The Problem of the Green Capsule (7 page)

“On the surface it’s a clear case,” growled Major Crow, speaking down his nose. “Somebody overheard and saw Chesney and Wilbur Emmet making their preparations, and knew what the show was to be. He knocked out Emmet, played his part, and substituted a poisoned capsule for the harmless one. The gelatine would take a minute or two to dissolve. So Chesney wouldn’t notice anything wrong when he took the capsule. That is, he wouldn’t shout out immediately that he’d been poisoned, or try to stop the murderer. The murderer could fade away, leaving the disguise outside. When the gelatine melted, the poison would kill in a couple of minutes. All very clear. Yes. Apparently.
But
——
”

“Ah!” grunted Bostwick, as the Chief Constable pounced on the word. “Why hit Mr. Emmet out? Eh, sir?”

Elliot was suddenly conscious of a far greater shrewdness than he had expected emanating from the bulk in the corner. Bostwick was his superior officer, of course, but still he had not expected it. The Superintendent had been rocking back and forth, bumping his posterior at measured intervals against the wall; and now he looked at Elliot with such a broad and fishy expression that it was as though a searchlight had been turned on.

“That’s exactly it, Inspector,” agreed Major Crow. “As Bostwick says, why hit Mr. Emmet out? Why not let
Emmet
give Chesney the poisoned capsule in the ordinary course of the show? If the murderer knows what they’re going to do, all he needs to do is change over the capsules. Why run the risk of knocking out Emmet, dressing up in the clothes and possibly being spotted straightaway, and walking in here exposed to everybody’s eyes?—why let himself in for all those terrific risks when all he had to do was substitute one capsule for another, and let somebody else do the dirty work?”

“I think,” Elliot said thoughtfully, “that that’s the whole point of the crime.”

“The whole point of the crime?”

“Yes, sir. In the performance as it was rehearsed, Mr. Chesney never intended to
swallow
any capsule at all.”

“H’m,” said Major Crow, after a pause.

“He was only going to pretend to swallow it. You see. This whole performance was to be a series of traps for the observation. You’ve probably had similar tricks played on you in a course in psychology at college——”

“Not me,” said Major Crow.

“Not me,” grunted Superintendent Bostwick.

All Elliot’s stubborness rose up fiercely in him; not only at this, but at the slight air of hostility which had come into the room. He wondered if he sounded as though he was swanking. Then he decided, with the tips of his ears tingling, that he did not give
a curse.

“The instructor,” he went on, “takes a bottle of some liquid, puts his tongue to it, makes a wry face, and comments on the bitter taste of the stuff. Then he passes the bottle to you. All it contains is coloured water. But, if you’re not careful, you’ll swear the stuff is bitter just from having it impressed on you. Or else it really is bitter, and he only pretends to taste it—telling you to do as he did. Unless you note carefully what he did, you’ll take a swig of it.

“That’s what happened here, very probably. Mr. Chesney warned them to look out for traps. You remember, Miss Wills said he looked surprised and annoyed when the capsule was shoved into his mouth. It’s likely that his instructions to Emmet were to pretend to give him the pill, and he would pretend to swallow it. But the real murderer pushed it down his throat, that’s all. To avoid breaking up the show, Mr. Chesney didn’t make any audible protest.” Elliot shook his head. “And I’ll be very much surprised if in that list of questions he prepared we don’t find some such question as—‘How long did it take me to swallow the capsule?’ or the like.”

Major Crow was impressed.

“By Jove, that’s reasonable enough!” he admitted, with a gleam of relief. Then exasperation and bewilderment flooded out everything else. “But look here, Inspector—even so—to do that—my God, are we dealing with a lunatic?”

“Looks like it, sir.”

“Let’s face it,” said Major Crow. “A lunatic, or whatever fancy name we want to call it, from this house.”

“Ah,” murmured Bostwick. “Go on!”

The Chief Constable spoke mildly. “To begin with, how would an outsider know they were going to arrange an observation test here to-night? They didn’t know it themselves until dinner; and it’s unlikely that an outsider would have been hanging about these windows so conveniently afterwards to overhear what Chesney and Emmet were arranging. It’s even more unlikely that an outsider in dress trousers and evening shoes would be hanging about on the one particular night when they were going to dress for dinner. I admit none of this is conclusive; it’s only suggestive. But—you see the difficulty?”

“I do,” returned Elliot grimly.

“If somebody in this house did it, who could have done it? Joe Chesney was out on a case; if he didn’t leave the case until midnight, he’s certainly out of it. Wilbur Emmet was nearly killed by the real murderer. There’s nobody else except a couple of maids and a cook, who could hardly qualify. The only other alternative—yes, I know this sounds fantastic—but there’s only one other possibility. This would mean that the murderer was one of the three persons who were supposed to be watching the show in this room. It would mean that this person crept out of here in the dark, coshed poor Emmet, put on the clothes, gave Chesney a poisoned pill, and crept back in here before the lights went up.”

“No, sir, it doesn’t sound likely,” agreed Elliot dryly.

“But what else have we got?”

Elliot did not reply.

He knew that they must not theorise now. Until the postmortem, they could not even say with definiteness how Marcus Chesney had died, except that it had probably been by one of the cyanides in the prussic acid group. But the Chief Constable’s final possibility had already occurred to him.

He looked round the Music Room. It was about fifteen feet square, panelled in grey picked out with gilt. The French windows were closed in with heavy velvet curtains of a dark grey colour. As for furniture, the room contained only the grand piano, the radio-gramophone, a tall Boule cabinet beside the door to the hall, four light arm-chairs upholstered in brocade, and two footstools. Thus the centre was comparatively clear; and a person—if he took care to avoid the grand piano by the windows—could cross the room in the dark without bumping into anything. The carpet, they had already seen, was so thick as to prevent any footstep being heard.

“Yes,” said the Chief Constable. “Test it.”

The electric switch was behind the Boule cabinet beside the door to the hall; Elliot pressed it down, and darkness descended like an extinguishing-cap. The lights had been so bright that a ghost-pattern of the electric candles in the chandelier still wove and shrank in front of Elliot’s eyes in the dark. Even with the curtains open, it was impossible to distinguish anything against the overcast sky outside. There was a faint rattle of rings as someone drew the curtains close.

“I’m waving my hands,” came the Chief Constable’s voice out of the dark. “Can you see me?”

“Not a thing,” said Elliot. “Stay where you are; I’m going to open the double-doors.”

He groped his way across, avoiding a chair, and found the doors. They opened easily and almost without noise. Shuffling forward some eight or nine feet until he found the table, he felt for the bronze lamp. He turned the switch, and the dead white glare sprang up against the opposite wall. Then Elliot backed away to study it from the Music Room.

“H’m,” said Major Crow.

The only living thing in that “office” was the clock. They saw it, ruthless and busy, on the mantelpiece of dark polished wood behind the head of the dead man. It was a fairly large ormolu clock, having a dial fully six inches across, and a small brass pendulum which switched and swung in moving gleams. Beneath it sat the dead man, undisturbed. The time was five minutes to one.

The table was of mahogany, with a brown blotter; and the bronze lamp stood towards the front of it slightly to (their) right. They saw the chocolate box with its design of blue flowers. By standing on tiptoe, Elliot could see the pencil lying on the blotter, but there was no trace of the pen Marjorie Wills had described.

In the wall towards their left, they could make out one of the French windows. Against the wall to their right stood a roll-top desk, closed, with a green-shaded lamp over it; and a very long filing-cabinet in steel painted to represent wood. That was all, except for one more chair and a pile of magazines or catalogues spilled on the floor. They saw it framed in the proscenium arch of the doors. Judging by the position of the chairs in the Music Room, the witnesses had been sitting about fifteen feet away from Marcus Chesney.

“I don’t see much there,” observed Major Crow doubtfully. “Or do you?”

Elliot’s eye was again caught by the folded piece of paper he had seen before, stuck behind the handkerchief in the pocket of the dead man’s jacket.

“There’s that, sir,” he pointed out. “According to what Miss Wills told us, that must be the list of questions Mr. Chesney prepared.”

“Yes, but what about it?” almost shouted the Chief Constable. “Suppose he did prepare a list of questions? What difference——?”

“Only this, sir,” said Elliot, feeling tempted to shout himself. “Don’t you see that this whole show was designed as a series of traps for the witnesses? There was probably a trick in half the things they saw. And the murderer took advantage of it. The tricks helped him; covered him; probably still cover him. If we could find out exactly what they saw, or thought they saw, we should probably have a line on the murderer. Not even a lunatic is going to commit such a slapdash, crash-bang, open murder as this unless there was something in Mr. Chesney’s plan that afforded him protection, threw the police dead wrong, provided him with an alibi, God knows what! Isn’t that clear?”

Major Crow looked at him.

“You will excuse me, Inspector,” he said with sudden politeness, “if I still think your manner has been odd all evening. I am also curious to know how you knew the surname of Miss Wills’s
fiancé.
I hadn’t mentioned it.”

(Oh. hell!)

“Sorry, sir.”

“Not at all,” returned the other, with the same formality. “It doesn’t matter in the least. Besides, with regard to the list of questions, I am inclined to agree with you. Let’s see if we learn anything from them. You’re right: if there are any catch questions, or questions about catches, they will be here.”

He pulled the paper out of the dead man’s pocket, unfolded it, and spread it out on the blotter. Here is what they read, in neat copper-plate handwriting.

ANSWER CORRECTLY THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

1.
Was there a box on the table? If so, describe it.

2.
What objects did I pick up from the table? In what order?

3.
What was the time?

4.
What was the height of the person who entered by the French windows?

5.
Describe this person’s costume.

6.
What was he carrying in his right hand? Describe this object.

7.
Describe his actions. Did he remove anything from the table?

8.
What did he give me to swallow? How long did it take me to swallow it?

9.
How long was he in the room?

10.
What person or persons spoke? What was said?

N.B.—
The
LITERALLY
correct answer must be given to each of the above questions, or the answer will not count.

“It looks straightforward enough,” muttered Major Crow, “but there are catches. See the N.B. And you certainly seem to be right about the fake swallowing, Inspector. See question 8. Still——”

He folded up the paper and handed it to Elliot, who put it carefully away in his note book. Then Major Crow backed away towards the double-doors, his eyes fixed on the clock.

“Still, as I was saying——”

A shaft of light cut across the Music Room as the door to the hall opened. The silhouette of a man was framed there, and they saw a bald head gleam against the light.

“Hullo!” said a voice, sharp and going a little high, “Who’s in there? What are you doing there?”

“Police,” said Major Crow. “It’s all right; come in, Ingram. Put the lights on, will you?”

After fumbling a moment on the wrong side of the door, the newcomer groped behind the Boule cabinet and switched them on. And Elliot realised that his first brief impression of Professor Gilbert Ingram, gained in a courtyard at Pompeii, would have to be revised a little.

Professor Ingram’s round, shining, amiable face, his tendency towards portliness and his somewhat bouncing movements, gave the impression that he was short and tubby. This was aided by the twinkle of a guileless-seeming blue eye, a button nose, and two tufts of dark hair ruffled out over the ears on either side of his baldness. He had a trick of lowering his head and looking up with a quizzical expression which matched his attitude towards life. But all this looked subdued now; subdued, and a trifle scared. His face was mottled with colour; his shirt-front, which had a deep crease, bulged out around the waistcoat like dough rising in an oven; and he brushed the fingers of his right hand together as though to remove chalk from them. Actually, Elliot saw, he was of middle height, and he was not noticeably fat.

“Reconstructing, eh?” he suggested. “Good evening, Major. Good evening, Superintendent.”

His manner had a casual courtesy which included everybody in the flick of a smile, like the flick of a whip over a team of horses. Elliot’s chief impression was of a strong and penetrating intelligence looking out of that guileless face.

“And this, I suppose,” he added hesitantly, “is the Scotland Yard man Joe Chesney was telling me about? Good evening, Inspector.”

“Yes,” said Major Crow. He went on with some abruptness. “Look here, you know—we’re depending on you.”

“Depending on me?”

“Well, you’re a professor of psychology.
You
wouldn’t be fooled by tricks. You said you wouldn’t. You can tell us what really happened in this damned show. Can’t you?”