‘No, please, Mr Sewell,’ Mitzi said earnestly, ‘it is dreadful. Really, this time she means it. I don’t know what is happening.’
‘Very well. Tell Angela I’ll be there in ten minutes – or thereabouts.’
With somewhat incoherent thanks to me and apologies to Rona, Mitzi retired. I rose reluctantly.
‘The usual SOS from Angela,’ I explained, ‘I suppose I’d better go up and see what it’s all about.’
To my surprise Glen rose too.
‘I’ll stroll a little way with you,’ he said. ‘I want a mouthful of air before surgery.’
Knowing Glen as I did, I suspected some motive beyond the wish for a breath of air. Nor was I wrong. We had hardly gone fifty yards before he began to grin and said:
‘I thought we’d keep Harold on tenterhooks a bit longer, but I expect you’d like to hear about the post-mortem.’
‘I certainly would. But it wasn’t fair to ask you.’
‘That’s why I’m telling you,’ said Glen. ‘Well, it’s a washout. Nothing doing. Friend Cyril can pack up his nasty suspicions and take them back to Mincing Lane with him.’
My voice probably sounded as relieved as I felt.
‘John died of epidemic diarrhoea?’
‘Absolutely. No sign of any other disease, no sign of anything else at all. Nothing (if you want the technical details) but a bit of reddening of the duodenum and a very slight reddening of the jejunum. Precisely what one would expect, in fact, after epidemic diarrhoea.’
‘Thank goodness,’ I said.
It seemed that Cyril had had his trouble for nothing. I hoped, somewhat viciously, that the Home Office might have something to say about his body snatching after all.
‘Then that’s the end of that,’ I added. ‘And now, presumably, John really can be buried at last.’
‘Less certain vital parts of him,’ Glen replied with professional callousness. In answer to my look of enquiry he went on: ‘Oh yes. The bigwig surgeon was satisfied, I was satisfied, the assistant was satisfied, but dear old Cyril isn’t satisfied. He’s insisted on the usual organs being sent up to some hospital or other for analysis.’
‘What on earth for?’ I asked, mystified.
‘Seems almost as if he’d got inside information, doesn’t it?’ Glen said.
‘Your taste in jokes, Glen, like your manners, is deplorable,’ I told him.
3
It was, therefore, without any anticipation of ill that I made a comparatively blithe way to Oswald’s Gable.
Angela was in tears and had sought her usual refuge: bed. She received me there with the aplomb of the habitual invalid – and one who knows, at that, that she looks very nice in bed. She seemed to think it deliberate malice on the part of Frances to be in Torminster when she, Angela, wanted her.
‘Oh well, I suppose you’ll do,’ she told me peevishly. ‘You’re not very sympathetic, are you, Douglas? But after all, it’s advice I want, not sympathy… Douglas, what am I to do? Everyone’s against me.’
‘Nonsense, Angela,’ I soothed. ‘No one’s against you.’
I sat, a trifle gingerly, on the end of the bed where I had been bidden, and confronted Angela, looking very young and pretty and pathetic, in a pale silk dressing-jacket with her hair just untidy enough to be charming. I knew quite well that the effect was calculated, as all Angela’s effects were; but the knowledge, instead of putting me at my ease, only seemed to embarrass me the more.
‘Oh, indeed?’ she sniffed, dabbing at her nose with an absurd little handkerchief – and being very careful not to disturb the powder, as I saw with fascination. ‘Well, if your parlourmaid took your most private letters and gave them to your horrible brother-in-law, and he opened them, wouldn’t you say they were against you?’
‘What are you talking about, Angela?’ I asked.
Angela explained. She had written a private – a most private – letter that morning, and given it to the parlourmaid to post. And the parlourmaid, instead of posting it, had carried it straight to Cyril, who had opened it – and found himself well rewarded.
‘Cyril opened it?’ I repeated incredulously.
‘Yes. He’s like that, you know.’
‘But whom was it to?’
Angela actually bridled.
I will not recount the twists and mental wrigglings in which Angela indulged during the next ten minutes, obviously anxious to tell me about the letter and ask my advice, and yet at the same time unbearably coy about it. In view of the importance which was attached to this letter later I will give its text now, just as it was read out in the coroner’s court a fortnight afterwards:
DARLING BOY:
I am in great trouble and very unhappy. Please come at once and tell me what to do. You know that John died last week – most unexpectedly! – of some internal trouble from which he had been suffering for a long time.
Now his brother is down here, acting very strangely. He seems to think there was something wrong about John’s death and has insisted on a post-mortem. I am so frightened. He is treating me as if I were a criminal. If he finds out about us, I don’t know what he might do. For God’s sake don’t say anything to anyone about the France trip – and remember, I wasn’t in London at all that week; I was in Bournemouth all the time. You could come and stay in Torminster, and Peters could drive me over. Nobody could know, and I must have your advice, now more than ever.
All my love, darling boy, still,
Your distracted
ANGELA.
And the letter was addressed to Philip Strangman, Esq., St Joseph’s Hospital, London, EC.
The gist of this precious communication I gathered then from Angela, and it did not need a fool to see that if Cyril’s suspicions, whatever they might have been, had not proved groundless and appearances at the post-mortem had been ominous, the information which this letter afforded might have been capable of a most sinister interpretation. Even as it was, I thought the lack of trust was bad enough, and I scolded Angela suitably.
She hung her head and tried to look ashamed, but there was a curiously triumphal glint in her eye which made me feel a little disgusted. Nor was this disgust lessened when I learned, in answer to further questions, that this Philip Strangman was not, as I had imagined from the ‘Esq.’ after his name, a surgeon on the hospital’s staff, but a mere unfledged medical student.
‘Were you mad, Angela?’ I said without sympathy.
Angela bridled. ‘Don’t take that tone, please, Douglas. I know I’m older than Philip, if that’s what you mean; but age isn’t everything. We love each other.’
‘You mean you’re lovers,’ I said somewhat brutally.
‘We’re that, in the vulgar sense of the word too,’ Angela answered, not without dignity.
‘And what would John have thought about it? I wonder,’ I demanded a little hotly, for I resented the silly woman’s betrayal of my friend.
‘John knew. And he quite understood.’
‘John knew?’ I echoed.
‘Certainly he knew. I told him. Only a few weeks ago. I didn’t wish to deceive him, and offered to leave here. We talked it over. He was fond of me, in his way, but he knew he’d never suited me – any more than I’d ever suited him. He advised me to stay here with him, on a purely friendly basis, until Philip was earning enough to keep us both. It was very generous of him and I was grateful and agreed. John always was very generous, you know.’
‘He certainly was,’ I agreed, rather nonplussed. The gesture did undeniably sound like John. And yet…
‘So, seeing that the whole thing had John’s approval, will you please get into touch with Philip for me (since apparently it isn’t safe to write a letter while Cyril’s still in the house) and ask him –’
‘No, I won’t,’ I cut Angela short: for to tell the truth the complacency with which
she brought out John’s acquiescence in the role – for, after all, that was what it amounted to – of mari complaisant, irked me very much. ‘Nor, I’m sure, will Frances. And my advice to you, Angela, is –’
‘Oh, well, if you won’t help me I don’t want your silly advice,’ Angela pouted – yes, literally pouted. ‘Will you go away, please, Douglas?’
‘I certainly will, Angela. And in view of your incredible idiocy in writing such a letter, I think I’d better congratulate you about the post-mortem. If they had found anything –’
Her manner completely changed as she darted forward and caught at my arm.
‘You mean – they haven’t found anything?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Apparently not.’
‘John did die of epidemic diarrhoea?’
‘According to Glen, there’s no reason to doubt it.’
‘Glen…oh!’ She frowned. I noticed that she no longer looked like a spoiled and helpless child. ‘But Cyril practically said that…’
‘What did Cyril practically say?’
‘Oh, nothing.’ All of a sudden the old appealing look came into her face. Her voice went up at least two tones. ‘Oh, but Douglas…’
‘Well?’
‘Before you go, if you do happen to see Cyril, please try to find out what it is he’s been searching the house for ever since last night. He and the servants have turned everything simply upside down. Do try to find out, and tell me. Will you?’
‘I’ll ask him,’ I said, and escaped.
Cyril was in the hall as I came down the stairs. I had the feeling that he had been lying in wait for me.
Cyril evidently believed in direct methods, for his question was certainly blunt.
‘I suppose Angela sent for you. What did she want?’
I believe in direct methods myself at times, and I used them then.
‘That’s her business. What have you been searching her house for?’
Cyril stroked his little moustache and smiled, unpleasantly.
‘I might answer, that’s my business. But I won’t. I’ll tell you: I’ve been searching for a half-empty bottle of medicine which, as I understand, was prescribed and sent round by Doctor Brougham to my brother, but now seems unaccountably to have disappeared. Can you throw any light on its whereabouts, Sewell?’
I kept my composure.
‘If you have any problems of that sort, I suggest you take them to the police,’ I said shortly.
He smiled again.
‘Oh, but I’ve already done that.’
I let myself out of the house.
I had made an enemy, but that did not worry me. I thoroughly disliked the fellow in any case.
But I could not help reflecting, as I walked home, how very fortunate it was that the post-mortem had proved
abortive – for all of us. As for that wretched bottle of medicine, I determined to bury it under the next tree I planted.
4
Just ten days later Harold came round to see us at ten o’clock in the evening, in a state of dithering excitement. There was no need for him to apologise for the lateness of his call. The news he brought fully justified that.
‘I say, what do you think?’ he broke out, almost before the door had closed behind him. ‘I thought you’d like to know at once – they found arsenic in John’s body!’
chapter five
Enter the Police
Frances and I stared at Harold.
‘Arsenic?’ I repeated stupidly, stopping dead in my movement to pull a chair up to the fire for him. ‘Nonsense!’
‘Not nonsense at all,’ retorted Harold. ‘I happened to be at the Broughams’ this evening, and the report came through to Glen on the telephone. As a matter of fact I believe it was that fellow who did the autopsy, tipping Glen off.’
‘And Glen told you?’ asked Frances.
‘He said it would be all round the place tomorrow, so I might as well be the first to know,’ Harold said ingenuously. ‘I thought you’d like to be the second. Arsenic! That’s a pretty serious thing, you know.’
‘That’s a mild way of putting it,’ I muttered.
To tell the truth I felt quite dazed. I don’t know if anyone reading this has ever had an intimate friend die from the effects of poison, but if so he will know that at first the news sounds quite incredible; and the closer the friend is, the more incredible does the news sound. Other people, other people’s friends, people of whom one reads in the newspapers, may die perhaps of poison, but one’s own friends never. The thing seems impossible.
Harold pulled his own chair up to the fire. I leaned back against the mantelpiece, still staring at him. Mechanically I noticed that the book Frances had been reading had fallen on the floor, apparently without her noticing it, and mechanically I stooped and picked it up and laid it very carefully on the arm of her chair.
‘Arsenic!’ breathed Frances again. She looked at me in a peculiar way. I realised at once what was in her mind: that cursed bottle of medicine. More than ever I wished that she had not seen fit to meddle with it.
‘There’ll be an inquest, of course,’ Harold said, not without a certain relish. ‘And pretty quickly too, I expect.’
‘What does Glen think?’ I asked abruptly.
Harold shrugged his shoulders. ‘Can’t account for it, of course. Flummoxed.’
‘Yes, yes, but what does he think? You know – accident, suicide or murder?’
‘Oh, not murder,’ Frances put in with such assurance that Harold looked at her.
‘Why not murder?’ he asked with (I would swear) something like disappointment in his voice.
‘Who could possibly want to murder John?’ Frances replied simply.
Harold prepared to be argumentative. ‘How do we know? We can’t possibly say. All sorts of things might have been going on.’
‘Nobody could ever want to murder John,’ Frances returned with the same conviction.
I felt she was right.
‘John was such – such a grand fellow,’ I amplified, searching for the right phrase to describe John and finding them all either inadequate or banal. ‘Nobody but a fiend or a lunatic could have thought of murdering him.’
Harold quirked the corners of his mouth in that mannerism which has always slightly irritated me. ‘Well, how can we say? It might have been a lunatic. Or a fiend.’
‘The idea’s out of the question,’ I snapped.
Harold’s quirk deepened. ‘Is it? It would have been out of the question, I should have said a month ago, that we could be sitting in this room discussing John’s death from arsenical poisoning. But we are. After that, nothing seems impossible.’
I did not wish to pursue the argument.
‘Did Glen say how much arsenic they’d found?’
‘I gathered it was a measurable quantity. Glen seemed to think that meant a good deal.’
‘More than just traces?’
‘A lot more. If you’re thinking of arsenical wallpapers or minute traces from cooking utensils,’ Harold said knowledgeably, ‘it’s nothing like that. Death was directly due to arsenical poisoning, and for a measurable quantity to be found after an illness lasting several days, with all the eliminations that took place, a good deal more than a fatal dose must have been swallowed.’
‘You seem to know a lot about arsenic all of a sudden,’ I said suspiciously.
‘Don’t be silly, darling,’ Frances told me. ‘Glen’s been coaching him.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ returned Harold, ‘Glen hasn’t. He didn’t seem to know very much about arsenic himself. We looked it up in one of his textbooks.’
‘I believe Glen positively despises drugs,’ Frances remarked. ‘Surgery’s all he cares for. Why does a man have to be a physician and a surgeon? He may be rotten at one of them and brilliant at the other
…well, like Glen.’
‘This will look pretty bad for Glen, by the way,’ I said to Harold, disturbed by the thought.
‘He doesn’t seem worried.’
‘No, I don’t suppose he is. And if he were, he wouldn’t show it. But it can’t do a doctor much good to have a patient die of poison under his nose and give a certificate that he died a natural death. They won’t break him, of course, but he’ll come in for some very nasty criticism.’
‘It’s a shame to put all that responsibility on one man,’ Frances observed with some heat.
‘Oh, Glen seems to think he’s covered all right,’ Harold said carelessly: ‘Rona was asking him about that. He says no one can tell the symptoms of arsenical poisoning from natural illness, or very rarely. After all, it happens over and over again with these arsenical poisoning cases.’
There was a little silence.
‘How the devil did John get arsenic inside him?’ I burst out. ‘That’s what I can’t understand.’ It still seemed an incredible horror that John, whom we had known so well, should have died from arsenic poisoning. It made me feel foolishly and uselessly angry; and the anger, as I dimly realise, sprang from an irrational sensation of guilt, as if in some way I could have prevented the thing and had not done so. Of course I could not have prevented it.
Harold quirked again. ‘Well, you and Frances seem agreed that it can’t have been murder, and I imagine that John was hardly the person to commit suicide, so it must have been accident.’
‘But how?’ I demanded helplessly. ‘How could anyone, John least of all, have taken a large dose of arsenic by accident? One simply doesn’t do such a thing.’
Harold spread out his hands. ‘One doesn’t. But the only presumption is that he did.’
There was another uneasy silence.
Finally Frances broke it.
‘It needn’t have been an accident on John’s part,’ she said quietly. ‘It might have been someone else’s.’
‘It must have been someone else’s,’ Harold affirmed. I avoided Frances’ eye.
2
After Harold had gone I tackled her.
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