A Death at the Beer Soup Club Page 4

  Montclaire prepared to state his reasons for charging Edgerton, but before he could utter another word, the blighter pushed Fish and Ridley aside and rushed for the doors. Once in the great lobby of the Club, he ran past the staircase and Mr. Brightly, through the doors and into Pall Mall, stopping only once to glance back and see Montclaire advancing after him. Frightened, he dashed into the street, past one stopped cab and then beyond, into the path of a hansom coming the other way, which he had not seen. The horses ran him down and trampled him as they did so and then the cab, with its screaming passengers, rolled over him, one wheel, as I gasped to see it, crushing his neck.

  As Edgerton’s broken body lay quavering in the street, a crowd of passers-by and those from the Club gathered round. Fish knelt to one side of the badly-mangled body, and finding no pulse in his neck, looked up. “He’s dead.”

  3

  Shocked by what had happened to Edgerton, Ridley and the others soon retreated to the Club, while the crowd of gawkers outside watched every move of Scotland Yard’s removal of the body and restoration of the circulation of vehicles in Pall Mall. After about an hour, during which every member of the Beer Soup Club consumed more than one gin or brandy, Fish returned, a grim look on his face.

  “Montclaire, there’s no doubting that Edgerton’s reaction to your charge must be taken as evidence of his guilt, but it’s far from proof. What prompted you to make such an accusation?” Now, there was no hint of annoyance in Fish’s voice. Only honest inquiry.

  Montclaire took a final dose from his snifter of brandy, as Ridley and the others waited to hear his explanation. “Do not fear, Detective Inspector. I have every element of the evidence one would have needed to charge Edgerton, had he dared to face justice. Instead, knowing that I would certainly prove his guilt, he sought to run away. I suspect he planned to disappear onto the Continent, where he probably had money secreted away in several banks.”

  As Montclaire made this bold assertion, I secretly hoped he could make good, because otherwise, it was clear Fish would arrest him, if only to make life difficult for a week or two.

  “And you may rest assured, Fish, that I will provide every detail in my report to the Home Secretary, which I am sure will satisfy both your Government and mine.”

  “I hope you will share the main points of that report with us, Montclaire,” said Ridley. “We are eager to know the explanation.”

  “Et bien, mon ami,” said Montclaire, a sly smile on his lips. “There were two questions in this crime that puzzled me and that I came to regard as essential to answer. First, was the matter of the agent that had poisoned Dawkins. It was clear he’d been poisoned and the Police Surgeon attested to that, but what was it precisely that killed him. Dr. Gailbreth could not be specific. The second question came from Catherine Peters.”

  “Catherine?” Sir Joshua asked.

  “Yes. In her guilt, she wrote a note, which said in part ‘He told me . . . .’ That told me she clearly had an accomplice, and Fish here assumed it was her brother. But I was not so certain. I decided to leave that as an open question, pending further investigation.” I asked myself. Who is he?”

  “And how did you answer those questions?” Chambers pressed.

  Montclaire smiled and hailed the barman for another snifter of brandy.

  “Three pieces of evidence came together, at a point in this investigation, and together they pointed strongly to Rufus Edgerton. First, Dawkins’ solicitor was able to tell me of Edgerton’s motive. While he and Dawkins had apparently mended their old hostilities and all seemed well between them, beneath the surface Edgerton seethed with hatred of his rival but found that he could not get satisfaction in law. There was that.”

  “It’s not enough that a man hates another man,” said Fish, coldly. “It’s no crime to hate your fellow man. If it were, we have half of London in the lockup.”

  “C’est vrai, Detective Inspector, and half of Paris too. But Edgerton acted upon his hatred. He used his apparent goodwill toward his old adversary to lure him to dinner, which I learned was the evening before the Beer Soup Club met, and at that dinner, he poisoned Dawkins, with the help of Catherine Peters.”

  “Poisoned the night before!” Fish exclaimed. “Nonsense, man! He was poisoned a the Club.”

  “I beg your pardon, Fish, but that is almost certainly not so. Dr. Galbraith could only establish the Dawkins was poisoned with some agent within a large family of plants.”

  “That’s right. The Euphor-- something-or-other and that bit of information meant nothing at all,” said Fish.

  “Oh, but it meant everything, Fish. You see, the most prominently used plant of the Euphorbiaceae family is the Castor Bean – the very plant upon which Edgerton’s fortune was founded.” The Club members exhaled an audible gasp in unison.

  “A coincidence? I thought not. Further research into the numerous poisonous plants in the Euphorbiaceae family informed me that almost none of them kill quickly. In fact, poisoning by derivatives of the Castor Bean commonly require thirty-two to forty-eight hours to kill. That was just the time that had elapsed since Dawkins had dined with Edgerton the day before.

  “Edgerton, of course, knew of the hot dispute between Dawkins and Belloc, and he knew the Beer Soup Club would meet that evening. And so he was able to poison Dawkins, with the help of Catherine Peters, and allow everyone to assume his hated adversary had been poisoned at the Club. Of course, he contrived to be absent at the Club’s dinner, so as to avoid suspicion entirely.”

  “Good Heavens, Montclaire? You’ve done it! You’ve explained the whole thing,” said Ridley.

  Montclaire frowned, whereas I had expected him to smile.

  “There is one thing. I eventually concluded that Catherine Peters was referring to her employer, Edgerton when she wrote ‘He told me . . . .’ but I am sad to say that Catherine Peters appears to have died and so will never confirm what I suspect.”

  Epilogue

  Montclaire presented his formal report to the Home Secretary in a matter of days and on the basis of his evidence, and Edgerton’s guilty-minded actions, Stockton Peters was released. There was no formal ruling regarding Dawkins’ murder, and so the Coroner’s Inquest returned a quick verdict of “Murder by person or persons unknown.” Montclaire smiled when he read the verdict in The Times.

  Several months later, when we had returned to Paris, a further development changed that verdict dramatically. Catherine Peters was found in Scotland, where she had fled to live with distant relations. When she was questioned as to her role in the crime, she confessed that she had cooperated because Dawkins had trifled with her and she hated him. More to Montclaire’s interest, she confirmed that it was Edgerton who had put her up to the poisoning.

 

 

  E A Allen, A Death at the Beer Soup Club

 

 

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