“Then, Bates came on the scene. He was penniless and in a nasty frame of mind. He’d had his share of our profits in the past, but had spent it and then seemed to think that I’d had more than I ought to have had and that more was due to him. He evidently intended to live on me for the rest of his days. I wasn’t going to have that. I decided to settle him once and for all. He’d arrived after dark and I thought nobody could possibly have seen him enter my place. Just my luck for the blasted doctor to be passing at the time! I decided to kill Bates and dispose of his body. I fancied poison. I’d means of getting it without being traced. I’m a bit of a toxicologist as well as a chemist, so it was easy.”
Gillibrand again showed signs of excitement and apprehension and when Littlejohn tried to quieten his fears, he looked at his colleague as if suspecting he had taken leave of his senses.
“Bates told me in cold blood what he expected,” went on Rider. “He wanted a sum down in cash—a ridiculous sum—and so much a month after. I told him it wasn’t possible. He said he’d have it or make it hot for me. I said I’d have to think it out, hoping to keep him until I’d a chance to give him a doped drink. I’d preparations to make, too, and couldn’t just kill him then and there. He stayed overnight. I was ready to finish him off and drive him away to the woods when it got dark the following evening. Just as I was bracing myself for it, Bates said he’d another errand to do. I knew where he was going. Apprehensive lest anyone should see him, I told him to wait until dusk and then take the quiet field-path to Wall’s. He grinned, that nasty, crooked grin of his. ‘So you guessed where I was going, eh?’ he said. ‘That’s another who’s going to pay me a pension. Harbouring a criminal’s a punishable offence. I’ll have to tell him, that if he doesn’t hand me enough to live on, I’ll have to give myself up to the police and get them to keep me for a year or two. I’ve got a few years’ lodgings still owing to me.’ Even as he cackled at his own joke, I saw a better way of killing him. He’d a key to Wall’s place and was going to let himself in by the back french window and face the old man. I knew the existence of the old well behind The Corner House. If I caught Bates on his way back, I’d only to knock him out and sink him down the well and the job was done. I thought the well was never used. That was my mistake. How was I to know that a daft old gardener was using it to hide his money in and rooting down it with a hook on the end of a pole?
“There’s little else to tell. I followed Bates. Having no sandbag or loaded stick handy, I just found an old stocking, put a round sizeable stone in it, and used that as a weapon. But things didn’t quite turn out as I’d hoped. Wall wasn’t in when Bates got in the house. So Bates waited for him. He calmly put the light on and I could see Wall enter by the dining-room door. Then Wall drew the curtains and I could see no more. Soon Bates emerged in a hurry but furtively. I clouted him good and hard before he could get his bearings and dumped him down the well. He’d left the french window open, so I went back to take a peep at what he’d been at. Very foolish of me, but quite natural. I found Wall on the ground. Apparently they quarrelled and a struggle had ensued. Wall was in a terrible state, for Bates had almost throttled him to death. He was just recovering consciousness when an awful idea dawned on me. If he survived, he’d be sure to ask what had happened to Bates. Even if nothing could be pinned on me, there was a big risk. Besides, what had Bates already told Wall in his truculence? I’d got to silence Wall, too. I didn’t like it, but it was to save my own neck. I’d no weapon…I’d thrown my own down the well with Bates. So, I hanged Wall on his own limb-stretching device. That’s all. Except that I locked the french window and threw the key down the well.”
Littlejohn rose. Gillibrand did the same, feeling utterly at a loss.
“Well, if that’s all, you’d better accompany us to Olstead police-station, Mr. Rider, where you can sign a statement…” began Littlejohn.
Rider burst into harsh laughter.
“Not on your life, Inspector. Why do you think I’ve kept you here so long? The whisky I drank contains a deadly poison. I was expecting you, so had it handy. Given a quarter of an hour—and it’s that since I took it—nothing on earth can save me. Any moment now and the pangs will be on me. No hangman for me…And you can thank Miss Cockayne for this…I might have given you a run for your money otherwise. And you can thank the whisky-sodden doctor opposite, too. Because I prepared this poison for him.”
Gillibrand took up the ’phone hastily, but Littlejohn stayed his hand again.
“I guessed all along he’d taken something,” Gillibrand was saying. “But I thought…”
Rider looked hard at Littlejohn. The Scotland Yard man didn’t seem in the least bit perturbed. Something had gone wrong somewhere, for instead of an atmosphere of tension prevailing, there seemed to be an anti-climax in the offing.
Littlejohn crossed to Rider and snapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists.
“Now, Mr. Rider, come along and no more prevaricating. What you thought was aconitine, was merely a strong dose of horse-radish. Fortunately P. C. Mellalieu, who called round here on another matter this morning, saw you digging up monkshood root. He’s a naturalist and recognized the plant. Contact with me and the investigation over the past few days has made the constable suspicious of you, Rider. He suspects you’re up to no good. So whilst your back was turned, he substituted horse-radish root, which is almost identical with that of monkshood, or wolf’s-bane, as Mellalieu calls it. He just came to tell me his tale. Your pains are merely tummy-ache.”
Gillibrand had no time to register relief, for as soon as the hoax dawned on Rider, he became like one possessed. He fought like a madman, flailing the air with his manacled hands and giving with his feet, the best exhibition of la savatte that Littlejohn had ever come across. He and his two captors struggled and heaved about the room, the Inspectors hanging on his arms like bulldogs, Rider almost lifting them from their feet in his demoniac frenzy. The face of P.C. Mellalieu appeared at the window. Two eyes grew round as saucers and a moustache bristled. The front door opened and in trod the bobby, truncheon in hand. With the light of one set purpose in his eyes, William Arthur Mellalieu relentlessly advanced on the milling mass of arms and legs which constituted his two superiors and their captive. Carefully the village constable selected the head of Rider from the heaving group and, raising his staff, he gave it a precise, but telling swipe. The bottom seemed to drop completely out of the struggle and all that remained was to transport Mellalieu’s victim to the lock-up.
***
The dairyman’s motor-van having been requisitioned again and the bemused Rider, with Gillibrand and Mellalieu supporting him hustled off to the Olstead gaol, Littlejohn crossed the road to Dr. Keating’s surgery. The doctor was exasperated at the sight of the Inspector, for he had an appointment at a bottle-party that evening and had been bustling his patients about with a view to an early finish.
“When am I going to see the last of you policemen?” he asked trying to muster his professional dignity and failing miserably. “I can’t get on with my daily duties for your pestering.”
“I won’t keep you long this time, doctor, if you’ll answer a couple of straight questions.”
“Well, get on with them, then…”
Keating’s eyes grew shifty.
“You were sent-for when Bates’s body was found in the well on the allotment behind Wall’s place?”
“Yes. You know I was.”
“Right. Had you ever seen Bates before that?”
“No. Why should I? He was a stranger here, wasn’t he?”
Littlejohn raised his eyebrows and looked Keating full in the face.
“Sure you never saw him before?”
“No, I tell you. What are you driving at?”
“Where were you on the night before Bates’s death, doctor?”
“Oh hell, is this beginning all over again. I suppose you think I killed Bates now.
Well, I didn’t. I was out on my rounds until well after dark that night. You can see my case-book and follow my tracks for alibis if you like.”
“That won’t be necessary. Did you pass Rider’s place after dark?”
“Of course I did. How else could I have got home?”
“See anybody going in there by the light of your headlamps?”
Keating turned the colour of putty.
“I may have done. What of it?”
“You may have done, eh? Then, why did you tell Rider you saw Bates entering his place that night?”
“I might have said I…I…saw somebody like Bates. I was chaffing Rider a bit the other day…”
“Funny sort of joke, doctor. Why didn’t you tell that to the police when they arrived at the well?”
“I wasn’t sure…you see…”
“I see nothing. I only know that you suppressed evidence and demanded from Rider a price for your silence.”
“It’s a damned lie. I never…”
“Rider has been arrested to-day on suspicion of murder, doctor. You are involved in it. An accessory, in fact. Now are you going to make a clean breast of it and give me a statement, or are you coming with me to Olstead under arrest?”
Half an hour later, Littlejohn left with a statement in his pocket and the doctor remained to get blind drunk alone in his surgery.
As Rider had prophesied, the jury fastened on to the sock and hung to it like bulldogs. All the efforts of defending Counsel could not shake them. It was stated that Rider had made his confession under pressure and in a confused state of mind. It was even denied that he said certain things. Counsel poured scorn on the tale about the horse-radish and the attempted suicide. A tissue of theory which wouldn’t hold water, he said. But the jury hung on to the sock and the shamefaced and faltering evidence of Dr. Keating, who put up a shocking show under the withering cross-fire of the prosecuting lawyer.
Throughout, Rider behaved as though he cared little for the result. One way or the other seemed all the same to him. Relentlessly the structure of his past life was erected, his connection with Bates, his movements at the time of the crimes, his false alibis and, ever and again, his socks. He was sentenced to death; he took it calmly. His appeal failed; he didn’t seem to care. He told the prison chaplain that he’d gambled and lost and would take his medicine without spiritual assistance. He played draughts with his warders and his cold-bloodedness gave the pair of them nerves.
“Never see a chap like ’im before,” said one of them. “You might think his feelings ’ad left ’is body. A proper cold fish…”
Rider made no further confession, but his last remark to Epicurus Smayle, the hangman, was full of significance.
“If I’d been as good a botanist as I am chemist,” he said as the pair of them met for the last time, “I’d have saved you a job.”
The matter bothered Epicurus for a long while after the event.
Had he known of it, old Wall would have been mighty pleased with the ultimate results of his violent passing.
Dr. Keating was removed from the register by an indignant Medical Council, and ceased to trouble the sick of Stalden as a result. His practice being put up for sale by a trustee in bankruptcy, and Mrs. Keating removing herself and her private money to her mother’s, people wondered anxiously who was to be their next doctor. To their delight there came another Wall. This time, Dr. John, who made a real job of it by amalgamating the two practices—quack and orthodox under one roof at The Corner House.
Perhaps you saw the notice in The Times to the effect that Dr. John Wall had been married to Miss Betty Cockayne…
Littlejohn attended the wedding. He’s always letting himself in for functions of that kind. It was widely rumoured that he was the match-maker, but that remains an unsolved mystery.
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The Dead Shall be Raised and The Murder of a Quack Page 31
