Her hands tightened on each other, and she looked up again and stared dully at him. “How do you know all these things?” she asked wonderingly.
“You forced your husband into asking for a police investigation so that there would be policemen around and he would not dare to attempt your life?”
“Yes. That is the truth, Inspector.”
Knollis gave a deep sigh. “Suppose you tell me the whole story. It will save me a lot of work, and yourself a great deal of trouble and worry.”
“Inspector,” she said, “I will tell you what I know.”
“You told me during our first interview that you were perfectly happy with your husband, Mrs. Manchester.”
“I was trying to keep up appearances, Inspector,” she said with a wan smile. “And now—well, I don’t care. Fred and I were happy at first, although at the best our marriage was no more than a marriage of convenience. Fred wanted my social contacts; I wanted his money—and security. All my life I seem to have been wandering from place to place, seeking a haven.
“I left home when I was fifteen. I discovered the nature of my father’s trade, and I fled from it. I changed my name to Martin, studied in my spare time, and fitted myself to become a governess. I obtained positions, but they never lasted long. Someone would find out who I was, and shudder at the thought of their children being in the care of a hangman’s daughter.
“After this had happened half a dozen times I grew weary of it all. I wanted a rest, and time to think. I had saved a little money and so I went on a cruise, hoping that some solution would present itself before I got home again. Fred was on the same boat, and he made up to me. I was not quite so balanced in those days, and I wanted to impress him, so I talked about Lady This and Lord That and the Honourable So-and-So. He talked about his money. Before we left the boat he had proposed to me—and it was the most cold-blooded proposition imaginable. I was to help him to become a socialite, and he was to give me a home, and money, and a name. I accepted, because I thought that once we were married I would find some means of keeping my part of the bargain.”
“And you did not?” Knollis interrupted.
“I did not, Inspector. We were married, and Fred eventually bought Baxmanhurst. We were living in London then, and he did not tell me where the house was that he had bought, not until he brought me to it. I scented danger as soon as we neared the district, because, as you may know, I was born in a hamlet not many miles from here. I tried to get him to sell, but I had no valid reason which I could use to persuade him, and I dare not tell the truth, and so I had to lie low and pretend to be an ailing woman.
“While on the cruise I had made the acquaintance of Dana Vaughan, and a very pleasant woman she seemed. We promised to meet again, but did not do so for a long time afterwards, when Fred took me to London and we saw her playing in The Hempen Rope. The theme of the play was so obviously based on my own early life that I had Fred make enquiries about Leslie Danvers, and then learned that ‘he’ was Dana.
“In some way she had learned my secret. I was so afraid of her going any further with it that I resumed our friendship in the hope of enlisting her sympathy, which I am pleased to say that I did. Dana is now a firm friend, and my secret is safe with her.”
“So that it was definitely Brailsford who told your husband, Mrs. Manchester?” said Knollis.
“It could have been no one else.” She nodded. “He knew it, and he played on it. From time to time he would ‘borrow’ money from me, money which I knew I would never see again. At last I refused to lend him any more, and Fred’s attitude towards me changed from that day. I taxed Desmond with his betrayal, and he just grinned at me and said he had no qualms; a wife had no right to have secrets from her husband. He added that quite a lot of our friends would probably be interested as well—and borrowed fifty pounds on the strength of it. I can’t prove it, but I think that he was playing the same game on Fred. I’m afraid that Desmond is a cad.”
“I see,” said Knollis quietly. “Tell me, Mrs. Manchester, did your secret ever become the subject of an open quarrel with your husband?”
“Yes, it did, Inspector—a few weeks ago. He said he had learned who I was, and ironically thanked me for my promise to make him well known. There was nothing I could say to excuse myself, so I let him rave on for about ten minutes. He finally reached the pitch of his rage, and struck me across the mouth. I neither cried out nor tried to protect myself, for I knew that I was in the wrong. The sins of the fathers . . .”
“And now? What do you intend to do?” asked Knollis.
“I think I shall sell Baxmanhurst back to Sir Giles Tanroy, and then go abroad and see if it is possible to start again. Perhaps Kenya, or New Zealand. I don’t know. I don’t know what I shall do!”
“Who killed your husband, Mrs. Manchester?” asked Knollis quietly.
“One or the other of them, and I don’t know which,” she replied. “Either Dana or Desmond.”
“Why should Desmond kill him? What motive has he?”
“A woman is easier to blackmail than a man, and with Fred out of the way—you see?”
“If Dana did it, then she did it for me. She is a true friend. You know that it is one of them, so please do not think that I am being faithless to a friend, Inspector! Dana would give her life for me—if only to atone for writing that play.”
“I think I should tell you something,” said Knollis. “The medical experts are of the opinion that no woman could have swung the axe with such violence.”
Her hands fell apart, and she looked up with an expression of intense relief. “Oh! Then I am glad—glad for Dana! She knows that I believe she did it, and now I can tell her—”
“Nothing!” Knollis interjected. “You will not repeat a word of this interview to anyone.”
“Oh!” she said in a crestfallen manner. “And yet I see your point. Very well, Inspector, I will keep my silence.”
Knollis excused himself, and went for a stroll in the hurst. Donald Duck had revived his brain, and it was now working overtime. His main difficulty was to keep track of the thoughts that arose in his consciousness. He made a page of notes, and then strode back to the house, once more seeking out Freeman.
“This conversation is to be regarded as confidential. You are not to mention it even to Smith. Understand?”
Freeman smiled. “I know how to hold my tongue, sir.”
“There is a question I want to ask you. Miss Dana had been ill before she came to Baxmanhurst, hadn’t she?”
“Oh yes, sir!”
“Is she still taking medicine?”
“I don’t think so, sir, although she brought several boxes and bottles with her. She put them in the box-room soon after she arrived.”
“The box-room. Where is it?”
“Next to Mr. Brailsford’s room, sir.”
“Locked?” asked Knollis.
“No, sir, I’ve never known it to be locked.”
Knollis handed her a much-folded ten-shilling note. “Put that towards your trouseau, and don’t talk!” Freeman smiled. “Thank you, sir. I promise I won’t say a word to a soul, not even to Smithy. You go straight up the stairs, and the box-room is facing you, with Mr. Brailsford’s on the right.”
Knollis drove furiously back to Trentingham. Leaving the car at the kerb, he charged into the headquarters and went straight to the official technical library, and there he banged on the table for the librarian. The constable in charge ambled through the doorway, changing his pace considerably as he recognised his client.
“I want Dixon, Mann and Brend on Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, and Glaser’s Poison,” said Knollis, “and I’m in a hurry.”
The constable supplied the volumes and slammed them on the table. “Paper and pencil, sir?”
“Please,” said Knollis.
He pulled up a chair, and seated himself. “While I’m doing this, ring through and ask for the name of the London doctor who attended Miss Dana Vaughan. Sergeant Ellis’s repo
rt.”
Knollis opened Glaser’s book first. In the chapter headed ‘Soporifics’ he found the reference to chloral hydrate. The first paragraph was mainly historical, dealing with its discovery, and stating that it is “no harmless sleeping draught,” but at the time of its discovery there was little to replace it. Knollis read on:
This is a colourless crystalline substance easily soluble in water and alcohol and causing inflammation when laid on the skin. Small doses are insufficient, but two—or at the most three—grams are sufficient to calm even very violent excitement and procure sleep. More, however, must not be given, otherwise the patient relapses into unconsciousness, and the heart and respiratory organs are paralysed. . . .
He read on to the end of the passage, and then returned to the beginning and made a note of the fact that: Many pharmacologists strongly disapprove of this medicament and Lewin calls it “the most dangerous of all soporifics which ought to have been discarded long ago.”
An idea was beginning to dawn in his mind when the constable interrupted to say that he had found the name of the doctor.
“Then look him up in the medical directory and see when he was born,” said Knollis. “See, where was I? Oh yes, I’d better have a look at Dixon, Mann and Brend.”
These two gentlemen were far more technical than their European colleague, and he had to work his way through toxic and non-toxic doses, temperatures, and a catalogue of chloral poisoning cases.
He shut the book and pushed it away, scratching his head. “There was something else,” he muttered.
“You put me off. Now what the devil was it? I suppose it will come back to me. Got that date yet?”
“Born eighteen-eighty-three, sir,” said the constable proudly.
“That makes him sixty-two, according to my mental arithmetic. A member of the old school. It might be possible! Can you get Dr. Clitheroe on the telephone?”
“I can’t get him on the telephone, sir,” he replied. “But I happen to know that he’s across at the dead-house. He was in here about ten minutes ago, consulting a few books.”
“Then I’ll go across,” said Knollis.
He strode across the street to the mortuary, and found the doctor examining a suicide who had been brought in to keep Manchester’s remains company.
“Clitheroe!” said Knollis anxiously. “Have you a minute to spare!”
The tall doctor glanced up. “Knollis excited, eh? Unusual, surely! What is wrong?”
“Look,” said Knollis, “if you had a nerve case—amnesia, sleeplessness, sleep-walking, nightmares, and all that, would you prescribe chloral hydrate?”
The doctor laughed. “Not in these enlightened days. It’s a bit tricky.”
“Would any doctor?” persisted Knollis.
The doctor hesitated. “Well, yes, some of the old boys might yet if they are sufficiently conservative.” And then he added: “Why?”
“See you later,” Knollis replied.
He returned to the library, and once more took up Glaser’s book on poison, meanwhile asking the constable to ring up Dr. Denstone at Bowland and ask him if he could see him straight away. “Tell him I’ll be right over if he can,” he said.
He pored over Glaser and groaned so loudly that the constable turned from the ’phone. “All right, sir?”
“In health, yes,” Knollis returned, “but not in temper. It can’t be, I tell you! It can’t be!”
“Dr. Denstone will see you, sir,” said the constable.
“Right,” replied Knollis. “Now ring round and see if you can find Sergeant Ellis, and tell him I want him straightway.”
The constable grimaced as Knollis looked away, and once more picked up the telephone.
Knollis read and reread the sections in both books which related to chloral hydrate, and was closing them when the constable informed him that Sergeant Ellis had left a message to say that he had gone over to Barston on a hunch.
“Where is Barston?” Knollis snapped.
“Near Frampton, sir.”
“Is that the village or hamlet where Marlin used to live?”
“That’s right, sir. He died there, too.”
Knollis grabbed his hat. “I wonder what bee he’s got in his bonnet this time!”
He drove to Bowland and rang Dr. Denstone’s bell.
“You said you would call on me,” said the doctor, ““and I was wondering when you would come. Have a drink?”
“I need one,” said Knollis. “I’ll take it neat.”
The doctor busied himself with the decanter, and passed a glass of whisky to Knollis. “Your health, Inspector!”
“Your health!” said Knollis, and almost in the same breath said: “If you had a nerve case whose symptoms were insomnia, amnesia, nightmares, and sleep-walking, would you prescribe chloral hydrate?”
“Chloral hydrate!” repeated the doctor with upraised brows. “No, I don’t think I should.”
He then asked the inevitable: “Why?”
“Would any doctor prescribe it?” asked Knollis.
“Why, yes—but not me. Look, perhaps I can help you more if you explain what is behind your question.”
“Well,” Knollis explained. “I’ve been looking up the books on toxicology, and they seem to agree that chloral hydrate is an out-dated drug.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Dr. Denstone replied. “It is used, and some of the older members of the profession swear by it in preference to the newer drugs of that nature. But why do you ask?”
Knollis drained his glass. “Temple was doped. We agree on that?”
“Yes, we agree on that, Inspector.”
“Where did the dope come from? You can’t walk into a chemist’s shop and buy knock-out drops as if they were aniseed balls!”
“Agreed again. What do you suggest?”
“Simply this,” said Knollis, “that Miss Vaughan came down to Baxmanhurst as a near-wreck. You may not know all this, but she had suffered loss of memory, sleep-walking, and had also tried to strangle her maid during the course of a nightmare. Her doctor was a West End man, and he is sixty-two years of age. Now, taking all those facts into consideration, do you think it likely that he prescribed chloral hydrate?”
Dr. Denstone mused, and recharged the glasses.
“It comes within the bounds of possibility, but not within the bounds of probability. I’m fifty-eight myself, and almost a member of the same school, but I wouldn’t use it. Tricky stuff. Look, I suggest that you get in touch with the fellow concerned. You will be certain then. As it is, you are only hoping that he prescribed it!”
“Touché!” said Knollis with a grin. “Perhaps you are right—but if he didn’t, then where in the name of heaven did it come from?”
“That,” said the doctor dryly, “is your job. I am not a detective.”
Knollis returned to Baxmanhurst, and after making sure that the coast was clear he invaded the box-room. Here, in a small attaché case, he found several bottles, one of which was labelled C.H. and contained crystals. He. tipped a few into his match-box and went back to Trentingham, where he sought out Dr. Clitheroe.
“Are these chloral crystals?” he demanded.
“I think so,” said Dr. Clitheroe, “but I’d prefer the verdict of an analyst. I’ll take them along if you like, and ring you later in the evening. That do?”
“Fine,” said Knollis.
He wrote a long message to Scotland Yard, requesting that the doctor and Vaughan’s maid should be re-interviewed with reference to the chloral, and handed it in to the teleprinter room.
CHAPTER XVI
THE STORIES OF THREE PEOPLE
Although Knollis relaxed physically for the next few hours, his brain was working at full pressure as he sat in the office allotted to him and watched the market-day throng in the Square below. There was a certain rhythm in the movement of the shoppers and stall-gazers which encouraged his thoughts to flow easily and smoothly. He was no psychologist in the academic sense, and therefore
he was not interested in the whys and wherefores of the phenomenon. He was satisfied, and more than satisfied with the results. Ellis was away at Barston. Colonel Mowbray had slunk away for a surreptitious eighteen holes on the Trentingham links. The sergeants and the constables were engaged on their various routine tasks concerned with the case. The gentlemen of the Press were being dealt with by a diplomatic Inspector of police on the floor below. Knollis was alone, and consequently inclined to agree with the poet that God was in his heaven, and all was right with the world. He could now attempt to reconstruct the tragedy as he believed it had occurred, and strictly according to the evidence collected.
There were three people concerned, apart from the corpse—and even he had only been a corpse-elect when the affair opened. But when did it open? Perhaps back in those dim days when Marlin had been blown sky-high by a German mine, or perhaps it was one of our own. At any rate, he had been blown sky-high, and had descended with a torn face and a lacerated mind. That was the initial cause. As a result of that, Daniel had been born, and his wife had committed suicide. As a result of that, Marlin had turned hangman—and probably God alone was able to trace the peculiar twists and turns of thought that had taken him towards the noose and the trap and the other grim impedimenta of his new trade. As a result of that, Mildred and Daniel had left home; Mildred, it would seem, to attempt to better herself, and Daniel, it would seem, to live as easily and with as little work as possible.
Mildred. She had studied, and fitted herself for a post as governess, and there seemed to be little doubt but that she had equipped herself well, and had obtained the type of post she wanted—until the secret of her parentage leaked out, and then she passed on, a sort of female Wandering Jew, welcomed until the truth was known, and then turned from the door with threats and imprecations. As a result of that, she decided to seek security by some other method.
Knollis picked up his pencil and made a note: How did Mildred Manchester get the idea of going on a cruise? Was it a planned attempt to find a wealthy husband? Having found a husband, she married him, and considered herself safe at last from the slings of outrageous fortune. Some people seem to be cursed to a life of trouble and unhappiness. Enter Dana Vaughan, with her play based on the basic facts of Mildred’s life. This was a threat of exposure, when she would surely lose all that she had gained. She made a friend of Dana, and the bonds of friendship sealed the secret.
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