Nobody's Perfect

by Douglas Clark

  Having discovered the flaw in Huth’s character, I needed to find a personable woman who could have been his permanent mistress. The girls in Barugt House are as pleasant looking — or as motley — as you could find anywhere. But I judged that Huth would look for personality and intelligence as well as physical beauty. I had two reasons for this supposition. His wife is an extremely intelligent woman, and men often go for the same type a second time. Miss Krick is, I should say, unintelligent, and this is why he had so little to do with her. Miss Murdo is attractive and intelligent, but she has been fully occupied in getting herself engaged and preparing for marriage to another man, and so I ruled her out. Miss Chambers, a different type again, but personable and intelligent. She confessed she had been fully occupied thinking how to bring Hunt, the copywriter, to his senses. The only other intelligent and attractive woman that came within the scope of my investigation was Joan Parker. I had to consider her, and almost immediately found grounds for suspicion. You now hold her on a charge of murder.

  The case against Parker built up swiftly. I had to satisfy myself whether she had the opportunity to kill Huth. If so, how and why.

  Parker made the mistake on my first day at Barugt House of telling me that Miss Krick had visited the secretariat for only five minutes, when Miss Krick herself had told me her stay had been twenty minutes. I was told Parker mistook the time because she, Parker, had gone into Barraclough’s office after five minutes. Barraclough’s office has two doors. One from the secretariat, and one from the vestibule. If Parker had carried a paper through to Barraclough, and then left immediately by the door into the vestibule, she could have entered Huth’s office unnoticed, and had a quarter of an hour alone with him. So Parker had the opportunity, and despite careful enquiries, I could find no trace of any other visit made to Huth, except that of Dr Mouncer for his usual coffee break.

  I questioned Miss Krick about status in Barugt House so that I could learn Parker’s history with the firm. Parker had been a typist with Pharmacy and a secretary with Research and Development. I enquired from various sources whether she would gain any medical knowledge from this experience. I was told that an intelligent girl would pick up a superficial knowledge of drugs in Pharmacy, and learn how to handle them in Research and Development. Both these facts were vital in building up the case against Parker.

  I still had no proof that Parker had been Huth’s permanent mistress, but I was extremely surprised to find that so attractive a woman had avoided marriage, or even an engagement, by her middle twenties. And yet Parker obviously liked men. She was at ease with me, and treated Barraclough in such a way as to show she was a woman used to the company of men. Her conversation showed she spent much of her time with men. I felt sure there must be a man in her life and, in view of other things, felt certain it was Huth. If this was so, it is certain she would know Huth was taking Nutidal — an important point.

  To bring the murder home to Parker I had to discover how it was done. We knew Huth had died from an overdose of phenobarbitone potentiated by alcohol. We started a thorough search for missing phenobarbitone, but the method of accounting is so thorough that we could find no discrepancy. However, I discovered that samples of phenobarbitone had recently been offered to doctors. Whether Parker, with her limited medical knowledge, had first of all decided to use phenobarbitone for her purpose, or whether she merely took it when the opportunity arose, I cannot say. But directors, among whom was her chief, Barraclough, had delivered to them, by hand, all sample offers sent out by publicity. A copy of the letter offering phenobarbitone, together with the prepaid request card for samples, was taken into the secretariat and handed to Parker, as his P.A., to hand on to Barraclough in the usual way. She didn’t pass them on. She filled in the card with the name and qualifications of a real doctor, taken from the list, but added her own address. Here I had a slice of luck. When I saw the card, put aside because the address didn’t agree with the one in the Medical Directory, I realized I had heard of that particular postal area for the first time earlier that day. Miss Murdo had told me that she was sharing a flat with a girl in Brendan’s Wood. The card was addressed to Brendan’s Wood. I saw Miss Murdo immediately and she told me Parker was her flat-mate. Miss Murdo will also testify that, unusually for her, Parker got up early enough to meet the post on the two or three days during which the phenobarbitone tablets were being sent out.

  The great mystery about this case as far as my team was concerned was the lack of tablet sediment in the brown drug bottle found on Huth’s desk. It was clean. Hill did not appreciate that Nutidal is put up in capsules — little gelatine torpedoes which are obviously watertight and dustproof. The purpose of capsule coating is to delay the action of the drug until the stomach juices have dissolved the casing. They are known variously as sustained release capsules or timed disintegration capsules. It was obvious that if Huth was taking Nutidal, any drug he was given in place of it would have to have the appearance of Nutidal capsules. This suggested that the phenobarbitone he had taken had been concealed in capsules instead of Nutidal powder. I should have been surprised if there had been signs of phenobarbitone in the bottle. If this theory was correct, I had to prove that Parker had also got hold of some Nutidal tablets.

  Although Nutidal is not a Dangerous Drug within the meaning of the Acts, no pharmacist will sell it without a prescription. Nor would the Barugt Company shop. However, because it is not scheduled, it is much easier to obtain in Barugt House than phenobarbitone. Parker’s scheme was simple. On the Friday afternoon before Huth’s death she went into Barraclough and said she had a headache, but was too late to go to the Company shop, which only opens at lunchtimes. As he was fully entitled to do, Barraclough agreed to write an internal indent on Reculver’s department for some mild analgesic for Parker and for some antacid tablets which he suddenly remembered his wife wanted. Parker typed these items on the indent. Barraclough signed it. Parker then returned to her own office and added, above the signature, another item — a bottle of Nutidal capsules. She went down to Reculver’s department herself to collect the drugs, so by Friday evening she had both phenobarbitone and Nutidal — the means she needed for carrying out her plan.

  Although it is unnecessary to prove one, I find that the discovery of the motive is the greatest help an investigator can have in a case such as this. Unfortunately discovery is often difficult, and in this case I had to rely on theories. There were many of these, but what finally put me on the right track was a request from Hunt and Vera Chambers. They asked me to keep the news of their engagement secret because Barugt would not continue to employ both parties to an engagement or marriage. Why this is so, I can’t think, but I understand it is a common practice with many employers, including the Government. When I saw March, he told me he had been engaged for a short time. There was no reason why he should tell me the name of his fiancée, and I didn’t ask for it. But he also made a point of asking me to keep the information to myself. To me, this was a clear indication that his future wife must also be an employee at Barugt. Now March is not the sort of chap to suffer fools gladly, and I couldn’t see him tying himself to some hare-brained little typist. He, like Huth, would be interested only in an intelligent woman. And yet he told me that his fiancee was a beautiful girl. Naturally, as I had Parker very much in mind at this time, I immediately thought of her. If I was right, lots of things would become clearer. I would now have the situation where Parker was the mistress of the man her future husband hated. An ideal situation for incubating murder.

  Miss Murdo was again useful to me. I wondered how Parker had managed to keep her flat-mate in ignorance of the fact that she was Huth’s mistress. Strangely enough, she managed it by the simple trick of making no secret of the fact that she was running around with a married man named Leslie. Leslie is Huth’s second Christian name. Parker never took Leslie to the flat because Miss Murdo, being a bit of a “Wee Free,” would certainly have objected. That was her excuse for preserving Huth’s mystery. Murd
o told me, however, that though she didn’t know March and Parker were actually engaged, she did know they’d been seeing something of each other recently. A fact which pleased Miss Murdo, who hated seeing Parker throw herself away on a married man.

  This was as far as I could go. From then on, everything on my part was conjecture, based on what I knew. When I questioned Parker tonight she realized that as I knew so much, but not all, her own account of what happened would probably sound better than mine. Here is the gist of what she told me.

  Just as Huth had attempted to seduce Murdo, so with Parker. Only this time he was successful. Parker admitted that her salary as a newly promoted PA. wouldn’t run to paying for half a modern flat and buying all the nice things a girl like her thrives on and dreams about. Huth was her opportunity to get them. More than that, she said he promised her marriage after divorce from his present wife. I can believe this. Parker is the type of girl any man would like to marry, and when he was in her arms I can understand Huth promising her the moon.

  But he was too clever a businessman to put his promises into practice. Why should he divorce a wife he wanted to keep when he could have Parker on the side? And would a big American corporation, selling ethical drugs, like the idea of scandal within its ranks? Whatever the reason, Huth made no attempt to fulfill his promises, and Parker eventually realized he had no intention of doing so. By then she was becoming disenchanted. She wanted a home and family — in marriage — which she considers is the right of every woman. And in the case of a woman as beautiful as this, I agree with her, if that is what she wants. It was about this time that Parker became friendly with March again. I think she was caught on the rebound because she had previously worked for March — before she teamed up with Huth — and though March had shown a great interest in her then, she had not responded as fully as he would have liked. According to Parker, March pestered her in those days, and she had occasionally gone out with him, but his dourness offended her. But it appears that after March got his promotion he felt he was in a position to offer Parker everything a girl could want, so he had then set his cap at her in earnest. March the Control Manager was a new person, and this time Parker had not sent him packing. She said she had found a surprising lot to like in the man. I got the impression that she is very much in love with him, and her subsequent actions seem to bear this out.

  When March proposed marriage, Parker accepted gladly. But by now she realized that March had a pathological hatred of Huth. She was in a fix, but she told Huth she was ending their relationship, praying that it could end without fuss, and that March would never get to hear of it. She said she feared that if March did learn she had been Huth’s mistress he would certainly throw her over and probably kill Huth. She insists that she really did fear that March would attack Huth, and having met March, I am inclined to agree with her that that is just the impression he gives one — or tries to.

  But Huth wouldn’t play ball. I imagine he thought that a man of his age would never again be able to get himself a permanent mistress as attractive as Parker, and so he refused to let her go. He knew she was a necessity to him. At first he made no threats. He simply refused to accept the situation, and when a man in his position, with a forceful personality, takes that stand, it is difficult for a young woman employee — even though she is his mistress — to counter him effectively. Parker, however, was adamant, and there was a row, during which Parker inadvertently let slip the fact that the man she intended to marry was the newly-promoted March. She soon realized the magnitude of her mistake. Huth said he would inform March if — and she quoted — “the nonsense went any further.” As you may expect, this attitude of Huth’s only made Parker more determined to leave him and marry March. But the situation she had most feared had arisen. She really believed March would go berserk; and what made it worse in her eyes was the fact that Huth, not realizing just how much March hated him, would carry out his threat. She came to the conclusion that to stop Huth ruining her life further, and to stop her future husband committing murder, she would have to give Huth a serious jolt. That is when the idea of really frightening Huth entered her mind. And that, she claims, is what she set out to do. Not to murder him. Her idea was to make him so ill that it would bring him to his senses when he was told how it had happened. If he were to make an official fuss about being doped, he couldn’t have hoped to keep the reason for it quiet; or if he were to accuse her privately of trying to kill him she had intended to say that March knew all about their relationship and that it was he who had concocted the plan as a warning against further blackmail. She hoped this would deter him from ever mentioning the subject to March.

  It was a crazy scheme, but I believe the girl was desperate in the face of Huth’s blackmail. And I think she was right not to imagine Huth would eventually relent. He wouldn’t relent over dismissing Dieppe, in spite of pleas by Dr Mouncer, and this case affected him much more personally than did Dieppe’s future. A man with his urge could never give up. Parker probably sensed that better than anybody. So she took steps to get hold of the phenobarbitone. She says that at the time she had no definite idea how she would use it, but she had some nebulous plan of dropping the tablets in his drinks, when they were together. She was still consorting with him, because he would accept nothing less, and she knew she had to string him along until such time as she could put some plan into action. That is how and when she got to know he was taking Nutidal.

  This is where Huth’s Victorian attitude helped her. He didn’t take the Nutidal bottle home. He didn’t want his wife to see it. He took the capsules in his office, except at the weekend, when he managed to take them in private. He was able to be lax with the timing of the doses because though the instructions say “two capsules four times daily,” it doesn’t matter much whether the intervals are exactly spaced or not. It is the amount of Nutidal that is taken in seven days that really matters, and from what Dr Mouncer told me, it should be possible to take four capsules twice daily without causing harm. Huth must have been aware of this, and in order to cut down the number of doses, he followed this alternative course. Parker learned what he was doing, and knowing what the recommended full course of treatment was, she was able to calculate that he would have just four left to take on Monday.

  During the weekend she opened and emptied a number of Nutidal capsules, ground the phenobarbitone tablets to powder and refilled the capsules. She knew how to do this well enough as a result of her work in Research and Development. The capsules are made in two halves: two little thimbles which join in the middle. Gentle heat only is required to separate the two halves and reseal them, and as Parker had fifty-six to play with, a few discards wouldn’t matter.

  Nutidal capsules hold half a gramme of powder. The large tablets of phenobarbitone contain one grain of pure drug, and each tablet weighs one-eighth of a gramme. Each refilled Nutidal capsule would, therefore, hold four grains of pure phenobarbitone. The maximum therapeutic dose is ten grains in twenty-four hours, and even these produce unpleasant side effects. As 1 have said earlier, the exact lethal dose differs from person to person, but it is certain that sixteen grains taken all at once would cause anybody the serious trouble that Parker says she hoped to induce in Huth.

  Her plan of action was simple. It all depended on being able to see Huth on Monday morning before he took his Nutidal. She had planned to call on him as if sent by Barraclough. As it turned out, Krick left her office and seemed likely to be away for some time, so Parker seized that opportunity. Her excuse to Huth himself was to announce to him that she had taken a step he had long urged her to take: stopped smoking cigarettes. It was a poor excuse, but she could think of no other, and because she wished to distract his attention while she was with him, she thought of announcing at the same time that she had taken to smoking one of the brands of mild cigars recommended for women. She would then offer him one. To make sure he took it — she was well aware of his reluctance to smoke any brand but his own — she set out to be particularly pleasan
t to him. Huth didn’t carry a cutter, because the cigars he smoked were ready cut, but she knew he kept a cutter in his top left-hand drawer, which was also where he kept his bottle of Nutidal.

  I imagine that Parker could charm the birds from the trees. Certainly she could get an immediate response from a man with Huth’s urges. So she had little difficulty in getting a happy and grateful Huth to accept a cigar. It was she who opened the drawer for the cutter and pointed out that he hadn’t finished the Nutidal. While Huth was busy with the cigar, the real Nutidal bottle went into the left-hand pannier pocket of her skirt, and the bogus bottle, taken from the same pocket, was put on the desk. Huth took his four capsules obediently, and chose sherry to wash them down with. While he was getting the sherry from the pedestal cupboard, Parker gave the Nutidal bottle a flick with her handkerchief. It needed very little wiping because she had cleaned it well before going to his office. At some time after that Huth must have picked up the bottle, because we found one set of his prints on it. Parker left him, saying she wanted to be away before Krick returned. The whole episode had taken probably less than five minutes. Parker returned to Barraclough’s office as if returning from the lavatory.

  Mouncer thought Huth looked peaky at coffee time, but not so seriously as to cause him to take any action. The capsules had probably only just begun to disintegrate by then, but by lunchtime Huth was really beginning to feel the effects. The bad taste in his mouth was not caused by Parker’s cigar, but by the metallic taste of too much phenobarbitone. He took a fair amount of sherry and brandy in an attempt to brighten himself up. This was the worst thing he could have done. He went upstairs to his office, but by this time he felt so ill that he locked the door and sat down. He didn’t want Krick or anybody else to see him in that state, and no doubt he hoped the malaise would pass off in a few minutes. I imagine it was then, while he was still in possession of his faculties, that he helped himself to more brandy Soon after that he must have been asleep, in a coma, or had become so weak that he was unable to help himself. Krick didn’t enter the office, nor did Mrs Pallot, until next morning.