Death in High Heels (9 page)

“And put the poison on the other plate then? No, you don’t, Sergeant. It would have been easy to do, I grant you, but Victoria didn’t go to that hot-cupboard at all. The cupboards are divided, one on each side of the hatch, and Victoria’s was in the one nearest to the table; the poisoned plate was in the other one.”

“As you like, sir. Well then, Miss Gregory; she actually took the plate out of the far cupboard and gave it to Miss Doon; she’d ’ave to take the tin cover-thing off the top, and there’d be ample opportunity for her to put poison on it then.”

“Yes, but no motive; she had the job they all wanted, and she had the luncheon party and from all accounts she was highly pleased with herself; what’s even more to the point, I don’t see how she could have got hold of any of the stuff. When she came in with Bevan she stayed outside the girls’ room where they were cleaning the hat and everybody agrees that she didn’t touch the crystals at all. She went straight downstairs and told the charwoman to go and clear up the mess. Then she went into the cloak room in the basement.”

“There’s no possibility of collusion, I suppose, with Mr. Cecil? He couldn’t have given her any of what he took?”

“No, he went downstairs with Mrs. ’Arris and out to the huh-hah, where I suppose he just put the stuff in his pocket and came back; anyway, he went straight upstairs again, and didn’t see Miss Gregory at all; Mrs. ’Arris was in the kitchen all the time. After that he was in the showroom holding an indignation meeting with the girls about the way Mr. Bevan had spoken to him.”

“Miss Gregory couldn’t have got hold of any from Mrs. Harris?”

“Mrs. ’Arris says she never set eyes on her the whole morning, except when the Gregory came down and told her to go and brush the stuff off the showroom floor. Besides, Bedd, have a heart; they were in the midst of an unholy row about the missing brooch; it wasn’t likely that Miss Gregory was going to approach the old girl and beg for the loan of a little poison for murderous purposes.”

“The brooch business might have been a put-up job.”

“You’ve got a bee in your bonnet about Gregory; how could it have been a put-up job when they can’t possibly have known that the poison was coming into the place?”

“Well, all right, sir. Miss Gregory’s out and the two young ladies is out; Victoria David and Irene Best What about this ’ere Macaroni?”

“I believe she’s out too. She took the stuff she was given straight down to Miss Doon and handed it over to her, as she says she did; because Bevan told me that Doon mentioned it to him afterwards. And there it is now, just as the girls say they gave it to her; packet screwed up the same way and approximately the same amount of poison.”

“She might have picked some up in the scramble, after she dropped the lot they were cleaning the hat with.”

“No. Everyone agrees that she gave one yelp when she saw Bevan in the showroom and legged it downstairs as fast as she could lick. She certainly had opportunity to put poison on the plate, because it was she that put the plate in the hot-cupboard; and I supposed there may have been a motive mixed up in this business of the brooch, though I think most of the suspicion had shifted to Mrs. ’Arris; but she couldn’t have got any poison, I’m practically sure.”

“Well, then, she’s—A+B+C. Then there’s Mrs. ’Arris herself.”

“And she’s got everything, Bedd. Motive, ready-made; opportunity to obtain and ample opportunity to administer.”

“I don’t like to think it of the old girl, Mr. Charlesworth, straight I don’t.”

“Neither do I, poor old faggot. All the same, I’m afraid she’s Suspect No. 1. Let’s see how the list looks now.”

The sergeant licked a stub of pencil and made a laborious table. “Minus A for Irene,” pointed out Charlesworth, looking over his shoulder. “She was nowhere near the table where they were cleaning the hat; she couldn’t have had any poison.”

“She was in the room, sir.”

“Yes, but she never touched the crystals, Bedd. Everyone says that. She is supposed to have picked a few up off the floor, but Mrs. Gay says there was hardly any there, and she herself only got a few of the bigger grains; the rest you couldn’t get hold of … they were swept up with a vacuum cleaner next morning.”

“Anyway, it ’ardly matters, sir, as she’s minus B as well. ’Ere you are, Mr. Charlesworth, in order of suspicion.”

He presented the list with pride and Charlesworth gazed at it hopefully.

Opportunity	Opportunity
to Obtain	to Administer	Motive
Mrs. Harris	+    A	+    B	+    C		Probable
Mr. Cecil	+    A	+    B	+   ?C
Mr. Bevan	+    A	+    B	+   ?C
Rachel	+    A	+    B	—    C		Possible
Aileen	+    A	+    B	—    C
Judy	+    A	+    B	—    C
Gregory	—    A	+    B	—    C		Impossible
Macaroni	—    A	+    B	+    C
Victoria	—    A	—    B	—    C
Irene	—    A	—    B	—    C

“So what?” said Sergeant Bedd at last, having recently been to the pictures.

4

Cecil lived in a block of flats in Bayswater, not one of those great rabbit-warrens but a little nest of bijou service flats for bachelors. There was a good deal of pseudo-Tudor furniture in the hall and the lift was panelled and decorated to correspond. It worked, however, with twentieth-century efficiency and Charlesworth rang the bell of number 9 on the second floor.

Cecil appeared in a dressing-gown whose sickly yellow served only to heighten the extraordinary pallor of his face. The lock of hair fell more limply than ever over his furrowed brow and he frequently, during the conversation that followed, forgot all about tossing it back. His flat was in a state of chaotic, disorder; nails and tin-tacks were naked upon the walls as though innumerable pictures and draperies had been recently torn from them; a solitary photograph stuck out here and there, the book-shelves were empty and half a dozen occasional tables did nothing but take up room. Charlesworth sat down gingerly in a Victorian rocking-chair and, motioning away the grospoint footstool which Cissie solicitously placed beneath his feet, proceeded to open fire.

“Mr. Cecil, I must explain that I wasn’t entirely satisfied with what you told me yesterday about your disposal of that oxalic acid. I want you to repeat to me exactly what you did after Mr. Bevan asked you to have it swept up.”

“I put it down the huh-hah, Inspector, as I said.”

“Begin at the beginning, will you? Mrs. Harris swept it up and gave it to you? All of it?”

“Oh, yes, Inspector; she swept it right into her dustpan and then tipped it out on to a piece of white paper; there wasn’t any left in the pan or on the floor.”

“You’re quite sure of that?”

“Oh, yes, I am, and you can ask the girls; they were there too … naughty things, they should never have brought it in.”

“Did Mrs. Best help to pick it up?”

“Nobody touched it, Inspector; I was standing there watching it until Mrs. Harris came upstairs, and Irene was sitting in her corner all the time.”

“And then you carried it straight down to the lavatory in the area?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see anyone on the way?”

“On the way? Of course not, Inspector, there was no one to see.”

“You didn’t speak to Miss Gregory?”

“No, I didn’t even see her.”

“So that nobody can say whether or not you had the poison in your hand?”

“Mrs. Harris may have noticed it; she followed me down the stairs.”

“And she would have seen you come back with it in your pocket?”

“Yes, she was in the … no, I mean, of course not. I didn’t have it in my pocket.”

“There are traces of it in the lining.”

Cecil regarded him with terrified brown eyes. “There can’t be! There aren’t.…”

“Oh, yes, there are.”

For a moment he thought that Cecil was going to faint; but after a long silence a cunning look crept over the pallid face and he suggested, like a child trying out a story which it hardly hopes will be believed: “Perhaps I put the hand holding the poison into my pocket as I went downstairs. I may easily have done that… in fact, now I come to think of it, I do believe that I unconsciously …”

From this bright suggestion he would not be budged.

Four

1

B
EFORE
the shop opened next morning, Charlesworth was on the threshold of Christophe et Cie. Judy came forward, still in her outdoor coat, and opened the silver door. “You’re a bit early, Mr. Charlesworth! We haven’t started the day yet.”

“I’m in rather a hurry this morning, but I wanted to see Mr. Bevan for a minute. Is he in?”

“I shouldn’t think so, but I’ve only just got here myself. Would you like to go over to his office and see; you know the way by now, I should imagine.”

She ran downstairs. Charlesworth walked quickly across the heavy carpet and lifted his hand to knock at the door of Bevan’s room; he dropped it again as a voice came from within, speaking low and tenderly: “Haven’t you got a kind word for me this morning, after I’ve taken all the trouble to get here early so as to talk to you? Not even a little kiss?”

“Not a sausage,” said a nasal voice, and there was a gurgle of soft laughter.

Charlesworth strolled back to the door. Aileen! Aileen and Bevan! The key was still in the silver lock and he turned it and went out to the car. After a moment’s thought he cancelled his original plans and headed for Bevan’s flat.

Maryland Mansions was a block of flats larger but not less pretentious than Cecil’s bijou nest. It took a good deal of time to sort out the night-watchman on Bevan’s stairway from an army of porters, remarkable rather for the splendour of their uniform than for their physique; but at last Charlesworth ran him to earth, breakfasting in a dingy room next to the boiler-house; and, once discovered, he was delighted to air his views.

“Come right in, sir, and sit down. It’s a bit ’ot in ’ere, account of the furnaces next door, but you get used to it. Excuse me going on with me meal, but I just got off duty, see; bit of excitement we’ve ’ad with this ’ere murder in Mr. Bevan’s shop. Reporter, is it?”

“Police,” said Charlesworth, briefly.

“Oh, p’lice. That’s different. I don’t mind telling you I wouldn’t ’ve said much if you was from the Press,” said the night-watchman hurriedly; “you ’as to be careful in a thing like this. Libel and such. Not but what you can’t be libelled for telling the truth and the truth is ’e’s been at ’ome both nights
and all
night since the murder was done. For murder it was, sir, mark my words; tired of ’er, that’s what it was, and ’aving a bit of a lull now, before takin’ up with ’is new paramore.”