The Poisoned Chocolates Case · Chapter 9 (2/2)

Roger looked round him with a mysterious air and frowned in the approved manner. “Yes!” he nodded, his finger to his lips. “But not a word, Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer.”

“Of course not, I promise.” But Roger was disappointed to notice that the lady did not seem quite so impressed as he had hoped. From her expression he was almost ready to believe that she suspected how unavailing his efforts had been, and was a little sorry that he had taken on more than he could manage.

But the bus had now reached them, and with a hasty “Goodbye” Roger swung himself on to the step as it lumbered past. With awful stealth, feeling those big brown eyes fixed in awe on his back, he climbed the steps and took his seat, after an exaggerated scrutiny of the other passengers, beside a perfectly inoffensive little man in a bowler-hat. The little man, who happened to be a clerk in the employment of a monumental mason at Tooting, looked at him resentfully. There were plenty of quite empty seats all round them.

The bus swung into Piccadilly, and Roger got off at the Rainbow Club. He was lunching once again with a member. Roger had spent most of the last ten days asking such members of the Rainbow Club as he knew, however remotely, out to lunch in order to be asked to the club in return. So far nothing helpful had arisen out of all this wasted labour, and he anticipated nothing more today.

Not that the member was at all reluctant to talk about the tragedy. He had been at school with Bendix, it appeared, and was as ready to adopt responsibility for him on the strength of this tie as Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer had been for Mrs. Bendix. He plumed himself more than a little therefore on having a more intimate connection with the business than his fellow-members. Indeed one gathered that the connection was even a trifle closer than that of Sir Eustace himself. Roger’s host was that kind of man.

As they were talking a man entered the dining-room and walked past their table. Roger’s host became abruptly silent. The newcomer threw him an abrupt nod and passed on.

Roger’s host leant forward across the table and spoke in the hushed tones of one to whom a revelation has been vouchsafed. “Talk of the devil! That was Bendix himself. First time I’ve seen him in here since it happened. Poor devil! It knocked him all to pieces, you know. I’ve never seen a man so devoted to his wife. It was a byword. Did you see how ghastly he looked?” All this in a tactful whisper that must have been far more obvious to the subject of it had he happened to be looking their way than the loudest bellowing.

Roger nodded shortly. He had caught a glimpse of Bendix’s face and been shocked by it even before he learned his identity. It was haggard and pale and seamed with lines of bitterness, prematurely old. “Hang it all,” he now thought, much moved, “somebody really must make an effort. If the murderer isn’t found soon it will kill that chap too.”

Aloud he said, somewhat at random and certainly without tact: “He didn’t exactly fall on your neck. I thought you two were such bosom friends?”

His host looked uncomfortable. “Oh, well, you must make allowances just at present,” he hedged. “Besides, we weren’t bosom friends exactly. As a matter of fact he was a year or two senior to me. Or it might have been three even. We were in different houses too. And he was on the modern side of course (can you imagine the son of his father being anything else?), while I was a classical bird.”

“I see,” said Roger quite gravely, realising that his host’s actual contact with Bendix at school had been limited, at most, to that of the latter’s toe with the former’s hinder parts.

He left it at that.

For the rest of lunch he was a little inattentive. Something was nagging at his brain, and he could not identify it. Somewhere, somehow, during the last hour, he felt, a vital piece of information had been conveyed to him and he had never grasped its importance.

It was not until he was putting on his coat half-an-hour later, and for the moment had given up trying to worry his mind into giving up its booty, that the realisation suddenly came to him unbidden, in accordance with its usual and maddening way. He stopped dead, one arm in his coat-sleeve, the other in act to fumble.

“By Jove!” he said softly.

“Anything the matter, old man?” asked his host, now mellowed by much port.

“No, thanks; nothing,” said Roger hastily, coming to earth again.

Outside the club he hailed a taxi.

For probably the first time in her life Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer had given somebody a constructive idea.

For the rest of the day Roger was very busy indeed.