by Francis Iles
“Well, surely. Pretty obvious, isn’t it?”
Dr. Lydston joined the tips of his long fingers and contemplated them with apparently earnest admiration. “And what do you imagine was the nature of this poison?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Some food poison, I suppose.” It was Dr. Bickleigh’s turn to be cautious. “That’s just what I wanted to see you about. I don’t want to butt in or anything like that, you know, but how are you treating the case?”
Dr. Lydston’s professional dignity was clearly upset. “Well, really,” he began stiffly.
Dr. Bickleigh hastened to eradicate an unfavourable impression, and put on his most winning smile. “That sounds awful cheek, coming from me to you, but I really am interested. I was caught myself, you see, and it was a literal case of ‘Physician, heal thyself.’ And yesterday I called to enquire about Mrs. Bourne (just a friendly visit, of course) and saw her for a few moments, as perhaps you’ve heard.” Yes, the old fool would certainly have heard, so he had better be smoothed down over that too. “I know you attend her, so I was careful not to verge on the professional; but out of sheer interest I asked her a few questions, and her symptoms were certainly identical with mine; and presumably with Chatford’s too.” He paused questioningly.
“The cases certainly do present points of resemblance,” admitted Dr. Lydston.
Pedantic old fool! “Yes. Well—!” Dr. Bickleigh smiled again, most disarmingly. “The fact is, I wondered whether I could possibly be of any help. Chatford’s case certainly sounds the most serious of the three, and—well, I did cure myself, didn’t I?”
“Are you suggesting that I call you in for a consultation?” asked Dr. Lydston precisely.
“Something like that, perhaps.” Dr. Bickleigh dissembled his eagerness. “I know it’s a most unprofessional thing to suggest, but, after all, we’re all more or less friends, and . . . Well, I really do think I could be of help.”
“How did you treat yourself ?”
“Oh, well . . .” Dr. Bickleigh laughed. “I’d much rather hear your own suggestions.”
“Um!” Dr. Lydston deliberated. “Chatford called me up in the middle of the night. He was in a good deal of pain, so I gave him an injection of morphia, and ordered hot applications to the abdomen. Later on I recommended a colon wash-out of normal saline, and made him up a prescription of bismuth and soda with hydrocyanic acid.”
Dr. Bickleigh nodded. “Yes. Treatment on normal lines, in fact.”
“I saw no reason to advise anything else,” replied Dr. Lydston stiffly.
“No, quite. But in my case . . . Oh, well, I won’t bother you with that. But seriously, Lydston, I should very much like to have a look at him, out of sheer professional interest. Surely you could stretch a point and take me with you? What about this afternoon?”
“H’m! Somewhat irregular, isn’t it? And, in any case, I could do nothing without the patient’s consent.”
“Oh, Chatford wouldn’t mind,” said Dr. Bickleigh easily.
“He might object most strongly,” remarked Dr. Lydston drily. “No, Bickleigh, I’m sorry. I think it would be too irregular.”
“Oh, come,” persuaded Dr. Bickleigh. “Stretch a point, Lydston. He won’t mind.”
Dr. Lydston, however, seemed to have made up his mind at last. He rose. “I’m afraid it isn’t a thing I could agree to. In fact, I don’t care about it at all. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, very well,” Dr. Bickleigh smiled. “After all, it doesn’t matter in the least. And no doubt you’re quite right to be so old-fashioned, Lydston; in questions of etiquette as well as treatment.” Two little spots were burning on his cheek-bones.
The two parted without shaking hands.
Dr. Bickleigh drove away rigid with fury. The damned old fool! If he didn’t look out it would be his turn next. It had been a sheer insult—a reflection on his own professional competence, nothing less. Dr. Bickleigh fingered through the cloth the little phial in his trousers pocket. Lydston had better look out; he didn’t seem to realise what sort of a man he was dealing with.
And if the two of them thought they were going to keep him out of that bedroom . . .
In his consulting-room, Dr. Lydston, after staring at his blotting-pad for five minutes, pulled the telephone towards him.
3
AFTER ALL, there could have been no conspiracy to keep Dr. Bickleigh out of the bedroom. He had hardly finished his belated lunch an hour later when his telephone bell rang.
It was Dr. Lydston. “Oh, Bickleigh, I’ve been thinking over what you suggested. I couldn’t do anything without Chatford’s consent, of course, but I’ve just put it to him and he has no objection at all.”
“Oh, yes,” said Dr. Bickleigh, with a mighty effort of indifference.
“And I must confess,” proceeded Dr. Lydston in his precise tones, “that the case does present certain puzzling features. So if your offer still holds good . . .”
“You’re inviting me in to a consultation?”
“Yes, in a way . . . Yes, certainly.”
“How would three-thirty suit you?”
“Admirably.”
“Very well. I’ll be there.”
Dr. Bickleigh’s exultation was so great that his hand shook as he hung up the receiver. Chatford was delivered into his grasp.
He went into the surgery. Since the morning a better idea had occurred to him.
With meticulous care he prepared a capsule, his thoughts darting brightly from one rosy realisation to another. Revenge was sweet . . . but Ivy was sweeter . . . rich, widowed Ivy . . . yes, riches were sweetest of all. And, with Chatford out of the way, those ridiculous enquiries must collapse; their mainspring would have been removed. Though, for that matter, they must have collapsed already. (Had he really in the middle of the night taken them seriously? It was curious to remember now. Most interesting how lowered vitality depressed the brain. Triumph of matter over mind.) The Chief Inspector would be back in London by now, his report of a mare’s nest in his pocket. In a way it was rather a pity. It would have been amusing to remove the instigator of it under his very nose.
How utterly undetectable murder could be made. It was amazing. Why did not more intelligent people take it up? Perhaps they did, and one never heard of it. But Dr. Bickleigh could not quite believe that. Surely he was unique.
At three-thirty exactly he stepped blithely out of the Jowett in front of Chatford’s house. Two minutes later his goal was triumphantly reached.
Chatford was in a bad way. That was quite evident. He lay inertly in bed, obviously in a state of extreme collapse, and seemed hardly conscious. Dr. Bickleigh stood for a moment looking down on him, and could hardly control the muscles of his face.
“I’ll take his temperature,” he said in a low voice.
“No need,” Dr. Lydston replied, in equally hushed tones. “I’ve just taken it.” He beckoned Dr. Bickleigh into a farther corner. “Seems to have just taken a turn for the worse,” he whispered. “Since I rang you up. Temperature’s jumped up to a hundred and two point eight.”
Dr. Bickleigh nodded. “I’d better make a cursory examination.”
“I shouldn’t advise disturbing him, just at the moment. I can tell you anything you want to know.”
“Well, what are the other symptoms?”
“Oh, what one would expect: tongue slightly furred, considerable abdominal pain, cramps in the lower limbs, and, of course, vomiting and diarrhoea.”
“Pronounced?” Dr. Bickleigh asked sharply.
Dr. Lydston hesitated. “Well, perhaps not so pronounced as one might have expected, no.”
“Any paralytic symptoms?”
“I—don’t think so. Well, possibly. I haven’t particularly noticed.”
Dr. Bickleigh looked his contempt at such inefficiency. “Well, have the pupils been dilated?”
“Yes.” Dr. Lydston seemed to brighten. “Oh, yes. Decidedly.”
“And you’ve been treating him just with a bism
uth and soda mixture, with hydrocyanic acid?”
“And bismuth salicylate. Fifteen grains every four hours.”
“I see. And what’s your diagnosis?”
“In my opinion,” said Dr. Lydston, somewhat defensively, “acute gastro-enteritis, resulting from food poisoning.”
“Yes,” Dr. Bickleigh said gently. “I don’t agree with you, Lydston.”
“No?” Dr. Lydston was surprised.
“No. From what I’ve seen of him, and from what you tell me, I should say it was a clear case of botulism.”
“Botulism!” It was plain that the idea had not entered Dr. Lydston’s head at all.
“Yes. Of course, I was practically sure from my own case, and Mrs. Bourne’s. But they were really too light to be certain. That’s why I wanted to see him. I’m pretty certain where the infection came from, too. We had potted meat sandwiches for tea, and— well, really, there was no other possible vehicle.”
“Good gracious. But that ought to be ascertained, Bickleigh. Is the rest of the potted meat still in existence?”
“No. I thought the sandwiches tasted a little funny at the time, and I went out to the kitchen afterwards and smelt it.” Dr. Bickleigh explained how he and Mrs. Holne had arrived at the conclusion that the pot had better be thrown away.
“Dear, dear.” Dr. Lydston stroked his lean chin. “Botulism. No, I must confess that never occurred to me. In fact, I’ve never had a case before at all.”
“Ah, that’s where I scored,” Dr. Bickleigh pointed out. “I had a case in Wyvern’s Cross. Unfortunately, it proved fatal, but it gave me the experience. I attribute the promptness with which I was able to cure myself entirely to that.”
“No doubt, no doubt. Well, what do you advise, then?”
“A full dose of jalap and cream of tartar,” replied Dr. Bickleigh promptly. “And, in view of his condition, the sooner it’s administered the better. Luckily I brought one with me.”
“You did?” said Dr. Lydston with interest.
“Yes. I was practically certain, you see, and I judged that speed would be advisable. Here it is.” Dr. Bickleigh drew a small pillbox from his trousers pocket and extracted the capsule with its fatal content of culture-jelly. “I’d better administer it at once.” How incredibly easy it all was.
“I’ll administer it, I think,” said Dr. Lydston, a little stiffly.
With a hidden smile at the childishness of this exhibition of professional jealousy, Dr. Bickleigh handed the capsule over. All the better. Let Lydston kill him. It made the situation still more amusing.
Dr. Bickleigh watched the administration with calm pleasure. He felt no more compunction than before, in his own drawing-room. Chatford was not the sort of person to arouse that.
With his usual preciseness, Dr. Lydston half filled a tumbler with water and approached the bed. “I want you to take this,” he said gently, and Chatford’s eyes slowly opened. He had not the strength to raise his head, and Dr. Lydston had to support it and put the capsule in his mouth for him. It took several efforts and sips of the water before Chatford intimated that it had gone down. As Dr. Lydston carefully laid the head on the pillows again Dr. Bickleigh turned away and looked out of the window. He had to do so, to hide a small smile of triumph which he simply could not suppress. Well, that was the end of damned Chatford and his mischief-making. Heigho for Ivy, and independence at last.
Now that the thing was done, his senses seemed strangely intensified. He turned back from the window and looked round the room as he had not done before, and seemed to take everything in at one sweeping glance—the big double bed in which the sick man lay (Chatford was evidently old-fashioned; it was always the man on that question who was the old-fashioned one), the cup of arrowroot on the bedside table, the medicine-bottle of milky-looking fluid on the mantelpiece, the tumbler and two smaller bottles (surgery bottles, too) on the washstand, the very feminine dressing-table with its wing-mirrors. . . . How very curious to reflect that this was Ivy’s room as well as Chatford’s. Most curious.
Abstractedly he strolled, with unconscious professional instinct, towards the washstand. Why surgery bottles? And labels indicating their contents, too. Most unusual. “Sod. Carb. Sol.” “Tinct. Ferr. Perchlor.” And the bottle on the mantelpiece; but the contents of that were not stated.
“Well, I think we’d better leave him,” suggested Dr. Lydston.
Dr. Bickleigh, who had no further object in staying, quite agreed.
Downstairs, the two chatted for a moment about the case and Chatford’s chances of recovery, which they agreed in putting none too high. Dr. Bickleigh asked whether Mrs. Chatford had been sent for, and was told that everything necessary and possible had been done. He prepared to say good-bye.
But Lydston, it seemed, was positively loath to let him go. Not out of Chatford’s house. They both left that briskly enough. But then it appeared that Lydston had not brought his car, and Dr. Bickleigh had to give him a lift home; and, as if overcome by gratitude for this service, Lydston pressed him so strongly to stay to tea that, eager though he was to get away, it was simply impossible to refuse. Dr. Lydston explained earnestly that his wife was out, and seemed to think this still another excellent reason for Dr. Bickleigh staying to tea. And afterwards he had so many questions to ask about botulism and food-poisoning in general, and a dozen other subjects, that it was past five o’clock before Dr. Bickleigh got away.
When finally he was allowed to escape, he drove back to Wyvern’s Cross in a kind of trance of satisfaction.
4
IT WAS only when he had got home and put the car away that a query which had been lying submerged in his mind rose to the surface. Why on earth tincture of perchloride of iron?
He took down the Materia Medica in his consulting-room bookshelf and looked it up. The next moment he laughed out loud. The combination of ferric perchloride and sodium carbonate, with the tumbler, on the wash-stand, the arrowroot, the demulcent drinks, and the milky-looking stuff on the mantelpiece (obviously calcined magnesia)—why, it was as plain as pikestaff. That old fool Lydston had been treating Chatford for arsenical poisoning!
Well, after all, the symptoms are identical with those of gastro-enteritis.
So that was why he had come round so suddenly. Wanted to see if he himself would diagnose the same thing. How extraordinarily funny. Lydston had suspected arsenical poisoning, and—
Dr. Bickleigh’s mirth ended sharply. Arsenic! That was where the arsenic motif came in. Nothing to do with Julia at all. Good heavens, but surely they could not suspect. . . .
He dropped into a chair, literally. His knees had suddenly lost their strength. They did suspect.
They must suspect. Why else should the Chief Inspector have questioned him so closely about arsenic? They suspected him of having administered arsenic to Madeleine and Chatford. That reference to gossip about Julia had been just a blind. The man had been trying to trap him into an admission of possessing arsenic.
But how could they suspect such a thing? Chatford’s symptoms were not unlike those of arsenical poisoning, it was true; but the presence or absence of arsenic in the body could be ascertained in a moment by any competent analyst. And the analyst’s report would have been negative. So how could they suspect?
Dr. Bickleigh leaned forward over the table, his head on his hands. He must keep calm. He must think this properly out.
They had suspected arsenical poisoning, but they might not have suspected himself as its administrator.
No, that would not do. The Chief Inspector would not have questioned him like that if he had not been suspected as the administrator.
Well, then, they had suspected him of administering arsenic, but they couldn’t do so any longer because by now they must have got the analyst’s report that there was no arsenic in the eliminations. What would they be thinking now, then? Obviously, that the illnesses had been due to natural causes. That their suspicions had been unfounded, beastly, lying. They must be thinking
that. There was nothing else to think.
And that was why Lydston had changed his mind. Lydston would have been in the confidence of the police. He would have known of the suspicion. Naturally, then, he had refused to let him see Chatford this morning. But, after he had left, Lydston had heard of the analyst’s report and realised that arsenic couldn’t be in question at all: the illness was perfectly natural. And he had called Dr. Bickleigh in, not only to get a helpful opinion, but in a way to make amends for the baseness of . . .
Wait a minute, though. Suppose the whole thing had been a trap. Suppose that, arsenic being out of the question, Lydston and everybody else had been puzzled as to what really was the matter with Chatford: the analyst could find no poison, but they persisted in their beastly idea that Dr. Bickleigh had poisoned Chatford. Supposing they had called him in with the hope that he would give himself away and tell them what the trouble really was. And, good God, that was exactly what he had done: diagnosed an obscure disease like botulism, without a proper examination of anything . . . given himself right into their hands.
Wait a minute again, though. No good getting flustered. Supposing that really was the truth—well, what did it matter? He was competent to diagnose botulism. And botulism was a natural disease. No question of poison there. His idea all along had been to establish botulism as soon as possible. That couldn’t be wrong now, could it?
No, not possibly. How could the establishment of botulism possibly be wrong?
Oh, God—the capsule. The capsule that he had pretended to contain jalap and cream of tartar.
But Lydston had administered it. Chatford had swallowed it. He had seen him with his own eyes. That definitely precluded the possibility of a trap. And of suspicion too. Good heavens, yes. They wouldn’t have invited a suspected man in and calmly administered anything he brought with him, would they? No, that was final.
What a hell of a relief. And what a hell of a stew he had been getting into over nothing at all. He really must look after his nerves. This sort of thing was really silly.