In the Teeth of the Evidence

  ‘But since he had no time to do so, the will in favour of Mr Raymond Whipley will now stand?’

  ‘That is so.’

  Inspector Brown of the County Police then gave evidence about finger-prints. He said that one coffee-cup and one liqueur glass bore the finger-prints of Mr Raymond Whipley, and the other cup and the glass which held the poison, those of Mr Whipley, senior. There were no other prints, except, of course, those of the parlour-maid, on the cups or glasses, while the flask of créme de menthe bore those of both father and son.

  Bearing in mind the possibility of suicide, the police had made a careful search of the room for any bottle or phial which might have contained the poison. They had found nothing, either in the cabinet or elsewhere. They had, indeed, collected from the back of the fireplace the half-burnt fragment of a lead-foil capsule, which bore the letters ‘. . . AU . . . tier & Cie’, stamped round the edge.

  From its size, however, it was clear that this capsule had covered the stopper of a half-litre bottle, and it seemed highly improbable that an intending suicide would purchase prussic acid by the half-litre, nor was there any newly opened bottle to which the capsule appeared to belong.

  At this point a horrible thought began to emerge from Mr Egg’s inner consciousness – a dim recollection of something he had once read in a book. He lost the remainder of Inspector Brown’s evidence, which was purely formal, and only began to take notice again when, after the cook and housemaid had proved that they had been together the whole evening, the doctor was called to give the medical evidence.

  He said that deceased had undoubtedly died of prussic acid poisoning. Only a very small amount of the cyanide had been found in the stomach, but even a small dose would be fatal to a man of his age and natural frailty. Prussic acid was one of the most rapidly fatal of all known poisons, producing unconsciousness and death within a very few minutes after being swallowed.

  ‘When did you first see the body, doctor?’

  ‘I arrived at the house at five minutes to twelve. Mr Whipley had then been dead at least two hours, and probably a little more.’

  ‘He could not possible have died within, say, half an hour of your arrival?’

  ‘Not possibly. I place the death round about half-past nine and certainly not later than ten-thirty.’

  The analyst’s report was next produced. The contents of the flask of crème de menthe and the coffee dregs in both cups had been examined and found to be perfectly harmless. Both liqueur glasses contained a few drops of crème de menthe, and in one – that which bore the finger-prints of old Mr Whipley – there was a distinct trace of hydrocyanic acid.

  Even before the coroner began his summing-up it was plain that things looked very black for Raymond Whipley. There was the motive, the fact that he alone had easy access to the deadly cyanide, and the time of death, coinciding almost exactly with that of his hasty and agitated flight from the house.

  Suicide seemed to be excluded; the other members of the household could prove each other’s alibis; there was no suggestion that any stranger had entered the house from outside. The jury brought in the inevitable verdict of murder against Raymond Whipley.

  Mr Egg rapidly made his way out of court. Two things were troubling him – Mrs Minchin’s evidence and that half-remembered warning that he had read in a book. He went down to the village post-office and sent a telegram to his employers. Then he turned his steps to the local inn, ordered a high tea, and ate it slowly, with his thoughts elsewhere. He had an idea that this case was going to be bad for business.

  In about an hour’s time, the reply to his telegram was handed to him. It ran: ‘June 14, 1893. Freeman and Toplady, 1931,’ and was signed by the senior partner of Plummett & Rose.

  Mr Egg’s round and cheerful face became overcast by a cloud of perplexity and distress. He shut himself into the landlord’s private room alone and put through an expensive trunk call to Town. Emerging, less perplexed but still gloomy, he got into his car and set off in search of the coroner.

  That official welcomed him cheerfully. He was a hearty and rubicund man with a shrewd eye and a brisk manner. Inspector Brown and the Chief Constable were with him when Monty was shown in.

  ‘Well, Mr Egg,’ said the coroner, ‘I’m sure you’re happy to be assured that this unfortunate case conveys no imputation against the purity of the goods supplied by your firm.’

  ‘That’s just what I’ve taken the liberty of coming to you about,’ said Monty. ‘Business is business, but, on the other hand, facts are facts, and our people are ready to face them. I’ve been on the phone to Mr Plummett, and he authorised me to put the thing before you.

  ‘If I didn’t,’ added Mr Egg, candidly, ‘somebody else might, and that would make matters worse. Don’t wait for unpleasant disclosures to burst. If the truth must be told, see that you tell it first. Monty’s maxim – from The Salesman’s Handbook. Remarkable book, full of common-sense. Talking of common-sense, a spot of that commodity wouldn’t have hurt our young friend, would it?’

  ‘Meaning Raymond Whipley?’ said the coroner. ‘That young man is a pathological case, if you ask me.’

  ‘You’re right there, sir,’ agreed the Inspector. ‘I’ve seen a sight of foolish crooks, but he licks the lot. Barmy, I’d call him. Quarrelling with his dad, doing him in and running away in that suspicious manner – why didn’t he put up an electric sign to say “I done it”? But as you say, I don’t think he’s quite all there.’

  ‘Well, that may be,’ said Monty, ‘but over and above that, there’s old Mr Whipley. You see, gentlemen, I know all my customers. It’s my job, as you may say, to have all their fancies by heart. No good offering an 1847 Oleroso to a gentleman that likes his sherry light and dry, or tantalising a customer that’s under orders to stick to hock with bargains in vintage port.

  ‘Now what I’d like you to tell me is, how did the late Mr Whipley come to be drinking crème de menthe at all? He only kept it by him for ladies; it was a flavour he couldn’t do with in any shape or form. You heard what he said about it to Mr Raymond.’

  ‘That’s a point,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘I may say it had already occurred to us. But he must have taken the poison in something.’

  ‘Well, I only say, bear that in mind – that, and the foolishness of the murder, if it was done the way the jury brought it in. But now about this lead-foil capsule. I can tell you something about that. I didn’t intrude myself at the inquest, because I hadn’t got the facts, but I’ve got them now and here they are. You know, gentlemen, it stands to reason, if a capsule was taken off a bottle that day in the study, there must have been a bottle belonging to it. And where is it? It’s got to be somewhere. A bottle’s a bottle, when all’s said and done.

  ‘Now, gentlemen, Mr Whipley dealt with my employers, Plummett & Rose, for over fifty years. It’s an old-established firm. And that capsule was put out by a firm of French shippers who went into liquidation in 1900; Prelatier & Cie was their name, and we were their agents in this country. Now, that capsule came off a bottle of Noyeau sent out by them – you can see the last two letters of the word on the stamp – and we delivered a bottle of Prelatier’s Noyeau to Mr Whipley, with some other samples of liqueur, on June 14, 1893.’

  ‘Noyeau?’ said the coroner, with interest.

  ‘I see that means something to you, doctor,’ said Mr Egg.

  ‘It does, indeed,’ said the coroner. ‘Noyeau is a liqueur flavoured with oil of bitter almonds, or peach-stones – correct me if I’m wrong, Mr Egg – and contains, therefore, a small proportion of hydrocyanic acid.’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Monty. ‘Of course, in the ordinary way, there isn’t enough of it to hurt anybody in a single glassful, or even two. But if you let a bottle stand long enough, the oil will rise to the top, and the first glass out of an old bottle of Noyeau has been known to cause death. I know that, because I read it in a book called Foods and Poisons, published a few years ago by Freeman & Toplady.’

&nbs
p; ‘Cedric Whipley’s firm,’ said the inspector.

  ‘Exactly so,’ said Monty.

  ‘What, precisely, are you suggesting, Mr Egg?’ inquired the chief constable.

  ‘Not murder, sir,’ said Monty. ‘No, not that – though I suppose it might have come to that, in a way. I’m suggesting that after Mr Raymond had left the study, the old gentleman got fidgety and restless, the way one does when one’s been through a bit of an upset. I think he started to drink up his cold coffee, and then wanted a spot of liqueur to take with it.

  ‘He goes to the cabinet – doesn’t seem to fancy anything, roots about, and comes upon this old bottle of Noyeau that’s been standing unopened for the last forty years. He takes it out, removes the capsule and throws it into the fire and draws a cork with his corkscrew, as I’ve seen him do many a time. Then he pours off the first glass, not thinking about the danger, drinks it off as he’s sitting in his chair and dies without hardly having time to call out.’

  ‘That’s very ingenious,’ said the chief constable. ‘But what became of the bottle and the corkscrew? And how do you account for the crème de menthe in the glass?’

  ‘Ah!’ said Monty, ‘there you are. Somebody saw to that, and it wasn’t Mr Raymond, because it would have been all to his advantage to leave things as they were. But suppose, round about half-past eleven, when Mrs Minchin was tidying her room and the other servants were in bed, another party had gone into the study and seen Mr Whipley lying dead, with the bottle of Noyeau beside him, and had guessed what had happened.

  ‘Supposing this party had then put the corkscrew back into the cupboard, tipped a few drops of crème de menthe from Mr Raymond’s glass into the dead gentleman’s, and carried the Noyeau bottle away to be disposed of at leisure. What would it look like then?’

  ‘But how could the party do that, without leaving prints on Mr Raymond’s glass?’

  ‘That’s easy,’ said Monty. ‘He’d only to lift the glass by taking the stem between the roots of his fingers. So. All you’d find would be a faint smudge at the base of the bowl.’

  ‘And the motive?’ demanded the chief constable.

  ‘Well, gentlemen, that’s not for me to say. But if Mr Raymond was to be hanged for murdering his father, I fancy his father’s money would go to the next of kin – to that gentleman who published the book that tells you all about Noyeau.

  ‘It’s very unfortunate,’ said Mr Egg, ‘that my firm should have supplied the goods in question, but there you are. If accidents happen and you are to blame, take steps to avoid repetition of same. Not that we should admit any responsibility, far from it, the nature of the commodity being what it is. But we might perhaps insert a warning in our forthcoming Catalogue.

  ‘And à propos, gentlemen, let me make a note to send you our New Centenary History of the House of Plummett & Rose. It will be a very refined production, got up regardless, and worthy of a position on any library shelf.’

  FALSE WEIGHT

  A Montague Egg Story

  ‘Hullo!’ said Mr Montague Egg.

  He knew the Royal Oak, at Pondering Parva, and it was not, in a general way, a place he would have chosen to stop at. It did but little business, its food was bad, its landlord surly, and it offered few opportunities to an enterprising traveller in high-class wines and spirits. But to find it at half-past eight in the morning the centre of an interested crowd, with a police car and an ambulance drawn up before the door, was a challenge to any man’s curiosity. Mr Egg took his foot from the accelerator, and eased the car to a standstill.

  ‘What’s up here?’ he asked a bystander.

  ‘Somebody killed . . . Old Rudd’s cut ’is missus’s throat . . . no, he ain’t – George done it . . . that ain’t right, neither, it was thieves and they’ve gone off with the till . . . George, he come down and found the blood running all over the floor . . . hear that? that’s Liz Rudd a-hollerin’ . . . she got highsterics . . . thought you said ’e’d cut ’er throat . . . no, I didn’t, Jim said that, he don’t know nothin’. I tell you ’tis George . . . Ah! here’s the Inspector a-comin’ out; now we’ll hear summat . . .’

  Mr Egg was already out of the car and approaching the bar entrance. A uniformed Inspector of police met him on the doorstep.

  ‘Now then, you can’t come in here. Who are you, and what do you want?’

  ‘My name’s Montague Egg – travelling for Plummett & Rose, wines and spirits, Piccadilly. I’ve come to see Mr Rudd.’

  ‘Well, you can’t see him now, so you’d better buzz off. Wait a minute. You say you’re a commercial traveller. This your regular district?’

  Mr Egg replied that it was.

  ‘Then you might be able to give us some information. Come in, will you?’

  ‘Wait while I fetch my bag,’ said Monty. He was interested, but not to the point of forgetting that a traveller’s first duty is to his samples and credentials. He fetched the heavy case from the car and carried it into the inn, to the accompaniment of cries from the crowd: ‘That’s the photographer, see his camera?’ Setting it down inside the door, he looked round the bar of the Royal Oak. At a table near the window sat a police-constable, writing in a notebook. A large, pug-faced man, whom Monty recognised as Rudd, the landlord, was leaning back against the bar in his shirt-sleeves. He was unshaven, and looked as though he had dressed hurriedly. A tousle-headed young fellow, with immense muscles and no forehead to speak of, stood scowling beside him. From a room somewhere at the back came a noise of feminine shrieking and sobbing. That was all, except that a door on the right, labelled ‘Bar-parlour’, stood open, and through it could be seen the back of a man in an overcoat, who was bending over something on the floor.

  The Inspector took Mr Egg’s papers, looked them through and returned them.

  ‘You’re on the road early,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Monty. ‘I meant to get through to Pettiford last night, but the fog held me up at Madgebury. I’m making up for lost time. I slept at the Old Bell – they can tell you all about me there.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the Inspector, with a glance at the constable. ‘Well, now, Mr Egg. I believe all you commercial gentlemen know each other pretty well, as a rule. We’d like to see if you can identify this man in here.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Monty, ‘though of course I don’t know every traveller on the road. But surely his name will be on his papers.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ replied the Inspector. ‘His papers must have been in his sample case, and that’s gone. He’s got some letters on him, but they don’t – well, we’ll go into that later on. This way, please.’

  He marched into the room on the right. Monty followed him. The stooping man stood up.

  ‘No doubt about this, Birch,’ he observed. ‘Head battered in. Dead eight to ten hours. Couldn’t possibly have done it himself, or by accident. Weapon probably that bottle over there. Better try it for finger-prints. Anything else you want to know? Because, if not, I’ll be getting back to my breakfast. I’ll leave word with the coroner as I go, if you like.’

  ‘Thanks, doctor. Eight to ten hours, eh? That fits Rudd’s story all right. Now, Mr Egg, come and have a look at this, will you?’

  The doctor stepped aside, and Monty saw the dead body of a man. He was a small man, dressed in a neat blue serge suit. His hair was sleek and black, and he wore a small tooth-brush moustache. The blood from an open wound on the temple had run down and caked on his smooth cheek. He appeared to be about thirty-five or forty years of age.

  ‘Oh, yes, I know him,’ said Monty. ‘I know him quite well, as a matter of fact. His name is Wagstaffe, and he travels – travelled – for Applebaum & Moss, the big cheap jewellers.’

  ‘Oh did he?’ said Inspector Birch, with emphasis. ‘That case of his would contain jewellery then, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes – and watches, and that sort of thing.’

  ‘Humph!’ said the Inspector. ‘And can you tell me why he should be carrying letters about in his pocket ad
dressed to a number of other people? Here’s one – Joseph Smith, Esq. Here’s another – Mr William Brown. And here’s a very touching one – Harry Thome, Esq. Hot stuff, that one is.’

  ‘Do you need any telling, Inspector?’ inquired Mr Egg, softly.

  ‘I don’t know that I do, if it comes to that. Ah! you commercial gentlemen are all alike, aren’t you? A wife in every port of call, eh?’

  ‘Not me, Inspector. No wedding-bells for Monty Egg. But I’m afraid it’s true about poor Wagstaffe. Well, he seems to have got what was coming to him, doesn’t he?’

  ‘You’re right. He put up a bit of a struggle, though, from the looks of it.’ Inspector Birch glanced round the bar-parlour. It was a small room, and every piece of furniture in it seemed to have suffered violence. A small round table before the fireplace had been knocked over, and a broken whisky-bottle had distributed its contents in an odorous stream across the linoleum. Chairs had been pushed back and overturned, the glass front of a what-not was starred as though by a blow from a threshing foot, and a grandfather clock, standing near the fire-place, had been canted over sideways, so that only the edge of the mantelpiece kept it from falling. Mr Egg’s eyes wandered to the clock-face, and the Inspector’s followed them. The hands stood at ten minutes past eleven.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Birch. ‘And unless he’s a liar, we know pretty well when this happened and who did it. Do you know anything about a commercial called Slater?’

  ‘I’ve heard of an Archibald Slater,’ said Monty. ‘Travels in lingerie.’

  ‘That’s the man. Is he in a good way of business? Good screw, I mean? Comfortable, and all that?’