« ^ »
‘You know,’ said Bluebell, accepting a lift in Dame Beatrice’s car and sitting between her husband and Dame Beatrice on the back seat while Garnet sat in front with George, ‘I know it means plain sailing for the rest of us—the family and Fiona and Ruby, I mean—but I can’t help feeling that the police are barking up the wrong tree.’
‘The coroner was wise enough to repress that outspoken juryman and insist upon a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown,’ Dame Beatrice pointed out.
‘All the same, I am sure they mean to arrest that honest, ignorant girl.’
‘Yes, but even if they arrested her as she left the house, there is still a hearing before the magistrates to come.’
‘There’s a
‘How do you mean?’ asked his sister. ‘And how do you know what the classic formula is?’
‘I sometimes have a crime in one of my novels, so I need to know such things. Three points arise before a criminal can be convicted. The person concerned must be shown to have had the means, the opportunity and (to a much lesser extent) a motive for committing the crime.’
‘Why “to a lesser extent”? I should have thought the motive was of supreme importance.’
‘Well, no, because what would be a valid motive to one person would offer no temptation, or very little, to another. Let us take a very simple example: let us suppose that you and Gamaliel are equally hungry; really hungry, I mean. You come to a baker’s shop in which you happen to know that the proprietor is also the only counter-hand. As you are both approaching the shop you see him chasing a small boy down the street. The shop door is open. You—both of you—are almost starving. What happens? You tell me, honestly, what happens.’
‘Well,’ said Bluebell, ‘I think you have picked a heavily loaded and very unfair example, but—well, yes, I suppose you are right. Gamaliel would step inside the shop and grab all the bread and buns that he could get hold of: I should not.’
‘Yet my premise is that you are just as hungry as he is.’
‘Gamaliel needs food far more than I do, so I still don’t think it’s a fair example. What does Dame Beatrice think?’
‘I think that if Gamaliel were starving and you had no food to give him, you would steal it. Your motive, in such a case, would be strong enough for that. But one can argue about motive indefinitely. What we have to consider in the far from hypothetical case which has come under our notice, is to what extent we can agree that there is a
‘She had the means,’ said Parsifal. ‘Do not misunderstand me. I do not believe the girl is guilty. All the same, the kind of plant which appears to have wrought the mischief is known to have been growing in the garden of the house where she was living.’
‘You would have to prove that the root or roots of that particular plant had been dug up at the requisite time,’ said Bluebell, ‘and, moreover, that Margaret was the person who did the excavating.’
‘So “opportunity” comes under two separate headings,’ said Garnet. ‘One: when had she the opportunity to do the digging? That raises another question, you know. The majority of householders, and that includes these cottagers, are very proud of their gardens, I’m sure Mrs Antrobus or her husband (if she has one) would have noticed at once that the plants of monkshood had been tampered with and one or more of them removed.’
‘An excellent point,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘and one which must be investigated further.’
‘Further? Oh, but the police must have gone into the matter. My second point,’ Garnet went on, ‘is that, granted she had the poisonous root at hand and, for the sake of argument, granted that she had murder in mind, it would have to be established that she had the opportunity to substitute a lethal jar of condiment for an innocuous one.’
‘I thought the cook’s evidence covered that point,’ said Parsifal. ‘The murderer had only to pop into the kitchen while the cook was upstairs resting after lunch and the kitchenmaid was in the scullery washing the dishes and with a closed door between her and the kitchen, for the exchange of jars to be effected in only a few seconds and in perfect safety.’
‘But the murderer need not have been this girl,’ Bluebell protested. ‘Anybody living or staying in the house, or even Mattie or Redruth Lunn from outside it, could have had the same opportunity.’
‘The means would have been simple enough to come by,’ Parsifal conceded. ‘Mrs Antrobus is far from being the only person hereabouts to have monkshood in her garden. Come to think of it, we’ve got several plants of that genus in our own front garden.’
‘But we don’t—I mean, we didn’t until this morning know that the cook and the kitchenmaid would be out of the kitchen at a definite and well-established time,’ said Garnet.
‘We might find that hard to prove,’ said Bluebell. ‘Fiona most certainly would have known, and there is no way of proving that she had not told us.’
‘Even if she herself denied telling us?’ said Parsifal.
‘The law would argue that she was lying in order to protect the people who had taken her in when she had nowhere else to go,’ said Garnet.
‘But what motive could any of us have for murdering our grandmother? The very question sounds like a music hall joke,’ protested Bluebell.
‘We may have sufficient motive attached to us when the Will is read,’ said Garnet, with a short laugh in which there was no hilarity.
‘Oh, gracious me! I never thought of that,’ said Bluebell.
