Humbleby pulled himself together. Nebulous, amateurish excursions into mysticism might be all very well, but this was not the moment for them.
“Thank you, Mr. Crane,” he said; and as if the words had been a signal, the group round the fire shifted and broke. David threw aside his magazine. Medesco heaved himself out of his chair and moved his great bulk, not without a certain feline grace, to a position in front of the hearth, where he stood with his hands clasped behind his back. Eleanor, glancing at her watch, excused herself briefly and left the room on some domestic errand. Nicholas got to his feet, replenished his glass with sherry, drank it at a gulp, and filled again. Only Cloud, subdued by what he had heard, and ruminating, perhaps, some opposition between his professional advantage and his personal sense of moral fitness—only Cloud remained motionless.
“Well, that’s that,” Nicholas said with an attempt at levity. “The confessional is now closed for the night, and the repentant sinner will direct three Government documentaries by way of expiation… Is that funny? No, I suppose in the circumstances it isn’t.”
Humbleby was regarding him speculatively.
“I think,” he said, “that I must have missed Professor Fen’s warning to you.”
“Warning?” Nicholas echoed vaguely.
“You said earlier on that on Saturday he advised you to take certain precautions.”
“Oh, that… Yes, he did. He said he thought it’d be a good thing if Madge and I didn’t eat or drink anything except what other people were eating and drinking.”
“And have you been taking his advice?”
“I have, yes. He’s got something of a reputation as a criminologist, I understand, so I thought that probably he had reason for the warning. And besides that, he said another thing which made me decide that he must be rather a perceptive sort of person.”
“What was that?”
“A plain hint that he’d guessed there was hanky-panky about Gloria’s contract. It can’t possibly have been anything except a guess, but it was an uncomfortably accurate one.”
“And did you pass on his warning to your sister?”
“I did. But I doubt if she’s been paying any attention to it. She’s probably reached that stage of megalomania at which you begin to fancy you’re immortal. And in any case,” Nicholas added, dropping to a more prosaic level, “she’s one of those people who quite automatically do the opposite of what they’re advised to do. If I wanted her to go to Iceland for a holiday, I should tell her that the sunshine of Italy was what she needed, and the next thing I knew she’d be at Reykjavik or the North Pole, chucking soap into geysers for the benefit of the newsreel cameras.”
“I see… What precautions have you yourself taken?”
“Well, I’ve been having all my meals and drinks out, at restaurants and bars, that’s really what it amounts to. And even before you found out that Maurice’s tonic had been poisoned, I gave up taking my own medicine… Look here, Inspector, was Maurice’s death an act of revenge?”
“I can’t say more than I said before, sir, and that is that there’s a fifty-fifty chance it was.”
Nicholas considered this. “Then let’s suppose that thanks to the Mercury the poisoner wants to get at me as well. He can’t put his stuff in the drinks at my flat without breaking open the sideboard, because the woman who cleans for me is slightly dipso, and I have to keep them locked up. He can put it in the odds and ends of food and drink I keep there, and he can put it in my medicine—provided, of course, that he can get into the flat… As a matter of fact, I’ve got the medicine with me… No, no, I’m not intending to take it, my dear chap. But I’ve got a chemist friend in Aylesbury and it occurred to me to ask him to test it for me. One does like to know where one stands. I forgot to take it to him on the way down here, but I can drop it in tomorrow morning.”
“If you care to let me have it, sir, I can test it for colchicine straight away.”
“Test it for what?”
“Colchicine. That’s what killed your brother.”
“Damned if I’ve ever heard of it.”
“It’s rare, certainly. And even if your medicine has been poisoned, that particular toxin may not have been used—though poisoners usually tend to stick to their formula.”
“It’s like a dream, isn’t it?” said Nicholas a little dazedly. “Dispassionate, civilised chat about whether someone is trying to kill one or not… Well, I’ll get you the medicine. When you say you can test it straight away do you mean here and now?”
“If you can give me a room to work in.”
“Yes, of course we can. I’ll consult Mamma about it. Oh, here she is now. Mother, the Inspector wants a room to do chemical experiments in.”
“Good heavens.” Eleanor Crane’s astonishment was pleasantly artificial. “Not trying to isolate bloodstains, surely?”
Nicholas explained the position to her and she nodded. “Yes,” she said, “that can certainly be managed. There’s a sort of box-room that might do, with a table and a chair and a washbasin and a gas fire that works. You must have a look at it, Inspector, and see if it suits you.”
“I’ll fetch the stuff and bring it back here,” said Nicholas, and departed.
“But first, how about dinner?” said Eleanor. “We usually dine at eight, and it’s after nine, and our cook pretends to take pride in the food she serves up, revolting though it generally is, and she’s muttering about giving notice. Inspector, you’ll dine with us, I hope?”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Humbleby urbanely. “It’s kind of you to ask me, but I’d rather go ahead with this job. Perhaps, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, a sandwich…”
“By all means. Mr. Cloud, you’ll stay, of course?”
The lawyer stood up slowly. His face had a strained, vacant look.
“Thank you, Mrs. Crane, but I should prefer not to,” he said. “In the usual way I don’t allow my personal feelings to intrude upon my business, but in this instance—in this case…”
The little man’s struggle to express himself at once honestly and tactfully was not without dignity. After a fractional hesitation he went on:
“I’m sorry to say that after what I’ve heard I shall never again be able to devote myself wholeheartedly to Mr. Crane’s affairs. And I think, therefore, that it would be best for him to have some other legal adviser. I—if you will pardon me, I’ll leave now, and write to him about it in the morning.”
“I can see your point of view, Mr. Cloud,” said Eleanor gravely, “and I quite sympathise with it.”
“You’re very kind, Mrs. Crane. Very kind… No, please don’t ring. I can let myself out. Good evening, Mrs. Crane. Good evening to you all…”
He bowed himself through the door. And by the time Nicholas returned, David, too, had left—in order, as he was at pains to inform them, to wash his hands in readiness for the impending meal. The medicine proved to be a milky fluid in the usual graded bottle; about a third of it had been used.
“What is it prescribed for?” Humbleby asked.
Nicholas grinned. “What they call nervous dyspepsia—though when I look at poor old Evan George, with all his bellyaches, I feel quite ashamed of making a fuss about it… I imagine it’s mostly bicarbonate. That’s what it tastes like, anyway.
“Ah. Well, I’ll get my bag out of my car, and then, if you’d be so kind as to show me to this room…”
Ten minutes later he was alone there. It was small, bare and inhospitable, high up among the attics, but quite suitable for his purpose. Beyond its uncurtained windows, in a darkness unrelieved by moon or stars, the tops of tall trees sighed and whispered in the steady downpour. The aged but mercurial butler brought him substantial quantities of sandwiches and beer.
“Some scandal, eh?” he said affably. “Driving poor honest working girls to suicide. But that’s the boss class all over.”
“Miss Scott worked only spasmodically,” said Humbleby, “and there is no evidence that she was honest.”
The butler ignored this. “But Mr. Maurice, ’e got what was coming to ‘im,” he observed. “Seduced er, ’e did. Droy de saygnur, that’s what they called it in the bad old days of laysez-feer—I dare say you don’t know French, so I’ll translate that for you. It means working girls being forced by law to go to bed with the upper classes, see?”
“You know what you’re like?” said Humbleby. “You’re like some ghastly relic left over from the earliest origins of the Fabian Movement.”
The butler ignored this, too.
“So I can tell what you’re saying to yourself, he pursued. “You’re saying to yourself: ‘Now, ’ow does it come about that a straightforward chap like old Syd Primrose works for a lot of degenerate capitalists like the Cranes?’ You’re saying to yourself—”
“I’m saying to myself that I shouldn’t be surprised to find you licking the boots of people who torture little children for the fun of it.”
The butler took this observation in very bad part. His face became suffused with senile fury.
‘You shut yer trap,” he snarled, transported. “And keep it shut. Don’t think you can malinger me,” he shouted, “and get away with it. Just you wait till we ’ave the revolution. Just you—”
“You said earlier,” Humbleby pointed out, “that we weren’t going to have a revolution.”
“Never you mind what I said, Mr. Bossy. Castin’ a man’s words in ’is teeth. Spittin’ in a poor old chap’s eye. Why—”
“I’ll boot a poor old chap hard in the backside,” said Humbleby, “if he doesn’t get out of here and leave me alone. For God’s sake, go away and read The New Statesman or something. I’m busy.”
The ancient Primrose summoned up his energies for an annihilating blast of invective. None, however, came. It was not that he had thought better of it; rather it was as if he had suddenly lost all recollection of what was being talked about. His face smoothed itself out, and he nodded agreeably.
“So that’s settled, then,” he remarked inconsequently. “Got all you want, ’ave you? You’ve only got to ring if you need anything.” He made for the door and paused there. “About torturing children,” he said earnestly. “I don’t ’old with it.” He adopted a lecture-room posture, one finger upraised. “Now—”
“Get,” said Humbleby, “out.”
Primrose went.
Thereupon Humbleby settled down to work. He enjoyed playing with chemicals, and applied himself single-mindedly to the task in hand. From his case he took test-tubes, nitric acid, sulphuric acid and caustic potash, and for ten minutes was pleasantly occupied with them. Then he sat back and pensively considered the results.
To both the tests he had applied the reaction had been positive. One needed a control experiment, of course, using medicine that was known to be unadulterated; but it was very unlikely that a prescription for dyspepsia would contain any substance capable of provoking the same chemical reactions as colchicine—unlikely, indeed, that any such substance existed. Zeisel’s reaction (which was rather too complicated for Humbleby to perform at the moment) would clinch the matter, but even without that there was no doubt in his mind that Nicholas Crane’s medicine contained colchicine.
It looked, then, as if Fen’s original reading of the case—his interpretation of it as an act of vengeance—might well be correct. But there were two other possibilities—the first, that a murderer unconnected with Gloria Scott had reason for killing Nicholas as well as Maurice; and the second, that Nicholas had killed Maurice from a motive yet to be discovered, and was now attempting to disarm suspicion by simulating a scheme for murdering himself. Neither of these alternatives, however, struck Humbleby as being particularly convincing, since neither accounted for the obliteration of Gloria Scott’s true identity by the ransacking of her rooms in Stamford Street. The girl’s motive for committing suicide was now plain; on no conceivable hypothesis could the invasion of her rooms have helped to keep that motive secret; therefore the Stamford Street affair—unless it were wholly irrelevant and accidental, which Humbleby simply refused to believe—must be connected with the murders. And the only connection which Humbleby could imagine was precisely that which Fen had adumbrated in the first instance—the theory of an avenging murderer, associated with Gloria Scott at the time when she was using her proper name, and anxious (naturally enough) to occlude that connection before initiating his ghastly vendetta.
Thus Humbleby meditated, while he munched sandwiches and gulped beer. And the urgent problem, he saw, was how far-reaching this vendetta was likely to be. Since it included Nicholas, thanks to the Mercury’s informative ways, it would presumably be bound to include Madge as well. And further than that? Well, it might prove to be a vendetta in the strict sense of the word—an indiscriminate attack on the entire family, regardless of whether they had harmed Gloria Scott or no. In that case, Humbleby reflected, it was going to be very difficult to deal with indeed. Better, on the whole, assume that the poisoners malevolence was directed against specific people until events proved otherwise… And upon this callous decision—since the “events” he contemplated would almost certainly be homicidal—Humbleby finished his viands, pushed the tray aside, and began repacking his chemicals and apparatus. The next step, anyway, was clear: he must find out what opportunity there had been for poisoning Nicholas’ medicine.
In the event, however, this enterprise was slightly delayed. Humbleby met Nicholas coming up the stairs to report a telephone call from the police at Doon Island.
“Ah, yes, I asked them to ring me back as soon as they’d made sure Miss Crane was all right,” said Humbleby.
Nicholas turned and they went down to the hall together.
“You’ve completed your tests?” Nicholas enquired.
“Yes.”
“And the result? Or mayn’t I ask?”
“Of course you may. After all, it does concern you very intimately… The bottle of medicine you gave me was in fact poisoned.”
“With this colchicine muck?”
“Yes.”
Nicholas whistled.
“Well, at least I know where I am now,” he said wryly. “What happens next?”
“I must talk to you about opportunity for poisoning the medicine. Are you nearly at the end of dinner?”
“Yes. We’ve been gobbling away in an unsociable silence. I can be with you as soon as you’ve finished talking on the phone. We’ll have some coffee in the boudoir—that’s that door there.”
Inspector Berkeley, on Doon Island, seemed disposed to be chatty.
“Yes, she’s as safe as houses,” he said in answer to Humbleby’s first query. “I interviewed her personally—luscious bit of flesh, isn’t she?”
Humbleby frowned at this familiarity; he did not, he said, want to waste time evaluating the merely aphrodisiac properties of the girl. What had happened at the interview?
“Well, I told her there was a possibility she was in danger,” pursued Berkeley, chastened, “and to be short about it, she just laughed at me.”
“Good heavens above, you can’t have been very impressive with her, can you? Had she seen the Mercury?”
“Oh, yes. There was a copy there in the room. She was pretty brazen about it all, but I could see she was on edge.”
“With your discernment, you should have been a psychiatrist.”
“Yes, but it’s a useful gift when you’re in the Force, too,” said Berkeley, unaware of the irony. “She was on edge all right. And of course, when I say she laughed at me, I don’t mean she actually laughed.”
“No. You just put that bit in to confuse me.”
“She wasn’t in a jolly mood, that’s to say. And small wonder, if you ask me.”
“Small wonder indeed,” said Humbleby heavily, “with a libidinous flatfoot like you goggling at her.”
“Hey,” said Berkeley indignantly. “That’s a slander…” A new thought struck him. “I tell you what, though. Her legs are a disappointment.”
�
�With your imaginings, you’d probably find any real pair of legs a disappointment… This is serious, man. Did you manage to impress on her that she’s got to look after herself? Since I phoned you first, new evidence has come up which makes it even more urgent. She really is in very grave danger of being killed.”
“Cripes,” said Berkeley soberly. “Well, all I can say is that I did my best.”
“You warned her about food and drink and medicines and that sort of thing?”
“Yes, I did that. I don’t think that she’s going to pay any attention, though.”
“And even if she does, we can’t just leave it at that. Our X may try a more direct approach. You must have a man stationed outside the house night and day.”
“Right,” said Berkeley briskly. “I’ll deal with that at once. Anything else?”
“Let’s see… Is the house burglar-proof?”
“Far from it. It’s only a little cottage.”
“Well, try and see to it that she locks the doors and shuts the windows when she goes to bed. You can’t force her to, of course, but with a little tact you may be able to manage it… Oh, look here, I’d better telephone her myself.”
“You can try, but I doubt if you’ll get through. The thing rang three times while I was with her, and she didn’t answer it once. Seems to be a policy.”
“Blast the girl. Well, I can’t spare the time to come down and argue with her, so you’ll have to take complete responsibility. I’ll get the A.C. to contact your Chief Constable so that you can have all the men and facilities you need.”
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