‘In bed I hope,’ said the Inspector. ‘I got Fettes to insist on it. Then he can trot down to the court and swear that neither she nor Potter is in a fit state to give evidence. There’s no point in dragging that poor old lady through the tiresome business again. What’s the matter with you, by the way? You look all het up.’
To Campion the night had brought no counsel. He was still undecided on his course of action and never remembered finding himself in a similar quandary. The situation in which he was at once so certain in his mind and so utterly devoid of concrete evidence was mercifully new. Of one thing alone he was sure. The time to confide in the Inspector had not yet arrived.
‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘A bit puzzled, that’s all.’
‘You should worry!’ Oates spoke grimly. ‘There’s hell blowing up in the department. Orders are to get it all cleared up and over quickly. Imagination is a wonderful thing. I wish that darn doctor would turn up.’
In the end Doctor Fettes phoned to say that the P.M. had taken him all night and if he was to get to the inquest on time he could not visit Little Venice first. However, his assistant, Doctor Derrick, a sandy-haired young man with a blue suspicious eye, arrived and pronounced Mr Potter fit for examination.
Campion and the Inspector went into the faded spare bedroom which had housed so many famous folk in the great days when Lafcadio was a lion.
Campion was prepared for a painful experience, but even so the sight which Mr Potter presented as he sat up in the big Italian bed, propped by the glistening pillows, had in it that element of the unexpectedly shocking which is the very essence of embarrassment.
The natural redness of his face had gone, leaving it a network of tiny red veins so that his skin looked like crackle-ware. His eyes had shrunk and become paler, as if they threatened to disappear altogether, and his mouth was loose and piteous. He looked old and frightened to stupidity.
The Inspector stood regarding him gravely and for some seconds it seemed that the man in the bed had not noticed the intrusion. Suddenly he glanced up.
‘The suggestion that I killed my wife is absurd,’ he said. He spoke without vehemence or, it seemed, much personal feeling.
Oates cleared his throat.
‘What put such an idea into your head, Mr Potter?’ he began cautiously.
For a moment the washed-out eyes rested on the policeman’s grey face with contempt.
‘I’ve been listening to Lisa,’ he said shortly. ‘No point now in beating about the bush. No time for conventions, manners, affectations. Too many affectations in my life, anyway. Too many in everybody’s life. It’s all no good rotten stuff.’
The Inspector shot a sidelong glance at Campion.
‘It’s very unfortunate that Miss Capella should have been able to get in to you,’ he said sternly. ‘She will probably get into serious trouble.’
If he hoped to shake the man in the bed out of his uncompromising mood by this threat he was disappointed. Mr Potter, normally the kindest of men, shrugged his shoulders.
‘I really can’t help it,’ he said. ‘I can’t help anything. I should like to be left alone.’
‘Now, Mr Potter,’ Oates’s tone became conciliatory, ‘I do realize that it must be most painful for you to talk now, but the matter is urgent. There are several questions I want to put to you and an explanation I must have. In trying to help you yesterday Miss Capella raised a question which must be cleared up – do you understand?’
The question was an afterthought, for Mr Potter had turned away and was staring out of the window at the speeding sky.
Oates repeated the words and the figure in the bed moved. He looked at his tormentors and with an obvious effort strove to concentrate.
‘I am alone,’ he said suddenly. ‘I am quite free. I can go where I like, do what I like. I wish I was dead.’
There was complete silence after he had spoken. Campion felt breathless and the Inspector’s eyes contracted. It was very terrible.
Oates deliberated. Finally he shook his head.
‘I must know,’ he said. ‘Why did you send a telegram yesterday morning to the Headmaster of Blakenham to say you were in bed, ill?’
Mr Potter looked at him vaguely for a full minute before replying.
‘Other things were important,’ he said at last, and then very painstakingly, as though he were treading on new ground, ‘nothing that was important then is important now. Nothing at all is very important now. It was for some trifling reason – I had a lithograph print I was pleased about.’ Mr Potter seemed astonished as he remembered. ‘I wanted to show it to someone. I was mad.’
‘Where did you go?’ Oates prompted.
‘To Bill Fenner’s studio in Putney. We spent all day talking and looking at stuff. I was playing truant, like a child. As if it mattered!’
‘When did you come back?’ demanded Oates, making a mental note of the name and district. ‘When you saw me – all of us?’
‘Yes – yes, I think so.’ The effort of recollection was clearly difficult and Mr Potter’s forehead was furrowed for a moment until his eyes suddenly widened and he looked at the Inspector blankly.
‘No, of course,’ he said. ‘Of course, it was yesterday. I came back before, that’s how it happened. I understand now.’
‘You came back before?’
‘Yes. About five o’clock. Does it matter?’
The Inspector sat down on the edge of the bed.
‘Try to remember it exactly, sir,’ he said. ‘I know it’s difficult.’
‘No,’ said Mr Potter unexpectedly. ‘No, it’s very clear, although it seems a long time ago.’ He sat very still and his face worked helplessly. ‘I saw her and I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘My poor Claire, I didn’t know.’
‘You saw her?’ The Inspector’s quiet echoes gently forced the man to keep to the story.
‘She must have been dead then,’ whispered Mr Potter. ‘When I came in the first time I saw her lying there, the glass at her feet, and I didn’t know. Even then …’ His voice trailed away.
The Inspector’s eyes snapped.
‘The glass at her feet? We found no glass there.’
‘I washed it out and put it back in the cupboard,’ said Mr Potter simply.
‘Why?’ There was something very like stupefaction in the Inspector’s face.
‘More affectation,’ said Mr Potter. ‘Another thing that didn’t matter. Polite fiction. It’s all silly trumpery stuff … no real point in it.’
‘Why did you wash out the glass?’ the Inspector persisted.
‘It was Thursday,’ said Mr Potter. ‘At a quarter to seven on Thursdays Mrs Lafcadio always comes … came … down to the studio to ask my wife and me to dinner. I knew it was no use trying to rouse poor Claire, but I thought if Mrs Lafcadio did not see the glass the evidence of – of my wife’s condition would not be so apparent. So I sluiced it out and replaced it in the cupboard. Then, as there seemed nothing else I could do, I hurried out, hoping no one had seen me. I see now how idiotic it was. It didn’t matter what I did.’
The Inspector, who had taken out his notebook now, sat, his pencil poised and an odd expression in his eyes. Campion caught his thought and the recollection of the curious scene in the dining-room after the reception came back to him.
He saw the bright interior, the straight brown legs in the sensible shoes sticking out across the picture framed by the doorway, and Mr Potter’s nervous attempts to keep the Inspector and himself outside. The whole mystery concerning the man’s early visit to the studio became suddenly clear.
The Inspector braced himself. To officials facts are facts and must be treated as such.
‘When you saw Mrs Potter how did she look? Where was she?’
‘She was lying face downward on the divan, half sitting, her body twisted so that her face was hidden.’ Mr Potter spoke with a sort of wonderment, as though his mind were concerned with essential things far removed from the trivial matters he related.
Mr Potter roused himself with an effort.
‘I couldn’t have told you this yesterday,’ he said, ‘because yesterday it seemed a serious matter, but now it seems so small. My wife frequently drank enough alcohol in one draught to render her completely unconscious for some time. I think it took effect very quickly. It was a form of drugging, I suppose. If anything upset her too much … I mean, if she suddenly found she could not bear anything … she used to do that. I remember it worried me, I was frightened by it and … God forgive me … shocked. It seems ridiculous now. Why shouldn’t she?’
‘So when you saw Mrs Potter lying on the divan you thought she was … you thought that was what had happened and were not alarmed?’
Oates was speaking with unexpected gentleness and it occurred to Campion that he must share his own curious feeling that Mr Potter was living in a new stark world in which there were very few familiar landmarks.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Potter. ‘I thought she was drunk.’
‘So you took the glass away so that Mrs Lafcadio should not see it, possibly examine it, and guess what was the matter?’
The man in the bed laughed. It was a strange sound, having in it nothing of the melodramatic but a percentage of pure derision.
‘Yes. Asinine.’
‘Why did you wash the glass?’
‘I –’ Mr Potter looked at his persecutor and unexpectedly his eyes brimmed over with tears. ‘We had an arrangement about the incidental housework. We each washed up and tidied up as it occurred. I rinsed out the glass naturally and stood it on the shelf to drain. I couldn’t put it away dirty.’
‘I see,’ said the Inspector hastily and busied himself with his notebook.
‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘where was the bottle?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh come, Mr Potter, where was it usually kept?’
‘I don’t know.’ The Inspector’s victim had the disconcerting air of speaking the literal truth about something in which he was not interested. ‘I never found out. It used to worry me. Good God, the things that used to worry me! I’ve been mad. I used to hunt when she was out. It was all so tidy – it should have been easy. I never found anything. Yet whenever she wanted it I used to find her like that. It’s gone on for years.’
‘Years?’ Campion and the Inspector felt they were peering in at a secret. The vision of the tragic, ineffectual husband protecting his masterful wife in his small worried way seemed indecent, sad, and to be covered.
‘Not so much at first, of course, but often lately.’
‘She only did it when she was upset?’
‘Oh, yes. She was very strong. She never let it take hold of her. It was only when things got too bad.’
‘I see.’ The Inspector rose. ‘Thank you for your information, Mr Potter. It has been very valuable. I shall try not to bother you any more than I can help. By the way, did your wife ever consult a doctor about this – er – habit of hers?’
‘A doctor? No, I don’t think so.’ Mr Potter seemed mildly surprised. ‘She and I were the only people who knew about it, I think, although the others must have guessed, and she did not consider it important at all. I used to worry.’
‘What was it?’ enquired Oates. ‘Whisky?’
‘I don’t know. I never saw it. I told you.’
‘Most extraordinary,’ commented the Inspector. ‘Where did she buy it?’
‘I don’t think she did buy it.’
Mr Potter made this extraordinary announcement with the same air of detachment which had characterized him throughout the interview.
Inspector Oates paused half-way across the room.
‘Where did it come from, then?’
‘I told you, I don’t know,’ said Mr Potter with patient disinterest. ‘Lately, whenever my wife was distressed I used to find her unconscious, usually with a glass by her side, but although I hunted everywhere I never found any supply. On one occasion I found her in the dining-room at this house – you were there, I remember – but that was the only time. Apart from that it was always in the studio. I don’t think she bought any alcohol, because it is expensive, you know, and our resources were so very small that it would have been impossible for her to spend even a few shillings without me knowing. We were impossibly poor. That seemed to matter very much too. Oh, dear God, I am tired.’
He lay back and closed his eyes.
Campion and the Inspector went out. The younger man wiped his forehead and stretched as though his clothes had become tight.
The Inspector sighed.
‘It’s things like that that make me believe in capital punishment,’ he said briefly. ‘We’ll get this bird, Campion, and we’ll string him up.’
CHAPTER 16
That was on the Sunday
–
‘NICOTINE,’ said the Inspector, displaying his copy of the analyst’s report, ‘one of the most pernickety poisons in the world, specially prepared by Providence, no doubt, to delay police officers in the execution of their duty.’
Campion and the Inspector were in the library at Little Venice. It was the morning of the Sunday following the Friday on which they had interviewed Mr Potter.
In the circumstances it seemed to Mr Campion that the Home Office chemists had been unusually expeditious and he said so. ‘I thought they were liable to take six weeks on a job like this,’ he remarked.
‘Not when the whole department is up in the air.’ The Inspector spoke succinctly. ‘We all want this thing cleared up before the Press decides to scream itself into a fit. Unfortunately, all we seem to be able to do is to create a lot of excitement all round. In this instance it’s done a bit of good. Those beggars can do with a bit of hustling. Still, it’s interesting, isn’t it? The nicotine, I mean. It’s getting fashionable just now, yet up to a few years ago there was only one known instance of it being used criminally.fn1 Know anything about it?’
‘Not much,’ said Campion. ‘A small dose is fatal, isn’t it?’
‘Ten to twenty milligrammes of the alkaloid does the trick in three to five minutes … paralyses the respiratory system, among other things.’ Oates spoke savagely. ‘I saw the stuff in the lab. last night … I always sweat these things up as I go along. You’d be surprised how much I know about arsenic,’ he added with apparent irrelevance. ‘Criminals ought to stick to arsenic. These fancy poisons let us in for no end of trouble. Still, this nicotine is colourless, volatile stuff which goes yellow if you leave the cork out, and if you keep it long enough it goes solid. That’s practically all I learnt on the subject from our boys.’
Campion was looking at the report.
‘By applying the Stas-Otto process to the contents of the stomach we isolated 14.89 milligrammes alkaloid Nicotiana Tabacum,’ he read. ‘Yes, well, that’s clear enough. It ought to be simple to trace the source once you get your list of suspects. You can’t go and buy this muck by the pint, I take it.’
The Inspector glanced at the younger man curiously and when he spoke his voice was weary.
‘Anyone can buy a box of cigars,’ he said.
‘A box of cigars?’ Mr Campion’s pale eyes widened. ‘Can the alkaloid be extracted easily?’
‘As far as I can see, yes.’ Oates was very grave. ‘In fact, I gather that either of us, with very little knowledge and practically no unusual paraphernalia, could get enough trouble out of a box of Havanas to keep the analysts busy for months, so, although we shall consider the question of source with our customary thoroughness, I don’t expect much help in that direction. We’re up against brains, Campion. It may make it more interesting, but it’s putting years on my life.’
Mr Campion hesitated and opened his mouth as though to speak, but thought better of it, and Oates did not notice him.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ll go down to that damn studio. We’ve got no business here, anyway. I seem to have been using this room as an office ever since the cr
ime. Mrs Lafcadio doesn’t resent it, either. Bless her! Now and again she sends me a cup of tea!’
The two men went through the hall and down the staircase to the garden door.
The Potter studio was forlorn and deserted save for the plainclothes man encamped in the tiny porch.
The Inspector unlocked the door and they went in.
Without the dignity of tragedy the room looked smaller than when Campion had first seen it. The atmosphere was close and smelt abominably of damp, although the place had been unoccupied so short a time. While it was not actually untidy, the bookshelves and the side tables had a slightly ruffled appearance, betraying a recent search amongst their contents.
Oates stood looking round him in mild exasperation.
‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all. Not a sign of a bottle or a flask in the whole outfit. Not a trace of alcohol in the place.’
‘Could she have got it from the house in a glass?’ Campion spoke without much enthusiasm and the elder man shrugged his shoulders.
‘And put the stuff in herself? Well, she might, but I don’t think so. Hang it all, what did she get the nicotine out of? There’s not a phial, not a pill bottle, nothing that might have contained it. Besides, someone must have seen her go into the house – Lisa, for instance, whose window looks straight out on this doorway.’
Campion nodded absently. ‘You’ve made a thorough job of it, I suppose?’
‘Well, I had Richardson and Miss Peters. You know ’em, don’t you?’
Campion had a vision of the stout, lazy-looking man with the delicate hands and the sharp, inquisitive eyes, followed by the tiny birdlike woman whose hands moved so quickly yet so methodically through drawers and table-loads of litter. The legend concerning them was that they were relations of the Recording Angel whom nothing ever escapes.
‘That settles it then,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing here.’
‘I know that.’
‘They found no alcohol and no poison?’
‘Poison!’ The Inspector spoke explosively. ‘My good boy, this garden is lousy with poison. Rennie has about two stone of pure white arsenic to start with. There’s a quart and a half of dilute hydrochloric acid in the shed behind the scullery – Dutch mordant. Potter used it in his lithography.
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