“It is,” Duncannon said. “But let’s leave these points over for the present.”
He glanced quizzically at Sir Clinton.
“I think you’ve got the latest specimen in the series, haven’t you?”
“Oh, yes, it came by this morning’s post. I’m a shade more careful than Barsett, though. I’ve read it, and I’m not going to hand it over to you, because there’s a name in it which I prefer to suppress. You may guess it, but that’s your affair. Here’s the production, apart from that.”
He took out his pocket-book, drew a paper from it, and began to read, suppressing a name when he came to it:
“They call you clever. Set a thief to catch a thief. But you can’t catch me, — you! Ha! Ha! You old hangman’s tout. Do you get a commission from him, you — ? Anonymous letters are great fun. One can say what one thinks in them, and I think you’re a — — , no less. Not married, are you? And don’t want to be? Then try your friend Mrs. Blank and put Barsett’s eye out. Good-bye to you, old bluebottle. Kiss the sergeant from me.”
Sir Clinton folded up the paper and restored it to his pocket-book.
“Bluebottle, meaning a policeman, is in Shakespeare, I believe. It came in again in the middle of last century with the blue tunic; but I haven’t heard it for quite a while. Still, that’s beside the point, at present. I take it that you selected these specimens to illustrate something, Mr. Duncannon?”
“Well, in a way, yes,” Duncannon agreed. “There are three or four points. First of all, you get a preoccupation with sex running through the lot. But that’s no great help. It’s too common amongst poison-pen productions to be of much use. Then in the letter to Miss Jessop you get the accusation about the curate, which is obviously there because the writer is also interested in that curate and seems a bit jealous. But curates are common game in this line. All it suggests is that the writer has something to do with St. Salvator’s. And even that isn’t a cert. Curates go out into circles outside the church-folk at times. But still, it’s reinforced by something else. You notice the quotation from St. Paul, and Aholibah out of Ezekiel, and the anti-Catholic animus in the one the maid got. The maid’s a Protestant, by the way.”
“I should take that as excluding the younger generation from suspicion to some extent,” Wendover interjected. “They don’t know their Bibles as well as we older people do.”
“Some of them are still brought up strictly enough in that line,” Duncannon objected. “You simply can’t take anything for granted. Well, there’s something further. Just notice the definiteness in the accusations in the three to Miss Jessop, the maid, and Barsett and compare it with the general abuse in Dr. Malwood’s letter and yours,” he nodded to the Chief Constable. “The one to Dr. Malwood’s a nasty bit of work, but by comparison with the first three, it’s almost genial. No real bitterness in it, I mean. Same with the one to you, Sir Clinton, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“It certainly doesn’t unveil any awkward secrets,” Sir Clinton agreed with a laugh. “I take it that you mean the writer doesn’t know much about me. I’m a target merely because of my official position. And Malwood’s obsession with glands is a thing that the merest acquaintance might have heard about. That’s your point?”
“That’s my point,” Duncannon confirmed.
“And it’s not so hard to see that you’ve narrowed down your suspects to a couple, otherwise you wouldn’t have brought up just these particular letters to show us. Your basis is this, isn’t it? Somebody connected with St. Salvator’s — as suggested by the curate reference. Somebody churchy to the extent that they know their Bible. Somebody jealous of Mrs. Hyson — to judge by the letter to the maid. So it’s either the maid herself or Miss Jessop? That right?”
“It’s not certain,” Duncannon said cautiously. “But it’s a beginning.”
“And your next move?”
“Put a watch on the two of them and clear the pillar-boxes whenever they post anything. And perhaps something else to ‘mak sicker,’ as the Scots say.”
“You don’t want my help there? You have your own watchers?”
“We’ll manage it, I think, without bothering you. But I wanted to tell you that we’re putting a watch on these two women. Otherwise some of your flatties might be interfering with my men, thinking they were up to no good. You’ll see to that? Only, don’t go spreading the glad news, please. The best way, perhaps, would be for me to bring my men to you and you could show them to your fellows without telling them what’s in the wind. Just that my men aren’t to be nailed for loitering with intent or anything of that sort.”
“I’ll fix it for you,” Sir Clinton assured him. “And you’ll let us know how you get on? Good hunting! It’s high time that sort of thing was stopped.”
Chapter Seven
Life’s Unfinished Road
THE Chief Constable had invited Dr. Malwood to a tête-à-tête dinner in order to extract some information from him. But when they had settled themselves comfortably in the smoking-room, he did not come immediately to the topic he had in mind.
“Any more letters from your friend with the poison pen?” he asked with a smile. “You and I got off fairly lightly, in comparison with some other people, to judge by the samples Duncannon showed me a while ago.”
Malwood smiled in return as he picked a cigarette from the box which Sir Clinton had placed beside him.
“My specimen struck me as rather jovial,” he agreed in an amused tone. “ ‘Glands, says you? ——, says I. May your harem never grow less, Solomon.’ I’m no bigot. Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion on the importance of glands, even if they express it a trifle coarsely. And as my practice is very largely among women, I don’t mind being likened to Solomon. With a thousand wives or so, he must have been a bit of an expert in feminine vagaries, and I’ve no doubt I could have picked up lots of tips from him if we’d ever come across each other.”
“It was news to me that you’d taken to psychoanalysis,” Sir Clinton pointed out.
“To me, likewise,” admitted Malwood with a smile.
“H’m! Then evidently the poison pen doesn’t know you intimately either as a friend or a patient,” Sir Clinton inferred. “Your gland mania’s public property. Anyone might get to know about that.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Malwood concurred. “I certainly didn’t recognise the style. By the way, has that fellow Duncannon got on the track of the writer yet?”
Sir Clinton shook his head.
“Not yet, so far as a capture goes. He seems to have narrowed down his suspect list to a couple of sex-starved creatures; but the actual trapping of the right one is likely to be a troublesome affair, he tells me.”
“Sex-starved?” echoed the doctor. “Females, then, I presume. I suspected something of the sort from the letter I got. How did your epistle run?”
“Oh, referred to my bachelor life and suggested someone who might be kind to me. The whole lot are simply variations on the same theme, you know. The writer harps on one string — can’t get away from it.”
“One or two of my patients seem to have been favoured also,” the doctor volunteered. “I didn’t ask to see the letters. It just came out incidentally when we were talking over some points in their cases. But I gathered that all these things centred round one subject, plus malicious gossip when any was available.”
“I hope your patients aren’t taking the stuff too seriously,” Sir Clinton said thoughtfully. “It must be worrying to get things like that when you’re off your balance a little, anyhow.”
Dr. Malwood gave a nod of agreement.
“Yes, the sooner this business is stopped, the better it’ll be,” he said in a more serious tone. “Duncannon’s got a long row to hoe, from what he told me about the affair. But I hope he’ll lose no time. You never can tell what damage may be done by one of these things landing on a woman who isn’t quite normal.”
“You know that side of it better than I do, of course,” Sir Clinton replied, “b
ut I can quite understand. One can only hope that Duncannon may be lucky enough to run the creature down quickly. He hinted that he had a card or two up his sleeve in the matter. I didn’t get too inquisitive about that. We’re all entitled to our trade secrets. And that reminds me, Malwood, that I asked you here to-night with the idea of getting you to reveal one of your own trade secrets. I wouldn’t ask such a thing normally, but the case is a special one, and there’s no question of your information being made public.”
Malwood gave the Chief Constable a shrewd glance.
“No blank cheques,” he said, bluntly. “I must know what you’re after before I say anything. And I don’t promise to say anything at all, remember.”
Sir Clinton nodded as though acquiescing in this.
“Then I’ll put my cards on the table,” he said. “In strict confidence, of course. You had a Mrs. Telford among your patients, hadn’t you?”
“I had,” the doctor admitted concisely.
“She’s dead,” said Sir Clinton, with equal terseness.
Malwood was completely taken aback and his face showed it.
“Dead?” he echoed, incredulously. “I’ve heard nothing about that.”
“No, you wouldn’t hear about it so soon. I’ve had a letter from the Procurator-Fiscal up North who’s looking up the thing. They hold no inquests in Scotland, you know. The Fiscal goes into the facts of cases like this one and makes up his mind whether there’s any charge to be brought against anyone. There’s no public inquiry of any sort.”
“He’s applied to you for information, then?”
“Yes, and I’m applying to you. Strictly between ourselves, Forrest — that’s the Fiscal, who happens to be a friend of mine — is just a shade doubtful about the affair. It might be suicide, or again her husband might be mixed up in it.”
Malwood considered this for some moments before answering.
“Rubbish!” he declared at last. “I mean there’s no question of Telford’s having taken that line. I saw a good deal of the two of them, together and apart, in connection with her case; and they were devoted to each other. You can’t take in a doctor so easily as the man in the street in some cases. You can take it from me that if anything happened to that girl, young Telford would be completely knocked out. He simply idolised her, Driffield. There’s no other word for it. But the whole thing’s impossible, I tell you. Her case turned out a complete success. She was cured when she left here and went back to Scotland. I had a talk with him when he came to take her home, just a few days ago, and if any man was glad at the way things turned out, it was young Telford. He’d had a rough time while it lasted, poor beggar, and his relief was tremendous.”
“That’s something for my Fiscal friend,” Sir Clinton noted. “I don’t say that he’s particularly keen on the idea of a murder, but his job is to make sure, you know. Suicide looks much more likely, on the facts of the case.”
“But suicide’s just as unlikely,” protested Malwood. “When she left my hands, she was as sound as a bell, physically. She’d nothing to worry about, so far as her case went. It was a perfect cure.”
“Well, she’s dead,” said Sir Clinton testily. “It wasn’t accident. So it must have been either murder or suicide.”
“I can’t understand it,” the doctor said, definitely. “Tell me what happened. I won’t let it go further. But perhaps I might be able to throw some light on it if I knew the facts. It’s not likely, though, I must admit.”
“It’s damnably awkward for Forrest,” Sir Clinton explained. “He was an acquaintance, if not actually a friend, of both Telford and his wife. The whole affair’s in his hands at present. If it’s a murder case, it’s his business to get to the bottom of it regardless of personal factors. On the other hand, if it’s suicide, then there’s no point in advertising the fact. He can satisfy himself and then hold his hand with a clear conscience. It’s happened in an out-of-the-way place and the only stir will be a local one, and small at that, for the Telfords were well liked and people will be sorry.”
“That’s lucky, at any rate,” the doctor said, sympathetically.
“It is. Now here’s what happened. You probably know that the Telfords had a cottage up in Glen Terret where they used to go for week-ends and in the summer, for the fishing. They both fished a bit. That’s how they struck up an acquaintance with Forrest, for he does a bit in that line too. Curiously enough, it was fishing up yonder that brought me in touch with Forrest myself.”
“And he’s applying to you for your opinion as an expert, perhaps?”
Sir Clinton shook his head.
“No. He writes to me because Mrs. Telford’s been living here under your charge for a while.”
“I begin to see what you’re after,” Malwood admitted. “But I’ll have to hear more before I make up my mind. Go on with your story.”
“Then don’t interrupt so much,” Sir Clinton said, rather restively. “Where was I? Oh, yes. After you discharged Mrs. Telford from your Institute, she went back to Scotland with her husband. You’d recommended fresh air and so forth, so they determined to settle down for a month or two at Glen Terret in this cottage that they’d rented. It’s within ninety minutes’ drive of Telford’s office — at least if one drives at the rate he’s accustomed to — so he was able to get back to the cottage every evening. She was left there alone all day, except at the week-ends. The maid they had took scarlet fever ten days ago and was whisked off to hospital, and they hadn’t been able to get a substitute.”
“Any neighbours near-by?” inquired the doctor.
“Mostly farmfolk and the like. Nobody of her own type near at hand, if that’s what you’re after.”
“H’m! It wasn’t quite that I meant when I recommended fresh air,” the doctor said, doubtfully. “However, go on.”
“On the day of this tragedy, Telford went off as usual in the morning,” Sir Clinton continued. “It seems that after he left his office he went to his house to pick up one or two wireless gadgets he wanted. He’d brought his short-wave transmitter to the cottage in Glen Terret when they settled down there.”
“Where could he get current for it?” demanded Malwood, shrewdly.
“Off the grid,” Sir Clinton explained with a smile. “They’ve rather spoiled the look of Glen Terret with the power plyons, but there’s no doubt that current is a blessing to people in these out-of-the-way districts. The cottage had electric light, so there was no trouble about power for Telford’s wireless stunt.”
“Very well, go on,” said Malwood, rather crestfallen.
“Telford arrived at the cottage about eight o’clock. Usually, his wife came to the door when she heard the car, but this time she didn’t appear. He took it that she was busy with the evening meal they used to have as soon as he came home. So he ran his car into the shed that served as a garage and walked into the cottage, expecting to find his wife. To his surprise, the place was empty. What’s more, there had been no preparations made for supper. He began to feel uneasy, which was natural enough in a lonely place like that. There’s always the chance of a tramp and if I’d been Telford I’d have had a dog in the house. But Mrs. Telford didn’t like dogs, it seems.
“He hunted about and found a note which she’d left for him. No one but himself has seen that note. His tale is that he tore it up and threw it away a short time later. That’s a pity, in the circumstances. According to him, it said that she’d gone for a walk, as he might be later than usual and it was a fine evening. He was to follow her up the Midwhaup. She wouldn’t be far.
“Perhaps I’d better give you some notion of the lie of the land there. About a mile above the cottage in Glen Terret, another glen runs into the main one, bringing in a fair-sized stream to join the Terret Water. In dry weather, you can cross this stream — it’s called the Midwhaup — on stepping-stones; but after rain the stepping-stones are under water and you can’t get over dry-shod. The result is that anyone going for a walk from the cottage would stick to the neare
r bank of the Midwhaup unless the stepping-stones were easily passable. As it happened, there had been a lot of rain a day or two earlier, the burns were pretty full, and no girl would have got across without the bother of taking off her shoes and her stockings, if she were wearing any. Obviously, then, Mrs. Telford would keep to the nearer bank. Now half a mile further up from the point where it joins the Terret, the Midwhaup leaps over a rocky ridge, so that there’s a fall, perhaps fifty feet high with a deep pool at the foot. In a dry season, it’s not much more than a trickle; but when the burns are in spate the Hart Lynn, as they call it, is quite a sizeable waterfall and drops sheer into the big pool below it with a roar you can hear at quite a long distance.
“Now to continue Telford’s story. He followed the track by the Terret until he came to the stepping-stones. They were under water, so he assumed that his wife wasn’t likely to have crossed on them, and he turned up the nearer bank of the Midwhaup. I forgot to say that the Midwhaup runs through a wooded glen, so one can’t see ahead to any extent.
“Telford went on until he came near Hart Lynn, and then he turned aside from the track and approached the fall. Jutting out over the pool there’s a big projecting rock which forms the best view-point for the fall. It seems he and Mrs. Telford often used to go to it when they took a walk in that direction; so he thought that she might be waiting there for him. He came out from among the trees, stepped out on this tongue of rock, and saw that his wife wasn’t there. He was just about to retrace his steps to the path again when he happened to glance down into the pool below; and there he saw his wife’s body swirling round and round in the whirlpool formed by the fall. He recognised it at once by the dress.
“Of course he scrambled down to the water’s edge at once, and with the help of a long branch — you couldn’t swim in a place like that — he managed to get the body ashore. It was too late to do anything. She was quite dead. What’s more, she’d been pinioned with a strap round her ankles and another one round her wrists so that her hands were behind her back.”
Murder Will Speak Page 12
