"Sir Eustace, of course," added Miss Dammers in her detached way, "had nothing to fear from the King's Proctor."
She took another sip of water, while the others tried to accustom themselves to this new light on the case and the surprising avenues it illuminated.
Miss Dammers proceeded to illuminate them still further, with powerful beams from her psychological searchlight. "They must have made a curious couple, those two. Their widely differing scales of values, the contrast of their respective reactions to the business that brought them together, the possibility that not even in a common passion could their minds establish any point of real contact. I want you to examine the psychology of the situation as closely as you can, because the murder was derived directly from it.
"What can have induced Mrs. Bendix in the first place to become that man's mistress I don't know. I won't be so trite as to say I can't imagine, because I can imagine all sorts of ways in which it may have happened. There is a curious mental stimulus to a good but stupid woman in a bad man's business. If she has a touch of the reformer in her, as most good women have, she soon becomes obsessed with the futile desire to save him from himself. And in seven cases out of ten her first step in doing so is to descend to his level.
"Not that she considers herself at first to be descending at all; a good woman invariably suffers for quite a long time from the delusion that whatever she does, her own particular brand of goodness cannot become smirched. She may share a reprobate's bed with him, because she knows that only through her body at first can she hope to influence him, until contact is established through the body with the soul and he may be led into better ways than a habit of going to bed in the daytime; but the initial sharing doesn't reflect on her own purity in the least. It is a hackneyed observation but I must insist on it once more: good women have the most astonishing powers of self - deception.
"I do consider Mrs. Bendix as a good woman, before she met Sir Eustace. Her trouble was that she thought herself so much better than she was. Her constant references to honour and playing the game, which Mr. Sheringham quoted, show that. She was infatuated with her own goodness. And so, of course, was Sir Eustace. He had probably never enjoyed the complaisance of a really good woman before. The seduction of her (which was probably very difficult) would have amused him enormously. He must have had to listen to hour after hour's talk about honour, and reform, and spirituality, but he would have borne it patiently enough for the exquisite revenge on which he had set his heart. The first two or three visits to Fellows's Hotel must have delighted him.
"But after that it became less and less amusing. Mrs. Bendix would discover that perhaps her own goodness wasn't standing quite so firm under the strain as she had imagined. She would have begun to bore him with her self - reproaches; bore him dreadfully. He continued to meet her there first because a woman, to his type, is always a woman, and afterwards because she gave him no choice. I can see exactly what must inevitably have happened. Mrs. Bendix begins to get thoroughly morbid about her own wickedness, and quite loses sight of her initial zeal for reform.
"They use the bed now because there happens to be a bed there and it would be a pity to waste it, but she has destroyed the pleasure of both. Her one cry now is that she must put herself right with her own conscience either by running away with Sir Eustace on the spot, or, more probably, by telling her husband, arranging for divorce (for, of course, he will never forgive her, never), and marrying Sir Eustace as soon as both divorces are through. In any case, although she almost loathes him by now nothing else can be contemplated but that the rest of her life must be spent with Sir Eustace and his with her. How well I know that type of mind.
"Naturally, to Sir Eustace, who is working hard to retrieve his fortunes by a rich marriage, this scheme has small appeal. He begins by cursing himself for having seduced the damned woman at all, and goes on to curse still more the damned woman for having been seduced. And the more pressing she becomes, the more he hates her. Then Mrs. Bendix must have brought matters to a head. She has heard about the Wildman girl affair. That must be stopped at once. She tells Sir Eustace that if he doesn't break it off himself, she will take steps to break it off for him. Sir Eustace sees the whole thing coming out, his own appearance in a second divorce - court, and all hopes of Miss Wildman and her fortune gone for ever. Something has got to be done about it. But what can be done? Nothing short of murder will stop the damned woman's tongue.
"Well - it's high time somebody murdered her anyhow.
"Now I'm on rather less sure ground, but the assumptions seems to me sound enough and I can produce a reasonable amount of proof to support them. Sir Eustace decided to get rid of the woman once and for all. He thinks it over carefully, remembers to have read about a case, several cases, in some criminological book, each of which just failed through some small mistake. Combine them, eradicate the small mistake from each, and so long as his relations with Mrs. Bendix are not known (and he is quite certain they aren't) there is no possibility of being found out. That may seem a long guess, but here's my proof.
"When I was studying him, I gave Sir Eustace every chance of plying his blandishments on me. One of his methods is to profess a deep interest in everything that interests the woman. Naturally therefore he discovered a profound, if hitherto latent, interest in criminology. He borrowed several of my books, and certainly read them. Among the ones he borrowed is a book of American poisoning cases. In it is an account of every single case that has been mentioned as a parallel by members of this Circle (except of course Marie Lafarge and Christina Edmunds).
"About six weeks ago, when I got in one evening my maid told me that Sir Eustace, who hadn't been near my flat for months, had called; he waited for a time in the sitting - room and then went. Shortly after the murder, having also been struck by the similarity between this and one or two of those American cases, I went to the bookstall in my sitting - room to look them up. The book was not there. Nor, Mr. Bradley, was my copy of Taylor. But I saw them both in Sir Eustace's rooms the day I had that long conversation with his valet." Miss Dammers paused for comment.
Mr. Bradley supplied it. "Then the man deserves what's coming to him," he drawled.
"I told you this murder wasn't the work of a highly intelligent mind," said Miss Dammers.
"Well, now, to complete my reconstruction. Sir Eustace decides to rid himself of his encumbrance, and arranges what he thinks a perfectly safe way of doing so. The nitrobenzene, which appears to worry Mr. Bradley so much, seems to me a very simple matter. Sir Eustace has decided upon chocolates as the vehicle, and chocolate liqueurs at that. (Mason's chocolate liqueurs, I should say, are a favourite purchase of Sir Eustace's. It is significant that he had bought several one - pound boxes recently.) He is searching, then, for some poison with a flavour which will mingle well enough with that of the liqueurs. He is bound to come across oil of bitter almonds very soon in that connection, actually used as it is in confectionery, and from that to nitrobenzene, which is more common, easier to get hold of, and practically untraceable, is an obvious step.
"He arranges to meet Mrs. Bendix for lunch, intending to make a present to her then of the chocolates which are to come to him that morning by post, a perfectly natural thing to do. He will already have the porter's evidence of the innocent way in which he acquired them. At the last minute he sees the obvious flaw in this plan. If he gives Mrs. Bendix the chocolates in person, and especially at lunch at Fellows's Hotel, his intimacy with her must be disclosed. He hastily racks his brains and finds a very much better plan. Getting hold of Mrs. Bendix, he tells her some story of her husband and Vera Delorme.