In the Teeth of the Evidence (33 page)

    ‘But it
is
true, Auntie.’

    ‘You mustn’t say that, darling. I’ve told you ever so many times that it’s very nice to make up stories, but we mustn’t ever forget that it’s all make-believe.’

    ‘But I
did
see the fairy.’

    ‘If you say that any more, Auntie will be very cross with you—’

    ‘But I did, I did. I
swear
I did.’

    ‘Cyril!’ Mrs Tressider was definitely shocked. ‘That is a very wicked word to use. You must go straight to bed without your supper, and Auntie doesn’t want to see you again till you have apologised for being so rude and telling such naughty stories.’

    ‘But, Auntie—’

    ‘That will do,’ said Mrs Tressider, and rang the bell. Cyril was led away in tears.

‘If you please, ma’am,’ said Nannie, catching Mrs Tressider as she rose from the dinner-table, ‘Master Cyril don’t seem very well, ma’am. He says he has a bad stomach-ache.’

    Cyril did seem feverish and queer when his aunt went up to him. He was flushed and feverish, and his eyes were unnaturally bright and frightened. He complained of a dreadful pain under his pyjama-girdle.

    ‘That’s what happens to naughty little boys who tell stories,’ said Mrs Tressider, who had old-fashioned ideas about improving the occasion. ‘Now Nannie will have to give you some nasty medicine.’

    Nannie, advancing, armed with a horrid tumblerful of greeny-grey liquorice powder, had her own moral to draw.

    ‘I expect you’ve been eating them nasty old crab-apples out of the old garden,’ she remarked. ‘I’m sure I’ve told you time and again, Master Cyril, to leave them things alone.’

    ‘I didn’t eat nothing,’ said Cyril, ‘’cept the fairy feast in the palace with the leopard lady.’

    ‘We don’t want to hear about the leopard-lady any more,’ said Mrs Tressider. ‘Now, own up darling, that was all imagination and nonsense, wasn’t it? He does look feverish,’ she added in an aside to Nannie. ‘Perhaps we’d better send for Dr Simmonds. With Mr Tressider away, one feels rather anxious. Now, Cyril, drink up your medicine and say you’re sorry  . . .’

    When Dr Simmonds arrived an hour later (for he had been out when summoned) he found his patient delirious and Mrs Tressider thoroughly alarmed. Dr Simmonds wasted no time with liquorice powder, but used the stomach pump. His face was grave.

    ‘What has he been eating?’ he asked, and shook his head at Nannie’s suggestion of green apples. Mrs Tressider, white and anxious, went into details about the child’s story of the leopard lady.

    ‘He looked feverish when he came in,’ she said, ‘but I thought he was just excited with his make-believe games.’

    ‘Imaginative children are often unable to distinguish between fact and fancy,’ said the doctor. ‘I think he very probably did eat something that he shouldn’t have done; it would be all part of the game he was playing with himself.’

    ‘I made him confess in the end that he was making it all up,’ said Mrs Tressider.

    ‘H’m,’ said Dr Simmonds. ‘Well, I don’t think you’d better worry him about it any more. He’s a highly-strung child and he’ll need all his strength—’

    ‘You don’t mean he’s in any danger, Doctor?’

    ‘Oh, I hope not, I hope not. But children are rather kittle little cattle and something has upset him badly. Is Mr Tressider at home?’

    ‘Ought I to send for him?’

    ‘It might be as well. By the way, could you let me have a clean bottle? I should like to take away some of the contents of the stomach for examination. Just to be on the safe side, you know. I don’t want to alarm you – it’s just that, in a case of this kind, it is as well to know what one has to deal with.’

Before morning, Cyril was collapsed, blue in the face and cold, and another doctor had been called in. Tressider, when he hurriedly arrived by the midnight train, was greeted by the news that there was very little hope.

    ‘I am afraid, Mr Tressider, that the boy has managed to pick up something poisonous. We are having an analysis made. The symptoms are suggestive of poisoning by solanine, or some alkali of that group. Nightshade – is there any garden nightshade at Crantonbury Hall?’ Thus Dr Pratt, a specialist and expensive.

    Mr Tressider did not know, but said he thought they might go and see next day. The search-party was accordingly sent out in the morning. They discovered no nightshade, but Dr Pratt, prowling about the weed-grown kitchen garden made a discovery.

    ‘Look!’ he said. ‘These old potato-plants have got potato-apples on them. The potato belongs to the genus Solanum, and the apples, and sometimes even the tubers themselves, have occasionally given rise to poisonous symptoms. If the boy had happened to pluck and eat some of these berries—’

    ‘He did, then,’ said Dr Simmonds. ‘See here.’

    He lifted a plant on which a number of short stalks still remained to show where the potato-apples had been.

    ‘I had no idea,’ said Tressider, ‘that the things were as poisonous as that.’

    ‘They are not as a rule,’ said Dr Pratt. ‘But here and there one finds a plant which is particularly rich in the poisonous principle, solanine. There was a classical case, in 1885 or thereabouts—’

    He prosed on. Mrs Tressider could not bear it. She left them and went upstairs to sit by Cyril’s bedside.

    ‘I want to see the lovely leopard lady,’ said Cyril, faintly.

    ‘Yes, yes – she’s coming, darling,’ said Mrs Tressider.

    ‘With her leopards?’

    ‘Yes, darling. And lions and tigers.’

    ‘Because I’ve got to be King of the Fairies when I grow up.’

    ‘Of course you have, darling.’

    On the third day, Cyril died.

    The expert’s analysis confirmed Dr Pratt’s diagnosis. Seeds and skin of the potato-apple had been identified in the contents of the stomach. Death was from solanine poisoning, a remarkable quantity of the alkali having been present in the potato-apples. An examination of other berries taken from the same plants showed that the potatoes in question were, undoubtedly, particularly rich in solanine. Verdict: Death by misadventure. Children, said the coroner, were very apt to chew and eat strange plants and berries, and the potato-apple undoubtedly had an attractive appearance – like a little green tomato – the jury had no doubt often seen it in their own gardens. It was, however, very seldom that the effects were so tragic as in the present sad case. No blame could possibly attach to Mr and Mrs Tressider, who had repeatedly warned the child not to eat anything he did not know the name of, and had usually found him an obedient child in this respect.

Tressider, to whom nobody had thought to mention the story of the leopard lady, showed a becoming grief at the death of his little ward. He purchased a handsome suit of black and ordered a new saloon car. In this he went about a good deal by himself in the days that followed the inquest, driving, on one occasion, as far as Greenwich.

    He had looked up the address in the telephone-book and presently found himself rolling down a quiet riverside lane. Yes – there they were, on the right, two shabby green gates across which, in faded white lettering, ran the words:

SMITH & SMITH

REMOVALS

    He got out of the car and stood, hesitating a little. The autumn had come early that year, and as he stood, a yellow poplar leaf, shaken from its hold by the wind, fluttered delicately to his feet.

    He pushed at the gates, which opened slowly, with a rusty creaking. There was no avenue of poplars and no squat grey house with a pillared portico. An untidy yard met his gaze. At the back was a tumble-down warehouse, and on either side of the gate a sickly poplar whispered fretfully. A ruddy-faced man, engaged in harnessing a cart-horse to an open lorry, came forward to greet him.

    ‘Could I speak to Mr Smith,’ asked Tressider.

    ‘It’s Mr Benton you’ll be wanting,’ replied the man. ‘There ain’t no Mr Smith.’

    ‘Oh!’ said Tressider. ‘Then which of the gentlemen is it that has a very high, bald forehead – a rather stoutish gentleman. I thought—’

    ‘Nobody like that here,’ said the man. ‘You’ve made a mistake, mister. There’s only Mr Benton – he’s tall, with grey ’air and specs, and Mr Tinworth, the young gentleman, him that’s a bit lame. Was you wanting a Removal by any chance?’

    ‘No, no,’ said Tressider, rather hastily. ‘I thought I knew Mr Smith, that’s all. Has he retired lately?’

    ‘Lord, no.’ The man laughed heartily. ‘There ain’t been a Mr Smith here, not in donkey’s years. Come to think of it, they’re all dead, I believe. Jim! What’s happened to old Mr Smith and his brother what used to run this show?’

    A little elderly man came out of the warehouse, wiping his hands on his apron.

    ‘Dead these ten years,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’

    ‘Gent here thought he knowed the parties.’

    ‘Well, they’re dead,’ repeated Jim.

    ‘Thank you,’ said Tressider.

    He went back to the car. For the hundredth time he asked himself whether he should stop the cheque. The death of Cyril could only be a coincidence. It was now or never, for this was the 30th September.

He vacillated, and put the matter off till next day. At ten o’clock in the morning he rang up the bank.

    ‘A cheque’ – he gave the number – ‘for £1,000, payable to Smith & Smith. Has it been cashed?’

    ‘Yes, Mr Tressider. Nine-thirty this morning. Hope there’s nothing wrong about it.’

    ‘Nothing whatever, thanks. I just wanted to know.’

    Then he
had
drawn it. And somebody had cashed it.

    Next day there was a letter. It was typewritten and bore no address of origin; only the printed heading SMITH & SMITH and the date, 1 October.

‘
Dear Sir,

    ‘With reference to your esteemed order of the 12th July for a Removal from your residence in Essex, we trust that this commission has been carried out to your satisfaction. We beg to acknowledge your obliging favour of One Thousand Pounds (£1,000), and return herewith the Order of Removal which you were good enough to hand us. Assuring you of our best attention at all times,

       
‘Faithfully yours,                  

       
‘Smith & Smith.’

    The enclosure ran as follows:

    ‘I, Arthur Tressider of (here followed his address in Essex) hereby confess that I murdered my ward and nephew, Cyril Tressider, in the following manner. Knowing that the child was in the habit of playing in the garden of Crantonbury Hall, adjoining my own residence, and vacant for the last twelve months, I searched this garden carefully and discovered there a number of old potato-plants, some of them bearing potato-apples. Into these potato-apples I injected with a small syringe a powerful solution of the poisonous alkali solanine, of which a certain quantity is always present in these plants. I prepared this solution from plants of solanum which I had already secretly gathered. I had no difficulty in doing this, having paid some attention as a young man to the study of chemistry. I felt sure that the child would be tempted to eat these berries, but had he failed to do so I had various other schemes of a similar nature in reserve, on which I should have fallen back if necessary. I committed this abominable crime in order to secure the Tressider estates, entailed upon me as next heir. I now make this confession, being troubled in my conscience.

       
‘Arthur Tressider.

    ‘1 October, 193—’

    The sweat stood on Tressider’s forehead.

    ‘How did they know I had studied chemistry?’

    He seemed to hear the sniggering voice of Dr Schmidt: ‘Our organisation—’

    He burned the papers and went out without saying his customary farewell to his wife. It was not until some time later that he heard the story of the leopard lady, and he thought of Miss Smith, the girl with the yellow eyes like cat’s eyes, who should have been called Melusine.

THE CYPRIAN CAT

It’s extraordinarily decent of you to come along and see me like this, Harringay. Believe me, I do appreciate it. It isn’t every busy K.C. who’d do as much for such a hopeless sort of client. I only wish I could spin you a more workable kind of story, but honestly, I can only tell you exactly what I told Peabody. Of course, I can see he doesn’t believe a word of it, and I don’t blame him. He thinks I ought to be able to make up a more plausible tale than that – and I suppose I could, but where’s the use? One’s almost bound to fall down somewhere if one tries to swear to a lie. What I’m going to tell you is the absolute truth. I fired one shot and one shot only, and that was at the cat. It’s funny that one should be hanged for shooting at a cat.

    Merridew and I were always the best of friends; school and college and all that sort of thing. We didn’t see very much of each other after the war, because we were living at opposite ends of the country; but we met in Town from time to time and wrote occasionally and each of us knew that the other was there in the background, so to speak. Two years ago, he wrote and told me he was getting married. He was just turned forty and the girl was fifteen years younger, and he was tremendously in love. It gave me a bit of a jolt – you know how it is when your friends marry. You feel they will never be quite the same again; and I’d got used to the idea that Merridew and I were cut out to be old bachelors. But of course I congratulated him and sent him a wedding present, and I did sincerely hope he’d be happy. He was obviously over head and ears; almost dangerously so, I thought, considering all things. Though except for the difference of age it seemed suitable enough. He told me he had met her at – all places – a rectory garden-party down in Norfolk, and that she had actually never been out of her native village. I mean, literally – not so much as a trip to the nearest town. I’m not trying to convey that she wasn’t pukka, or anything like that. Her father was some queer sort of recluse – a mediaevalist, or something – desperately poor. He died shortly after their marriage.