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“If Harriet can once establish herself with Bunter she will have no further trouble with domestics”
The medical staff at Broxford General concurred that the symptoms of Mr Mervyn Bunter as described were consistent with those of appendicitis but were more perturbed by the fact that by the time he arrived at the hospital, the patient was in a deep coma. A recently qualified registrar at the end of a night shift, finding Lord and Lady Peter Wimsey’s account of the events of their wedding night incredible at best and deeply suspicious at worst, performed his duty as an upright citizen and called the police.
With the Chief Constable in bed with influenza and Superintendent Kirk tied up with the case of the exploding taxi, the task of investigating the suspected poisoning of Mr Mervyn Bunter, valet, fell to Sergeant Foster at Pagford. The crime had in all likelihood been committed in Paggleham, after all, and there wasn’t another man spare in the district. Having interviewed his lordship and his bride separately in a green-tiled room smelling of antiseptic placed at his disposal, and heard the evidence of Police Constable Sellon who asserted that he had overheard a fair-haired man in a monocle threatening to kill his valet as the car silently glided past him on his rounds of the village on the evening of the eighth inst., it did not take Sergeant Foster long to arrest Lord Peter Wimsey for attempted murder, method: poisoning by substance or substances unknown.
Lord Peter Wimsey’s insistence that he had given the victim nothing more harmful than aspirin fell on ears deafened by the chance at last to gain the recognition that their owner considered his rightful due. Sergeant Foster was not entirely certain whether he was dealing with the disastrous consequences of a ménage a trois in high life as P C Sellon claimed or a potential blackmail case – who knew what dark secrets the personal manservant of a man of the world might threaten to tell his master’s bride – but he would get to the bottom of it and when he had, truth and justice would be served and his long sought-after promotion would be assured.
Watching her husband of a bare twenty-four hours being taken “down to the station”, Harriet thanked her stars that the Sergeant, in his zeal, had neither impounded the car nor told her not to leave the vicinity of the crime. To a mystery writer, the latter was always a useful injunction for keeping all of one’s suspects handily in the same spot for days on end, but perhaps the police outside books were not so concerned by the exigencies of plot. Or perhaps they were incompetent. She collected the Daimler and drove away before he could change his mind. If the good sergeant was so certain he had got his man that he was prepared to let her roam the countryside at will, then she would take full advantage of the fact.
How was more of a poser. Peter’s face in horrified entreaty over his shoulder as he was taken away swam before her as she negotiated the blind bends on the road back to Paggleham. He, no doubt, found the whole thing ridiculous and trusted in his own ability to talk his way out of it. She had thought it ridiculous too when it had happened to her. But the police hadn’t kept looking and sense and sanity hadn’t prevailed and the threads of circumstance had pulled and tightened and ensnared and the exits shrunk and narrowed until the doors had slammed shut. One could not depend on common sense or justice or the advantages of caste. And if Bunter died, what then?
Hard evidence was what was needed, for good or ill, and she did not trust the police to find it. Indeed, her suggestion that they should start looking had been blithely ignored by the good Sergeant who apparently shared Mrs Ruddle’s initial prejudices against the sort of woman who wore furs like Harriet’s. It was perhaps fortunate for Harriet that Foster viewed the press and sensational novels alike as the works of the Devil, would not have even The Times in the house, and was as unfamiliar with the notorious past of crime novelist Harriet Vane as he was unaware of the detective fiction convention that poison was a woman’s weapon.
It was inconceivable, Harriet thought as she swung through Paggleham, that Peter would have intentionally poisoned Bunter. Suicide was also out of the question. Harriet had no doubt that had Bunter wished to do away with himself, he would not have chosen to do so at a moment so extremely inopportune to his lordship or by so undignified a method. Besides, were their marriage as anathema to Bunter as all that, there would have been plenty of time for him to honourably resign on what she had no doubt would have been a generous pension before things got as far as the ceremony. What remained then was accident and misadventure. What in heaven’s name could Bunter have eaten – that they had not – to have had so calamitous an effect?
She reached Talboys to find it standing as serenely as it had done for centuries. Thanks to Mrs Merdle’s astonishing turn of speed, she was ahead of the police but even the most pig-headed and ham-fisted of police would surely get round to searching the house before too long. She started in the kitchen.
She and Peter had shared all the contents of the Fortnum’s hamper apart from a jar of gentleman’s relish and a box of marrons glacé, both of which remained sealed. Investigating further, Harriet found nothing more suspicious than a chunk of Cheddar bearing a few spots of blue mould and six dubious-looking onions in a string bag on the back of the scullery door. Neither looked particularly tempting had Bunter felt the urge for a late supper while she and Peter had been otherwise so selfishly occupied. Nor did the scullery cupboards reveal anything more noxious than carbolic soap, borax (unopened) and a tin of Brasso. If Mrs Ruddle required more demanding cleaning products she clearly was expected to bring her own.
Upstairs, the bucket that Peter had so thoughtfully provided lay upturned and rinsed out in the lavatory. Although welcoming his consideration and attention to domestic detail amid the myriad demands of that morning, she felt it would have been rather more helpful had the contents of Bunter’s stomach remained available for chemical analysis.
Harriet had her qualms about searching Bunter’s belongings but it had to be done and she hoped he would forgive the intrusion in the circumstances, assuming he survived in any state so to do. In the event, it was not that intrusive a search as searches went. The pockets of his clothes, neatly folded over a chair, were empty but for a corkscrew and a box of matches. His suitcase lay open on the bedroom floor, its equally neatly folded contents few and in plain sight. There were no hidden compartments or secret pockets. The brown envelope, its flap open, lay on the washstand alongside the jug and basin and a clean and empty glass. It was neatly labelled “aspirin” in a hand that she did not recognise but which was identical to that in the letter beside it which began “Dear mother, I write from an unknown destination…” before the pen slipped in a stuttering trail of blue ink across a page spotted with ominous stains.
She looked at the white crystals. Aspirin it said. Well either Peter had given him too much of the stuff or it wasn’t aspirin. What were the effects of an overdose of aspirin? No crime novelist worth her salt was without a copy of Dixon Mann’s Forensic Medicine and Toxicology but regrettably she had not considered it essential honeymoon reading. Damn. She found a clean envelope from her own handbag, poured about half of the substance into it and left the rest for the police, should they deign to turn up.
Now what? Robert Templeton at this point, like Lord Peter Wimsey no doubt, had access to a tame Home Office chemist willing to drop everything and perform instant and incontrovertible chemical experiments while airily skimming over the awkward details of the precise process involved. Alas she had no such connections. Chief Inspector Parker? Since he was now her brother-in-law, they would have to get used to meeting on social terms sooner or later but she had hoped for a quietly tactful family gathering rather than a desperate appeal to his professional expertise, in which she personally had no very great confidence. And he would have to tell the family. Harriet was reluctant to worry the Dowager Duchess if all could be sorted out before she had to know the worst, and the longer the Duchess could be kept in blissful ignorance the better. No. What a detective novelist in possession of an unidentified packet of white powder was in want of was a sensible scientist with a laboratory, a sense of discretion and a dedication to establishing the truth, in a place where ascertaining the facts would take precedence over the embarrassment and explanations caused by turning up out of the blue when one had been waved off to live happily ever after a mere twenty-four hours earlier.
She checked the Daimler’s fuel tank, judged that if Bunter had filled up before they left London, based on the distance travelled since she should just about make it, and pointed Mrs Merdle towards Oxford.
*****
“Miss Vane, I mean madam, your ladyship, I should say, we weren’t expecting to see you here again so soon.” Little ruffled Padgett’s outward calm, even the sudden reappearance of people who were supposed to be on their honeymoon.
“I wasn’t expecting to be here again so soon either,” Harriet replied, “but it’s rather an emergency. Is Miss Edwards in college?”
“Just back this afternoon, my lady. You’re lucky to have caught her. Shall I have Mrs Padgett find her for you?”
“Thank you Padgett. I think the fewer people I have to explain myself to wandering around college the better. And when you’ve done that, I’ve left the Daimler outside. Do you think you could park it somewhere a little less public for me? I’d have tried getting it into one of the garages in Mansfield Lane but I’m not sure it would fit.”
“I’ll see to it for you my lady,” said Padgett, his voice tinged with a new note of respect, “and mum’s the word.”
Miss Edwards, returned from the Long Vacation, expressed her regret at missing the wedding and was willing to give chemical analysis her best shot.
“Though it would help if you could tell me anything else you can think of that would help to narrow it down,” she pointed out “as otherwise it’s going to take me days and I might use all the stuff up before I get anywhere.”
“Well it was labelled aspirin so I suppose we’d better check first whether it is or not, but I suspect it probably isn’t. I rather hope it isn’t actually poison but you’d better not rule it out.”
“Right you are,” said Miss Edwards cheerfully unlocking the lab cupboard and readying a rack of test tubes, “but I think I’d get on much better without you peering over my shoulder. I promise I’ll tell you as soon as I find anything and besides, you look done in.”
“I can only agree,” said the Warden, materialising behind them. “Lady Peter, Padgett told me you were here. Naturally we will afford you all the assistance we can and while Miss Edwards is busy here, I suggest you come to my sitting room and have something to eat. After that, I shall insist that you get some rest until we have an answer for you.”
***
Harriet had not expected to sleep but after a cheese omelette, ensconced on the Warden’s couch under a Welsh blanket, sleep she had. Dreams of Peter’s hands, the slither of silk sliding against her thigh, had given way to a nightmare in which she and the Dowager Duchess were chasing Bunter, unaccountably dressed in a mink cloak that kept whisking out of sight just as they were catching up with him. She woke to Miss Edwards’ determined hand on her shoulder and her brisk voice in her ear.
“Sorry to wake you, but I’ve got it.“
Harriet sat up groggily.
“Potassium bromide,” said Miss Edwards triumphantly. “That do you? Used in photography, as a sedative for hysteria and what the encyclopaedia calls ‘morbid mental excitement’, and as an anaphrodisiac. Rather a small margin between the therapeutic and the toxic dose. Make any sense?”
Remembering the time she had returned a distraught Peter to the ministrations and reassurances of Bunter after that advertising agency case, Harriet rather thought that it did.
***
“And is there anything else we can do for you, Lady Peter?” asked the Warden.
“There is in fact,” said Harriet. “I know I’ve married one of the wealthiest men in England but I haven’t got any cash left and the Daimler does rather eat petrol…”
“In view of the debt the college owes to you and Lord Peter,” said the Warden, “a tank of petrol is the very least we can provide. I shall have Padgett fill her up.”
The tank filled, Harriet turned the Daimler’s bonnet towards Hertfordshire once more, destined first for the hospital and then for the police. She had never enjoyed fast driving but she found that Mrs Merdle made it remarkably easy to do over seventy without noticing and that high speed was quite a different proposition when one was in the driving seat rather than a passenger. Besides, she told herself, putting her foot down and her headlights on, there were lives at stake.
***
The following day Harriet was summoned back to the hospital with the news that the patient’s insistence on speaking to her was hindering his recovery. She found Bunter, still looking slightly green, propped up in bed in a private room wearing a pair of striped pyjamas.
“My lady,” he said in agitation. “I must thank you and I must apologise…”
“For heaven’s sake, Bunter,” said Harriet firmly. “I can quite see how it happened and it wasn’t the fault of either of you. And I didn’t spend the night collecting three summonses between Oxford and Bletchley to have you resign at the end of it.”
The wind taken out of his sails, he gazed at her. She almost thought he looked impressed.
“Only,” she added, before he could say anything else. “I think it might be better in future if you didn’t deliberately mislabel things, however sparing it may be to his lordship’s feelings.”
“Yes, my lady.” Bunter said, more chastened than she had ever seen him. “If I may say so, that point had already occurred to me, and the medical staff have also waxed particularly eloquent on the subject. I can assure your ladyship that it won’t happen again.”
“I would also venture to add, my lady,” he continued, looking slightly past her left shoulder, “that I had hoped, or if I might make so bold, assumed, that in view of his lordship’s change in circumstances, the eventuality would not arise in the future in any case.”
She gazed at him in her turn.
“Thank you, Bunter,” was all she could manage in what she hoped was a like spirit. “I hope it doesn’t either, but if it does, and you think it necessary, do you think you might tell me first?”
“Certainly, my lady.”
Their eyes met with perfect understanding.
***
“You do realise, woman, that you have just rescued me from a poisoning charge?” He sat on the edge of the hotel bed, a man reprieved.
“The thought did cross my mind,” she said. “It’s poetic justice or dramatic irony or something but I wasn’t thinking about that at the time, other than how easy it is for people to get tangled up in things through no fault of their own. What mattered most was finding out what had really happened, getting Bunter well again and disentangling you.”
“If it hadn’t been for you keeping your head when the local constabulary were losing theirs – I only spent a day and a night arguing myself into the ground in the face of their point blank refusal to believe me. It was the longest night I have ever lived through and it was nothing, dearest of Harriets, compared to what that time then must have been like for you. But I truly am most extremely grateful.”
“As was I,” she said.
He held out his hand.
“Honours even?” he asked.
They shook.
“But it’s more than that,” she said sinking down beside him. She took a deep breath. “I hadn’t found you and realised what… what everything meant, only to have you snatched away again. Peter… I’m sorry. I didn’t know, back then, what that felt like either. And I haven’t ever said it. I couldn’t. But… I love you.”
“If she whom I love, should love me,” he said drawing her down beside him as she stopped his mouth with hers.
***
“I do have another confession to make too,” said Harriet some time later, his head on her breast, his hands at her hip. “You see, Bunter must have been taken ill before he had time to unload the port and in my haste to clear your name and save his life and everything, I forgot it was in the back and I’ve been tearing round the countryside at rather more than your tenderly protective speed and the bottles all fell over sideways. I don’t know much about port but I don’t think that’s very good for it. Will Bunter be very upset?”
"Dearest," said Peter. "I am sure Bunter will think it a sacrifice worth making."