Behold Here's Poison Read online

  The Sergeant, bristling with suspicion, said: ‘You don’t say! Taken the Merc with him, by any chance?’

  ‘If,’ said Benson, with awful dignity, ‘you refer to the Mercédès-Benz, no, Sergeant! The car is in the garage.’

  ‘Mr Matthews has been here, then, within the past hour?’ interposed Hannasyde.

  ‘Certainly he has,’ replied Benson. He added grudgingly: ‘What’s more, Mr Matthews left a message in case you should call.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘He will not be at home all day, but if you care to come round at nine o’clock this evening he will be happy to see you,’ said Benson.

  ‘Tell him when he comes in that I shall call at that time, then,’ said Hannasyde, and moved away towards the stairs.

  ‘And what,’ demanded the Sergeant, ‘is my lord up to now, if I may ask?’

  ‘You may ask,’ said Hannasyde, ‘but I’m damned if I can tell you. Unless, for some reason or other, he wants to ward me off for a few hours.’

  ‘We’ll look clever if the next we hear of him is on the Continent somewhere,’ remarked the Sergeant.

  ‘What’s gone wrong with your psychology?’ asked Hannasyde solicitously.

  ‘There’s nothing gone wrong with it,’ said the Sergeant. ‘But if you weren’t my superior, Chief – I say, if you weren’t – I should be asking you what had happened to make you lose your grip all of a sudden. The way things are, of course, I can’t ask you.’

  ‘Don’t worry!’ said Hannasyde. ‘I haven’t lost it yet. You can put a man on to watch that flat, if it will make you feel happier. Tell him to report to the Yard anything that happens – particularly Randall’s return.’

  ‘Well, that’s better than doing nothing,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Do you expect to get any good out of it?’

  ‘No, but it’s as well to be on the safe side,’ answered Hannasyde.

  It was not until eight o’clock in the evening that the detective watching the flat got into touch with Sergeant Hemingway at Scotland Yard. He rang up then with the news that Randall had come home five minutes before.

  The Sergeant relayed this information, and waited for instructions.

  ‘Just on eight o’clock,’ said Hannasyde, glancing at his wrist-watch. ‘He’s come home to dinner, I should say. Tell Jepson to keep a sharp look-out, and if Matthews goes out again to tail him.’

  But Randall did not go out again, and when Hannasyde arrived at his flat at nine o’clock he was ushered immediately into the library, and found Randall there, lounging in the depths of a large armchair, with a coffee-tray on a low table beside him.

  He was looking tired, and not in the least amiable. There was a crease between his black brows, and a grimness about his mouth which Hannasyde had never seen before. He dragged himself out of the chair when the Superintendent came in, and greeted him for once without the faint, sardonic smile which Hannasyde found so irritating.

  ‘Come in, Superintendent,’ he said. ‘Where is your satellite?’

  ‘I’m alone,’ replied Hannasyde.

  Randall looked him over. ‘How fortunate! I wanted you alone,’ he said.

  ‘I thought perhaps you might,’ said Hannasyde.

  Randall continued to regard him for a moment, and then bent over the table and picked up the coffee-pot. ‘Did you?’ he said. ‘Do you know, I begin to think rather well of your intelligence, Superintendent.’

  ‘I have always thought well of yours, Mr Matthews, though I may not have approved the uses it has been put to,’ retorted Hannasyde.

  At that the smile did flicker for an instant in Randall’s eyes. ‘Tut, tut, Superintendent.’ He handed a fragile cup and saucer to Hannasyde. ‘Brandy, or Benedictine?’

  ‘Thank you; brandy, please.’

  ‘A red-letter day,’ remarked Randall, pouring the brandy gently into two big glasses. ‘Superintendent Hannasyde for the first time accepts refreshment under my roof.’

  Hannasyde took the glass, and said: ‘Yes. But I believe it is also a red-letter day in that you are going – at last – to tell me what, up till now, you have been so busily concealing.’

  ‘Cigars at your elbow,’ murmured Randall. ‘It is a thoroughly nauseating affair, Superintendent, and I may mention in passing that my thoughts of my deceased Aunt Harriet are not loving ones.’ He sipped his brandy. ‘Do you want me to remember that you are a member of the C.I.D., or would you like me to tell you the unvarnished truth?’

  ‘The unvarnished truth, please.’

  ‘Yes, I daresay,’ Randall drawled. ‘But it will have to be without prejudice, Superintendent.’

  Hannasyde hesitated. ‘I can’t promise anything, but I’m out to solve a murder-case, not to bring a charge against you for getting hold of Hyde’s papers by using a false name and a pair of sun-glasses.’

  ‘It would be rather paltry, wouldn’t it?’ agreed Randall.

  ‘Worse than that. I rather think you may have been within your rights when you took possession of those papers.’

  Randall looked pensively down at him. ‘Now, when did you tumble to that, Superintendent?’ he asked.

  ‘When your cousin told me that you were going to give away all your uncle’s money, Mr Matthews.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Randall. ‘That was certainly a mistake on my part.’ He walked across the room to his desk, and picked up the evening paper that lay there, and came slowly back with it. ‘I think that’s the most important part of my story – as far as you are concerned,’ he said, and handed the paper to Hannasyde. ‘The second paragraph,’ he said.

  Hannasyde shot one quick look at him, and then lowered his gaze to the column just below the fold in the newspaper.

  Accident on the Piccadilly Tube was the heading. Underneath was a brief statement that shortly after three o’clock in the afternoon a middle-aged man threw himself in front of an express train at Hyde Park Corner Station. It was understood that the man was a Mr Edward Rumbold, of Holly Lodge, Grinley Heath, well-known in City circles as the head of a firm of wool-exporters.

  Hannasyde read it deliberately through, and then laid down the paper. ‘I think you have a good deal to explain to me, Mr Matthews,’ he said sternly. ‘What am I to understand by this?’

  Randall finished his brandy, and set the glass down on the mantelpiece behind him. ‘Well, there won’t be a case, Superintendent,’ he answered.

  ‘He murdered your uncle?’

  ‘Incredible, isn’t it?’ said Randall. ‘But quite true. Only I think we won’t call it murder. My uncle had been blackmailing him for years.’

  ‘Then your uncle was John Hyde?’ Hannasyde said swiftly.

  ‘Yes, he was. But you’d already guessed that, I think. I hope you appreciate his choice of pseudonym. He had a pretty sense of humour, hadn’t he?’

  ‘How long have you known this?’ demanded Hannasyde.

  ‘Known for certain? Since the day I visited your friend Brown. He rather thought he had seen me before. I am not at all unlike my uncle.’

  ‘But you suspected before that?’

  ‘Oh yes, some time before.’

  Hannasyde brought his hand down on his knee. ‘Now I know what it was you saw in that drawer!’ he said, annoyance in his voice. ‘I ought to have thought of that sooner!’

  Randall looked down at him with faint amusement. ‘My dear Superintendent! What drawer?’

  ‘In your uncle’s desk. There was a pair of sun-glasses, horn-rimmed. I thought at the time that you had expected to see something which wasn’t there.’

  Randall gave a little laugh. ‘Oh no! But my uncle not only never wore sun-glasses, but poured scorn on those who did. I merely thought it a little odd when I saw that pair in his desk. I think, you know, that I had better tell you just what happened.’

  Hannasyde nodded, and watched him move towards the deep chair, and sit down on one of its arms.

  Randall lit a cigarette, and smoked in silence for a minute, frowning. ‘Well, to go back to the very begin