DEAD MEN’S SHOES
There’s many a weary game to be played
With never a penny to choose,
But the weariest game in all the world
Is waiting for dead men’s shoes.
It was about a week later that Edward Mottisfont rang David Blake up on
the telephone and begged him in agitated accents, to come to Mr.
Mottisfont without delay.
“It’s another attack—a very bad one,” said Edward in the hall. His voice
shook a little, and he seemed very nervous. David thought it was
certainly a bad attack. He also thought it a strange one. The old man
was in great pain, and very ill. Elizabeth Chantrey was in the room, but
after a glance at his patient, David sent her away. As she went she made
a movement to take up an empty cup which stood on the small table beside
the bed, and old Mr. Edward Mottisfont fairly snapped at her.
“Leave it, will you—I’ve stopped Edward taking it twice. Leave it, I
say!”
Elizabeth went out without a word, and Mr. Mottisfont caught David’s
wrist in a shaky grip.
“D’ you know why I wouldn’t let her take that cup? D’ you know why?”
“No, sir——”
Old Mr. Mottisfont’s voice dropped to a thread. He was panting a little.
“I was all right till I drank that damned tea, David,” he said, “and
Edward brought it to me—Edward——”
“Come, sir—come—” said David gently. He was really fond of this queer
old man, and he was distressed for him.
“David, you won’t let him give me things—you’ll look to it. Look in the
cup. I wouldn’t let ’em take the cup—there’s dregs. Look at ’em, David.”
David took up the cup and walked to the window. About a tablespoonful of
cold tea remained. David tilted the cup, then became suddenly attentive.
That small remainder of cold tea with the little skim of cream upon it
had suddenly become of absorbing interest. David tilted the cup still
more. The tea made a little pool on one side of it, and all across the
bottom of the cup a thick white sediment drained slowly down into the
pool. It was such a sediment as is left by very chalky water. But all
the water of Market Harford is as soft as rain-water. It is not only
chalk that makes a sediment like that. Arsenic makes one, too. David put
down the cup quickly. He opened the door and went out into the passage.
From the far end Elizabeth Chantrey came to meet him, and he gave her a
hastily scribbled note for the chemist, and asked her for one or two
things that were in the house. When he came back into Mr. Mottisfont’s
room he went straight to the wash-stand, took up a small glass bottle
labelled ipecacuanha wine and spent two or three minutes in washing it
thoroughly. Then he poured into it very carefully the contents of the
cup. He did all this in total silence, and in a very quiet and
business-like manner.
Old Mr. Edward Mottisfont lay on his right side and watched him. His
face was twisted with pain, and there was a dampness upon his brow, but
his eyes followed every motion that David made and noted every look upon
his face. They were intent—alive—observant. Whilst David stood by the
wash-stand, with his back towards the bed, old Mr. Edward Mottisfont’s
lips twisted themselves into an odd smile. A gleam of sardonic humour
danced for a moment in the watching eyes. When David put down the bottle
and came over to the bed, the gleam was gone, and there was only
pain—great pain—in the old, restless face. There was a knock at the
door, and Elizabeth Chantrey came in.
Three hours later David Blake came out of the room that faced old Mr.
Mottisfont’s at the farther end of the corridor. It was a long, low
room, fitted up as a laboratory—very well and fully fitted up—for the
old man had for years found his greatest pleasure and relaxation in
experimenting with chemicals. Some of his experiments he confided to
David, but the majority he kept carefully to himself. They were of a
somewhat curious nature. David Blake came out of the laboratory with a
very stern look upon his face. As he went down the stair he met with
Edward Mottisfont coming up. The sternness intensified. Edward looked an
unspoken question, and then without a word turned and went down before
David into the hall. Then he waited.
“Gone?” he said in a sort of whisper, and David bent his head.
He was remembering that it was only a week since he had told Edward in
this very spot that his uncle might live for three years. Well, he was
dead now. The old man was dead now—out of the way—some one had seen to
that. Who? David could still hear Edward Mottisfont’s voice asking, “How
long is he likely to live?” and his own answer, “Perhaps three years.”
“Come in here,” said Edward Mottisfont. He opened the dining-room door
as he spoke, and David followed him into a dark, old-fashioned room,
separated from the one behind it by folding-doors. One of the doors
stood open about an inch, but there was only one lamp in the room, and
neither of the two men paid any attention to such a trifling
circumstance.
Edward sat down by the table, which was laid for dinner. Even above the
white tablecloth his face was noticeably white. All his life this old
man had been his bugbear. He had hated him, not with the hot hatred
which springs from one great sudden wrong, but with the cold slow
abhorrence bred of a thousand trifling oppressions. He had looked
forward to his death. For years he had thought to himself, “Well, he
can’t live for ever.” But now that the old man was dead, and the yoke
lifted from his neck, he felt no relief—no sense of freedom. He felt
oddly shocked.
David Blake did not sit down. He stood at the opposite side of the table
and looked at Edward. From where he stood he could see first the white
tablecloth, then Edward’s face, and on the wall behind Edward, a
full-length portrait of old Edward Mottisfont at the age of thirty. It
was the work of a young man whom Market Harford had looked upon as a
very disreputable young man. He had since become so famous that they had
affixed a tablet to the front of the house in which he had once lived.
The portrait was one of the best he had ever painted, and the eyes,
Edward Mottisfont’s black, malicious eyes, looked down from the wall at
his nephew, and at David Blake. Neither of the men had spoken since they
entered the room, but they were both so busy with their thoughts that
neither noticed how silent the other was.
At last David spoke. He said in a hard level voice:
“Edward, I can’t sign the certificate. There will have to be an
inquest.”
Edward Mottisfont looked up with a great start.
“An inquest?” he said, “an inquest?”
One of David’s hands rested on the table. “I can’t sign the
certificate,” he repeated.
Edward stared at him.
“Why not?” he said. “I don’t understand——”
“Don’t you?” said David Blake.
Edward rumpled up his hair in a distracted fashion.
“I don’t understand,” he repeated. “An inquest? Why, you’ve been
attending him all these months, and you said he might die at any time.
You said it only the other day. I don’t understand——”
“Nor do I,” said David curtly.
Edward stared again.
“What do you mean?”
“Mr. Mottisfont might have lived for some time,” said David Blake,
speaking slowly. “I was attending him for a chronic illness, which would
have killed him sooner or later. But it didn’t kill him. It didn’t have
a chance. He died of poisoning—arsenic poisoning.”
One of Edward’s hands was lying on the table. His whole arm twitched,
and the hand fell over, palm upwards. The fingers opened and closed
slowly. David found himself staring at that slowly moving hand.
“Impossible,” said Edward, and his breath caught in his throat as he
said it.
“I’m afraid not.”
Edward leaned forward a little.
“But, David,” he said, “it’s not possible. Who—who do you think—who
would do such a thing? Or—suicide—do you think he committed suicide?”
David drew himself suddenly away from the table. All at once the feeling
had come to him that he could no longer touch what Edward touched.
“No, I don’t think it was suicide,” he said. “But of course it’s not my
business to think at all. I shall give my evidence, and there, as far as
I am concerned, the matter ends.”
Edward looked helplessly at David.
“Evidence?” he repeated.
“At the inquest,” said David Blake.
“I don’t understand,” said Edward again. He put his head in his hands,
and seemed to be thinking.
“Are you sure?” he said at last. “I don’t see how—it was an attack—just
like his other attacks—and then he died—you always said he might die in
one of those attacks.”
There was a sort of trembling eagerness in Edward’s tone. A feeling of
nausea swept over David. The scene had become intolerable.
“Mr. Mottisfont died because he drank a cup of tea which contained
enough arsenic to kill a man in robust health,” he said sharply.
He looked once at Edward, saw him start, and added, “and I think that
you brought him that tea.”
“Yes,” said Edward. “He asked me for it, how could there be arsenic in
it?”
“There was,” said David Blake.
“Arsenic? But I brought him the tea——”
“Yes, you brought him the tea.”
Edward lifted his head. His eyes behind his glasses had a misty and
bewildered look. His voice shook a little.
“But—if there’s an inquest—they might say—they might think——”
He pushed his chair back a little way, and half rose from it, resting
his hands on the table, and peering across it.
“David, why do you look at me like that?”
David Blake turned away.
“It’s none of my business,” he said, “I’ve got to give my evidence, and
for God’s sake, Edward, pull yourself together before the inquest, and
get decent legal advice, for you’ll need it.”
Edward was shockingly pale.
“You mean—what do you mean? That people will think—it’s impossible.”
David went towards the door. His face was like a flint.
“I mean this,” he said. “Mr. Mottisfont died of arsenic poisoning. The
arsenic was in a cup of tea which he drank. You brought him the tea. You
are undoubtedly in a very serious position. There will have to be an
inquest.”
Edward had risen completely. He made a step towards David.
“But if you were to sign the certificate—there wouldn’t need to be an
inquest—David——”
“But I’m damned if I’ll sign the certificate,” said David Blake.
He went out and shut the door sharply behind him.