The Problem of the Green Capsule

by John Dickson Carr

  Bostwick had noticed them. “Oh, ah. You’ll see several things there. In the lower shelf.”

  “H’mf. Rather a mixed bag, isn’t it?” muttered Dr. Fell, peering over his shoulder. “The young lady’s character begins to seem more interesting than I thought it was.”

  “It’s already interesting enough for me, sir,” said Bostwick grimly. “Look here.”

  The dressing-table was between the windows. In the middle of it, pushed back against the round mirror, stood an ornate gold box some five inches square. Its sides were rounded, and it stood up on four short legs; the workmanship was Italian, with a coloured design of Madonna and Child on the lid. The false bottom, barely a quarter of an inch high, was well and ingeniously concealed; it worked on a spring mechanism from a tiny rosette in one of the legs. Bostwick illustrated it.

  “I suppose,” Elliot said slowly, “she got this box during the trip abroad?”

  “I dare say.” Bostwick was indifferent. “The point is——”

  “And, as a result, other members of the party might know about the false bottom?”

  “So?” rumbled Dr. Fell, peering round. “You suggest it was planted here?”

  Elliot was honest. “I don’t know. It’s the first thing I did think of, I admit. But if somebody did plant it here, I also admit that I don’t see rhyme or reason in it. Let’s face this.” He walked up and down the room, brooding. “We’ve got to accept the fact that the real murderer is either a member of this household or very intimately associated with the Chesneys. We can’t get away from that. If this were fiction, the murderer could conveniently turn out to be a complete outsider—say Stevenson the chemist, for instance.”

  Bostwick opened his eyes. “Here, here, here! You’re not saying——”

  “No. That won’t work; and we know it. But what person here would have any reason to——”

  He checked himself, and both he and Bostwick looked round, for there had been a slight exclamation from Dr. Fell. Dr. Fell was not interested in the jewel-case. Instead he had idly, almost absently, pulled half open the right-hand drawer of the dressing-table. From this he took out the cardboard container for a Photoflood bulb: empty. He weighed it in his hand. He sniffed. After setting his eyeglasses more firmly on his nose, he held the container up against the light as though he were studying a bottle of wine.

  “Oh, I say,” muttered Dr. Fell.

  “Well, sh?”

  “The little more, and oh how much it is,” said Dr. Fell. “Look here: if nobody has any objection, I should very much like to talk to the maid who does up this room.”

  It was Elliot who went in search of her; Dr. Fell’s manner had been that of one who begins to pound on a door, and prepares to break it in. He found that Lena, the red-haired maid, was responsible for the room. But Pamela, the pretty one, insisted on accompanying her for moral support; and both of them faced Dr. Fell with a strained and solemn air which (Elliot later learned) covered a wide impulse to giggle.

  “Hullo,” said Dr. Fell amiably.

  “Hello,” said the red-haired maid, not committing herself. But Pamela, on the other hand, smiled engagingly.

  “Heh-heh-heh,” said Dr. Fell. “Which of you is responsible for tidying up this room in the mornings?”

  Lena, after a quick look around, answered defiantly that she was.

  “Ever see this before?” inquired Dr. Fell, holding up the cardboard container.

  “Yes, I did,” answered Lena. “She had it yesterday morning.”

  “She?”

  “Miss Marjorie had it,” said Lena, after receiving a violent nudge from her companion. “She went up the road and bought it, early, and when she got back I was just tidying the room up, so I know.”

  “Is it a clue, sir?” asked Pamela, with innocent eagerness.

  “It is. What did she do with it: do you know?”

  Lena glowered. “She put it in that dressing-table drawer there, that you have open; and you’d better put it back, too, if that’s where you got it.”

  “Did you see it afterwards?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Pure, simple fright was reacting on Lena in this way; but Pamela was made of different stuff.

  “I saw it afterwards,” she volunteered.

  “You did? When?”

  “Quarter to twelve last night,” replied Pamela promptly.

  “Wow!” said Dr. Fell, with such relief, violence, and tactlessness that even Pamela shied back and Lena’s face grew muddy pale. “I beg your pardon; I am deeply sorry,” he urged, waving his hands and adding to the consternation. Bostwick was staring at him.

  “You better be careful,” said Lena passionately. “You’ll go to gaol, that’s what’ll happen to you.”

  “I shan’t go to gaol,” said Pamela. “Shall I?”

  “Of course not,” Dr. Fell told her, soothing again. “Can you tell me about it? Try to tell me about it.”

  Pamela stopped long enough to make a secret and triumphant grimace towards her companion. “I got it for Mr. Chesney,” she explained. “I sat up last night, listening to the wireless——”

  “Where is the wireless?”

  “In the kitchen. And when I left it I came out and started to snoopy up the stairs, but just then Mr. Chesney walked out of the office.”

  “Yes?”

  “He said, ‘Hullo, what are you doing up? You’re supposed to be in bed.’ I said please, I’d been listening to the wireless; I was just going up to bed. He was going to say something, but Professor Ingram came out of the library just then. Mr. Chesney said to me, ‘Do you know for the Photoflood light bulb that Miss Marjorie bought to-day? Where is it?’ I did know for it, because Lena told me——”

  “Don’t you try to put it on to me,” cried Lena.

  “Oh, don’t be so daft!” said Pamela, with a sudden touch of impatience. “There’s nothing in it, is there? I said it was upstairs. Mr. Chesney said, ‘Well, run up and get it for me, will you?’ And so I did, and brought it down to him while he was talking to the professor, and then I went to bed.”

  Whatever line of questioning Dr. Fell had in mind, it was interrupted by Lena.

  “I don’t care whether there’s anything in it or not,” Lena burst out. “All I know is I’m getting sick and tired of talking here, and talking there, but all the time hush-hush about her.”

  “Lena! S-s-t!”

  “No, and I won’t s-s-t,” said Lena folding her arms. “I don’t believe for a minute she did the things they say she did, else my Pop wouldn’t let me stay here, not for a minute; and he told me so; and I’m not afraid of her anyway. I’m not afraid of ten like her. But she will not do things the way other people do them, and that’s why they say what they do about her. Why did she go over to Professor Ingram’s yesterday, part of the morning and half the afternoon alone: when her own boy, who’s as nice a looking boy as you’ll see, sat here? What about those trips she used to take to London, when she was supposed to be going to Mrs. Morrison’s at Reading? It was to see a Man, that’s what it was.”

  For the first tune Superintendent Bostwick was interested.

  “Trips to London? What trips to London?” he demanded.

  “Oh, I know,” said Lena darkly.

  “I’m asking you, when was all this?”

  “Never mind when it was,” said Lena, now thoroughly roused and almost shivering with stateliness. “It was to see a Man, that’s what it was; and that’s good enough.”

  “Look here, my girl,” said Bostwick, losing his own temper. “we’ll just have no more of that, if you know what’s good for you. Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

  “Because my Pop told me he’d beat the behind off me if I ever so much as mentioned it to anybody, that’s why. And, anyway, it was five or six months ago, so it’s no odds to this. It’s nothing that would interest you, Mist-er Bostwick, What I say is, if we were all allowed to behave like her——”

  “Who was the man she went to Lo
ndon to see?”

  “Please, may we go now?” intervened Pamela, jabbing at her companion’s ribs with her elbow.

  “No, you trumping well can’t go now! Who was the man she went to London to see?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know. I didn’t follow her.”

  “Who was the man she went to London to see?”

  “Oh, ain’t we got manners, though?” said the red-head, opening her eyes. “Well, I don’t know; and I still shouldn’t know, not if you was to give me all the money in the Bank of England. All I know is that the boy worked in a laboratory or something, because he wrote letters. No, and don’t you go thinking things, either, because it was printed on the envelope! That’s how I know.”

  “A laboratory, eh?” repeated Bostwick, slowly and heavily. His tone changed. “Out you go, now; and wait outside until I call you.”

  This command was all the easier to enforce, since at this moment Lena at last succumbed to a fit of weeping. The events of the night before, working with delayed action, had been a little too much. Pamela, a much cooler card altogether, took her out solicitously; and Bostwick rubbed his forehead.

  “A laboratory, eh?” He studied the idea again.

  “You think that’s interesting?” inquired Elliot.

  “Why, I’ll tell you. I think we’ve had a bit of luck at last, and come slap up against the thing that beat us before: where she got the poison,” declared the Superintendent. “That’s my experience. It all comes at once, good luck or bad luck. That’s what it does. A laboratory! Well, dash my buttons! I—This young lady has got a mania for chemists, though, hasn’t she? First this chap, then Mr. Harding.…”

  Elliot took his decision.

  “Harding is this chap,” he said: and explained.

  Throughout his explanation, while Bostwick’s eyes grew larger and Dr. Fell remained sombrely staring out of the windows, Elliot had an idea that it was no news to the doctor. Memories of the morning returned to him, of Dr. Fell hovering a little too close not to have overheard. But the whistle Bostwick gave him was so long and elaborate as to take on the nature of a musical scale.

  “How long—when’d you learn this?” he demanded.

  “When she was trying, as you say, to vamp a police-officer.”

  (He was conscious of Dr. Fell’s eye on him.)

  “Oh, ah,” said Bostwick, as though enlightened. “So it was only—never mind.” The Superintendent drew a breath of vague, irritated relief. “The main thing is, we’ve got our case now. We’re as safe as London. We can tell where she got the poison: she got it from Mr. Harding. She’s probably visited his laboratory; she’d have access to everything; she could steal what she wanted, and who’s the wiser? Eh? Or else—” He paused, a lowering and heavy expression coming over his face. “Now, I wonder? I wonder? Mr. Harding’s a very pleasant-spoken sort of gentleman; but this is a whole lot deeper, a whole lot, than we thought. What if they’ve had us from the very start of it? What if she and Mr. Harding planned the whole thing between them? What would you say to that?”

  “I’d say you can’t have it both ways, sir.”

  “As how?”

  “Well, sir, you talk about a case.” Elliot was on the verge of a roar. “But you’ve got to have a case. What is it? First she committed a murder alone. Then she committed a murder in cahoots with Emmet. Now she kills Emmet and commits a murder in cahoots with Harding. For God’s sake let’s be sensible. You can’t have her going about the place in a homicidal ring-around-the-rosebush with everybody she meets.”

  Bostwick put his hands in his pockets in a leisurely fashion.

  “Oh? Now just what do you mean by that, my lad?”

  “Don’t I make it plain?”

  “No, my lad, I’m afraid you don’t. At least, you make some things plain, I’m afraid; but other things you don’t. You sound as though you still didn’t believe this young lady was guilty.”

  “As a matter of strict fact,” said Elliot, “you’re quite right. I still don’t believe it.”

  There was a small, slight crash. Dr. Fell, never what could be called careful in his movements, had just succeeded in knocking a bottle of scent off Marjorie’s dressing-table. After blinking down vastly at it, seeing that it was unbroken, and letting it remain, he heaved himself back with an expression of great pleasure. Relief went up from him like steam rising from a furnace.

  Dr. Fell said:

  “By me alone can the tale be told. The butcher of Rouen, poor Berrold. Lands are swayed by kings on a throne——”

  “How’s that?”

  “Hah!” said Dr. Fell, smiting himself on the chest, like Tarzan. Then he dropped his air of lofty quotation, wheezed once or twice, and pointed out of the window. “We had better,” he continued, “decide on a plan of campaign. We had better decide whom we are to attack, where we are to attack, and why we are to attack. Miss Wills, Mr. Harding, and Dr. Chesney are at this moment driving up in the car. Therefore a little causerie is indicated. But one thing I will say now. Elliot, my lad: I am very glad indeed you said what you have just said.”

  “Glad? Why?”

  “Because you’re quite right,” replied Dr. Fell simply. “That girl had no more to do with any of these crimes than I had.”

  There was a silence.

  To cover a blankness of thought, Elliot drew back the curtain of the nearest window and glanced out. Below was the trim front lawn of Bellegarde, with the trim gravel drive and the low stone wall fronting the road. An open car, driven by Harding, was just turning in at the gates. Marjorie sat beside him in the front seat, and Dr. Chesney lounged in the rear. Even at that distance Elliot noticed as a grotesque touch that Dr. Chesney, though he wore a dark suit, had a white flower in his button-hole.

  Elliot did not look at the expression on Bostwick’s face.

  “Now, here was your plan,” pursued Dr. Fell. “You were going to assume your finest leer, and go at her with a yell. You were going to flourish the hypodermic needle in her face. You were going to bombard her until she confessed. You were going to take the shortest way, in fact to drive her really mad and make her do something foolish. Well, my simple advice to you is: don’t. Don’t say a word about it. Aside from the fact that she isn’t guilty——”

  Bostwick looked at him. “So you’re in it too,” he said in a heavy voice.

  “I am,” said Dr. Fell. “By thunder, I am! I am here to see that no harm comes to the lame, the halt, and the blind, or I am not worth a Birmingham groat in this cosmos. Kindly place that in your pipe and light it. I tell you, if you push this thing much further you’ll wind up your case by having a suicide on your hands. Which would be a pity: because that girl’s not guilty and I can prove it. We’ve been misled by one of the largest and most shimmering red herrings—wow! —I can remember; but you might as well hear the truth now. Oh, and forget your damned laboratories. Marjorie Wills had nothing to do with this. She did not steal, borrow, or obtain any poison from Harding’s laboratory, and neither, I am almost sorry to say, did Harding. Is that clear?”

  In his excitement or annoyance he was gesturing towards the window. That was how they all came to see what happened below.

  The car was idling up the drive, about twenty feet from the front door. Harding was looking down at Marjorie, who seemed rather flushed and uncertain, and saying something to her. Harding did not look into the driving-mirror to see what was going on behind him—as, in fact, there was no reason why he should. Dr. Joseph Chesney sat forward on the rear seat, his fists planted on his knees and a smile on his face. The watchers could note every detail vividly: the lawn still wet from rain, the yellow-leaved chestnut trees along the road, the smile that showed Dr. Chesney was a little drunk.

  After a glance at the house, Dr. Chesney took the white flower out of his button-hole and flipped it over the edge of the car into the drive. Joggling on the rear seat, he reached into his coat pocket. What he drew out of his pocket was a .38 calibre revolver. The smile was still on his freck
led face. Leaning forward, he steadied his elbow on the back of the seat, pressed the muzzle of the pistol into the back of George Harding’s neck, and pulled the trigger. Birds were startled out of the vines at the crash of the shot; and there was a cough and jerk as the engine of the car stalled.

  Chapter XVII

  WHITE CARNATION

  Superintendent Bostwick was a good twenty years older than Elliot; but he was downstairs only a step or two behind the latter. In the first fraction of a second Elliot wondered if what he had seen was an illusion, a mirage in that quiet front lawn, like one of Marcus Chesney’s illusions. But it had been no illusion that Harding tumbled sideways from the driving-seat, and that Harding screamed.

  The car, stalled, was drifting gently almost against the front steps when Marjorie had the presence of mind to pull on the hand-brake. When Elliot got there, Dr. Chesney was standing up in the back seat, evidently stricken sober. What Elliot expected to find was Harding lying across the side of the car with a bullet in his brain. What he really found was Harding, who had fumbled at the catch of the door and managed to get it open, scrambling on all fours across the gravel drive to the grass, where he collapsed. His shoulders were hunched up to his ears. Blood was coming out of the back of his neck round his collar, where he could feel it, and scaring him into a frenzy. The words he spoke sounded grotesque; they might have been ludicrous on any other occasion.

  “I’m shot,” he was saying in a voice little above a whisper. “I’m shot. Oh, my God, I’m shot.”

  Then he kicked out with his heels, and writhed on the grass; so that Elliot knew they were dealing with no corpse or even near-corpse.

  “Lie still!” he said. “Lie——”

  Harding’s plaint rose to a note of horror. Nor was Dr. Chesney, in a different way, more coherent. “It went off, he insisted, holding out the revolver; “it went off.” What he seemed to wish to impress on his hearers’ minds, over and over, was the startling news that it went off.