"I have come round," said Mr. Urquhart, "in answer to your letter. I am
greatly interested to hear that you have some fresh information about
my unfortunate cousin's death. Of course I shall be delighted to give
you any assistance I can."
"Thank you," said Wimsey. "Do sit down. You have dined, of course? But
you will have a cup of coffee. You prefer the Turkish variety, I fancy.
My man brews it rather well."
Mr. Urquhart accepted the offer, and complimented Bunter on having
achieved the right method of concocting that curiously syrupy brew, so
offensive to the average Occidental.
Bunter thanked him gravely for his good opinion, and proffered a box
of that equally nauseating mess called Turkish Delight, which not only
gluts the palate and glues the teeth, but also smothers the consumer
in a floury cloud of white sugar. Mr. Urquhart immediately plugged his
mouth with a large lump of it, murmuring indistinctly that it was the
genuine Eastern variety. Wimsey, with an austere smile, took a few sips
of strong black coffee without sugar or milk, and poured himself out a
glass of old brandy. Bunter retired, and Lord Peter, laying a note-book
open upon his knee, glanced at the clock and began his narrative.
He recapitulated the circumstances of Philip Boyes' life and death at
some length. Mr. Urquhart, yawning surreptitiously, ate, drank and
listened.
Wimsey, still with his eye on the clock, then embarked upon the story
of Mrs. Wrayburn's will.
Mr. Urquhart, considerably astonished, set his coffee-cup aside, wiped
his sticky fingers upon his handkerchief, and stared.
Presently he said:
"May I ask how you have obtained this very remarkable information?"
Wimsey waved his hand.
"The police," he said, "wonderful thing, police organisation.
Surprisin' what they find out when they put their minds to it. You're
not denying any of it, I presume?"
"I am listening," said Mr. Urquhart, grimly. "When you have finished
this extraordinary statement, I may perhaps discover exactly what it is
I have to deny."
"Oh, yes," said Wimsey, "I'll try to make that clear. I'm not a lawyer,
of course, but I'm tryin' to be as lucid as I can."
He droned remorselessly on, and the hands of the clock went round.
"So far as I make it out," he said, when he had reviewed the whole
question of motive, "it was very much to your interest to get rid of
Mr. Philip Boyes. And indeed the fellow was, in my opinion, a pimple
and a wart, and in your place I should have felt much the same about
him."
"And is this the whole of your fantastic accusation?" enquired the
solicitor.
"By no means. I am now coming to the point. Slow but sure is the motto
of yours faithfully. I notice that I have taken up seventy minutes of
your valuable time, but believe me, the hour has not been unprofitably
spent."
"Allowing that all this preposterous story were true, which I most
emphatically deny," observed Mr. Urquhart, "I should be greatly
interested to know how you imagine that I administered the arsenic.
Have you worked out something ingenious for that? Or am I supposed to
have suborned my cook and parlourmaid to be my accomplices? A little
rash of me, don't you think, and affording remarkable opportunities for
blackmail?"
"So rash," said Wimsey, "that it is quite out of the question for a man
so full of forethought as yourself. The sealing-up of that bottle of
burgundy, for example, argues a mind alive to possibilities--unusually
so. In fact, the episode attracted my attention from the start."
"Indeed?"
"You ask me how and when you administered the poison. It was not before
dinner, I think. The thoughtfulness shown in emptying the bedroom
water-bottle--oh, no! that point was not missed--the care displayed in
meeting your cousin before a witness and never being left alone with
him--I think that rules out the period before dinner."
"I should think it might."
"The sherry," pursued Wimsey, thoughtfully. "It was a new bottle,
freshly decanted. The disappearance of the remains might be commented
on. I fancy we can absolve the sherry."
Mr. Urquhart bowed ironically.
"The soup--it was shared by the cook and parlourmaid and they survived.
I am inclined to pass the soup, and the same thing applies to the fish.
It would be easy to poison a portion of fish, but it would involve the
co-operation of Hannah Westlock, and that conflicts with my theory. A
theory is a sacred thing to me, Mr. Urquhart--almost a what d'you call
it--a dogma."
"An unsafe attitude of mind," remarked the lawyer, "but in the
circumstances I will not quarrel with it."
"Besides," said Wimsey, "if the poison had been given in the soup or
the fish, it might have started to work before Philip--I may call
him so, I hope?--had left the house. We come to the casserole. Mrs.
Pettican and Hannah Westlock can give the casserole a clean bill of
health, I fancy. And by the way, from the description it must have been
most delicious. I speak as a man with some considerable experience in
gastronomic matters, Mr. Urquhart."
"I am well aware of it," said Mr. Urquhart, politely.
"And now there remains only the omelette. A most admirable thing
when well made and eaten--that is so important--eaten immediately.
A charming idea to have the eggs and sugar brought to the table and
prepared and cooked on the spot. By the way, I take it there was no
omelette left over for the kitchen? No, no! One does not let a good
thing like that go out half-eaten. Much better that the good cook
should make a fine, fresh omelette for herself and her colleague.
Nobody but yourself and Philip partook of the omelette, I am sure."
"Quite so," said Mr. Urquhart, "I need not trouble to deny it. But you
will bear in mind that I did partake of it, without ill-effects. And
moreover, that my cousin made it himself."
"So he did. Four eggs, if I remember rightly, with sugar and jam from
what I may call the common stock. No--there would be nothing wrong with
the sugar or the jam. Er--I believe I am right in saying that one of
the eggs was cracked when it came to the table?"
"Possibly. I do not really remember."
"No? Well, you are not on oath. But Hannah Westlock remembers that when
you brought the eggs in--you purchased them yourself, you know, Mr.
Urquhart--you mentioned that one was cracked and particularly desired
that it should be used for the omelette. In fact, you yourself laid it
in the bowl for that purpose."
"What about it?" asked Mr. Urquhart, perhaps a trifle less easily than
before.
"It is not very difficult to introduce powdered arsenic into a cracked
egg," said Wimsey. "I have made the experiment myself with a small
glass tube. Perhaps a small funnel would be even easier. Arsenic is
a fairly heavy substance--7 or 8 grains will go into a tea-spoon. It
collects at one end of the egg, and any traces on the exterior of the
shell can be readily wiped off. Liquid arsenic could be poured in
still more easily, of course, but for a particular reason I made my
experiment with the ordinary white powder. It is fairly soluble."
Mr. Urquhart had taken a cigar from his case, and was making rather a
business of lighting it.
"Do you suggest," he enquired, "that in the whisking together of
four eggs, one particular poisoned egg was somehow kept miraculously
separated from the rest and deposited with its load of arsenic at one
end of the omelette only? Or that my cousin deliberately helped himself
to the poisoned end and left the rest to me?"
"Not at all, not at all," said Wimsey. "I suggest merely that the
arsenic was in the omelette and came there by way of the egg."
Mr. Urquhart threw his match into the fireplace.
"There seem to be some flaws in your theory, as well as in the egg."
"I haven't finished the theory yet. My next bit of it is built up from
very trifling indications. Let me enumerate them. Your disinclination
to drink at dinner, your complexion, a few nail-parings, a snipping or
so from your very well-kept hair--I put these together, add a packet of
white arsenic from the secret cupboard in your office, rub the hands a
little--so--and produce--hemp, Mr. Urquhart, hemp."
He sketched the shape of a noose lightly in the air.
"I don't understand you," said the solicitor, hoarsely.
"Oh _you_ know," said Wimsey. "Hemp--what they make ropes of. Great
stuff, hemp. Yes, well, about this arsenic. As you know, it's not good
for people in a general way, but there are some people--those tiresome
peasants in Styria one hears so much about--who are supposed to eat
it for fun. It improves their wind, so they say, and clears their
complexions and makes their hair sleek, and they give it to their
horses for the same reason; bar the complexion, that is, because a
horse hasn't much complexion, but you know what I mean. Then there was
that horrid man Maybrick--he used to take it, or so they say. Anyhow,
it's well known that some people do take it and manage to put away
large dollops after a bit of practice--enough to kill any ordinary
person. But you know all this."
"This is the first time I've heard of such a thing."
"Where _do_ you expect to go to? Never mind. We'll pretend this is
all new to you. Well, some fellow--I've forgotten his name,[2] but
it's all in Dixon Mann--wondered how the dodge was worked, and he got
going on some dogs and things and he dosed 'em and killed a lot of 'em
I daresay, and in the end he found that whereas liquid arsenic was
dealt with by the kidneys and was uncommonly bad for the system, solid
arsenic could be given day by day, a little bigger dose each time, so
that in time the doings--what an old lady I knew in Norfolk called
'the tubes'--got used to it and could push it along without taking any
notice of it, so to speak. I read a book somewhere which said it was
all done by leucocytes--those jolly little white corpuscles, don't you
know--which sort of got round the stuff and bustled it along so that
it couldn't do any harm. At all events, the point is that if you go
on taking solid arsenic for a good long time--say a year or so--you
establish a what-not, an immunity, and can take six or seven grains at
a time without so much as a touch of indijaggers."
[Footnote 2: Valetta.]
"Very interesting," said Mr. Urquhart.
"Apparently these beastly Styrian peasants do it that way, and they're
very careful not to drink for two hours or thereabouts after taking it,
for fear it should all get washed into the kidneys and turn poisonous
on 'em. I'm not bein' very technical, I'm afraid, but that's the gist
of it. Well, it occurred to me, don't you see, old horse, that if you'd
had the bright idea to immunise yourself first, you could easily have
shared a jolly old arsenical omelette with a friend. It would kill him
and it wouldn't hurt you."
"I see."
The solicitor licked his lips.
"Well, as I say, you have a nice clear complexion--except that I notice
the arsenic has pigmented the skin here and there (it does sometimes),
and you've got the sleek hair and so on, and I noticed you were careful
not to drink at dinner, and I said to myself, 'Peter, my bright lad,
what about it?' And when they found a packet of white arsenic in your
cupboard--never mind how for the moment!--I said, 'Hullo, hullo, how
long has this been going on?' Your handy foreign chemist has told the
police two years--is that right? About the time of the Megatherium
crash that would be, wouldn't it? All right, don't tell me if you don't
want to. Then we got hold of some bits of your hair and nails, and lo
and behold, they were bung-full of arsenic. And we said 'What-ho!' So
that's why I asked you to come along and have a chat with me. I thought
you might like to offer some sort of suggestion, don't you know."
"I can only suggest," said Urquhart, with a ghastly face but a strictly
professional manner, "that you should be careful before you communicate
this ludicrous theory to anybody. What you and the police--whom,
frankly, I believe to be capable of anything--have been planting on
my premises I do not know, but to give out that I am addicted to
drug-taking habits is slander and criminal. It is quite true that I
have for some time been taking a medicine which contains slight traces
of arsenic--Dr. Grainger can furnish the prescription--and that may
very likely have left a deposit in my skin and hair, but further than
that, there is no foundation for this monstrous accusation."
"None?"
"None."
"Then how is it," asked Wimsey, coolly, but with something menacing in
his rigidly controlled voice, "how is it that you have this evening
consumed, without apparent effect, a dose of arsenic sufficient to kill
two or three ordinary people? That disgusting sweetmeat on which you
have been gorging yourself in, I may say, a manner wholly unsuited
to your age and position, is smothered in white arsenic. You ate it,
God forgive you, an hour and a half ago. If arsenic can harm you, you
should have been rolling about in agonies for the last hour."
"You devil!"
"Couldn't you try to get up a few symptoms?" said Wimsey,
sarcastically. "Shall I bring you a basin? Or fetch the doctor? Does
your throat burn? Is your inside convulsed with agony? It is rather
late in the day, but with a little goodwill you could surely produce
_some_ display of feeling, even now."
"You are lying. You wouldn't dare to do such a thing! It would be
murder."
"Not in this case, I fancy. But I am willing to wait and see."
Urquhart stared at him. Wimsey got out of his chair in a single swift
movement and stood over him.
"I wouldn't use violence if I were you. Let the poisoner stick to his
bottle. Besides, I am armed. Pardon the melodrama. Are you going to be
sick or not?"
"You're mad."
"Don't say that. Come, man--pull yourself together. Have a shot at it.
Shall I show you the bathroom?"
"I'm ill."
"Of course; but your tone is not convincing. Through the door, along
the passage, and third on the left."
The lawyer stumbled out. Wimsey returned to the library and rang the
bell.
"I think, Bunter, Mr. Parker may require some assistance in the
bathroom."
"Very good, my lord."
Bunter departed and Wimsey waited. Presently there were sounds of a
scuffle in the distance. A group appeared at the door. Urquhart, very
white, his hair and clothes disordered, flanked by Parker and Bunter,
who held him firmly by the arms.
"Was he sick?" asked Wimsey, with interest.
"No, he wasn't," said Parker, grimly, snapping the handcuffs on his
prey. "He cursed you fluently for five minutes, then tried to get out
of the window, saw it was a three-story drop, charged in through the
dressing-room door and ran straight into me. Now don't struggle, my
lad, you'll only hurt yourself."
"And he still doesn't know whether he's poisoned or not?"
"He doesn't seem to think he is. At any rate, he made no effort about
it. His one idea was to hop it."
"That's feeble," said Wimsey, "if I wanted people to think I'd been
poisoned I'd put up a better show than that."
"Stop talking, for God's sake," said the prisoner. "You've got me, by a
vile, damnable trick. Isn't that enough? You can shut up about it."
"Oh," said Parker, "we've got you, have we? Well, I warned you not to
talk, and if you _will_ do it, it's not my fault. By the way, Peter, I
don't suppose you did actually poison him, did you? It doesn't seem to
have hurt him, but it'll affect the doctor's report."
"No, I didn't, as a matter of fact," said Wimsey. "I only wanted to see
how he'd react to the suggestion. Well, cheerio! I can leave it to you
now."
"We'll look after him," said Parker. "But you might let Bunter ring up
a taxi."
When the prisoner and his escort had departed, Wimsey turned
thoughtfully to Bunter, glass in hand.
"_Mithridates he died old_, says the poet. But I doubt it, Bunter. In
this case I very much doubt it."