by Richard Hull
In order, therefore, to get the dye on his hands, the Judge must have untied the cord – at least that was the theory – and the idea had been that whenever he saw a member whose hands had gone that very peculiar shade of green, he would be able to ask him why he had seen fit to tamper with the marker. But now presented with the first fruits of his handiwork, he found it quite impossible to carry out the programme. And yet – how had the Judge contrived to get his fingers on to the dyed cord?
As a speculation, it was interesting, but from a practical point of view, Ford certainly lacked the courage of his convictions. In fact he ran away from them as fast as he could. He hastened to explain that the idea that Judge Skinner might be the book thief was too ridiculous to be considered for a moment. It was, of course, not a man like him for whom he was looking. But he had hopes all the same of finding out something from the device.
Nothing seemed less probable to the Judge, and he said so. Nevertheless, as a reasonable man, he was prepared to give the secretary credit for having made an effort. ‘For, young man, it’s quite time someone took this club in hand. Allowing members to die twice in the library! It’s disgraceful.’
It passed through Ford’s mind to suggest firstly that he was being taken in hand far too much by his anonymous correspondent, and secondly that no one had died twice, but it would never do to be funny at the expense of an indignant man. He contented himself with saying that it ‘was most regrettable’.
‘Regrettable, eh? Hardly the word I should use about Pargiter. Careless, that’s what it is – careless. When you see a man’s ill, send him off home. At once. That’s the right thing to do.’
Ford wondered what the Judge would have said if he had started the interview by saying: ‘Sir, in my opinion, you are in danger of having apoplexy. Go home’? Aloud he muttered a non-committal affirmative.
‘And how long will it take before this has gone?’
Normally, Ford explained, he had been told that it took about a week before the dye disappeared, but with a person of such scrupulously clean habits as Judge Skinner, perhaps four days would see the end of it. For the fact that the dye had got on to the Judge’s hands he could only offer the humblest apologies.
It was a bit obvious, and Skinner was not for a moment deceived. All the same, it was clear to him that Ford was doing his best to repair the damage done, no doubt by accident. After all, what else could he do other than apologise? Wisely he decided to make the best of it and went off to tell the story against himself as often as he could. It seemed the only way of preventing other people from telling it behind his back.
Left alone, the prospect seemed drearier than ever to Ford. His attempt to find out something for himself had started badly, and if he was going to have as little success in the less important and less difficult matter, what chance had he got in the bigger and more complicated problems? He picked up a sheet of paper, and heading it idly ‘Men I would like to know’, wrote underneath:
The man who killed Morrison.
The man who killed Pargiter.
The man who steals the library books.
The man who sends those anonymous typewritten letters to me.
He sighed wearily. It would be a help if he were sure whether it was four men he wanted to know, or three, or two, or possibly only one. Certainly not more than three, he thought. Surely it was reasonable to assume that numbers 1 and 2 were the same? Hearing a step outside, he hurriedly crumpled up the paper and threw it in the fire. It was no document to leave lying about!
Cardonnel came in chortling with laughter and gaily singing ‘They’re hanging men and women now, for wearing of the green’.
‘Watson, Watson, my dear fellow, you have excelled yourself. If the club laughs, and I think it will, all will be well, but heaven help you if they don’t see the funny side.’
With tears trickling down his cheeks, he waved in the air three fingers resembling a chestnut tree in spring. ‘I’ve just been talking to the Judge and I think he’s all right now, but did it never occur to you that that dye would spread? For heaven’s sake take all the markers out before someone covers his clothes with it.’
‘But do you mean to say that everyone’s getting it? Surely it’s only if you untie the cord?’
‘Did you suggest to the Judge he had?’
Ford blushed. ‘Well, no, as a matter of fact, I hardly liked to.’
‘I’m not surprised. But do go and take them off. Everybody’s getting covered with it. Laming’s absolutely furious; says he’ll never live it down in the Home Office.’
‘Heavens, why?’
‘Who knows? But, man, don’t waste time. Get on with it.’
Ford picked up the house telephone and gave instructions to each floor that the markers were all to be untied from the books and brought back to him.
‘I suppose you are right,’ Cardonnel said thoughtfully, ‘if half the members of the club are going to be bright green, we may as well have green waiters to match.’
‘What?’
‘Well, they’ll all get smothered bringing them up. And has it occurred to you, too, that probably most of the books will be smeared. You’ll probably have to pay for new copies of most of them. Do you know really it seems to me that it would have been cheaper to have let them be stolen. But, my word,’ he added meditatively, ‘what an efficient dye!’
There comes a moment even in the life of a club secretary when it is impossible to go on giving a realistic imitation of a doormat any longer.
‘Dash it all, sir,’ Ford broke out, ‘I was trying, and, come to that, if you will excuse my saying so, other methods have not helped us very much. I mean, I have been through the bedroom list I gave you, and we don’t seem to be any nearer to fixing our man from Nottingham.’
It was perhaps fortunate for Ford that Cardonnel was at heart a good-tempered man. No one likes being told that he is indifferently competent at his hobbies. It is worse than being told you are incapable in your profession. But Cardonnel’s character was not only sufficiently big for him not to take offence where no offence was intended, it was sufficiently big for him to appreciate if there was any truth in the criticism.
‘I know. You’re quite right. There’s something wrong somewhere. Perhaps you were right when you suggested that the man did not live in Nottingham now, but only used to do so.’
‘Well, I’ve been through the addresses again and not only the present addresses, but the old ones for the last five years, and I can’t find anyone who comes from that part of the world who was in the club on those dates.’
‘I suppose I must take that as conclusive. All the same, I give up my idea of a Nottingham man with the very greatest reluctance. All those cricket and football matches could not have been pure coincidence, could they?’
As a matter of fact, in Ford’s opinion, they were probably exactly that, but it was almost impossible to say so. It is never very easy to convince anyone that a theory he has built up is founded on a fallacy, and when the labour of building up the theory had been so very heavy, it is doubly difficult. Besides, if it was only a coincidence, it was a very extensive one. All he could do was to suggest feebly that there must be some curious and unexpected factor that had in some way vitiated the conclusions. ‘“The best laid plans of mice and men”, you know,’ he ended.
Cardonnel nodded. ‘That is one of the quotations that is never finished, and if it should be, is almost invariably finished incorrectly.’
The rather legitimate indignation and the entirely incorrect assertion that he could finish the quotation quite accurately if he chose, which had both risen simultaneously to Ford’s lips, caused him to stutter. Before he could say anything, there was a knock at the door, and after the briefest pause a page-boy came in.
Cardonnel gave one look at him and burst into fits of laughter. In his hand the boy held some fifty or sixty of the book-markers which he had apparently been sent to collect from floor to floor. His palms and all his fingers were a vivid gre
en; even the dirt of his nails was mercifully obliterated with it. Smears of apple green covered his uniform, and, to add to it, he had apparently sucked the book-markers on his way upstairs. His lips, his forehead, even his hair and ears proclaimed the efficiency of the compound. He turned rather an angry look on Cardonnel. What was the old man laughing at him for? He hadn’t done anything that he knew of to be laughed at like that.
‘Help,’ came faintly from Cardonnel. ‘And the Judge says you told him that it took a week normally to get it off. It’s a lucky thing, young man, Guy Fawkes Day is over. Just look at yourself in that glass. There’s only one thing you can do with him, Ford. Send him round to the makers of that infernal dye of yours as an advertisement. It might pay for his uniform. Look out! Don’t put those infernal markers near me, boy.’
Ford turned to the rather sulky-looking page. ‘All right, boy. Not your fault. Go and see the steward and tell him I said you were to be put on duty for the next week where you will not be seen.’
The lad gave one last look in the glass. ‘They won’t half laugh at me, sir.’
‘And at me, boy. You can tell them you’re not the only one. Plenty on the members too.’ Cardonnel showed him his hands, and sent the boy off reasonably happy. Anyhow, he was going to get a new uniform out of it. He liked to look smart, and the one he had inherited from previous page-boys was not, in his opinion, worthy of him.
As he went, Cardonnel got up and looked in the glass. ‘Ah, I’m glad to see that, unlike our young friend, I did not suck the cord. Hope that stuff isn’t poisonous, by the way.’
23
Spider Or Fly?
‘We can’t have the staff poisoned.’
‘What?’ Cardonnel swung round quickly from the looking-glass. ‘What on earth do you mean by that?’
‘Why, just what I said. It would be very awkward if one of the boys was upset by that dye. Their parents do make such a fuss – even about the most trivial things. Do you know, that the other day–’ Ford tried to cover his unfortunate slip by starting to recount the extensive bullying he had recently received from a large woman, no respecter of persons, on the subject of the food given to her son. He had decided, he said, for the future to employ nothing but orphans or those whose parents lived at a safe distance in one of the remoter distressed areas.
But so obvious a red herring was useless against Cardonnel. That astute man was almost sure that Ford had stopped his sentence abruptly, and had swallowed the word ‘too’. It was a good opportunity to bring up the point which Gladwin had made to him about Morrison’s heart, and to that matter he started to bring the conversation round. The animadversions of little Billy’s mother on the subject of rabbit as an article of diet were merely boring. He swept them all aside.
‘I want to talk to you about Anstruther, and please understand’ – his legal caution prevailing – ‘that what I want to say is entirely confidential.’
With a feeling that if he did not, far too much might emerge, Ford made another desperate attempt to switch the conversation.
‘I am so glad you have brought his name up. I want to tell you something that I was told the other day. It might help you in your enquiry about the books.’ With that he plunged into such an account as he could remember of Hughes’s accusations. As repeated by Ford, it did not sound very convincing, but at least he managed to suggest that there was some evidence for thinking that Anstruther, at any rate, borrowed books. To Ford’s joy, Cardonnel seemed to be taking quite an interest; he followed the story, such as it was, carefully, and began to cross-examine him about it, a process which served to show how many links in the chain of evidence were missing.
As a topic of conversation it could not last forever, but there was always a chance that it might last long enough. Like Anstruther himself, as Ford fondly thought, he was playing for time. At any moment someone might interrupt. For once he wanted to hear the telephone bell ring; even an angry member dripping green dye from every finger would have been welcome. But nothing happened.
‘This is all very intriguing,’ Cardonnel summed up, ‘if hardly conclusive. I think I shall give myself the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Dr Anstruther. I hardly know him, you know, and he seems to be a man well worth cultivating, a curious character, so very reserved, of whom so very little is known. I must find out more about him, more about his antecedents, for instance. He may yet,’ he added hopefully, ‘prove my deductions to have been right. But this is not what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to talk to you about his patients.’
Ford’s last despairing effort to make a feeble joke on the subject of its being unprofessional, was brushed ruthlessly aside. ‘No doubt it has struck you as odd that two of them should have died here recently. So far as Pargiter is concerned, I have nothing to say. I have thought for a long while that he hardly looked a healthy man. That he should have had a cerebral haemorrhage seems to me quite likely. But what I cannot understand is Morrison.’
‘Heart failure,’ remarked Ford woodenly.
‘So I was told,’ was the dry comment. ‘The only trouble is that Morrison used to talk about his ailments to a friend of mine ad nauseam and the only thing he never mentioned was a weak heart.’
‘Ah, that so often happens. People are so ready to talk about their imaginary ills, but seldom about what is really wrong with them.’ Ford shook his head wisely. He had for once in his life spoken the truth rather shrewdly, and the trifling fact that he did not believe a word of it himself must not be allowed to detract from the merit of the performance.
Not that Cardonnel believed a word of it either. He merely shook his head and continued. ‘Now there were two people, and two only as far as I can make out, who knew anything of what happened after he died – yourself and Dr Anstruther. And after that, what do I see?’
He paused rhetorically, and gave Ford time to hope that he had seen nothing.
‘Why, that you two, who previously had exchanged very few words, suddenly became as thick as thieves. Moreover, you suddenly start a burst of activity over all sorts of little details of the management of the club which you have previously studiously neglected for years, and then you start getting nervous and jumpy, and hoping that the staff will not be poisoned. And now you tell me that this doctor, this newly found colleague of yours, is taking to drink, and is stealing the books. Well, perhaps he is. But why, tell me? Obviously because,’ he shook his head solemnly, ‘I was going to talk about Morrison’s death and you wanted to lead me away from the subject.’
He paused for breath, and then continued. ‘But, of course, the oddest point is this: why, when Pargiter died, did Anstruther not get a second opinion? It would have been the most obvious precaution in the world. So there must have been some reason. We know, don’t we, that there was nothing wrong with Pargiter’s death, was there?’
‘No, nothing at all.’
‘You said that rather too quickly. As a matter of fact you and I know nothing of the kind. I wonder now if there was?’ He leaned back in his chair and considered the point. As for Ford, he could only hope that he did not look as nervous as he felt.
‘Well, that is a point that can be considered later,’ Cardonnel went on. ‘Mind you, I am inclined to think that there was not, simply because no one would risk the exact duplication of a crime. Still, it will be wise only to let the matter stay in abeyance for the time being. Let us go back to the beginning. Obviously something was definitely wrong with Morrison’s death, possibly something that might have come out, though I can hardly see how, in a post-mortem on Pargiter. But the point is this, you know quite well what happened about Morrison. Now then, what was it?’
The last sentence was thrown out suddenly and rapidly. Faced with the direct question, Ford made the fatal yet ultimately fortunate mistake of hesitating. He might have pretended a bland ignorance, have replied readily: ‘Why, nothing so far as I know. It upset me at the time, that was all; naturally,’ and gone on to talk about feeling responsible for anything th
at happened in the club.
But with Cardonnel’s steady gaze, he did not for a moment believe that he could get away with it, nor did he feel that he could make a clean breast of the whole thing. Instead, with a devastating weakness, he adopted a middle course, which was completely untrue and very unfair to Benson. He placed Cardonnel in the position in which he had found himself when the chef had arrived to say he had muddled the two bottles, and ho had then gone on and found Morrison dead in the library.
‘But consider the position I was in. To this day I do not know how Morrison died. It may have been heart failure. It may have been the perchloride of mercury. There was Benson to consider – there was the club to consider. If it was heart failure, there was no more to be said. But if he had been poisoned, it was a pure accident, and one very much better kept quiet. And so I induced Anstruther to help me to do so. Really I have felt rather sorry for him. Now that this second death has occurred it’s very awkward for him.’
‘But doesn’t he know how Morrison died?’
‘No idea in the world. You see as he had decided to say it was heart failure, he could not make a complete post-mortem.’
For a moment Cardonnel leant back in his favourite judicial attitude, with the tips of his fingers touching. ‘Not being a doctor, I speak with some hesitation, but I should say that that was unmitigated rubbish.’