Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie
“That girl’s a fool,” said Emily Arundell. “Her taste in books is the worst I’ve ever come across.”
“Oh, dear. I’m so sorry—Perhaps I ought—”
“Nonsense, it’s not your fault.” Emily Arundell added kindly. “I hope you enjoyed yourself this afternoon.”
Miss Lawson’s face lighted up. She looked eager and almost youthful.
“Oh, yes, thank you very much. So kind of you to spare me. I had the most interesting time. We had the Planchette and really—it wrote the most interesting things. There were several messages… Of course its not quite the same thing as the sittings… Julia Tripp has been having a lot of success with the automatic writing. Several messages from Those who have Passed Over. It—it really makes one feel so grateful—that such things should be permitted….”
Miss Arundell said with a slight smile:
“Better not let the vicar hear you.”
“Oh, but indeed, dear Miss Arundell, I am convinced—quite convinced—there can be nothing wrong about it. I only wish dear Mr. Lonsdale would examine the subject. It seems to me so narrow-minded to condemn a thing that you have not even investigated. Both Julia and Isabel Tripp are such truly spiritual women.”
“Almost too spiritual to be alive,” said Miss Arundell.
She did not care much for Julia and Isabel Tripp. She thought their clothes ridiculous, their vegetarian and uncooked fruit meals absurd, and their manner affected. They were women of no traditions, no roots—in fact—no breeding! But she got a certain amount of amusement out of their earnestness and she was at bottom kindhearted enough not to grudge the pleasure that their friendship obviously gave to poor Minnie.
Poor Minnie! Emily Arundell looked at her companion with mingled affection and contempt. She had had so many of these foolish, middle-aged women to minister to her—all much the same, kind, fussy, subservient and almost entirely mindless.
Really poor Minnie was looking quite excited tonight. Her eyes were shining. She fussed about the room vaguely touching things here and there without the least idea of what she was doing, her eyes all bright and shining.
She stammered out rather nervously:
“I—I do wish you’d been there… I feel, you know, that you’re not quite a believer yet. But tonight there was a message—for E.A., the initials came quite definitely. It was from a man who had passed over many years ago—a very good-looking military man—Isabel saw him quite distinctly. It must have been dear General Arundell. Such a beautiful message, so full of love and comfort, and how through patience all could be attained.”
“Those sentiments sound very unlike papa,” said Miss Arundell.
“Oh, but our Dear Ones change so—on the other side. Everything is love and understanding. And then the Planchette spelt out something about a key—I think it was the key of the Boule cabinet—could that be it?”
“The key of the Boule cabinet?” Emily Arundell’s voice sounded sharp and interested.
“I think that was it. I thought perhaps it might be important papers—something of the kind. There was a well-authenticated case where a message came to look in a certain piece of furniture and actually a will was discovered there.”
“There wasn’t a will in the Boule cabinet,” said Miss Arundell. She added abruptly: “Go to bed, Minnie. You’re tired. So am I. We’ll ask the Tripps in for an evening soon.”
“Oh, that will be nice! Good night, dear. Sure you’ve got everything? I hope you haven’t been tired with so many people here. I must tell Ellen to air the drawing room very well tomorrow, and shake out the curtains—all this smoking leaves such a smell. I must say I think it’s very good of you to let them all smoke in the drawing room!”
“I must make some concessions to modernity,” said Emily Arundell. “Good night, Minnie.”
As the other woman left the room, Emily Arundell wondered if this spiritualistic business was really good for Minnie. Her eyes had been popping out of her head, and she had looked so restless and excited.
Odd about the Boule cabinet, thought Emily Arundell as she got into bed. She smiled grimly as she remembered the scene of long ago. The key that had come to light after papa’s death, and the cascade of empty brandy bottles that had tumbled out when the cabinet had been unlocked! It was little things like that, things that surely neither Minnie Lawson nor Isabel and Julia Tripp could possibly know, which made one wonder whether, after all, there wasn’t something in this spiritualistic business….
She felt wakeful lying on her big four-poster bed. Nowadays she found it increasingly difficult to sleep. But she scorned Dr. Grainger’s tentative suggestion of a sleeping draught. Sleeping draughts were for weaklings, for people who couldn’t bear a finger ache, or a little toothache, or the tedium of a sleepless night.
Often she would get up and wander noiselessly round the house, picking up a book, fingering an ornament, rearranging a vase of flowers, writing a letter or two. In those midnight hours she had a feeling of the equal liveliness of the house through which she wandered. They were not disagreeable, those nocturnal wanderings. It was as though ghosts walked beside her, the ghosts of her sisters, Arabella, Matilda and Agnes, the ghost of her brother Thomas, the dear fellow as he was before That Woman got hold of him! Even the ghost of General Charles Laverton Arundell, that domestic tyrant with the charming manners who shouted and bullied his daughters but who nevertheless was an object of pride to them with his experiences in the Indian Mutiny and his knowledge of the world. What if there were days when he was “not quite so well” as his daughters put it evasively?
Her mind reverting to her niece’s fiancé, Miss Arundell thought, “I don’t suppose he’ll ever take to drink! Calls himself a man and drank barley water this evening! Barley water! And I opened papa’s special port.”
Charles had done justice to the port all right. Oh! if only Charles were to be trusted. If only one didn’t know that with him—
Her thoughts broke off… Her mind ranged over the events of the weekend….
Everything seemed vaguely disquieting….
She tried to put worrying thoughts out of her mind.
It was no good.
She raised herself on her elbow and by the light of the nightlight that always burned in a little saucer she looked at the time.
One o’clock and she had never felt less like sleep.
She got out of bed and put on her slippers and her warm dressing gown. She would go downstairs and just check over the weekly books ready for the paying of them the following morning.
Like a shadow she slipped from her room and along the corridor where one small electric bulb was allowed to burn all night.
She came to the head of the stairs, stretched out one hand to the baluster rail and then, unaccountably, she stumbled, tried to recover her balance, failed and went headlong down the stairs.
The sound of her fall, the cry she gave, stirred the sleeping house to wakefulness. Doors opened, lights flashed on.
Miss Lawson popped out of her room at the head of the staircase.
Uttering little cries of distress she pattered down the stairs. One by one the others arrived—Charles, yawning, in a resplendent dressing gown. Theresa, wrapped in dark silk. Bella in a navy-blue kimono, her hair bristling with combs to “set the wave.”
Dazed and confused Emily Arundell lay in a crushed heap. Her shoulder hurt her and her ankle—her whole body was a confused mass of pain. She was conscious of people standing over her, of that fool Minnie Lawson crying and making ineffectual gestures with her hands, of Theresa with a startled look in her dark eyes, of Bella standing with her mouth open looking expectant, of the voice of Charles saying from somewhere—very far away so it seemed—
“It’s that damned dog’s ball! He must have left it here and she tripped over it. See? Here it is!”
And then she was conscious of authority, putting the others aside, kneeling beside her, touching her with hands that did not fumble but knew.
A feel
Dr. Tanios was saying in firm, reassuring tones:
“No, it’s all right. No bones broken… Just badly shaken and bruised—and of course she’s had a bad shock. But she’s been very lucky that it’s no worse.”
Then he cleared the others off a little and picked her up quite easily and carried her up to her bedroom, where he had held her wrist for a minute, counting, then nodded his head, sent Minnie (who was still crying and being generally a nuisance) out of the room to fetch brandy and to heat water for a hot bottle.
Confused, shaken, and racked with pain, she felt acutely grateful to Jacob Tanios in that moment. The relief of feeling oneself in capable hands. He gave you just that feeling of assurance—of confidence—that a doctor ought to give.
There was something—something she couldn’t quite get hold of—something vaguely disquieting—but she wouldn’t think of it now. She would drink this and go to sleep as they told her.
But surely there was something missing—someone.
Oh well, she wouldn’t think… Her shoulder hurt her—She drank down what she was given.
She heard Dr. Tanios say—and in what a comfortable assured voice—“She’ll be all right, now.”
She closed her eyes.
She awoke to a sound that she knew—a soft, muffled bark.
She was wide awake in a minute.
Bob—naughty Bob! He was barking outside the front door—his own particular “out all night very ashamed of himself” bark, pitched in a subdued key but repeated hopefully.
Miss Arundell strained her ears. Ah, yes, that was all right. She could hear Minnie going down to let him in. She heard the creak of the opening front door, a confused low murmur—Minnie’s futile reproaches—“Oh, you naughty little doggie—a very naughty little Bobsie—” She heard the pantry door open. Bob’s bed was under the pantry table.
And at that moment Emily realized what it was she had subconsciously missed at the moment of her accident. It was Bob. All that commotion—her fall, people running—normally Bob would have responded by a crescendo of barking from inside the pantry.
So that was what had been worrying her at the back of her mind. But it was explained now—Bob, when he had been let out last night, had shamelessly and deliberately gone off on pleasure bent. From time to time he had these lapses from virtue—though his apologies afterwards were always all that could be desired.
So that was all right. But was it? What else was there worrying her, nagging at the back of her head. Her accident—something to do with her accident.
Ah, yes, somebody had said—Charles—that she had slipped on Bob’s ball which he had left on the top of the stairs….
The ball had been there—he had held it up in his hand….
Emily Arundell’s head ached. Her shoulder throbbed. Her bruised body suffered….
But in the midst of her suffering her mind was clear and lucid. She was no longer confused by shock. Her memory was perfectly clear.
She went over in her mind all the events from six o’clock yesterday evening… She retraced every step…till she came to the moment when she arrived at the stairhead and started to descend the stairs….
A thrill of incredulous horror shot through her….
Surely—surely, she must be mistaken… One often had queer fancies after an event had happened. She tried—earnestly she tried—to recall the slippery roundness of Bob’s ball under her foot….
But she could recall nothing of the kind.
Instead—
“Sheer nerves,” said Emily Arundell. “Ridiculous fancies.”
But her sensible, shrewd, Victorian mind would not admit that for a moment. There was no foolish optimism about the Victorians. They could believe the worst with the utmost ease.
Emily Arundell believed the worst.
Four
MISS ARUNDELL WRITES A LETTER
It was Friday.
The relations had left.
They left on the Wednesday as originally planned. One and all, they had offered to stay on. One and all they had been steadfastly refused. Miss Arundell explained that she preferred to be “quite quiet.”
During the two days that had elapsed since their departure, Emily Arundell had been alarmingly meditative. Often she did not hear what Minnie Lawson said to her. She would stare at her and curtly order her to begin all over again.
“It’s the shock, poor dear,” said Miss Lawson.
And she added with the kind of gloomy relish in disaster which brightens so many otherwise drab lives:
“I daresay she’ll never be quite herself again.”
Dr. Grainger, on the other hand, rallied her heartily.
He told her that she’d be downstairs again by the end of the week, that it was a positive disgrace she had no bones broken, and what kind of patient was she for a struggling medical man? If all his patients were like her, he might as well take down his plate straight away.
Emily Arundell replied with spirit—she and old Dr. Grainger were allies of long-standing. He bullied and she defied—they always got a good deal of pleasure out of each other’s company!
But now, after the doctor had stumped away, the old lady lay with a frown on her face, thinking—thinking—responding absentmindedly to Minnie Lawson’s well-meant fussing—and then suddenly coming back to consciousness and rending her with a vitriolic tongue.
“Poor little Bobsie,” twittered Miss Lawson, bending over Bob who had a rug spread on the corner of his mistress’s bed. “Wouldn’t little Bobsie be unhappy if he knew what he’d done to his poor, poor Missus?”
Miss Arundell snapped:
“Don’t be idiotic, Minnie. And where’s your English sense of justice? Don’t you know that everyone in this country is accounted innocent until he or she is proved guilty?”
“Oh, but we do know—”
Emily snapped:
“We don’t know anything at all. Do stop fidgeting, Minnie. Pulling this and pulling that. Haven’t you any idea how to behave in a sickroom? Go away and send Ellen to me.”
Meekly Miss Lawson crept away.
Emily Arundell looked after her with a slight feeling of self-reproach. Maddening as Minnie was, she did her best.
Then the frown settled down again on her face.
She was desperately unhappy. She had all a vigorous strong-minded old lady’s dislike of inaction in any given situation. But in this particular situation she could not decide upon her line of action.
There were moments when she distrusted her own faculties, her own memory of events. And there was no one, absolutely no one in whom she could confide.
Half an hour later, when Miss Lawson tiptoed creakingly into the room, carrying a cup of beef tea, and then paused irresolute at the view of her employer lying with closed eyes, Emily Arundell suddenly spoke two words with such force and decision that Miss Lawson nearly dropped the cup.
“Mary Fox,” said Miss Arundell.
“A box, dear?” said Miss Lawson. “Did you say you wanted a box?”
“You’re getting deaf, Minnie. I didn’t say anything about a box. I said Mary Fox. The woman I met at Cheltenham last year. She was the sister of one of the Canons of Exeter Cathedral. Give me that cup. You’ve spilt it into the saucer. And don’t tiptoe when you come into a room. You don’t know how irritating it is. Now go downstairs and get me the London telephone book.”
“Can I find the number for you, dear? Or the address?”
“If I’d wanted you to do that I’d have told you so. Do what I tell you. Bring it here, and put my writing things by the bed.”
Miss Lawson obeyed orders.
As she was going out of the room after having done everything required of her, Emily Arundell said unexpectedly:
“You’re a good, faithful creature, Minnie. Don’t mind my bark. It’s a good deal worse than my bite. You’re very patient and good to me.”
Miss Lawson went out of the room with
Sitting up in bed, Miss Arundell wrote a letter. She wrote it slowly and carefully, with numerous pauses for thought and copious underlining. She crossed and recrossed the page—for she had been brought up in a school that was taught never to waste notepaper. Finally, with a sigh of satisfaction, she signed her name and put it into an envelope. She wrote a name upon the envelope. Then she took a fresh sheet of paper. This time she made a rough draft and after having reread it and made certain alterations and erasures, she wrote out a fair copy. She read the whole thing through very carefully, then satisfied that she had expressed her meaning she enclosed it in an envelope and addressed it to William Purvis, Esq., Messrs Purvis, Purvis, Charlesworth and Purvis, Solicitors, Harchester.
She took up the first envelope again, which was addressed to M. Hercule Poirot, and opened the telephone directory. Having found the address she added it.
A tap sounded at the door.
Miss Arundell hastily thrust the letter she had just finished addressing—the letter to Hercule Poirot—inside the flap of her writing case.
She had no intention of rousing Minnie’s curiosity. Minnie was a great deal too inquisitive.
She called “Come in” and lay back on her pillows with a sigh of relief.
She had taken steps to deal with the situation.
Five
HERCULE POIROT RECEIVES A LETTER
The events which I have just narrated were not, of course, known to me until a long time afterwards. But by questioning various members of the family in detail, I have, I think, set them down accurately enough.
Poirot and I were only drawn into the affair when we received Miss Arundell’s letter.
I remember the day well. It was a hot, airless morning towards the end of June.
Poirot had a particular routine when opening his morning correspondence. He picked up each letter, scrutinized it carefully and neatly slit the envelope open with his paper cutter. Its contents were perused and then placed in one of four piles beyond the chocolate pot. (Poirot always drank chocolate for breakfast—a revolting habit.) All this with a machinelike regularity!