Case with No Conclusion (18 page)

“I was out all that day, and returned to the Cypresses only just in time to have a bath and change before dinner.”

“Did you go into the library?” asked Beef.

“To the best of my recollection, not at all. Over dinner there was a lively political discussion in which Wakefield distinguished himself by an effective, if somewhat aggressive, statement of his case. He is, as you probably know, what can best be described in my view as an anarchist.”

“Bombs and that?”

A very faint suggestion of a smile passed over the weary features of the prisoner. “Perhaps hardly bombs,” he admitted, “but destructive methods that are scarcely less dangerous. This paper of his admittedly aims at the downfall of our whole economic system, and of course I could have no sympathy with it. But Wakefield is an eloquent fellow, and his arguments were not without interest. We rose from the table almost reluctantly, and took our coffee in the library. It was here that my brother gave me a book he had brought with him; a fine edition of Omar Khayyám. He knew that I was an admirer of Fitzgerald's remarkable translation.
I remember that I read aloud several of my favourite stanzas.”

“Why did you choose that one about the tapster?” asked Beef. “I know a publican often does get a bad name, but I can't think why you should have read that out.”

Mr. Nicholson sighed. “Surely,” he suggested icily, “Mr. Ferrers's literary preferences at least are his own affair?”

“It was then that my brother and Wakefield put to me their suggestion that I should give financial backing to their paper. I was willing to do what I could for any enterprise of my brother's, but I did not feel, at the time, that my conscience would allow me to support this particular publication. On that matter I have, however, recently changed my mind and decided that I will do what I can for my brother's sake.”

“Was there any nastiness about it?” asked Beef.

Stewart seemed remarkably patient in spite of the double strain which was being imposed on him. “Very little was said,” he explained. “The request was made, and refused, in a few words. At half-past nine, or thereabouts, my brother and Wakefield said good night and left the house, and I found myself alone with Dr. Benson.”

B
EFORE
you go any further,” began Beef, “let's hear what you've got to say about this Doctor Benson.”

For the first time Stewart Ferrers seemed to have been made uncomfortable by the question. He hesitated a moment, and I noticed that on his large pale forehead there were signs of perspiration.

“Benson had been our doctor for a good many years,” he said, “and we had never had any complaint about his professional abilities. There was a suggestion, I believe, that he drank rather more than was good for him, and my friend the Vicar (an excellent fellow, Smyke) disapproved of his advocacy of cremation. But otherwise there was little that could be said against him. I cannot describe him as a close personal friend, but I liked to have him to the house from time to time in common courtesy. But that evening would, in any case, have been the last time I should have invited him.”

“Why?” said Beef loudly.

“Because,” Stewart explained in his cold, precise voice, “he made a most extraordinary suggestion to me as soon as we were alone. He hinted that there had been some sort of friendship between me and his wife, a lady with whose acquaintance I
had scarcely been honoured, and (if I must be frank) whose personality, so far as I understood it, met with my disapproval.”

I thought I noticed an exchange of glances between the two brothers which looked anything but friendly to me.

“Why, what was wrong with her?” said Beef.

“I don't think we had better discuss that,” said Stewart, “if you don't mind. Suffice it to say that I should not have wished my name to be associated with hers even had she not been a married woman. But Benson claimed to have heard a rumour of a most ridiculous kind which suggested that I had been in her company several times, and I naturally resented the suggestion, and told him so.”

“So you had a bit of a row, then?”

“Well, I see no point in concealing the fact. Our argument was certainly acrimonious. To suggest that it led, or could have led, to any sort of violence on my part is, of course, preposterous. But we certainly disagreed”

“Now we come to something, Mr. Ferrers,” said Beef, watching the prisoner very closely, “about which I want a straight answer, if you don't mind. Duncan distinctly heard Benson use this sentence, ‘It's in my surgery now.' What did he mean by that?”

I think we were all watching Stewart more closely then than at any other time during the interview, for Beef had succeeded in bringing out this question with an air of great importance. I was certain that it embarrassed Stewart Ferrers acutely. He hesitated, then:

“I don't know,” he said. “I cannot possibly reconstruct a whole conversation held weeks ago, and remember every phrase that was used in it. It might have referred to anything. I'm sorry I can't help you there.”

“But surely you must know what he was talking about,” continued Beef. “I mean, even if it was something you'd lent him, you'd know what it was.”

“I have told you I don't know,” said Stewart, his voice rising to a higher pitch, and Nicholson again interrupted.

“Mr. Ferrers must not be irritated by these senseless inquiries,” he said.

“All right,” conceded Beef, “only I'd like to remind you that I'm trying to help him. But I've got to ask something else that's going to upset him, I'm afraid.” He used the rhetorical pause with deadly effect, and then came out, as if blundering, with the blunt query, “How was it there was arsenic in the whisky that night?”

I was sitting next to Stewart Ferrers, and I am convinced that he was trembling. I thought that if this question really hit him, however, he kept his head remarkably well.

“I have no conception as to what you can possibly mean by that suggestion,” he said stiffly.

Nicholson broke in. “What exactly do you mean?” he flashed, as though for the first time he was interested in the activities of Beef.

“I mean what I say. I could smell arsenic in that whisky, and I've got a sample of it at home now.”

“Are you suggesting that Benson was poisoned as well as stabbed, then?”

“No,” said Beef, “I don't suggest anything of the sort. I just wanted to know if Mr. Ferrers could account for it in any way.”

“I certainly cannot,” said Stewart Ferrers.

The atmosphere in that little, steam-heated room had grown almost too tense to bear. The bare distempered walls, the varnished furniture and the large radiator were oppressive enough in themselves, but the human element was even more disturbing. The strange attitude of brother to brother, I could not analyse. I was not sure if a blinding hatred was working underneath their cold civility, or if they were joined by some blood-bond which had now triumphed over their petty difficulties. But I was convinced that between them there was something unusual, something outside the range of normal human emotions. Nicholson, who I felt to be a competent lawyer, was plainly bewildered by Beef, and by the suggestion that Beef was making. He seemed to wonder whether to dismiss the Sergeant as a blunderer more likely to bring trouble to his client than help, or whether to take him seriously. I myself, apart from the necessity of remaining a dispassionate observer, was genuinely at sea.

“All right, we'll leave that,” said Beef. “What time did he go?”

“I've calculated that as accurately as I can and given the police the result. I should say it was about a quarter-past eleven.”

“You parted friendly?”

There was another hesitation. “We were never friendly,” said Stewart at last.

“You saw him out, did you?”

“Yes, I went to the front door with him. He'd been expecting his car to be brought around but presumed, I remember, that it must have been taken up to his house. He walked off down the drive, and I shut the door behind him.”

“Did you bolt it?” asked Beef.

“No, it is never bolted. The servants have complete freedom outside their working hours, and each has a latch-key. I didn't know who was in and did not think it my business to wonder about that.”

“I daresay there's servants in many a house would be glad of that. Then you just left the front door locked with the Yale?”

“That's right.”

“How about the doors and windows and things?”

“It was Duncan's place to see to those. I had absolute confidence in Duncan.”

“Well, he's gone now,” reflected Beef. But this failed to elicit any reaction from Stewart, Peter or Nicholson. “What did you do then?”

“I went to bed,” said Stewart.

“Straight away?”

“I turned the light off in the library, and walked straight upstairs.”

“There was nothing unusual at all?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Are you a good sleeper?”

A troubled look crossed Stewart's face. “I haven't been here,” he said, “but until this all happened, I have always slept excellently.”

“So you dropped off quick, then?”

“As far as I can remember, almost at once.”

“Did you wake up in the night?”

“No, my bedroom was at the back of the house, and I slept without interruption until Duncan brought my tea in the morning.”

“So that's all you know about that evening?”

“Yes, that's all.”

Beef seemed to screw up his eyes. “What was that bit of paper found in your pocket, then, about some Saint and that?”

“I'm simply unable to account for it. I've already told this to Stute. I can only presume that somebody, anxious to incriminate me, had pushed it into my pocket.”

“You won't half have a job to make anyone believe that,” was Beefs comfortless reflection.

Nicholson squirmed slightly at this, but did not interrupt.

“Then, about that money,” said Beef. “There was five hundred pounds in single notes found up in your bedroom. What was they doing there?”

Stewart cleared his throat. “A little eccentricity of mine,” he said. “I was very fond of horse-racing, and went in for it on a fairly large scale. My position as a churchwarden made it inadvisable for me to run credit accounts with bookmakers, and I did my betting, cash, through Duncan. I kept these sums for this purpose.”

“Yes, but did you know there was another lot found beside Benson's body?”

I was certain this time that Stewart started. “The police never mentioned that.”

Beef chuckled. “The police didn't know nothing about it,” he said. “It was I and Mr. Townsend what followed a man half-way across Europe…”

“To Ostend,” I interrupted reprovingly.

“Well, Ostend then,” said Beef, “who brought that to light. How do you account for it?”

“I think it must have been in a drawer in my bureau. How it came to be beside Benson, I can't say.”

Beef had evidently finished his questions, for he snapped his notebook to and fixed the elastic band round it. “Well, Mr. Ferrers,” he said, “I'll do my best. But you make things very difficult, you know. There's a lot more things you could have told me…

Nicholson rose. “I think we've had enough of this,” he said.

“Very well,” said Beef, “it won't make no difference to my efforts. But you're leaving me to work in the dark, and work alone.”

Stewart seemed to be troubled by some inner doubt. “Perhaps if you came here alone,” he said in a very low voice.

“I couldn't allow that,” said Nicholson quickly. “I, after all, am responsible for your defence.”

Ferrers subsided again, and we left him with his face in his hands.

I
DON'T
know much about these things,” said Peter when we were out in the fresh air again, “but it strikes me that if you could find the bookmaker with whom these mysterious bets of my brother's were made, it would be useful evidence for the defence.”

“I'd sooner find the murderer,” said Beef. “But in the meantime I'm inclined to agree with you. Supposing we hopped down to Sydenham straight away?”

I sighed, for the thought of the faded grandeur of that suburb was not a welcome one to me. But Peter had agreed with a nod, and when we had dropped Nicholson at his office, we once again crossed the river.

For some time we went along in silence, with Beef, who was beside me in the front, casting apprehensive glances at any car which came within three feet of us. I disliked driving with Beef because he did so little justice to my more than average skill with a car in traffic. Suddenly he gave a low moan. “What's the matter?” I said quickly. Beefs only reply was a prolonged animal sound. He was leaning forward slightly in the seat, and had one hand thrust between his coat and waistcoat just below the heart.

“It's my stomach,” he said at last, “hasn't been the same since we come back from Ostend.”

“If you're referring to the food,” I said, slightly nettled, “in my opinion it was excellent.”

“Still, that's what it was,” said Beef. “Foreign cooking what's enough to turn anyone's stomach. You never know what they're giving you when they get it up all fancy like that. Stands to reason there must be something wrong with it when they have to serve it up in disguise, as you might say.”

Beef seemed to be ruminating over the subject for some time and his only remark during the next ten minutes was to the effect that he knew what would cure it, and since both Peter and I ignored this hint he lapsed into a sulky silence, and seemed to be performing the difficult task of bringing his mind back to the job. At last he turned to Peter as if he had suddenly remembered something.