The Nursing Home Murder ra-3

by Ngaio Marsh

  “Oh, I’m all for bloodshed,” said Alleyn dryly. “Aren’t you, comrade?” He turned to his friend.

  The man uttered a short sinister laugh. Angela took Nigel’s hand. “He was an ulcer,” she said confusedly, but with energy. “When we find an ulcer we — we—”

  “Poultice it?” suggested Alleyn.

  “We cut it out.”

  “Paw ongcourager les autres,” said the man in diabolical French.

  “Oh,” said Nigel, “not exactly that, comrade— er—?”

  “Fox,” said Alleyn. “You’ve met before.”

  “?!!”

  “It’s all right, sir,” said Inspector Fox soothingly. “It’s the removal of my dentures that did it. Rather confusing. You were getting on very nicely. It was quite a treat to listen to you.”

  “Stimulating — that’s what it was, stimulating,” added Alleyn.

  “Inspector Alleyn,” said Angela furiously, “I’ll never forgive you for this — never.”

  “Hist!” said Alleyn. “The very walls have ears.”

  “Oh!” stormed Angela. “Oh! Oooo! Oh!”

  “Murder!” said Nigel very quietly.

  They walked on in silence until they came out by the river. A taxi drew up alongside them and they got in. Inspector Fox took a cardboard box from his pocket, turned delicately aside, and inserted his plates.

  “Begging your pardon, miss,” he said, “but it’s pleasanter to have them.”

  “And now,” said Alleyn, “just exactly what have you been up to?”

  “I won’t tell you.”

  “Won’t you, Miss Angela? That’s going to make it rather difficult.”

  “Oh, come on, Angela,” said Nigel resignedly. “He’ll have to know. Let’s come clean.”

  They came clean. The two policemen listened in silence.

  “Yes,” said Alleyn when they had finished. “That’s all very interesting. It’s informative too. Let me get it straight. You say that when you quoted Miss O’Callaghan as your friend — a very dangerous trick, Miss Angela — Sage fell over backwards. Do you think he did this accidentally or deliberately? Do you think he got such a shock he overbalanced and crashed, or did you feel he used this painful ruse to distract your attention? Or were you both acting your socks off so enthusiastically that you did not notice?”

  “Certainly not. At least— ”

  “I think he got a shock,” said Nigel.

  “Well, yes,” agreed Angela, “so do I. But he seemed more upset, oddly enough, afterwards, when he was lying there. His face went pea-green. Oh dear, he did look dreadfully funny.”

  “No doubt. What did you say — did you say anything that would account for this diverting phenomenon?”

  “I — no. Nigel said something. We both exclaimed, you know.”

  “I grabbed hold of him and he fairly fought me off.”

  “And then, you know, he got up and we asked if he was hurt and he said he was ‘quate O.K.’ and seemed to get better.”

  “What was it you said, Bathgate?”

  “I dunno. ‘Gosh!’ or ‘Help!’ or ‘Oh Fie!’ Something.”

  “Subsequently he said that he did not altogether respond to Comrade Kakaroff’s wave of brotherly love for O’Callaghan’s murderer — that it?”

  “He seemed to think that was going a bit far.”

  “And yet”—Alleyn went on—“and yet I seem to remember that at the conclusion of Kakaroff’s jolly little talk, Comrade Sage leapt to his feet and yelled ‘Comrade.’ ”

  “Yes — he did,” Nigel agreed, “but he may have been all carried away. He’s not a bad little tick really, I should say, once you’ve got past his frightful refinement.”

  “He spoke quite decently about Miss O’Callaghan,” added Angela.

  “So it appears. Did he and my girl-friend Banks have anything to say to each other?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Well, Fox?”

  “Well, sir?”

  “I suppose I visit Mr. Sage at his shop to-morrow— oh, Lard, it’s to-day, isn’t it? What’s the time?”

  Inspector Fox drew his watch from the inside pocket of the threadbare coat he was wearing. He held it up in a large and filthy paw. “Just on two, I make it,” he said. “Listen.”

  He lowered the window of the taxi. The lost, woebegone voice of a siren sounded out on the river. Then Big Ben, up in the cold night air, tolled two.

  Inspector Fox regarded his watch with grave approval, put it away, and laid his hands on his knees.

  “Longing for your bed, Fox?” asked Alleyn.

  “I am for mine,” said Angela.

  “Suppose we let Bathgate take the taxi on, and turn into the office for half an hour?”

  “Right ho, sir.”

  “Here we are.”

  He tapped on the window and the taxi stopped. The two detectives got out. Their breath hung mistily on the frosty air. Alleyn spoke for a moment to the driver and then looked inside.

  “Thank you so much for your help, both of you,” he said.

  “I say, Alleyn, I hope you don’t think we’ve made awful mugs of ourselves?” said Nigel lugubriously.

  Alleyn thought for a moment.

  “It was a very spirited effort, I consider,” he said at last.

  “We shall have to get you both in the Force, sir,” added Fox. His matter-of-fact voice sounded oddly remote out there in the cold.

  “Ah, Inspector Fox,” said Nigel suspiciously, “I’ve heard you say that before.”

  “Good night, Comrade Angela,” said Alleyn, “sleep well.”

  “Good night, inspector; I don’t grudge you your joke.”

  “Bless you,” answered Alleyn gently and slammed the door.

  The taxi drove off. Farther along the Embankment men were hosing down the street surface. A great fan of water curved out and made all the sound there was except for the siren and the distant toot of the taxi. The two men stared at one another.

  “I wonder just how much harm they’ve done,” said Alleyn.

  “None at all, sir, I should say.”

  “I hope you’re right. My fault if they have. Come on, let’s have a smoke.”

  In Alleyn’s room they lit their pipes. Alleyn wrote at his desk for some time. Fox stared gravely at the opposite wall. They looked a queer couple with their dreadful clothes, grimy faces and blackened hands.

  “She seems a very nice young lady,” Fox said presently. “Is she Mr. Bathgate’s fiancée, sir, if I may ask?”

  “She is.”

  “A very pleasant young couple.”

  Alleyn looked at him affectionately.

  “You’re a quaint old bag of nonsense.” He laid down his pen. “I don’t think, really, I took too big a risk with them. The little man was nowhere near them. You recognised him, of course?”

  “Oh, yes — from the inquest. I didn’t see who it was till he passed us in the doorway, but I’d noticed him earlier in the evening. He had his back towards us.”

  “Yes. I saw him, too. His clothes were good enough to shine out in that assembly. No attempt made to dress down to comrade level.”

  “No,” said Fox. “Funny — that.”

  “It’s altogether very rum. Passing strange. He walked straight past Sage and Nurse Banks. None of them batted an eyelash.”

  “That’s so. If they are in collusion, it might be deliberate.”

  “You know, Fox, I can’t think this Communist stuff is at the root of it. They’re a bogus lot, holding their little meetings, printing little pamphlets, making their spot of trouble. A nuisance from our point of view, but not the stuff that assassins are made of. Of course, given one fanatic— ” He stopped and shook his head.

  “Well,” said Fox, “that’s so. They don’t amount to much. Perhaps he’s different, though. Perhaps he’s the fanatic.”

  “Not that sort, I’d have thought. I’ll go and see him again. To-morrow. To-day. I rather like the bloke. We’ll have to get hold of the ex
pert who’s doing the Kakaroff bunch and find out if he’s deep in. It’s been a field day, this. It seems an age since we sat here and waited for the report on the post-mortem. Damn. I feel we are as one about to be had. I feel we are about to give tongue and run off on a false scent. I feel we are about to put two and two together and make a mess.”

  “That’s a pity,” said Fox.

  “What’s the time? Half-past two. Perhaps Bathgate will be back in his own flat by now, having dropped Miss Angela, who looked tired, at her uncle’s house. I think I shall send him to bed happy.”

  He dialled a number on his telephone and waited.

  “Hullo, Bathgate. How much are you betting on your funny little man?”

  “Roberts?” quacked Nigel’s voice clearly. “Yes, Roberts.”

  “Two to one, wasn’t it? Why? What’s up?”

  “Did you notice he was at the meeting to-night?”

  “Roberts!”

  “Yes, Roberts. Good night.” He hung up the receiver.

  “Come on,” he said wearily. “Let’s put two and two together and make a mess.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  “Fulvitavolts”

  Wednesday, the seventeenth. Morning and afternoon.

  The following morning Chief Inspector Alleyn and Inspector Fox reviewed their discussion.

  “The Lenin Hall theory looks even shoddier by the light of day,” said Alleyn.

  “Well, sir,” said Fox, “I won’t say it isn’t weak in places, but we can’t ignore the thing, can we?”

  “No. I suppose not. No.”

  “If there’s nothing in it, it’s a peculiar coincidence. Here’s this lady, deceased’s sister— ”

  “Oh yes, Fox, and by the way, I’m expecting the family solicitor. Mr. Rattisbon, of Knightley, Knightley and Rattisbon, an uncle of Lady O’Callaghan’s, I believe. Unusually come-toish advance — rang up and suggested the visit himself. He mentioned Miss O’Callaghan so guardedly that I can’t help feeling she plays a star part in the will. You were saying?”

  “I was going to say here’s this lady, deceased’s sister, giving him patent medicines. Here’s the Sage affair, the chemist, a member of the advanced party that threatened deceased, supplying them. Here’s the doctor that gave the anæsthetic turning up at the same meeting as the chemist and the nurse that gave the injection. The nurse knows the chemist; the chemist, so Mr. Bathgate says, isn’t so keen to know the nurse. The doctor, seemingly, knows neither of them. Well now, that may be bluff on the doctor’s part. Suppose they were all working in collusion? Sage wouldn’t be very keen on associating himself with Nurse Banks. Dr. Roberts might think it better to know neither of them. Suppose Sage had supplied Miss O’Callaghan with a drug containing a certain amount of hyoscine, Nurse Banks had injected a bit more, and Dr. Roberts had made a job of it by injecting the rest?”

  “All of them instructed by Comrade Kakaroff?”

  “Well — yes.”

  “But why? Why involve three people when one might do the trick? And anyway, none of them knew O’Callaghan was going to throw a fit and lie-for-dead in the House of Commons and then be taken to Sir John Phillips’s nursing-home.”

  “That’s so, certainly, but Sage would know, through Miss O’Callaghan, that her brother intended having Sir John to look at him as soon as the Bill was read. It seems they knew it was appendix. Mightn’t they even have said he’d better go to the hospital and have it out? The lady tells Mr. Sage about this. He reports. He and Nurse Banks and Dr. Roberts think they’ll form a plan of action.”

  “And, lo and behold, it all comes to pass even as they had said. I don’t like it, Fox. And anyway, my old one, how did Dr. Roberts give the injection with no syringe? Why didn’t he take the golden opportunity of exercising his obvious right of giving the hypodermic? To establish his innocence, you will say. He gave it on the sly, all unbeknown. But how? You can’t carry a syringe all ready for use, complete with lethal dose, in your trouser pocket. And anyway, his trousers like all the rest of him, were covered with a white nightie. And he was never alone with the patient.”

  “That’s so, and I admit it’s a bit of a facer. Well— perhaps he simply arranged the matter with Miss Banks and she gave the injection, using hyoscine instead of camphor.”

  “Subsequently letting everyone know how delighted she was at the death. Do you think that was sublety or stupidity?”

  Fox shook his head solemnly.

  “I don’t say I support the theory, chief, but it is a theory.”

  “Oh yes. There’s another point about the hyoscine. It’s kept in a bottle, which Thoms tells me is very out of date — it should be in an ampoule. Phillips, I suppose, doesn’t object, as he always uses his own tablets. Now Jane Harden says that the bottle was full and that one injection has since been used. I’ve checked that. When I saw the bottle it was almost full. Thoms brought it to me.”

  “Thoms did?” repeated Fox in his slow way.

  “Yes. I got a sample and am having it analysed. If anyone has added water, the solution will be below strength.”

  “Yes — but they might have managed to add more solution.”

  “I don’t see how. Where would they get it from? It would have to be done there and then.”

  Alleyn got up and walked about the room.

  “You’ve never told me your views on intuition,” he said.

  “I can’t say I’ve got any. No views, I mean — and no intuition either, for a matter of that. Very unimaginative I’ve always been. I recollect at school I was a poor hand at writing compositions, as they called them. Still I wouldn’t say,” said Fox cautiously, “that there is no such thing as intuition. I’ve known you come out rather strong in that line yourself.”

  “Thank you, Fox. Well, the weird is upon me now, if that’s the expression. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. I’ve got a hunch that the Bolshie lot is not one of the principal factors. It’s a secondary theme in the bloody cantata. And yet, blast it, we’ll have to follow it up.”

  “Oh well,” Fox rose to his feet. “What’s my job of work for to-day, sir?”

  “Get hold of Boys or whoever has been watching the comrades and see if Roberts’s connection with them can be traced. If there’s anything in this we’ll have to try and get evidence of collusion. Since the Krasinky-Tokareff affair Sumiloff has had to fade out, but there’s Comrade Robinson. He seems to have wormed his way into the foreground. You’d better call him in. We pay the brute enough; let him earn it. Call him in, Fox, and tell him to ferret. He might tell the comrades we’ve been asking questions and see how they respond. And, talking about ferreting, I’ve been going through the reports on the medical gentlemen. It’s the devil’s own game beating it all up and there’s a lot more to be done. So far there’s nothing very much to excite us.” He pulled forward a sheaf of papers. “Here you are. Phillips— Educated at Winchester and Cambridge. Medical training at Thomas’s. Brilliant record. Distinguished war service. You can read it. Inspector Allison has spent days on this stuff. Thomas’s was full of enthusiasm for one of its brightest boys. No bad marks anywhere. Here’s Detective-Sergeant Bailey on Roberts. Educated at home. Delicate child. Medical training at Edinburgh and abroad, in Vienna. After qualifying went to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, returning to England after war. Red Cross work, during war, in Belgium. Books on heredity — he lent me one and it seems damn’ good. I suppose we’ll have to go into the history abroad. I’ll ring up Toronto to-night. We’ll have to check up on that story about the overdose. Talk about routine! How long, O Lord, how long! Thoms — Educated St. Bardolph’s, Essex, and Guy’s. I rang up a friend of mine at Guy’s who was his contemporary. Very good assistant surgeon and never likely to get much further than that. Undistinguished but blameless career, punctuated by mild scandals about women. Little devil! My friend was rather uncomplimentary about Thoms. He called him a ‘lecherous little blight.’ That’s as far as we’ve got.”

  The tele
phone rang and Alleyn answered it.

  “It’s Mr. Rattisbon. Go down and make much of him, Fox. Bring him up tenderly, treat him with care. If he’s anything like the rest of his family, he’ll need warming. Use your celebrated charm.”

  “O.K.” said Fox. “Toojoor la politesse. I’m on to the third record now, chief, but their peculiar ways of pronunciation give me a lot of trouble. Still, it’s a sort of hobby, as you might say.”

  He sighed and went out, returning to usher in Mr. James Rattisbon, of Knightley, Knightley and Rattisbon, uncle to Lady O’Callaghan and solicitor to the deceased and his family. Mr. Rattisbon was one of those elderly solicitors whose appearance explains why the expression “dried-up” is so inevitably applied by novelists to men of law. He was desiccated. He was dressed in clothes of a dated type that looked rather shabby, but were actually in good repair. He wore a winged collar, rather high, and a dark tie, rather narrow. He was discreetly bald, somewhat blind, and a little tremulous. He had a kind of quick stuttering utterance, and a curious trick of thrusting out his pointed tongue and rattling it exceedingly rapidly between his thin lips. This may have served as an antidote to the stutter or it may have signified a kind of professional relish. His hands were bird-like claws with very large purplish veins. It was impossible to picture him in any sort of domestic surroundings.

  As soon as the door had been closed behind him he came forward very nimbly and said with incredible speed:

  “Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn?”

  “Good morning, sir,” said Alleyn. He advanced a chair towards Mr. Rattisbon and offered to take his hat.

  “Good morning, good morning,” said Mr. Rattisbon. “Thank-yer, thank-yer. No, thank-yer. Thank-yer.”

  He clung to his hat and took the chair.

  “It’s good of you to call. I would have been delighted to save you the trouble by coming to your office. I believe you want to see me about the O’Callaghan business?”

  “That is the business — that is the reason — it is in connection with that matter that I have waited upon you, yes,” rattled Mr. Rattisbon. He stopped short, darted a glance at Alleyn, and beat a finicky tattoo on the crown of his hat.