The Wychford Poisoning Case. Anthony Berkeley
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Название: The Wychford Poisoning Case
Автор: Anthony Berkeley
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Ужасы и Мистика
Серия: Detective Club Crime Classics
isbn: 9780008216436
isbn:
‘Exceptions? I shouldn’t have thought there was a single exception. Who?’
‘Well, Mrs Bentley, for one.’
‘Oh—Mrs Bentley. She knows what she did all right.’
‘Oh, no doubt. But she couldn’t have thought she was being obviously guilty, could she? I mean, she’s a curious sort of person if she did.’
‘But she is rather a curious sort of person in any case, isn’t she? Ordinary people don’t feed their husbands on arsenic. And who’s the other exception?’
‘Me,’ said Roger modestly.
‘You? Roger! Do you mean to say you think she’s not guilty?’
‘Not exactly. It was just the word “obviously” that I was taking exception to. After all, she hasn’t been tried yet, you know. We haven’t heard yet what she’s got to say about it all.’
‘What can she say? I suppose she’ll fake up some sort of story, but really, Roger! All I can say is that if they don’t hang her, no husband’s life will ever be safe again.’
‘Then let’s hope they do,’ remarked Alec humorously. ‘Speaking entirely from the personal point of view, of course.’
‘Prejudice, thy name is woman,’ Roger murmured. ‘Second name, apparently, bloodthirstiness. It’s wonderful. We’re all being women over this affair. Marmalade, please, Alexander.’
‘I know you’re a perverse old devil, Roger,’ Alec was constrained to protest as he passed the dish across, ‘but you can’t mean to say that you really think she’s innocent?’
‘I don’t think anything of the sort, Alexander. What I am trying to do (which apparently no one else is) is to preserve an open mind. I repeat—she hasn’t been tried yet!’
‘But the coroner’s jury brought it in murder against her.’
‘Even coroner’s juries have been known to be fallible,’ Roger pointed out mildly. ‘And they didn’t bring it in quite as bluntly as that. Their exact words, as far as I remember, were that Bentley died from the administration of arsenic, and the majority were of the opinion that the arsenic had been administered with the intention of taking away life.’
‘That comes to the same thing.’
‘Possibly. But it isn’t conclusive.’
‘You seem to know a lot about this case, Roger,’ Barbara remarked.
‘I do,’ Roger agreed. ‘I’ve tried to read every word that’s been written about it. I find it an uncommonly interesting one. After you with that paper, Alec.’
Alec threw the paper across. ‘Well, there was a lot of new evidence brought before the magistrates yesterday. You’d better read it. If you can keep an open mind after that, call the rest of us oysters.’
‘I do that already,’ Roger replied, propping the paper up in front of him. ‘Thank you, Oyster Alexander.’
‘ALEC,’ said Roger, as he settled his back comfortably against a shady willow and pulled his pipe out of his pocket. ‘Alec, I would reason with you.’
It was a glorious morning at the beginning of September. The two men had managed after all to put in a couple of hours’ fishing in the little trout-stream which ran through the bottom of the Grierson’s estate, in spite of Roger’s lingering over his kedgeree and kidneys. Twenty minutes ago they had broken off for the lunch of sandwiches and weak whisky-and-water which they had brought with them, and these having now been despatched Roger was feeling disposed to talk.
For once in a while Alec was not unwilling to encourage him. ‘About the Bentley case?’ he said. ‘Yes, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. What’ve you got up your sleeve?’
‘Oh, nothing up my sleeve,’ Roger said, cramming tobacco into the enormous bowl of his short-stemmed pipe. ‘Nothing as definite as that. But I must say I am most infernally interested in the case, and there’s one thing about it that strikes me very forcibly. Look here, would it bore you if I ran through the whole thing and reviewed all the evidence? I’ve got it all at my fingers’ tips, and it would help to clarify it in our minds, I think. Just facts. I mean, without all the prejudice.’
‘Not a bit,’ Alec agreed readily. ‘We’ve got half an hour to smoke our pipes in anyhow, before we want to get going again.’
‘I think you might have put it a little better than that,’ Roger said with reproach. ‘However! Now let me see, what’s the beginning of the story? The Bentley ménage, I suppose. No, further back than that. Wait a minute, I’ve got some notes here.’
He plunged his hand into the breast-pocket of the very disreputable, very comfortable sports’ coat he was wearing and drew out a small note-book, which he proceeded to study for a minute or two.
‘Yes. We’d better go over the man’s whole life, I think. Well, John Bentley was the eldest of three brothers, and at the time of his death he was forty-one years old. At the age of eighteen he entered his father’s business of general import and export merchants, specialising in machine-tools, and spent six years in the London office. When he was twenty-four his father sent him over to France to take charge of a small branch which was being opened in Paris, and he remained there for twelve years, including the period of the war, in which he was not called upon to serve. During that time he had married, at the age of thirty-four, a Mademoiselle Jacqueline Monjalon, the daughter of a Parisian business acquaintance, since dead; his bride was only eighteen years old. Is that all clear?’
‘Most lucid,’ said Alec, puffing at his pipe.
‘Two years after his marriage, Bentley was recalled to London by his father to assume gradual control of the whole business, which was then in a very flourishing condition, and this he proceeded to do. There was another brother in the business, the second one; but this gentleman had not been able to elude his duties to his country and had been conscripted in 1916, subsequently serving for eighteen months in France till badly wounded in the final push. From a certain wildness which I seem to trace in some of his statements to the press and elsewhere, I should diagnose a dose of shell-shock as well.’
‘Diagnosis granted,’ Alex agreed: ‘I noticed that. Hysterical kind of ass, I thought. Go on.’
‘Well, when our couple returned from France, they bought a large and comfortable house in the town of Wychford, which lies about fifteen miles south-east of London and possesses an excellent train-service for the tired businessman. Thence, of course, friend John would travel up to town every day except Saturdays, a day on which nobody above the rank of assistant-manager dare show his face in the streets of London or everybody would think his firm is going bankrupt: remember that if you ever go into business, Alec.’
‘Thanks, СКАЧАТЬ