Murder of a Martinet

by E. C. R. Lorac

  “I see,” said the A.C. “Did you think that one out for yourself. Macdonald?”

  “It seemed to me quite a possibility,” replied Macdonald, “but I will enlarge on that idea later. At the moment I want to tell you about the Colonel’s ideas, which showed careful forethought. He had decided on insulin as his medium, knowing it would bring about a painless death. He knew that he could obtain this substance from Dr. Baring’s medical case, and he knew also that Baring, who was old and shaky, was also forgetful and unobservant. When Colonel Farrington made up his mind to put his carefully prepared plan into operation on the Monday, he reviewed every circumstance and contingency, as a soldier should before committing himself to any strategy. There was one extraneous circumstance which he thought he might use to his own advantage On the Monday morning, between the time that Mrs. Pinks had finished cleaning the bedroom and the time the Colonel went downstairs to listen in at the kitchen door, he had had his Darts Club friend, old Bill Preston, in the house to examine the fastenings on the bedroom window’, with a view to putting a burglarproof catch on the window. Now, the Colonel knew all about fingerprints. If things went wrong, as they might do. it occurred to him that it might be useful to have some unidentifiable fingerprints in the room. He was much too ignorant of police investigations to imagine that we should ever track down his Darts Club acquaintances.”

  “Just one query here.” put in the A.C. “At what stage in the inquiry did you come to the conclusion that you couldn’t afford to believe anything the old man said?”

  “Pretty early on.” said Macdonald. “After I had talked to Madge, I was fairly certain that Colonel Farrington had given his wife the insulin, but I also believed that he would stick to the truth as far as he was able. He had plenty of common sense and realised how much wiser it was to stick to facts as far as possible. For my part, it was a matter of sorting out what was possible to corroborate and what wasn’t: without corroboration. I couldn’t afford to believe a word he said. He gave me a most careful and detailed description of his wife’s movements on the Monday morning, all calculated to fit in with his own scheme, but since I had already come to the conclusion that he must have given the insulin injection himself, his description was only of interest to me in the academic sense—the way in which it revealed his own careful but limited mind.”

  “It’s a fascinating story,” observed the A.C. “As you say. the old chap must have done some careful thinking.”

  Macdonald nodded. “Perfectly true.” he replied. “Now, as to the actual events. By persistent telephoning, the Colonel at length got Dr. Baring to the house on Monday evening and doubtless primed him with a long story of Muriel’s fainting fits and heart pains, to prepare the ground for the eventual death. Baring, between old age. flu. quinine, and whisky, was probably in no state to tell a sound heart from a bad one When he had seen the patient, the Colonel took him to the drawing room and. being genuinely sorry for the doctor’s obvious exhaustion, gave him a double whisky. I think this was the factor that shipwrecked the scheme. It was true that Baring forgot his medical case—or assumed that Farrington had put it in the car: this was according to plan, but Baring was now as near drunk as makes no difference. He probably got muddled between the brake and the accelerator and charged a lamp standard on his homeward way. Farrington, having given his wife some hot milk, read to her or a little and said he would then give her her hypodermic noculation according to the doctor’s orders. He did so, using the insulin he found in Baring’s case. The remainder of :he evening was spent as described by the various witnesses.”

  The A.C. put a word in here: “Aren’t you surprised that Farrington asked Madge in to see her mother that evening, Macdonald?”

  “No, sir. That was his careful mind again. You must remember that he counted on Dr. Baring coming in the morning. He wanted to be able to say, with corroboration, ‘I was worried about her last night.’ It was one of those little details which appeal to the simple mind. He knew quite well that Madge didn’t take Mrs. Farrington’s ailments seriously, and Madge was already much too tired and upset to start icing alarmist that evening. The only other event of the night was Paula’s doing. Paula, who had managed to possess herself of the key of the safe when she went to ask for the key of the glass cupboard, did go into her mother’s bedroom and did take some of her diamonds from the safe, hoping to sell them for Peter’s benefit. And Paula realised that her mother was no longer breathing normally—which perhaps accounts for the state she got into afterwards, when Scott refused to sign a death certificate. Paula knew that to have stolen the diamonds from Mrs. Farrington’s room that night put both her and Peter in a very unpleasant position.”

  3

  “But why were you so certain that Farrington himself did the job?” inquired the A.C. “There was motive enough among the other members of the household, particularly in Madge’s case.”

  “Yes. sir. I quite agree. There was motive. One has to remember that Mrs. Farrington had the money, and at her death the children—all save Madge—stood to profit. They could have acquired the means, for old Baring was not too careful over that medical case of his, but I did not believe they could have done it. Consider it carefully. It meant giving a hypodermic injection without waking the patient. Now it might conceivably be possible in the case of a child, for young children sleep very soundly. A child can sleep when a bomb explodes across the way, but elderly people do not sleep like that. In order to have given a hypodermic injection to Mrs. Farrington as she slept, it was necessary to go right up to her bed, to draw back the bedclothes so as to bare the arm. to get a grip on that arm, and finally to drive the needle home and keep it in place while the plunger was pressed down and the liquid forced in. It is true that Mrs. Farrington had had a mild barbiturate, but I did not believe, and I utterly refuse to believe, that the thing could have been done without waking her.”

  “Yes. I see your point. You’re probably right,” agreed the A.C., “but was it essential not to wake her? Couldn’t Madge have said it was doctor’s orders?”

  “Not if you realise the attitude of the one woman to the other, sir. Mrs. Farrington knew perfectly well that Madge hated her and that she had every reason to hate her. Madge had threatened her that morning. If Mrs. Farrington had woken up and found Madge beside her with a hypodermic. Mrs. Farrington would have created a scene which the whole house would have heard. Mrs. Farrington was afraid of Madge. When Mrs. Pinks plucked up her courage and told me how Mrs. Farrington both hated and feared Madge, she proved conclusively to my mind that Madge could never have done it. though I was certain of it before. And if not Madge, who else could have? Peter or Paula? Anne Strange? Joyce Duncan, who avoided her mother at all costs? It didn’t make sense, because Mrs. Farrington would have made a scene. Insulin doesn’t put a patient under at once. She would have had plenty of time and energy to ‘create,’ as they say.”

  “Yes—well, I suppose you were right.” said the A.C. “You got to know the household. Yes, you had a point there all right. Macdonald.”

  “Then there was the time element,” said Macdonald. “The probability was that the injection was given between eight-thirty and ten o’clock. Colonel Farrington was with his wife until after the nine o’clock news. He then went upstairs to ask Anne to come down to sit in the drawing room. Mrs. Farrington was then alone, and Madge could have had three or four minutes to do the job, but my objection still held: Mrs. Farrington would have made a scene which would have brought her husband and Anne Strange running to her room. Colonel Farrington then went out, and Anne Strange sat in the drawing room. Could she have done it? Would Mrs. Farrington have gone quietly to sleep again after Anne—who hated her—had used a hypodermic on her? No. It just didn’t make sense. It was obviously the one person in the house whom she trusted—namely, her husband.”

  The A.C. nodded. “I’m surprised the old boy didn’t shoot himself straight away, though. You say he was a decent old chap in most ways.”

  “Colone
l Farrington’s motive throughout was to help his children, but above all to help Madge. Madge got nothing under Mrs. Farrington’s will. If he could have inherited, he could have saved a bit for her out of income. When he planned his scheme it must have looked pretty safe. He counted on Baring .coming and signing a death certificate without hesitation.”

  “But when Scott refused a certificate, he must have realised the game was up.”

  “A more intelligent and better-informed man would have realised it, but the Colonel went on hoping. To do him justice, I think he wanted to see how the case would go before he threw up the sponge. I don’t think he feared anything for himself, but he did fear for Madge. A police inquiry was an unknown quantity to him: he had no experience of detectives, and he was afraid at first that Madge might be accused. He actually put on record his gratitude to Reeves and myself for being so unbiased and fair in our investigation. There was one set of circumstances which he thought gave him a chance to win through. He knew that Preston’s fingerprints were on the window ledges in the bedroom. He knew that Preston had waited outside the house on Monday evening—though the Colonel did not see him that evening. In his simple way Farrington said to himself: ‘These chaps are very thorough. They’ll find the fingerprints, they’ll hear of a loiterer outside; Muriel’s diamonds have disappeared. The burglar must have been responsible for the murder.’ He was as simple as that.”

  “And his children realised he must have done it?”

  “I think so. Madge, of course, would have argued exactly as I did. She would have known it was impossible for anybody else to have given Mrs. Farrington that injection. Rather than see him accused, Madge tried to take the guilt on her own shoulders and jump under a tube train to end the whole thing. I remember saying to her as I caught her back from the train, ‘You can’t do things like that.’ I felt several times that I should have liked to say the same thing to her father—you can’t settle things like that.”

  The A.C. nodded. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I think 1 see your other point. He was a very simple man. He could only see one step at a time.”

  “There was a lot that was honestly kind and unselfish in him,” said Macdonald; “but he did the one thing which no man may do—took the law into his own hands without any realisation of the forces which move behind the law. He found that out. But even so, I shall always remember him with some degree of liking. He was very devoted to Madge.”

  “And what will Madge do now?”

  “Go to America. The offer still holds, I hear. So it’s back as they were, so to speak, before Mrs. Farrington came down to the kitchen to order dinner for eight.”

  A grim little smile curled round the A.C.’s firm mouth.

  “Settled her own hash, eh, Macdonald?”

  The Chief Inspector nodded. “That’s about it,” he agreed.

  THE END