Page 132 of Marble Hall Murders

Pünd turned his attention back to the rest of the people in the room. ‘The most important question still remains,’ he said. ‘It has been asked many times, but I will mention it once more. Why kill a woman who has only weeks to live? Why risk prison or the guillotine when the outcome is already assured?’ Pünd looked across the room at James Fraser. ‘You will recall that we had exactly this discussion after the reading of the will. And what did I say?’

‘I did wonder about that,’ James remarked. ‘I asked you why anyone would murder a woman who was already dying and you answered, “Because it does not matter.” I have to say, I had absolutely no idea what you meant.’

‘And now I will tell you, my friend. Now I will describe what really occurred.’

There was another silence, finally broken by Robert Waysmith. ‘Are you saying that my father didn’t kill Lady Chalfont?’ he asked.

‘That is exactly what I am saying,’ Pünd replied.

‘Thank God for that. I told you. He wouldn’t kill anyone.’

‘Of course I didn’t kill her,’ Elmer rasped. ‘I loved her.’

‘But if he didn’t, who did?’ Voltaire exclaimed.

‘To answer that question, we must consider the character of Lady Margaret Chalfont, a woman who was kind and generous, who had no enemies and who was in the last weeks of her life. Never has there been a victim of a murder who deserved to die less. It seemed to me from the moment I arrived in France and heard what had happened that she could not have been the true target.’

‘You mean … the poison was intended for someone else?’ Robert asked.

‘No. That is not what I mean. When I said to James that her death did not matter, I meant that since she was going to die anyway, she could be killed with a clear conscience, even by someone who loved her – if her death could be used to benefit them in a certain way! Do you understand what I am saying? The murder of Lady Chalfont was not an end in itself. It was simply a means to an end.’

‘And what was that?’

‘Her wealth. Not the small amounts that she left in her will, but her entire fortune. Above all, it was about control.’

Pünd looked around the room, taking in the entire family.

‘This was ingeniously planned,’ he continued. ‘Even before Lady Chalfont came to England, it had all been decided. It was only the fact that she happened to meet me in a doctor’s waiting room in Harley Street that changed things. Ah, yes! That meant the plan had to be modified, to be accelerated. The poison had to be purchased on the very same day it was to be used. But otherwise it all went ahead as had been agreed.’

He turned to Judith. ‘You lied to me, Dr Lyttleton – and you insult my intelligence if you ask me to believe that you kept the accident of our meeting to yourself. You told your husband. You told everyone. When Lady Chalfont wrote to me, the letter was opened and read. Likewise, the telegram that I sent to her. And it was decided that I would be folded into the plan. A murder needs not just a victim. It needs also a detective, and that was the part I was to play.

‘Every single member of this family has been an actor, aparticipant in what followed. All of you worked together to convict Elmer Waysmith of a crime he had not committed.’

‘Wait a minute—’ Jeffrey Chalfont exploded.

‘You will not speak, Monsieur Chalfont!’ Voltaire slammed his fist down on the card table in front of him. ‘If anyone interrupts before Monsieur Pünd has finished, I will have them arrested!’

Silence returned to the room.

‘All the mistakes that I have described – the lid of the teapot, the book on the shelf, the matches from the Hôtel Lafayette, the turquoise ink – were placed deliberately for me to find. And then there is the little pantomime played by Jeffrey Chalfont and Harry Lyttleton at the moment Lady Chalfont dies. “No, no, no!” they say. “We never thought she had been poisoned.” So why, then, do they call the police? Why do they describe her death throes in such detail and even mention that she complained her tea had a strange taste? If anyone had wished to kill her, they could simply have remained silent and the whole world would have believed that she had succumbed to her heart disease. But there must be a clear signpost. This is not a natural death – it is a murder. They are demanding the police investigate.

‘And every time anyone speaks to me, they incriminate Elmer Waysmith. Harry Lyttleton supposedly sees him running across the Place Masséna. It is Jeffrey Chalfont who provides the exact time of Elmer’s return to the Chateau Belmar because he hears a clock strike at the same moment as he sees the car – even though, as I demonstrated to James, it would be impossible to see out onto the driveway if you were standing by thepetit salon, where the grandfatherclock is located. And when I interrogate Judith Lyttleton and Lola Chalfont for the first time, they work hard. The picture they paint of Elmer Waysmith is not a pleasant one. He is a gold-digger. His first wife would have been happier dead than living with him. His second wife had changed since she married him. And for good measure, it is Lola who hears the creaking of the stairs as the unknown assailant – who can only be Elmer Waysmith – makes his way to the kitchen.’

‘But if it wasn’t Elmer Waysmith at the Pharmacie Lafayette, who was it?’ Voltaire asked. He had broken his own rule, interrupting Pünd.

Pünd didn’t mind. ‘All along, it has been suggested that it was Elmer Waysmith who was buying the aconitine and who attempted to conceal his identity with the hat and the sunglasses,’ he said. ‘But what if it was another person,pretendingto be him, even speaking with an American accent? Now, finally, we have the reason for the bottle of liquid shoe polish that was found in the room used by the killer and which was, I believe, the only real mistake that was made. It was thrown into the dustbin, where it was later discovered by the maid – and even I failed to ask the one question that was most important. What colour was the shoe polish? It was a natural assumption that the liquid in the bottle was either black or brown. But what if it was white?’

‘Someone used it to change the colour of their hair!’ Voltaire exclaimed.

‘That is exactly the case, Monsieur Voltaire, and it explains why the pharmacist thought he smelled surgical spirit, which confirmed his belief that the man was a doctor. But it was,of course, white spirit that he smelled. This is the principal ingredient of liquid shoe polish.

‘It all becomes clear. Our mystery man has taken a room at the Hôtel Lafayette. He changes into different clothes, disguises himself with the hat and the glasses, colours his hair and then visits thepharmacie. While he is there, he has arranged for Alice Carling to walk in and ask the time. Thepharmacienis easily deluded into thinking that it is a quarter past twelve when in fact it is ten or fifteen minutes earlier. This extra time allows our man to return to the hotel, use the sink to remove the shoe polish, change his clothes and then disappear into Nice. At half past twelve exactly, Elmer Waysmith will arrive at the gallery for lunch with his son and it is assumed that the great detective Atticus Pünd will put two and two together and come to entirely the wrong conclusion.’

‘You’re saying they were all in on it!’ This time it was James Fraser who had spoken. ‘They were framing Elmer Waysmith. But why?’

‘For the simplest reason, James. It is child’s play – and indeed it was young Cedric who gave us the answer when we met him in the garden. “They were cross because Grandma gave all her money to Elmer.” That is what he said. Jeffrey and Lola Chalfont and Harry and Judith Lyttleton all loved Margaret Chalfont in their own ways and they would never have dreamed of harming her had she not been dying anyway. But they did not see hastening her end by a matter of weeks as being the same as murdering her. They wereusingher death to rid themselves of Elmer Waysmith. Monsieur Voltaire explained it to us. Had Elmer been found guilty of the crime …’

‘… he would have faced the guillotine.’ Voltaire completed the sentence.

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