The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie (story books to read TXT) 📖

>not notice the postmark! And yet you affirm so confidently that it came from Styles. It might, in fact, have been any postmark?”

“Y—es.”

“In fact, the letter, though written on stamped notepaper, might have been posted from anywhere? From Wales, for instance?”

The witness admitted that such might be the case, and Sir Ernest signified that he was satisfied.

Elizabeth Wells, second housemaid at Styles, stated that after she had gone to bed she remembered that she had bolted the front door, instead of leaving it on the latch as Mr. Inglethorp had requested. She had accordingly gone downstairs again to rectify her error. Hearing a slight noise in the West wing, she had peeped along the passage, and had seen Mr. John Cavendish knocking at Mrs. Inglethorp’s door.

Sir Ernest Heavywether made short work of her, and under his unmerciful bullying she contradicted herself hopelessly, and Sir Ernest sat down again with a satisfied smile on his face.

With the evidence of Annie, as to the candle grease on the floor, and as to seeing the prisoner take the coffee into the boudoir, the proceedings were adjourned until the following day.

As we went home, Mary Cavendish spoke bitterly against the prosecuting counsel.

“That hateful man! What a net he has drawn around my poor John! How he twisted every little fact until he made it seem what it wasn’t!”

“Well,” I said consolingly, “it will be the other way about to-morrow.”

“Yes,” she said meditatively; then suddenly dropped her voice. “Mr. Hastings, you do not think—surely it could not have been Lawrence—Oh, no, that could not be!”

But I myself was puzzled, and as soon as I was alone with Poirot I asked him what he thought Sir Ernest was driving at.

“Ah!” said Poirot appreciatively. “He is a clever man, that Sir Ernest.”

“Do you think he believes Lawrence guilty?”

“I do not think he believes or cares anything! No, what he is trying for is to create such confusion in the minds of the jury that they are divided in their opinion as to which brother did it. He is endeavouring to make out that there is quite as much evidence against Lawrence as against John—and I am not at all sure that he will not succeed.”

Detective-inspector Japp was the first witness called when the trial was reopened, and gave his evidence succinctly and briefly. After relating the earlier events, he proceeded:

“Acting on information received, Superintendent Summerhaye and myself searched the prisoner’s room, during his temporary absence from the house. In his chest of drawers, hidden beneath some underclothing, we found: first, a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez similar to those worn by Mr. Inglethorp”—these were exhibited—“secondly, this phial.”

The phial was that already recognized by the chemist’s assistant, a tiny bottle of blue glass, containing a few grains of a white crystalline powder, and labelled: “Strychnine Hydrochloride. POISON.”

A fresh piece of evidence discovered by the detectives since the police court proceedings was a long, almost new piece of blotting-paper. It had been found in Mrs. Inglethorp’s cheque book, and on being reversed at a mirror, showed clearly the words: “… erything of which I die possessed I leave to my beloved husband Alfred Ing …” This placed beyond question the fact that the destroyed will had been in favour of the deceased lady’s husband. Japp then produced the charred fragment of paper recovered from the grate, and this, with the discovery of the beard in the attic, completed his evidence.

But Sir Ernest’s cross-examination was yet to come.

“What day was it when you searched the prisoner’s room?”

“Tuesday, the 24th of July.”

“Exactly a week after the tragedy?”

“Yes.”

“You found these two objects, you say, in the chest of drawers. Was the drawer unlocked?”

“Yes.”

“Does it not strike you as unlikely that a man who had committed a crime should keep the evidence of it in an unlocked drawer for anyone to find?”

“He might have stowed them there in a hurry.”

“But you have just said it was a whole week since the crime. He would have had ample time to remove them and destroy them.”

“Perhaps.”

“There is no perhaps about it. Would he, or would he not have had plenty of time to remove and destroy them?”

“Yes.”

“Was the pile of underclothes under which the things were hidden heavy or light?”

“Heavyish.”

“In other words, it was winter underclothing. Obviously, the prisoner would not be likely to go to that drawer?”

“Perhaps not.”

“Kindly answer my question. Would the prisoner, in the hottest week of a hot summer, be likely to go to a drawer containing winter underclothing. Yes, or no?”

“No.”

“In that case, is it not possible that the articles in question might have been put there by a third person, and that the prisoner was quite unaware of their presence?”

“I should not think it likely.”

“But it is possible?”

“Yes.”

“That is all.”

More evidence followed. Evidence as to the financial difficulties in which the prisoner had found himself at the end of July. Evidence as to his intrigue with Mrs. Raikes—poor Mary, that must have been bitter hearing for a woman of her pride. Evelyn Howard had been right in her facts, though her animosity against Alfred Inglethorp had caused her to jump to the conclusion that he was the person concerned.

Lawrence Cavendish was then put into the box. In a low voice, in answer to Mr. Philips’ questions, he denied having ordered anything from Parkson’s in June. In fact, on June 29th, he had been staying away, in Wales.

Instantly, Sir Ernest’s chin was shooting pugnaciously forward.

“You deny having ordered a black beard from Parkson’s on June 29th?”

“I do.”

“Ah! In the event of anything happening to your brother, who will inherit Styles Court?”

The brutality of the question called a flush to Lawrence’s pale face. The judge gave vent to a faint murmur of disapprobation, and the prisoner in the dock leant forward angrily.

Heavywether cared nothing for his client’s anger.

“Answer my question, if you please.”

“I suppose,” said Lawrence quietly, “that I should.”

“What do you mean by you ‘suppose’? Your brother has no children. You would inherit it, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, that’s better,” said Heavywether, with ferocious geniality. “And you’d inherit a good slice of money too, wouldn’t you?”

“Really, Sir Ernest,” protested the judge, “these questions are not relevant.”

Sir Ernest bowed, and having shot his arrow proceeded.

“On Tuesday, the 17th July, you went, I believe, with another guest, to visit the dispensary at the Red Cross Hospital in Tadminster?”

“Yes.”

“Did you—while you happened to be alone for a few seconds—unlock the poison cupboard, and examine some of the bottles?”

“I—I—may have done so.”

“I put it to you that you did do so?”

“Yes.”

Sir Ernest fairly shot the next question at him.

“Did you examine one bottle in particular?”

“No, I do not think so.”

“Be careful, Mr. Cavendish. I am referring to a little bottle of Hydrochloride of Strychnine.”

Lawrence was turning a sickly greenish colour.

“N—o—I am sure I didn’t.”

“Then how do you account for the fact that you left the unmistakable impress of your finger-prints on it?”

The bullying manner was highly efficacious with a nervous disposition.

“I—I suppose I must have taken up the bottle.”

“I suppose so too! Did you abstract any of the contents of the bottle?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then why did you take it up?”

“I once studied to be a doctor. Such things naturally interest me.”

“Ah! So poisons ‘naturally interest’ you, do they? Still, you waited to be alone before gratifying that ‘interest’ of yours?”

“That was pure chance. If the others had been there, I should have done just the same.”

“Still, as it happens, the others were not there?”

“No, but–-”

“In fact, during the whole afternoon, you were only alone for a couple of minutes, and it happened—I say, it happened—to be during those two minutes that you displayed your ‘natural interest’ in Hydrochloride of Strychnine?”

Lawrence stammered pitiably.

“I—I–-”

With a satisfied and expressive countenance, Sir Ernest observed:

“I have nothing more to ask you, Mr. Cavendish.”

This bit of cross-examination had caused great excitement in court. The heads of the many fashionably attired women present were busily laid together, and their whispers became so loud that the judge angrily threatened to have the court cleared if there was not immediate silence.

There was little more evidence. The handwriting experts were called upon for their opinion of the signature of “Alfred Inglethorp” in the chemist’s poison register. They all declared unanimously that it was certainly not his handwriting, and gave it as their view that it might be that of the prisoner disguised. Cross-examined, they admitted that it might be the prisoner’s handwriting cleverly counterfeited.

Sir Ernest Heavywether’s speech in opening the case for the defence was not a long one, but it was backed by the full force of his emphatic manner. Never, he said, in the course of his long experience, had he known a charge of murder rest on slighter evidence. Not only was it entirely circumstantial, but the greater part of it was practically unproved. Let them take the testimony they had heard and sift it impartially. The strychnine had been found in a drawer in the prisoner’s room. That drawer was an unlocked one, as he had pointed out, and he submitted that there was no evidence to prove that it was the prisoner who had concealed the poison there. It was, in fact, a wicked and malicious attempt on the part of some third person to fix the crime on the prisoner. The prosecution had been unable to produce a shred of evidence in support of their contention that it was the prisoner who ordered the black beard from Parkson’s. The quarrel which had taken place between prisoner and his stepmother was freely admitted, but both it and his financial embarrassments had been grossly exaggerated.

His learned friend—Sir Ernest nodded carelessly at Mr. Philips—had stated that if the prisoner were an innocent man, he would have come forward at the inquest to explain that it was he, and not Mr. Inglethorp, who had been the participator in the quarrel. He thought the facts had been misrepresented. What had actually occurred was this. The prisoner, returning to the house on Tuesday evening, had been authoritatively told that there had been a violent quarrel between Mr. and Mrs. Inglethorp. No suspicion had entered the prisoner’s head that anyone could possibly have mistaken his voice for that of Mr. Inglethorp. He naturally concluded that his stepmother had had two quarrels.

The prosecution averred that on Monday, July 16th, the prisoner had entered the chemist’s shop in the village, disguised as Mr. Inglethorp. The prisoner, on the contrary, was at that time at a lonely spot called Marston’s Spinney, where he had been summoned by an anonymous note, couched in blackmailing terms, and threatening to reveal certain matters to his wife unless he complied with its demands. The prisoner had, accordingly, gone to the appointed spot, and after waiting there vainly for half an hour had returned home. Unfortunately, he had met with no one on the way there or back who could vouch for the truth of his story, but luckily he had kept the note, and it would be produced as evidence.

As for the statement relating to the destruction of the will, the prisoner had formerly practiced at the Bar, and was perfectly well aware that the will made in his favour a year before was automatically revoked by his stepmother’s remarriage. He would call evidence to show who did destroy the will, and it was possible that that might open up quite a new view of the case.

Finally, he would point out to the jury that there was evidence against other people besides John