Ngaio Marsh - Death At The Bar

“But how the hell would he get it? The jar had Abel’s prints. It hadn’t been touched.”

“Do you remember—”

“By God!” shouted Harper. “Don’t tell me! I’ve got it.”

He broke into a stream of oaths through which his enlightenment struggled for expression.

“That’s it,” said Alleyn. “Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

“Looks like it!” ejaculated Harper. “It blasted well shrieks of it. I’m a hell of a detective I am! Look at me! I missed the point about that evaporation business! Took Abel in to look at the pot and he said it was just the amount he’d poured in. Well, the damn thing was full. I never thought it might be water. I took photographs and sealed the place up just as it was. I did pour off this stuff and keep it. I’ll say that for myself. I made sure the poison had come out of the bottle in the cupboard. Blast it!”

“Abel’s prints,” Alleyn said, “were still on the key of the cupboard and on the knob. You can’t open the door without turning the key and the knob. Dr. Shaw saw that, when he looked at the cupboard and waited until it had been tested for prints. If anyone else had been to the cupboard they would either have left their own prints, used gloves and smeared Abel’s prints, or else wiped them off entirely. Nobody could have been to the cupboard.”

“I knew that, but all the same… Well, I suppose I thought they might have got at the bottle while — oh hell!”

“Anybody might have missed it, Mr. Harper,” said Fox. “I didn’t pick it till Mr. Alleyn pointed it out.”

“And I was lucky,” said Alleyn. “I’d read Taylor on the cyanides, during our trip down.”

“Well,” said Harper, “the coroner and Dr. Shaw missed the point. Oates gave evidence of discovery of the stuff in the rat-hole. Old Pomeroy deposed it was the same amount he’d poured in. Nobody said anything about evaporation.”

“Oates,” Alleyn pointed out, “saw the first night with Dr. Shaw — before they knew the exact nature of the poison. Not much more than twenty-six hours after it was put there.”

“He might have just dipped the dart in the stuff,” said Harper. “I did think of that. But now—”

“Now we know the dart must have been doctored a very short time before Oates sealed it up. You see where we’re heading?”

“Yes,” said Harper unwillingly. “I see, all right. But suppose Legge had the stuff on him and put it on the dart just before he threw it—”

“He didn’t,” said Alleyn. “Believe me, he didn’t. He’s a clumsy man. He fumbles. His hands are coarse and his fingers are thick. To get cyanide on that dart with seven pairs of eyes watching him, he’d need the skill and the hands of a conjurer. Even Abel Pomeroy who thinks, or wants to think, Legge did the job, can’t offer an idea of how he did it. Parish, who has thrown Legge in my teeth every time I’ve seen him, hasn’t an argument to offer. And on the other side we’ve got Will, Miss Moore, Miss Darragh and Cubitt all ready to swear, with, I believe, perfect truth, that Legge, as he stood there under the light, had no chance of anointing the fourth, or any other dart.”

“But we can’t explain the poison in any other way.”

“Oh yes,” said Alleyn, “I think we can. This is our case.” iv

Five o’clock had struck and they were still at the police station. Alleyn had gone over every word of his report with Harper. He had described each interview and had sorted the scraps of evidence into two groups, the relevant and the irrelevant. He had poured prussic acid solution into Abel’s little jar and, to reproduce rat-hole conditions, had placed it in a closed drawer. At the end of forty-six minutes half had evaporated.

“So you see,” said Alleyn, “if the liquid you found in the tin is water, as I believe it is, it looks as if the murderer must have visited the garage within forty-five minutes. Now on that night — the night on which Watchman chipped Legge and Will Pomeroy lost his temper — Legge gave an exhibition of dart-throwing which lasted only a few seconds. This took place a few minutes after Abel had set the poison in the garage. The argument followed. Legge went into the public bar, where he brought off the trick with the darts. He then returned and joined the others in a game of Round-the-Clock—”

“There you are,” interrupted Harper, “he could— sorry! Go on.”

“I know he could, Nick, but wait a bit. According to your report they all, with the exception of Miss Darragh, who had gone to bed, stayed in the private taproom until closing time. Our forty-five minutes have gone.”

“I suppose,” said Harper, “one of them might have gone out for a few minutes without being noticed.”

“Yes, and that is a point that will be urged by counsel. All we can prove here is opportunity — possibility. We can’t bring anything home. May we have the stuff you took from the rat-hole, Nick? Fox, would you get my bag? Mr. Noggins was generous with his prussic acid and there are at least three ounces of the water, if it is water. The analyst can lend us half. Let’s poach on his preserves and find out for ourselves.”

Fox opened Alleyn’s bag. From it he took two open-mouthed vessels about two inches high, two watch glasses, and a small bottle. Alleyn squinted at the bottle.

“Silver nitrate. That’s the stuff. Can you produce some warm water, Nick? Well, well I am exceeding my duty to be sure.”

Harper went out and returned with a jug of water and a photographic dish. Alleyn poured a little water into the dish, half-filled one of his tiny vessels with the fluid found in the rat-hole, and the other with acid from Abel’s bottle. He wetted the underside of the watch-glasses with nitrate solution and placed them over the vessels. He then stood the vessels, closed by the watch-glasses, in the warm water.

“Fox now says the Lord’s Prayer backwards,” he explained. “I emit a few oddments of ectoplasm and Hi Cockalorum the spell is wound up! Take a look at that, Nick.”

They stared at the dish. On the surface of the prussic acid a little spiral had risen. It became denser, it flocculated, and the watch-glass was no longer transparent but covered with an opaque whiteness.

“That’s cyanide, that was,” said Alleyn. “Now, look at the other. A blank, my lord. It’s water, Br’er Fox, it’s water. Now let’s pour them back into their respective bottles and don’t give me away to the analyst.”

“I suppose,” said Harper, as Alleyn tidied up, “I suppose this means we needn’t worry ourselves about the cupboard. The cupboard doesn’t come into the blasted affair.”

Alleyn held on the palm of his hand the three pieces of glass he had separated from the fragments of the broken brandy tumbler, and the small misshapen lumps he had found in the ashes of the fire.

“Oh yes,” he said. “Yes. We’re not home yet, not by a long march, but the cupboard still comes into the picture. Think.”

Harper looked from the pieces of glass to Alleyn’s face and back again.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “yes. But you’ll have the devil of a job to prove it.”

“I agree,” said Alleyn. “Nevertheless, Nick, I hope to prove it.”

i

Parish came downstairs singing “ La Donna é Mobile .” He had a pleasant baritone voice which had been half-trained in the days when he had contemplated musical comedy. He sang stylishly and one could not believe that he sang unconsciously. He swung open the door of the private tap and entered on the last flourish of that impertinent, that complacently debonair refrain.

“Good evening sir,” said Abel from behind the bar. “ ’Tis pleasant to hear you’m back to your churruping ways again.”