Margery Allingham - Police at the Funeral

She paused and regarded him shrewdly.

'Yes, I understand,' he said. 'And yet, how nearly the whole thing failed at the beginning. His most important ingenuity miscarried, you see, the ingenuity of the gun.'

'Of course,' said Mrs Faraday, 'I interrupted in the middle of your story. You were telling me that Andrew's body had just fallen into the water.'

'Yes,' said Mr Campion, jerking his mind back with an effort to the more concrete facts of the history, a feat which presented no difficulty to the remarkable old lady sitting propped up among the pillows. 'Beveridge says that he and George rushed forward on to the bridge. They peered over the parapet and just made out Andrew's body slipping slowly down the river. They were debating what they should do, thinking that it was just an ordinary case of suicide, when George noticed something caught under the parapet on the opposite side of the narrow bridge. He picked it up and found to his astonishment that it was a heavy Service revolver, through the stock-ring of which a piece of fine cord had been knotted. He pulled in about twelve feet of this cord from the river and discovered tied on the other end a long cylindrical weight from a grandfather clock.'

'The opposite side of the bridge?' inquired Great-aunt Caroline.

'Yes,' said Campion. 'Directly across the footway from the parapet on which Andrew had stood. He had hung the weight over the bridge, you see, so that after he had fired and the muscles of his hand had relaxed the gun would be jerked out of his hand and across the bridge into the river on the other side, thus preventing any chance of the gun being found with the body and giving the show away.'

'And yet the revolver caught,' observed the old lady. 'How?'

'Beveridge says the cord became imprisoned between two stones,' Campion explained. 'George seems to have taken in the situation at a glance. Beveridge says he thought there were money-making possibilities in the knowledge of such a secret. Of course, he dared not risk carrying the gun away, but if it remained where it was Andrew's death would be no secret. George was a little drunk at the time, and recklessness seems to have been his strong point. He picked up the gun and the weight and, winding the cord round them, like a child's skipping-rope, remarked--so Beveridge says--"Always make it more difficult!" Then he whirled the bundle round his head and pitched it as far as he could up into the trees on the other side of the river. The missile was naturally extremely heavy, so that it did not go very far, but the cord became unwound in mid-air and the whole thing caught in the branches of an elm, about half a dozen yards from the bank. The weight, being the heavier, pulled the gun up into a crotched branch where it stuck, as black as the wood itself, while the weight hung down on the cord in the thick ivy which covers the trunk. Your chauffeur, Beveridge and I found it at five o'clock this morning when we went down to look for it. No wonder the police didn't spot it. It took us about half an hour when we knew where it was.'

'Very clever,' said Great-aunt Caroline. 'Of Andrew, I mean. That clock weight fell down in the middle of dinner on the Saturday before he disappeared. He must have taken it immediately. I remember he went out late that night.' She was silent for some moments, staring in front of her, her eyes narrowed, her hands folded peacefully on the coverlet. 'I suppose you wonder why I kept Andrew in the house after disinheriting him?' she remarked suddenly. 'But I think I was justified. I had one distressing relative who was liable to blackmail me for small sums at any moment in George. I did not wish to create another in Andrew. Although he had no hold of any kind over me, you understand,' she remarked. 'I wished to be spared the possibility of unpleasant scenes. Besides,' she added, fixing Campion sternly, 'you may have noticed that I have a certain amount of authority over everyone under my roof. I was wrong about Andrew. I should have realized he was mad.'

She stirred restlessly among her embroidered pillows.

'Tell me,' she murmured pathetically, 'is it really necessary for me to leave this house while the place is ransacked by inquisitive policemen? Poor Hugh Featherstone will do me the honour of inviting me to his home, I know that; but I am old and do not want to leave my beautiful bedroom, which gives me a sense of well-being every time I look at it.'

Campion glanced round the magnificent period apartment. It was a wonderful room.

'I am sorry,' he said regretfully. 'But a thorough search must be made. You never know in a case like this; consider the unfortunate George. That was a sheer accident.'

'Yes,' said Great-aunt Caroline, suddenly grave, 'he was poisoned with cyanide, wasn't he? That must have been just wanton wickedness on Andrew's part.'

'That was ingenious too,' said Mr Campion. 'We were amazed at first, because, you know, cyanide has such a very distinctive smell. In the ordinary way you would think no man in his senses would get as far as putting it into his mouth by mistake. Cyanide, or prussic acid, is one of the most deadly poisons. People have died from the fumes of it, I believe. Fortunately, however, in George's case, the explanation was quite obvious. There was a pipe-rack on Andrew's dressing-table. I noticed it myself when Joyce and I were examining the room. It contained five extremely filthy blackened pipes and very good new one, a temptation to any man. I don't know if you have noticed,' he added, 'the way a man picks up a pipe and sucks it vigorously to make sure the stem is clear? It's a sort of involuntary movement.'

'I have,' said Great-aunt Faraday. 'A very disgusting habit. I dislike tobacco in any form and in a pipe particularly.'

'Well,' said Mr Campion apologetically, 'a pipe is practically the only thing a man puts straight into his mouth. This new pipe in Andrew's rack had a vulcanite mouthpiece which unscrewed. The wooden part of the stem of the pipe was practically filled with finely powdered cyanide. The Inspector thinks there was probably some piece of easily removable fluff or wool sticking out of the actual mouthpiece, which a man would naturally flick out with his fingers. This obstruction was sufficient to keep the smell of the cyanide in the pipe. A few charred fragments of tobacco in the bowl served the same purpose. After removing the wool, or whatever it was, and knocking out the ash, the natural impulse would be to put the pipe in the mouth and suck vigorously. George must have fallen straight into the trap. I don't know who Andrew intended it for, but I fancy he thought of the idea--another ingenuity--and could not resist trying it. He does not seem to have liked anyone, though it is certainly to his credit that, as far as we know, he made no attempt upon you or Joyce.'

'How could he hurt us more than by leaving us with this chaos?' Great-aunt Caroline said acidly. 'Andrew was not clever, but he had intuitions. If Marcus had been of my generation--delightful boy though he is--he might have thought twice about marrying a girl who had been involved in such a public scandal, however innocently. But times are changing rapidly. I don't think Andrew realized that.'

She was silent for some moments, and Mr Campion began to wonder if his audience was at an end, but presently he became aware that she was looking at him speculatively.

'Mr Campion,' she said, '--I have grown used to that name, I quite like it--I have said that George blackmailed me. I think enough of you not to want you to believe that I have anything in my family of which I am ashamed. I shall tell you about George.'

There was something in her tone which told Mr Campion that he was being greatly honoured.

'George,' said Great-aunt Caroline, 'was the son of my husband's brother Joseph.' The little black eyes grew hard. 'A despicable character, and a disgrace to his family. This person was shipped off to the colonies many years ago. He returned with a certain amount of money and a wife. They lived in Newmarket, quite near us, you see. She was a peculiar-looking woman and of a very definite type, which we in those days chose to ignore. They had a child, a girl, and when that child was born the rumours that had been rife about the mother, were proved beyond a doubt. By some horrible machination of heredity the stain in the woman's blood had come out.' She lowered her voice. 'The child was a blackmoor.'