Ask For Ronald Standish

by Sapper

  “Quite right, isn’t it?” agreed Ronald. “But you seem surprised. Wasn’t that piece on the nail when you came out the other night?”

  “Of course not,” he stammered. “How could it have been?”

  “How indeed,” said Ronald pleasantly. “You at once took it down.”

  “A lie,” shouted Tranton.

  “Then how come your finger marks on it?” asked Ronald quietly.

  “I may have touched it as it lay on the floor,” said Tranton sullenly.

  “‘Quite positively – no,’ was your answer to the inspector’s question,” remarked Ronald.

  “Good God! man, with a tragedy like that one may forget a trifle.” Tranton with a great effort had recovered his self-control. “In any event, what has it to do with me? I was in the drawing-room when it happened.”

  “Let us return there,” said Ronald. “As you say you were in the drawing-room talking to your friends.”

  “And if you’ll tell me how anyone in the drawing-room could know when a man arrives on the landing outside I shall be obliged,” he sneered,

  “Just what I am going to tell you,” answered Ronald, unwrapping his parcel. “For that is the very point that has been worrying us. You see, Tranton, you murdered Sinley by firing a fixed gun electrically through the ventilator. You had asked him to examine that strange mask you had suspended on a nail…”

  “Are you mad?” spluttered Tranton.

  “But our difficulty, in view of the fact that the lift is absolutely silent, was to find out how you knew when he was in position so to speak. And then it suddenly dawned on me that not only were you talking, but you were playing the wireless. Shall we turn it on now, Tranton?”

  The colour of chalk, Tranton plucked at his collar ceaselessly.

  “When trying it before we found a valve had been removed,” continued Ronald. “Which struck me as strange, since it was playing all right on the night of the party. So I obtained another. Here it is. Hold him, Mac.”

  Struggling like a madman in the grip of the inspector and the constable who had joined us, Raymond Tranton strove to get at Ronald, who was imperturbably adjusting the valve.

  “Now,” he said, “let’s hear the news.”

  He switched on; then, going to the window, he waved his hand.

  “Another constable representing Sinley is about to come up in the lift,” he said. “Listen.”

  It started suddenly, a clear piercing note from the wireless. Then it stopped.

  “The lift is up,” said Ronald quietly.

  Came a pause, then the noise started again.

  “Now it’s going down. And now Sinley is looking at the mask. And now you killed him, Tranton. That is how you knew when he’d arrived on the landing.”

  The shrill note stopped, and in the room there was dead silence.

  “The lift was inaudible, save when the wireless was playing. Then, the lift being electric, that noise took place. Ingenious, Tranton, very ingenious.”

  “You can’t prove it,” snarled the other.

  “At any rate,” said Ronald affably, “we can have a damned good attempt.”

  4: The Paper Stamp

  “Show the gentleman in, Sayers,” said Ronald Standish, tossing the card his man had just given him over to me. I glanced at it and saw that our visitor was a Mr Alfred Humber of Humber, Jones and Humber, Gray’s Inn; and a moment or two later a typical family solicitor entered, who looked from one to the other of us in doubt.

  “Take a chair, Mr Humber,” said Ronald, rising and pulling one forward. “This is Mr Miller.”

  Mr Humber sat down and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “Cooler in here than it is outside, Mr Standish,” he remarked in a deep, rather pleasant voice. “But as I expect you are a busy man, I’ll get down to the reason of my visit right away. It was Mr James Marrowby from whom I heard about you some two years ago, and I docketed your name for future reference should the occasion ever arise.”

  Ronald bowed. “I remember Mr Marrowby’s case well,” he remarked. “How can I be of service to you?”

  Mr Humber drew some papers from his pocket and adjusted a pair of spectacles.

  “I should like to make it quite clear at the beginning, Mr Standish,” he said, “that I can only give you a bare outline of what has happened. The details I do not know myself, but I am hoping that if you are sufficiently interested you will come forthwith to Ashington Manor and go into the matter more fully. Have you by any chance read the morning papers closely? You haven’t. Then you will not have seen the small paragraph that contains the news.

  “Ashington Manor lies not far from Tenterden, and it belongs – or rather belonged – to a Mr George Sinclair who has been a client of my firm for years. And it is in connection with his sudden and very unexpected death yesterday that I have come to see you.

  “But before I come to that part of it, which I have only heard in brief over the telephone, it will be necessary for me to give you some details as to his circumstances generally. He was a man just rising sixty-five, in excellent health save that recently he has been having some little digestive trouble for which a doctor has been treating him. He was unmarried, and for the past four or five years his nephew John Sinclair has been living with him. His hobbies were a strange mixture, gardening and toxicology, and for the purposes of the latter he had built a room at the end of the garden which he used as a laboratory and study. It was in this room that he was found dead by his nephew at four o’clock yesterday afternoon.

  “I must now deal with another aspect of his affairs, which, as things have panned out, is a very important one. I allude to finance. Mr Sinclair some years ago was a quite wealthy man, but he was one of those dear fellows who was under the fond delusion that he was a financial genius. And it soon became apparent to us that unless he was watched carefully he wouldn’t remain wealthy for long. So we persuaded him to put his investments in our hands, where they have remained ever since. We also advised him to take out an insurance policy on his life, which he did. And it is over this policy that the trouble, if any, is going to arise. I have it here with me and I will give you the details.

  “The business was effected with the Southern British, and the policy was for a certain number of years or earlier death. You are doubtless familiar with similar schemes.”

  “I am,” said Ronald. “How many years was it?”

  “Twenty-five; of which twenty-four and nine months have already elapsed.”

  “And for what was he insured?”

  “The sum which would have fallen due, had he lived, in three months from now is just under twenty-five thousand pounds.”

  “Which now that he is dead falls due at once,” remarked Ronald.

  “Now we are coming to the point, Mr Standish.” The lawyer leaned forward impressively. “Again I must remind you that my information is of the scantiest, and that what I am about to tell you is what I heard in an agitated conversation over the ’phone with his nephew. John told me, that amazing though it might seem, the circumstances pointed to suicide.”

  “In which case the company won’t pay up,” said Ronald.

  “Exactly. But as John said to me, the thing is incredible. What possible reason could there be for him to take his own life? His finances were sound, though like all of us he had felt the draught during these past few years. And in three months from now he would have received twenty-five thousand pounds.”

  “Come, come, Mr Humber,” remarked Ronald, “there are other reasons for suicide beside financial ones.”

  “I would be the last to deny it,” said the lawyer. “But in his case I can think of none. He thoroughly enjoyed life; he was healthy; there was no question of the loss, say, of a devoted wife. There is nothing, Mr Standish, that I can think of which could have caused my old friend to take his life.”

  “How did he do it?” asked Ronald.

  “I understand from John that he drank poison,” answered Mr Humber, and Rona
ld raised his eyebrows.

  “That looks a pretty deliberate action,” he remarked. “I mean, I take it, that since there is no question of foul play…”

  “Good heavens! no,” cried the lawyer.

  “Then the only alternative to suicide is that it was an accident.”

  “Precisely. Precisely, Mr Standish. And it is in order to try and establish the fact that it was an accident that I have come to you. Your trained eye will notice things that ours will miss. It is not only a question of the company paying up, believe me; though naturally one doesn’t want to lose the money. But it is the stigma of the thing that I want removed. And so I am venturing to ask you if you will be good enough to accompany me down to Ashington Manor, and go into things first hand on the spot.”

  Ronald rose.

  “All right, Mr Humber; we’ll come. Though I must frankly confess that from what you have told me up to date things don’t look too bright. One would hardly expect a man whose hobby is toxicology to drink poison by accident.”

  Ashington Manor was a medium-sized house lying some distance back from the road, down to which the property stretched. Some fine old trees fringed the lawn, and partially hidden amongst them was a low building which was obviously the laboratory to which Mr Humber had alluded.

  Standing by the front door as we drove up was a young man of about thirty, and with him was a short thick-set companion who I instinctively put down as belonging to the police.

  “My dear John,” said Mr Humber as the car drove up, “my very deepest sympathy. I can hardly believe it even now.”

  “I can hardly believe it myself, Mr Humber,” said the young man. “The whole thing was so tragically, so unbelievably sudden. By the way, this is Inspector Durrant.”

  “And this is Mr Standish,” said the lawyer, “who has kindly come down to help us if he can.”

  John Sinclair bowed.

  “Very good of you,” he remarked. “We want all the assistance we can get, don’t we, Inspector?”

  Inspector Durrant gave a non-committal grunt.

  “Assistance won’t alter facts, Mr Sinclair, I’m afraid,” he said. “And it’s facts that we have to put before the coroner.”

  “At any rate,” put in the lawyer, “it will do no harm to hear the facts. Shall we go inside?”

  We followed John Sinclair into the house.

  “They can be told very shortly,” he said, when we were settled in his study. “My uncle, as perhaps you have heard, Mr Standish, was a very ardent toxicologist. And yesterday afternoon he announced his intention of continuing some experiments he was engaged upon down in his laboratory, which is the building you see across the lawn. He was working, so he told me at lunch, on a little known African poison belonging to the group with which the points of darts and spears are sometimes impregnated by the natives – I believe curare is one of the family – a group of probably the most deadly poisons in the world.

  “The old man had seemed a bit moody and irritable during the morning, so as I had to go into Tenterden myself I was glad he had something to take his mind off.”

  “Have you any idea why he was moody and irritable?” asked Ronald.

  “I don’t think he was feeling very fit; that’s what he told Ames the butler. He’s been having trouble with his digestion, and as I told you, Inspector, I’m convinced my theory is right.”

  “Take it in order, sir,” said the inspector. “That comes later.”

  “I returned from Tenterden about four,” continued Sinclair, “and as I was passing the laboratory I put my head inside to see how he was getting on. To my horror I saw the dear old chap lying contorted on the floor in a corner of the room, and quite dead. For a moment I was completely stunned; I could hardly believe my eyes. Then I rushed to the house and telephoned for the doctor, though it was obvious that my uncle was beyond human aid.

  “Doctor Streatham came immediately, and together we returned to the laboratory. Everything, just as it is now, was as I had found it, and while the doctor made his examination I took stock of things. The desk was in its usual state of untidiness, but there was one most unusual feature about it. My uncle was the most abstemious man, and he rarely touched spirits. But standing on the desk with the stopper out was a decanter of whisky and a siphon, and a half-filled glass of what appeared to be whisky and soda was on the blotting-pad in front of his chair. In addition to that a tiny bottle, also with the stopper out and marked ‘Poison,’ was beside the glass.

  “I had just finished investigations to that point when the doctor called me.

  “‘Bend down and smell your uncle’s lips,’ he said gravely, and somewhat unwillingly I did so. And at once I perceived what the doctor was driving at. A faint but very pungent odour hung round them, and I was not surprised when the doctor beckoned me over to the table again, and pointed to the bottle of poison. I sniffed it; the smell was the same, though infinitely stronger. So with the whisky and soda, this time faint but still unmistakable.

  “‘I am afraid there can be no doubt as to what has happened,’ said Streatham after a while. ‘For some inexplicable reason your uncle has put this poison, whatever it may be, into a whisky and soda and has drunk it.’

  “And then the full implication of his words struck me.

  “‘Good Lord! man,’ I cried, ‘you aren’t suggesting that he did it on purpose. That he committed suicide?’

  “He stared at me in silence; then he shrugged his shoulders.

  “‘I’m devilish sorry to have to say so, my dear fellow,’ he said at length, ‘but it’s difficult to see any other solution that fits the facts. We must send for the police.’”

  Sinclair thumped his fist into the palm of his hand.

  “Gentlemen,” he cried violently, “I don’t care what anybody says: I don’t care how black it looks, I am convinced that my uncle did not commit suicide.”

  “What then is your theory?” asked Ronald quietly.

  “He may have been experimenting,” answered Sinclair. “The man who discovered chloroform experimented on himself.”

  “As an expert!” said Ronald. “With a poison he knew was deadly?”

  “Then I have another solution,” cried Sinclair. “One I have already mentioned to the inspector. My uncle, as I have told you, has been having digestive trouble for some months past, and the doctor prescribed some drops which he had to take if he got an attack. Now he was not at his best at lunch yesterday, and it may be that he got worse in the afternoon. The bottle with the drops is standing on his desk, as you will see, and I believe he absentmindedly muddled up the two. They are not unlike – the two bottles.”

  “Except,” put in the inspector dryly, “for a staring red label of ‘POISON’ on one of them.”

  “You don’t know how absent-minded my uncle could be,” said Sinclair. “And it is clear he was so yesterday afternoon.”

  “How do you know that?” cried Ronald.

  “Very simple, Mr Standish. My uncle had a peculiar trick, one which I think Mr Humber will remember. You know how some people when they are thinking deeply will draw little pictures on blotting paper. He had another mannerism – you recall it, Mr Humber?”

  “I do: perfectly,” said the lawyer, turning to Ronald. “He had on his desk one of those implements for stamping an address on notepaper, and if he was engrossed in something or talking he would go on using it ceaselessly. Is that what you mean, John?”

  “It is,” was the answer. “It was a piece of foolscap yesterday that he was stamping; it is still there on the desk. Gentlemen,” he continued, “I firmly believe that that is what really happened. My uncle was the last man in the world to take his own life. Mr Humber knows, and I dare say he’s told you, Mr Standish, that he had a considerable sum falling due to him from an insurance company in the near future. And only last week he was telling me the result of inquiries he’d made with regard to purchasing an annuity with the money. Does that look like the action of a man who is proposing to commit suicide?”


  “The impulse to do so sometimes comes very suddenly,” said the inspector.

  “Damn it, Inspector,” cried Sinclair half angrily, “I believe you want that verdict brought in.”

  “Not at all, Mr Sinclair,” said the inspector quietly. “I knew your uncle and respected him far too much for that. But there’s no good blinding one’s eyes to the fact that it isn’t what you think or I think, but what the coroner and his jury will think. In addition to that, the insurance company will most certainly be represented. And on the face of it, putting aside for the moment all personal bias, I am bound to say that the evidence as it stands points to suicide, and not accident. I’m afraid it will be very hard to make the coroner believe that your uncle could have made a mistake in those two bottles, however absent-minded or engrossed he was at the time. What do you think, Mr Standish?”

  “That I would like to go to the laboratory,” said Ronald. “Where, by the way, is the body?”

  “Upstairs,” answered Sinclair. “The postmortem is to be held this afternoon.”

  We trooped into the hall, and while crossing the lawn Ronald fell behind with me.

  “I don’t see that we’re going to do much good, Bob,” he said. “As the inspector says, everything depends on the coroner’s interpretation of certain facts. But if I was young Sinclair, I should be optimistic about the result. His uncle was well known and liked in the district, and a local coroner will bring it in as an accident if he possibly can in spite of anything the insurance may say.”

  The laboratory was a large airy room. A big sink with running water, and a bench covered with the usual paraphernalia of the chemist occupied one wall. Shelves with rows of bottles were above it, but it was to the desk that our eyes instinctively turned.

  It was in a state of orderly disorder. A whisky decanter and siphon stood at the back; on the blotting-pad was the half-filled glass just as Sinclair had described. Also the phial of poison. In one corner was another little bottle marked “The Prescription. To be taken as ordered,” and Sinclair pointed to it,