H.M. blew out smoke somberly.
"It wasn't us that saved Mrs. Fane's life, son," he added. "It was only the fact that the murderer gave her too big a dose. It was so whackin' big that it neutralized itself. Once I sent for a stomach-pump…"
Courtney, without seeing him, stared at the past. It was as though many blurred pictures had now come into focus to form a series-
"Nice pleasant gentleman or lady, this murderer," observed Masters grimly. "Oh, ah! You've got a bit of a better idea now, haven't you, Mr. Courtney?" Courtney had.
"Just a minute!" he begged. "When was the strychnine given to her, then?"
"About four o'clock on Thursday afternoon, we make it," replied Masters. "That's to say: about twenty minutes before the symptoms started to come on. Strychnine usually begins to work within twenty minutes."
"I see. And it was administered through the mouth, wasn't it? In a grapefruit?" H.M. raised his eyebrows.
"So?" he grunted, peering round a poisonous cloud of smoke. "Have you been tryin' to play detective too? But that's right. It must 'a' been the grapefruit. First, the cook swears it's the only thing Mrs. Fane ate on Thursday. Second, grapefruit's one of the few things that'd be bitter enough of itself to hide the bitter taste of strychnine — drat him!"
"Drat who?"
"This feller who's been foolin' us!" roared H.M. "I was the one who led everybody up the garden path. I was the one who fell into the trap, as smooth and slick as you please, and started babblin' about tetanus. It's small thanks to me Mrs. Fane's alive now. Cor!"
"Have you found the grapefruit that was used?"
It was Masters who answered him.
"No, sir, we haven't. And we're not likely to. At the time we had other things to think about — Mrs. Fane. When Sir Henry asked the cook later, she said she'd thrown the grapefruit in the dustbin. It wasn't there when we looked. Naturally. Somebody'd removed it."
Masters drew a design on the edge of his notebook with his pencil. His boiled eye looked wicked. He added sinister curlicues to the design, and said:
"It's not likely the murderer'd go poking about a dustbin in broad daylight. Especially as the dustbin's by that garden shed near the back door. Too conspicuous. So it'll be very interesting to know, sir, who was hanging about that back garden after dark." Courtney thought back.
"It'll also be a good thing to know," continued Masters, scoring black lines, "who was hanging about when Mrs. Propper prepared the grapefruit. And who could have got at it. And who carried it up to Mrs. Fane."
"But it certainly wasn't—"
Courtney began this sentence with a rush, and checked himself. Two pairs of eyes fastened on him.
"Yes, sir?" Masters prompted blandly. "You were saying?"
He tried to cough up a laugh.
"I was going to say, it certainly wasn't Frank Sharpless, of all people. The idea of him poisoning Mrs. Fane is so fantastic that you hardly need to consider it."
Masters was noncommittal.
"Just so. Evidently. And if that young gentleman isn't careful, he's going to be asked to resign his commission. Still, evidence is evidence."
"And what is more," said Courtney, "it doesn't lessen the troubles you're already in. You've already proved conclusively that nobody could have exchanged the daggers on Wednesday night. If you now prove that nobody could have poisoned the grapefruit on Thursday afternoon, you will be in the soup for fair."
He had meant nothing by this. But Masters' color, from being ruddy, threatened to turn purple. Masters had been compelled to cork himself down for so long that the bare suggestion of this possibility was almost enough to finish him.
Snapping a rubber band round his notebook, he drew a deep breath and got up. He began to walk up and down under the lines of old weapons, which he regarded lovingly as though they expressed his mood.
"Now see here," he began firmly. "I'm done with flum-diddling and funny business—"
"You think so?" inquired H.M. "Cor!"
"I tell you, I'm done with flum-diddling and funny business. I'm fair sick of the word 'impossible! I don't ever want to hear it again. What's impossible about this? Poison in a grapefruit. Well?"
H.M. soothed him.
"Steady on, Masters. I'll just bet you you're not really thinkin' about impossibilities at all. You're thinkin' about your great big beautiful case against Mrs. Fane. Now aren't you?"
"That's as may be, sir."
"Aren't you? Because, son, that case is shot to blazes. She wouldn't be likely to give herself strychnine just to prove she died of tetanus. Now would she?"
Masters did not say anything. But he cast longing eyes at a murderous-looking Malay kris on the wall.
H.M. smoked reflectively.
"I was just wonderin'. If we eliminate Mrs. Fane, subject to change of mind without notice, is there anybody else we can eliminate?"
Masters was emphatic about this.
"No, there is not. In one of your cases, I wouldn't eliminate the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury. Whoever you think it can't be, that's always the person it is. What were you going to say, though?"
"I was just thinkin' about Dr. Rich."
"To tell you the truth, sir, so was I."
"Here's a chap," argued H.M., "who's had a lot laid at his door he's not guilty of. That business with the alleged rusty pin, for instance. The poor feller must have gone nearly out of his mind Thursday night."
"Oh, ah," acknowledged Masters. "And no motive."
"And, so far as appears, no motive. What do you think, son?"
"I think," snapped Masters, taking up his hat, "that we've done enough talking. I think that the sooner we cut along there and see Mrs. Fane and the cook, the sooner we can argue as much as we like. Are you ready, Sir Henry? And you, sir? Then what are we waiting for?"
Ten minutes later, when H.M. had been persuaded to put on a coat, they were ringing the front door bell at the Fanes'.
The door was opened by an effulgent Daisy, whose snub nose and freckled face shone as though they had been polished. Masters greeted her with a smile that was confidential and bland.
"Good afternoon, miss."
"Good afternoon, sir."
"And how is Mrs. Fane today? Better, I hope?"
"Ever so much better, sir," beamed Daisy. The look she directed at H.M. had in it something little short of awe. "She's sitting up a bit, in bed."
"Do you think we might see her, now?"
"I don't see why not, sir. Miss Browning's with her now. But I'll have to go and ask. Will you come in?"
"No hurry, miss. No hurry! As a matter of fact, we'd just like to have a word with Mrs. Propper first. Now, now! Nothing to be alarmed about. Just a little thing where we think she can help us."
"Auntie's in the kitchen. This way, please."
Ann Browning was not upstairs. She was coming down the stairs at this moment, dressed in a white twill sports-frock with bare arms, and with much of the strain gone from her face. The bruise on her neck under the ear must have been covered with powder, for it was not visible.
Masters greeted her genially as she reached the hall.
"Afternoon, Miss Browning! Sorry to hear about that business the other night. You haven't been getting yourself attacked again, have you?"
Ann stopped short.
"You told him!" she said, looking reproachfully at Courtney. "I wish you hadn't!"
"Hang it all, Ann, it might have been serious! You don't seem to realize the danger you were in."
"It was nothing, Mr. Masters," she assured the chief inspector, ignoring this. "Please forget it. I don't want any bother. I–I suppose you've come to see Vicky? Is there anything new?"
Masters adopted an air of jocoseness which Courtney found somewhat heavy.
"Nothing much, miss. Except," he lowered his voice, "you can thank your lucky stars you were sitting on the lawn at Major Adams's place with us at four o'clock in the afternoon on Thursday."
"Why?"
"Ah! Big s
ecret, miss. Very dark. Come along, Sir Henry."
While Ann stared at them perplexedly, Masters and H.M. followed Daisy towards the dining room. Courtney held back to speak to her.
"You didn't," said Ann, with her eyes on the floor, "you didn't ring up or come round on Friday or Saturday. At night, anyway. I was rather hoping you would."
His day, which hitherto had been overcast and threatening rain, suddenly grew dazzling with sun. "You mean that?" "Yes. Of course."
"My dear girl," he roared, "if I'd any idea, any idea at all, that you.. Good God, what's that?"
The noise, it is true, would have made anyone jump. It was due to a variety of circumstances. The dining-room floor was of polished hardwood which did not creak, but was, on the contrary, of exceptional firmness and slipperiness. Round it were scattered a few rugs like islands. It is unwise to step quickly on one of these rugs when you are not looking where you are going. Sir Henry Merrivale had committed this error.
Merely to say that H.M. took a toss conveys nothing. It lacks the element of majesty attendant on what happened.
His feet flew straight out ahead of him as though galvanized. His despairing howl was of no avail. After describing something of an arc, his ample posterior struck the floor with a crash that made the chandelier rattle, and sent him slithering six feet into a china-closet. There was a pause. Then there rose up in his powerful voice such a torrent of profanity, such a flood of blasphemy and vile obscenities, as must have made George Merrivale himself blush in the infernal regions.
"Sh-h!" urged Masters, also galvanized. "No, no, no! Sh-h!"
The kitchen door was flung open, and Mrs. Propper dashed out.
"I won't have such language—"
She broke off abruptly. Something of Daisy's awe had communicated itself even to Mrs. Propper.
"Heaven save us," she breathed, "it's the big doctor."
Qnly inarticulate gobbling sounds answered her, since Masters had fastened a big hand over H.M.'s mouth.
He removed his hand only when he judged it safe.
"Madam," said H.M. getting his breath but continuing to sit on the floor, "I'd sort of like to suggest that you got your verbs confused. I'm not a big doctor. But I need a big doctor. I need him like billy-o."
"I do hope you're not hurt, sir?"
"Hurt? I'm paralyzed! I'm-"
"Would you like me to rub some embrocation on it?"
H.M. merely looked at her.
"Get up, sir!" hissed Masters, in embarrassed despair. He tried to lift H.M., who merely sat stubbornly like a mule until a sudden idea appeared to occur to him.
Then he got up of his own accord, quickly, and went round counting the rugs. His deadly injury seemed to be forgotten.
If on Thursday night Mrs. Propper would merely have called him'a wild man, this afternoon she showed no such tendency. To Mrs. Propper, a chastened woman, he was something only a little short of a wizard. He had saved Vicky Fane from dying of lockjaw.
Masters saw it, and resolved to take due advantage.
"Very interestin'!" growled H.M., surveying the room. "Very!" Suddenly he seemed to remember; he groaned, and belatedly affected a bad limp; but, as this impressed nobody — even the anxious Mrs. Propper — he grudgingly discarded it.
"No sympathy," he said. "No sympathy for anybody! Looky here, ma'am. Chief Inspector Masters wants to ask you…"
"You ask her, sir," said Masters softly.
"I'm sure if there's anything I can do for you, sir," said Mrs. Propper, "I'd be only too glad to do it! Will you come into the kitchen?"
They went. Ann and Courtney followed. Though Masters seemed about to protest, H.M.'s glare silenced him.
Here H.M. leaned his elbow on the refrigerator.
"Ma'am," he began meditatively, "I'm goin' to deal very frankly with you. Can you keep a secret?"
Mrs. Propper's eyes gleamed.
Through the kitchen windows Courtney could see the dustbin beside the garden shed. Its metal lid was askew, and was now being investigated by a stray cat.
"I'm sure I'll do my best, sir!"
"Good. Now, ma'am, you think Mrs. Fane nearly died of lockjaw. Don't you?"
"Seeing it was you who brought her round, sir…"
"Well, she didn't. She was deliberately poisoned with some stuff called strychnine. That poison was put into a grapefruit, a piece of grapefruit, that you prepared for her about four o'clock on Thursday afternoon. Remember?"
Dead silence, except for the kitchen clock.
If this statement had been made by anybody else in Mrs. Propper's acquaintance, the result would probably have been fury or hysterics. As it was, she merely blinked back at him. It took some time before she even understood. But he ought to know. He was the Big Doctor.
Nor was the effect on Ann Browning less pronounced. Courtney glanced sideways at her tense arms and profile. Otherwise everyone in the kitchen stood rigid.
"God save us," muttered Mrs. Propper, getting her breath, "I-"
"Easy now! We're not suggestin' you had anything to do with it. We're sure you didn't. All we say is that somebody tampered with the grapefruit. The poison might 'a' been in the form of a liquid, or of a white powder. You do remember, don't you?"
Mrs. Propper swallowed.
"So help me, sir, I don't know nothing about it! I've been a good woman all my life, so help me, and I'd never—"
"Now, now, now! I said we know you didn't do it! Didn't I say that? All right. I'm just as kin': you do remember preparing the grapefruit?"
Mrs. Propper sat down rather abruptly in a white chair. She began in a dazed way to fan her face with her apron. What her manner might be when she had assimilated the shock was difficult to tell.
"Yes, I do indeed. But-"
"What happened?"
The cook searched her wits. "I took the grapefruit out of the ice-box, and cut it in half, and put one half in a nice dish—"
"Uh-huh. But before that?"
"Before when? Oh! I see what you mean. Don't hurry me, sir! Please don't hurry me. Mrs. Fane's bell rang—" wordless, she pointed to the indicator-board on the wall—"and Daisy went up and answered it."
"Yes?"
"Daisy came down, and said Mrs. Fane would like a nice grapefruit. Daisy'll tell you that herself. Though the times I've told Mrs. Fane, the times I've said, it's not enough to keep body and soul together—"
"Go on."
"I took the grapefruit out of—" This time she pointed to the refrigerator.
"It was a whole grapefruit, was it? It wasn't cut already?"
"Oh, no, sir! I cut it myself. With a knife," she added, evidently wanting to be precise.
"Who was here in the kitchen then?"
"Only Daisy and me."
"You're sure of that, now?"
"Only Daisy and me, so help me!"
"All right. What happened to the other half of the grapefruit?"
"I ate it myself."
It was very warm in the kitchen. H.M. peered round and exchanged a glance with Masters.
"Go on from there, ma'am. You cut the grapefruit—" "Yes. And put it in the glass dish." She made illustrative gestures. "And put it on a nice tray, with a spoon and a little sugar-bowl. And sprinkled some sugar on it."
"So," murmured H.M. "You sprinkled some sugar on it. I just want you to remember, ma'am. Strychnine is a white powder that looks for all the world like sugar. It could have been mixed in with the sugar, couldn't it?"
"Nasty stuff!" said Mrs. Propper, suddenly and violently. "Nasty stuff! No, sir, I swear it couldn't!" "Couldn't have been in the sugar? Why not?" She swallowed.
"Because, as soon as I'd sprinkled a little sugar on, I sprinkled a lot of — I mean, I sprinkled some sugar from that same bowl on me own grapefruit. And ate it. And I'm as right as rain."
H.M. turned round and exchanged with Masters a glance which seemed to say, "sunk." Even H.M. was growing rattled. He put up a hand and adjusted his spectacles, cleared his throat, and eyed her a
gain.
"You're sure, now, that nobody — not even Daisy — came near the grapefruit while you were doin' that?"
"Oh, sir, would I lie to you?"
"Don't carry on, now! What happened then?"
Mrs. Propper was transfixed by memory as though by an arrow.
"Then, just then, Captain Sharpless opened the door. He'd been up in Mrs. Fane's room (And there's things the Good Lord won't allow in this world, either, if you ask me!)
"And he said, he said, 'Don't bother, Daisy; I'll take it up to her.' And I handed him the tray." Her eyes were fixed and horrified. She made an illustrative gesture of handing the tray. "And out he walked with it. And so if anybody put that dreadful stuff in the grapefruit… God love us, it must have been that Captain Sharpless himself."
Her voice had grown louder, ringing in the kitchen. Footsteps crossed the floor of the dining room beyond. Frank Sharpless, pushing open the swing-door so that it almost caught Ann a blow behind the shoulder, poked his head round the edge of the door.
"Hullo!" he said pleasantly. "Did I hear somebody mention my name?"
Fifteen
"Daisy said you were out here," he went on. "What's the conference all about? Is anything up?". Mrs. Propper's expression must have betrayed her to anyone who was looking at her. She moved her ample body as though about to utter a stifled shriek. Her wide-open eyes conveyed that she had thought he was wicked, but not this wicked.
Sharpless did not look at her. He was a very different person from the hag-ridden talker of the garden. A clearer picture of (as the Sunday School weeklies would say) youth, health, and innocence could not have been found.
Fresh from shave and hair-cut. at the barber's, his hair sleekly groomed, his good-humored smile widening and his eyes untroubled, Sharpless saluted them with his cap. His stick was tucked under his left arm.
Chief Inspector Masters did not step into the breach: he jumped there. Perhaps they were all afraid that Mrs. Propper might leap up and cry, "Murderer!" or some such perfectly sincere melodramatic gesture, making the kitchen explode with emotionalism.
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