by Q. Patrick
The little party had crowded around the table and were staring at his demonstration with rapt attention. Even Philip Beeston had discarded his habitually bored expression and was looking on with as much interest as George Burwell.
“Now,” said Christopher, as he held up a sticky lump of sugar, “you can see for yourselves that this sugar has absorbed not only the water but the salt too. Taste it, Inspector.”
The Archdeacon gingerly applied the tip of his tongue to the lump of sugar. “It tastes quite salty, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Now, you’ll admit that if the salt had been hyoscine—or any other poisonous alkaloid—this lump of sugar would be impregnated with deadly poison. Am I right?”
The Archdeacon nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said, with obvious reluctance, “but that lump doesn’t look in the least like an ordinary lump of sugar—it’s just a sticky mess.”
“Ah! Inspector,” replied Christopher, smiling, “you have put your finger on the one weak spot—in fact—that’s just where my little demonstration falls down. But—you’ll have to take my word for it—and Dr. Crampton’s too—that if this table salt had been hyoscine, and if the water had been alcohol—hyoscine is soluble in alcohol, by the way, and salt isn’t—one could have done exactly the same thing. But in that case the alcohol would have evaporated completely and the hyoscine would have crystallized inside the sugar almost immediately. Then you would scarcely have known this particular lump from the most innocent or ordinary lump of sugar in the world!”
With these words he took up from the table the book with which Dr. Crampton had presented him during his visit to Clifton. “Now,” he said, “I want to read from one of the authorities, to prove to you that this is, if not a standard method, at least a familiar one with the medical profession for the administering of such drugs as hyoscine. This book of Dr. Crampton’s has been accepted as a medical text book in England and America, so it certainly ought to carry some weight with you, even if I don’t. Here we are—page 243.
“‘In administering small doses of hyoscine and other soluble drugs to neurotic patients, I suggest a method which is practical and easy and, at the same time, does not let the patient know that a drug is being administered to him. A weak solution of hyoscine in alcohol is prepared by the pharmacist’—here some complicated tables are added, but we can skip them—‘This is given to the nurse or some responsible person in the patient’s family with instructions to place a few drops on a lump of sugar with a medicine dropper. The alkaloid crystallizes inside the sugar which successfully masks its bitter taste The patient can take the sugar in coffee or tea at stated intervals without any trouble, but care should be taken (see previous tables) to make the dilution so weak that the patient receives only one-two hundredth to one-sixtieth of a grain at a time according to the dosage that is required and the clinical condition, age, weight and temperament of the patient. Hyoscine is more readily soluble in water than in alcohol, but the latter is advised for this purpose in order to avoid deliquescence and to obviate the danger of accidental poisoning or overdosing.’ …”
As Christopher laid down the book, Dr. Crampton jumped up from his seat like an agitated sparrow.
“That’s all very well, Christopher,” he said petulantly. “I don’t mind your reading from my book, but I think you ought to explain that my method—as outlined there—is absolutely safe and sane. Why, a child could use it without danger—why”
“No aspersions cast on Dr. Crampton,” said Christopher hurriedly. “His intentions were innocent enough, and I’ve no doubt his method has proved very valuable with neurotic patients in many instances. But—just suppose someone who knew something about chemistry and medicine—someone who was accustomed to administering hyoscine in this manner—
A nurse, for example,” interrupted the Archdeacon doggedly.
“All right—a nurse!” agreed Christopher surprisingly. “Supposing this person were to make up a strong solution of hyoscine—a solution so strong that a few drops of it would contain more than enough of the alkaloid for a lethal dose. Supposing he—or she—were to treat a few lumps of sugar with this strong solution and put them in, say, a package of ordinary lump sugar. Then would not each one of these poisoned lumps remain impregnated with its fatal dose of hyoscine until it was dissolved in tea or coffee by some unsuspecting victim? And would not the family who was unwittingly using that particular package of sugar gradually drop down one by one as the poisoned lumps were taken-—just as the Lubbocks did at Lady’s Bower?”
XIV
“Good God!” cried the Archdeacon, as he voiced the astonishment of everyone in the room. It sounds perfectly fantastic to me! Dr. Crampton, is this really possible?”
The neurologist nodded sadly. “Alas, yes! I’m afraid I must admit that my—er—method might possibly lend itself to some abuse of this sort at the hands of an experienced person, but—”
At this moment, the door was thrown open to admit Briggs, carrying in his arms a large tin which bore the label of a well-known firm of sugar manufacturers. Christopher cleared a space for it on the table at his side.
“Sye! where in ’eaven’s nyme did that come from?” asked Norris, who had been listening to what had gone before with an adenoidal stare.
Briggs brightened perceptibly as he heard the familiar Cockney accent and indicated Christopher with a backward gesture of his thumb.
“Arst ’im,” he said, grinning broadly. “Orders is orders.” With which cryptic remark he turned and left the room.
“Briggs has just fetched this tin of sugar from the larder at Lady’s Bower, Inspector Norris. You recognize it, don’t you, Lucy?”
The girl nodded.
With a deft movement of his hand, Christopher overturned the tin and spilled its contents—about four pounds of lump sugar—on to the table. It lay on the cloth in a snowy heap.
Dr. Crampton, now all excitement, hopped up from his seat and examined it eagerly. Finally, he selected several lumps from out of the pile.
“Look,” he whispered to Christopher, “look at those that I’ve put on one side. If you examine them closely, you’ll see that they have a slightly mottled, shrunken appearance. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if they were the ones we’re looking for.”
“Inspector Inge,” said Christopher, after he had examined the small pile which Dr. Crampton had put on one side, “superficially at least, you would say that these lumps here are perfectly normal in every respect. They don’t look very different from the rest of the sugar—or, at any rate, the difference is not great enough so that you would notice it unless you were deliberately looking for it. And yet—if you will be kind and courageous enough to taste one of them with the tip of your tongue, I think you will notice the faintly bitter taste of hyoscine—just as you noticed a slightly salty taste about the lump of sugar which I used for demonstration purposes a few moments ago.”
Very, very cautiously the archidiaconal tongue was applied to the lump of sugar which Dr. Crampton held out. Very ponderously and apologetically the Archdeacon wiped his lips with a large pocket handkerchief and expectorated into the waste-paper basket.
“But the sugar in the bowl, Dr. Crosby, we analyzed it! Why didn’t we find more poisoned lumps? Apparently, quite a number were used…!”
“Coincidence—or mathematics,” replied Christopher with a gentle shrug. “Ten poisoned lumps mixed in with five pounds of sugar! You can figure out for yourself the chances for more than one lump to be in a small sugar bowl at the same time! A simple sum in permutations and combinations…!”
“You may be right,” said the Archdeacon, and there was a note of grudging admiration in his tone, “but we’ll want to have our analyst check up on it before we can be dead sure. But, Dr. Crosby”—here the Archdeacon paused and looked around him cautiously, as if trying to gauge the sentiments of his hearers, “I’ll grant that you may be right as to the method of administration, but you have only confirmed my
belief that this job must have been done by someone with a knowledge of chemistry and medicine. It was no amateur performance. Sir Howard—I am convinced—couldn’t have done it. He hasn’t sufficient scientific knowledge. You, presumably, would not wish to murder your own mother and then be obliging enough to disclose your special method. Neither Dr. Crampton nor Dr. Hoskins had any particular motive—and as for Mr. Burwell—well—” here the Archdeacon spread out his hands as though the gentleman in question were incapable of anything more serious than an occasional tag from Shakespeare—“No,” he continued, “in spite of this interesting and instructive demonstration of yours, I still feel that Mrs. Crosby is the only possibility, and I regret to say that I feel it my duty to serve my warrant on her—even now—and to ask her to come along with me, at least for further questioning. We can hear the rest of your story at the inquest.”
With these words, he laid a slightly apologetic hand on Lucy’s arm and murmured with sinister benevolence, “Now, Mrs. Crosby, if you are ready—”
Lucy looked at Christopher helplessly—an unspoken appeal in her eyes.
“I can’t go,” she murmured. “Oh, Christopher, we can’t be separated so soon….”
A flicker of pain and frustration passed over the face of the young doctor.
“Well, dear—I’ve done my best to explain, but still, they either don’t—or won’t—see. I can’t do more … now. I have no proof—nothing tangible. But I can try to get some. You’ll have to be brave, Lucy—we know it will come out all right.”
“But, Christopher, I can’t go there alone—without you.” She shivered.
It was now Christopher’s turn to spread out his hands in a helpless gesture.
“It won’t—it can’t be for long, darling,” he murmured.
With a little cry, Lucy shook off the Archdeacon’s restraining hand and ran to her husband.
“I hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” she whispered in a desperate voice, “but, since it has, I feel I’ve got to do something which I hoped I should never have to do.” With trembling fingers she picked her handbag from the table and drew from it an envelope on which Christopher’s name was hastily scribbled.
“The letter,” she cried, “your mother’s letter! She gave it to me just before she died and told me to give it to you only if you, or someone you loved was in danger. Otherwise I was to destroy it unread. It may help—” her voice trailed off brokenly.
Christopher took the letter and read it through eagerly.
“Wait a minute, Inspector, please,” he said slowly, with his eyes fixed on the paper. “This may throw some light on things. And—there are still quite a few more questions which ought to be asked and answered. Let’s not jump to conclusions—just yet. Give me a few more minutes—”
“I’ll give you ten minutes,” said the Archdeacon resignedly, as he pulled out his watch and resumed his seat with obvious reluctance.
Inspector Norris was on his feet in a moment. “Sye, Archdeke,” he whispered, his eyes shining with a strange excitement, “don’t go off half cock, this wye. Don’t do it now. We’re just beginning to learn things—important things—and there’s one or two questions as I’d like to ask, if—”
“Go ahead,” said the Archdeacon with the grandiloquent gesture of an indulgent public prosecutor. “My case is finished.”
Norris heaved a sigh of relief, and, facing the others, said in a squeaky voice which was at once diffident and impertinent, “I’m not what you’d call altogether au fay with this case, but there are one or two things I’d like to know, if—”
Christopher looked up from his letter and nodded encouragingly.
“Naow—to go back a minute to that there sugar, which is presoomed to have caused the deaths in the Lubbock family. Can you tell me, Mrs. Crosby, ’oo it was as bought it, and ’ow did it get into Lady’s Bower?”
Lucy hesitated for a moment, but Christopher, seeing her pause, nodded again, saying, “You may as well tell the truth, Lucy—it’s got to come out, sooner … or later!”
She wheeled and faced the Inspector. “Lady Crosby sent it to my mother,” she replied, blushing. “She supplied us with groceries and food regularly. She had done it for years. There was nothing strange about it.”
“O-kye!” Norris was refreshingly imperturbable. He turned to the neurologist.
“And naow, Dr. Crampton,—’oo in Crosby-Stourton knew of your tricky method of administering hyersine?”
“I used that method in the case of old Mrs. Burwell,” the doctor answered despondently. “To the best of my recollection the instructions were given to Lady Crosby only. Mrs. Lubbock, of course, was the old lady’s attendant, but I should never have dreamed of trusting her with such a delicate task as the administration of sedatives. Besides, Mrs. Burwell was—er—decidedly cantankerous towards the end. She didn’t take kindly to trained nurses so her daughter had to do all that kind of thing for her.”
“O-kye. And could Mrs. Burwell have been given an overdose without your knowledge?”
“It is possible—yes.” The little doctor’s voice was regretful. “When a patient in a critical state is taking a certain drug regularly, deliberate overdosage might pass unobserved by any physician unless he had some special reason to look for it. But—as I remember it, Mrs. Burwell died in her sleep and there was nothing about her death to arouse my suspicions. She was very old—had been ill a long while, and it was only a matter of a few weeks, or months, anyhow—”
“O-kye, doctor. Now, in your opinion, would Lady Crosby or Mrs. Lubbock have had the necessary knowledge and—er—skill to substitute a larger dose for the one you prescribed, and thus kill the old lady?”
“Mrs. Lubbock—no. Definitely, no. But, Lady Crosby,” here the neurologist paused and looked apologetically at Christopher, “Lady Crosby was an exceptionally intelligent woman. She had had a college education—had studied natural sciences at Girton. I believe—and, of course, she was closely associated with the Cottage Hospital and several similar institutions during the war. She had a great deal of medical experience, and—” The doctor’s voice was now so regretful and so low that they all had to strain their ears to hear what he said.
“O-kye,” interrupted Norris, with a smirk in the direction of his colleague, “and now, Dr. Crampton, was Mrs. Burwell really insane?”
“Well, she was, and she wasn’t—the term is not easy to define—”
“Was Lady Crosby insane?”
“Well,” the little doctor looked uneasily around him, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that she was insane, but, after her mother’s death she did suffer from a form of functional neurosis which showed itself in restlessness, anxiety and a feverish desire for activity. When I left Crosby-Stourton I referred her to Habermehl, the great mental specialist, for treatment. You would have to ask him for details of the case….”
During this cross-examination, Christopher had been staring down at his mother’s letter with a strange, tortured expression on his face. At the mention of Habermehl’s name, he jumped from his chair, and said, as though his life’s blood, and not words, were coming from his lips,
“I suppose I started this, but you don’t think I’ve enjoyed it, do you? It’s been Hell. If I were as brave a man as my father, I might lie to you, the way he did, but—sooner or later—you’re bound to find out the truth. So … why not now … before the innocent have to suffer any more?”
Bewilderment and incredulity were painted on the faces of Beeston, Burwell and the Archdeacon as Christopher uttered these agonized words. There was a self-satisfied smile on Norris’ plebeian countenance, but Lucy’s eyes were filled with tears of sympathy as she looked at her husband.
“Surely you see now,” Christopher cried, as he looked from one stupefied countenance to another, “or must I actually name her? It was my poor mother who did it. I had suspected for some time that she was—er—mentally unbalanced, just as her mother was. When I saw Habermehl the other day, he proved that my suspi
cions were all too true. I think she probably hastened Mrs. Burwell’s end in the way I described to you—and then, when she began receiving those threatening letters, she tried to kill Mrs. Lubbock in the same way. Naturally she thought the letters came from Mrs. Burwell’s old nurse, or at her instigation, since she was the only person who might reasonably be expected to know what she’d done. And so, my poor mother treated several lumps of sugar with hyoscine, enclosed them in an ordinary five-pound package and sent it to Lady’s Bower with her regular gift of groceries. Then she established her perfect alibi by going up to London until it was all over. Perhaps she intended to come back in time to stop Mrs. Lubbock from being poisoned, but it was too late. She had not counted on the unexpected arrival of Lucy’s sisters from London. Their deaths—I firmly believe—were purely accidental. I don’t think my mother ever intended them any harm….”
There was a rustle of astonishment in the room.
“… And I don’t believe Mrs. Lubbock ever really knew anything about Mrs. Burwell’s death, but I think my mother gave away the truth just before she committed suicide, and then—and then—it was too late.”
“Suicide!” There was a gasp from his audience.
“Yes, my mother must have killed herself after she discovered the ghastly mistakes she had been making. But she left some explanation. I felt sure she would. Although her mind was unhinged and she suffered from a constant fear of being found out, she was not utterly bad and I am sure she would not have allowed anyone else to suffer for her wrongdoing. She sent for Lucy just before she died and gave her this letter—to be opened only in case of danger to someone I loved. The letter is addressed to me. I will read it—or, if you like, Inspector, you can read it for yourself.”
With averted eyes he handed to the Archdeacon a hastily scribbled letter. It ran: