‘But presumably,’ said Fen, ‘it can be tested.’
‘We shall try,’ Humbleby answered. ‘But the analyst people aren’t going to be pleased at having no guide whatever. There are about five thousand different tests for toxins. They’ll use up what we give them in doing the first thousand or so and, if they haven’t got a positive reaction by then, there’ll be nothing more we can do about it.’
‘Rabbits,’ said Fen. ‘Dogs, toads.’
Humbleby sighed. ‘Oh yes. A licensed vivisection laboratory is the only hope. But even so, you know, it will probably take weeks.’
‘And the syringe?’
‘Five c.c.,’ said Wolfe. ‘An unusually large one, I understand. It may ultimately be traced, but there’s nothing to stop anyone buying a hypodermic anywhere at any time, so frankly I’m not hopeful. Still, we’ve ascertained that it doesn’t belong to the hospital, which I suppose is progress of a kind.’
‘I take it you’ve also ascertained that no drugs are missing from the hospital stores?’
‘I only wish we could. But bless their hearts, they can’t tell me. There’s apparently no check on quantities. They just go on using things until they run out, and then get some more. No locks have been tampered with – and that’s absolutely all one can say on the subject.’
‘And it would be inane, no doubt, to ask if there were any finger-prints.’
‘It would, I’m afraid. Gloves are indicated. Nor are there any footmarks; the ground’s far too hard. Nor are there any fragments of clothing. Clothing very seldom catches on things, if you come to think of it.’
‘What about the nurse? Can’t she help?’
‘A nice girl,’ said Humbleby thoughtfully. ‘And courageous. But no, she can’t help. Assailant unidentifiable, a mere silhouette. Sex of assailant probably male, but there’s no swearing to that. Size of assailant – too confused and alarmed to be certain. We’re operating – or rather, not operating – in a factual vacuum. . . . Well, well, it’s common enough. There have to be clues in detective novels, but in actuality there are fewer than is generally supposed, and on occasion – as now – none at all.’ Humbleby peered about him. ‘Or after all, is there to be a clue? Your sergeant, Wolfe, looks as if he might have found one.’
They followed the direction of his gaze. An eager-looking young man in uniform hurried up to them with something lying on a handkerchief in the palm of his hand.
‘Found it under a bush near the girl’s window, sir,’ he reported.
‘Good for you, Jimmy,’ said Wolfe.
They all examined the object – a small glass container empty, and bearing the label of a well-known chemist. When they had looked their fill, Wolfe said: ‘Try it for prints, Jimmy.’
The sergeant saluted and made off. ‘Insulin,’ Humbleby commented without evident comprehension. ‘I can’t say I know much about that. They give it for diabetes, don’t they?’
‘So I believe.’ Wolfe nodded. ‘Of course, we can’t be sure that container has anything to do with the attack on the girl. In a hospital it’s natural that – – ’
‘Oh, come,’ Fen interrupted. ‘It’s clear enough, I think. The effect of an overdose of insulin is to produce a hypoglycaemic coma – just such a coma, to all outward appearance, as would probably precede death in a case of serious head injury.’ He sat upright with something like animation. ‘My God, what a damnably clever scheme! The girl will have been having injections, so the prick in her arm wouldn’t arouse comment. And death would look like a perfectly natural consequence of the accident. There probably wouldn’t even be an inquest. And if there were a post-mortem it certainly wouldn’t occur to them to test the blood-sugar content. The thing is fool-proof. There isn’t a doctor in the land who would have hesitated to write out the death certificate.’
‘Good God.’ Humbleby was shocked. ‘And am I to understand that this insulin can be obtained by anyone?’
‘Certainly you are. There’s no need to sign a poisons book, or even to have a doctor’s prescription.’
‘And the quantity required?’
Fen frowned slightly. ‘Let’s see; that was a 5 c.c. container, at forty units to the c.c. Two hundred units. It would probably be enough to kill, but I dare say he had more of the stuff on him, and was proposing to give a second injection and make sure of it. . . . Hell!’ Fen suddenly exclaimed. ‘He may have actually given one injection before the nurse got back. Wait for me.’ He got up and fled into the hospital.
Ten minutes later he reappeared in a more tranquil state of mind. ‘All’s well,’ he said. ‘No sign of trouble. In fact, it seems that the girl’s rallying fast. They’re expecting her to be conscious at any time now. . . . And there’s a point there, by the way. As I understand it, they didn’t at first imagine she’d live.’
‘That’s so,’ said Wolfe. ‘She took a turn for the better early yesterday morning – thereby, one presumes, provoking the attack last night.’
‘But how many people would know she was recovering?’
‘Half the neighbourhood, I should think. These nurses gossip – who doesn’t – – and it’s got about that there’s some kind of a mystery regarding this girl, so people are interested in her. No, I’ve considered that as a possible lead, and of course I’ll do what I can about it, but I’m not sanguine.’
Humbleby’s eye was on Wolfe’s ruddy complexion, and he seemed for a moment to contemplate some species of joke in connexion with this last remark. But evidently he thought better of it, for he produced a packet of cheroots from his pocket, lit one, and after a pause for reflection merely said:
‘Well, what now? To me it seems that our only course is to wait till the girl’s fit to talk, and then see if we can’t get some indication from her of a reason for the attack. It’s not impossible that she knows something about Bussy’s murder.’
‘Well, there’s very little else we can do, except wait,’ said Wolfe with candour.
‘You’ve made no progress, then,’ Fen inquired, ‘in the matter of Bussy?’
‘None whatever. Material clues are lacking, inferences lead in and out of the same blind alley: how did X know that Bussy was going to turn up at the hut?’ Wolfe stared at Fen with distrust. ‘Are you sure your conversation with Bussy couldn’t have been overheard?’
‘I’m positive of it. And I didn’t tell anyone about it, and it’s inconceivable to me that Bussy did.’
Wolfe shrugged. ‘Then we’re left with an impossibility.’ He hesitated, and then, apparently, came to a decision. ‘Look here, has it occurred to either of you that these cases may not, after all, be rationally related to one another?’
‘It has certainly occurred to me,’ said Humbleby through a cloud of blue smoke. ‘You mean, I take it, that there’s a homicidal maniac at work; that the connexion between two of his victims – Bussy and Mrs Lambert – is fortuitous; and that we’re wasting our time trying to establish a logical nexus for the three affairs, when the only thing they have in common is that one madman is responsible for all of them.’
‘That is what I mean,’ Wolfe agreed. ‘I wouldn’t, of course, now identify this madman with Elphinstone.’
‘Nor even, necessarily, with the person who was blackmailing Mrs Lambert.’
‘Quite so.’
Humbleby turned to Fen. ‘And you, Professor – What do you think?’
‘I think you’re talking nonsense. Homicidal maniacs don’t contrive murder methods which simulate natural death. No, I stick to our original notion: that X blackmailed Mrs Lambert, killed her to prevent discovery, killed Bussy because Bussy was on his track, and attempted to kill this girl for a reason which we’ve yet to discover.’
Humbleby sighed. ‘It’s the better hypothesis, I admit. But for the one besetting problem, it fits the facts very much more snugly. Well, well, we shall see.’
‘And until the girl’s fit to talk,’ said Wolfe, ‘there’s one job we can get on with – I mean breaking open that box I took from her room a
t the inn just after the accident. I feel I’m justified in doing that now.’
‘Ah,’ said Fen. ‘Let me know if it’s anything interesting, won’t you?’ He made his farewell and departed.
CHAPTER 15
IT is no part of my intention, in this brief though salutary narrative, to describe the progress of Fen’s election campaign. And indeed details are needless, since the intelligent reader can easily infer them from what has already been said. Shepherded by Captain Watkyn, Fen toured the constituency, was orotund in village halls and at street corners, disrupted with canvassing the matutinal labours of housewives, chatted affably and encouragingly with the small but gallant band of his active supporters, and in general piled cliché on cliché with an ingenuity worthy (as Captain Watkyn, with the air of one who has coined a new and striking turn of phrase, on one occasion remarked) of a better cause.
But disenchantment lay heavy on him, and he performed these functions conscientiously but without zeal. A repugnance for the whole transaction grew on him hourly, and upon the editing of Langland he looked back with a nostalgia which students of that malignant poet will scarcely be able to credit. His meetings, though numerically small, were almost always enthusiastic, and he might have derived some consolation from that. By a smooth and earnest utterance, in which no single sentence lacked platitude of form or content, he could undoubtedly hold and stir his hearers. But the pleasure to be had from this rapidly palled. An expert conjuror may initially be gratified if his audience supposes the tricks to be worked by real magic; if this attitude persists, he will soon grow peevish and discontented. And thus it was with. Fen. He found himself in the position of an actor whose miming is so plausible that the emotions he presents come to be universally regarded as real and not artificial, and to whose skill, in consequence, no tribute is ever paid.
He was haunted, moreover, by a growing fear that he might actually be elected. This possibility had not, at the time of his arrival in Sanford Angelorum, seemed particularly daunting, but a few days of campaigning gave it a more ominous look. A whole-time preoccupation with democratic politics, he rapidly discovered, is not easily imposed on a humane and civilized mind. In no very long time the gorge rises and the stomach turns. And the prospect of five years spent trooping in and out of lobbies, crying ‘Oh!’ from back benches, arguing in committee rooms, corresponding with crazy constituents, and suffering without protest that which the House of Commons supposes to be wit – all this, conceivably stored up for him in what Captain Watkyn would have called the womb of time, Fen was beginning to find inexpressibly dispiriting. He had money of his own; he had been a Professor at Oxford for nearly ten years; he had felt that a change of occupation would be good for his soul. And he now saw with belated clarity that he had been mistaken. He might, of course, have withdrawn his candidature, and there were moments when he seriously considered doing this; but a certain native obstinacy, combined with a curiosity as to the ultimate issue, kept him in the field. And if the worst happened, the Chancellor could probably be induced to give him the Chiltern Hundreds. . . .
Polling was fixed for the Saturday. By the Thursday, the state of the parties defied analysis. Labour expected a gain on the figures at the General Election, but was far from being confident of victory. And the Conservatives would have been happy enough had it not been, for Fen, whose programme, in so far as it was ascertainable at all, leaned rather to the Right than to the Left, and who was expected in consequence to seduce a certain number of Conservative voters from their proper allegiance: an expectation which was strengthened by Strode’s comparative lack of personality.
‘The fact is, old boy, it’s anybody’s guess,’ said Captain Watkyn, who was as yet unaware of Fen’s waning enthusiasm. ‘And your own chances aren’t half bad. Now, if we could only get that ruddy loudspeaker van working again. . . .’
The loudspeaker van’s first excursion had taken it from Sanford Morvel to Sanford Angelorum, and thence a short distance towards a minute village romantically and quite inappositely named Dawn. When about three miles from the nearest telephone, it had, however, broken down simultaneously in all departments, and it was now back at the electrician’s undergoing treatment appropriate to its relapse. Fen would have been delighted to have abandoned it altogether, but for Captain Watkyn the whole campaign was tending to resolve itself into a kind of duel between himself and the van, and he declined to hear of such a thing. In this matter, he gave Fen to understand, his professional reputation was at stake; by hook or by crook he was going to have the damned van back on the road by Polling Day; and Fen, after arguing the point feebly for some minutes, was forced to give in.
Even more disconcerting than the loudspeaker van was the problem of Mr Judd. Mr Judd had run politically amok. His early reluctance to be active in Fen’s cause had given place with horrid swiftness to an excess of zeal which both Fen and Captain Watkyn found a serious embarrassment. He insisted on taking the chair at all meetings; he orated unquenchably; he spent hours in Sanford Morvel library assembling a factual indictment of the Party system in politics and elaborating this into a philosophy of history. And upon such topics as the origins of Whiggery he talked at Fen and Captain Watkyn in season and out, to their consternation and dismay. At first it seemed probable to Fen that all this constituted an attempt to please Jacqueline, but in view of the disinterested vehemence of Mr Judd’s goings-on he was presently compelled to abandon the theory. Mr Judd, it became plain, was reacting as only a normally retiring man can react to the excitements of public life. They had gone to his head like (I quote Captain Watkyn again) strong wine, and whereas previously he had shunned them, now he could not have enough of them. Fen and Captain Watkyn found being in his company a severe trial of their patience, for Captain Watkyn had never had any interest in political problems as such, and Fen had temporarily lost whatever interest he might previously have felt. They contemplated Mr Judd’s unforeseen fervour with the fatalistic horror of Frankenstein when confronted for the first time by his monster. And Mr Judd plunged unheeding on, like the broom of the sorcerer’s apprentice, and neither Fen nor Captain Watkyn could think of any spell powerful enough to stop him.
‘Opsimath,’ said Fen dismally. ‘Having embarked on politics for the first time late in life, Judd has got obsessed with them; just as a child, on discovering it can write its own name, goes on writing its own name until it drops down from exhaustion.’
‘Ah,’ said Captain Watkyn sagely.
It is undeniable that Mr Judd’s zeal won many supporters for Fen; but his efforts may have been nullified to some extent by the editor of the Sanford Advertiser and Peek Gazette, who, in his determination to requite the service rendered him by Fen’s father, disastrously overstepped the bounds of good sense. He published, on the Thursday, an issue which overtly flouted those great canons of impartiality in British journalism to which British journalists are so assiduous in calling our attention, by extolling Fen and his candidature to the virtual exclusion of all else. Even Captain Watkyn, whose optimism constituted a necessary adjunct of his livelihood and so was not easily quenched, felt some misgivings.
‘The fact is, old boy, it looks deuced fishy,’ he said. ‘It looks like what it is, a put-up job, and I’m afraid it’ll do you more harm than good. Astonishing how tactless some of these journalist Johnnies are.’
By this time, of course, there were at large in the neighbourhood journalist johnnies of a more portentous kind than the editor of the Sanford Advertiser and Peek Gazette. As has already been said, the Sanford election, in its beginnings, received scant attention from the nation at large; a few of the more popular newspapers came out with small heads like ‘Don-detective Enters Politics’, but the pressure on their space was too overwhelming to allow of more than the briefest paragraphs. The outbreak of murder, however, and the escape of Elphinstone offered more promising material, and moreover, by some unfathomable logic, enhanced the interest of the election; and soon political and crime reporters were rubbin
g shoulders in the Sanford bars and, in the intervals of quarrelling fiercely about their accommodation, foraging abroad for pabulum for the presses. Since Fen was involved both in the politics and in the crime, he was a good deal sought after. But his Machiavellian attempts to barter inside information about the murders for political support produced a deadlock. No journalist on the spot – as he might have known, and probably did – was in a position to make such bargains, and this was just as well, since Fen did not possess any inside information about the murders and, if his offers had been accepted, would have had no recourse but to invent some: an exercise in which, though undoubtedly skilled at it, he would ultimately have been detected. The reporters were consequently obliged to content themselves with Mr Judd, who was prepared to talk inexhaustibly about both crime and politics. His obiter dicta, on the former subject at any rate, were widely published; Annette de la Tour’s sales rose perceptibly, and Annette de la Tour’s publisher took to drinking Lafite instead of Margaux with his lunch. A very general contentment prevailed.
On leaving Wolfe and Humbleby at the hospital, Fen went to ‘The White Lion’ to seek out Captain Watkyn. He was discovered lurking unhappily in the lounge under the compelling, ancient-mariner-like eye of Mr Judd, whose political albatross, the Party system, had acquired additional plumage from the previous afternoon’s work in the public library, and who was now expounding this at length. Fen silenced him for long enough to ascertain that no arrangement had been made for that morning, and then uncivilly fled, driving back under a cloudless sky to ‘The Fish Inn’.
He procured coffee, and drank it perched on the garden roller, brooding disjointedly over the election and the crimes. Within the inn, Mr Beaver and his coadjutors hammered monotonously away, presently introducing a variation in the form of a saw whose voice was the voice of a corncrake in intolerable agony. Fen rose hurriedly and left the precincts. He subscribed wholeheartedly to the view of Sir Max Beerbohm that nothing so effectively inhibits thought as going for a walk, but at the moment no better alternative offered itself. He set off rather dejectedly along the village street.
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