Blue Murder (9 page)

“Man!” roared Macalistair, “There was no morphia in those powders!”

The whole room gasped, and even the coroner was taken aback.

“But Miss Hardstaffe has told us that everyone in the house knew there was morphia in them.”

“And who told them?” demanded the doctor. “Mrs. Hardstaffe, of course! And who told her? Did I? Certainly not! Nobody did tell her. She made it up so that she could impress her family and friends.”

The coroner made a last effort.

“Both Mr. Hardstaffe and his daughter were considerably worried about your patient being constantly in possession of morphia. Mr. Hardstaffe has told us that he mentioned this to you several times. Didn't you explain that the powders contained none?”

“And have him go off and tell his wife?” demanded Macalistair. “No. As long as she thought the powders were doing her good, she could pretend that there was strychnine in them for all I cared.”

“I see. And do you mind telling us what really was in the sleeping-powders?”

The doctor grinned like a happy schoolboy.

“Just powdered chalk with a pinch of sodium bicarbonate,” he said.

Superintendent Cheam walked around the drawing-room in the Hardstaffe's house waiting for Leda.

The room reminded him of Mrs. Hardstaffe.

It was too fussy altogether for that horsey-faced daughter of hers, he decided. The old lady must have done quite a bit of travelling in her time, though, to judge from the many little ornaments scattered in glass-topped cases and over occasional tables. What if she had bought some morphia abroad, and concealed it in that Chinese ivory thing, probably bought in Cannes and made in Birmingham?... No, too much like a book: real life was less picturesque.

And, thinking of books, what a queer thing that confession of Mr. Smith's had been. Had the fellow been trying to collect authentic details of police procedure, or was it one of those Looking-Glass murders, confession first, crime afterwards? A bit of a loony, in his opinion. Must be, if he was keen on Miss Hardstaffe as they were saying in the village.

Well, there was the huge armchair with its back to the big bow window, and there the knobkerri hanging on the left of the alcove. A nasty weapon. No man could recover from a blow on the head from that.

But, he reminded himself, he was not concerned with the murder of Mr. Hardstaffe with a knobkerri; he was investigating the poisoning of Mrs. Hardstaffe by morphia.

And where the blazes had that daughter of theirs got to? Did she think he had nothing to do but wait here all day? Well, well, a man didn't become a Police Superintendent unless he had patience.

A few minutes later the door opened, and Briggs came in apologetically.

“I can't find Miss Hardstaffe anywhere,” she said. “I think she must have gone out with the dogs.”

“Oh well, perhaps I'd better...” began Cheam, then, looking at the girl, he went on, “I wonder whether I could go upstairs to Mrs. Hardstaffe's bedroom? You could come along too, to make sure that I don't pinch anything, you know. Not that I'm likely to, unless it's those nice pink cheeks of yours.”

“Oh, Sup-er-in-ten-dent!” exclaimed Briggs in her high-pitched, off-duty voice. “And you with a daughter older'n me. Why, you're as bad as Mr. Hardstaffe, that you are!”

“Don't you be saucy, my girl, or I'll pinch something more than your cheeks,” returned Cheam. “Come along now, unless you think Miss Hardstaffe will object to me seeing over the rooms?”

“Oh no, I'm sure she won't,” said the maid, resuming her more serious manner. “How could anyone mind if it helps you to find out who murdered the poor mistress, and she such a kind, gentle lady who never harmed nobody.”

“And who said she'd been murdered?”

“I did, and I'll say it again. Murdered. You'll never make me believe she killed herself. She wasn't that kind. She
enjoyed
life, did Mrs. Hardstaffe.”

The Superintendent could think of no reason for such an extraordinary statement until he remembered that Briggs was one of those women whose chief pleasure is “a good cry.” He assumed that she had placed her late mistress' enjoyment of ill-health in the same category of morbid pleasure.

By this time they had gone out into the wide, square hall, and were ascending the stairs to the balcony overhanging it, from which the bedrooms opened.

“It's the second of the doors from the left,” Briggs explained. “The first one's the master's, the third one's the Best Spare, and the fourth is Mr. Smith's. Miss Leda's bedroom is round the corner, and so is mine and Cook's. But you'll know all about that, I expect: they've all been searched. My! but those men of yours are thorough, I will say. Cook says give them a vacuum cleaner and a few dusters and we'd have the spring-cleaning done in no time!”

Cheam unlocked the door of the second bedroom with a key he had taken from his pocket, and entered.

The bedroom still seemed to hold the pale, fleeting ghost of its late owner. Here, as in the room below, were the same scattered mementos of foreign countries, jostling alongside faded photographs of men and women, some of whom even Mrs. Hardstaffe must have forgotten.

“Why couldn't it have been suicide?” he asked suddenly.

Briggs started, then flushed.

“You fairly made me jump!” she exclaimed. ‘Why?... Oh, you mean what I said? Because if she'd wanted to do away with herself, she'd have done it long ago. Stands to reason. A woman doesn't live with a man like the master for all them years and wait until she's sixty before she clears out of it. I shouldn't have stood the way he talked to her in front of us servants, and mind you, Miss Leda did her share of talking, too. She hasn't got her father's temper—not but what I think sometimes it's worse to be kind of cool and callous, the way she is.”

The Superintendent did not seem to be listening. He walked across to the door connecting the two bedrooms and rubbed his little finger round the empty keyhole.

“What are you looking for?” asked Briggs suddenly suspicious.

“Grease,” replied Cheam, regarding his finger thoughtfully. “I seem to have found it, too.”

Briggs sniffed.

“Regular Mussolini, I shouldn't wonder,” she remarked, tossing her ‘permanent' curls. “I've got enough to do in this house as it is without cleaning keyholes out, and if you're looking for dirt, I can tell you right off that you'll find it. I've often told Miss Hardstaffe that she can't expect me to keep the place clean with only a half-daft German woman to help me. And those dogs!” She elevated a dainty nose. “They're always being sick or worse, on the carpets all over the house, making the place like a pigsty, and not healthy for decent folk to live in I say.”

A distant wailing disturbed the Superintendent's delicately thorough examination of the room.

“What's that? An air raid siren?” he asked.

“You like your little joke, don't you?” said the maid, with pert assurance acquired from the knowledge that she was addressing the father of the girl friend with whom she “walked out of a Sunday.” “You know as well as I do that we've got no sireens here. That's Mr. Stanton's little boy.”

“Sez which?”

“Aren't you dense this morning, Mr. Cheam! Mr. Stanton is the master's son, and it's his baby boy crying. Mr. Stanton came for the funeral, of course, and I must say he's nice. Good-looking like his mother, not like
him
. It's like a book really, him coming back after all those years to his old home like the prodigal son after he'd quarrelled with his father. They still hate each other, though. I ve seen them looking at each other at dinner. They smile and talk as pleasant as you please, but there's murder in their eyes.” She heaved a sentimental sigh. “Mr. Stanton's got such lovely eyes!”

Cheam turned on his heel, and walked out into the corridor, and into Mr. Hardstaffe's bedroom.

He walked round the room, noting the College Eleven photographs, the autographed oar suspended over the mantelpiece, the tasseled, moth-eaten cap.

Hardstaffe must have been Cox, with his build, thought Cheam. He must have been pretty fit for that. Perhaps it accounted for the old man's virility now, and his failure to take a degree then.

“Mrs. Hardstaffe must have been a very long-suffering  woman,” he murmured, forgetting that Briggs had followed him into the room.

“Oh, she was,” said the non-stop maid. “It was anything for peace for her. She couldn't stand all the shouting and raving that went on when the master got really roused up about anything. He could always get his own way by smashing something, but it usually belonged to her, poor thing!”

“Did she ever stand up to him?”

“Oh yes, she did. She was proud, and there were certain things she wouldn't stand at all. I don't think you ought to touch any of the master's things, Mr. Cheam. I shall get into trouble if he finds out.”

For the Superintendent was opening and searching the drawers of writing-table, tall-boy, and dressing-table.

“I'll deal with Mr. Hardstaffe,” he replied. “What wouldn't the old lady stand for?”

“We-ll... Miss Fuller, for one thing. And a fair old row they had about her, I can tell you.”

“When was this?”

“On Saturday night, the same night the poor mistress died.”

“That's strange,” remarked Cheam.

“I don't know that it was,” replied Briggs. “It isn't the first time by a long chalk that the mistress has ticked him off about his girl-friends.”

“I thought you said you weren't interested in keyholes,” said Cheam, pointedly.

Briggs tossed an indignant head.

“Nor I'm not. I never was one to go peering about other folks' business. But it's like this: they've got such loud voices in this house that you can't help hearing what they say even when the door's shut, if you're passing. But on Saturday, the door was open. The master had just gone to bed, and the mistress must have been waiting for him, though she'd been in her room for some time. You see, Miss Fuller was here to dinner, and when she went, the master went with her.”

“What time was all this?”

“Twelve o'clock or after. Miss Fuller went at about eleven o'clock. I'm usually in bed by ten o'clock, but when they have visitors, one of us has to stay up in case they ring for coffee or anything. It ought to have been Frieda's job but she doesn't seem able to keep awake after nine at night. Sleep and eat, that's all she does, the poor thing. So I sent her to bed and stayed up instead. I went along to see if the lights were switched off on the landing, and I saw the mistress standing in her dressing-gown and cap at the master's bedroom door.”

“Go on,” said Cheam.

“The door was open, and she was fairly giving it to him. She said she could see that he was up to his old tricks, and that she wouldn't have it. She said he'd had all her youth and he wasn't going to have any other woman's. She wouldn't have any more scandal in the village about his little ways. Everyone knew that he'd married her for money, she said, but if this affair with Miss Fuller went on, she'd take steps at once to see that he got none of it when she died. She said she'd go to see her lawyer on Monday. Then he must have laid hands on her, for she started to scream blue murder, and then I heard her go into her own room, and I went to bed.”

“May I ask what all this is about?” asked a cold voice from the doorway.

Briggs uttered a little squeal.

Cheam swung round to see Leda standing at the bedroom door wearing a holland overall over her black clothes, and muddied rubber Wellingtons. At her heel was the inevitable Sealyham—a puppy which, not yet having reached the age of suspicion, ran forward in wriggling ecstasy to lick the Superintendent's regulation boots.

“I know you have certain inquiries to carry out, Superintendent Cheam,” she said, pushing a grimy hand into her overall pocket to search for a cigarette, “but I think a certain politeness might be observed in the course of your duty. I should prefer you to ask for me personally whenever you wish to see anything in the house, rather than spend your time with this chattering girl.”

“I'm sorry, Miss Hardstaffe,” said Cheam. “Vicky did go to look for you, but she couldn't find you, so I took the liberty of asking her to let me come up to see the rooms. In a case of murder, you know, time is precious, and we have to come and go as we please.”

Leda frowned at Briggs.

“Vicky” indeed! she thought. The girl will be getting quite above herself.

“Stupid girl!” she exclaimed aloud. “You know perfectly well that this is my day for doing out the kennels. Down, Cherub, down!”

The puppy, thus admonished, stopped making frenzied snaps at Cheam's hand, and squatted in an unmistakable attitude in the very centre of the carpet.

“Cherub!”

Leda glanced half-apologetically at the Superintendent.

“She's only a puppy: she doesn't know any better,” she explained. Then, turning to Briggs, said, “Get something to clear it up.”

Briggs cast a disdainful look at the offending carpet, and walked out.

“I've finished up here, Miss Hardstaffe,” said Cheam, “but I should like to ask you a few questions if you can spare a few minutes. Perhaps you won't mind if I get one of my men to jot it down. It saves so much time.”

Leda nodded, and led the way downstairs. She went into the morning-room, where after a few minutes, Cheam joined her, followed by a police constable.

“I really don't see what I can tell you that I haven't said already at the inquest,” she said. “I'm still quite sure that there's been some ghastly mistake and that those powders did contain the morphia. I can't believe that anyone would want to murder Mother. She was really a very gentle woman.”