Cottage Sinister

by Q. Patrick

  “But Christopher dear, doesn’t it give you pause—doesn’t it worry you to have these—these terrible things going on in her family?”

  “Does it worry me!” The lines in his face deepened at his mother’s question.

  “Well, that’s why, dear, I thought it would be a good plan to get Lucy away—perhaps to Canada. I might be able to get her a good post out there, and then we could arrange for Mrs. Lubbock to follow later, and they could make a fresh start together. You know they’re rather miserable here because Lucy’s so unpopular. The stupid people in the village are all a little jealous. That’s why I’ve wondered whether I’ve been right … And of course your attentions, my dear …”

  Her voice trailed off to an indistinct murmur, and Christopher brooded for a time in silence.

  “You don’t know Lucy,” he said at length, “or you wouldn’t suggest that plan. She’s not one of your soft, timid souls. She takes it as a sort of challenge to stay here and face the music and keep going. She wouldn’t go away unless her mother urged it, and I think Mrs. Lubbock’s too old to think of going off to Canada. No, Mother, that won’t work, and your son, in due course, will just have to succumb to his fate, if his fate will have him.”

  Lady Crosby sighed, and stirred uneasily in her chair.

  “Well, dear, I can’t run your life for you. It’s up to you. But do just promise me this; won’t you keep away from Lady’s Bower for the present—just for the next few days? Give yourself a chance to think it all over without the distraction of being with her. It’s fairer to her, too.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother, but I can’t promise you even that. Lucy needs all her friends just now. God knows there are few enough! They’re saying things in the village about her—dreadful things. But you mustn’t worry about me, Mother. I’m all right—I know my own mind if ever a man did.”

  A look of dogged sorrow came into Lady Crosby’s eyes. She rose irresolutely, and looked at the clock.

  “It’s early still, but I’m tired, and there doesn’t seem to be anything more to say. Chistopher, could you give me your arm? I think—I’ll go—to bed.”

  Christopher sprang up. “Right-o. And then I think I’ll go for a stroll in the park. I’ve a mess of things in my head to think about.”

  When Christopher came down after seeing his mother to her door, Sir Howard waylaid him in the hall,

  “Young man,” said Sir Howard, “I want a word with you. What would you say if I told you that a certain beautiful young lady said to me that you were as blind as a bat?”

  “Tell you to tell her I agreed with her,” said Christopher, making for the door.

  “Look here. Hold on. Come back. Where are you going to at this hour of the evening?”

  “Gathering mushrooms!” said Christopher as the great door slammed behind him.

  The Archdeacon passed an excellent night at the Crosby Alms. He had been given the best room, which contained an enormous four-poster bed with plump oaken legs and hangings of crimson brocade. A bed so venerable and so comfortable (as mine host had conversationally remarked) that Henry VIII might well have slept in it. And so enormous (as the Archdeacon had waggishly riposted) that it could easily have accommodated all his six wives at the same time! At any rate, the bed suited the Archdeacon admirably, and the Archdeacon suited the bed. A strict adherent to the chaste, medieval night-shirt, he suggested a benign and somewhat bewildered bishop as he lay luxuriously beneath the quaint old patchwork quilt, and glanced up with appreciation at the faded splendor of the ecclesiastical trappings above his head.

  He woke in a good humor, and told himself, as he shaved his smooth, clerical cheeks, that he was almost enjoying this case. When he went downstairs to the dining room where the buxom blonde barmaid placed before him a succulent dish of his favorite kidneys, he decided that he was enjoying the case very much indeed. He had never been quite so comfortable in his life. He liked the village. The old cottages, with their crumbling stones, their mossy roofs and bright, cheerful gardens, gave him a sense of peace and repose. He took a quiet pleasure in the gentle, unobtrusive wisdom of the rustics. He liked the village ale, and—above all—he liked his propinquity to the aristocracy. A twinge of conscience reminded him that he had no right to be enjoying himself in the midst of tragedy and death. And yet, in some innermost recess of his mind, he secretly wished that the case might not prove too easy—or, at least, that the solution might not present itself too quickly. He would like to spend weeks—or even months—eating the mythical lotus (or the less poetical kidney) amid these pleasant and comfortable surroundings. The spell of Circe was upon him!

  But the siren voice gradually began to fade and Duty, Stern Daughter, stood by him once more as he reflected, over a Capstan cigarette and a penultimate cup of coffee, that he would probably see Sir Howard Crosby to-day. Had not the great landowner sent for him, Archibald Inge, not only to avenge these two innocent country girls, but also to protect the women-folk of the village from the ravages of this fiend? Nobody knew where the blow would strike next and he was all that stood between the ignorant rustics and a cruel, relentless killer. The thought braced him to shake off the last traces of his lethargy, gulp down a fourth and final cup of coffee and hasten outside into the early morning sunshine. Goading him like a Fury, the Stern Goddess drove him round to the village post office where he intended to send off to the Yard the telegram which he had carefully prepared last night, reporting what little progress had already been made.

  Mrs. Greene greeted him with a confidentially whispered “Good Morning,” and gave him a look which implied, “We servants of His Majesty must all pull together in this sad business!” He handed in his telegram with a preoccupied nod. It was very long and it was in code, so that Mrs. Greene, scanning it with a puzzled and disappointed frown, was obliged to ask some quite unnecessary questions in the vain hopes of eliciting from the Archdeacon the few straws of information which were thus denied to her. When she finally realized that the secrets of Scotland Yard are even more zealously guarded than those of the Postal Service, she went so far as to commit herself to a profound reflection:

  “There’s more in this business than meets the eye, sir.”

  “Ah!” parried the Archdeacon guardedly, but not altogether without encouragement.

  “Yes, sir, a woman in an official position like me, sir, she sees things and she knows things that are hidden, sir, yes hidden from the rest of the village. Post cards and letters, sir, post cards and letters—even the outside of them can tell a lot to an eye that is trained, sir—to one who handles thousands of them throughout the year, sir.”

  “I imagine that there is not much that escapes you,” replied the Archdeacon, as he tried hard to look with admiration into the all-seeing and slightly protuberant eyes of the postmistress. He had decided that this woman, who was, after all, the one link between the villagers and the outside world, was not to be sneezed at as a source of information.

  “For instance, sir,” she continued in a mysteriously hushed voice, “you may not of known it, but about eight years ago almost every young man in this village got a letter, sir—” She paused as though waiting for the full and awful import of her words to sink in. “Twas when the two elder Lubbock girls was in service up at the Hall, sir—” she paused again and looked at the Archdeacon as if they were fellow cospirators in some horrible plot, “what they call an animus letter, sir,” she added with unconscious humor.

  “Really!” the Archdeacon looked suitably impressed.

  “Yes, sir, and there’s not a soul in this village as knows who sent them. Crool, terrible letters they were; sir, and one young man was so shamed that he up and left Crosby-Stourton never to return—the son of old Joe Birch as died last Sunday night, sir—I knew all about it at the time, sir, but this post office is a sacred trust to me and my lips have been for ever sealed.”

  “If you think, ma’am, that this has any bearing on these recent deaths, it is your duty as a public servant to tell me
all that you know. Believe me, it will go no further unless of course, a human life hangs in the balance.” The Archdeacon was a past-master in the art of unloosening women’s tongues.

  Mrs. Greene beckoned him to come closer and at the same time uttered such a noisy and mysterious “Hus-sh!” that the Archdeacon instinctively looked downward as though he were expecting her to call attention to some scandalous impropriety about his clothing.

  “It was Isabel Lubbock as sent those letters, sir,” she whispered tensely into the confessional ear of the Archdeacon. “Jealous she was that all the young men were fonder of Amy, sir. They do say as how you should never speak ill of the dead, but if you knew how that there Isabel pried and prizzed around into other peoples’ lives, you wouldn’t be surprised at the sad end she’s come to sir—” (Mrs. Greene’s tone was positively aggrieved, as though Isabel had poached on the sacred prerogatives of His Majesty’s Post Office.)

  “Yes, sir, she spied around, found out all the bad things she could and then sent each and every one of Amy’s fellows a crool, wicked letter. Don’t ask me how I know, sir, there are some secrets of my office, sir—”

  At this juncture the Archdeacon made a sympathetic motion of the eyelids which Mrs. Greene must foolishly (and rather vulgarly) have mistaken for a wink. At any rate she continued her story with renewed assurance and volubility.

  “Will Cockett was one as got a letter, sir, and the wickedest of the lot. He was terrible cut up about it too and he always had the notion that it spoilt his chance with Amy. Now if he knew—”

  “Yes, yes,” the Archdeacon was now more than interested.

  “I say if he knew who sent him that letter, sir—well, I’m not suggesting anything, but it was a well-known fact in this village that Isabel Lubbock hated her sister and wouldn’t stop at nothing to do her mischief. And anyone who hurt so much as a hair of Amy Lubbock’s head, sir—well, God help ’em if Will Cockett knew as they’d done it. A quiet, patient man, sir, but you know the old saying as is true today as the day it was written, ‘Beware the anger of a patient man.’”

  Mrs. Greene paused to take a deep breath and looked furtively around her. Her ample bosom appeared positively diminished now that it was unburdened of so many weighty secrets.

  “People forget,” she said, shaking her head as though all the wisdom of the world were on her shoulders, “but I don’t forget like the rest of ’em, sir. I remember how even Lady Crosby—kind soul as she is and always has been especially to the Lubbock family—insisted that Isabel should leave the Hall and go to service in London. I reckon she couldn’t stand her prizzing and prying around all the time any more than the rest of them. At any rate, out she went on her ear did Miss Isabel Lubbock, and rarely she’s hated my Ladyship for it since, in spite of all her generosity to pore old Mrs. Lubbock and her educating Lucy way above her station.”

  Here Mrs. Greene gave the Archdeacon a look which spoke volumes of her personal opinion of people who were unfortunate enough to be “educated way above their station.”

  “And there’s other things going on in this village as I see too, sir,” she said, as though Heaven (or perhaps His Majesty) had gifted her with optic powers extraordinary. “Now, take Miss Vivien Darcy, for example—what was she doing—?”

  But she got no further, for at this moment Dr. Hoskins entered the Post Office. Mrs. Greene’s thin-lipped mouth shut like a rat trap and she shuffled some sheets of postage stamps with splendid insouciance. The doctor looked pale and overtired.

  “Any letters for me, Mrs. Greene?” She handed him an official-looking envelope. “Good, that’s what you and I want, Inspector. Let’s get outside.”

  With one longing, lingering look of understanding thrown over his shoulder to the Postmistress, the Archdeacon followed Dr. Hoskins out into the village street. The doctor opened his letter and glanced hurriedly through several closely-typed sheets. The Inspector noticed that his hand shook slightly as he held the foolscap close to his short-sighted eyes.

  “The autopsy reports?” he queried.

  “Yes, yes,” the young doctor’s voice was tremulous with excitement and scientific interest, “at least it’s the carbon copy. The originals go to the coroner’s office. It certainly looks as though Crosby were right. They don’t say positively that it was hyoscine, but you can bet your boots it was one of the alkaloids of the atropine series. The external symptoms all pointed that way too—the dilated pupils, dry skin, constricted throats. Apparently both bodies were quite normal otherwise. No signs of any degenerative diseases. That rules out heart failure and apoplexy—in fact, it rules out death from natural causes altogether. In other words, Inspector, I feel we can go so far as to say that the girls were poisoned all right, and any one of say three drugs—atropine, hyoscamine and hyoscine—might have been responsible. Hyoscine is my guess and Crosby’s too.”

  The Archdeacon rubbed his hands together softly. He could not help feeling a certain amount of gratification in the fact that it really was a murder case after all.

  “Three possible drugs!” he ejaculated, “doesn’t that rather complicate matters?”

  “No, not really, you see the three are isomeric.” He paused, seeing that the Archdeacon looked more bewildered than usual, “that is to say they have the same formula chemically and approximately the same action in the human body. The only difference is in their molecular constitution. I doubt if even the Public Analyst would be able to distinguish one from the other in the stomach content—”

  “And the Dormital tablets?” the Archdeacon said quickly, anxious to get back into his depth. Dr. Hoskins blinked myopically at the pages in the bright sunlight.

  “I was just coming to them. They are true to formula, all right. That is the formula telegraphed to me by the company. Just triple bromides and harmless as possible. The poor girl could have swallowed the whole bottle without developing anything more serious than a rash. I’m convinced that their presence was merely accidental and that they had no bearing whatsoever on Amy Lubbock’s death. When all’s said and done, almost every woman has a bottle of them in her medicine chest. You ask your wife, she’s probably got one.”

  The Archdeacon turned to his companion with a faintly perceptible glint of suspicion in his eyes.

  “Do you mind if I see the report, doctor?” Hoskins passed it over to him without a word. The Archdeacon frowned at it for a few moments, then, selecting some of the most complicated words at random and mangling their pronunciation in a manner which made the young doctor wince, he read.

  “Paralyzing inhibitory terminations, mydriasis, intercranial hemorrhage, laevorotary isomer, medullary centres—! Why the deuce can’t they write these things in English. It’s all Greek to me!” Dr. Hoskins smiled a trifle grimly.

  “Well, you needn’t worry, it will all come out at the inquest. In the meantime you will just have to take my word for it.”

  “When is the inquest, by the way?”

  “Well, Dr. Young of Edith’s Ford is the coroner for this district. He’s away on a holiday just now. The best thing for you to do is to ask Sir Howard exactly what arrangements are being made. I’m not awfully well up on these matters as nothing like this has ever happened before in my—er—practice.”

  The Archdeacon nodded thoughtfully. The mention of Sir Howard’s name found him chastened and humble. After rubbing his chin for a moment he said in a more respectful tone.

  “These drugs you mention, Dr. Hoskins—are they simple drugs such as might be prescribed every day, or are they—”

  “Complicated as the devil,” the young doctor snapped. “Doubt if you could get them anywhere round here short of Bristol. Except in hospitals, of course. However, we’ll go round to Scripps, the local chemist, if you like, though it is probably a waste of time. It might interest you to know, by the way, that either Crosby or I could easily have saved those girls if we had been called in soon enough. A shot of pilocarpine, artificial respiration—nothing simpler. Has it occurred to you th
at the murders were extremely well timed? In both instances they took place when no doctor was handy. I wonder if that was deliberate.”

  They discussed this point as they walked down the village street, passed the butter market and Crosby Cross until they came to a small, shabby chemist shop housed in a perfect specimen of 16th century architecture.

  Mr. Scripps, an old man with a tobacco-stained beard, shook his whiskers at them in bewilderment as Dr. Hoskins reeled off the formidable names—“Atropine, hyoscamine, hyoscine.”

  “No, doctor, nothing like ’em in stock and never have had—now there’s aspirin here, if that would do—?”

  They wasted no more time on Mr. Scripps and his wares.

  “Well, let’s try the Cottage Hospital. Maybe old Crampton used hyoscine when he was in charge. There will certainly be some atropine there, anyhow. That’s used quite frequently in all hospitals. Here’s my house. If you wait a second I’ll run you over in my Austin.” The Archdeacon assented readily.

  It took them but a few minutes to reach the small but rather imposing stone building which lay on the outskirts of the village. As they passed under the Gothic entrance the Archdeacon read the inscription:

  CROSBY-STOURTON COTTAGE HOSPITAL

  GIFT OF LADY CYNTHIA CROSBY, 1915

  “Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy laden.”

  “Given by Lady Crosby during the war,” said Dr. Hoskins as he noticed the direction of his companion’s gaze. “It’s a bit of a white elephant now, but, of course, it was always full while the war was on and for some years after. Lady Crosby ran it herself, I believe, and darned well, too. She’s always been keen about medicine and health. In fact, she once told me that, before she married, it was her ambition to be a doctor herself and I think she’d have been a good one. Plenty of nerve. She’s made up for it, poor soul, by being on the women’s committee of almost every large hospital in the county and this is one of three that she’s bought and equipped at her own expense.”