Bodies from the Library 5, page 37
‘It becomes plain, then, that it is in our interests to solve this mystery which the Inspector regards as insoluble, without delay. Eamonn did not enter the Hospitality Room, but I hope that he may be able to help us.
‘My suggestion is this. I have had a number of occupations in my life. Now I propose that, on your behalf as well as my own, I should turn detective and solve this puzzle. Bill Bannister who, for some extraordinary reason, thinks I am what he calls good copy, will be my Watson. Do you agree?’
There was an enthusiastic murmur. ‘Very well. Now I want you, Isobel and Zoë, to tell me anything at all that struck you as unusual in the Hospitality Room last night—anything at all, no matter how slight.’
Silence. Then Zoë Gail said slowly, ‘Rivers was more nervous than he should have been. After all, he was a well-known actor both in stage and screen. He shouldn’t have been so frightened of playing a parlour game on television.’
‘I agree, my dear. And I’ll tell you something else. He was much more nervous this week than last. Isobel?’
‘Last week he had three or four drinks. This week he only took one, although he was so much more nervous. That seems a little odd. And another thing. It seemed to me that Dr Mostyn wasn’t there just for the show. I had an impression that he was watching Rivers closely. And his diagnosis of poison was done at lightning speed.’
‘Good,’ said Gilbert Harding. ‘I can add one small item of information. Charles Schultz, as you probably know, is a historical novelist. I am friendly with his publisher, Railton, and I happened to mention to Railton that I would like to meet Schultz, as I admired his last book. Railton said that would be impossible, as the Schultzes had their passages booked back to the United States. They should have sailed yesterday.’
‘That may have a perfectly innocent explanation,’ Bill Bannister said.
‘Certainly. It is simply an oddity to be investigated. Now, Eamonn, we come to you.’
‘I wondered when that would happen,’ Eamonn Andrews said with a smile.
‘You talked to this man Mortimer. What did you think of him?’
Andrews stroked his chin.
‘Well now, he was pretty excited. He had this doll, and when he told me it was called Melanie I was afraid we might be in for trouble, because I’d seen his wife come in with Rivers. I told Mortimer that his wife would be there, but he obviously knew that already. I tried to get him to call the doll by a different name, but he wouldn’t. So I warned Leslie that there just might be a little bother, and he’d better be prepared for it.’
‘You think he staged this business of the doll deliberately to be revenged on his wife and Rivers?’
‘No doubt at all about it.’
‘Would he have been satisfied with this comparatively petty revenge, or would he have gone to the length of murder?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. But I don’t see how he could have done it, do you, Gilbert?’
‘I have the beginnings of an idea. It’s based on the fact that you really can’t wipe fingerprints off a glass in public without somebody seeing you. But at the moment my idea seems merely to lead into the realm of fantasy. Now for positive action. I propose to pay a call on Mrs Rivers. I have a recollection, but I must confess a vague one, of meeting her when Rivers did some shows on the panel last year. Can anybody amplify that?’
‘I’ve met her,’ Bill Bannister said unexpectedly. ‘I once did a feature about Rivers in a series called “Stars of Stage and Screen”. She’s a rather nice quiet little woman.’
‘And I shall call on Mrs Mortimer. And Mr Mortimer. And perhaps we can clear up the puzzles relating to Dr Mostyn and the Schultzes. Then I shall report back to you.’
As they rose to go, Cham-pu eagerly and joyously snapped at skirts and trouser legs.
Gwendolen Rivers received Gilbert Harding and Bill Bannister in her Kensington house. Her manner was cold. ‘I’ve consented to see you, Mr Harding, but I really don’t see that I can tell you anything I haven’t told the police.’
‘Now, ma’am.’ Harding flung out his hands in a gesture at once forlorn, pathetic and comic. ‘I am not a busybody by nature. I regard a respect for privacy as a mark of civilized behaviour. But here I can plead that I am prying in a good cause. I am trying to find out who killed your husband. Won’t you help me?’
‘Well.’ She visibly relented. ‘I will do what I can, but it is all deeply painful to me. Not only because of Godfrey’s death, but—you know about Mrs Mortimer?’
‘Yes.’ While she spoke, Harding considered her. ‘A nice quiet little woman?’ Yes, she was that, but behind the quiet manner and the greying hair he sensed more determination than he had remembered or than Bill Bannister had led him to expect. A woman of taste, too, for he guessed that she rather than Rivers was responsible for the decoration of this attractive blue and white room with its faint suggestion of Regency influence. She was dressed herself in blue and white, with no concessions to conventional mourning.
‘That was very bitter for me. We had been married twelve years. I met Godfrey in the war, you know, nursed him back to health when he was invalided home from the Western desert. We were very happy until he met her six months ago.’ Hands clasped together, Mrs Rivers looked into the fire. Then she said abruptly, ‘There is no doubt at all who killed my husband, Jack Mortimer.’
Harding stroked his moustache. ‘If you will tell me, ma’am, how Mortimer could possibly have put poison into your husband’s glass without entering the room …’
‘Oh, that’s what the Inspector said, but don’t you see that’s his cleverness? He’s a clever devil.’
‘Your husband seemed extremely nervous at his last performance of What’s My Line? Tell me, to your knowledge, was he frightened of anything?’
‘Of course he was,’ she cried. ‘And hadn’t he reason to be, when Mortimer sent him a box of poisoned chocolates only last week?’
‘A box of poisoned chocolates.’ Harding stared at her.
V
WHO SENT THE POISONED CHOCOLATES?
‘You’ve told the Inspector about those chocolates?’ Harding asked.
‘Naturally,’ Mrs Rivers replied coolly. ‘Perhaps you’d like to speak to Eileen. She took in the parcel.’
Eileen was the daily help, a shrewd and keen-eyed Irishwoman. Yes, she remembered the parcel coming. It had a London postmark and was addressed to Mr Rivers. He had opened it in her presence and said with delight: ‘Chocolates, Eileen. Chocolates from an unknown admirer.’ He had offered her one and had eaten one himself. Within half an hour they had both been violently sick.
Eileen left them and Mrs Rivers took up the tale. ‘When I came home I found Godfrey lying down. He showed me the chocolates and we looked at them. Half of those on the top layer had been crudely opened and put together again.’
Bill Bannister asked: ‘Did you tell the police about this?’
‘No. We simply put them in the furnace.’ Mrs Rivers looked at her hands and for the first time seemed embarrassed. ‘It sounds strange, I expect, but the fact is we both knew they had been sent by Mortimer.’
‘How?’ Harding asked.
‘Why—who else could have done it? Mortimer hated Godfrey. I suppose it was natural that he should.’
‘Tell me, ma’am,’ Harding said with a preliminary cough. ‘How was this unhappy situation to be resolved? Did you contemplate divorcing your husband?’
Slowly, but with passionate conviction, she said, ‘I should never have divorced Godfrey. This was an infatuation. It was already fading, and in another month or two it would have been over.’
‘I see. Now, can you tell me what happened here last night?’
‘What happened? But nothing happened.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘That is, nothing out of the way. We had dinner about seven—very light, because Godfrey never liked eating much at night. Just after eight o’clock the Schultzes came in, and Dr Mostyn. They had a drink. Godfrey took only tonic water with his usual pill, a mild sedative Dr Mostyn made up for him. Just after half-past eight they left. I went to bed.’
‘There was no question of you accompanying your husband?’
‘No. I came along two or three times when he was on the show last year. It would have been nothing new for me. And in any case I knew that woman would be with him.
Harding rose slowly to his feet. ‘You have been very patient, Mrs Rivers. And you have told me much about which I must meditate. Thank you.’ At the door he paused. ‘Oh, by the way, have you any idea whether your husband knew that Mortimer was to be the celebrity on last night’s show?’
She had moved to the window. Her hands rested on flowers in a bowl. Now she snapped a flower stalk. ‘If he did, he knew it from Melanie Mortimer,’ she said sharply. ‘Ask her.’
‘That last question struck home,’ Bannister said as Harding’s car threaded a way through crowded streets. ‘What made you ask it?’
‘It’s obvious, surely.’ Harding was a little impatient. ‘Leslie Jackson naturally does everything possible to keep secret the identity of the celebrity, but accidents do happen sometimes. If Rivers knew who the celebrity was to be, it would help to explain his extreme nervousness. That is the most rudimentary piece of deduction. Much more interesting is the affair of the chocolates.’
‘You mean that Mortimer may not have sent them?’
‘Possibly not, but that isn’t the interesting thing. What interests me is the unusual nature of these so-called poisoned chocolates, which were apparently filled with essence of ipecacuanha. Now let me alone. I must think.’ For the rest of the journey Gilbert Harding closed his eyes and showed every appearance of being asleep.
Jack Mortimer had a suite at Morton’s Hotel. A bottle of whisky stood on a side table, and he had obviously been using it. He showed his long teeth in a smile that had no friendliness.
‘What an honour to be visited by the great Mr Harding. I asked the manager to put down the red carpet, but he said that was strictly reserved for American oil magnates and White Russian princesses. So the best I can do is to offer you and your sidekick a drop of what the management calls liqueur whisky.
‘No, thank you, I have three questions to ask and then I shall be happy to leave you to your career of private drinking. First, how did you happen to be the guest celebrity in this particular week?’
Now Mortimer had picked the large, pretty, vicious-looking dummy he called Melanie off the sofa, and was cradling her in one arm. When he spoke it was in the languid voice of Melanie Mortimer. ‘Why, Gilbert, don’t say you’ve turned detective. You really aren’t made for it, Gilbert, not with that figure.’
Harding nodded. ‘You’re even more stupid that I thought you were, Mortimer. I thought you might be interested to know that those chocolates you sent have been traced to this postal district.’
Mortimer put the dummy down. He said in his own voice, ‘It’s a lie. The inspector’s been going at me about chocolates till I’m sick of it. I never sent Rivers any chocolates, poisoned or otherwise. I’m not a murderer. I got the celebrity spot through my agent, who told Leslie Jackson I had a new dummy. So I had. I wanted to get a bit of my own back on Rivers and that wife of mine, nothing more than that.’
‘So you say. Second question. Did you tell anybody—anybody at all—that you were appearing on What’s My Line?’
Again Mortimer picked up the dummy and stroked her. ‘I have no secrets from my darling Melanie.’
‘So your wife came to see you within the last few days.’ Harding leaned forward. ‘Did she come to ask for a divorce?’
‘Get out.’ Mortimer’s voice was high. ‘I don’t want to talk to you, please understand that. I won’t answer your filthy questions.’ He picked up the glass of whisky with one hand and with the other clasped the dummy Melanie to him in a passionately protective gesture.’
‘You’ve answered my question already.’ Harding stood with his hand on the door. ‘I leave you with this thought, Mortimer. It’s a lonely man who has to drink with a dummy.’
‘This is all very well,’ Bill Bannister said, while they drank tea in Harding’s flat. ‘But I don’t see that it gets us much further. How did that poison get into the glass? And where did it come from in the first place? Those are important things, it seems to me.’
‘As to the last question, I understand from Inspector Gimlet that a quantity of aconitine is missing from Dr Mostyn’s dispensary. Apparently he knew both the Riverses and the Mortimers quite well, and any of them might have taken it.’
‘I can’t see that’s important. But the fact that Rivers may have known Mortimer was to be the celebrity—what of it?’
Gilbert Harding ceremonially, and with some effort, poured out a saucer of tea for Cham-Pu, who lapped it noisily. ‘It helps, that’s all. It helps us to see the complete picture. Now we see why Rivers was nervous. We know that Mortimer had been approached by his wife about divorce. Perhaps neither of those things is at the centre of the puzzle, but they have their place. In most murder cases the truth is simple. But it is complicated by all sorts of trivial plots and counterplots going on separately that have nothing to do with the murder.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. Then there are the chocolates. To me they’re almost the most puzzling feature of the whole affair.’
‘The chocolates are interesting, as I have said already.’
‘But I suppose they are not what you would call at the centre of the puzzle. After all, they didn’t poison anybody.’
Cham-Pu jumped on to Harding’s knee. ‘On the contrary, my dear young man. It is precisely because the chocolates didn’t poison anybody that they are so important. We are dealing with an intelligent murderer, Bannister. The chocolates, the setting, the method of murder—all these, if I am not much mistaken, are part of a plan quite deliberately designed to deceive us.’
VI
GILBERT HARDING FINDS A VITAL CLUE
If Gilbert Harding had been asked to guess Melanie Mortimer’s spare-time occupation, almost the last thing he would have expected was that she might be engaged in social work.
Harding and Bannister found her that evening, however, at the Mary MacLaren Girls’ Club in Deptford.
‘Mr Harding,’ the Chief Warden said enthusiastically. She had iron-grey hair and a handshake that gripped like a pair of pincers. ‘I am delighted to meet you. I hope on another occasion that you will come and talk to our girls.’
‘My dear madam, I can imagine nothing more terrifying.’ Hastily changing the subject, Gilbert Harding said, ‘Has Mrs Mortimer been helping you for long?’
‘About five years. She’s really invaluable, absolutely selfless. She’s taking some girls now in the gym. I’ll go along there with you.’
In the gymnasium a game of basketball was in progress. Melanie Mortimer, wearing shorts and a blouse, was acting as referee. Harding watched with interest and astonishment the authority she obviously exercised, and the way she called the girls around her at the end of the game and talked to them rather as, he imagined, the managers of American baseball teams talked to their players.
‘Melanie is a good basketball player herself,’ the Chief Warden said. But of course her real game is table tennis. She played for England at that, you know. We’re at the top of the Deptford and District League, and she says one or two of the girls are really good. They all love her.’
It was rarely that Gilbert Harding found himself at a loss for words, but now he could do no more than feebly nod his head at this new incarnation of the languid Melanie Mortimer. She came towards them, her cheeks flushed and looking altogether more attractive and intelligent than the languid figure he remembered in the Hospitality Room.
‘That’s all for now, girls,’ she said briskly. ‘Mr Harding and Mr—Bannister, isn’t it? Come along.’
She led them along a corridor to a tiny cubicle, where Harding noticed with interest cups on the mantelpiece and photographs on the wall. He walked over to look at them and saw that they showed a youthful Melanie Mortimer playing table tennis, basketball and hockey, and running.
‘This is most interesting. I had no idea that you were a famous athlete.’
She laughed. ‘That’s putting it much too strongly. I wasn’t top class at anything except table tennis. I’ve always loved playing games, though I love anything to do with children too. Perhaps that was part of our trouble. Jack’s and mine. We never had children.’
‘But your whole manner is different. You might be another person.’
She coloured. ‘Jack was always rather contemptuous of the things I could do well. I just got into the way of being the kind of person he expected, I suppose.’
‘And you seemed languid because you were really bored by theatres, and theatrical people, and childish entertainments like What’s My Line?’
Now she was scarlet. She said with manifest insincerity, ‘Oh, Mr Harding. I know you’re all most terribly intelligent on the panel. It’s just, well, not my line, I suppose. I’m awfully stupid. Jack always said so, and I think Godfrey thought so as well.’
‘Nothing is so limited as a public entertainer’s idea of intelligence. But it is about your husband that I came to talk. I saw him today. He told me that you knew he was to be on the programme last Monday.’
She nodded. ‘I didn’t tell the Inspector because—well, I felt some sort of loyalty to Jack, I suppose, and it didn’t seem to make any difference. But since he told you already …’
‘And you told Rivers that Mortimer would be the celebrity?’
‘Yes. I wanted Godfrey to withdraw from the programme. I knew there would be trouble. Jack was—he was hardly sane about it. You see, I told him that I was going to start proceedings for divorce. There’s plenty of evidence, you know. Jack regards himself as above the law, I think. He believes that standards which apply to other people ought not to apply to him.’
