The Problem of the Green Capsule

by John Dickson Carr

  “I do not think he had any idea, at the beginning, of trying to throw suspicion on Marjorie. That would have been foolish and dangerous. He might want the girl’s money, but he certainly didn’t want the girl arrested. He only tried to throw suspicion on Wilbur Emmet by planting the cardboard pill-box in Emmet’s pocket. Chance, however, threw heavy suspicion on Marjorie, and Harding saw a way of using it to his own advantage. For he was getting a bit alarmed over something else: the girl was cooling off.

  “You all noticed that. For some weeks her ardour had been definitely on the wane. She no longer looked with bedazed eyes at her charmer; she had got, perhaps, a glimpse or two into his soul; she had a tendency to snap at him, she even considered suicide. Harding, even in the fullness of his vanity, could not help dimly suspecting something like this. He couldn’t lose her now, or he would have run several horrible risks for nothing, and that was bad business. The sooner he could stampede her into marriage, the better for him.

  “He did it by a combination of tenderness and terrorisation. The murder of Wilbur Emmet, a necessary part of his plan, he committed with a hypodermic stolen from you, Dr. Chesney. And the next day he planted it in the false bottom of the jewel-casket. The girl was already half mad with fear; and Harding, missing no opportunity, had got her into such a state that she was willing to cling to him for the pure and insane relief of letting someone carry her troubles. That last effort, with the hypodermic, did the trick. She told us herself she got married to avoid being arrested for murder. I have no doubt Harding pointed out many things to her; among them, that the police might uncover her visits to the laboratory and find she had access to poison; but if she were arrested, and they were married, he would not have to testify against her in the witness-box. Gentlemen, when you stop to consider the smooth, the calm, the complete eye-dazzling cheek of an approach like that——”

  Dr. Fell paused, with a guilty kind of start; Major Crow hissed at him; and then they all stared steadily, and with a furious embarrassment, at the fire.

  Marjorie had come in.

  Elliot would not have imagined that she could look so pale or that her eyes could acquire such a glitter. But her hands were steady.

  “It’s all right,” Marjorie said. “Please go on. You see, I’ve been listening at the door for five minutes. I want to hear.”

  “Hrr!” said Major Crow. He bounced out of his chair, and began to fuss. “Would you like a window open? Or a cigarette? Or a brandy? Or something?”

  “Have this pillow,” urged Dr. Chesney earnestly.

  “I think, my dear, that if you were to lie down—” began Professor Ingram.

  She smiled at them.

  “I’m quite all right,” she said. “I’m not nearly as brittle as you think. And Dr. Fell is quite right. He did do all that. He even took the books on chemistry I’ve got upstairs in my room, and used them against me. I got them, you know, so that I could read up and try to take an intelligent interest in the work he was doing; but he said what would the police think when they found them there? What’s more, he—he knew what Inspector Elliot knew: about my trying to buy potassium cyanide in London——”

  “What?” roared Major Crow.

  “Didn’t you know?” She stared at him. “B-but the Inspector said—at least, he hinted——”

  This time Elliot’s face was so hot that there was no mistaking it in anyone’s eyes.

  “I see,” Major Crow remarked politely. “Let it pass.”

  “A-and he even said they might suspect me of having something to do with the show where Uncle Marcus was killed. He said he knew Uncle Marcus had written a letter to Dr. Fell, and the letter said to keep an eye on my actions.…”

  “It did,” said Dr. Fell. “‘I will be fair and give you a straight tip: keep a close eye on my niece Marjorie.’ That is why I so carefully kept the letter away from the impressionable Superintendent Bostwick until I could show who was really guilty; it would only have led him in the wrong direction. Your uncle was trying to gull me in the same way he tried to gull you by saying Dr. Nemo was Wilbur Emmet. But the effect on Bostwick——”

  “Please wait,” the girl urged, clenching her hands. “You don’t need to think you can make me faint by telling me the truth. When I saw George this afternoon, I mean when he thought he’d been shot, I was so utterly disgusted that I felt sick. But that’s what I wanted to know. Was it an accident that he got shot?”

  “I wish it hadn’t been,” said Dr. Chesney from deep in his throat. “Lord, I wish it hadn’t been! I wish I’d put a bullet in the swine’s skull then and there. Still, it was an accident just the same. I swear to you I didn’t know there was a live cartridge in it.”

  “But Dr. Fell said——”

  “I am sorry,” returned Dr. Fell, making an uncomfortable movement. “Not once in this entire case, I maintain have I misled you by word, deed, or suggestion; but I had to mislead you then. There were too many ears close at hand. I refer particularly to the sharp Pamela and the even sharper Lena, whose ears were open just inside the door; and an extraordinary amount of shouting was going on in a public place. Lena’s obvious fondness for Harding would probably have led her to report anything I said; and, if Harding heard me say it was not an accident, he would think he was safe beyond all his dreams of bliss.”

  “Thank God,” said the girl. “I was afraid it might be you.”

  “Me?” demanded Dr. Chesney.

  “The murderer, I mean. Of course, at first I thought it might be Professor Ingram——”

  Professor Ingram’s mild eyes opened wide. “This is rather astonishing,” he declared. “I am flattered, but——”

  “Oh, it was your talk about committing the perfect psychological murder. And then, when I went over to your house and stayed there all afternoon, and asked you whether I ought to marry George, and you psychoanalyzed me and said I didn’t love him and he wasn’t the type for me—oh, I didn’t know what to think. But you were right. You were right. You were right.”

  Dr. Fell blinked round. “Psychoanalyzed her?” he demanded. “And what type should she marry?”

  Marjorie’s face flamed.

  “I never,” she said through her teeth, “I never even want to see another man as long as I live.”

  “Present company excluded, I hope,” said Professor Ingram comfortably. “We can’t let you acquire any neurosis, you know. I have thought that in a well-ordered community such a neurosis would be cured by the same principle that is used when airmen crash without being hurt. In order to get back their nerve permanently, they are immediately sent up again in another plane. Your type? I should say, after consideration, that it is one in which the inhibitions correspond to——”

  “Oh, rubbish,” said Major Crow. “The type she wants is a policeman. Now, when this is settled, I promise you, I give you my word of honour, that I’m not having anything more to do with this case. That’s definite. But what I say is——”