Below Suspicion Page 7

  Lucia was rather tall, though to Butler she seemed middle-sized or even small. Such words as 'healthy' and 'wholesome/ though ordinarily they would have made Butler laugh, now struggled through his mind. The colour of her skin, a soft tawny-pink, was thrown into contrast by the white negligee. The thick lace of the negligee did not quite conceal the fact that—in her apparent haste and befuddlement—she wore under it only a brassiere and a pair of step-ins. There were pink satin slippers on her feet.

  "Mr. Butler?" she repeated hesitantly.

  It is a sober fact that Patrick Butler had to fight to control his voice, like a schoolboy.

  "Yes, Mrs. Renshaw."

  "They're all against me," said Lucia. "They all hate me. Will you help me?"

  "I will do more than that. I will save you."

  Butler's very real streak of eighteenth-century gallantry, which underlay all his bombast, saw nothing melodramatic in this speech, or in what followed: Impulsively Lucia extended her hand; and he, with the same gravity, bent over and kissed her hand. "By God!" he thought. "By God!"

  "I knew you would," said Lucia. "When I heard you in court yesterday. ... Court!" She shuddered. "Won't you sit dovm?"

  "Thank you."

  She indicated another easy-chair on the opposite side of the orange-glowing electric-fire. With what grace, with what infinite grace in this age of clumsy movement, she sat down! Lucia shook back her heavy yellow hair. Her tawny-pink skin was again in contrast to the white negligee as she breathed deeply.

  "I like things to be pleasant!" she said. "I enjoy life! I never lose my temper and be mde to people, even in these times. And now...."

  "Your husband is dead. I'm sorry."

  "I'm sorry too. But only for remembrance's sake." Lucia looked away, squeezing her eyes shut. "I asked Dick to give me a divorce last night. That's why I was in this room when he died."

  Butler did not know why he felt obscurely startled.

  "Your husband died in this room?"

  "Yes. I. . . ." Lucia hesitated. She also was startled. Her blue eyes, with only a film of tears to mar the perfect beauty of the face, moved round the room. Then she shrank back timidly, as though under a threat.

  "I shouldn't be sitting here, should I? But most of the time I've been so dreadfully upset and confused I simply haven't known where I was. Shall we go somewhere else?"

  "No, of course not!" The fluent 'me dear' stuck in his throat. "What you did, Mrs. Renshaw, was perfectly natural."

  "Oh, do you think so?"

  "Of course. And if I'm to help you, Mrs. Renshaw, I must hear what happened. You say you asked your husband for a divorce?"

  "Yes."

  "What did you mean by adding, 'that's why I was in the room when he died'?"

  "Sleeping here, I mean." Lucia lowered her eyes. "We'd occupied separate rooms for over a year. But last night I decided to sleep here "

  "When you intended to ask him.... ?"

  "Oh, not for the reason you're thinking!"

  "I wasn't thinking—!"

  Both of them stopped, fierily confused; and Butler, for one, was a liar. Yet in his sudden hatred of the deceased Richard Renshaw he could not help asking the question in his mind.

  "What was your husband like?"

  "That's the extraordinary thing. He was something like you."

  "Like me?"

  "Oh, I don't mean he looked much like you. Dick was very dark, almost swarthy; you're fair-complexioned and you've got light-brown hair. But his voice, and his way of carrying himself, and one or two gestures. . . ."

  God rot the man! Butler, conscious that his wits were not at their best, had the sense to say only:

  "Tell m.e your story, please."

  Again Lucia sank back in the chair. Her heightened colour had faded.

  "Dick," she went on, "had been away on a business trip. Yesterday afternoon, when I got home, there was a telegram to say he'd arrive by the train that gets to Euston at eleven o'clock. So I—I made up my mind. I told Kitty, that's the maid, to air the beds in this room, and fill the water-bottle, and get things ready."

  Butler, while the voice flowed on, glanced surreptitiously round the room.

  The twin beds were now trimly made, their yellowish coverlets smoothed out. Just between the beds, but higher up against the wall,

  hung a rather large ivory crucifix. It surprised Butler, though he could not have said why. Of great antiquity, yellowish-tinged, the crucifix stood out against the brown panelling of the wall.

  Underneath it, beside the lamp on the bedside table, gleamed a glass water-bottle. It was an ordinary night water-bottle, round and narrow-necked, with a drinking-glass inverted over the neck. It was only about a fifth full of water. Not until you scrutinized it closely did you see the faint smears on its surface: the dustings of 'grey' powder where the police had searched for fingerprints.

  Domestic murder, under the ivory crucifix.

  Butler wrenched his attention back to Lucia.

  "And of course," Lucia was saying, "Kitty didn't begin to do the room until past eleven o'clock. I'd already got undressed, in my own room down the passage; so I supervised her in here. I told her she'd better change the beds instead of just airing them; and she did. Finally she picked up that water-bottle. ..."

  Lucia, peering past the heavy line of her hair, tried to nod towards the bottle and then faltered.

  "Go on!" prompted Butler.

  "Kitty took the water-bottle into the bathroom, there. I watched her —you can see the wash-basin is just opposite the door. She poured out the water that was in the bottle, and rinsed it out a couple of times, and filled it with fresh water from the tap."

  "And then?"

  "She put it on the table, where it is now, with the tumbler over the top. Then I told her she could run along up to bed. But every second after eleven o'clock I'd been getting more and more panicky."

  "Why?"

  "Because of Dick!" The wide blue eyes opened at him. "All the time he was away, I had been working up my courage to ask for the divorce "

  "Why did you want a divorce?"

  Lucia stared at the fire.

  "I didn't mind his being constantly unfaithful to me." She paused. "No, that isn't true. We like to say tra-la-la and be so sophisticated, don't we? I did mind. But it wasn't because I—I was in love with him. It was the horrible, awful humiliation."

  Butler looked at the floor. He could guess, or thought he could, what it cost her to say that.

  "Go on about last night."

  "About a quarter to twelve I heard a taxi drive up. I was sitting up in that bed there." She nodded towards the one on the left. "I had to catch him then, don't you see? If you bring up something a man doesn't like, he just says, I've got too much on my mind; we'll talk about it later!' And you let it go, or at least I do, unless you've got yourself worked up. That's why I was here in his room. After all that time !"

  "How long had your husband been away?"

  "Over three weeks. He only intended to stay a few days, really; but they let him open one of his old factories again, and he stayed to oversee it or whatever they do. Anyway, he was back. I heard the front door slam with an angry kind of noise...."

  In imagination Butler could hear it, and hear the heavy steps of Dick Renshaw ascending the uncarpeted stairs.

  "He opened the door," Lucia went on. Her voice rose. "He stood and looked at me, in a queer kind of way, with his suitcase in his hand and his hat on the back of his head. I was sitting up in bed, with my knitting; Kitty brought me my knitting-bag when she first came into the room. Dick said, 'Hullo, is this a reconciliation?' I said no, it wasn't, and pitched in to talk about the divorce.

  "Dick's face got as hard as stone. He didn't say anything. He began unpacking the suitcase, and putting everything away, while I still kept on talking. When he had finished unpacking, he very leisurely undressed and put on his pj^'amas; and still without a word. By this time I was scared. Of course, I'd arranged matters with Miss Cannon in
case he. ..."

  "Just a moment!" Butler interrupted.

  Butler's mind had stumbled on the words, 'Miss Cannon.' 'Miss Cannon of Cannon Row' danced through his brain like a nursery rhyme.

  "You'd arranged matters," Butler prompted her, "in case he—what?"

  "Oh, in case he hit me or anything," answered Lucia, raising her thin-arched eyebrows in a face so perfectly made up that no make-up was apparent. She did not appear to find the statement unusual, or even notice her companion's boiling rage.

  "I—er—I see. Who is Miss Cannon?"

  "Oh, Agnes Cannon has been with me since I was fourteen. She was my governess. I don't know what you'd call her—a kind of fixture. She was to come in here, and threaten to ring the police, if Dick got violent."

  "And did he get violent?"

  "No, it was worse." Lucia shuddered. "He sat down on the edge of his own bed, in pyjamas and slippers, and just looked at me. For a second I thought he was going to . . . make advances; you know. But his eyes changed. He picked up that water-bottle on the bedside table."

  Lucia paused, her hand at her breast.

  "I ought to explain," she added, "that Dick had one habit; it never varied. He once told me he'd been doing it since he was an undergraduate. Every night, just before he turned in, he'd take a deep drink out of the water-bottle. He didn't use a glass. He just tilted up the bottle and drank till you thought he'd never stop.

  "After that, last night I mean, he turned back the bed-covers. But, instead of getting into bed, he sat down and said to me, 'Unless you can get evidence against me, which you can't, just forget that divorce; you know what happened to your private 'tecs when you tried it.' And he kept on talking, not loudly, but about dreadful things.

  "All of a sudden—it might have been ten or fifteen minutes later—a funny look came over him. It was as though he had a dry taste in his mouth, and kept moving his tongue round. Dick got up, and went to the bathroom muttering something about brushing his teeth. The next thing I knew, in the bathroom, he was being violently sick. Mr. Butler, L...

  "Anyway, I jumped out of bed and cried out, 'What's the matter? What's the matter?' But it only went on and on. Then he staggered back, and fell on his own bed. His eyes were glassy. He twisted on his side, and said—not to me; just to the air—something I can't understand even yet. He said 'O, where hae ye been. Lord Randal, my son?' "

  There was a silence.

  The words of the old ballad, one of the most subtly terrifying in English, hung in the room as though all the evil of the past were moving here in imperceptible waves.

  "Then," Lucia went on, "Dick looked straight at me and said . . . what I don't want to repeat."

  "I'm afraid it's necessary. What did he say?"

  " 'You've poisoned me, you bitch.' And he rolled over on his face and writhed."

  The recital, clearly, was too much for Lucia Renshaw. She sprang to her feet. Putting one hand on the ledge of the old black-marble mantelpiece, she looked down at the electric-fire. Despite her all-too-evident

  maturity in the white negHgee, the words fell from her lips as incongruously as from those of a small girl; and, when she again appealed to Butler, Lucia's expression was that of a hurt child.

  "I tried to get a doctor, you know." She spoke as though in protest. "I called out for Miss Cannon; and we 'phoned and 'phoned. Our own doctor was out on a case. We tried to remember the names of doctors in the neighborhood. But we couldn't. Then we began ringing our friends."

  "Didn't it occur to you to ring 999 for an ambulance?"

  Lucia lifted her shoulders wearily.

  "No. At times like that (oh, it's true!) you become completely stupid. We didn't get a doctor until nearly three o'clock. By that time we were all running about. Miss Cannon and Kitty and I, and the front door was open. A policeman came in."

  Now terror shone in Lucia's eyes and loosened her firm mouth.

  "The doctor hurried upstairs. But it was too late. Poor Dick was in convulsions so bad that Miss Cannon said, 'Couldn't you hold him down? I can't stand this!' Before the doctor could open his bag, Dick gave a moan and—didn't breathe any more. I didn't realize how bad it was until I saw the policeman take out a pencil and notebook.

  "They're all against me!" Lucia burst out. "They all hate me!"

  "Here's one who doesn't," declared Butler, rising to his feet with all force of personality.

  "Do you mean that, Mr. Butler? Do you mean it?"

  "Of course." Yet his brain felt dead, or atrophied, because of his very power of sympathy for her. "It was antimony, wasn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "In the water-bottle?"

  Lucia nodded quickly, without looking at him.

  "WTiy do you say they're all against you?" he asked.

  "Because they think, don't you see, I'm the only one who could have put poison in the bottle. Or they s-say so."

  "Listen to me! Your maid," Butler spaced his words, "rinsed out the bottle and filled it from a tap in the bathroom. Couldn't Kitty herself have introduced the poison then?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "If you put that awful stuff in water, the police say, you've got to stir it and keep stirring it until it dissolves so nobody notices a trace. Any-

  way, Kitty didn't do anything at all. I watched her." Here Lucia gave him a furtive, shivering glance. "I could say she might have, only. ..."

  "Only what?"

  "I forgot to tell you Miss Cannon was here then. She watched Kitty too."

  "But afterwards?"

  "Kitty put the bottle on the table; I told you that. She and Miss Cannon left the room together."

  "But afterwards, I repeat, while you were alone in here?"

  "Miss Cannon," said Lucia, "has the room at the end of the gallery. I told her to sit there, and watch my door till Dick got home, and to listen after that in case he—well, you know. Nobody went into this room except Dick himself."

  Patrick Butler, the urbane and never-flurried, felt panic tighten his collar and made the chilly room seem too warm. He struck wildly at phantoms.

  "Could somebody have crept in here and poisoned the bottle? Through the windows, maybe?"

  "Not," Lucia swallowed hard, "without my seeing him. Besides, the shutters of both windows were locked on the inside."

  "Wait! Could there have been something wrong with the bathroom water-tap?"

  "No. The—the police thought of that."

  "All I've got to tell you," Butler assured her in his most lordly manner, "is that you needn't worry. Don't worry, do you hear? Leave everything to me. You see, Mrs. Renshaw "

  "Couldn't you ,.. couldn't you call me Lucia?"

  "Would you mind?"

  Lucia extended both her hands, and he gripped them hard. There was about this woman, he thought, a beauty and strength of sheer spirit which tingled from her hand-clasp. Even now her face was earnest, almost tender. She was, he thought, an innocent who enjoyed life and even kept on her old governess because Lucia could not bear to part with her. She was. . . .

  A sudden knock at the door made them both jump back as though they had been guilty of some indiscretion. More flurry, more near-hysteria, burst in as the door opened.

  In the doorway stood a smallish, trimly dressed woman whose eyes also showed the strain of recent weeping. Her soft and fluffy white hair

  belied her age; Miss Agnes Cannon (of Cannon Row) could have been not quite in her middle forties. The white hair emphasized the roundness of a gentle face, with a pair of gold pince-nez, as Miss Cannon pressed a damp handkerchief against her mouth.

  "Mr. Butler?" she asked, and rushed on without waiting for an answer. "I have a message for you from Mr. Denham. He wants you to go downstairs at once."

  "Forgive me, but I'm afraid...."

  "Please go!" Miss Cannon burst out. "Mr. Denham says it's terribly important. It's about—the pohce."

  WILL you excuse me for a moment?" Butler asked Lucia. "I want to ask you a few more questions l
ater."

  And he hurried downstairs, his mind obsessed with water-bottles. He remembered, as a grotesque coincidence, the picture of Old Charlie sitting at the solicitors' table in the courtroom and toying idly with the neck of a water-bottle there. Otherwise Butler's brain was not at its clearest.

  Charles Denham, seated on a long sofa in the front drawing room, was smoking a cigarette and blowing slow smoke rings.

  "Well?" Butler demanded. "What's up?"

  "I admit," said Denham, "I was getting a little impatient. You've had much more than five minutes with Mrs. Renshaw. Is she guilty or not guilty?"

  Butler was stunned. "Is she guilty?" he repeated."

  "Yes."

  "Are you off your head, Charlie? That woman is as innocent as a saint out of heaven!"

  "You exalt the sex," observed Denham, watching another smoke ring. "Now I love 'em, mind you! I love their ways and their eyes and their lips. But I keep 'em in their place, Pat."

  "What in hell are you talking about?"

  Butler did not see the slight twitch in Denham's dark-complexioned face.

  "The evidence against Mrs. Renshaw," the solicitor said evenly, "is about as black as it can be. Can you think of a defence?"

  Butler couldn't. But words seemed to form themselves by instinct.

  "Let me ask you just one question, Charlie. Do you think Lucia Renshaw is a complete nitwit?"

  "On the contrary. She's a very clever woman."

  "Very well. Then if she had poisoned her husband, do you think she'd have been such a fool as to leave all that damning evidence against herself?"

  "In a detective story, no."

  Butler, opening his mouth to reply, stopped dead. It struck him, like a blow between the eyes, that he had heard exactly these same words somewhere before. Denham watched him out of a smoke-mist.

  "Oh, yes," Denham interpreted his thoughts. "We've been speaking in quotations. But what I said just now about Lucia Renshaw was what you said, some time ago, about Joyce Ellis. It makes a difference, doesn't it, when you happen to be emotionally involved yourself?"

  His voice poured with bitterness. Twisting round, he squashed out his cigarette in an ashtray on the table behind him. On that table were two very large silver candelabra, highly polished, each with seven branches. Their glitter seemed to fascinate Patrick Butler.