by Q. Patrick
“Furthermore, I feel I need not elaborate the significance of Mrs. Lubbock’s last words to Mrs. Greene, words which I interpret as her attempt to tell someone the story which only death prevented her from telling me.
“Gentlemen, I think my case is sound.”
The Archdeacon sat down, folded his hands in his lap, and stared amiably at his feet, while a little ripple of anxiety and corroboration passed over the room.
Lucy alone sat quite still and did not raise her eyes when he finished. Sir Howard sat still and impassive, too, but the veins on his hands stood out as he toyed with a paper-weight on the writing-table. Dr. Crampton appeared to be looking in every direction at once, and tapped nervously on the floor with his foot. But he, too, was silent, and it was Christopher who broke in with a request to be allowed to say a few words.
Everyone looked up in surprise at the tone of his voice, which, though grave, was serene and assured where his hearers might have expected a broken, tragic utterance. He rose from his chair as if a little uncertain as to just how he should begin. Then, as if with a sudden determination not to be dramatic, he sat down again, ran a vague hand through his red, untidy hair, and addressed the Archdeacon:
“I must admit that your case is mathematically perfect,” he said, “and I don’t deny many of your statements. I do say, though, that the conclusions you’ve drawn are absolutely wrong. Now, I’m going to give you my case, but, before doing so, I want you to go back with me some two years—to events of which you can be expected to have known nothing whatsoever—events which concern my own family and its past.
“At that time my grandmother, Mrs. Burwell, was still living. She was living right here, in fact, at Crosby Hall. No one can pretend, as I’ve already hinted to you once or twice, Inspector, that she was exactly a lovable character. What I did not tell you was something the significance of which I have realized myself only within the last two days. Here it is. Though my grandmother had complete control over her large estate, nevertheless, shortly before she died, there were grave doubts as to her sanity. In fact, just before her death, Habermehl, the famous mental specialist, had been called into consultation. A week before the consultation was to have taken place Mrs. Burwell made her will. Two days before it was to have taken place, she died. As you all doubtless know, the entire estate was left to my mother, and thus indirectly to me. While the Lord knows my father, too, has benefited through my mother’s generosity during the last two years—not only in being able to put through certain pet schemes of his own, but also in freeing this property completely of a heavy burden of mortgage and debt. Am I right in my facts?” (He glanced at Beeston and Crampton, both of whom nodded gravely.) “Now then, before I go any further I want you all to realize the implications of what I say. According to English law, if old Mrs. Burwell could have been proved to have been insane at the time of making her will, that will might have been declared invalid—in which case the bulk of her property would probably have gone eventually to her only son, George Burwell, now sitting in that chair over there.”
“Yes, that’s so,” interposed Beeston. “Though he’d have had to take it into court. But he might easily have won his case, because as far as I know he was never legally disinherited by his mother.”
“On the contrary,” said Burwell sagely, “‘where yet was ever found a Mother who’d give her booby for another!’” “Therefore,” went on Christopher imperturbably, “(and remember this, please), my father, my mother, and I myself all would have had excellent motives for doing away with the old lady after the will was made and before the consultation with Habermehl took place.”
“I protest!” exclaimed Sir Howard. “This is outrageous!”
“Not at all,” suggested Philip Beeston suavely. “It is most interesting, and, so far, quite sound in its legal aspects.”
“Oh, I’ve thought of all that,” said Christopher grimly. “Even Mrs. Lubbock,” he went on, “might conceivably have been in on this hypothetical murder of my grandmother, as it’s been obviously to her advantage that my mother, rather than my uncle, inherited my grandmother’s fortune. Now then, for the purposes of making this clear, I want you to assume that one of us three did it—with or without Mrs. Lubbock’s connivance—my father, my mother, or myself (for I was a young medical student at home on holiday when my grandmother died; so I, too, had plenty of the Inspector’s famous Means and Opportunity as well as Motive). Well, will you make that assumption, just for the minute or two that it will take me to finish my case?”
Everyone nodded in silence save Lucy and Sir Howard, who both sat staring intently at their own hands.
“Good. Thank you. Now then. Let us call that mythical person X. Let us suppose that X murdered Mrs. Burwell, for the reasons outlined above. And let us suppose that, after two years of safety, X is blackmailed by an unknown individual—since proved to have been Isabel Lubbock masquerading under the pseudonym of Myra Brown. X knows very well that the only person who could have known of the murder at the time is Mrs. Lubbock, the nurse on the case. X is terrified, and resolves on another murder to cover up the first—resolves, that is, on the murder of Mrs. Lubbock. If Mrs. Lubbock is Myra Brown herself, what more natural than thus to destroy every possible danger of discovery? If Myra Brown is not Mrs. Lubbock but someone else (and remember, X may not have known for sure), then Myra Brown can have obtained her information only through Mrs. Lubbock, and, hence, if Mrs. Lubbock is out of the way Myra Brown’s hold over X becomes negligible in the eyes of any court. Am I right?”
“Roughly speaking, yes,” said Beeston judicially.
“Well then, X determines to murder Mrs. Lubbock. As we have agreed, what more natural? The scheme is made, the means of death prepared with diabolical cunning, Mrs. Lubbock’s life is a matter of days at most….”
But Christopher got no further, for Sir Howard, who had been staring wildly in front of him during the last part of this discourse, now rose with such a sudden jerk that he knocked over the chair he had been sitting in.
“Stop!” he exclaimed in a voice thick with horror and emotion. “Stop! Christopher—no more! Gentlemen—all of you—God forgive me—I did it!”
There was a breathless bush, broken only by a bewildered little “But …” from Lucy,
Then, while the eleventh baronet stood clutching the writing-table and swaying a little where he stood, all eyes were riveted on the future twelfth. For Christopher, rising slowly from his chair, received his father’s confession as if it were the only pleasant anecdote in an otherwise distasteful after-dinner speech. His face relaxed, and a look which combined affection and respect came into his shadowed eyes. Slowly he walked across the room to face Sir Howard behind the writing table.
“Father,” he exclaimed, holding out his hand, “you’re topping after all! Simply topping!”
Mechanically Sir Howard held out his own hand. Delightedly Christopher shook it.
XIII
During the congratulatory little scene between father and son, a benevolent smile caressed the Archdeacon’s lips … a smile which dimpled almost playfully around his episcopal mouth as he looked indulgently first at Christopher and then at Sir Howard … a smile that embraced a self-confessed murderer of innocent women, and the son who stood by him in obvious admiration of his confession! There must be something wrong somewhere—and yet …
The smile said as plainly as words, “Very well, very well, gentlemen, you are welcome to your little display of dramatics, and I fully appreciate the heroic instinct that lies behind this confession—but—facts are facts—and Sir Howard will have to prove his guilt by facts before he can expect me to accept it.”
The others were now staring incredulously at the eleventh baronet. There was a bewildered furrow on Lucy’s forehead, a cynical smile on Philip Beeston’s well-bred, handsome face, and an unholy look of triumph on the ravaged countenance of George Burwell.
“Deuced interesting,” he muttered, as he screwed his monocle into the socket of h
is right eye and looked at his brother-in-law as though he had never before appreciated him at his true worth. “But, tell us more, my dear Howard—‘thou tellst me all and yet thou tellst me nothing.’”
With the same serene and pontifical smile, the Archdeacon echoed his words.
“Yes, Sir Howard, tell us more—if you please. How, for example, did you poison the two Lubbock girls?”
Sir Howard looked appealingly at his lawyer, but Mr. Beeston was now staring out of the window abstractedly, as though this practical joke was no affair of a busy man like him.
“How—how!” blustered the baronet, “what does it matter how? … I did it I—admit it—that’s enough!”
“I presume you poisoned the tea then?” said the Archdeacon imperturbably.
“Of course—damn it.”
“But my records show quite clearly,” here the Archdeacon shuffled the pages of his ubiquitous notebook, “that you called at Lady’s Bower on Sunday, in the morning—and on Monday, in the early afternoon. In both cases this was some time before the family took tea. May I ask if you put the poison in the tea-pot?”
Sir Howard nodded in a belligerent and slightly bewildered manner, as though assent were the line of least resistance.
“Come, come, Sir Howard,” the Archdeacon’s voice now sounded tolerant but faintly impatient. “You must forgive me if I say so, but that is nonsense—sheer nonsense. The contents of the pot were analyzed and not a trace of poison was found. And besides—if the pot of tea had been poisoned, would not everyone who drank from it—and in each case there were a great many who did—have been poisoned also? No, no, sir—it’s not good enough—it just won’t hold water. Besides—” here the Archdeacon puffed out his papal chest and said with much solemnity “—it was you, Sir Howard, who called in
Scotland Yard—and it’s hardly likely—”
“Well, I won’t say another word,” snapped Sir Howard, “without Beeston’s advice. But I have made my confession and now I wish the inquiry to stop. Is that sufficient?”
The Archdeacon shook his head gently but firmly.
“All right,” the landowner snorted. “If you won’t stop the inquiry, you won’t … but you can’t stop me from leaving my own library. And so—with or without your permission—I am going to my study. You can find me there when you want me, and, in the meantime you must thrash this out amongst yourselves. I’m upset—very much upse….”
With these words he strode out of the room and shut the door behind him with baronial emphasis. While the commotion caused by his exit was subsiding, Christopher took the opportunity to ring the bell and ask for Briggs. The young chauffeur appeared and received some whispered instructions which caused him to look around him in amazement and to mutter a distinctly audible and none too respectful “Crikey!” As the leather breeches disappeared through the doorway, the Archdeacon turned towards Christopher and said in the same smooth, sonorous voice,
“It is quite obvious to me, Dr. Crosby, that your father—gallant gentleman that he is—is merely attempting to shield your wife! He showed us just now that he was prepared to stand by her to the limit now that she is actually one of the family, but to my mind there is not one shadow of evidence against Sir Howard. He was not even near the cottage at the time the poison must have been administered—in the case of Amy and Isabel and also in the case of Mrs. Lubbock. I am not one whit shaken in my belief—a belief which amounts now to a certainty—that there was only one person who could have committed these crimes, and that was the person who in every case had access….”
“Wait,” cried Christopher excitedly, “I don’t say that you are wrong about father’s innocence, but I do think I can show you—”
The Archdeacon held up a peremptory hand. “Futhermore, your wife is involved still deeper by the theory which you yourself expounded to us so ingeniously just now. Two years ago, at the time of your grandmother’s death, she was no child. Even then she may have conceived the plan of keeping the money in the family into which she hoped to marry. I do not say she is your friend X or that she murdered Mrs. Burwell—that is your own particular contribution to the case. I admit that it is very plausible to suppose that the person who killed your grandmother (if she really was killed) also killed the others—but I repeat what I said just now….that Mrs. Crosby had—in each case—the motive, the means and the opportunity.”
“Nonsense,” interrupted Christopher, flushing angrily, “my wife was in London at the time of Mrs. Burwell’s death. She hadn’t even finished her training. I could produce a thousand witnesses to prove it. And as to your ridiculous idea of keeping the money in the family into which she intended to marry—why—I don’t think she was even conscious of my existence at that time, and I’d certainly never spoken more than two words to her.” In his indignation he looked ludicrously like a red-headed edition of his father. George Burwell tittered, profanely muttering. “She never told her love, but—sat like Patience on a monument….”
“And now,” continued Christopher, ignoring his uncle’s levity, “I want to show you that your theory is all wrong—I want to convince you, Inspector, that the person who killed all these people need not necessarily have been present to administer the poison—”
There was a rustle of interest round the room.
“But, Dr. Crosby,” insisted the Archdeacon, “must I tell you again that the things were analyzed? Nobody could possibly have poisoned one person at a time without killing everyone else, unless he—or she—had been present at or around the time, of death to slip the hyoscine in the cup of the victim.”
There was a strange smile on Christopher’s face. “Was everything analyzed?” he asked, “The tea, the sugar …?”
The Archdeacon nodded.
“Even the sugar in the bowl?”
The Archdeacon nodded again.
“Ah! but did you analyze the source of supply? All the sugar and tea in Lady’s Bower?”
“No, of course not—” the Archdeacon’s tone was impatient. “To the best of my somewhat limited knowledge, Dr. Crosby, one cannot poison five pounds of tea or five pounds of sugar effectively without killing everyone who takes any.”
“As far as the tea is concerned, I will admit you may be right,” said Christopher, “and in the case of granulated sugar too. But—lump sugar, such as one uses in tea—that’s another story! Why couldn’t someone poison one or two lumps in, say, five pounds, and kill, say, one or two people?”
Everyone in the room was now staring eagerly at Christopher, with the exception of Dr. Crampton, who was looking down at the pattern on the Aubusson carpet with his hands folded meekly on his lap.
The Archdeacon grunted. “I’m not a chemist, and I’m not a poison expert,” he muttered, “but I am more than willing to learn.” The tone was faintly skeptical.
“Very well, you shall learn,” said Christopher with emphasis, as he strode across the room and rang the servants’ bell. A butler appeared at the door, received some instructions and returned bearing a tray which contained a bowl of lump sugar, a salt cellar, a tumbler and a jug of water. Christopher arranged these articles before him in the manner of a conjurer who is preparing his stage properties. There was a deep silence in the panelled library.
Christopher then turned to the dejected little neurologist. “With your permission, Dr. Crampton, I will explain to these laymen your method of administering hyoscine—or indeed any other soluble alkaloid—without necessarily being present at the time when it is to be taken. Dr. Crampton,” he turned again to his breathless audience, “is responsible for this ingenious little device. You’ll find it described in Chapter 14 of his book entitled ‘Newer Aspects of Neurology.’”
Dr. Crampton continued to study the pattern on the carpet with a dejected air.
“Please get on with it, Dr. Crosby,” said the Archdeacon impatiently, “it’s getting very late. …”
“Very well, I’ll get on with it, but I’m afraid I’ll have to go fairly slowly or y
ou won’t follow me.” Christopher poured a few grains of the salt into the tumbler.
“Now, you see this salt, Inspector? Well—may I ask you to use your imagination sufficiently to consider it as hyoscine for the time being? Dr. Crampton can tell you that they look very similar and also that this amount of hyoscine would be enough to poison several people—”
The Archdeacon grunted.
“Now, I’ll pour a few drops of water on the salt in the tumbler—just sufficient to dissolve it. So. As a matter of fact, if we were really following Dr. Crampton’s instructions in detail, the water should be alcohol, but—never mind. It’s dissolved. See. Now, Inspector, that is a saturated salt solution.”
He shook the tumbler gently and passed it to the Archdeacon who examined it with interest.
“Well?” he queried.
“Well—if the salt really were hyoscine, you’ll admit that this mixture would be pretty deadly.”
The Archdeacon grunted again.
“All right. Now—I’ll take a lump of sugar and put it in the tumbler. Or—if I had a medicine dropper—I could drop the liquid on to the sugar. This is quite a rough and ready method, but you see the sugar absorbs the moisture completely.”