Murder in the Mill-Race

by E. C. R. Lorac

“Them had different key rings. One was brass, one was steel.”

  The. phrase “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings” flashed through Macdonald’s mind: he had had previous experience of the fact that illiterates, and even partially defective persons, could be very observant of small details which pass unnoticed by the intelligent.

  “I’m glad you told me about the key rings, Hannah,” he said. “That may be very helpful. Now there’s another thing you could do for me. I want to see the medicine cupboard again.”

  “You can and welcome, but I never touched he since you saw it afore.”

  “I don’t expect you have, but I know now what a good memory you’ve got. You’ll be able to tell me just what you did when the children had their medicine. I expect you know all the bottles and all the doses, too.”

  “Them has been the same so long I couldn’t help but know they,” she replied. “When the war come, they began to give ’em all cod-liver oil, the dear Lord knows why. Them did well enough without it. But mostly ’twas the same. Doctor, he wasn’t one to change. Him be a wise and good man, kind him is, kindest soul I do know. Him’s the same to all, saint and sinner too. You ask in village, they’ll tell you.

  “Yes. They all say the same,” agreed Macdonald. “They like Dr. Ferens, but they miss old Dr. Brown.”

  “He was homely-like. Never frightened the childer,” said Hannah.

  “Look, Hannah: as we’re going upstairs, you can show me just what happened when Dr. Brown came for his weekly visit. He came on Monday mornings, didn’t he?”

  “Iss. Mondays at eleven to the minute. I was always ready for he, to open door and take he up to dispensary, and the childer, they was ready and waiting, too.”

  “I’ll go to the front door and you can let me in and pretend I’m Doctor,” said Macdonald, and she nodded, evidently quite proud to be asked to assist.

  Hannah was nothing if not thorough. She had been drilled to the same actions for so many years that she performed them accurately. On opening the front door, she said: “Good morning, Doctor,” and waited. Macdonald said, “Good morning, Hannah . . . My hat and gloves . . .” (He had neither.)

  “And your stick,” she said firmly, setting them on a chair in dumb show. “If you’ll kindly step upstairs, Sister’s quite ready.”

  She led the way up to the little room called the dispensary, knocked on the door, and opened it. “Doctor, Sister.”

  There were two chairs, and Hannah indicated the more important for Macdonald. “Doctor’d mention the weather and maybe his rheumatiz,” she went on. “Sister would answer very polite—her stood up by table, see—and Doctor’d say, ‘Anything to report?’ and generally ’twas, ‘All doing nicely, thank you, Doctor,’ and her would show him lists of the children’s weights and that, and mention if we’d any in bed. And then him’d say: ‘Well, have them in. I like to see them,’ and then I’d go to door, so, them being all ready on landing, and them’d come in, walking round table so, while Sister said their names: girls first, then boys. And us taught them all to say, ‘Good morning, Doctor. Thank you.’ And times he’d stop one and say, ‘Put out your tongue, now. Sister will give you a nice drop of summat tonight,’ though ’twas always that Gregory powder he meant, and a real poisonous taste that has; and then I’d see the childer go downstairs all quiet and respectful-like and Cook’d be waiting with their milk and a bite o’ summat. If so be we had any in bed, I’d show the way up and wait inside by bedroom door till Doctor and Sister had done, and then I’d bring they down in here again. And maybe Doctor’d write an order if so be we wanted more medicine or plasters or suchlike, and he’d give the paper to Sister and her would copy the order in her book, and Doctor might say a word or two about they in the village—new babies and the old folks he called his dear old chronics—and then he’d always say: ‘Mustn’t stand gossiping. Hannah wants to get on with her work and I can’t find the way downstairs unless her shows me,’ and in winter maybe he’d say, ‘Give me an arm, Hannah, my dear. My rheumatiz is playing up today, and you two women’ll be the death of me with your polished floors,’ and I’d take he downstairs and give mun his hat and his gloves and his stick and say, ‘Good mornin’, Doctor, and thank you.’ ’Twas always the same.”

  “Thank you, Hannah,” said Macdonald. “You’ve got a very good memory. Now when Dr. Brown wrote the orders for more medicine from the chemist, didn’t he ever look in the medicine cupboard?” Hannah’s face puckered in disappointment. “I did forget to put that bit in,” she said. “Doctor, he had many a good laugh at our medicine cupboard. ‘None o’ they newfangled notions here,’ he’d say. ‘Gregory powder and Epsom salts and cascara, bicarb, chlorate o’ potash, ammonia-quinine, cod-liver oil, and castor oil: good old-fashioned remedies and you can’a beat they.’ ”

  She went through her list complacently, and Macdonald told Reeves later that the list sent a reminiscent shiver down his own back. He had been dosed with all those remedies in his own childhood, and the one he had resented most was the chlorate of potash tablets, which had tasted repellent. He got up, took the keys from his pocket, and unlocked the medicine cupboard. It was a tall built-in cupboard with double doors. In the right-h and section were all the “good old-fashioned remedies,” together with medicine glasses, thermometers still in their glass of disinfectant, methylated spirits, enamelled basins, rolls of bandages and cotton wool, boracic powder, and carbolic ointment. All the bottles were clean and polished and not a drip or stain sullied the scrubbed shelves. The other half of the cupboard was latched top and bottom; when opened, it showed one of the shelves shut in by an extra door labelled ‘Poisons.’ Macdonald unlocked it and surveyed the contents: there were several bottles of disinfectant, camphorated oil, chlorodyne—and a bottle of aspirin. Hannah pointed at the latter.

  “Sister never did hold with they,” she said. “The housemaids would make free with aspirin and suchlike if so be they’d a headache or that, and Sister wouldn’t have it noways. If so be we found they’d been a-buying they when them was out, Sister’d take ’em away. Her always went through their rooms reg’lar, and the place they’d hide things in you’d never believe.” (When Macdonald repeated this to Reeves, the latter so far forgot himself as to say, “I can’t think why the woman wasn’t drowned years ago—poor brats of girls.”) “Sister always kept this cupboard locked, and her gave out all the doses herself,” added Hannah.

  “When Miss Torrington had any medicine for herself, was it kept in this cupboard?” asked Macdonald.

  “ ’Tis hard to say, sir. Her never had no medicine in her room, but if her kept any in here, ’twould be in that locked part, and her didn’t often open that for me to see. And her wouldn’t let me see her taking no medicine, because her was proud of never being sick.”

  Macdonald set both cupboard doors open wide, together with the “poison cupboard.”

  “When did the bottle of brandy disappear, Hannah?” he asked quietly.

  She shook her head. “ ’Tis hard to say. I’d tell you and welcome. I’d tell you anything, you been that homely and quiet with it. But her didn’t often open that part o’ cupboard so’s I could have a good look, see. I know that be there. For years ’twas there, and Sister’d say, ‘ ’Tis of the evil one, Hannah, and if so be I didn’t lock it away safe, maybe ’twould be putting temptation in the way o’ poor weak souls.’ That was there, sure enough, but when Sergeant opened the cupboard, that’d gone. I don’t know how long ago that went.”

  She picked up her apron and began pleating it in her fingers, her face puckered up like a troubled infant’s. “Was it that . . . made Sister come over dizzy-like, sir?”

  “What made you think of that, Hannah?”

  She went on screwing up her apron. “Her’d got queer-like. Her was always hard, hard as a stone her heart was for all her loving talk, but these last months her’s changed. ’Tis true. Something about she was fair frightening. I can’t tell you for why——”

  “But when did it co
me into your mind that she’d been drinking brandy? You say you didn’t know the brandy bottle had gone until Sergeant Peel opened the cupboard.”

  “No. Not till Sergeant opened it, like ’tis now. Then I saw ’twere gone.”

  “Did you think Sister had taken it when you saw the bottle wasn’t there any longer?” Macdonald’s voice was as even as ever, his tone pleasantly conversational. Hannah sidled up to him and put out her knobbly hand and twitched his coat, looking up at him in a way that was oddly childlike, but something about her eyes was different: their silly complacency had given way to a distraught look, halt wild, half sly. “She’s going to tell she murdered the woman,” flashed through Macdonald’s mind, but Hannah whispered:

  “I smelt her breath when I went to pick her up.” The knotted fingers still twitched at Macdonald’s coat, and her words came in a rush now. “’Twas so long ago since I smelled that. Years and years ’twas. But I knew it. My pa, he drank. In Bristol us lived, down by the docks, and us was poor . . . poor. Hungry and cold I was. Him was like a mad thing when him was drunk. He beat my ma, beat her like a dog. I mind the smell o’s breath, all that time ago. I’d Forgotten that; never give it a thought all these years, but I minded it when I picked Sister up.” Her breath was coming fast and she was nearly sobbing, struggling to get her words out, her hand still pulling at Macdonald’s sleeve. “I never thought o’ that, not all these years. I put that behind me. I’d not smelled that since he hit ma over head with poker: him killed she, poor besom . . . and me there . . .”

  Her laboured voice broke off in a clucking sound, and then she began to scream, and went on screaming with a shrill dreadful iteration, while her fingers still clawed at Macdonald’s sleeve.

  CHAPTER XV

  Hannah’s screams were dying away as Cook came pounding upstairs, her heavy tread slamming on the linoleum, shaking the staircase.

  “Sakes alive, what be that?” she burst out as she flung the door open. “’Twas like a soul in torment. God ha’ mercy, what be you done to her?”

  Macdonald had got Hannah on to the chair and she sat crumpled up in it, her puckered face clay-coloured now. Her eyes were shut, though tears still trickled down her cheeks, and her mouth was open. Macdonald found the pulse in the skinny wrist and realised that Hannah hadn’t even fainted. She had screamed her nerve storm out and exhaustion had claimed her. Her head fell sideways grotesquely, and she sobbed jerkily, in the exhausted state that can come suddenly to children and the subnormal after a crisis of excitement.

  “I haven’t done anything to her. She started talking about her own mother’s death and worked herself into a state of hysteria over it,” said Macdonald. “I’d better carry her upstairs to her room and get the doctor to come and see to her.”

  “Sakes, her do look in a bad way,” said Cook. “Had us better get her summat—brandy or some such?”

  “Have you got any brandy?” asked Macdonald.

  She flashed him a glance. “In this house? O’ course not. But I could run across to Mr. Barracombe. Sister wouldn’t have no liquor in this house.”

  Macdonald picked up the skinny little form. “Go on upstairs and open her bedroom door for me. It’s not brandy she wants. It’s something to get her quiet.”

  Cook thudded out of the room and on up the stairs, panting and muttering, and Macdonald followed and laid Hannah on a narrow bed in a room almost as bare as a prison cell.

  “Cover her up with some blankets and then get a hot-water bottle,” he said, “but don’t give her anything. I’ll go and ring up the doctor.”

  “Her do look mortal bad,” groaned Cook.

  Macdonald ran downstairs to the office again and called Ferens’ number on the telephone. “Is that Dr. Ferens? Macdonald here. Will you come over to Gramarye at once, please?”

  “Gramarye? You want Dr. Brown.”

  “I don’t. I want you. At once, please.”

  Ferens expostulated, “My God . . . what for . . .” as he hung up the receiver. But he was at the front door within two minutes, case in hand.

  “It’s Hannah Barrow,” said Macdonald. “She got talking and worked herself up into a screaming fit and she’s flat out. I carried her up to her bedroom. D’you know your way?”

  “No. I’ve never been inside this house before. She’s not my patient, you know.”

  “So you’ve told me. I called you because I judged you’d be better primed to cope with the occasion,” said Macdonald as he led the way upstairs. “Having studied the contents of the medicine cupboard here, I thought another opinion was indicated.”

  Ferens stopped dead. “You don’t mean . . .”

  “No, I don’t,” retorted Macdonald. “She screamed herself to exhaustion, that’s all. Give her a bromide, or whatever suits the occasion, and let the poor little cuss go to sleep. I’ll tell you about it when you’re through.”

  Hannah Barrow was now covered up in grey blankets (good “government surplus”), her cap was over one ear, and her hands clawed feebly at the blankets as she sobbed and hiccoughed. Cook was standing beside the bed.

  “I’d be glad if you’d take my notice. Me nerves won’t stand any more of this,” she said as she saw Macdonald.

  “Have you filled those hot-water bottles?” he snapped as Ferens came into the room.

  Cook gaped at him. “’Tis Dr. Brown should come to see to her,” she proclaimed. “Her’s registered with Dr. Brown.”

  “I’m doing locum for Dr. Brown this time,” said Ferens cheerfully. “You go and do what the Chief Inspector tells you and fill some hot-water bottles. Pie’s got more sense than you have.”

  Cook sniffed noisily and followed Macdonald to the door. “Us haven’t got no hot-water bottles. Sister didn’t hold with they. A warm brick, now——”

  “Then go across to Mrs. Ferens and borrow two hot-water bottles,” retorted the doctor, “and hurry up about it.”

  2

  “Well, that’s Hannah Barrow’s life story,” said Macdonald.

  He and Raymond Ferens were sitting in the office at Gramarye. The casement windows were open wide now, and the warmth and sensuous fragrance of midsummer floated in, merging with blue cigarette smoke to make the cold bare little room seem alive and lived in.

  “Poor little wretch,” said Ferens softly.

  Macdonald nodded. “Yes. I shan’t forget that story in a hurry. I wonder if it’s possible that the memory of her mother’s death was blotted out by the hideous shock of witnessing it. I believe it does happen in some cases. The memory is suppressed, clamped down, as though a scar grows over damaged tissue and hides it.”

  “Of course it happens,” said Ferens. “It’s that sort of memory, shut down in the subconscious, that can wreak havoc in people’s lives. But I thought you weren’t interested in psychology?”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t interested. I said I refused to be obsessed by it. I still do,” said Macdonald, “but I did believe that when Hannah was telling me about it, her mind went back to that horror which some circumstance had routed out, and she was no longer Nurse Barrow of Gramarye, but a Bristol slum child. It was that word she used—in pity and horror. ‘Poor besom.’ It’s an old word and an ugly one. It’s certainly not a word the respectable Hannah Barrow would have used.”

  Ferens nodded. “You’re probably right. It was the telling of it which broke her up. That uncontrolled weeping was quite characteristic of the whole case.” He broke off and looked out of the window, and the silence which followed in the room was broken by a thrush singing its heart out on the top of a beech tree.

  “I suppose you realise you’ve got a complete explanation of the Warden’s death?” asked Ferens abruptly.

  Macdonald nodded. “Yes. The psychologist’s explanation. That’s what I meant when I said I refused to be obsessed by it. But if you would like to put forward your own idea of what may have happened, I shall give full consideration to it.”

  “It’s the story of the missing brandy bottle which clinches
it, to my mind,” said Ferens slowly. “Let us trace the case history. A slum child in a dockland district, undernourished, ill treated: the father drank, and eventually killed the mother with a poker. The child was taken to an orphanage. They probably looked after her, according to the lights of fifty years ago, and they would certainly not have let her talk that memory out of her system. It was, as you say, clamped down. I gather from what you say that the job she was put to was in what would pass for a respectable household. The mistress of it beat the girl and ill-treated her and half starved her, but I gather there was no mention of alcoholism. Orphanages may make mistakes in the characters of employers, but they’re careful not to send into houses where drunkenness occurs.”

  “Perfectly true,” said Macdonald. “The mistress of the house was a teetotaller.”

  “Very well. Hannah tripped up her tormentor on the stairs and the woman broke her neck. Result, a prison sentence. Then a period in an institution. Rehabilitation, as we say nowadays. Then Gramarye, and over twenty years of drudgery, and uplift which brought contentment of a sort. Hannah was now respected. She was Nurse Barrow. Life went according to pattern. She was taught to do the same thing in the same way, day after day, year after year. She was educable to that point—she could do just those things the Warden had trained her to do, and I think she was probably happy doing them. Do you agree to all that?”

  “Yes. To all of it,” said Macdonald.

  “Very well. Note that since the day the child had seen her drunken father kill her mother she had never experienced drunken violence again—until she saw Sister Monica drunk. Saw it, smelled the cause of it—and it turned her brain. She remembered the last time. Alter that she wasn’t responsible for her own actions any more. Her lather hit her mother. Hannah repaid that hit.”

  Ferens broke off and lighted a cigarette. Then he went on: “As you know, I’m not a psychiatrist. It’s quite probable that, despite your scepticism, you know more about the subject than I do. You get trained psychiatrists on to all crimes of violence. I know you won’t be biased by anything I say, but I’d suggest you get a psychiatrist on to this job.”