'I must confess that I thought at one time that we did,' said Mrs. Fielder - Flemming, making her peace. 'Sir Charles,' she added unnecessarily, 'I apologise, without reserve.'
Sir Charles inclined his head courteously. 'Please don't refer to it, madam. And in any event the experience for me was an interesting one.'
'I may have been misled by the case I quoted,' said Mrs. Fielder - Flemming, rather wistfully. 'It was a strangely close parallel.'
'It was the first parallel that occurred to me, too,' Roger agreed. 'I studied the Molineux case quite closely, hoping to get a pointer from it. But now, if I were asked for a parallel, I should reply with the Caylyle Harris case. You remember, the young medical student who sent a pill containing morphine to the girl Helen Potts, to whom it turned out that he had been secretly married for a year. He was by way of being a profligate and a general young rotter too. A great novel, as you know, has been founded on the case, so why not a great crime too?'
'Then why, Mr. Sheringham,' Miss Dammers wanted to know, 'do you think that Mr. Bendix took the risk of not destroying the forged letter and the wrapper when he had the chance?'
'He very carefully didn't do so,' Roger replied promptly, 'because the forged letter and the wrapper had been calculated not only to divert suspicion from himself but actually to point away from him to somebody else - an employee of Mason's, for instance, or an anonymous lunatic. Which is exactly what they did.'
'But wouldn't it be a great risk, to send poisoned chocolates like that to Sir Eustace?' suggested Mr. Chitterwick diffidently. 'I mean. Sir Eustace might have been ill the next morning, or not offered to hand them over at all. Suppose he had given them to somebody else instead of Bendix.'
Roger proceeded to give Mr. Chitterwick cause for his diffidence. He was feeling something of a personal pride in Bendix by this time, and it distressed him to hear a great man thus maligned.
'Oh, really! You must give my man credit for being what he is. He's not a bungler, you know. It wouldn't have had any serious results if Sir Eustace had been ill that morning, or eaten the chocolates himself, or if they'd been stolen in transit and consumed by the postman's favourite daughter, or any other unlikely contingency. Come, Mr. Chitterwick! You don't imagine he'd send the poisoned ones through the post, do you? Of course not. He'd send harmless ones, and exchange them for the others on the way home. Dash it all, he wouldn't go out of his way to present opportunities to chance.'
'Oh! I see,' murmured Mr. Chitterwick, properly subdued.
'We're dealing with a very great criminal,' went on Roger, rather less severely. 'That can be seen at every point. Take the arrival at the club, just for example - that most unusual early arrival (why this early arrival at all, by the way, if he isn't guilty?). Well, he doesn't wait outside and follow his unconscious accomplice in, you see. Not a bit of it. Sir Eustace is chosen because he's known to get there so punctually at half - past ten every morning; takes a pride in it; boasts of it; goes out of his way to keep up the good old custom. So Bendix arrives at ten thirty - five, and there things are. It had puzzled me at the beginning of the case, by the way, to see why the chocolates had been sent to Sir Eustace at his club at all, instead of to his rooms. Now it's obvious.'
'Well, I wasn't so far out with my list of conditions,' Mr. Bradley consoled himself. 'But why don't you agree with my rather subtle point about the murderer not being a public - school or University man, Sheringham? Just because Bendix happens to have been at Selchester and Oxford?'
'No, because I'd make the still more subtle point that where the code of a public - school and University might influence a murderer in the way he murdered another man, it wouldn't have much effect when a woman is to be the victim. I agree that if Bendix had been wanting to dispose of Sir Eustace, he would probably have put him out of the world in a nice, straightforward, manly way. But one doesn't use nice, straightforward, manly ways in one's dealings with women, if it comes to hitting them on the head with a bludgeon or anything in that nature. Poison, I fancy, would be quite in order. And there's very little suffering with a large dose of nitrobenzene. Unconsciousness soon intervenes.'
'Yes,' admitted Mr. Bradley, 'that is rather too subtle a point for one of my unpsychological attributes.'
'I think I dealt with most of your other conditions. As regards the methodical habits, which you deduced from the meticulous doses of poison in each chocolate, my point of course is that the doses were exactly equal in order that Bendix could take any two of the chocolates and be sure of having got the right amount of nitrobenzene into his system to produce the symptoms he wanted, and not enough to run any serious risk. That dosing of himself with the poison really was a master - stroke. And it's so natural that a man shouldn't have taken so many chocolates as a woman. He exaggerated his symptoms considerably, no doubt, but the effect on everybody was tremendous.
'We must remember, you see, that we've only got his word for the conversation in the drawing - room, over the eating of the chocolates, just as we've only got his word for it that there ever was a bet at all. Most of that conversation certainly took place, however. Bendix is far too great an artist not to make all possible use of the truth in his lying. But of course he wouldn't have left her that afternoon till he'd seen her take, or somehow made her take at least six of the chocolates, which he'd know made up more than a lethal dose. That was another advantage in having the stuff in those exact six - minim quantities.'
'In fact,' Mr. Bradley summed up, 'our Uncle Bendix is a great man.'
'He really is,' said Roger, quite solemnly.
'You've no doubt at all that he is the criminal?' queried Miss Dammers.
'None at all,' said Roger, astonished.
'Um,' said Miss Dammers.
'Why, have you?'
'Um,' said Miss Dammers.
The conversation then lapsed.
'Well,' said Mr. Bradley, 'let's all tell Sheringham how wrong he is, shall we?'
Mrs. Fielder - Flemming looked tense. 'I'm afraid,' she said in a hushed voice, 'that he is only too right.'
But Mr. Bradley refused to be impressed. 'Oh, I think I can find a hole or two to pick at. You seem to attach a good deal of importance to the motive, Sheringham. Don't you exaggerate? One doesn't poison a wife one's tired of; one leaves her. And really, I find some difficulty in believing (a) that Bendix should have been so set on getting hold of more money to pour down the drainpipe of his businesses as to commit murder for it, and (b) that Mrs. Bendix should have been so close as to refuse to come to her husband's help if he really was badly pressed.'
'Then I think you fail to estimate the characters of both of them,' Roger told him. 'They were both obstinate as the devil. It was Mrs. Bendix, not her husband, who realised that his businesses were a drainpipe. I could give you a list a yard long of murders that have been committed with far less motive than Bendix had.'
'Motive allowed again, then. Now you remember that Mrs. Bendix had had a lunch appointment for the day of her death, which was cancelled. Didn't Bendix know of that? Because if he did, would he have chosen a day for the delivery of the chocolates when he knew his wife wouldn't be at home for lunch to receive them?'
'Just the point I had thought of putting to Mr. Sheringham myself,' remarked Miss Dammers.
Roger looked puzzled. 'It seems to me a most unimportant point. If it comes to that, why should he necessarily want to give the chocolates to his wife at lunch - time?'
'For two reasons,' responded Mr. Bradley glibly. 'Firstly because he would naturally want to put them to their right purpose as soon as he possibly could, and secondly because his wife being the only person who can contradict this story of the bet, he would obviously want her silenced as soon as practicable.'
'You're quibbling,' Roger smiled, 'and I refuse to be drawn. For that matter, I don't see why Bendix should have known of his wife's lunch - appointment at all. They were constantly lunching out, both of them, and I don't suppose they took any particular care to inform each other beforehand.'
'Humph!' said Mr. Bradley and stroked his chin. Mr. Chitterwick ventured to raise his recently crushed head. 'You really base your whole case on the bet, Mr. Sheringham, don't you? '
'And the psychological deduction I drew from the story of it. Yes, I do. Entirely.'
'So that if the bet could be proved after all to have been made, you would have no case left?'
'Why,' exclaimed Roger, in some alarm, 'have you any independent evidence that the bet was made?'
'Oh, no. Oh, dear me, no. Nothing of the sort. I was merely thinking that if any one did want to disprove your case, as Bradley suggested, it is the bet on which he would have to concentrate.'
'You mean, quibbling about the motive, and the lunch - appointment, and such minor matters, is altogether beside the point?' suggested Mr. Bradley amiably. 'Oh, I quite agree. But I was only trying to test his case, you know, not disprove it. And for why? Because I think it's the right one. The Mystery of the Poisoned Chocolates, so
