Poison In The Pen (15 page)

Miss Silver walked across the Green to fetch the few things that she would need for the night. Miss Wayne displayed some incredulity.

“You are going to stay at the Manor?”

“Miss Repton would like me to do so. It has been a great shock to her.”

Miss Renie’s handkerchief dabbed sketchily at eyes and nose.

“Oh, yes indeed—and to us all. But surely a stranger—one would have thought Lady Mallett, or at any rate a friend—”

“Lady Mallett was herself a good deal distressed. Sometimes it is easier to be with a stranger whose personal feelings are not involved.”

Miss Renie sniffed and dabbed.

“I should have thought that Mettie Eccles would have stayed.”

Miss Silver gave a slight reproving cough.

“I am afraid the shock has been worse for her than for anyone, since it was she who made the dreadful discovery.”

“I offered to wait and go home with her,” said Miss Renie. “The police wished to question her, and she was obliged to stay. I was feeling the shock a good deal myself, but I was perfectly willing to remain there with her. And all she said was, ‘For God’s sake let me alone!’ Really quite profane! After that, of course, I couldn’t say any more, could I?”

Whilst Miss Silver was putting a few things into a case Joyce Rodney came in. She shut the door and sat down upon the bed.

“Oh, Miss Silver, I’m so thankful I took David away.”

Miss Silver looked up from folding a warm blue dressing-gown.

“I think you did wisely, and I am sure he is very happy with your friend in Ledlington.”

“Oh, yes, he is. I’m so thankful I was there today, and not at the Manor. It must have been dreadful.” She hesitated, and then went on. “Penny Marsh came to see me this morning. She wanted to know whether I would take Connie’s place and help her to run the school.”

“Yes, Mrs. Rodney?”

Joyce Rodney made an impatient movement.

“I do wish you would call me Joyce! Everyone does.”

Miss Silver’s reply was kind but firm.

“I have told you that I do not consider it advisable.”

“Yes, I know. All the same I wish you would. When Penny spoke to me about the school I felt as if it might be a very good plan. Of course I couldn’t go on doing so much for Aunt Renie, but I would be able to pay for my board, and she could have extra help—only with these dreadful things happening—” She broke off, looked very directly at Miss Silver, and said, “About Colonel Repton—you were there when it happened. Was it suicide? Aunt Renie says it was—but was it?”

Miss Silver laid the dressing-gown in the suitcase.

“Neither Miss Wayne nor myself is in a position to say.”

“Well, you know, everyone says that he and Scilla had had a frightful quarrel, and that she was only waiting until after Connie’s funeral to clear out. They say he was going to divorce her.”

Miss Silver said mildly, “That scarcely appears to be compatible with suicide.”

“No, it doesn’t, does it? Frankly, I shouldn’t have thought anyone would kill himself because Scilla was walking out on him. Of course she’s pretty, but she doesn’t do a single thing that a man like Colonel Repton expects his wife to do—why, she doesn’t even keep house. And she’s got an odious temper.”

Miss Silver put a sponge, a nailbrush, a toothbrush, and a tube of toothpaste into a blue waterproof case which had been a last year’s Christmas gift from her niece by marriage, Dorothy Silver, who was the wife of Ethel Burkett’s brother. She said,

“Men do not take the same view of these things that we do. Mrs. Repton has the type of looks which is apt to render them indifferent to practical considerations.”

Joyce laughed.

“How right you are! And I was being thoroughly catty. I daresay she is all right against her own background, and she must have been hideously bored down here, but I do hate to see anyone take on a job and then not lift a finger to make a success of it. Look here, I’ll walk back across the Green with you and carry that case.”

It was when they were alone under the night sky with the empty Green stretching round them that Joyce Rodney said out of the middle of what had been quite a long silence,

“Miss Silver—about Colonel Repton—you never did say whether you thought it was suicide. Do you know, I don’t somehow feel as if it was. Florrie has been telling everyone that he said he was going to divorce his wife. Well, as you say, if he was going to do that he wouldn’t commit suicide, would he?”

To this bald but commonsense statement of a problem upon which she did not desire to enlarge, Miss Silver thought it best to observe in a noncommittal manner that suicide was sometimes due to a sudden impulse, and that there was not at present enough evidence to show how Colonel Repton had met with his death.

It was about this time that Valentine was saying to Jason Leigh, “He didn’t kill himself. Oh, Jason, he didn’t—he wouldn’t!” She stood in the circle of his arms and felt safe.

But outside of that charmed circle there was a world of which the foundations had been shaken. She had never known her father, and she could only remember her mother as someone very vague and shadowy who lay on a sofa, and then one day wasn’t there any more and Aunt Maggie said she had gone to heaven. But Roger had always been there, part of the established order of things. He was not at all exciting, but always a kind person round whom the house revolved. It had never occurred to her to think whether she loved him or not. Now that he was dead, it was like being in a house with one of the walls sheared off and letting in all the winds of calamity. She pressed against Jason and heard them blow, but they couldn’t touch her as long as he held her close. He said,

“I shouldn’t have thought he would either.”

“He didn’t. I am quite sure he didn’t. He talked to me about suicide once, and he said it was running away. He said he didn’t believe it got you out of anything either. It was shirking, and if you shirked you only made things harder for yourself and everyone else.”

“You had better tell that to the Chief Constable.”

“I have. He didn’t say anything. Jason, what is so frightful about it is that if he didn’t do it himself, there is only one person I can think of who would have done it.”

“Scilla? You’d better not go about saying that, darling.”

“As if I would! As if I wanted to! I’ve been trying not to say it to myself, but it keeps on coming back. There was a story I read once about a room in a house. Someone had been murdered there, and the door wouldn’t stay shut. It’s like that—about Scilla—in my mind. I try to shut it away, but the door won’t stay shut.” Her voice had gone away to just a breath against his cheek. They were so close that he couldn’t be sure whether he heard the words or just knew that she was saying them. He kept his own voice down, but it sounded too loud.

“Why should she?”

“He was going to divorce her. He told Maggie. That is why she looked so ghastly at the Work Party this afternoon—he had just been telling her. There was an affair—with Gilbert— and he had found it out.”

“Is that why you broke it off?” The words came hard and hot before he could stop them.

“No—no, it wasn’t. You’ve got to be quite sure about that, because it’s true. I didn’t know—I hadn’t any idea until that Wednesday night. When I left you and came back to the house they were in her sitting-room. I was coming in through the drawing-room window, and the door between the rooms wasn’t quite shut. I heard—something—and I oughtn’t to have listened—but I did. He was telling her it was over. He said he was—fond of me.”

“That was very kind of him.”

“It was quite horrid,” said Valentine with sudden vigour. “I came away after that. In the morning I got one of those poison-pen letters. It said Gilbert had been carrying on with Scilla. But you are never to think that that was when I made up my mind to break it off, because it wasn’t. It was quite, quite made up when I was with you in the gazebo. You told me I couldn’t marry Gilbert, and I knew I couldn’t. I knew it the way you know something that you don’t have to think about. It was just there.”

They kissed.

Miss Repton was better in the morning. She was in deep grief, but the sense of shock was lifting. She found herself able to read her Bible, and expressed a wish to see Mr. Martin, with whom she presently had a very comforting talk. It appeared he did not adhere to the school of thought which believed that those who passed away remained asleep in their coffins until the Day of Judgment, a belief which had been entertained by her parents and handed down to her by them. It had never occurred to her to question it before, but she found the Vicar’s more modern view very comforting indeed. She was also extremely grateful for the continued presence of Miss Silver, both on her own account and for the sake of Valentine. As she put it with rather touching simplicity,

“I do not wish to have unkind thoughts about anyone, and I have been praying to be delivered from any harsh judgments, but I am afraid that everyone will know by now that dear Roger was going to divorce his wife, and one can’t help wondering—no one can help wondering whether— whether—And it does seem more suitable that there should be somebody else with dear Valentine.”

Late in the morning the Chief Constable came over. He asked to see Miss Silver, and she came down to him in the study, where she found him looking out of the window. He turned as she came in, informed her briefly that the post mortem had established the fact that death was due to cyanide poisoning, and went on.

“Crisp saw the gardener last night, and he says it was used to destroy wasps’ nests near the house in July. Everybody knew it had been used. He had pointed the nests out to Roger Repton and told him something ought to be done about them or they would be over-run with wasps hatching out in August, and then what was going to happen to the fruit? Scilla Repton came along while he was talking and wanted to know all about it, and said she was scared of wasps. Was he sure there was something that would kill them, and what was it? In fact considerable interest was displayed, and when he was destroying the nests she came out and watched him. He said he had to tell her not to touch the stuff, because it was the worst kind of poison. Casting back to my interview with her yesterday, it seems to me that she rather overdid her ignorance of cyanide and all its works.”

Miss Silver had seated herself in the corner of the leather-covered couch which she had occupied at that interview. Then Scilla Repton in her tartan skirt and emerald jersey had been sitting by the writing-table. An excellent memory recalled the naive manner in which Scilla had stumbled over the very word. It had been “Cya what?—Cya stuff.” As she opened her flowered knitting-bag and took out little Josephine’s now almost completed cardigan she said gravely,

“I do not feel that too much attention should be paid to that. She is not a young woman of any education. She practically never opens a book, and her knowledge of current events is obtained from the more sensational headlines in the papers, a brief glance at the pictures, and the news-reel at the cinema. I think it more than possible that an unfamiliar word like cyanide would leave her mind as casually as it had entered it. It was, in any case, the possibility of a plague of wasps which she found interesting and alarming. The cyanide would only come into it as a means of averting that threat.”

March had taken the opposite sofa corner. He said grimly,

“Unless it occurred to her that it could be used to remove an inconvenient husband as well as a wasps’ nest.” Then, with half a laugh, “She is everything you don’t like, but you’ll put the case for her with scrupulous fairness, won’t you?”

She smiled.

“Naturally, my dear Randal.”

“Well, now that you have discharged your conscience, suppose you tell me what you really think.”

She knitted for a while in silence.

“I suppose,” she said, “that you can see what is on the surface as well as I can. Her looks have been cultivated to the utmost, her mind has not been cultivated at all. I do not know what her parentage may have been, but I think she has had to fend for herself from an early age. Miss Maggie tells me that no relations have ever been mentioned, no old friends have ever been asked to stay. She has been a show girl and a mannequin, a precarious and intermittent form of employment and a very bad preparation for life in the country as the wife of an impoverished landowner nearly double her age. She may well have felt that she had made a disastrous mistake, especially if she was attracted by Mr. Gilbert Earle. I do not think that she had any affection for her husband, or for his family. Miss Maggie tells me that Colonel Repton made a settlement on her at the time of the marriage. It amounted to about two hundred a year. She may have felt two hundred a year and her freedom preferable to a continuance of her life at the Manor, where she had no ties either of affection or interest. All this is arguable, but in all of us there are certain factors which set a barrier between what we would prefer and what we are prepared to do in order to obtain that preference. A young woman might wish to be free and independent, and yet be quite incapable of murder as a means to that end.”

He nodded.

“As to the settlement, I’ve been seeing Repton’s solicitors this morning. They are an old Ledlington firm, Morson, Padwick, and Morson. I had an extremely interesting talk with Mr. James Morson, the head of the firm. Scilla Repton would have forfeited her settlement if she had been divorced for adultery. Asked whether she were aware of this fact, Mr. Morson looked down his nose and said he had personally made it his business to explain it to her at the time the settlement was made, pointing out the words dum casta and telling her what they meant. He had been a good deal scandalized by the fact that she had immediately burst out laughing and said in a drawling voice, ‘Oh, then, if I get bored with Roger and run away with somebody else I don’t get a bean. What a shame!’ So you see she was perfectly well aware that she would be left penniless if he divorced her. And he had not only told her that he was going to divorce her, but he had informed his sister and his solicitor. I gather that she had been meeting Earle in the flat of a complaisant friend, of which evidence would probably have been forthcoming. Now so far everything rather adds up against her, but yesterday morning Roger Repton went in to Ledlington and altered his will.”

Miss Silver knitted placidly.

“Indeed, Randal?”

He could not believe her to have missed the implication, but he proceeded to put it into words.

“He altered his will and cut her right out of it. He insisted on doing it then and there in what Mr. Morson had obviously considered a very precipitate manner. Now—point one—it might be argued that this is evidence of an intention to commit suicide. And—point two—when he saw his wife in the study some time within an hour of his death and Florrie heard them quarrelling, did he, or did he not, tell her that he had altered his will? Because if he did, and she knew he had cut her out of it, her interest in his death would be considerably reduced, whereas if she only thought he was going to alter it, it would be very much enhanced.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“There is, of course, no evidence upon either point. But suppose him to have informed her of the change in his will. She would certainly have been extremely angry. It must by then have been after four o’clock. The cyanide was, in all probability, already in the stoppered decanter. If it was added to the contents by Mrs. Repton, this may have been done much earlier in the afternoon, or during that very interview at some moment when Colonel Repton’s attention had been diverted. His death had in either case already been resolved upon, and the means were to hand. Would an angry young woman who had planned her husband’s death be in any state to weigh the alternative advantages of pursuing this plan or changing it? If he lived to divorce her, she would lose her settlement. If he died now, she might, or might not, be able to keep the settlement. That, I suppose, would depend upon the line taken by the family and the amount of evidence as to her infidelity. I think it would probably appear to her that she would keep it, because if he were dead he couldn’t divorce her. As to the will, had he any considerable amount to leave?”

March said,

“Very little. As there is now no male heir, the estate, including the farms from which practically all his income was derived, passes under the entail to Valentine Grey. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for her very generous contributions, the place would have had to be sold long ago. Scilla Repton probably knew all this.”

Miss Silver pulled upon the ball of blue wool. She said,

“It is common knowledge, Randal. I had not been here twenty-four hours before Miss Wayne had told me very much what you have told me now.”

“Then you think she did it?”

“I think we may say that there was a good deal of motive. She was threatened with divorce and with the loss of her settlement. She was also threatened with the loss of her lover. I do not know to what extent her feelings were involved, but Mr. Earle is an attractive young man who is said to have a career before him, and he is the heir to a title. Even nowadays he could not afford to marry a woman about whom there had been a serious scandal. As Roger Repton’s widow she would be in a much more eligible position.”

“Yes, that is true.”

“So much for the motive. As to the opportunity, it would of course have been easier for her than for anyone else to add cyanide to the contents of the decanter. It could have been done in the morning when Colonel Repton was out, or at any time during the afternoon when he was absent from the study for a few minutes. This is also true about anyone else in the house, but nobody else appears to have any motive. Apart from the household, two other people would have had the opportunity required.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Two?”

“Mr. Barton and Miss Eccles.”

He shook his head.

“Well, doesn’t the same thing apply? What motive could either of them have had?”

Miss Silver’s needles clicked.

“The one which we have not touched upon, the one which I believe to have been the real motive for the deaths of both Colonel Repton and Connie Brooke. Each was believed to have identified the author of the poison-pen letters. In the case of Colonel Repton there may have been contributory motives. If it was his wife who poisoned him, there certainly were. He told her he knew who had written the letters, and he said, ‘Perhaps you wrote them yourself. It would be one way out of Valentine’s marriage and of your own.’ This was at the height of a violent quarrel, and may not have been very seriously meant. He did not repeat it to Miss Maggie when he told her that his wife had been unfaithful to him.

In the meanwhile Florrie’s story of the quarrel had gone all round the village, and it was being repeated everywhere that Colonel Repton knew who had written the letters. His death followed, just as Connie Brooke’s death followed upon the rumour that she possessed the same knowledge. I find it difficult to dissociate the two cases. Therefore, unless Mrs. Repton was the writer of the letters, I am disinclined to believe that it was she who poisoned her husband.”

“According to Florrie he accused her of having written them.”

“Not quite in that way, I think, Randal. What she put in her statement was that Colonel Repton had received one of the anonymous letters, and that it had accused Mrs. Repton of having been unfaithful to him. She then continued, ‘Mrs. Repton said it was all lies, and the Colonel said it was a filthy letter about a filthy thing, and he knew who wrote it. And Mrs. Repton said who was it then? And the Colonel said wouldn’t she like to know, and perhaps she had done it herself, because that would be one way of breaking off Miss Valentine’s marriage and getting out of her own.’ You see, it was more of a taunt than a direct accusation, and he did not repeat it to his sister.”

“I don’t know that that proves anything. His personal reaction to her infidelity could very well have been uppermost in his mind, with the anonymous letters a good deal in the background. And if it wasn’t Scilla Repton who poisoned him, who was it?”

She said soberly, “We were talking of Mr. Barton and Miss Eccles, both of whom are to some extent linked with the deaths of Connie Brooke and Colonel Repton. I do not say that either of them is guilty, but in each case there was opportunity.”

“Barton?” His tone was one of surprise. “Well, he certainly saw Repton within a very short time of his death, but he was, according to Florrie, received on the friendliest terms, and there is no evidence of a quarrel or of any other motive. He had every reason to feel grateful to Repton, who had been a very good friend to him. I believe he was devoted to him. I saw him after I left here last night, and I am sure that the news of Repton’s death was a severe shock. And what possible connection could he have with Connie Brooke?”

“None, unless he was the writer of the anonymous letters. A very strong one if he was. And there is this slight connection. On the Wednesday night—that is, the night on which Connie Brooke met her death—I had put out the light and I was opening my bedroom window. The party at the Manor was breaking up. I saw two or three cars go away, and I saw Mr. Barton come home from one of his nocturnal rambles. He had his cats with him, and he came from the far end of the Green—that is, from the direction of Connie Brooke’s house. It proved no more than that he was in that neighbourhood at a time when, provided he had access to the house, he could have drugged her cocoa.”

Randal smiled.

“It is scarely evidence.”

She continued to knit.

“I do not advance it as such. I have mentioned it because I do not wish to keep anything back. I think, however, that with regard to Mr. Barton you have by no means told me all you know about him.”

He nodded.

“No, I haven’t. And I am in two minds whether to tell you now. If I were not a good deal more sure of your discretion than I am of my own, I would hold my tongue. As it is, I am going to tell you. Barton isn’t the chap’s real name. There isn’t any need to tell you what it is, but you will probably remember the case. I think we’ll just go on calling him Barton. He got a commission from the ranks of the battalion in which Repton was. A year or two later they were on foreign service in the Far East, a gruelling sort of job. Barton got a nasty face wound which left him badly scarred. Then he had sunstroke and was invalided home. He found his wife living with another man, and he killed them both—pitched the man out of the window and strangled the woman. There is no doubt that he was not sane at the time. They sent him to the Criminal Asylum at Broadmoor, and after some years he was released. Repton let him have this cottage at a peppercorn rent and has befriended him in every way. He could have no reason to destroy his benefactor.”