Below Suspicion Read online

  "Got any tea, then?"

  The proprietor reluctantly admitted that he might have tea, and shambled away. Patrick Butler looked at Joyce.

  "Well, me dear?" he asked as heartily as he could.

  Joyce tried to speak, and couldn't.

  Butler, studying her furtively, admitted to himself that she had stood the strain of the trial very well. He could remember one client, another woman, whose face had fallen in and whose hands—quite literally-had become a livid greenish-white.

  Joyce, though under such intense nervous reaction that she could not keep her own hands still, had not aged or grov^oi ugly. Her eyes haunted him, the large grey eyes with the black lashes. Melting sleet-drops glistened against the tumbled black hair cut in the short bob. Her mouth, to Patrick Butler, was a sensual allure about which he as a sensible man must not think.

  Then Joyce spoke quietly.

  "You don't really believe I'm innocent, do you?"

  Butler looked shocked.

  "Come, now!" he urged her in a reproachful tone. "Don't you put your trust in British justice?"

  "The jury acquitted you, acushla. They believed what you said. You're a free woman, free as air. What more do you want?"

  "Is it ungrateful to want something more? Is it? I only. . . ."

  The tea had arrived, momentarily checking conversation. Two thick white mugs, slopping a beverage like mud-coloured dishwater, were planked down on the table. Meanwhile, Butler had surreptitiously taken out his notecase under the table, fished out its contents of fifty or sixty pounds, and crushed the money into the palm of his hand.

  "Now tell me, me dear," he soothed. "What are your future plans?"

  "I don't know. I hadn't thought as far ahead."

  "We-ell! But you must have money, you know. Of course, there's the legacy from Mrs. Taylor. . . ."

  "I can't touch that, I'm afraid. I should see her face every time I spent any of it."

  "A sentiment," Butler continued soothingly, "that does you credit. So if you'll just accept this," his clenched hand slid across the table, "from a well-meaning friend who. . . ."

  Suddenly Joyce lost all control of her reflexes. There was a crash as her elbow knocked over the white cup, which cascaded its mud-coloured tea down beside the table. Joyce, catching herself up, regarded it with horror as though she had really committed a crime.

  "I'm awfully sorry. But please don't offer me money. Please."

  "Sure now, me dear, and 'twas only. . . ."

  "Oh, stop it!" Joyce cried uncontrollably.

  "Stop what?"

  "Stop using that fake Irish accent. It's no more natural to you than Cockney or Lancashire. You didn't dare use it in court."

  "Nolle prosequi. So-and-so you/" screamed the parrot, and sharpened its beak on the bars of the cage. Patrick Butler felt the blood rise in his head. Casually, temptingly, he slid the money inside the crumpled newspaper near her hand.

  "I watched you in court," said Joyce. "Sometimes I thought you believed me, and then ... I didn't know. You're a wonderful lawyer, I know that. But you're really a romantic actor. You were acting and acting and acting."

  Now the blood of anger buzzed in his ears.

  "Isn't that rather ungrateful of you?" he asked.

  "Yes, it is," admitted Joyce, with tears in her eyes. "But, when we first met at Holloway, you said you believed me."

  "Naturally!"

  "Afterwards you said ... if we wanted to preserve real truth, we often had to tell lies about small things. Then, later, there was that question of the door banging in the middle of the night."

  "I never heard that story," he retorted truthfully, "until Alice Griffiths told it in the witness-box."

  "But, Mr. Butler, there wasn't any door banging in the middle of the night! It was one of the big shutters upstairs; I went up and fastened it. After the first day of the trial, you told me to corroborate it in the witness-box."

  Here Joyce's eyes, frantic with bewilderment, searched her companion's face in vain.

  "Alice and Bill Griffiths," she insisted, "are honest people. Why did they tell that lie?"

  "You ought to be glad they did. Miss Ellis. It saved your pretty neck."

  "Then 5'ou don't believe I'm innocent? You never did?"

  "I'll tell you," returned Butler, with brutal directness, "exactly what

  I told Charlie Denham. You're as guilty as hell. Why don't you be reasonable and admit it?"

  It was as though he had struck her in the face. There was a long silence.

  "I see," Joyce murmured, and moistened dry lips.

  Slowly, because her knees were shaking, she slid along the bench and stood up outside the booth. Without looking at Butler, she buttoned up the oilskin waterproof. Now she felt the trembling through her whole body. Joyce took two steps away, and suddenly turned.

  "I worshipped you," she said. "I still do. I always will. But one day, maybe before very long, you're going to come to me and tell me you were wrong." Her voice rose piercingly. "And for God's sake don't say you're never wrong!"

  Then she ran for the door.

  The glass-panelled door banged. The parrot screamed again. As a draught swirled through the dingy coffee-room, the discarded newspaper flapped up and sank down on the seat opposite Butler. The closely wadded banknotes slid along into coflfee-stains. For a moment Butler did not touch them.

  Curse and blast all women who made emotional scenes! Butler, though he felt an inexplicable twinge of conscience, could not understand Joyce. He sipped his tea, lukewarm as well as vile, and set down the cup. Angrily he snatched up the despised banknotes. Then he looked up, to find Charles Denham standing beside the booth.

  "For the love of Mike," Butler burst out, "don't you start!"

  "Start what?"

  "How should I know? Anything!"

  "Congratulations," murmured Denham, sliding into the seat opposite, "on the verdict."

  "There's no call to congratulate me. I told you it would happen."

  Despite Denham's calm tone, his dark eyes were glittering as they had glittered in the courtroom, and his nostrils were distended.

  "What I began to tell you in court," he went on, "is that there's new evidence. Last night, while Joyce was still on trial, something else happened."

  "Oh? WTiat happened?"

  "You told me you didn't know Lucia Renshaw, who was in court yesterday. Do you know her husband? Dick Renshaw?"

  "Never heard of him. Should I have?"

  "Mr. Renshaw," Denham said, "was poisoned last night with another hea7 dose of antimony. He died, in horrible agony, about three o'clock this morning. He was probably poisoned by the same person who killed Mrs. Taylor."

  The old parrot screamed, flopping about in its cage with demoniac excitement. Patrick Butler, who had taken out a silver cigarette case and snapped on a lighter, sat motionless while he stared at Denham. Then he blew out the flame of the lighter.

  "The same person . . . Look here, Charlie! Are the Renshaws your clients too?"

  "Yes. Just as Mrs. Taylor was."

  "And Renshaw's poisoned tool Do the police suspect anybody?"

  "Yes. Lucia Renshaw herself. And I'm bound to admit," Denham averted his eyes, "the evidence looks very black against her. There'll probably—well, there'll probably be an arrest."

  Butler smote his fist on the table.

  "Oh, bejasus!" he exclaimed in sheer ecstasy. "Do you mean I can go into court and kick the police's behinds again? In more or less the same poison case?"

  "Pat, not so fast! Don't you see the point of all tliis?"

  Denham smiled. From the moment of Joyce Ellis's acquittal, he had become a very different person from the haggard, haunted young man of the past weeks. He was again his pleasant, quiet, unobtrusive self. Yet about him there was a sense of strain—perhaps a new strain—even when he smiled.

  "Joyce," he pointed out grimly, "certainly didn't poison Dick Renshaw. And, in my opinion," he hesitated, "the beautiful Lucia didn't either. We
're in the middle of a worse mess than we ever thought. Look here!"

  From beside him Denham picked up the crumpled newspaper, flattened it on the table, and indicated again that small headline: WAVE OF POISON CASES SAYS SUPT. HADLEY

  "Don't bother to read the item," Denham advised. "I've got secret information that isn't printed here. I got it from Dr. Fell." "Dr. Fell?" "You've heard, I think, of Dr. Gideon Fell? He was at the trial too.

  If you'd ever turned round and looked behind you, you'd have seen him."

  Butler was ruffled. He put away cigarette case and lighter.

  "Would you mind telling me," he requested, "just what in blazes you're talking about?"

  "In the last three months," answered Denham, tapping the paper, "there have been nine unsolved deaths by poison. All in different parts of the country."

  "Crimes of imitation, me boy!" Butler v^'as impatient. "It always happens."

  "I said in the last three months. Most of them before Mrs. Taylor's death. Now listen!" Charles Denham wagged his head fonvard, eyebrows intent. "In not one of those cases—not one, Pat!—have the police been able to trace the purchase of any poison to any suspect. You know what that means."

  Butler whistled. For the bu)ang of poison, no matter under what disguise or what false signature in the poison-book at the chemist's, is the factor which almost invariably trips up the murderer.

  "Come off it, me boy!" scoffed Butler, a little angry that Charlie was again his normal self. "There's no doubt about where the poison came from in Mrs. Taylor's case."

  "I wonder!" said Denham.

  "What's that?"

  "Tell me, Pat. Did you notice anything odd about that trial today?"

  "Odd!" said Butler. "The man asks me," he addressed the coffee-room with some violence, "whether I noticed anything odd! Candidly, Charlie, I did. Mr. Justice Bloody Stoneman. . . ."

  "No, no, not the judge! I meant the witnesses. In particular, that doctor."

  "Dr. Bierce?"

  "Yes," agreed Denham, running a nervous hand over his face. "He was tr)^ing to tell us something; and the rules of evidence wouldn't let him. But he said, you remember, that Mrs. Taylor's house wasn't healthy. He said it wasn't a good atmosphere for anybody as unsophisticated as Joyce."

  Then Denham's tone changed, self-consciously.

  "By the way," he added, "where is Joyce? I thought I saw her coming in here with you."

  "She did."

  "I was waiting in your car. I—I rather hoped. . . ."

  "She didn't want to see you, Charlie. She told me so."

  "Oh, Well. After all," and Denham smiled and tried hard to laugh, "there's no reason why she should want to see me. None at all." There was a pause. "You got her address, of course?"

  "No, I'm afraid I didn't. And if you take my tip, Charlie, you'll keep away from that woman. Unless you want a dose of arsenic in your beer."

  "So clever in your foolishness!" murmured Denham, after another pause. "So fooHsh in your cleverness!"

  "Will you tell me," Butler inquired with restraint, "just what this has to do with the sinister poisoning of nine people? And with this woman Lucia Renshaw being accused of killing her husband? Had she any motive for killing him?"

  Denham hesitated.

  "It's true," he admitted, "that they didn't get on very well. . . ."

  "That's not evidence, Charlie. It's merely a definition of maniage. Why do the police suspect her?"

  "Because, apparently, Lucia's the only person who could have done it! And yet. . . ."

  "What, exactly, do you want me to do?"

  "I can't brief you officially, of course. We don't know which way the cat, meaning the police, will jump. But it's only five o'clock now. Could you possibly run out to Hampstead and talk to her before dinner?"

  "I can," Butler assured him heartily. "I can, Charlie; and I'll do more than that. Give me five minutes' talk with the lady, and I'll tell you whether or not she's guilty."

  "Pat," said the other, after a silence during which he put his head in his hands, "I owe more to you than I can ever pay back. No, wait; I mean that! But this last victory of yours—it's unhinged you! Do you set yourself up as God Almighty?"

  "Not at all." Butler looked shocked. "It is merely," he explained with urbanity, as he picked up his hat, "that I am never wrong."

  THE home of the late Richard Renshaw and his wife, called 'Abbot's House/ was in Cannon Row, Hampstead.

  Sweeping up Haverstock Hill and Roslyn Hill, the limousine turned right at the traffic-light opposite Hampstead Underground Station, and up the steep, curving High Street which leads eventually to the Round-pond. But, only a little way up, there is an inconspicuous turning. Making several narrow turns in a short distance, the car emerged into sedate Cannon Row.

  And Patrick Butler, jumping out impetuously, got his first shock.

  "Good God, Charlie! This is—" And he stopped.

  Under a blue-black sky, from which rain or sleet had ceased to fall, the house was set back some forty feet behind a fence of thin overlapping shingleboards painted brown.

  Other houses in Cannon Row were mere dim outlines with dim-yellow lights. But this monstrosity, though not overly large, loomed up in whitish-grey blur because it was faced with stucco and built in that style called Victorian Gothic. On each side of an arched front door were two large full-length bow windows, set one above the other to match. Along the roof-edge ran miniature battlements, with a miniature sham tower at one comer.

  "This is Mrs. Taylor's house," said Butler, with his memory full of ugly images. 'Til swear those are the same trees tapping the front windows on each side!"

  "And why not?" asked Denham.

  "Vhy not?"

  "Both houses," said Denham, "were built by Mrs. Taylor's grandfather in the middle 'sixties. One at Balham, which was then fashionable. One here, which is still fashionable. This one," he added, "also has a Grierson lock on the back door."

  A raw wind scratched branches in thin tick-a-tack on window-glass. The two houses, at least, were not furnished alike inside. Butler saw this, with relief, when a young maidservant opened the front door.

  But the atmosphere of hysteria, blowing out at them, was as palpable as the signs of disarrangement. Kitty Owen, the maidservant, was eighteen years old and would have been pretty if she had not been so thin. Kitty shied back in terror until Denham mentioned their names.

  "I'm sorry, sir," the maid gulped. "I thought you was more people from the police. But Fm not sure whether you can see the madam. She's been having hysterics."

  "Mrs. Renshaw invited us, you know," smiled Butler.

  Kitty, for some reason, started perceptibly. She regarded Butler with a paralyzed look merging into deeper fear.

  "I'll go and see," she managed to say. "Will you wait in there, please?"

  The doorway she indicated led into a high Victorian drawing room, now richly furnished with somewhat soiled pre-war furniture and a number of good antiques. Shaded lamps shone down on an Aubusson carpet.

  In the middle of the room, as though he had just left off pacing, stood Dr. Arthur Evans Bierce.

  "Butler!" said Dr. Bierce, at the introductions. "We met in court, of course. I thought you were some relation of . . . but of course you looked different in wig and gown."

  Seen close at hand, he exuded that same air—intensified—of curt, no-nonsense friendliness, tinged with the disillusionment of a g.p. who sees state-medicine approaching to wreck his initiative. His narrow bald skull, faintly freckled, loomed up like Shakespeare's. His handclasp was firm and bony.

  "You—er—hadn't met before the courtroom?" Denham asked.

  "No," said Butler. "I knew what I should get from this witness."

  "You saved Miss Ellis's life," the doctor stated. "I am proud to make your acquaintance, sir."

  "And I to make yours. Doctor," said Butler, towering with his most impressive eighteenth-century air. "You're Mrs. Renshaw's physician?"

  "Hardly." Dr. Bierce spoke
dryly. "Mrs. Renshaw, I believe, gets her medical advice from Harley Street or Devonshire Place." His brown eyes, under the sandy brows, grew wary. "But she 'phoned me late this

  afternoon, in a somewhat frantic state, and asked me to come here as a friend."

  "How is Mrs. Renshaw now?"

  "I don't know. She won't see me. I think I had better be going."

  "Tell me. Doctor. Do you consider this house 'unhealthy'?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "My young friend here," Butler referred to Charlie Denham as though the latter were about fourteen, "reminded me of something in your testimony. You said of Mrs. Taylor's: The whole house was unhealthy.' Can you say the same of this one?"

  "Sir, I-"

  This was the point at which Kitty, the maid, came flying in at the door.

  "Only one of you's to go upstairs," Kitty reported. "Mr. Butler, please."

  Butler hesitated, especially since Dr. Bierce seemed about to speak. But he followed Kitty.

  She led him down the main passage, into a lofty back hall where a wooden staircase—ascending first along the left wall, then along the back wall—led up to a number of bedroom doors round a gallery with a balustrade. It was darkish here, due to fuel economy; several times Butler stumbled. Kitty tapped on the rear bedroom door, up the flight of stairs, at the right, and opened it.

  "Yes?" said a woman's voice from inside.

  Lucia Renshaw, in a heavy negligee of white lace, was sitting in an easy-chair at the far side of a portable electric-fire set against the grate. She rose to her feet, obviously shy and a little dazed.

  And Patrick Butler, that cynical bachelor, received the shock of his hfe.

  Vaguely he was aware that he stood in a high-ceilinged bedroom, whose high windows had old-fashioned shutters, and that one lamp burned on a little table between twin beds. At the back, slightly towards his left, he could see the white-tiled pallor of a modern bathroom.

  For everything else

  "Mr. Butler?" asked Lucia Renshaw in a low voice.

  She had been crying bitterly. But of this there remained traces only in the faint red veins of the iris in her appealing blue eyes. Lucia's hair, heavy and dull-gold in this light, was unloosed and lay round her shoulders from a madonnaesque parting in the middle.