I“I ’ve got what I could, sir.” So Sergeant1 Hay reported. “The marmalade, bit of the ham. Samples of tea, coffee andsugar, for what they’re worth. Actual brews2 have been thrown out by now, of course, but there’s one point. There wasa good lot of coffee left over and they had it in the servants’ hall at elevenses—that’s important, I should say.”
“Yes, that’s important. Shows that if he took it in his coffee, it must have been slipped into the actual cup.”
“By one of those present. Exactly. I’ve inquired, cautious like, about the yew3 stuff—berries or leaves—there’s beennone of it seen about the house. Nobody seems to know anything about the cereal in his pocket, either . . . It just seemsdaft to them. Seems daft to me, too. He doesn’t seem to have been one of those food faddists who’ll eat any mortalthing so long as it isn’t cooked. My sister’s husband’s like that. Raw carrots, raw peas, raw turnips4. But even hedoesn’t eat raw grain. Why, I should say it would swell5 up in your inside something awful.”
The telephone rang and, on a nod from the inspector6, Sergeant Hay sprinted7 off to answer it. Following him, Neelefound that it was headquarters on the line. Contact had been made with Mr. Percival Fortescue, who was returning toLondon immediately.
As the inspector replaced the telephone, a car drew up at the front door. Crump went to the door and opened it. Thewoman who stood there had her arms full of parcels. Crump took them from her.
“Thanks, Crump. Pay the taxi, will you? I’ll have tea now. Is Mrs. Fortescue or Miss Elaine in?”
The butler hesitated, looking back over his shoulder.
“We’ve had bad news, ma’am,” he said. “About the master.”
“About Mr. Fortescue?”
Neele came forward. Crump said: “This is Mrs. Percival, sir.”
“What is it? What’s happened? An accident?”
The inspector looked her over as he replied. Mrs. Percival Fortescue was a plump woman with a discontentedmouth. Her age he judged to be about thirty. Her questions came with a kind of eagerness. The thought flashed acrosshis mind that she must be very bored.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you that Mr. Fortescue was taken to St. Jude’s Hospital this morning seriously ill and hassince died.”
“Died? You mean he’s dead?” The news was clearly even more sensational8 than she had hoped for. “Dear me—this is a surprise. My husband’s away. You’ll have to get in touch with him. He’s in the North somewhere. I dare saythey’ll know at the office. He’ll have to see to everything. Things always happen at the most awkward moment, don’tthey.”
She paused for a moment, turning things over in her mind.
“It all depends, I suppose,” she said, “where they’ll have the funeral. Down here, I suppose. Or will it be inLondon?”
“That will be for the family to say.”
“Of course. I only just wondered.” For the first time she took direct cognisance of the man who was speaking toher.
“Are you from the office?” she asked. “You’re not a doctor, are you?”
“I’m a police officer. Mr. Fortescue’s death was very sudden and—”
She interrupted him.
“Do you mean he was murdered?”
It was the first time that word had been spoken. Neele surveyed her eager questioning face carefully.
“Now why should you think that, madam?”
“Well, people are sometimes. You said sudden. And you’re police. Have you seen her about it? What did she say?”
“I don’t quite understand to whom you are referring?”
“Adele, of course. I always told Val his father was crazy to go marrying a woman years younger than himself.
There’s no fool like an old fool. Besotted about that awful creature, he was. And now look what comes of it . . . A nicemess we’re all in. Pictures in the paper and reporters coming round.”
She paused, obviously visualizing10 the future in a series of crude highly coloured pictures. He thought that theprospect was still not wholly unpleasing. She turned back to him.
“What was it? Arsenic11?”
In a repressive voice Inspector Neele said:
“The cause of death has yet to be ascertained12. There will be an autopsy13 and an inquest.”
“But you know already, don’t you? Or you wouldn’t come down here.”
There was a sudden shrewdness in her plump rather foolish face.
“You’ve been asking about what he ate and drank, I suppose? Dinner last night. Breakfast this morning. And all thedrinks, of course.”
He could see her mind ranging vividly14 over all the possibilities. He said, with caution:
“It seems possible that Mr. Fortescue’s illness resulted from something he ate at breakfast.”
“Breakfast?” She seemed surprised. “That’s difficult. I don’t see how. . . .”
She paused and shook her head.
“I don’t see how she could have done it, then . . . unless she slipped something into the coffee—when Elaine and Iweren’t looking. . . .”
A quiet voice spoke9 softly beside them:
“Your tea is all ready in the library, Mrs. Val.”
Mrs. Val jumped.
“Oh thank you, Miss Dove. Yes, I could do with a cup of tea. Really, I feel quite bowled over. What about you, Mr.
—Inspector—”
“Thank you, not just now.”
The plump figure hesitated and then went slowly away.
As she disappeared through a doorway15, Mary Dove murmured softly:
“I don’t think she’s ever heard of the term slander16.”
Inspector Neele did not reply.
Mary Dove went on:
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Where can I find the housemaid, Ellen?”
“I will take you to her. She’s just gone upstairs.”
II
Ellen proved to be grim but unafraid. Her sour old face looked triumphantly17 at the inspector.
“It’s a shocking business, sir. And I never thought I’d live to find myself in a house where that sort of thing hasbeen going on. But in a way I can’t say that it surprises me. I ought to have given my notice in long ago and that’s afact. I don’t like the language that’s used in this house, and I don’t like the amount of drink that’s taken, and I don’tapprove of the goings on there’ve been. I’ve nothing against Mrs. Crump, but Crump and that girl Gladys just don’tknow what proper service is. But it’s the goings on that I mind about most.”
“What goings on do you mean exactly?”
“You’ll soon hear about them if you don’t know already. It’s common talk all over the place. They’ve been seenhere, there and everywhere. All this pretending to play golf—or tennis—And I’ve seen things—with my own eyes—inthis house. The library door was open and there they were, kissing and canoodling.”
The venom18 of the spinster was deadly. Neele really felt it unnecessary to say “Whom do you mean?” but he said itnevertheless.
“Who should I mean? The mistress—and that man. No shame about it, they hadn’t. But if you ask me, the masterhad got wise to it. Put someone on to watch them, he had. Divorce, that’s what it would have come to. Instead, it’scome to this.”
“When you say this, you mean—”
“You’ve been asking questions, sir, about what the master ate and drank and who gave it to him. They’re in ittogether, sir, that’s what I’d say. He got the stuff from somewhere and she gave it to the master, that was the way of it,I’ve no doubt.”
“Have you ever seen any yew berries in the house—or thrown away anywhere?”
The small eyes glinted curiously19.
“Yew? Nasty poisonous stuff. Never you touch those berries, my mother said to me when I was a child. Was thatwhat was used, sir?”
“We don’t know yet what was used.”
“I’ve never seen her fiddling20 about with yew.” Ellen sounded disappointed. “No, I can’t say I’ve seen anything ofthat kind.”
Neele questioned her about the grain found in Fortescue’s pocket but here again he drew a blank.
“No, sir. I know nothing about that.”
He went on to further questions, but with no gainful result. Finally he asked if he could see Miss Ramsbottom.
Ellen looked doubtful.
“I could ask her, but it’s not everyone she’ll see. She’s a very old lady, you know, and she’s a bit odd.”
The inspector pressed his demand, and rather unwillingly21 Ellen led him along a passage and up a short flight ofstairs to what he thought had probably been designed as a nursery suite22.
He glanced out of a passage window as he followed her and saw Sergeant Hay standing23 by the yew tree talking to aman who was evidently a gardener.
Ellen tapped on a door, and when she received an answer, opened it and said:
“There’s a police gentleman here who would like to speak to you, miss.”
The answer was apparently24 in the affirmative for she drew back and motioned Neele to go in.
The room he entered was almost fantastically overfurnished. The inspector felt rather as though he had taken a stepbackward into not merely Edwardian but Victorian times. At a table drawn25 up to a gas fire an old lady was sittinglaying out a patience. She wore a maroon-coloured dress and her sparse26 grey hair was slicked down each side of herface.
Without looking up or discontinuing her game she said impatiently:
“Well, come in, come in. Sit down if you like.”
The invitation was not easy to accept as every chair appeared to be covered with tracts27 or publications of areligious nature.
As he moved them slightly aside on the sofa Miss Ramsbottom asked sharply:
“Interested in mission work?”
“Well, I’m afraid I’m not very, ma’am.”
“Wrong. You should be. That’s where the Christian28 spirit is nowadays. Darkest Africa. Had a young clergymanhere last week. Black as your hat. But a true Christian.”
Inspector Neele found it a little difficult to know what to say.
The old lady further disconcerted him by snapping:
“I haven’t got a wireless29.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, I thought perhaps you came about a wireless licence. Or one of these silly forms. Well, man, what is it?”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you, Miss Ramsbottom, that your brother-in-law, Mr. Fortescue, was taken suddenly illand died this morning.”
Miss Ramsbottom continued with her patience without any sign of perturbation, merely remarking in aconversational way:
“Struck down at last in his arrogance30 and sinful pride. Well, it had to come.”
“I hope it’s not a shock to you?”
It obviously wasn’t but the inspector wanted to hear what she would say.
Miss Ramsbottom gave him a sharp glance over the top of her spectacles and said:
“If you mean I am not distressed31, that is quite right. Rex Fortescue was always a sinful man and I never liked him.”
“His death was very sudden—”
“As befits the ungodly,” said the old lady with satisfaction.
“It seems possible that he may have been poisoned—”
The inspector paused to observe the effect he had made.
He did not seem to have made any. Miss Ramsbottom merely murmured: “Red seven on black eight. Now I canmove up the King.”
Struck apparently by the inspector’s silence, she stopped with a card poised32 in her hand and said sharply:
“Well, what did you expect me to say? I didn’t poison him if that’s what you want to know.”
“Have you any idea who might have done so?”
“That’s a very improper33 question,” said the old lady sharply. “Living in this house are two of my dead sister’schildren. I decline to believe that anybody with Ramsbottom blood in them could be guilty of murder. Because it’smurder you’re meaning, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t say so, madam.”
“Of course it’s murder. Plenty of people have wanted to murder Rex in their time. A very unscrupulous man. Andold sins have long shadows, as the saying goes.”
“Have you anyone in particular in mind?”
Miss Ramsbottom swept up the cards and rose to her feet. She was a tall woman.
“I think you’d better go now,” she said.
She spoke without anger but with a kind of cold finality.
“If you want my opinion,” she went on, “it was probably one of the servants. The butler looks to me a bit of arascal, and that parlourmaid is definitely subnormal. Good evening.”
Inspector Neele found himself meekly34 walking out. Certainly a remarkable35 old lady. Nothing to be got out of her.
He came down the stairs into the square hall to find himself suddenly face to face with a tall dark girl. She waswearing a damp mackintosh and she stared into his face with a curious blankness.
“I’ve just come back,” she said. “And they told me—about Father—that he’s dead.”
“I’m afraid that’s true.”
She pushed out a hand behind her as though blindly seeking for support. She touched an oak chest and slowly,stiffly, she sat down on it.
“Oh no,” she said. “No. . . .”
Slowly two tears ran down her cheeks.
“It’s awful,” she said. “I didn’t think that I even liked him . . . I thought I hated him . . . But that can’t be so, or Iwouldn’t mind. I do mind.”
She sat there, staring in front of her, and again tears forced themselves from her eyes and down her cheeks.
Presently she spoke again, rather breathlessly:
“The awful thing is that it makes everything come right. I mean, Gerald and I can get married now. I can doeverything that I want to do. But I hate it happening this way. I don’t want Father to be dead . . . Oh I don’t. Oh Daddy—Daddy. . . .”
For the first time since he had come to Yewtree Lodge36, Inspector Neele was startled by what seemed to be genuinegrief for the dead man.
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1
sergeant
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| n.警官，中士 | |
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brews
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| n.（尤指某地酿造的）啤酒( brew的名词复数 )；酿造物的种类；（茶）一次的冲泡量；（不同思想、环境、事件的）交融v.调制( brew的第三人称单数 )；酝酿；沏（茶）；煮（咖啡） | |
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yew
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| n.紫杉属树木 | |
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turnips
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| 芜青( turnip的名词复数 )； 芜菁块根； 芜菁甘蓝块根； 怀表 | |
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swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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sprinted
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| v.短距离疾跑( sprint的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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sensational
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| adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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visualizing
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| 肉眼观察 | |
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arsenic
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| n.砒霜，砷；adj.砷的 | |
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12
ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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13
autopsy
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| n.尸体解剖；尸检 | |
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14
vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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15
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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16
slander
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| n./v.诽谤，污蔑 | |
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17
triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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venom
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| n.毒液，恶毒，痛恨 | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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fiddling
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| 微小的 | |
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unwillingly
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| adv.不情愿地 | |
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suite
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| n.一套(家具)；套房；随从人员 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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sparse
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| adj.稀疏的，稀稀落落的，薄的 | |
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27
tracts
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| 大片土地( tract的名词复数 )； 地带； （体内的）道； （尤指宣扬宗教、伦理或政治的）短文 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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wireless
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| adj.无线的；n.无线电 | |
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arrogance
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| n.傲慢，自大 | |
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distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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poised
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| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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improper
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| adj.不适当的，不合适的，不正确的，不合礼仪的 | |
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meekly
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| adv.温顺地，逆来顺受地 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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