Strong Poison

There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood.

The judge was an old man; so old, he seemed to have outlived time and change and death. His parrot face and parrot voice were dry, like his old, heavily veined hands. His scarlet robe clashed harshly with the crimson of the roses. He had sat for three days in the stuffy court, but he showed no sign of fatigue.

He did not look at the prisoner as he gathered his notes into a neat sheaf and turned to address the jury, but the prisoner looked at him. Her eyes, like dark smudges under the heavy square brows, seemed equally without fear and without hope. They waited.

“Members of the jury⁠—”

The patient old eyes seemed to sum them up and take stock of their united intelligence. Three respectable tradesmen⁠—a tall, argumentative one, a stout, embarrassed one with a drooping moustache, and an unhappy one with a bad cold; a director of a large company, anxious not to waste valuable time; a publican, incongruously cheerful; two youngish men of the artisan class; a nondescript, elderly man, of educated appearance, who might have been anything; an artist with a red beard disguising a weak chin; three women⁠—an elderly spinster, a stout capable woman who kept a sweet shop, and a harassed wife and mother whose thoughts seemed to be continually straying to her abandoned hearth.

Chief Inspector Parker, disengaging himself from a group of friends, came slowly up through the crowd and greeted the Dowager. “And what do you think of it, Peter?” he added, turning to Wimsey, “rather neatly got up, eh?”

“Charles,” said Wimsey, “you ought not to be allowed out without me. You’ve made a mistake, old man.”

“Made a mistake?”

“She didn’t do it.”

“Oh, come!”

“She did not do it. It’s very convincing and watertight, but it’s all wrong.”

“You don’t really think that.”

“I do.”

Parker looked distressed. He had confidence in Wimsey’s judgment, and, in spite of his own interior certainty, he felt shaken.

“My dear man, where’s the flaw in it?”

“There isn’t one. It’s damnably knife-proof. There’s nothing wrong about it at all, except that the girl’s innocent.”

“You’re turning into a common or garden psychologist,” said Parker, with an uneasy laugh, “isn’t he, Duchess?”

Wimsey sat down and waited, a prey to curious sensations. Presently there was a noise of footsteps, and the prisoner was brought in, attended by a female wardress. She took the chair opposite to Wimsey, the wardress withdrew and the door was shut. Wimsey, who had risen, cleared his throat.

“Good afternoon, Miss Vane,” he said, unimpressively.

The prisoner looked at him.

“Please sit down,” she said, in the curious, deep voice which had attracted him in Court. “You are Lord Peter Wimsey, I believe, and have come from Mr. Crofts.”

“Yes,” said Wimsey. Her steady gaze was unnerving him. “Yes. I⁠—er⁠—I heard the case and all that, and⁠—er⁠—I thought there might be something I could do, don’t you know.”

“That was very good of you,” said the prisoner.

“Not at all, not at all, dash it! I mean to say, I rather enjoy investigating things, if you know what I mean.”

“I know. Being a writer of detective stories, I have naturally studied your career with interest.”

She smiled suddenly at him and his heart turned to water.

“Well, that’s rather a good thing in a way, because you’ll understand that I’m not really such an ass as I’m looking at present.”

That made her laugh.

“You’re not looking an ass⁠—at least, not more so than any gentleman should under the circumstances. The background doesn’t altogether suit your style, but you are a very refreshing sight. And I’m really very grateful to you, though I’m afraid I’m rather a hopeless case.”

“No.” The word broke out with a kind of repressed savagery that startled him. “Philip wasn’t the sort of man to make a friend of a woman. He wanted devotion. I gave him that. I did, you know. But I couldn’t stand being made a fool of. I couldn’t stand being put on probation, like an office boy, to see if I was good enough to be condescended to. I quite thought he was honest when he said he didn’t believe in marriage⁠—and then it turned out that it was a test, to see whether my devotion was abject enough. Well, it wasn’t. I didn’t like having matrimony offered as a bad conduct prize.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Wimsey.

“Don’t you?”

“No. It sounds to me as if the fellow was a prig⁠—not to say a bit of a cad. Like that horrid man who pretended to be a landscape painter and then embarrassed the unfortunate young woman with the burden of an honour unto which she was not born. I’ve no doubt he made himself perfectly intolerable about it, with his ancient oaks and family plate, and the curtseying tenantry and all the rest of it.”

Harriet Vane laughed once more.

“Yes⁠—it’s ridiculous⁠—but humiliating too. Well, there it is. I thought Philip had made both himself and me ridiculous, and the minute I saw that⁠—well, the whole thing simply shut down⁠—flop!”

She sketched a gesture of finality.

“I quite see that,” said Wimsey. “Such a Victorian attitude, too, for a man with advanced ideas. He for God only, she for God in him, and so on. Well, I’m glad you feel like that about it.”

Paying off the taxi man (who had obviously taken them for welfare workers till he saw the size of his tip, and now did not know what to make of them), Wimsey steered his companion down the dirty alleyway. At the far end was a small house, from whose lighted windows poured forth the loud strains of a chorus of voices, supported by a harmonium and other instruments.

“Oh, dear!” said Wimsey, “we’ve struck a meeting. It can’t be helped. Here goes.”

Pausing until the strains of “Glory, glory, glory” had been succeeded by a sound as of fervent prayer, he hammered lustily at the door. Presently a small girl put her head out and, seeing Lord Peter, uttered a shrill cry of delight.

“Hullo, Esmeralda Hyacinth,” said Wimsey. “Is Dad in?”

“Yes, sir, please, sir, they’ll be so pleased, will you step in and oh, please?”

“Well?”

“Please, sir, will you sing ‘Nazareth’?”

“No, I will not sing ‘Nazareth’ on any account, Esmeralda; I’m surprised at you.”

“Daddy says ‘Nazareth’ isn’t worldly, and you do sing it so beautiful,” said Esmeralda, her mouth drooping.

Wimsey hid his face in his hands.

“This comes of having done a foolish thing once,” he said. “One never lives it down. I won’t promise, Esmeralda, but we’ll see. But I want to talk business with Dad when the meeting’s over.”

The child nodded; at the same moment, the praying voice within the room ceased, amid ejaculations of “Alleluia!” and Esmeralda, profiting by this momentary pause, pushed open the door and said loudly:

“Here’s Mr. Peter and a lady.”

The room was small, very hot and very full of people. In one corner was the harmonium, with the musicians grouped about it.