and turned up a well-kept drive. Soon Featherstone Hall stood before them in all its Victorian surfeit of ornamentation, its red brick front excrescent with domes, turrets, cupolas and here and there an unnecessary pillar holding yet another granite ball. Crankshaw cast one shocked glance upwards, then followed Harris into the equally alarming modernity of the white and chromium front hall. A parlour maid, presumably Andrews, took their coats, sniffed slightly at Harris and flashed a quick, interested glance at Crankshaw.

Reflecting gloomily on the snobbery of the working classes, he reminded himself that her obvious respect for his decently ancient tweeds would doubtless smooth his path when he interviewed her. If he got the chance to do so, which seemed unlikely, with Harris so very much in command. He fought down a moment's desperate vision of Patience in her cell and followed Harris into a large and bookless library. A bluff, bewhiskered semi-military man rose to greet them from the large desk where he was sorting papers. “Ah, Harris, back again so soon?”

The remark was hardly welcoming, but Harris chose to ignore this. He introduced Crankshaw to Joseph Ffeathers, explaining that he was to compile the official report on the
case. “I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to put up with a few more questions, just till Mr Crankshaw gets things clear. He's just joined us, you see, from Scotland Yard.”