Montague Egg Stories

 

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THE POISONED DOW ’08

 

“GOOD MORNING, MISS,” SAID Mr. Montague Egg, removing his smart

trilby with something of a flourish as the front door opened. “Here I am

again, you see. Not forgotten me, have you? That’s right, because I couldn’t

forget a young lady like you, not in a hundred years. How’s his lordship to-

day? Think he’d be willing to see me for a minute or two?”

He smiled pleasantly, bearing in mind Maxim Number Ten of the

Salesman’s Handbook, “The goodwill of the maid is nine-tenths of the

trade.”

The parlourmaid, however, seemed nervous and embarrassed.

“I don’t—oh, yes—come in, please. His lordship—that is to say—I’m

afraid—”

Mr. Egg stepped in promptly, sample case in hand, and, to his great

surprise, found himself confronted by a policeman, who, in somewhat gruff

tones, demanded his name and business.

“Travelling representative of Plummet & Rose, Wines and Spirits,

Piccadilly,” said Mr. Egg, with the air of one who has nothing to conceal.

“Here’s my card. What’s up, sergeant?”

“Plummet & Rose?” said the policeman. “Ah, well, just sit down a

moment, will you? The inspector’ll want to have a word with you, I

shouldn’t wonder.”

More and more astonished, Mr. Egg obediently took a seat, and in a few

minutes’ time found himself ushered into a small sitting-room which was

occupied by a uniformed police inspector and another policeman with a

note-book.

“Ah!” said the inspector. “Take a seat, will you, Mr.—ha, hum—Egg.

Perhaps you can give us a little light on this affair. Do you know anything

about a case of port wine that was sold to Lord Borrodale last spring?”

“Certainly I do,” replied Mr. Egg, “if you mean the Dow ’08. I made the

sale myself. Six dozen at 192s. a dozen. Ordered from me, personally,

March 3rd. Dispatched from our head office March 8th. Receipt

acknowledged March 10th, with cheque in settlement. All in order our end.

Nothing wrong with it, I hope? We’ve had no complaint. In fact, I’ve just

called to ask his lordship how he liked it and to ask if he’d care to place a

further order.”

“I see,” said the inspector. “You just happened to call to-day in the

course of your usual round? No special reason?”

Mr. Egg, now convinced that something was very wrong indeed, replied

by placing his order-book and road schedule at the inspector’s disposal.

“Yes,” said the inspector, when he had glanced through them. “That

seems to be all right. Well, now, Mr. Egg, I’m sorry to say that Lord

Borrodale was found dead in his study this morning under circumstances

strongly suggestive of his having taken poison. And what’s more, it looks

very much as if the poison had been administered to him in a glass of this

port wine of yours.”

“You don’t say!” said Mr. Egg incredulously. “I’m very sorry to hear

that. It won’t do us any good, either. Not but what the wine was wholesome

enough when we sent it out. Naturally, it wouldn’t pay us to go putting

anything funny into our wines; I needn’t tell you that. But it’s not the sort of

publicity we care for. What makes you think it was the port, anyway?”

For answer, the inspector pushed over to him a glass decanter which

stood upon the table.

“See what you think yourself. It’s all right—we’ve tested it for

fingerprints already. Here’s a glass if you want one, but I shouldn’t advise

you to swallow anything—not unless you’re fed up with life.”

Mr. Egg took a cautious sniff at the decanter and frowned. He poured

out a thimbleful of the wine, sniffed and frowned again. Then he took an

experimental drop upon his tongue, and immediately expectorated, with the

utmost possible delicacy, into a convenient flower-pot.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” said Mr. Montague Egg. His rosy face was

puckered with distress. “Tastes to me as though the old gentleman had been

dropping his cigar-ends into it.”

The inspector exchanged a glance with the policeman.

“You’re not far out,” he said. “The doctor hasn’t quite finished his post-

mortem, but he says it looks to him like nicotine poisoning. Now, here’s the

problem. Lord Borrodale was accustomed to drink a couple of glasses of

port in his study every night after dinner. Last night the wine was taken in

to him as usual at 9 o’clock. It was a new bottle, and Craven—that’s the

butler—brought it straight up from the cellar in a basket arrangement—”

“A cradle,” interjected Mr. Egg.

“—a cradle, if that’s what you call it. James the footman followed him,

carrying the decanter and a wineglass on a tray. Lord Borrodale inspected

the bottle, which still bore the original seal, and then Craven drew the cork

and decanted the wine in full view of Lord Borrodale and the footman.

Then both servants left the room and retired to the kitchen quarters, and as

they went, they heard Lord Borrodale lock the study door after them.”

“What did he do that for?”

“It seems he usually did. He was writing his memoirs—he was a famous

judge, you know—and as some of the papers he was using were highly

confidential, he preferred to make himself safe against sudden intruders. At 11 o’clock, when the household went to bed, James noticed that the light

was still on in the study. In the morning it was discovered that Lord

Borrodale had not been to bed. The study door was still locked and, when it

was broken open, they found him lying dead on the floor. It looked as

though he had been taken ill, had tried to reach the bell, and had collapsed

on the way. The doctor says he must have died at about 10 o’clock.”

“Suicide?” suggested Mr. Egg.

“Well, there are difficulties about that. The position of the body, for one

thing. Also, we’ve carefully searched the room and found no traces of any

bottle or anything that he could have kept the poison in. Besides, he seems

to have enjoyed his life. He had no financial or domestic worries, and in

spite of his advanced age his health was excellent. Why should he commit

suicide?”

“But if he didn’t,” objected Mr. Egg, “how was it he didn’t notice the

bad taste and smell of the wine?”

“Well, he seems to have been smoking a pretty powerful cigar at the

time,” said the inspector (Mr. Egg shook a reproachful head), “and I’m told

he was suffering from a slight cold, so that his taste and smell may not have

been in full working order. There are no fingerprints on the decanter or the

glass except his own and those of the butler and the footman—though, of

course, that wouldn’t prevent anybody dropping poison into either of them,

if only the door hadn’t been locked. The windows were both fastened on the

inside, too, with burglar-proof catches.”

“How about the decanter?” asked Mr. Egg, jealous for the reputation of

his firm. “Was it clean when it came in?”

“Yes, it was. James washed it out immediately before it went into the

study; the cook swears she saw him do it. He used water from the tap and

then swilled it round with a drop of brandy.”

“Quite right,” said Mr. Egg approvingly.

“And there’s nothing wrong with the brandy, either, for Craven took a

glass of it himself afterwards—to settle his palpitations, so he says.” The

inspector sniffed meaningly. “The glass was wiped out by James when he

put it on the tray, and then the whole thing was carried along to the study.

Nothing was put down or left for a moment between leaving the pantry and

entering the study, but Craven recollects that as he was crossing the hall

Miss Waynfleet stopped him and spoke to him for a moment about some

arrangements for the following day.”

“Miss Waynfleet? That’s the niece, isn’t it? I saw her on my last visit. A

very charming young lady.”

“Lord Borrodale’s heiress,” remarked the inspector meaningly.

“A very nice young lady,” said Mr. Egg, with emphasis. “And I

understand you to say that Craven was carrying only the cradle, not the

decanter or the glass.”

“That’s so.”

“Well, then, I don’t see that she could have put anything into what

James was carrying.” Mr. Egg paused. “The seal on the cork, now—you say

Lord Borrodale saw it?”

“Yes, and so did Craven and James. You can see it for yourself, if you

like—what’s left of it.”

The inspector produced an ash-tray, which held a few fragments of dark

blue sealing-wax, together with a small quantity of cigar-ash. Mr. Egg

inspected them carefully.

“That’s our wax and our seal, all right,” he pronounced. “The top of the

cork has been sliced off cleanly with a sharp knife and the mark’s intact.

‘Plummet & Rose. Dow 1908.’ Nothing wrong with that. How about the

strainer?”

“Washed out that same afternoon in boiling water by the kitchenmaid.

Wiped immediately before using by James, who brought it in on the tray

with the decanter and the glass. Taken out with the bottle and washed again

at once, unfortunately—otherwise, of course, it might have told us

something about when the nicotine got into the port wine.”

“Well,” said Mr. Egg obstinately, “it didn’t get in at our place, that’s a

certainty. What’s more, I don’t believe it ever was in the bottle at all. How

could it be? Where is the bottle, by the way?”

“It’s just been packed up to go to the analyst, I think,” said the

inspector, “but as you’re here, you’d better have a look at it. Podgers, let’s

have that bottle again. There are no fingerprints on it except Craven’s, by

the way, so it doesn’t look as if it had been tampered with.”

The policeman produced a brown paper parcel, from which he extracted

a port-bottle, its mouth plugged with a clean cork. Some of the original dust

of the cellar still clung to it, mingled with fingerprint powder. Mr. Egg

removed the cork and took a long, strong sniff at the contents. Then his face

changed.

“Where did you get this bottle from?” he demanded sharply.

“From Craven. Naturally, it was one of the first things we asked to see.

He took us along to the cellar and pointed it out.”

“Was it standing by itself or with a lot of other bottles?”

“It was standing on the cellar floor at the end of a row of empties, all

belonging to the same bin; he explained that he put them on the floor in the

order in which they were used, till the time came for them to be collected

and taken away.”

Mr. Egg thoughtfully tilted the bottle; a few drops of thick red liquid,

turbid with disturbed crust, escaped into his wineglass. He smelt them again

and tasted them. His snub nose looked pugnacious.

“Well?” asked the inspector.

“No nicotine there, at all events,” said Mr. Egg, “unless my nose

deceives me, which, you will understand, inspector, isn’t likely, my nose

being my livelihood, so to speak. No. You’ll have to send it to be analysed

of course; I quite understand that, but I’d be ready to bet quite a little bit of

money you’ll find that bottle innocent. And that, I needn’t tell you, will be a

great relief to our minds. And I’m sure, speaking for myself, I very much

appreciate the kind way you’ve put the matter before me.”

“That’s all right; your expert knowledge is of value. We can probably

now exclude the bottle straight away and concentrate on the decanter.”

“Just so,” replied Mr. Egg. “Ye-es. Do you happen to know how many

of the six dozen bottles had been used?”

“No, but Craven can tell us, if you really want to know.”

“Just for my own satisfaction,” said Mr. Egg. “Just to be sure that this is

the right bottle, you know. I shouldn’t like to feel I might have misled you

in any way.”

The inspector rang the bell, and the butler promptly appeared—an

elderly man of intensely respectable appearance.

“Craven,” said the inspector, “this is Mr. Egg of Plummet & Rose’s.”

“I am already acquainted with Mr. Egg.”

“Quite. He is naturally interested in the history of the port wine. He

would like to know—what is it, exactly, Mr. Egg?”

“This bottle,” said Monty, rapping it lightly with his finger-nail, “it’s the

one you opened last night?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sure of that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many dozen have you got left?”

“I couldn’t say off-hand, sir, without the cellarbook.”

“And that’s in the cellar, eh? I’d like to have a look at your cellars—I’m

told they’re very fine. All in apple-pie order, I’m sure. Right temperature

and all that?”

“Undoubtedly, sir.”

“We’ll all go and look at the cellar,” suggested the inspector, who in

spite of his expressed confidence seemed to have doubts about leaving Mr.

Egg alone with the butler.

Craven bowed and led the way, pausing only to fetch the keys from his

pantry.

“This nicotine, now,” prattled Mr. Egg, as they proceeded down a long

corridor, “is it very deadly? I mean, would you require a great quantity of it

to poison a person?”

“I understand from the doctor,” replied the inspector, “that a few drops

of the pure extract, or whatever they call it, would produce death in

anything from twenty minutes to seven or eight hours.”

“Dear, dear!” said Mr. Egg. “And how much of the port had the poor old

gentleman taken? The full two glasses?”

“Yes, sir; to judge by the decanter, he had. Lord Borrodale had the habit

of drinking his port straight off. He did not sip it, sir.”

Mr. Egg was distressed.

“Not the right thing at all,” he said mournfully. “No, no. Smell, sip and

savour to bring out the flavour—that’s the rule for wine, you know. Is there

such a thing as a pond or stream in the garden, Mr. Craven?”

“No, sir,” said the butler, a little surprised.

“Ah! I was just wondering. Somebody must have brought the nicotine

along in something or other, you know. What would they do afterwards

with the little bottle or whatever it was?”

“Easy enough to throw it in among the bushes or bury it, surely,” said

Craven. “There’s six acres of garden, not counting the meadow or the

courtyard. Or there are the water-butts, of course, and the well.”

“How stupid of me,” confessed Mr. Egg. “I never thought of that. Ah!

this is the cellar, is it? Splendid—a real slap-up outfit, I call this. Nice, even

temperature, too. Same summer and winter, eh? Well away from the house-

furnace?”

“Oh, yes, indeed, sir. That’s the other side of the house. Be careful of

the last step, gentlemen; it’s a little broken away. Here is where the Dow

’08 stood, sir. No. 17 bin—one, two, three and a half dozen remaining, sir.”

Mr. Egg nodded and, holding his electric torch close to the protruding

necks of the bottles, made a careful examination of the seals.

“Yes,” he said, “here they are. Three and a half dozen, as you say. Sad

to think that the throat they should have gone down lies, as you might say,

closed up by Death. I often think, as I make my rounds, what a pity it is we

don’t all grow mellower and softer in our old age, same as this wine. A fine

old gentleman, Lord Borrodale, or so I’m told, but something of a tough

nut, if that’s not disrespectful.”

“He was hard, sir,” agreed the butler, “but just. A very just master.”

“Quite,” said Mr. Egg. “And these, I take it, are the empties. Twelve,

twenty-four, twenty-nine—and one is thirty—and three and a half dozen is

forty-two—seventy-two—six dozen—that’s O.K. by me.” He lifted the

empty bottles one by one. “They say dead men tell no tales, but they talk to

little Monty Egg all right. This one, for instance. If this ever held Plummet

& Rose’s Dow ’08 you can take Monty Egg and scramble him. Wrong

smell, wrong crust, and that splash of white-wash was never put on by our

cellar-man. Very easy to mix up one empty bottle with another. Twelve, twenty-four, twenty-eight and one is twenty-nine. I wonder what’s become

of the thirtieth bottle.”

“I’m sure I never took one away,” said the butler.

“The pantry keys—on a nail inside the door—very accessible,” said

Monty.

“Just a moment,” interrupted the inspector. “Do you say that that bottle

doesn’t belong to the same bunch of port wine?”

“No, it doesn’t—but no doubt Lord Borrodale sometimes went in for a

change of vintage.” Mr. Egg inverted the bottle and shook it sharply. “Quite

dry. Curious. Had a dead spider at the bottom of it. You’d be surprised how

long a spider can exist without food. Curious that this empty bottle, which

comes in the middle of the row, should be drier than the one at the

beginning of the row, and should contain a dead spider. We see a deal of

curious things in our calling, inspector—we’re encouraged to notice things,

as you might say. ‘The salesman with the open eye sees commissions mount

up high.’ You might call this bottle a curious thing. And here’s another.

That other bottle, the one you said was opened last night, Craven—how did

you come to make a mistake like that? If my nose is to be trusted, not to

mention my palate, that bottle’s been open a week at least.”

“Has it indeed, sir? I’m sure it’s the one as I put here at the end of this

row. Somebody must have been and changed it.”

“But—” said the inspector. He stopped in mid-speech, as though struck

by a sudden thought. “I think you’d better let me have those cellar keys of

yours, Craven, and we’ll get this cellar properly examined. That’ll do for

the moment. If you’ll just step upstairs with me, Mr. Egg, I’d like a word

with you.”

“Always happy to oblige,” said Monty agreeably. They returned to the

upper air.

“I don’t know if you realise, Mr. Egg,” observed the inspector, “the

bearing, or, as I might say, the inference of what you said just now.

Supposing you’re right about this bottle not being the right one, somebody’s

changed it on purpose, and the right one’s missing. And, what’s more, the

person that changed the bottle left no fingerprints behind him—or her.”

“I see what you mean,” said Mr. Egg, who had indeed drawn this

inference some time ago, “and what’s more, it looks as if the poison had

been in the bottle after all, doesn’t it? And that—you’re going to say—is a

serious look-out for Plummet & Rose, seeing there’s no doubt our seal was

on the bottle when it was brought into Lord Borrodale’s room. I don’t deny

it, inspector. It’s useless to bluster and say ‘No, no,’ when it’s perfectly

clear that the facts are so. That’s a very useful motto for a man that wants to

get on in our line of business.”

“Well, Mr. Egg,” said the inspector, laughing, “what will you say to the

next inference? Since nobody but you had any interest in changing that

bottle over, it looks as though I ought to clap the handcuffs on you.”

“Now, that’s a disagreeable sort of an inference,” protested Mr. Egg,

“and I hope you won’t follow it up. I shouldn’t like anything of that sort to

happen, and my employers wouldn’t fancy it either. Don’t you think that,

before we do anything we might have cause to regret, it would be a good

idea to have a look in the furnace-room?”

“Why the furnace-room?”

“Because,” said Mr. Egg, “it’s the place that Craven particularly didn’t

mention when we were asking him where anybody might have put a thing

he wanted to get rid of.”

The inspector appeared to be struck by this line of reasoning. He

enlisted the aid of a couple of constables, and very soon the ashes of the

furnace that supplied the central heating were being assiduously raked over. The first find was a thick mass of semi-molten glass, which looked as

though it might once have been part of a wine bottle.

“Looks as though you might be right,” said the inspector, “but I don’t

see how we’re to prove anything. We’re not likely to get any nicotine out of

this.”

“I suppose not,” agreed Mr. Egg sadly. “But”—his face brightened

—“how about this?”

From the sieve in which the constable was sifting the ashes he picked

out a thin piece of warped and twisted metal, to which a lump of charred

bone still clung.

“What on earth’s that?”

“It doesn’t look like much, but I think it might once have been a

corkscrew,” suggested Mr. Egg mildly. “There’s something homely and

familiar about it. And, if you’ll look here, I think you’ll see that the metal

part of it is hollow. And I shouldn’t be surprised if the thick bone handle

was hollow, too. It’s very badly charred, of course, but if you were to split it

open, and if you were to find a hollow inside it, and possibly a little melted

rubber—well, that might explain a lot.”

The inspector smacked his thigh.

“By Jove, Mr. Egg!” he exclaimed, “I believe I see what you’re getting

at. You mean that if this corkscrew had been made hollow, and contained a

rubber reservoir, inside, like a fountain-pen, filled with poison, the poison

might be made to flow down the hollow shaft by pressure on some sort of

plunger arrangement.”

“That’s it,” said Mr. Egg. “It would have to be screwed into the cork

very carefully, of course, so as not to damage the tube, and it would have to

be made long enough to project beyond the bottom of the cork, but still, it

might be done. What’s more, it has been done, or why should there be this little hole in the metal, about a quarter of an inch from the tip? Ordinary

corkscrews never have holes in them—not in my experience, and I’ve been,

as you might say, brought up on corkscrews.”

“But who, in that case—?”

“Well, the man who drew the cork, don’t you think? The man whose

fingerprints were on the bottle.”

“Craven? But where’s his motive?”

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Egg, “but Lord Borrodale was a judge, and a

hard judge too. If you were to have Craven’s fingerprints sent up to

Scotland Yard, they might recognise them. I don’t know. It’s possible, isn’t

it? Or maybe Miss Waynfleet might know something about him. Or he

might just possibly be mentioned in Lord Borrodale’s memoirs that he was

writing.”

The inspector lost no time in following up this suggestion. Neither

Scotland Yard nor Miss Waynfleet had anything to say against the butler,

who had been two years in his situation and had always been quite

satisfactory, but a reference to the records of Lord Borrodale’s judicial

career showed that, a good many years before, he had inflicted a savage

sentence of penal servitude on a young man called Craven, who was by

trade a skilled metal-worker and had apparently been involved in a fraud

upon his employer. A little further investigation showed that this young

man had been released from prison six months previously.

“Craven’s son, of course,” said the inspector. “And he had the manual

skill to make the corkscrew in exact imitation of the one ordinarily used in

the household. Wonder where they got the nicotine from? Well, we shall

soon be able to check that up. I believe it’s not difficult to obtain it for use

in the garden. I’m very much obliged to you for your expert assistance, Mr.

Egg. It would have taken us a long time to get to the rights and wrongs of those bottles. I suppose, when you found that Craven had given you the

wrong one, you began to suspect him?”

“Oh, no,” said Mr. Egg, with modest pride, “I knew it was Craven the

minute he came into the room.”

“No, did you? You’re a regular Sherlock, aren’t you? But why?”

“He called me ‘sir,’” explained Mr. Egg, coughing delicately. “Last time

I called he addressed me as ‘young fellow’ and told me that tradesmen must

go round to the back door. A bad error of policy. ‘Whether you’re wrong or

whether you’re right, it’s always better to be polite,’ as it says in the

Salesman’s Handbook.”

 

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