“Certainly not; the medicines were kept in my room.”
“Nothing on the bedside table or the mantelpiece?”
“There was a cup of diluted Listerine by the bed, for washing out the patient’s mouth from time to time, that was all.”
“And there’s no digitalin in Listerine — no, of course not. Well now, who brought up the brandy-and-water?”
“The housemaid went to Mrs Mitcham for it. I should have had some upstairs, as a matter of fact, but the patient couldn’t keep it down. Some of them can’t, you know.”
“Did the girl bring it straight up to you?”
“No — she stopped to call Miss Dorland on the way. Of course, she ought to have brought the brandy at once and gone to Miss Dorland afterwards — but it’s anything to save trouble with these girls, as I daresay you know.”
“Did Miss Dorland bring it straight up—?” began Parker. Nurse Armstrong broke in upon him.
“If you’re thinking, did she put the digitalin into the brandy, you can dismiss that from your mind, constable. If he’d had as big a dose as that in solution at half past four, he’d have been taken ill ever so much earlier than he was.”
“You seem to be well up in the case, Nurse.”
“Oh, I am. Naturally I was interested, Lady Dormer being my patient and all.”
“Of course. But all the same, did Miss Dorland bring the brandy straight along to you?”
“I think so. I heard Nellie go along the passage on the half landing, and looked out to call to her, but by the time I’d got the door open, I saw Miss Dorland coming out of the studio with the brandy in her hand.”
“And where was Nellie then?”
“Just got back to the end of the passage and starting downstairs to the telephone.”
“At that rate. Miss Dorland couldn’t have been more than ten seconds alone with the brandy,” said Peter, thoughtfully. “And who gave it to General Fentiman?”
“I did. I took it out of Miss Dorland’s hand at the door and gave it to him at once. He seemed better then, and only took a little of it.”
“Did you leave him again?”
“I did not. Miss Dorland went out on the landing presently to see if the taxi was coming.”
“She was never alone with him?”
“Not for a moment.
“Did you like Miss Dorland, Nurse? Is she a nice girl, I mean?” Wimsey had not spoken for so long that Parker quite started.
“She was always very pleasant to me ” said Nurse Armstrong. “I shouldn’t call her an attractive girl, not to my mind.”
“Did she ever mention Lady Dormer’s testamentary arrangements in your hearing?” asked Parker, picking up what he conceived to be Wimsey’s train of thought.
“Well — not exactly. But I remember her once talking about her painting, and saying she did it for a hobby, as her aunt would see she always had enough to live on.”
“That’s true enough,” said Parker. “At the worst, she would get fifteen thousand pounds, which carefully invested, might mean six or seven hundred a year. She didn’t say she expected to be very rich?”
“No.”
“Nor anything about the General?”
“Not a word.”
“Was she happy?” asked Wimsey.
“She was upset, naturally, with her aunt being so ill.”
“I don’t mean that. You are the sort of person who observes a lot — nurses are awfully quick about that kind of thing, I’ve noticed. Did she strike you as a person who — who felt right with life, as you might say?”
“She was one of the quiet ones. But — yes — I should say she was satisfied with things all right.”
“Did she sleep well?”
“Oh, she was a very sound sleeper. It was a job to wake her if anything was wanted in the night.”
“Did she cry much?”
“She cried over the old lady’s death; she had very nice feelings.”
“Some natural tears she shed, and all that. She didn’t lie about and have awful howling fits or anything like that?”
“Good gracious, no!”
“How did she walk?”
“Walk?”
“Yes, walk. Was she what you’d call droopy?”
“Oh, no — quick and brisk.”
“What was her voice like?”
“Well, now, that was one of the nice things about her. Rather deep for a woman, but with what I might call a tune in it. Melodious,” said Nurse Armstrong with a faint giggle, “that’s what they call it in novels.”
Parker opened his mouth and shut it again.
“How long did you stay on at the house after Lady Dormer died?” pursued Wimsey.
“I waited on till after the funeral, just in case Miss Dorland should need anybody.”
“Before you left, did you hear anything of this trouble about the lawyers and the wills?”
“They were talking about it downstairs. Miss Dorland said nothing to me herself.”
“Did she seem worried?”
“Not to notice.”
“Had she any friends with her at the time?”
“Not staying in the house. She went out to see some friends one evening, I think — the evening before I left. She didn’t say who they were.”
“I see. Thank you. Nurse.”
Parker had no more questions to put, and they took their leave.
“Well,” said Parker, “how anybody could admire that girl’s voice—”
“You noticed that! My theory is coming out right, Charles. I wish it wasn’t. I’d rather be wrong. I should like to have you look pitifully at me and say, ‘I told you so.’ I can’t speak more strongly than that.”
“Hang your theories!” said Parker. “It looks to me as if we shall have to wash out the idea that General Fentiman got his dose in Portman Square. By the way, didn’t you say you’d met the Dorland girl at the Rushworths?”
“No. I said I went hoping to meet her, but she wasn’t there.”
“Oh, I see. Well, that’ll do for the moment. How about a spot of lunch?”
At which point they turned the corner and ran slap into Salcombe Hardy, emerging from Harley Street. Wimsey clutched Parker’s arm suddenly. “I’ve remembered,” he said.
“What?”
“Who that portrait reminds me of. Tell you later.”
Sally, it appeared, was also thinking of grub. He was, in fact, due to meet Waffles Newton at the Falstaff. It ended in their all going to the Falstaff.
“And how’s it all going?” demanded Sally, ordering boiled beef and carrots.
He looked limpidly at Parker, who shook his head.
“Discreet man, your friend,” said Sally to Peter. “I suppose the police are engaged in following up a clew — or have we reached the point when they are completely baffled? Or do we say that an arrest is imminent, eh?”
“Tell us your own version, Sally. Your opinion’s as good as anybody’s.”
“Oh, mine! — Same as yours — same as everybody’s. The girl was in league with the doctor, of course. Pretty obvious, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” said Parker, cautiously. “But that’s a hard thing to prove. We know, of course, that they both sometimes went to Mrs. Rushworth’s house, but there’s no evidence that they knew each other well.”
“But you ass, she—” Wimsey blurted out. He shut his mouth again with a snap. “No, I won’t. Fish it out for yourselves.”
Illumination was flooding in on him in great waves. Each point of light touched off a myriad others. Now a date was lit up, and now a sentence. The relief in his mind would have been overwhelming, had it not been for that nagging central uncertainty. It was the portrait that worried him most. Painted as a record, painted to recall beloved features — thrust face to the wall and covered with dust.
Sally and Parker were talking.
“… moral certainty is not the same thing as proof.”
“Unless we can show that she knew the terms of the will�
�”
“… why wait till the last minute? It could have been done safely any time…”
“They probably thought it wasn’t necessary. The old lady looked like seeing him into his grave easily. If it hadn’t been for the pneumonia.”
“Even so, they had five days.”
“Yes — well, say she didn’t know till the very day of Lady Dormer’s death…”
“She might have told her then. Explained… seeing the thing had become a probability…”
“And the Dorland girl arranged for the visit to Harley Street…”
“… plain as the nose on your face.”
Hardy chuckled.
“They must have got a thundering shock when the body turned up the next morning at the Bellona. I suppose you gave Penberthy a good gruelling about that rigor.”
“Pretty fair. He fell back on professional caution, naturally.”
“It’s coming to him in the witness-box. Does he admit knowing the girl?”
“He says he just knows her to speak to. But one’s got to find somebody who has seen them together. You remember the Thompson case. It was the interview in the tea-shop that clinched it.”
“What I want to know,” said Wimsey, “is why—”
“Why what?”
“Why didn’t they compromise?” It was not what he had been going to say, but he felt defeated, and those words would end the sentence as well as any others.
“What’s that?” asked Hardy, quickly.
Peter explained.”
“When the question of survivorship came up, the Fentimans were ready to compromise and split the money. Why didn’t Miss Dorland agree? If your idea is the right one, it was much the safest way. But it was she who insisted on an inquiry.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Hardy. He was annoyed. All kinds of “stories” were coming his way to-day, and tomorrow there would probably be an arrest, and he wouldn’t be able to use them.
“They did agree to compromise in the end,” said Parker. “When was that?”
“After I told Penberthy there was going to be an exhumation,” said Wimsey, as though in spite of himself.
“There you are! They saw it was getting too dangerous.”
“Do you remember how nervous Penberthy was at the exhumation?” said Parker. “That man — what’s his name’s — joke about Palmer, and knocking over the jar?”
“What was that?” demanded Hardy again. Parker told him, and he listened, grinding his teeth. Another good story gone west. But it would all come out at the trial, and would be worth a headline.
“Robert Fentiman ought to be given a medal,” said Hardy. “If he hadn’t gone butting in—”
“Robert Fentiman?” inquired Parker, distantly.
Hardy grinned.
“If he didn’t fix up the old boy’s body, who did? Give us credit for a little intelligence.”
“One admits nothing,” said Parker, “but—”
“But everybody says he did it. Leave it at that. Somebody did it. If Somebody hadn’t butted in, it would have been jam for the Dorland.”
“Well, yes. Old Fentiman would just have gone home and pegged out quietly — and Penberthy would have given the certificate.”
“I’d like to know how many inconvenient people are polished off that way. Damn it — it’s so easy.”
“I wonder how Penberthy’s share of the boodle was to be transferred to him.”
“I don’t,” said Hardy. “Look here here’s this girl. Calls herself an artist. Paints bad pictures. Right. Then she meets this doctor fellow. He’s mad on glands. Shrewd man — knows there’s money in glands. She starts taking up glands. Why?”
“That was a year ago.”
“Precisely. Penberthy isn’t a rich man. Retired Army surgeon, with a brass plate and a consulting-room in Harley Street — shares the house with two other hard-up brass-platers. Lives on a few old dodderers down at the Bellona. Has an idea, if only he could start one of these clinics for rejuvenating people, he could be a millionaire. All these giddy old goats who want their gay time over again — why, they’re a perfect fortune to the man with a bit of capital and a hell of a lot of cheek. Then this girl comes along — rich old woman’s heiress — and he goes after her. It’s all fixed up. He’s to accommodate her by removing the obstacle to the fortune, and she obligingly responds by putting the money into his clinic. In order not to make it too obvious, she has to pretend to get a dickens of an interest in glands. So she drops painting and takes to medicine. What could be clearer?”
“But that means,” put in Wimsey, “that she must have known all about the will at least a year ago.”
“Why not?”
“Well that brings us back to the old question: Why the delay?”
“And it gives us the answer,” said Parker. “They waited till the interest in the glands and things was so firmly established and recognised by everybody that nobody would connect it with the General’s death.”
“Of course,” said Wimsey. He felt that matters were rushing past him at a bewildering rate. But George was safe, anyhow.
“How soon do you think you’ll be able to take action?” asked Hardy. “I suppose you’ll want a bit more solid proof before you actually arrest them.”
“I’d have to be certain that they don’t wriggle out of it,” said Parker, slowly. “It’s not enough to prove that they were acquainted. There may be letters, of course, when we go over the girl’s things. Or Penberthy’s — though he’s hardly the man to leave compromising documents lying about.”
“You haven’t detained Miss Dorland?”
“No; we’ve let her loose — on a string. I don’t mind telling you one thing. There’s been no communication of any kind with Penberthy.”
“Of course there hasn’t,” said Wimsey. “They’ve quarrelled.”
The others stared at him.
“How do you know that?” demanded Parker, annoyed.
“Oh, well — it doesn’t matter — I think so, that’s all. And any way, they would take jolly good care not to communicate, once the alarm was given.”
“Hallo!” broke in Hardy, “here’s Waffles. Late again. Waffles! — what have you been doing, old boy?”
“Interviewing the Rushworths,” said Waffles, edging his way into a chair by Hardy. He was a thin, sandy person, with a tired manner. Hardy introduced him to Wimsey and Parker.
“Got your story in?”
“Oh, yes. Awful lot of cats these women are. Ma Rushworth — she’s the sloppy sort of woman with her head in the clouds all the time, who never sees anything till it’s stuck right under her nose — she pretends, of course, that she always thought Ann Dorland was an unwholesome kind of girl. I nearly asked why, in that case, she had her about the house; but I didn’t. Anyway, Mrs. Rushworth said, they didn’t know her very intimately. They wouldn’t, of course. Wonderful how these soulful people sheer off at the least suggestion of unpleasantness.”
“Did you get anything about Penberthy?”
“Oh, yes — I got something.”
“Good?”
“Oh, yes.”
Hardy, with Fleet Street’s delicate reticence towards the man with an exclusive story, did not press the question. The talk turned back and went over the old ground. Waffles Newton agreed with Salcombe Hardy’s theory.
“The Rushworths must surely know something. Not the mother, perhaps — but the girl. If she’s engaged to Penberthy, she’ll have noticed any other woman who seemed to have an understanding with him. Women see these things.”
“You don’t suppose that they’re going to confess that dear Dr. Penberthy ever had an understanding with anybody but dear Naomi,” retorted Newton. “Besides, they aren’t such fools as not to know that Penberthy’s connection with the Dorland girl must be smothered up at all costs. They know she did it, all right, but they aren’t going to compromise him.”
“Of course not,” said Parker, rather shortly. “The mother probably knows nothi
ng, anyway. It’s a different matter if we get the girl in the witness-box—”
“You won’t,” said Waffles Newton “At least, you’ll have to be jolly quick.”
“Why?”
Newton waved an apologetic hand.
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club lpw-5 Page 22
