Poison in the Pen

CHAPTER 27

About half an hour later March stopped his car on the other side of the Green, lifted the latch of a gate, and made his way with the help of a torch to the sideways-looking door of Gale’s Cottage. His knocking upon it brought a somewhat delayed and reluctant answer. There was no bell and no knocker. He was obliged to switch off his torch and use that, and he was beginning to wonder whether Mr. James Barton could be out, when there was the sound of a slow footstep and the door was opened a bare two inches, and on the chain at that, since an unmistakable rattle came through the gap. A deep breathy voice said, “Who’s there?”

“My name is March. I am the Chief Constable of the county, and I would like to have a word with you.”

The voice from within said, “Why?”

“Because you were one of the last people to see Colonel Repton.”

There was a gasp, the rattle of the chain which held the door, and the sound of the door creaking back upon its hinges. There was no light in the narrow passage, but a door on the right stood half open and enough light came from it to throw up the figure of a tall man standing back about a yard from the threshold.

“What’s this about Colonel Repton?”

“I believe you were one of the last people to see him.”

Barton repeated the words almost in a whisper.

“To see him?”

March said, “Mr. Barton, if Colonel Repton was a friend of yours, I’m afraid you must be prepared for a shock, because he is dead.”

James Barton said, “Oh, my God!” And then, “But he can’t be-I was talking to him-Oh, come in!”

The room with the half open door was the kitchen, and it was warm and comfortable, with an oil lamp on the dresser, a bright fire, and thick red curtains at the window. There was a table covered with a crimson cloth, an old leather-covered armchair, and a strip of carpet in front of the fireplace upon which lay seven large tabby cats.

In the light Mr. Barton was seen to be a thin and rather stooping person with a good deal of grizzled hair and a straggling beard, but even the beard and the bushy eyebrows did not hide the terrible scar which ran across his face. Before March had taken in these particulars he was saying,

“Colonel Repton-what has happened? I was up there- he wasn’t ill.”

“Yes, that is why I have come to see you. He wasn’t ill, and he is dead. I believe that he was murdered.”

“Murdered-”

There were a couple of plain wooden chairs in the room. Barton sank down on one of them and leaned forward over the table, folding his arms and dropping his head upon them. His breathing quickened into sobs. After a minute or two he straightened himself.

“He was a very good friend to me. It’s knocked me over. Will you tell me what happened?”

“He was poisoned-we believe, with cyanide.”

“That’s the stuff they use for wasps?”

“Yes.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

March had taken the other chair. He said,

“I hope you can help us to find out.”

Barton raised a hand and let it fall again.

“Isn’t that what the police always say when they’re talking about the chap they’ve got it in for?”

“If you mean have we any special reason to suspect you at present, the answer is no. But since you were one of the last people to see Colonel Repton alive-By the way, just when did you leave him?”

“It would be four o’clock, or a little later. I don’t carry a watch.”

“Do you mind telling me why you went to see him, and what passed between you?”

“I went to pay my rent.”

“I see. And just what do you pay for this cottage?”

Barton was leaning on an elbow, staring down at the red tablecloth. He jerked his head up at that and said roughly,

“What’s that got to do with the police?”

“Is there any reason why you should mind answering the question?”

“Oh, no-no-I just wondered why you should ask it, that’s all. If you must know, it was what is called a peppercorn rent.”

“You mean you didn’t pay him anything at all?”

“No, I don’t. I mean I paid him a peppercorn-one a month-and we’d sit talking for a bit. He was about the only one I ever did talk to, and I suppose you’ll try and make out I did him in.”

“Will you tell me what you talked about this afternoon?”

Barton went back to staring down upon the red tablecloth.

“Most times I’d go up after dark, but I didn’t today.”

“Why was that?”

“I don’t know. I’d a fancy to go when I did, that’s all. I’d been thinking of things, and I’d got to the point where they didn’t bear thinking about, so it came to me I’d go up and see the Colonel.”

March’s memory produced a date. He wouldn’t have sworn to it in court, but short of that he was as certain of it as makes no difference. This was the thirteenth of October, and on the thirteenth of October some thirty years ago… He said,

“Well you went up to see Colonel Repton. What did you talk about?”

“Him.” Barton stared at the cloth. “I went round to the study window and knocked on it because they’d got company-a lot of women visiting Miss Repton for a sewing-party. Miss Wayne from next door, she was there, and the one that’s staying with her. I’d forgotten about it, but I wasn’t going to let it put me off. I knew he wouldn’t be having any truck with it anyway. So I went round by the far end of the Green and got in over the wall and round to the study window. I’d done it before.”

“And when you got there Colonel Repton asked you if you’d come to pay your peppercorn rent and offered you a drink.”

He got a startled sideways look.

“If you know all the answers you can find them for yourself.”

March was made to feel that he had been clumsy. He hastened to make amends.

“Mr. Barton, please do not be offended. It would be a natural way for Colonel Repton to receive you, wouldn’t it? And I am really anxious to know about the drink, because, you see, the cyanide-we are practically sure that it was cyanide-was in a small decanter of whisky on his writing-table, and I would like to know whether you saw the decanter there.”

He was staring at March now.

“Oh, yes, I saw it. And he offered me a drink out of it all right, but that was just a joke between us-he knew I wouldn’t take it. It’s devil’s stuff, and I don’t use it. He knew that well enough. It’s always the same when I go up-he says, ‘Have a drink,’ and I say, ‘No,’ the same as he knows I’m going to.”

“Well, that being over, you say you talked about him.”

“Yes-about him and about women-he knows what I think of them. He talked about his wife.”

“What did he say about her?”

“Said she’d done the dirty on him and he was going to divorce her. I never spoke to her in my life-I don’t have any truck with women-but I could have told him she was that sort right from the word go. I could have told him, but it wouldn’t have been any good. That’s the sort of thing you have to find out for yourself. Cats and dogs, they go after their nature, and you know what that nature is-it’s the way they’re made. And women are just the same, but they’re not honest about it the way an animal is. They lie, and creep, and go round corners, pretending to be holy angels-angels of light, and not the drabs and sluts they are.”

March broke in.

“Are you perfectly sure that Colonel Repton spoke of divorcing his wife?”

“Of course I’m sure. Why should I make it up? He said he was all through with her and she’d be clearing out just so soon as Connie Brooke’s funeral was over. He said he’d been telling his sister, and once the funeral was over everyone would know.”

“That was a very confidential way for him to talk.”

The hand that was resting on Barton’s knee moved and clenched. He said in his deep hoarse voice,

“Sometimes it eases a man to talk. I’ve had troubles myself.”

March waited for a moment before he spoke again. Then he said,

“Well, he talked to you in this confidential way. Did he say anything-anything at all to suggest that he had the thought of suicide in his mind?”

He got a quick angry look.

“No, he didn’t!”

“Because that would be a possible alternative to murder. A man who had, or thought he had, discovered that his wife was unfaithful might have taken his own life.”

Mr. Barton brought his fist down upon the table.

“Not if it was Colonel Repton, he wouldn’t! And I’ll take my Bible oath he wasn’t thinking of any such thing. He talked about getting rid of her-said it oughtn’t to take so long to get a case through the courts now. Well, if he was planning about that, he wasn’t thinking of killing himself, was he?”

“Not then.”

“When did it happen?”

“He was seen alive at half past four, and found dead at his desk just after five o’clock.”

“That means the stuff was there in the decanter when I was with him. He’d never have offered me a drink the way he did if he knew there was poison in it.”

“He might have if he was sure you wouldn’t take it.”

The fist came down on the table again.

“Not on your life! It’s not what any man would do-not to a friend! Cyanide? That’s the stuff that kills you dead in a minute. There’s something in a man that would turn at offering it to a friend.”

“He knew you wouldn’t take it-you said so yourself.”

Barton shook his head.

“He’d not have done it. Just thinking of it would have turned him. And he wasn’t thinking about suicide-I’ll swear he wasn’t.”