The Case of the Match-Point Poisoner

for dartford, who was kind enough to say that he enjoyed my first Homer Featherstonhaugh adventure, The Case of the Calamitous Currency  

a detective story  
 
‘It was certainly the case that made my name’ said Homer Featherstonhaugh (pronounced Fan-shaw), modestly, in response to his friend’s effusive praise of his work on the case of The Match-Point Poisoner. He puffed his cigar before a roaring fire in a drawing room at Vikram’s, a gentleman’s club. It was six years after the Great War. Dr Theodore Devlin refilled his pipe. He didn’t care for cigars, but took a moment to admire the ornate rosewood box belonging to Homer. Its lid was emblazoned with two crossed tennis rackets. ‘What I don’t understand is how you managed to figure out what poison was being used.’  
 
‘Oh, that was simpler than you might imagine, and tied in with how I caught the chap. His father had been a missionary in the Congo.’  
 
‘Ah, yes, the poor man. It’s been said that the tragedy hastened his death.’  
 
‘It forced him to see what he’d turned away from since his boy was in knickerbockers. Lunacy ran in the family, of course. It just skipped over Reverend Granger.’ Homer leaned forward and stoked the fire. His enormous bulk troubled Dr Devlin, though he noticed that his friend and patient’s breathing had been deeper since he’d put him on regular exercise. ‘What In Christendom did Lady Arabella see in him?’  
 
‘That’s no mystery’ said Homer. ‘Colin Granger was handsome, charming, and well-off, as vicar’s sons go. And he was mad about her, so to speak.’  
 
‘Still, when she learned that he’d been caught worshipping the moon in Epping Forest...’  
 
‘He was just a boy.’  
 
‘A deeply sick boy. The Reverend must have tanned his hide from there to Dick Turpin’s hideaway. The Lady was courted by so many more suitable chaps... Then again, to quote Don Quixote, the nature of women is to reject the man who loves them and love the man who despises them.’ Homer grimaced. ‘Don’t give me that Spanish nonsense’ he said, shifting in his chair as he listened to a servant at the other end of the room gather up tea things. Homer and Devlin were the last guests in the drawing room. ‘A woman is not a dog, she cannot be reduced to simple and predictable behaviours.’  
 
‘No argument there’ said the doctor. ‘But we agree, at least, that the Lady was an unfortunate victim of a bad marriage. It’s just a shame that so many had to die for it, including two generations of a family.’  
 
‘Mr and Mrs Ryland were incidental damage. Granger didn’t know that Abe would be sharing his pot of tea with them. Not that it troubled his conscience, I’m sure.’ It was the Rylands’ whose deaths finally compelled Scotland Yard to look beyond their own for a gifted amateur who might be able to assist. Enter Homer Featherstonhaugh, a war correspondent for The Times who’d helped to ferret out German spies. By then the press had already dubbed the mysterious killer, responsible for the deaths of two of the London tennis club’s pros, “The Match-Point Poisoner”. It was initially thought that an athletic rival might be responsible, and the American Abe Ryland had shouldered some of the suspicion, before a spot of afternoon tea between games brought his playing career (and his parents’ dotage) to an end.  
 
‘When I arrived on the scene the flatfoots had already stampeded it’ said Homer, snorting with disgust. ‘They’d even righted the chairs and let the maids tidy up, as if tidying the terrace was of greater importance than gathering evidence.’ The terrace, built with columns meant to remind one of Greek architecture, overlooked the tennis courts, and on that summer afternoon in 1921 had a soothing and shadowy atmosphere. Though only Homer seemed to appreciate it. He took a long drag on his cigar before expelling a cloud of noxious fumes, appearing to see the past in it.  
 
‘There were, I suppose, five suspects, though as two of those were very old women, I dismissed them as being unlikely to either want or be able to tear down three strapping young men in their prime.’  
 
‘You clearly don’t have any maiden aunts, old boy’ said Devlin, grinning.  
 
‘The glass vial with the poison was found in the teapot, the rubber stopper discarded in a corner of the terrace. My three viable suspects were also having tea when it happened. Two of them were up-and-coming hopefuls, and then there was Colin Granger, who’d never played tennis except as a hobby and was there because his wife was a frequent guest. The club was popular with ladies of leisure, who liked to while away an afternoon playing doubles with handsome young bucks. That was what gave me the idea that the murders might not be about professional rivalry, but sexual jealousy.’  
 
Homer tossed the stub of his cigar into the fire and plucked another from the box, with all the gluttony of a child raiding an unguarded tuck shop. At least he’s off the chocolates, thought Dr Devlin.  
 
‘My first step, as is always my method, is to ask what the deceased was like. I don’t mean did he have any secrets, any mistresses and the like. I just mean on a day to day level, was he pleasant company, was he patient with the staff, and so on. The Rylands are a wealthy family based in Westchester County, New York. Been about since the pilgrim days, and built some of their present fortune on slave shares in the South, though they don’t like to talk about that. Abraham Ryland III was apparently an insufferable fusspot, like his father and his father before him, and at thirty-two was bent on one last shot at competitive glory, having had to retire from tennis for five years due to a horse-riding injury. (Which also got him out of the War just as the yanks were joining the fight. So, swings and roundabouts.)  
 
‘He made life hellish for club staff whenever he was in residence at Wimbledon, insisting on more checks to any food or drink served him than a pharaoh would demand. But of course, like so many pharaohs, he fell victim to the poisoner’s plot.’  
 
‘After the first two deaths, you can’t exactly blame the chap for being cautious.’  
 
‘That is true, though apparently he was always a ratbag. To a point where, were it not for those first two deaths, the list of people with a motive to kill him would have been endless.’ Devlin winced at Homer’s harsh language, which in Vikram’s (one of London’s oldest gentleman’s clubs) sounded a bit like a swear screamed in a chapel of rest.  
 
‘After interviewing the two young hopefuls,  I turned my attention to Granger, who’d been taking tea on the terrace by himself. His wife was in Yorkshire, which was odd, as he only knew the club through her, but he told me that he was in the area for a meeting of a colonial society and thought he’d stop in for a spot of tea. I could tell he was a bit balmy on the crumpet, though, by the way he repeatedly tapped one foot against a thigh. Especially when I remarked how popular the place must be with women, and that their husbands should keep an eye on them. If I’d known then that as a boy he’d once almost killed a fellow student at Harrow over a petty row about tuck, I might have watched my mouth.’  
 
‘Homer, dear boy, when have you ever watched your mouth?’ Homer ignored this. ‘I asked him if he’d seen anything, anyone hovering near the tea things, and he said that he’d brought Ryland’s service himself. “He was a good friend” Colin said, “or was... I say, you don’t think...”  
 
“Just have to cover all ground” I assured him, though I made a mental note to ask how friendly the club pros had been with Arabella, and she with them. No telling what a chap might do where his pride’s involved.  
 
‘During my investigations I discovered the history of Colin Granger’s mental weakness, how he reported hearing Devils as a boy and needed to be locked up during full moons. I also learned that he’d accompanied his father to the Congo, and that it was there that he’d become interested in a certain type of fungi which had been killing the natives, on whose food it had grown. “You can extract the poison in a liquid form” he explained to me, “and if ingested it can kill as quickly as cyanide.”  
 
‘He told you that?’  
 
‘He didn’t play tennis professionally himself, and since the Yard was so focused on athletic rivalry as the motive, he thought that he could play the part of helpful witness.’  
 
‘Still, it seems indiscreet.’ Homer shrugged. ‘Murder is indiscreet’ he said.  
 
‘How did you connect him to the first two murders? The papers said that he was in Yorkshire with Arabella when the second man died. They gave some story about him secretly travelling by night down to Wimbledon, breaking into the club, and lacing the victim’s regular teacup, but that seemed far-fetched to me.’ Homer smiled. ‘You’d make a fine detective yourself. I thought the same thing. Which is why I wasn’t surprised when, during a search of Ryland’s flat, I found a vial much like the one in his teapot.’  
 
Dr Devlin didn’t display the typical expressions of shock that one reads about in novels. He merely looked at Homer and raised a quizzical eyebrow, still puffing his pipe. ‘Are you suggesting...’  
 
‘That Abe Ryland was in league with Colin Granger, that there were two Match-Point Poisoners, right up until one poisoned the other?’ Homer took his cigar between two fingers and paused for dramatic effect. ‘Yes, I am.’  
 
‘But why would Abe do that?’  
 
‘Because he was ambitious. Because he felt his dreams of sporting stardom falling through his fingers, and the two pros he helped kill taking what he felt was his place on the podium.’ Devlin stared at the fire and shook his head, in awe at man’s venality. ‘So why did Granger kill Abe?’  
 
‘Same reason he got involved in the first place, though Abe would have offered his old friend a share of the prize money if he helped him reach the top. Granger might have been well-off for a vicar’s son, but he was still a vicar’s son, and his wife’s comparative fortune likely emasculated him. He was also jealous of his wife’s friendships with all these handsome young athletes who made him feel like less of a man. That was the real reason. Abe’s ambition must have blinded him to the truth that, just as Colin was suspicious of the British pros, so too would his mad and hateful eye eventually turn towards him. I suspect that Abe must have made some remark about Lady Arabella’s beauty, and so his fate was sealed.’  
 
Dr Devlin shuddered. ‘Did you not tell the Yard about this?’  
 
‘Abraham Ryland spent his last moments in agony, knowing that his mother and father were in agony too, and that they would die because of him. Wicked as he was, I felt that that was justice enough, without posthumously dragging his name through dirt. And Granger wasn’t saying anything. I think that he wanted to spare Arabella. He loved her, in his way.’ Homer punctuated the sentence by picking up the cigar box and snapping shut its lid. Devlin looked again at the crossed rackets, flickering in firelight. ‘You’ve been loose-lipped tonight, though’ he said. ‘Aren’t you worried that the truth’ll get out?’  
 
Homer shrugged. ‘Granger’s been hung and three years have passed’ he said. ‘Besides’ he added, winking at Devlin, ‘if you flap your gums, I can always poison your tea.’  
 
Dr Theodore Devlin watched his friend and patient haul himself out of his chair, the minimal effort causing him to huff and puff like he’d just played tennis himself, then finish off a fifth of whiskey in one gulp. ‘Homer, old boy, you’ll be the death of me one way or another’ he retorted.