“Mr. Chitterwick, do any of us know this woman?” demanded Mrs. Fielder-Flemming abruptly.
Mr. Chitterwick looked more embarrassed than ever. “Er—yes,” he hesitated. “That is, you must remember it was she who smuggled Miss Dammers’s two books into Sir Eustace’s rooms too, you know.”
“I shall have to be more careful about my friends in future, I see,” observed Miss Dammers, gently sarcastic.
“An ex-mistress of Sir Eustace’s eh?” Roger murmured, conning over in his mind such names as he could remember from that lengthy list.
“Well, yes,” Mr. Chitterwick agreed. “But nobody had any idea of it. That is—Dear me, this is very difficult.” Mr. Chitterwick wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, and looked extremely unhappy.
“She’d managed to conceal it?” Roger pressed him.
“Er—yes. She’d certainly managed to conceal the true state of matters between them, very cleverly indeed. I don’t think anybody suspected it at all.”
“They apparently didn’t know each other?” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming persisted. “They were never seen about together?”
“Oh, at one time they were,” said Mr. Chitterwick, looking in quite a hunted way from face to face. “Quite frequently. Then, I understand, they thought it better to pretend to have quarrelled and—and met only in secret.”
“Isn’t it time you told us this woman’s name, Chitterwick?” boomed Sir Charles down the table, looking judicial.
Mr. Chitterwick scrambled desperately out of this fire of questions. “It’s very strange, you know, how murderers never will let well alone, isn’t it?” he said breathlessly. “It happens so often. I’m quite sure I should never have stumbled on the truth in this case if the murderess had only left things as they were, in accordance with her own admirable plot. But this trying to fix the guilt on another person … Really, from the intelligence displayed in this case, she ought to have been above that. Of course her plot had miscarried. Been only half-successful, I should say. But why not accept the partial failure? Why tempt Providence? Trouble was inevitable—inevitable—”
Mr. Chitterwick seemed by this time utterly distressed. He was shuffling his notes with extreme nervousness, and wriggling in his chair. The glances he kept darting from face to face were almost pleading. But what he was pleading for remained obscure.
“Dear me,” said Mr. Chitterwick, as if at his wits’ end. “This is very difficult. I’d better clear up the remaining point. It’s about the alibi.
“In my opinion the alibi was an afterthought, owing to a piece of luck. Southampton Street is near both the Cecil and the Savoy, isn’t it? I happen to know that this lady has a friend, another woman, of a somewhat unconventional nature. She is continually away on exploring expeditions and so on, usually quite alone. She never stays in London more than a night or two, and I should imagine she is the sort of woman who rarely reads the newspapers. And if she did, I think she would certainly not divulge any suspicion they might convey to her, especially concerning a friend of her own.
“I have ascertained that immediately preceding the crime this woman, whose name by the way is Jane Harding, stayed for two nights at the Savoy Hotel, and left London, on the morning the chocolates were delivered, for Africa. From there she was going on to South America. Where she may be now I have not the least idea. Nor, I should say, has anyone else. But she came to London from Paris, where she had been staying for a week.
“The—er—criminal would know about this forthcoming trip to London, and so hurried to Paris. (I am afraid,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick uneasily, “there is a good deal of guesswork here.) It would be simple to ask this other lady to post the parcel in London, as the parcel postage is so heavy from France, and just as simple to ensure it being delivered on the morning of the lunch-appointment with Mrs. Bendix, by saying it was a birthday present, or some other pretext, and—and—must be posted to arrive on that particular day.” Mr. Chitterwick wiped his forehead again and glanced pathetically at Roger. Roger could only stare back in bewilderment.
“Dear me,” muttered Mr. Chitterwick distractedly, “this is very difficult.—Well, I have satisfied myself that—”
Alicia Dammers had risen to her feet and was unhurriedly picking up her belongings. “I’m afraid,” she said, “I have an appointment. Will you excuse me, Mr. President?”
“Of course,” said Roger, in some surprise.
At the door Miss Dammers turned back. “I’m so sorry not to be able to stay to hear the rest of your case, Mr. Chitterwick. But really, you know, as I said, I very much doubt whether you’ll be able to prove it.”
She went out of the room.
“She’s perfectly right,” whispered Mr. Chitterwick, gazing after her in a petrified way. “I’m quite sure I can’t. But there isn’t the faintest doubt. I’m afraid, not the faintest.”
Stupefaction reigned.
“You—you can’t mean … ?” twittered Mrs. Fielder-Flemming in a strangely shrill voice.
Mr. Bradley was the first to get a grip on himself. “So we did have a practising criminologist amongst us after all,” he drawled, in a manner that was never Oxford. “How quite interesting.”
Again silence held the Circle.
“So now,” asked the President helplessly, “what the devil do we do?”
Nobody enlightened him.
Colophon
The Poisoned Chocolates Case
was published in 1929 by
Anthony Berkeley.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
David Reimer,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2025 by
Brian Raiter
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Still Life,
a painting completed circa 1940 by
Meri Genetz.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
April 21, 2025, 3:39
