Cards on the Table (SB) (Superintendent Battle 3)

Looking down to the street below, Poirot noticed Despard striding back along the pavement. He did not trouble to pick out the following figure. Something else was interesting him.

“No one in particular,” he murmured to himself. “Now, I wonder.”

Sixteen

THE EVIDENCE OF ELSIE BATT

Sergeant O’Connor was unkindly nicknamed by his colleagues at the Yard: “The Maidservant’s Prayer.”

There was no doubt that he was an extremely handsome man. Tall, erect, broad-shouldered, it was less the regularity of his features than the roguish and daredevil spark in his eye which made him so irresistible to the fair sex. It was indubitable that Sergeant O’Connor got results, and got them quickly.

So rapid was he, that only four days after the murder of Mr. Shaitana, Sergeant O’Connor was sitting in the three-and-sixpenny seats at the Willy Nilly Revue side by side with Miss Elsie Batt, late parlourmaid to Mrs. Craddock of 117 North Audley Street.

Having laid his line of approach carefully, Sergeant O’Connor was just launching the great offensive.

“—Reminds me,” he was saying, “of the way one of my old governors used to carry on. Name of Craddock. He was an old cuss, if you like.”

“Craddock,” said Elsie. “I was with some Craddocks once.”

“Well, that’s funny. Wonder whether they were the same?”

“Lived in North Audley Street, they did,” said Elsie.

“My lot were going to London when I left them,” said O’Connor promptly. “Yes, I believe it was North Audley Street. Mrs. Craddock was rather a one for the gents.”

Elsie tossed her head.

“I’d no patience with her. Always finding fault and grumbling. Nothing you did right.”

“Her husband got some of it, too, didn’t he?”

“She was always complaining he neglected her—that he didn’t understand her. And she was always saying how bad her health was and gasping and groaning. Not ill at all, if you ask me.”

O’Connor slapped his knee.

“Got it. Wasn’t there something about her and some doctor? A bit too thick or something?”

“You mean Dr. Roberts? He was a nice gentleman, he was.”

“You girls, you’re all alike,” said Sergeant O’Connor. “The moment a man’s a bad lot, all the girls stick up for him. I know his kind.”

“No, you don’t, and you’re all wrong about him. There wasn’t anything of that kind about him. Wasn’t his fault, was it, if Mrs. Craddock was always sending for him? What’s a doctor to do? If you ask me, he didn’t think nothing of her at all, except as a patient. It was all her doing. Wouldn’t leave him alone, she wouldn’t.”

“That’s all very well, Elsie. Don’t mind me calling you Elsie, do you? Feel as though I’d known you all my life.”

“Well, you haven’t! Elsie, indeed.”

She tossed her head.

“Oh, very well, Miss Batt.” He gave her a glance. “As I was saying, that’s all very well, but the husband, he cut up rough, all the same, didn’t he?”

“He was a bit ratty one day,” admitted Elsie. “But, if you ask me, he was ill at the time. He died just after, you know.”

“I remember—died of something queer, didn’t he?”

“Something Japanese, it was—all from a new shaving brush, he’d got. Seems awful, doesn’t it, that they’re not more careful? I’ve not fancied anything Japanese since.”

“Buy British, that’s my motto,” said Sergeant O’Connor sententiously. “And you were saying he and the doctor had a row?”

Elsie nodded, enjoying herself as she relived past scandals.

“Hammer and tongs, they went at it,” she said. “At least, the master did. Dr. Roberts was ever so quiet. Just said, ‘Nonsense.’ And, ‘What have you got into your head?’”

“This was at the house, I suppose?”

“Yes. She’d sent for him. And then she and the master had words, and in the middle of it Dr. Roberts arrived, and the master went for him.”

“What did he say exactly?”

“Well, of course, I wasn’t supposed to hear. It was all in the Missus’s bedroom. I thought something was up, so I got the dustpan and did the stairs. I wasn’t going to miss anything.”

Sergeant O’Connor heartily concurred in this sentiment, reflecting how fortunate it was that Elsie was being approached unofficially. On interrogation by Sergeant O’Connor of the Police, she would have virtuously protested that she had not overheard anything at all.

“As I say,” went on Elsie, “Dr. Roberts, he was very quiet—the master was doing all the shouting.”

“What was he saying?” asked O’Connor, for the second time approaching the vital point.

“Abusing of him proper,” said Elsie with relish.

“How do you mean?”

Would the girl never come to actual words and phrases?

“Well, I don’t understand a lot of it,” admitted Elsie. “There were a lot of long words, ‘unprofessional conduct,’ and ‘taking advantage,’ and things like that—and I heard him say he’d get Dr. Roberts struck off the—Medical Register, would it be? Something like that.”

“That’s right,” said O’Connor. “Complain to the Medical Council.”

“Yes, he said something like that. And the Missus was going on in sort of hysterics, saying ‘You never cared for me. You neglected me. You left me alone.’ And I heard her say that Dr. Roberts had been an angel of goodness to her.

“And then the doctor, he came through into the dressing room with the master and shut the door of the bedroom—and he said quite plain:

“‘My good man, don’t you realize your wife’s hysterical? She doesn’t know what she’s saying. To tell you the truth, it’s been a very difficult and trying case, and I’d have thrown it up long ago if I’d thought it was con—con—some long word; oh, yes, consistent—that was it—consistent with my duty.’ That’s what he said. He said something about not overstepping a boundary, too—something between doctor and patient. He got the master quietened a bit, and then he said:

“‘You’ll be late at the office, you know. You’d better be off. Just think things over quietly. I think you’ll realize that the whole business is a mare’s nest. I’ll just wash my hands here before I go onto my next case. Now, you think it over, my dear fellow. I can assure you that the whole thing arises out of your wife’s disordered imagination.’

“And the master, he said, ‘I don’t know what to think.’

“And he come out—and, of course, I was brushing hard—but he never even noticed me. I thought afterwards he looked ill. The doctor, he was whistling quite cheerily and washing his hands in the dressing room, where there was hot and cold laid on. And presently he came out, with his bag, and he spoke to me very nicely and cheerily, as he always did, and he went down the stairs, quite cheerful and gay and his usual self. So you see, I’m quite sure as he hadn’t done anything wrong. It was all her.”

“And then Craddock got this anthrax?”

“Yes, I think he’d got it already. The mistress, she nursed him very devoted, but he died. Lovely wreaths there was at the funeral.”

“And afterwards? Did Dr. Roberts come to the house again?”

“No, he didn’t, Nosey! You’ve got some grudge against him. I tell you there was nothing in it. If there were he’d have married her when the master was dead, wouldn’t he? And he never did. No such fool. He’d taken her measure all right. She used to ring him up, though, but somehow he was never in. And then she sold the house, and we all got our notices, and she went abroad to Egypt.”

“And you didn’t see Dr. Roberts in all that time?”

“No. She did, because she went to him to have this—what do you call it?—’noculation against the typhoid fever. She came back with her arm ever so sore with it. If you ask me, he made it clear to her then that there was nothing doing. She didn’t ring him up no more, and she went off very cheerful with a lovely lo

t of new clothes—all light colours, although it was the middle of winter, but she said it would be all sunshine and hot out there.”

“That’s right,” said Sergeant O’Connor. “It’s too hot sometimes, I’ve heard. She died out there. You know that, I suppose?”

“No, indeed I didn’t. Well, fancy that! She may have been worse than I thought, poor soul.”

She added with a sigh:

“I wonder what they did with all that lovely lot of clothes. They’re blacks out there, so they couldn’t wear them.”

“You’d have looked a treat in them, I expect,” said Sergeant O’Connor.

“Impudence,” said Elsie.

“Well, you won’t have my impudence much longer,” said Sergeant O’Connor. “I’ve got to go away on business for my firm.”

“You going for long?”

“May be going abroad,” said the Sergeant.