The Wychford Poisoning Case. Anthony Berkeley

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       CHAPTER V

       ALL ABOUT ARSENIC

      FOR a moment Alec looked bewildered. Then he nodded.

      ‘I see what you’re driving at,’ he said slowly. ‘You mean, if Mrs Bentley’s own solicitor thinks she’s guilty, then her explanation of the evidence can’t be a particularly convincing one?’

      ‘Exactly.’

      ‘And according to what you were saying yesterday morning, that makes you yourself still more convinced of her innocence?’

      ‘Well, don’t put it as strongly as all that. Say that it makes me still more inclined to think she may be innocent.’

      ‘Contrary to the opinion of everyone else who is most competent to judge. Humph!’ Alec smoked in silence for a minute. ‘Roger, that Layton Court affair hasn’t gone to your head, has it?’

      ‘How do you mean?’

      ‘Well, just because you hit on the truth there and nobody else did, you’re not looking on yourself as infallible, are you?’

      ‘Hit on the truth!’ exclaimed Roger with much pain. ‘After I’d reasoned out every single step in the case and drawn the most brilliant deductions from the most inadequate data! Hit on the truth, indeed!’

      ‘Well, arrived at the truth, then,’ Alec said patiently. ‘I’m not a word-fancier like you. Anyhow, you haven’t answered my question. You’re not beginning to look on yourself as a story-book detective, and all the rest of the world as the Scotland Yard specimen to match, are you?’

      ‘No, Alec, I am not,’ Roger replied coldly. ‘The point I made about the unnaturalness of that large quantity of arsenic was a perfectly legitimate one, and I’m only surprised that nobody else seems to have noticed it, instead of promptly drawing the diametrically opposite conclusion. As to whether I’m right or wrong in the explanation I gave you, that remains to be seen; but you’ll kindly remember that I only put it forward as an interesting possibility, not a cast-iron fact, and I merely pointed out that it was just enough to cast a small doubt on the absolute certainty of Mrs Bentley’s guilt.’

      ‘All right,’ Alec said soothingly. ‘Keep your wool on. What about all that chit-chat about mysterious unknowns?’

      Roger affected a slight re-arrangement of his ruffled plumes. ‘There I’m quite ready to admit that I was using my imagination, and plenty of it too. But it was plausible enough for all that. And if Mrs Bentley by any weird chance is innocent it must be true. In any case, isn’t that just what we’re supposed to have come down here to find out?’

      ‘I suppose it is,’ Alec admitted.

      Roger regarded his stolid companion for a moment with a lukewarm eye. Then he broke into a sudden laugh and the plumage was smoothly preened once more.

      ‘You’re really a bit of an old ass at times, you know, Alec!’

      ‘So you seem to think,’ Alec agreed, unmoved.

      ‘Well, aren’t you? Still, never mind that for the moment. The story-book detective has another point to bring forward. It occurred to me while I was thinking over things before you arrived just now. You remember that Mrs Bentley bought those fly-papers they’re making all this fuss about at a local chemist’s here?’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘Well, now, I ask you again—is that natural? Is it natural, if one wants to buy fly-papers for the purpose of extracting the arsenic in order to poison one’s husband, to walk into the local chemist’s where one is perfectly well known and ask for them there? A certain amount of fuss always follows a murder, you know; and nobody realises that better than the would-be murderer. Is it likely that she’d do that, when she could have bought them equally well in London and never have been traced?’

      ‘That’s a point, certainly. Then you think that she didn’t get them with any—what’s the phrase?—ulterior motive?’

      ‘To poison her husband with them? Naturally, if she didn’t poison him.’

      ‘Then СКАЧАТЬ