The Man Who Grew Tomatoes Page 8

  He was right. With an electric torch in one hand and a formidable iron poker in the other, she had come tearing along the gallery, screeching like a banshee, and, as she was waving the torch wildly in the air, not unnaturally she tripped over Hugh and the tiger’s head.

  “Assassin, I have you!” she cried, as she fell.

  “Don’t be an ass,” said Hugh, testily. He scrambled to his feet and hauled her up. “Now, what is it?”

  “He had a knife! I saw it flash!” cried Hildegarde excitedly. “He is by way of the main stairs!”

  Hugh snatched the poker from her and ran, flicking on the light at the top of the main staircase as he went, but at the far end of the gallery he halted. The staircase divided, half-way down. One flight led to the large drawing-room and what had been intended as a boudoir, the other led to the principal dining-room and an ante-chamber.

  Hugh stood still at this parting of the ways and listened, but there was no sound to guide him. In the end, he descended to the front door, to find that this was still locked and bolted as he had left it. Switching on lights everywhere as he went, and still having the unpleasant feeling that the house held too many nooks in which a would-be assassin or burglar could lurk with intent, he continued his round of the ground-floor doors and windows, trying each one as he came to it. It seemed absurd, this second pilgrimage, and yet, much more than the first, a spine-chilling business. Hugh, who had been trained to dislike taking chances, felt that he might be taking one every second.

  He went, somewhat fearfully, up the back stairs, to find that Hildegarde had switched on the gallery light again and was standing beside the tiger-rug with a halberd, taken from the wall, in her hand. She made a striking, Boudiccan figure. Her hair was unbound, her striding stance was martial, and she flourished her extinguished torch at Hugh. She was fully dressed.

  “I wait for my poker, which you snatch,” she said. “It belongs to the room where I am.”

  Hugh handed it over in exchange for the halberd. This he replaced on the wall between two of the windows.

  “Did you see who it was?” he asked. Hildegarde shook her head.

  “A man climbs in at my window and I scream because I am virtuous,” she explained. “Also because I think perhaps I am to be murdered in my bed, and that is a not nice place to be murdered. But the man does not wish to murder me or do anything else to me. He wishes but to run through my room with a knife in his hand.”

  “How do you know about the knife?”

  “I did not then know about the knife, but I saw something shine when I switched on my torch and followed him.”

  “It was pretty plucky of you, I must say.”

  “You see, I think to myself that he is a burglar and I like a burglar even less than I like a murderer. The life, it is not so important, but the money—that is another matter.”

  “Well, I’d better see you back to your room,” said Hugh.

  They traversed the gallery to the front staircase, descended half-way, crossed the dining-room and its ante-room, and made their way to the wing in which Hildegarde and her brother had made their home. They ascended a staircase, traversed a corridor, and went as far as a room where the electric light was still showing.

  “There!” said Hildegarde, pointing triumphantly to the open window, which could be seen from the open doorway. “And the fire-escape! Easy for him, do you see?”

  “I should have thought you’d have preferred a room which did not have the fire-escape leading up to it,” said Hugh, resisting her efforts to impel him over the threshold.

  “Oh, but I am a pyrophobe. Always I like to know that, in case of fire, I have simply to open the window. I will close it now.” She did so. “And fasten it.” She pushed home the catch. “Better to suffocate a little than to have strange men with knives rushing about all night.”

  “He got out the same way, I’ve no doubt,” said Hugh. “Well, thank you again—and good night.”

  It was with no enthusiasm for the walk that he made his way back to the library. He had no intention of going to bed immediately. He locked the door, tried the window-fastenings, and then altered the position of an armchair so that, from it, he could command a view of both door and window. Then he poured himself a stiffish whisky, added a modicum of soda, and picked up his book. When a faint greyish light began to manifest itself through the closely-drawn curtains, he put down his book and went to bed.

  Three days later, having taken every precaution during the intervening evenings and nights to secure the house against intrusion, he invited the local doctor and his wife to dinner. He had played golf with the doctor once or twice and had been to dinner at his house. He invited the Bembridges, too, and the party also included, as Hugh’s own dinner-partner, a sprightly old lady with sharp black eyes, a beaky little mouth, claw-like hands alive with diamonds, an eldritch cackle, and a bizarre taste in evening clothes. She was introduced to the company by Hugh as “Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, who helped us out at the Ministry once when we were in the very devil of a spot.”

  “Yes,” agreed Dame Beatrice, with a leer which startled Jacob, the recipient of it, so much that he choked on some sherry which went the wrong way, “Mr. Camber and I are old acquaintances. Nevertheless, I supposed that he had forgotten me, and I must confess that I was both surprised and flattered by his invitation to visit him here at Camber Abbey.”

  Hugh laughed, and added that he had had an ulterior motive in asking her to pay him a visit. She cackled and said that she had suspected something of the sort. He volunteered no further explanation at the time, and the other guests were far too polite to ask questions. Their curiosity, if they had any, was satisfied when dinner was over, the coffee cups cleared away, and the party gathered in the larger of the drawing-rooms.

  At the first pause in the general conversation, Hugh addressed a question point-blank to Bembridge.

  “What do you know of a man named Maitland and another called Tunstall?”

  “Bill Maitland? Raymond Tunstall?”

  “Those are the chaps I mean.”

  “Bill Maitland farms somewhere over Biltham way. He isn’t one of your tenants.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. What about Tunstall?”

  “Lets out cruisers and yachts to visitors. A very warm man, I believe. Lives in a bungalow over Horning way somewhere.”

  “A catch for any woman, as the Victorians might have put it?”

  “Decidedly, I should say.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Thirty-six or seven.”

  “Good-looking? Attractive?”

  “Not particularly either, so far as I’m concerned, but if you mean that he might be attractive to women, I don’t think any man could say. I often wonder what makes women fall for the men they marry.”

  “They don’t, Charles dear. They take what they can get,” said Marion Bembridge.

  “And are thankful to get it,” retorted her husband.

  “Why this interest in two characters you don’t seem to know?” asked the doctor.

  “They have something in common with me. They proposed to Catherine Tolley.”

  “And you want to check your fatal fascination against their unfatal ditto?” asked the doctor’s wife. “Well, I can tell you one thing.”

  “No tales out of school, Margaret,” said the doctor, on a note of warning.

  “I shall tell this one. Tunstall is said to be a devotee of the bottle. That alone would account for Catherine’s turning him down, I should think.”

  “Oh, come! He likes a drink, but don’t we all?” said Bembridge.

  “Why do men always and invariably support one another against women’s insinuations?” demanded Marion. Nobody appeared to notice that Dame Beatrice had taken no part in the conversation. It now became general and lively, however, and she soon joined in. Some time later she said:

  “Mr. Camber is going to tell you why he has invited me here.”

  Hugh looked at her in horror.

>   “I thought,” he began.

  “You thought it was to be a deep, dark secret?”

  “Well, forewarned is forearmed, you know. I didn’t think the real purpose of your visit ought to be allowed to leak out—at any rate, not yet.”

  Dame Beatrice gazed, like a benevolent snake, at the faces around her.

  “Nobody here is going to breathe a word, naturally,” said Marion, in a tone of gentle rebuke.

  “No, no, of course not,” said Hugh. The rest of the company sat very still. Dame Beatrice felt that, if such a course had been physically possible, their ears would be quivering. The doctor’s wife spoke first.

  “Alaric is accustomed to the Confessional,” she said lightly. “We may answer for his discretion. As for me, I must be my own guarantee, I’m afraid.”

  “Well,” said Marion, with spirit, “I’m sure the agent of the Camber estates is not likely to yak about anything Hugh wants kept dark.”

  “Bless you,” said Dame Beatrice, “if I am to succeed in the task to which Mr. Camber has called me, the more yak—if I understand the onomatopæic—the better. I will tell you now why I am here. I am to discover the writer of anonymous letters who accuses Mr. Camber of murdering Mr. Paul Camber and his son Stephen.” Into the shocked silence which followed this bland explanation she tossed one other remark. “Of course, if the anonymous letter-writer is correct, and Mr. Hugh Camber did commit the murders, there must have been an accomplice, one would say. Now, Mr. Camber?”

  “There certainly would have been an accomplice,” said Hugh grimly. “I can prove where I was and what I was doing, I should hope, when…” He stopped short. “No, not when Paul died,” he added suddenly.

  “Ah,” said Dame Beatrice. “Now that will be enough ammunition for the yakkers, if there are any present—and I do hope that, if there are not, somebody will be sufficiently helpful…”

  “I’ll do anything to help Hugh and Catherine,” declared Marion eagerly. “Oh, dear, we must go! It’s after eleven. Come along, darling. Yes, you can have one more whisky, since I see Hugh making masculine sort of gestures towards the decanter. Margaret and I will take time to powder our noses. It is lovely for you to get free whisky. We mustn’t deprive you of it.”

  “There’s just one rather interesting thing that I think Dame Beatrice ought to know. Hugh won’t know about this unless one of the other servants has told him. Anybody mentioned the medical history of Ethel, Hugh?” asked the doctor, when his wife and Mrs. Bembridge had retired.

  “No. Should I have been interested?”

  “Probably not, but Dame Beatrice will be. Ethel is a picker and stealer.”

  “What?” Hugh sat up straight. “Ethel! But she’s a most respectable girl! A churchgoer, a Sunday School teacher, a reader of Bibles, and a pillar of the Village Institute. Spends her free half-day in good works.”

  “This wasn’t very serious—except for Ethel. She stole and ate some tomatoes which she ‘lifted’ out of a glass dish on the dining-room sideboard.”

  “I shouldn’t consider that much of a peccadillo. Is that all she took?”

  “Indeed, yes. But the actual taking was less important than its effects. I was called in to stem the results of her lapse from grace.”

  “Poisoning?” said Dame Beatrice. “Atropine?”

  “Atropine, yes. But wasn’t it an extraordinary thing? I mean, one knows, I suppose, that the tomato, the potato, and the deadly nightshade belong to the same natural order, but who ever heard of a lethal tomato?”

  Dame Beatrice produced a small notebook and inscribed some almost illegible hieroglyphics. She showed them to the doctor. He looked at her neat, medico-legal calligraphy, deciphered it without difficulty, and whistled.

  “Could be,” he said; and raised his eyebrows at her. “But it must have been deliberately done and yet it wouldn’t have killed Ethel even if I hadn’t treated her. She was vomiting pretty badly and there didn’t seem much doubt that the tomatoes were the cause.”

  “You didn’t think of getting the tomatoes analysed?”

  “No, I didn’t, for the simple reason that I took her symptoms at the time for hysteria. In any case, some very strong, sweet tea soon put her right and we got her to bed. Later on, I thought it over, but, again, I couldn’t see how the tomatoes could have poisoned her unless it was a very idiosyncratic allergy, so I let it go. It still puzzled me, however, so I asked whether any of the tomatoes were left, but they had all been disposed of.”

  “Were there any symptoms apart from the vomiting?”

  “Yes. She appeared to be merrily tight, laughing, shouting, and staggering about. But for the evidence of the cook, the housekeeper, and the kitchen-maid, I should have taken it for granted that she was drunk, but their combined assurances that she ‘never touched a drop’ and that the only alcohol in the house was in the wine-cellar, the key of which never left Paul Camber’s possession, convinced me that it was a curious allergy to tomatoes and that was all.”

  “You said she was laughing, shouting, and staggering about, and appeared to be drunk,” said Hugh. “But, surely, exactly the same thing was said of young Stephen Camber just before he was drowned?”

  “Was it? I was away from home, doing a locum when he was drowned. Was that really said about him?”

  “Why, yes, I remember it distinctly. It was the housekeeper here who told me about it when she gave notice. She seemed to think it was a scandalous thing to say about the boy. She also said there was no way in which Stephen could have imbibed anything alcoholic. And, of course, he wasn’t poisoned; he was drowned. I mean—”

  “Poisoned and drowned, it would appear,” said Dame Beatrice. “By the way, when did Ethel suffer from eating the tomatoes?—before or after the deaths of Stephen and Paul Camber?”

  “Very shortly before Paul’s death. Stephen, of course, died a short while before his father.”

  “I see.” She changed the subject, as Marion and the doctor’s wife came in, to that of Paul’s fateful holiday in Scotland. From that the conversation turned, more cheerfully, to deer-stalking in the Highlands, to salmon-fishing in the Irish loughs, to shikari in India, but before the guests departed Dame Beatrice referred again to the mysterious behaviour of Ethel.

  “What happened exactly?” she asked.

  “Oh, we’d just gone to bed when Paul Camber’s cook knocked us up,” said the doctor’s wife. “She seemed in a bit of a flap, so Alaric went along.”

  “I asked whether Paul Camber knew that Ethel was ill,” said the doctor, “but when I saw the girl I realised why they hadn’t reported to him. Ethel gave the impression that she was hopelessly drunk. I asked how on earth she had come to get into such a state, but the other servants swore she had taken nothing, as I told you.

  “‘If she hasn’t had alcohol,’ I said, ‘what has she had?’ The other maid said it was a judgement on her. There must have been something wrong with the dining-room tomatoes. Ethel, it appeared, was so fond of tomatoes that she had pinched three off the dining-room sideboard, yielding to a temptation which, according to cook, had stung her like an adder.”

  “How long before you saw her had she eaten these tomatoes?” asked Dame Beatrice.

  “A matter of nearly three hours. Had them with her supper at eight o’clock that night. Cook had given her a drink of water after she’d been sick, and she didn’t seem able to swallow, so I ordered some strong tea with lots of sugar, and that was that.”

  “And you did not tell Paul Camber about this?”

  “No, I didn’t. The girl was soon all right again. When I first saw her, as I said, she seemed tight, but a little later on her face was encarmined and her breathing became very slow. The strong tea was brought and she was persuaded to drink it. She seemed depressed and stupid, but by the time I left the house she was sleeping peacefully, with her respiration restored to normal.”

  “Solanaceae is a fairly wide-spread natural order,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “Oh, yes, it was at
ropine poisoning, as we said. Odd that young Stephen must have suffered from the same allergy. Of course, Paul was not a particularly moral character. I suppose Ethel couldn’t be Stephen’s mother?” suggested the doctor. No one seemed to think that this was likely, although Marion Bembridge declared that she wouldn’t put much past Paul Camber, and how he had dared to read the Lessons in church on Sunday mornings she could not think. The party then broke up.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Fancies, Facts, and Theories

  “Downhill I came, hungry and yet not starved.”

  Edward Thomas

  When the guests had gone, Dame Beatrice settled herself in a deep armchair by the wood fire and said:

  “From your letter to me, I gather that you are inclined to believe your anonymous correspondent.”

  “Believe him? Oh, about the manner of the deaths of my cousin and his son! I don’t know how you guessed, but I’ve certainly begun to wonder whether their deaths were accidental, and it’s an additional reason for my wanting to identify the letter-writer. I want to find out whether it’s guesswork on his part or whether he knows something that ought to go to the police. Anyway, I shall be interested to hear how you propose to set about finding out who he is. Have you any cut-and-dried plan? I had not much opportunity to follow your methods when you helped us at the Ministry last year, but I’m afraid I don’t see how village gossip inspired by Mrs. Bembridge and Mrs. Castleton is going to help us. I should have thought it would simply drive the chap underground for a bit, only to have him break out again later on.”

  “If the letter-writer lived in the village, it might well have that result.”