“Good God!”
“Can you run down first thing tomorrow? We may have it for you.”
“I will skip like a ram and hop like a high hill. We’ll beat you yet, Mr. Bleeding Chief-Inspector Parker.”
“I hope you will,” said Parker, amiably, and rang off.
Wimsey pranced back into the room.
“Miss Price’s price has gone to odds on,” he announced. “It’s suicide, fifty to one and no takers. I am going to grin like a dog and run about the city.”
“I’m sorry I can’t join you,” said Sylvia Marriott, “but I’m glad if I’m wrong.”
“I’m glad I’m right,” said Eiluned Price, stolidly.
“And you are right and I am right and everything is quite all right,” said Wimsey.
Marjorie Phelps looked at him and said nothing. She suddenly felt as though something inside her had been put through a wringer.
CHAPTER IX
By what ingratiating means Mr. Bunter had contrived to turn the delivery of a note into the acceptance of an invitation to tea was best known to himself. At half-past four on the day which ended so cheerfully for Lord Peter, he was seated in the kitchen of Mr. Urquhart’s house, toasting crumpets. He had been trained to a great pitch of dexterity in the preparation of crumpets, and if he was somewhat lavish in the matter of butter, that hurt nobody except Mr. Urquhart. It was natural that the conversation should turn to the subject of murder. Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of comfortable horrors within. The heavier the lashing of the rain and the ghastlier the details, the better the flavour seems to be. On the present occasion, all the ingredients of an enjoyable party were present in full force.
“ ’Orrible white, he looked, when he came in,” said Mrs. Pettican the cook. “I see him when they sent for me to bring up the ’ot bottles. Three of them, they ’ad, one to his feet and one to his back and the big rubber one to ’is stummick. White and shiverin’, he was, and that dreadful sick, you never would believe. And he groaned pitiful.”
“Green, he looked to me, Cook,” said Hannah Westlock, “or you might perhaps call it a greenish-yellow. I thought it was jaundice a-coming on – more like them attacks he had in the Spring.”
“He was a bad colour then,” agreed Mrs. Pettican, “but nothink like to what he was that last time. And the pains and cramps in his legs was agonising. That struck Nurse Williams very forcible – a nice young woman she was, and not stuck-up like some as I could name. ‘Mrs. Pettican,’ she said to me, which I call it better manners than callin’ you Cook as they mostly do, as though they paid your wages for the right of callin’ you out of your name – ‘Mrs. Pettican,’ said she, ‘never did I see anythink to equal them cramps except in one other case that was the dead spit of this one,’ she said, ‘and you mark my words, Mrs. Pettican, them cramps ain’t there for nothin’.’ Ah! little did I understand her meanin’ at the time.
“That’s a regular feature of these arsenical cases, or so his lordship tells me,” replied Bunter. “A very distressing symptom. Had he ever had anything of the sort before?”
“Not what you could call cramps,” said Hannah, “though I remember when he was ill in the spring he complained of getting the fidgets in the hands and feet. Something like pins-and-needles, by what I understood him to say. It was a worrit to him, because he was finishing one of his articles in a hurry, and what with that and his eyes being so bad, the writing was a trial to him, poor thing.
“From what the gentleman for the prosecution said, talking it out with Sir James Lubbock,” said Mr. Bunter, “I gathered that those pins-and-needles, and bad eyes and so on, were a sign he’d been given arsenic regularly, if I may so phrase it.”
“A dreadful wicked woman she must ’a been,” said Mrs. Pettican, “- ’ev another crumpet, do, Mr. Bunter – a torturin’ of the poor soul that longwinded way. Bashin’ on the ’ed or the ’asty use of a carvin’ knife when roused I can understand, but the ’orrors of slow poisonin’ is the work of a fiend in ’uman form, in my opinion.”
“Fiend is the only word, Mrs. Pettican,” agreed the visitor.
“And the wickedness of it,” said Hannah, “quite apart from the causing of painful death to a fellow-being. Why, it’s only the mercy of Providence we weren’t all brought under suspicion.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Pettican. “Why, when master told us about them diggin’ poor Mr. Boyes up and findin’ him full of that there nasty arsenic, it give me sech a turn I felt as if the room was a-goin’ round like the gallopin’ ’orses at the roundabouts. ‘Oh, sir!’ I ses, ‘what, in our ’ouse!’ That’s what I ses, and he ses, ‘Mrs. Pettican,’ he ses, ‘I sincerely hope not.’ ”
Mrs. Pettican, having imparted this Macbeth-like flavour to the story, was pleased with it, and added:
“Yes, that’s what I said to ’im. ‘In our ’ouse,’ I said, and I’m sure I never slep’; a wink for three nights afterwards, what with the police and the fright and one thing and another.”
“But of course you had no difficulty in proving that it hadn’t happened in this house?” suggested Bunter. “Miss Westlock gave her evidence so beautifully at trial, I’m sure she made it clear as clear could be to judge and jury. The judge congratulated you, Miss Westlock, I’m sure he didn’t say nearly enough -so plainly and well as you spoke up before the whole court.”
“Well, I never was one to be shy,” confessed Hannah, “and then, what with going through it all so careful with the master and then with the police, I knew what the questions would be and was prepared, as you might say.”
“I wonder you could speak so exactly to every little detail, all that time ago,” said Bunter, with admiration.
“Well, you see, Mr. Bunter, the very morning after Mr. Boyes was took ill, master comes down to us and he says, sitting in that chair ever so friendly, just as you might be yourself, ‘I’m afraid Mr. Boyes is very ill,’ he says. ‘He thinks he might have ate something as disagreed with him,’ he says, ‘and perhaps as it might be the chicken. So I want you and Cook,’ he says, ‘to run through with me everything we had for dinner last night to see if we can think what it could have been.’ ‘Well, sir,’ I said, ‘I don’t see that Mr. Boyes could have ate anything unwholesome here, for Cook and me had just the same, put aside yourself, sir, and it was all as sweet as it could be,’ I said.”
“And I said the same,” said the Cook, “Sech a plain simple dinner as it was, too- no oysters nor mussels not anythink of that sort, as it’s well known shell-fish is poison to some people’s stummicks, but a good stren’thenin’ drop o’ soup, and a bit of nice fish and a casseroled chicken with turnips and carrots done in the gravy, and a omelette, wot could be lighter and better? Not but there’s people as can’t relish eggs in any form, my own mother was just the same, give her so much as a cake what had bin made with a egg in it and she’d be that sick and come out all over spots like nettle-rash, you’d be surprised. But Mr. Boyes was a great gentleman for eggs, and omelettes was his particular favourite.”
“Yes, he made the omelette himself that very night, didn’t he?”
“He did,” said Hannah, “and well I remember it, for Mr. Urquhart asked particular after the eggs, was they new-laid, and I reminded him they was some he had brought in himself that afternoon from that shop on the corner of Lamb’s Conduit Street where they always have them fresh from the farm, and I reminded him that one of them was a little cracked and he’d said, ‘We’ll use that in the omelette tonight, Hannah,’ and I brought out a clean bowl from the kitchen and put them straight in – the cracked one and three more besides, and never touched them again till I brought them to table. “And what’s more, sir,’ I said, ‘there’s the other eight still here out of the dozen, and you can see for yourself they’re as good and fresh as they can be.’ Didn’t I, Cook?”