IT was nearly half-past five when Roger got back to the big house in the High Street. Mrs Purefoy was alone in the drawing-room.
‘No,’ she said in answer to his first question. ‘They came in to tea, but they went out again immediately afterwards. Sheila gave me a message for you if you came in first.’
‘Oh?’ Roger asked eagerly. ‘What was that?’
‘“Not much luck.” She was very mysterious about it, and wouldn’t tell me a word of what she is doing or why she was looking so important and pleased with herself.’
‘In other words,’ Roger laughed, ‘you know perfectly well that there’s something going on, and please, what is it?’
‘Well, not quite so bluntly as all that,’ Mrs Purefoy smiled.
‘Yes, we are up to something, the three of us,’ Roger had to admit. ‘But would you mind very much if I asked you not to ask me what it is? I’m responsible; it’s just a little bee in my bonnet. But I can promise you that it’s nothing that a perfectly respectable mother wouldn’t like her perfectly respectable daughter to be mixed up in.’
‘Then I suppose I shall have to be content with that, shan’t I?’ returned Mrs Purefoy serenely.
‘I say, do you mind frightfully? I’ll tell you like a shot if you really want me to.’
‘Of course I don’t! I was only teasing you. Now then, sit down and talk interestingly to me about the weather ’til the other two babies come back.’
‘I like you, Mrs Purefoy,’ said Roger frankly.
It was not ’til an hour later that Alec and Sheila returned. They marched in single file into the drawing-room, halted and right-turned.
‘All present and correct, Superintendent,’ announced Miss Purefoy, saluting briskly. ‘But I have to report Constable Grierson for a grave derewhatd’youcallit of duty, to wit and namely viz. that at half-past six on the twenty-first inst. prox. he did commit a grievous assault against the peace of our sovereign lord the King and of Superintendent Sheringham by endeavouring to shove his superior officer into the pond. I demand his immediate execution without bail.’
‘Not guilty, m’lud,’ said Alec promptly. ‘The woman tempted me and she fell. I didn’t shove her. I just blew at her.’
‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ Roger summed up, addressing the chair in which Mrs Purefoy was sitting, ‘you have now heard the evidence on both sides. The plaintiff’s case is that she paid for the pork-pie and obtained a receipt, which she has subsequently mislaid, while the defendant contends that the words uttered were true both in substance and in fact; it is for you to say which of them is speaking the truth. You will take the law from me. In order that the charge of arson can lie, you must first be satisfied in your own minds that the goods found on the plaintiff were not only in intention but also de jure the goods missed from the defendant’s shop on the date in question. I will now ask you to deliver yourselves of a verdict.’
‘M’lud,’ replied the jury, gathering up its knitting, ‘I must ask permission to retire—and leave you three silly children alone together which I know you’re wanting to be. No, don’t bother to be polite! In any case I’ve got to go and have a word or two with my cook.’
‘It’s rather nice, having a mother with a sense of humour, isn’t it?’ observed Sheila, as Alec closed the door behind the retiring jury. ‘It’s a thing so many mothers seem to lose, poor dears. Now then, Roger, tell us all about it! Did you kiss the Saunderson?’
‘Miss Purefoy!’
‘Well, did she kiss you, then? Perhaps that’s more like it—though I’m not a bit too sure.’
Roger turned pointedly to Alec. ‘Have you anything to report, Constable Grierson?’ he asked coldly.
‘He’s huffy, ’cos I spoke disrespectably about the Saunderson and he’s smitten with her,’ Miss Purefoy confided to that gentleman in a loud aside.
‘Not me,’ Alec replied. ‘I spent most of the afternoon shivering outside different places, waiting for Sheila to come out.’
‘Men always fall for the Saunderson,’ Miss Purefoy continued with much scorn. ‘She just makes a couple of goo-goo eyes at ’em, and down they go like blinking nine-pins.’
‘Alexander,’ Roger said with energy, ‘last night I believe you made a request of me. I refused. I’m sorry I refused, Alec. Is it too late to accept now?’
‘Not a bit! Three times a day, before or after meals, is the prescription. Wait while I fix her!’
‘No!’ squealed Miss Purefoy, repenting too late. ‘I’m sorry, Roger. I take it back. You never fell for her at all. You just kissed her without falling. No, Alec! What’s it got to do with you, anyway? Stop it, you brute! Let me go! Mother! Mother!’
With some difficulty Miss Purefoy was persuaded to arrive at the end of the couch and assume a position suitable for chastisement, her agonised appeals to the deity meeting with no response. With a rolled-up magazine Roger dealt with this first breach of discipline in his force.
‘Roger Sheringham,’ exclaimed the indignant recipient of his attentions when, very red in the face, she was allowed at last to regain her erect position. ‘I hate you worse than boiled beef. I won’t play detectives with you any more, and I think your books are tripe!’
‘There, my child,’ Roger returned equably, ‘I am more than disposed to agree with you; still, they sell well enough, and that’s the main thing, isn’t it? So now to business. It may interest you both to learn that I, at any rate, have had a most successful afternoon.’
‘Then you did—’ Sheila began, caught Alec’s eye and thought better of it. ‘Have you found out anything, dear Roger?’ she cooed in a voice of honey.
‘I have. A devil of a lot. And I’m going to find out a good deal more before very long. Seriously, you two, I’ve struck oil. Listen!’
He went on to give a condensed version of the conversation he had had with Mrs Saunderson, picking the facts like plums out of the dough of their surrounding emotion. Sheila, by a swift transition perfectly serious, listened as attentively and as gravely as Alec himself.
‘Half a minute!’ she interrupted, as Roger was nearing his conclusion. ‘Just say that again, will you? I want to get that quite clear. How many people were alone with him during that half-hour?’
‘For varying periods, no less than six—Mrs Saunderson, Mrs Allen, Brother William, Brother Alfred, Mary Blower and the nurse. Six for certain.’
‘Then, Mrs Bentley herself wasn’t?’ Alec asked.
‘So far as we know, that is so,’ Roger assented.
‘Then that clears her!’ Sheila cried.
‘Oh, no. Not in a court of law, it wouldn’t. The defence could make a point of it, no doubt, and a big point too; perhaps they intend to in any case. But the prosecution could tear it to shreds with the greatest ease.’
‘How?’
‘Well, for one thing we don’t know that she didn’t nip into his room. She had at least one opportunity, while that fool woman was in the library; probably others. So for that matter had anybody else—a point, by the way, which we mustn’t forget to remember! But the chief thing is that this question of the time before the symptoms of poisoning appear, is, as your father said, somewhat anomalous; that is to say, you can’t lay down a really hard and fast rule about it. In ninety-seven cases out of a hundred, perhaps, they would begin to show themselves in from an hour to half an hour after administration of the arsenic; in the remaining three they wouldn’t. Going by probabilities, Mrs Bentley is certainly cleared. But it’s only probability. One can’t say that there’s the least certainty about it. And “probability” as a defence in a court of law isn’t worth two pence, I fear.’
‘How do you mean?’ Alec asked.
‘Oh, it’s this futile attitude towards things known as “the legal mind”. To the legal mind a thing either is or it isn’t; there’s no half-way house, no “pretty nearly, but not quite,” no “rather less than more,” no “not exactly”; everything is either fact or non-fact. Any more absurd way to approach just the very problems that the courts are there to tackle I defy anybody to imagine. To put it in a nut-shell, the legal mind is absolutely lacking in any sense of proportion.’
‘This is too deep for me,’ said Sheila.
‘Well, I’ll try and give you a simple example of what I mean. Suppose there was some question about these quack electric belts that you see advertised everywhere and whose proprietors ought one and all to be shoved away in prison as common charlatans and thieves. (Would you believe it, but I know of a real case in which some wretched woman was taken in by the glibness of the advertisements and actually persuaded into parting with twenty pounds for one of the rotten things. Twenty pounds—for a thing not worth half a crown!) Well, supposing it was a question of the validity of one of these abominations, and a doctor was in the witness-box. This is the way the legal mind would go to work. He’d be asked, you see, whether this belt did or did not, as it claims to do, generate electricity when worn on the body; and he’d have to say “Yes!” Couldn’t help himself. It does, you see—just as drawing the tip of your finger across the tablecloth does; and just about the same amount. Any friction whatever generates electricity. ‘Aha!’ says the legal mind. ‘It does, does it? Then that’s all right. The thing is not a fraud. It says it generates electricity, and it does generate electricity. Fine anybody who says it’s a fraud a couple of hundred pounds, and whatever you do, make a precedent of it!’ Not a bit of use for the doctor to try to explain (if he ever gets the chance, which he certainly wouldn’t) that the belt doesn’t generate enough electricity to make a fly’s wings quiver. The legal mind doesn’t care a hang about that. It does generate electricity, and there’s an end of it.’
‘He’s getting all worked up,’ observed Alec to his fellow-listener.
‘Shut up, Alec! It’s jolly interesting. Go on, Roger.’
‘Well, take another example. Supposing a man had had nothing to eat for a whole day but a slice of bread. You’d say he had had something to eat, wouldn’t you?’
Sheila nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, now suppose it wasn’t a slice, but one single crumb, Would you still say he’d had something to eat?’
‘I—I don’t know. In a way, I suppose, but—!’
‘Well, finally suppose that it wasn’t even a crumb, but just a speck of bread, almost invisible to the naked eye. Would you still say that man had had something to eat that day, or not?’
‘No, I’m hanged if I would!’
‘Exactly; you wouldn’t. And nor would anyone else—who happened not to be afflicted with a legal mind! Nevertheless, on a strictly accurate statement of fact, that man had something to eat during that day; and that’s what the legal mind would tell you. Now then, what chance has Mrs Bentley got of being acquitted on a question of “probability”?’
‘Dam’ little,’ Sheila agreed.
‘And over and above all, don’t forget what I told you about her own solicitor. If he thinks her guilty, as I’m quite convinced he does, that means that he’s got precious little hope of an acquittal. And if anybody ought to be in a position to know how much her defence is going to be worth, certainly he should.’
‘And you say you’re going to be able to get at that, you think?’ Alec asked. ‘What her defence is going to be and her own explanations of all this business?’
‘Mrs Saunderson certainly knows what Mrs Bentley said about it all,’ Roger said, ‘and I imagine the defence is bound to be based on that. Whether I shall be able to worm it out of her remains to be seen. But in common fairness I ought to tell you,’ he added modestly, ‘that time and patience, when allied with Roger Sheringham, ought to work wonders.’
‘Roger,’ Sheila put in, ‘do tell me! Honestly, not ragging—did you kiss her?’
‘Miss Purefoy, you have a singularly prurient mind,’ Roger said coldly. ‘No, honestly, not ragging—I did not kiss her!’
‘Oh!’ said Miss Purefoy in frank disappointment. ‘You dud!’
‘Look here!’ Alec exclaimed suddenly. ‘Dash it all, Roger, we’ve been overlooking something tremendously important. Don’t you see? If Mrs Bentley didn’t do it, and always assuming she didn’t, then the person who did must have been one of those six!’
‘I’ve been wondering when one of my two bright subordinates was going to draw that rather shrieking deduction,’ Roger remarked tolerantly.
‘Oo!’ cried Sheila. ‘Who do you think did, Roger? I believe the nurse did.’
‘The nurse, my infant? Why the deuce do you think that?’
‘Because she’s the most unlikely person, of course. Don’t you know that it’s always the most unlikely person who committed the crime? Superintendent Sheringham, I’m surprised at you. What sort of a detective do you think you are?’
‘Talking about that, by the way, what sort of detectives are you between you? I’ve told you all my discoveries. I don’t seem to have heard anything from you at all.’
‘Oh, we didn’t find out much. We tried three times to get hold of Dr James, but he was out each time.’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter about him now; I found all that out myself. Did you manage to collect any evidence about character? Not that that’s wildly important, in view of what we know about that crucial half-hour. Still, did you?’
‘Well, I saw a lot of her friends and people who knew her, and faked up a different excuse each time to bring the conversation round to her, but what’s the use? They’re all perfectly convinced she’s guilty, and I don’t think a single one of them had a good word to say for her.’
‘God save us from our friends indeed! Yes, that was the same with my lady. Not the least earthly use trying to get any information as to character out of her. In fact, by her description, Mrs Bentley was a monster. And I told her it was le mot juste, Heaven forgive me! So not to put too fine a point on it, you didn’t find out anything at all?’
‘Well,’ said Alec, ‘we did—’
‘Oh, let me tell him, Alec, there’s an angel! Yes, Roger, we did find out one thing that I’ve never seen mentioned anywhere before, though whether it’s the least importance or not I don’t know. Probably not, as we discovered it and not you. It’s this. Did you know that the servant who told them about the fly-papers, Mary Blower, was under notice to go?’
‘The devil she was!’ Roger exclaimed. ‘That’s interesting.’
‘Sheila!’ Mrs Purefoy’s voice reached them faintly. ‘Sheila! Time you were getting ready for dinner, dear!’