The Problem of the Green Capsule

by John Dickson Carr

  “So that’s how he changed ’em over!” said Major Crow’s voice out of the gloom.

  “Sh-h-h!” roared Dr. Fell.

  But there was not time to think, for the whole affair was over too soon. When Nemo circled the table outside the range of light he became a sort of exploding blur, unpleasantly as though he had no existence and were dematerialising.

  Then they saw a man murdered.

  Nemo reappeared on the other side of the table. Marcus Chesney spoke to him soundlessly. Nemo’s right hand—which they could see because he was now partly facing them—was in his pocket. It came out; the movement of the hands flickered a little, but he was taking something out of what looked like a tiny cardboard box.

  Hitherto his movements had been swift and precise. Now they became charged with a kind of malignancy. The fingers of his left hand fastened lightly round Marcus Chesney’s throat; they moved, and tilted up the chin. Even in the hollows of the eyesockets you could see the startled gleam of Marcus Chesney’s eyes. Nemo’s right hand wormed over his captive’s mouth; it pressed a capsule inside, and flattened out.

  Superintendent Bostwick spoke out of the gloom.

  “Ah,” he said. “That was where the lady cried out, ‘Don’t, don’t!’”

  Nemo disappeared again.

  Circling back round the table in a shadowy dazzle, he picked up the black satchel. But this time he moved back to the extreme rear of the room as he was going out. Dimly but clearly, the light picked up his full figure. It showed the dress trousers and the evening shoes. It also showed the distance of the bottom of the raincoat from the floor. In one flash they could estimate his height almost as clearly as though they held a measure.

  “Stop the film!” said Major Crow. “Stop it right there! You can see——”

  It was unnecessary to stop the film. It had come to its end. With a series of flapping noises from the projector, the screen flickered, darkened, and grew blankly white.

  “That’s all,” said Stevenson’s voice rather huskily.

  For a brief time it was only Stevenson who moved. He shut off the machine, wormed his way from behind it, and went to open the curtains. He disclosed a kind of tableau. Major Crow radiated satisfaction. Superintendent Bostwick was smiling quietly and secretly to his pipe. But on Dr. Fell’s face was such an expression of utter and thunderstruck consternation that the Major burst out laughing.

  “Someone has received a jolt, I notice,” he remarked. “Now Inspector, I appeal to you. What was Dr. Nemo’s height?”

  “At least six feet, I should say,” Elliot conceded. “Of course, we shall have to take a magnifying glass to the film and do some measuring. He was dead in line with that mantelpiece, so it ought to be easy. Comparative measurements will do it. But it looked like six feet.”

  “Ah,” agreed Bostwick. “Six feet it was. And did you notice the chap’s walk?”

  “What do you say, Fell?”

  “I say no,” roared Dr. Fell.

  “But don’t you believe your” own eyes?”

  “No,” said Dr. Fell. “Certainly not. Definitely not. Observe the mess in which we have already landed by believing our own eyes. We are travelling in a house of illusions, a box of tricks, a particularly devious sort of ghost-train. When I think of that trick with the clock, I am filled with a kind of reverent awe. If Chesney could think of a stunt as ingenious as that, he could think of others as good—or better. I don’t believe it. By thunder, I won’t believe it.”

  “But is there any reason to suppose this is a trick too?”

  “There is,” affirmed Dr. Fell. “I call it The Problem of the Unnecessary Question. But here we are only supplied with huger and fresher problems——”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, observe how our expert witness was snookered,” argued Dr. Fell, drawing out his bandana handkerchief and flourishing it. “Three witnesses answered that question as to the height of Dr. Nemo. Marjorie Wills is not a particularly good witness. Harding is a rotten witness. Professor Ingram, on the other hand, is a very good witness indeed. Yet, in this question of height, both the unobservant ones got it right and Professor Ingram got it hopelessly wrong.”

  “Still, why are you so insistent that he wasn’t six feet?”

  “I’m not insistent on it. I only say something is fishy somewhere. For all the time, all the prickly, scrambled, uneasy time since I have heard about this case, one question has been bothering me like blazes. It still bothers me worse than any; and it is this. Why wasn’t that film destroyed?

  “I repeat,” said Dr. Fell, flourishing the handkerchief, “why wasn’t that film destroyed by the murderer? After Chesney’s death, when they carried Emmet upstairs, the whole ground floor of the house was deserted. There was: ample opportunity, easy opportunity, to destroy it. You yourselves found the Music Room empty when you arrived. The camera had been shoved away carelessly under the lid of a gramophone. All the murderer would need to do would be open the camera, expose the film to the light and pop goes the weasel. You can’t tell me the murdered wanted a picture of himself in action floating about for the police to put under a microscope. No, no, no.”

  “But Joe Chesney—” began Major Crow.

  “All right: suppose the murderer was Joe Chesney. Suppose he killed Marcus, depending on the clock trick for his alibi, exactly as you say he did. But the man can’t be a complete lunatic. If he played the part of Dr. Nemo, he knew Harding was there filming the whole thing for dear life. He must have known an examination of this film would immediately disclose the missing minute-hand, the hocussed clock, and upset the whole scheme with a crash: as it did. Now, what time did he telephone to you at the police station?”

  “At twenty minutes past twelve.”

  “Yes. And what time did you get to Bellegarde?”

  “About twenty-five minutes past.”

  “Yes. Exactly. So, if he telephoned you, he was downstairs within three steps of the Music Room door. The others were upstairs. Why didn’t he take two seconds off, walk into the Music Room, and destroy the evidence that could hang him?”

  Major Crow had grown rather red.

  “That’s got you, sir,” observed Bostwick dryly.

  “What the devil do you mean, it’s got me?” said Major Crow, with inordinate stiffness. “I don’t know. Maybe he couldn’t find the camera.”

  “Tut, tut,” said Dr. Fell.

  “But since you, Superintendent,” pursued Major Crow, “are being so infernally superior about this whole affair, perhaps you could help us out. Can you explain why the murderer didn’t destroy the film?”

  “Yes, sir, I think I can. It was like this. The murderer wasn’t in a condition to destroy the film, and the other murderer didn’t want it destroyed.”

  “What? Two murderers?”

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Emmet and Miss Wills.”

  Bostwick communed with his pipe, examining it all over. His face wore a heavy, sombre, reflective expression; and he spoke with some difficulty.

  “I haven’t said much about the business so far. But I’ve done a lot of thinking, one way or the other. And if you want to know what I think, I don’t mind telling you; and I can give you a real bit of evidence too.

  “Now, that chap in the picture,” he pointed to the screen, “that’s Mr. Emmet. Not a doubt of it. Look at his height. Look at the way he walks. You ask anybody hereabout; you show ’em that picture; you ask ’em who’s the only man they know that walks just like that; and they’ll tell you Mr. Emmet.

  “I never did believe all that stuff about somebody hitting Mr. Emmet out and taking his place. I didn’t; and that’s a fact. Miss Wills, she shoved it down our throats before we knew what she was about. It’s too much like a film itself. Lord alive,” he sat up, “who’d go to all that trouble and fanciness when all he’d got to do was tip a bit of cyanide into the old gentleman’s tea any day? Suppose his disguise fell off? Suppose the hat fell off, or the muffler got unwound? It didn’t; but it might ha
ve. Suppose the old gentleman grabbed him, which might have happened too? No, sir. And it’s like Dr. Fell says. Whoever killed the old gentleman wouldn’t want a film of it for us to see, so why didn’t he get rid of it?

  “I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night for thinking about it. And all of a sudden I said to myself, ‘Dash my buttons,’’’—he slapped his knee, “‘dash my buttons,’ I said, ‘where’s the other capsule?’’’

  Elliot looked at him.

  “The other capsule?” he inquired, as Bostwick returned the look steadily.

  “Ah. The other capsule. We think—Miss Wills makes us think—somebody’s hit Mr. Emmet out and put a poisoned capsule in place of an ordinary one. All right, say that’s so. If it’s so, where’s the other capsule? The harmless one? High and low we looked; all over the shop; in the raincoat and the satchel and everywhere else; and did we find another capsule? No, we didn’t. Which means there only was one; the one Mr. Emmet had; the one he forced down the old gentleman’s throat.”

  Major Crow whistled.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “And there’s another thing we didn’t find,” argued Bostwick, addressing Elliot. “That little box. The little pasteboard one he took the capsule out of. Did we find that in the raincoat? No, we didn’t. But I thought to myself, ‘Here!’ I said, ‘where is it?’ So I looked this morning where I thought it might be; and it was.”

  “Where?”

  “In the right-hand pocket of Mr. Emmet’s jacket. Hung up on a chair in his bedroom, where they put it when they undressed him.”

  “This,” said Major Crow, “looks bad.”

  “I might as well finish, sir, now I’m on it,” said Bostwick, speaking more rapidly and even more heavily. “Somebody killed Mr. Emmet last night. That somebody was in cahoots with Mr. Emmet over killing the old gentleman. It’s well known Mr. Emmet’d do anything for her. Or else she gave him a capsule with poison in it, without him knowing what was in it, and told him to go on and shove it down the old gentleman’s throat. But I wouldn’t be sure about this last, because Mr. Emmet hit himself out to get an alibi, so it looks like it was all arranged between them. Anyway, why did she shout out, ‘Don’t, don’t’ when the old gentleman was being murdered—and deny saying it afterwards?

  “That’s not hardly right or natural, unless she knew what was going on. And she knew all right. At the last minute she couldn’t stop herself. It’s happened before, that has. You might not think it, Mr. Elliot, but I read a lot of your London murder cases. And I’ll tell you where it happened before. The women can’t help themselves, even when they start all the trouble. ‘Don’t, don’t’ is just what the Edith Thompson woman started to shout out when this fellow Bywaters ran out and stabbed her husband on the way back from the cinema.”

  He paused, breathing heavily.

  Major Crow made an uneasy movement.

  “The evidence against Wilbur Emmet,” admitted Elliot, “is—well, if you can get people to identify Emmet as the man in this film, it’s all up.” He felt disconcerted and half sick, but he faced the facts. “So far, so good. But where’s the evidence against Miss Wills? We can’t arrest her just because she says, ‘Don’t, don’t.’ That’s not good enough.”

  “There’s evidence all right,” returned Bostwick. Again his face grew congested. He hesitated, and then he turned round and shouted over his shoulder: “Hobart Stevenson, if you ever breathe a word of what you’ve heard in this room, I’ll come round here and I’ll break your neck. And you know I mean it.”

  “I won’t say a word, Superintendent,” said Stevenson, who was staring with all his eyes. “Cross my heart.”

  “Mind, I’ll hear about it if you do,” warned Bostwick, glowering on him. He turned back to the others. “I was going to bring this up as soon as I’d seen the film. I haven’t mentioned it yet, even to the Major, because I wanted to be sure. But there’s evidence all right. You were saying a minute ago, sir, that not many people but doctors know how to use a hypodermic. But she would. She learned how to use one during that flu scare six or seven years ago; she helped Dr. Chesney inoculate people.

  “And you were saying, my lad,” he looked at Elliot, “that we didn’t seem keen to arrest people for throwing stones at her. Now that’s not true, and I didn’t like it. Not one bit. If somebody disturbs the peace I’ll do my duty; betting you the magistrates will go light on whoever it was. I warned you I had evidence. What do you think of this?”

  From the inside pocket of his coat he took out an envelope. He held it open so that they could look inside; he walked round the group with it. Inside was a small hypodermic needle. Its plunger was of nickel, and ran through a tiny glass tube inside which they could see a colourless smear. Its odour of bitter almonds was very apparent.

  “Yes,” said Elliot. “Yes.” His throat was very dry and his eyes felt hot. “Where did you get that?”

  “I’ve got a habit of snooping,” said Bostwick. “That was why I asked the Major to ask Miss Wills to come over here and get you. I found it in the false bottom of a jewel-case on the dressing-table in Miss Wills’s bedroom.”

  He handed the envelope to Elliot, and then folded his arms.

  “That,” said Major Crow, clearing his throat, “that, it seems, has definitely done it. What do you say, Inspector? Do you want a warrant?”

  “Not until I’ve had an opportunity to talk to her about it,” Elliot said mildly. He drew a deep breath. “But, as you say—I’m afraid that’s done it. What do you say, doctor?”

  Dr. Fell pressed his hands to his big mop of grey-streaked hair. He groaned; he showed a hideous face of indecision.

  “If I could only be sure! If I could only,” he argued, “climb out of what is at present the wreck of my cosmos! I don’t know what to say. This business has clattered round my ears in a way I never thought it could. It’s quite probable they’re right——”

  Elliot’s own hopes clattered down round his ears.

  —but a little talk with the girl, of course, is indicated before——”

  “Talk to her!” roared Superintendent Bostwick, losing control of his restraint at last. “Talk to her! Ah! That’s what we’re always doing, that is. The girl’s as guilty as hell, sir, and well we know it. God knows she’d had every chance, every opportunity. We couldn’t have been fairer to her if she’d been royalty. And what does it get us? We know what it gets us. She’s Edith Thompson all over again, except much worse. As for the Thompson woman, I’ve heard she”—he glanced at Elliot—”even tried to vamp the ’tec who went round to question her after the murder; and what I say is, history keeps repeating itself all the time.”

  Chapter XVI

  CARDBOARD CLUE

  At half-past four in the afternoon, Dr. Fell and Inspector Elliot went with Superintendent Bostwick into Marjorie Wills’s bedroom.

  The first two of them had eaten a very silent lunch at “The Blue Lion”; silent because Major Crow was with them. And, though the Major declared that after this particular side of the matter had been investigated he was having nothing more to do with the case, Elliot was not at all sure of this. Elliot, in fact, was inclined to be morose and a trifle queasy about the stomach when the joint was brought in. He kept telling himself that there it was, and that was that, and so on. Seen in retrospect, his interview with Marjorie, and her appeal to him, seemed to be so theatrically false that it made him gag like sour-tasting medicine. They were probably going to hang her; and that was that. But how the devil had she been able to read his thoughts?

  He had twice been present at a hanging. He did not care to remember the details.

  When they arrived at Bellegarde, he found (with a sense of relief which half choked him) that Marjorie was out. She had gone out in the car with Harding, said Pamela, the pretty maid; she had gone to either Bath or Bristol, said Lena, the red-haired maid. Both were in a bad state of nerves, together with Mrs. Grinley the cook, because they were alone in the house. A Mr. McCracken—who appeared
to be Emmet’s assistant at the greenhouses—would come up to the house from time to time, to give them a hail and make sure all was well. Dr. Chesney, though he had slept at Bellegarde the night before, had now gone. Neither the maids nor the cook had anything to add to the testimony about either death of the night before.

  Bellegarde lay pleasant and cheerful-looking in the autumn sunshine. Its yellow and blue bricks, its steep-pitched roof with the trim Dutch gables, seemed to hide no secrets. Wilbur Emmet, too, had died very peacefully. The windows of his bedroom faced west; pale sunlight poured in across the bed between undrawn curtains. His head was bandaged, and there was a slight cyanosis of the face: but this face looked serene and almost attractive in death. He lay straight out, the coverlet drawn to his chest and his right arm, the pyjama-sleeve turned back, outside it. Dr. West was permitted to remove the body for a postmortem examination; at the moment he could say only that Emmet seemed to have died from a dose of prussic acid administered subcutaneously, probably with a hypodermic needle. Nothing could have been quieter or less suggestive of the terrifying. Yet even Dr. Fell, looking round that sunlit room with its pattern like peaches on the wallpaper, could not keep back a slight shudder.

  “Yes,” agreed Bostwick, studying him. “Now this way, please.”

  Marjorie’s bedroom was at the front of the house. It also was a spacious, cheerful place, with cream-coloured paper having a panel design. The furniture was of light walnut, the windows had golden-brown draperies over frilled curtains. Beside the bed was a low open-faced book-stand containing twenty or more volumes, and Elliot glanced at the titles. A series of guide-books for France, Italy, Greece, and Egypt. A French dictionary, and a paper covered Italian Made Easy. The Sea and the Jungle. Where the Blue Begins, Antic Hay. The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Collected Plays of J. M. Barrie, Fairy Tales, of Hans Christian Andersen, La Chronique d’un Amant Vicieux. And—he wondered if Bostwick had noticed them—several text-books on chemistry.