Strong Poison · Chapter 1 (3/3)

Wimsey had pushed past without heeding him, and was making his way down into the body of the court, where Sir Impey Biggs stood conferring with his juniors.

“Seems to be in a bit of a stew,” said Mr. Arbuthnot, meditatively. “Gone to put an alternative theory of some kind, I expect. Wonder why I came to this bally show. Tedious, don’t you know, and the girl’s not even pretty. Don’t think I’ll come back after grub.”

He struggled out, and found himself face to face with the Dowager Duchess of Denver.

“Come and have lunch, Duchess,” said Freddy, hopefully. He liked the Dowager.

“I’m waiting for Peter, thanks, Freddy. Such an interesting case and interesting people, too, don’t you think, though what the jury make of it I don’t know, with faces like hams most of them, except the artist, who wouldn’t have any features at all if it wasn’t for that dreadful tie and his beard, looking like Christ, only not really Christ but one of those Italian ones in a pink frock and blue top thing. Isn’t that Peter’s Miss Climpson on the jury, how does she get there, I wonder?”

“He’s put her into a house somewhere round about, I fancy,” said Freddy, “with a typewriting office to look after and live over the shop and run those comic charity stunts of his. Funny old soul, isn’t she? Stepped out of a magazine of the nineties. But she seems to suit his work all right and all that.”

“Yes⁠—such a good thing too, answering all those shady advertisements and then getting the people shown up and so courageous too, some of them the horridest oily people, and murderers I shouldn’t wonder with automatic thingummies and life preservers in every pocket, and very likely a gas oven full of bones like Landru, so clever, wasn’t he? And really such women⁠—born murderees as somebody says⁠—quite pig faced but not of course deserving it and possibly the photographs don’t do them justice, poor things.”

The Duchess was even more rambling than usual, thought Freddy, and as she spoke her eyes wandered to her son with a kind of anxiety unusual in her.

“Top hole to see old Wimsey back, isn’t it?” he said, with simple kindliness. “Wonderful how keen he is on this sort of thing, don’t you know. Rampages off the minute he gets home like the jolly old warhorse sniffing the T.N.T. Regularly up to the eyes in it.”

“Well, it’s one of Chief Inspector Parker’s cases, and they’re such great friends, you know, quite like David and Beersheba⁠—or do I mean Daniel?”

Wimsey joined them at this complicated moment, and tucked his mother’s arm affectionately in his own.

“Frightfully sorry to keep you waiting, Mater, but I had to say a word to Biggy. He’s having a rotten time, and that old Jeffreys of a judge looks as though he was getting measured for a black cap. I’m going home to burn my books. Dangerous to know too much about poisons, don’t you think? Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape the old Bailey.”

“The young woman doesn’t seem to have tried that recipe, does she?” remarked Freddy.

“You ought to be on the jury,” retorted Wimsey, with unusual acidity, “I bet that’s what they’re all saying at this moment. I’m convinced that that foreman is a teetotaller⁠—I saw ginger beer going into the jury room, and I only hope it explodes and blows his inside through the top of his skull.”

“All right, all right,” returned Mr. Arbuthnot, soothingly, “what you want is a drink.”