The Mysterious Affair at Styles
placidly, “_I_ should not allow it!”
“_You_ would not allow it?”
“No.”
I looked at the extraordinary little man, divided between annoyance and
amusement. He was so tremendously sure of himself. As though he read my
thoughts, he nodded gently.
“Oh, yes, _mon ami_, I would do what I say.” He got up and laid his
hand on my shoulder. His physiognomy underwent a complete change. Tears
came into his eyes. “In all this, you see, I think of that poor Mrs.
Inglethorp who is dead. She was not extravagantly loved—no. But she was
very good to us Belgians—I owe her a debt.”
I endeavoured to interrupt, but Poirot swept on.
“Let me tell you this, Hastings. She would never forgive me if I let
Alfred Inglethorp, her husband, be arrested _now_—when a word from me
could save him!”
CHAPTER VI.
THE INQUEST
In the interval before the inquest, Poirot was unfailing in his
activity. Twice he was closeted with Mr. Wells. He also took long walks
into the country. I rather resented his not taking me into his
confidence, the more so as I could not in the least guess what he was
driving at.
It occurred to me that he might have been making inquiries at Raikes’s
farm; so, finding him out when I called at Leastways Cottage on
Wednesday evening, I walked over there by the fields, hoping to meet
him. But there was no sign of him, and I hesitated to go right up to
the farm itself. As I walked away, I met an aged rustic, who leered at
me cunningly.
“You’m from the Hall, bain’t you?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m looking for a friend of mine whom I thought might have walked
this way.”
“A little chap? As waves his hands when he talks? One of them Belgies
from the village?”
“Yes,” I said eagerly. “He has been here, then?”
“Oh, ay, he’s been here, right enough. More’n once too. Friend of
yours, is he? Ah, you gentlemen from the Hall—you’m a pretty lot!” And
he leered more jocosely than ever.
“Why, do the gentlemen from the Hall come here often?” I asked, as
carelessly as I could.
He winked at me knowingly.
“_One_ does, mister. Naming no names, mind. And a very liberal
gentleman too! Oh, thank you, sir, I’m sure.”
I walked on sharply. Evelyn Howard had been right then, and I
experienced a sharp twinge of disgust, as I thought of Alfred
Inglethorp’s liberality with another woman’s money. Had that piquant
gipsy face been at the bottom of the crime, or was it the baser
mainspring of money? Probably a judicious mixture of both.
On one point, Poirot seemed to have a curious obsession. He once or
twice observed to me that he thought Dorcas must have made an error in
fixing the time of the quarrel. He suggested to her repeatedly that it
was four-thirty, and not four o’clock when she had heard the voices.
But Dorcas was unshaken. Quite an hour, or even more, had elapsed
between the time when she had heard the voices and five o’clock, when
she had taken tea to her mistress.
The inquest was held on Friday at the Stylites Arms in the village.
Poirot and I sat together, not being required to give evidence.
The preliminaries were gone through. The jury viewed the body, and John
Cavendish gave evidence of identification.
Further questioned, he described his awakening in the early hours of
the morning, and the circumstances of his mother’s death.
The medical evidence was next taken. There was a breathless hush, and
every eye was fixed on the famous London specialist, who was known to
be one of the greatest authorities of the day on the subject of
toxicology.
In a few brief words, he summed up the result of the post-mortem. Shorn
of its medical phraseology and technicalities, it amounted to the fact
that Mrs. Inglethorp had met her death as the result of strychnine
poisoning. Judging from the quantity recovered, she must have taken not
less than three-quarters of a grain of strychnine, but probably one
grain or slightly over.
“Is it possible that she could have swallowed the poison by accident?”
asked the Coroner.
“I should consider it very unlikely. Strychnine is not used for
domestic purposes, as some poisons are, and there are restrictions
placed on its sale.”
“Does anything in your examination lead you to determine how the poison
was administered?”
“No.”
“You arrived at Styles before Dr. Wilkins, I believe?”
“That is so. The motor met me just outside the lodge gates, and I
hurried there as fast as I could.”
“Will you relate to us exactly what happened next?”
“I entered Mrs. Inglethorp’s room. She was at that moment in a typical
tetanic convulsion. She turned towards me, and gasped out:
‘Alfred—Alfred——’”
“Could the strychnine have been administered in Mrs. Inglethorp’s
after-dinner coffee which was taken to her by her husband?”
“Possibly, but strychnine is a fairly rapid drug in its action. The
symptoms appear from one to two hours after it has been swallowed. It
is retarded under certain conditions, none of which, however, appear to
have been present in this case. I presume Mrs. Inglethorp took the
coffee after dinner about eight o’clock, whereas the symptoms did not
manifest themselves until the early hours of the morning, which, on the
face of it, points to the drug having been taken much later in the
evening.”
“Mrs. Inglethorp was in the habit of drinking a cup of cocoa in the
middle of the night. Could the strychnine have been administered in
that?”
“No, I myself took a sample of the cocoa remaining in the saucepan and
had it analysed. There was no strychnine present.”
I heard Poirot chuckle softly beside me.
“How did you know?” I whispered.
“Listen.”
“I should say”—the doctor was continuing—“that I would have been
considerably surprised at any other result.”
“Why?”
“Simply because strychnine has an unusually bitter taste. It can be
detected in a solution of one in seventy thousand, and can only be
disguised by some strongly flavoured substance. Cocoa would be quite
powerless to mask it.”
One of the jury wanted to know if the same objection applied to coffee.
“No. Coffee has a bitter taste of its own which would probably cover
the taste of strychnine.”
“Then you consider it more likely that the drug was administered in the
coffee, but that for some unknown reason its action was delayed.”
“Yes, but, the cup being completely smashed, there is no possibility of
analyzing its contents.”
This concluded Dr. Bauerstein’s evidence. Dr. Wilkins corroborated it
on all points. Sounded as to the possibility of suicide, he repudiated
it utterly. The deceased, he said, suffered from a weak heart, but
otherwise enjoyed perfect health, and was of a cheerful and
well-balanced disposition. She would be one of the last people to take
her own life.
Lawrence Cavendish was next called. His evidence was quite unimportant,
being a mere repetition of that of his brother. Just as he was about to
step down, he paused, and said rather hesitatingly:
“I should like to make a suggestion if I may?”
He glanced deprecatingly at the Coroner, who replied briskly:
“Certainly, Mr. Cavendish, we are here to arrive at the truth of this
matter, and welcome anything that may lead to further elucidation.”
“It is just an idea of mine,” explained Lawrence. “Of course I may be
quite wrong, but it still seems to me that my mother’s death might be
accounted for by natural means.”
“How do you make that out, Mr. Cavendish?”
“My mother, at the time of her death, and for some time before it, was
taking a tonic containing strychnine.”
“Ah!” said the Coroner.
The jury looked up, interested.
“I believe,” continued Lawrence, “that there have been cases where the
cumulative effect of a drug, administered for some time, has ended by
causing death. Also, is it not possible that she may have taken an
overdose of her medicine by accident?”
“This is the first we have heard of the deceased taking strychnine at
the time of her death. We are much obliged to you, Mr. Cavendish.”
Dr. Wilkins was recalled and ridiculed the idea.
“What Mr. Cavendish suggests is quite impossible. Any doctor would tell
you the same. Strychnine is, in a certain sense, a cumulative poison,
but it would be quite impossible for it to result in sudden death in
this way. There would have to be a long period of chronic symptoms
which would at once have attracted my attention. The whole thing is
absurd.”
“And the second suggestion? That Mrs. Inglethorp may have inadvertently
taken an overdose?”
“Three, or even four doses, would not have resulted in death. Mrs.
Inglethorp always had an extra large amount of medicine made up at a
time, as she dealt with Coot’s, the Cash Chemists in Tadminster. She
would have had to take very nearly the whole bottle to account for the
amount of strychnine found at the post-mortem.”
“Then you consider that we may dismiss the tonic as not being in any
way instrumental in causing her death?”
“Certainly. The supposition is ridiculous.”
The same juryman who had interrupted before here suggested that the
chemist who made up the medicine might have committed an error.
“That, of course, is always possible,” replied the doctor.
But Dorcas, who was the next witness called, dispelled even that
possibility. The medicine had not been newly made up. On the contrary,
Mrs. Inglethorp had taken the last dose on the day of her death.
So the question of the tonic was finally abandoned, and the Coroner
proceeded with his task. Having elicited from Dorcas how she had been
awakened by the violent ringing of her mistress’s bell, and had
subsequently roused the household, he passed to the subject of the
quarrel on the preceding afternoon.
Dorcas’s evidence on this point was substantially what Poirot and I had
already heard, so I will not repeat it here.
The next witness was Mary Cavendish. She stood very upright, and spoke
in a low, clear, and perfectly composed voice. In answer to the
Coroner’s question, she told how, her alarm clock having aroused her at
four-thirty as usual, she was dressing, when she was startled by the
sound of something heavy falling.
“That would have been the table by the bed?” commented the Coroner.
“I opened my door,” continued Mary, “and listened. In a few minutes a
bell rang violently. Dorcas came running down and woke my husband, and
we all went to my mother-in-law’s room, but it was locked——”
The Coroner interrupted her.
“I really do not think we need trouble you further on that point. We
know all that can be known of the subsequent happenings. But I should
be obliged if you would tell us all you overheard of the quarrel the
day before.”
“I?”
There was a faint insolence in her voice. She raised her hand and
adjusted the ruffle of lace at her neck, turning her head a little as
she did so. And quite spontaneously the thought flashed across my mind:
“She is gaining time!”
“Yes. I understand,” continued the Coroner deliberately, “that you were
sitting reading on the bench just outside the long window of the
boudoir. That is so, is it not?”
This was news to me and glancing sideways at Poirot, I fancied that it
was news to him as well.
There was the faintest pause, the mere hesitation of a moment, before
she answered:
“Yes, that is so.”
“And the boudoir window was open, was it not?”
Surely her face grew a little paler as she answered:
“Yes.”
“Then you cannot have failed to hear the voices inside, especially as
they were raised in anger. In fact, they would be more audible where
you were than in the hall.”
“Possibly.”
“Will you repeat to us what you overheard of the quarrel?”
“I really do not remember hearing anything.”
“Do you mean to say you did not hear voices?”
“Oh, yes, I heard the voices, but I did not hear what they said.” A
faint spot of colour came into her cheek. “I am not in the habit of