Below Suspicion (12 page)

"Ma'am," grunted Dr. Fell without turning round, "did your husband drink as much water as is gone from this bottle?"

"No, no! The police took away a lot, to analyze. That's how I know it was antimony. The Chief Inspector told me this afternoon. And that is the last question I answer, tonight or at any other time."

Butler took a few steps round and faced her. "Listen, Lucia. . . ."

"I should be glad, Mr. Butler," Lucia said quietly, "if you did not intrude in my affairs any longer."

Butler, though feeling the full slap in the face, thought he could understand it. She was growing hysterical, of course. Any woman would do the same.

"Listen to me, please." He spoke gently. "There's not a particle of direct evidence against you for the murder of Mrs. Taylor. It may look bad, of course. . . ."

"Yes. And who made it look bad?"

Butler's heart sank, though he kept an expressionless face. "I really don't understand you."

" 'Mr. Butler proved,'" Lucia mimicked. " 'Mr. Butler proved.' I thought if I heard that just once more, I should begin screaming. You've put me into rather a pretty corner, haven't you?"

"It was my professional duty to defend my client."

"By attacking me?"

"Are you under the impression that I attacked you?"

"Didn't you? Didn't you get your witnesses to tell lies?"

"You—you should know better than to ask that question, Mrs. Ren-shaw. As a matter of professional ethics. . . ."

"I hate you!" flared Lucia, and her eyes brimmed over again. "You're against me too!"

"Oh, don't be such a fool!"

"How amusing!" breathed Lucia, with a woman-of-the-world's lightness, and her eye on a corner of the ceiling. "So now I'm a fool!"

"I beg your pardon. But it might interest you to know that I broke an unwritten law by even coming here."

"How interesting!"

"It is, rather." Butler gritted his teeth. "This work is done by a solicitor. Counsel's advice is taken only by a solicitor. I came here because—I don't know!—altruistic purpose—"

"Oh, get out!" screamed Lucia.

Patrick Butler bowed stiffly. In a blind rage, but with a sick sensation in his heart because Lucia had never seemed so desirable, he went out and closed the door with murderous care. Slowly walking downstairs, he saw the rear hall only as a blur of dim lights and luxurious furniture.

But over one chair, he noticed, lay his overcoat and hat. Slowly he put on the overcoat, as though his back and shoulders hurt him. As he went forward into the passage leading to the front, he saw Charles Denham—also in an overcoat, and holding a neat bowler hat—hesitating near the front door.

"Had enough for one evening?" Denham asked quietly.

"Eh? Oh! Yes."

"Like Dr. Bierce," said Denham, opening the front door, "I don't seem to be wanted here. It's half-past seven, Pat. I need my dinner."

"What I need," said Butler, "is about sixteen drinks."

The sharp-edged air, with a tang of damp, closed round them as they stepped outside the door. Denham shut the door and looked quickly at his companion.

"So you've seen through Lucia already?" he asked.

"That woman is as innocent as you are!" Butler shouted.

"Oh, granted." Denham spoke placidly. "But let's face it, Pat. She's completely selfish; and she has no more heart than. . . ."

His gaze wandered out to the hard asphalt paving of the road beyond the thin board fence. Butler saw the look.

"That's a lie!"

"I thought she'd appeal to you. But aren't you going to have a hard time defending her?"

On either side of the house, meeting the board fence at the front, ran two low stone walls spiky with dead rose-branches. Near the front of the left wall some boy with a decorative sense had placed an empty tin which might have contained Nemo's salts. Butler saw its faint glimmer by the light of a street-lamp.

"I'll defend her, all right," he snapped. "And I only hope Mr. Justice Bloody Stoneman is on the bench again!"

"But it's a pity, isn't it?" murmured Denham. "Don't you prefer your clients to be guilty?"

"Look here, I only said. . . . !"

"WTiere's the credit—or the fun—in defending somebody who's innocent?"

That was the moment when Butler, adjusting his overcoat, found in his inner coat-pocket the smooth, polished stone from the writing-desk. He took it out and weighed it in his hand. He wondered, in a kind of abstract fury, whether he could throw the stone and hit that tin on the fence.

"Between ourselves, Pat: how do you intend to defend Lucia?"

"I don't know."

"Not a ghost of an idea?"

"Not yet, no!"

Charles Denham began to laugh.

Butler, still eyeing the tin on the fence, swung towards him. "What's so damned funny about it?"

"I apologize it. It isn't funny. But the one client you know to be innocent is the one client you can't get acquitted!"

Patrick Butler threw with all his weight behind it. The tin, squarely struck, banged and flew wide; the stone clattered away into the road. From somewhere a dead shrubbery rose the squall and snarl of a cat.

That night Butler got drunk. At eleven o'clock, when he was sloshing down watered whisky at the Blue Dog Club in Berkeley Square, Lucia Renshaw was undressing to go to bed in her own home. Lucia's bedroom, full of mirrors, showed multiple reflections as she sat down to take off her stockings.

The stockings were rolled a few inches above the knee, and fastened with small, round garters coloured red. Before removing them, Lucia stared thoughtfully at her own reflection in a full-length mirror.

WELL, he was finished with Lucia Renshaw! Finished with the whole case! Finished and fed up!

When Butler came downstairs to breakfast on the following morning, with a bad headache, he had made that decision overnight. The whisky had told him that he wouldn't accept snubs or insults from anybody: he was Patrick Butler, by God—the woman could seek counsel's opinion elsewhere. Mrs. Pasternack, his ancient housekeeper, was waiting in the dining room.

"Good morning, Mrs. Pasternack."

"Good morning, sir. I've taken the liberty of. . . ."

"Mrs. Pasternack," said her employer, with pain jumping above his eyes, "I have nothing on my appointment book today. I don't even want to talk to my clerk. I'm out if the 'phone rings. That's all, thanks."

Mrs. Pasternack hesitated; but she knew him.

"Very good, sir."

Butler's home was an old, narrow, sedate house in Cleveland Row, facing across towards what used to be the Stable Yard Museum. Mist shrouded the dining-room windows on a raw morning. Since it was past nine o'clock, all electric light and heat and gas had to be turned off, and the little eighteenth century dining room seemed to wear a frosty rime.

There were two sausages on Butler's plate. They would be chiefly full of meal instead of meat; his gorge rose. Pouring out tea, which was at least hot, he glanced idly at the few letters beside the plate. He picked up the topmost letter, a grey envelope addressed in block capitals with a pencil.

He opened it, and read the brief message which was also in block capitals.

STAY OUT OF THE RENSHAW CASE. THIS WILL BE YOUR ONLY WARNING.

Butler sat up. His jaw thrust forward; a smile, pleased and wicked, curved his mouth and warmed his inner being.

"Well, well, well!" he murmured cheerfully.

The telephone was in the dining room. Gulping down the tea arid pouring out another cup, Butler carried the cup to the 'phone, where he looked up Lucia's number in the book and dialled it.

"May I speak to Mrs. Renshaw, please?"

"I'm afraid not," replied the unmistakable voice of Miss Cannon. "Who is calling?"

"It's Mr. Butler, me dear," announced that gentleman, in broad Dublin. "And fetch her to the 'phone now, wid no more nonsense."

At the other end of the line there seemed to be some kind of scuffle.

"Patrick," breathed Lucia's voice. It was as tender and intimate and personal as a touch. It poured with apology and penitence. "I was thinking of ringing you. To tell you what an awful beast and ungrateful wretch I was last night!"

"Say no more about it. You were upset."

"If I can ever make it up to you—!"

Butler's heart was singing.

"You can," he assured her. "You're having lunch with me today."

There was a pause; then more faint noises as of a scuffle, with a mumbling voice in the background.

"Oh, I can't," Lucia answered in the tone of a woman who means, "Please insist!"

"Why can't you?"

"Well! With—Dick being dead. . . . !"

"You hated the swine, and you know it. Wear your best dress in honour of the occasion. Meet me in the foyer at Claridge's, near the entrance to the little brasserie under the stairs, at half-past twelve."

Vividly he could see Lucia as he heard the yearning note in her voice.

"Perhaps I could," she admitted.

"Good! And one other thing." His eyes gleamed. "You told me last night about a firm of private detectives you hired. One of their men, who was watching you, got badly smashed up by a person or persons wearing brass knuckles. Was it your husband who gave this man the beating?"

"Good heavens, no! Dick—wasn't the type."

"I thought not. He'd get somebody else to do his dirty work. Well,

I may be able to find out something from this firm of private detectives. Will you give me their name and address?"

Lucia's voice hesitated. "I don't remember the address; it's in Shaftesbury Avenue. It's just called Smith-Smith, Discretion Guaranteed. You could find it in the 'phone book. But why do you want it?"

"I've just thought of a line of investigation. Claridge's at half-past twelve?"

"Claridge's," breathed Lucia, "at half-past twelve."

Butler, as he put down the 'phone, was so happy he could have danced for joy. If he did not actually dance, it was because he had conformed (outwardly) to custom ever since he had been called to the Bar. But he ate the unspeakable sausages with every evidence of relish, he ate buttered toast, he swilled tea. Mrs. Pasternack, watching him through an open door, judged the moment propitious when he had finished.

"If you'll excuse me, sir." Mrs. Pasternack glided in. "I've taken the liberty of asking the young lady to wait in the library."

"Of asking—what?"

"Sir, the young lady," replied Mrs. Pasternack, very slightly accenting the final word. Mrs. Pasternack was far from being a moralist. But those ladies whom she designated as "persons," at this hour of the morning, were more likely to be leaving Mr. Butler's house than calling there.

"Who is she?"

"A Miss Joyce Ellis, sir."

Hell! Flinging down his napkin petulantly, Butler got up like a schoolboy in a rage. Wasn't he ever to hear the last of the infernal girl? And yet . . . she was attractive, in a way. It surprised his aching head to remember that she had appeared in his dream last night. Perhaps she had come to apologize for her conduct at the coffee-room.

"I'll see her," he told Mrs. Pasternack.

Across the passage was his little front library, whose walls bore almost as large a collection of works on crime as the library of Dr. Gideon Fell. White mist, at the windows, turned all books dingy; it darkened the andirons and changed the leather chairs into hollows of shadow.

Joyce, sitting beside a little table and idly looking through The Trial oi Adelaide BartJett, rose to her feet as he entered.

"I'm sorry to bother you," said Joyce sincerely. "I know it must be a nuisance."

Butler was his heartiest.

"Nuisance?" he scoffed. "Faith, now, and how could you—" He stopped dead, because Joyce's eyes were fixed on him.

"I don't care what you say to me," the eyes told him, as clearly as though she had spoken aloud, "I don't even care what you do to me. But stop, stop, stop using that fake accent."

The rush of bitterness which filled Patrick Butler, surprising him, was directed against himself. Perhaps he was acting again; he didn't know. But the bitterness was jagged-edged, stabbing. He drew a chair near her and sat down.

"I'm pretty much of an ass, don't you think?"

"Nol" Joyce said sharply. Her eyes softened. "That's one of the things that makes you so . . . that's one of the things that makes you yourself."

"Ah, well, to the devil with it!"

"I only came here," Joyce said quietly, "because I know what you're doing. And I think I can help you."

Butler sat up straight, all posing gone.

"You know what I'm doing?"

"Yes. There was an account last night in the papers about Mr. Ren-shaw being poisoned."

"But even so—!"

"Mr. Denham," Joyce put down The Trial oi Adelaide Bartlett on the table, "Mr, Denham came out to Holloway Prison. He knew I'd have to go back there to pick up the few Httle things I'd left in my— cell. He thought I might have told a matron or somebody where I was going."

"But when did Old Charlie do this? He was with me until dinner time!"

"After he left you. And, as it happens, the Chief Matron has a sister who keeps a lodging-house in Bloomsbury; she recommended me by 'phone, and Mr. Denham found me at the lodging-house." Joyce hesitated. "Mr. Denham—"

"Here, what's wrong with Old Charlie!"

"Nothing!" Joyce assured him hastily, "He talked to me; people often do." Joyce made a wry mouth, but it was a beautiful mouth, "Anyway, I know you're going to defend Mrs. Renshaw, and I think I can help you,"

"How?"

Joyce leaned forward. She was still wearing the clumsily tailored suit

and yellow jumper of yesterday, though with no outer coat. But she had gone to the hairdresser; and about her skin clung a flavour not so harsh or antiseptic as that of prison soap.

'Tou want to know," said Joyce, shaking her sleek black hair, "the motive for these murders."

"Naturally!"

"I lived for nearly two years at Mrs. Taylor's," continued Joyce, and picked at the arm of the leather chair. "I liked her. I think everybody liked her. But somebody like myself will go on and on, never noticing little things. And then, all of a sudden—!" She stopped. "You see Mr. Butler, you're not really observant."