“But why couldn’t he leave it alone?” said Ferens.
“Because I was being tiresome over the medicine bottles,” said Macdonald. “Brown wasn’t stupid. He knew I should ask ad about deceased’s previous fads—her famous dizziness. Each occurred shortly after a meal. ‘To be taken three times a day. After meals.’ ‘Ter die,’ as the prescriptions have it. He’d have noticed that himself, and thought I might notice it too. So it was essential that the medicine must be found, in some improbable place, before I really set to on a full-dress search. If he could only prove the medicine had been harmless, he felt there wasn’t any concrete evidence against him.”
“And provided the village kept mum, he was quite right,” said Reeves. “The way he handed over the money—a few pounds at a time in pound notes—was almost foolproof. You can’t prove what a man’s spent or not spent in ready money. It’s only cheques, or large withdrawals of cash, which can be proved. It’s anybody’s money, so to speak. And as to motive—anybody in the village could have been credited with a motive.”
Ferens suddenly laughed. “But only a medical man could induce dizziness three times a day after meals. Well, I congratulate you both. I do admire other people’s brains.”
Anne turned to Macdonald. “Did anybody talk to you about Dr. Brown—any of your chief witnesses?”
“No. They all avoided mentioning him or bringing him into their statements as one might have expected them to do.”
“I must remember that,” she said thoughtfully.
Reeves suddenly sat up. “Forget it,” he said, and threw his daisy chain round Anne’s neck. “It’s not your line of country. You go and persuade her ladyship to let Gramarye to some nice young couple from away who’ll only think of the Warden as a bad joke and who’ll take an interest in vegetable marrows. It suits you,” he concluded, regarding the daisy chain with admiration.
“Forget it,” murmured Anne. “That’s good advice. I will. But I shan’t forget you, either of you.”
“That’s very kindly said,” replied Macdonald.
THE END
Murder in the Mill-Race Page 23