The Poisoned Chocolates Case

Roger called on himself.

“Ladies and gentlemen, as the one responsible for this experiment, I think I can congratulate myself. The three members who have spoken so far have shown an ingenuity of observation and argument which I think could have been called forth by no other agency. Each was convinced before beginning to speak that he or she had solved the problem and could produce positive proof in support of such solution, and each, I think, is still entitled to say that his or her reading of the puzzle has not yet been definitely disproved.

“Even Sir Charles’s choice of Lady Pennefather is perfectly arguable, in spite of the positive alibi that Miss Dammers is able to give to Lady Pennefather herself; Sir Charles is quite entitled to say that Lady Pennefather has an accomplice, and to adduce in support of that the rather dubious circumstances attending her stay in Paris.

“And in this connection I should like to take the opportunity of retracting what I said to Bradley last night. I said that I knew definitely that the woman he had in mind could not have committed the murder. That was a mis-statement. I didn’t know definitely at all. I found the idea, from what I personally know of her, to be quite incredible.

“Moreover,” said Roger bravely, “I have some reason to suspect the origin of her interest in criminology, and I’m pretty sure it’s quite a different one from that postulated by Bradley. What I should have said was, that her guilt of this crime was a psychological impossibility. But so far as facts go, one can’t prove psychological impossibilities. Bradley is still perfectly entitled to believe her the criminal. And in any case she must certainly remain on the list of suspects.”

“I agree with you, Sheringham, you know, about the psychological impossibility,” remarked Mr. Bradley. “I said as much. The trouble is that I consider I proved the case against her.”

“But you proved the case against yourself too,” pointed out Mrs. Fielder-Flemming sweetly.

“Oh, yes; but that doesn’t worry me with its inconsistency. That involves no psychological impossibility, you see.”

“No,” said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “Perhaps not.”

“Psychological impossibility!” contributed Sir Charles robustly. “Oh, you novelists. You’re all so tied up with Freud nowadays that you’ve lost sight of human nature altogether. When I was a young man nobody talked about psychological impossibilities. And why? Because we knew very well that there’s no such thing.”

“In other words, the most improbable person may, in certain circumstances, do the most unlikely things,” amplified Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “Well, I may be old-fashioned, but I’m inclined to agree with that.”

“Constance Kent,” led Sir Charles.

“Lizzie Borden,” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming covered.

“The entire Adelaide Bartlett case,” Sir Charles brought out the ace of trumps.

Mrs. Fielder-Flemming gathered the cards up into a neat pack. “In my opinion, people who talk of psychological impossibilities are treating their subjects as characters in one of their own novels—they’re infusing a certain percentage of their own mental make-up into them and consequently never see clearly that what they think may be the impossible for themselves may quite well be the possible (however improbable) in somebody else.”

“Then there is something to be said after all for the detective story merchant’s axiom of the most unlikely person,” murmured Mr. Bradley. “Good!”

“Shall we hear what Mr. Sheringham’s got to say about the case now?” suggested Miss Dammers.

Roger took the hint.

“I was going on to say how interestingly the experiment had turned out, too, in that the three people who have already spoken happen each to have hit on a different person for the criminal. I, by the way, am going to suggest another, so even if Miss Dammers and Mr. Chitterwick each agree with one of us, that gives us four entirely different possibilities. I don’t mind confessing that I’d hoped something like that would happen, though I hardly looked for such an excellent result.

“Still, as Bradley has pointed out in his remarks about closed and open murders, the possibilities in this case really are almost infinite. That, of course, makes it so much more interesting from our point of view. For instance, I began my own investigations from the point of view of Sir Eustace’s private life. It was there, I felt convinced, that the clue to the murder was to be found. Just as Bradley did. And like him, I thought that this clue would be in the form of a discarded mistress; jealousy or revenge, I was sure, would turn out to be the mainspring of the crime. Lastly, like him I was convinced from the very first glance at the business that the crime was the work of a woman.

“The consequence was that I began work entirely from the angle of Sir Eustace’s women. I spent a good many not too savoury days collecting data, until I was convinced that I had a complete list of all his affairs during the past five years. It was not too difficult. Sir Eustace, as I said last night, is not a reticent man. Apparently I had not got the full list, for mine hadn’t included the lady whose name was not mentioned last night, and if there was one omission it’s possible there may be more. At any rate, it seems that Sir Eustace, to do him justice, did have his moments of discretion.

“But now all that is really beside the point. What matters is that at first I was certain that the crime was the work not only of a woman, but of a woman who had comparatively recently been Sir Eustace’s mistress.

“I have now changed all my opinions, in toto.”

“Oh, really!” moaned Mr. Bradley. “Don’t tell me I was wrong all along the line.”

“I’m afraid so,” said Roger, trying to keep the triumph out of his voice. It is a difficult thing, when one has really and truly solved a problem which has baffled so many excellent brains, to appear entirely indifferent about it.

“I regret to have to say,” he went on, hoping he appeared humbler than he felt, “I regret to have to say that I can’t claim all credit for this change of view for my own perspicacity. To be quite honest, it was sheer luck. A chance meeting with a silly woman in Bond Street put me in possession of a piece of information, trivial in itself (my informant never for one moment saw its possible significance), but which immediately altered the whole case for me. I saw in a flash that I’d been working from the beginning on mistaken premises. That I’d been making, in fact, the particular fundamental mistake which the murderer had intended the police and everybody else to make.

“It’s a curious business, this element of luck in the solution of crime-puzzles,” Roger ruminated. “As it happens I was discussing it with Moresby, in connection with this very case. I pointed out to him the number of impossible problems which Scotland Yard solves eventually through sheer luck—a vital piece of evidence turning up of its own accord so to speak, or a piece of information brought in by an angry woman because her husband happened to have given her grounds for jealousy just before the crime. That sort of thing is happening all the time. The Avenging Chance, I suggested as a title, if Moresby ever wanted to make a film out of such a story.

“Well, The Avenging Chance has worked again. By means of that lucky encounter in Bond Street, in one moment of enlightenment it showed me who really had sent those chocolates to Sir Eustace Pennefather.”

“Well, well, well!” Mr. Bradley kindly expressed the feelings of the Circle.

“And who was it, then?” queried Miss Dammers, who had an unfortunate lack of dramatic feeling. For that matter Miss Dammers was inclined to plume herself on the fact that she had no sense of construction, and that none of her books ever had a plot. Novelists who use words like ‘values’ and ‘reflexes’ and ‘Œdipus-complex’ simply won’t have anything to do with plots. “Who appeared to you in this interesting revelation, Mr. Sheringham?”

“Oh, let me work my story up a little first,” Roger pleaded.

Miss Dammers sighed. Stories, as Roger as a fellow-craftsman ought to have known, simply weren’t done nowadays. But then Roger was a best-seller, and anything is possible with a creature like that.

Unconscious of these reflections, Roger was leaning back in his chair in an easy attitude, meditating gently. When he began to speak again it was in a more conversational tone than he had used before.