by Carola Dunn
“Right-oh. Thank you, Doctor, you’ve been very helpful, and that will be all for the present. I may need your views on Birtwhistle’s relations with the rest of the household, but I know you’re a busy man, you’re free to go back to your rounds. Please don’t leave the Matlock district without informing us of your whereabouts. And I’d appreciate your not talking to anyone about the case.”
“I’m going to look in on Ruby. May I tell her … it’s murder?”
“Please do. Better from you than from a stranger. Nothing beyond the fact, though.”
“And I’d like a word with Sybil.”
“By all means. Same caveat.”
They all listened to the typewriter rattling away in the next room.
“You’ll be able to tell exactly how long I’m talking to her,” Roger said ruefully.
Alec smiled. “Yes, and we wouldn’t want you to disturb her labours for too long.”
“Point taken. I’ll see you later, no doubt. I’ll be out on my rounds after I leave here, but my housekeeper will know roughly where I am if you need me.”
“Thank you.”
Roger stood up. Turning towards the connecting door, he had his back to Daisy. She wasn’t sure whether he had noticed her or not. He hadn’t greeted her, but a man in the midst of a police interrogation might be excused from observance of such courtesies.
As he stepped towards the door, Worrall said, “It’s locked, Doctor. Just to keep people out of these rooms, not to confine Mrs. Sutherby! Here, I’ll get it for you.”
He opened the door, relocking it after Roger passed through. “Quite alarmed he looked for a moment,” he observed softly to Alec. “You don’t suppose he suspects his ladyfriend?”
“No, but he’s undoubtedly aware that we suspect her. How long do you suppose it’ll be before my men and yours arrive? We need to send the bottles for analysis, and to search the house.”
“What for, sir? They’ve had plenty of time overnight to get rid of any evidence, before we even knew for sure it wasn’t a natural death.”
“Time, but sense and forethought? People do stupid things under stress, and still more often omit to do the common-sense things.
“Ah.” Worrall looked at his watch. “They’ll be here in an hour or less, I shouldn’t wonder.”
Alec thought for a moment. “Now that I’m pretty certain it’s a case of murder, not accidental ingestion, I’m going to ask you to gather everyone together in the hall and keep them there until we’ve done a thorough search. That includes the maids. I don’t want them running about emptying wastepaper baskets. Mrs. Birtwhistle, too, unless Dr. Knox insists on her staying in bed. And we’ll have to have them turn out their pockets, I’m afraid, and the ladies’ handbags. Better not warn them about that till we’re ready to do it.”
“Er, were you going to tell me what Dr. Knox had to say, sir?”
“It might as well wait until the others arrive.” Alec looked at Daisy for the first time in half an hour. “That will give my wife time to write up her notes.”
“How do you know—? Oh, all right. I didn’t bring my portable, though. You’ll have to make do with longhand.”
“I expect Mrs. Sutherby would let you use her machine, as I’ll be asking her to step in here to answer a few questions.”
“Alec! But I wanted to—”
“I dare say, but you will be in there typing and she will be in here talking. I shouldn’t worry, I expect she’ll give you a verbatim report later.”
Daisy wanted to call him a beast, but—though she wouldn’t have hesitated in front of Tom and Ernie—that wasn’t proper language to use to a detective chief inspector in front of an officer from another force.
Worrall gave her a sympathetic grin as he went to unlock the door again. Opening it, he said, “Mrs. Sutherby, the chief inspector would like a word with you, in here, if you please.”
He stood aside, and Daisy went through. Sybil was standing up behind her desk, pale and a little flustered. She wore round-lensed eyeglasses with light-grey celluloid frames. For some reason they made her look much younger and defenceless.
The door to the passage was just closing—behind Roger, Daisy assumed.
“Sybil, may I borrow your typewriter while you’re otherwise occupied? Oh dear, I hadn’t thought. I’m afraid it’ll muck up your carbons.” Reinserting into the roller a stack of three sheets of typing paper interleaved with two sheets of carbon paper was too rarely successful to be bothered with.
“I just started a new page. I can easily copy it over.” She took off her glasses, folded them, and set them on the desk. “Wh-what does he want?”
“Just to ask a few questions. He’s not going to browbeat you, I promise.”
“Roger said Humphrey was … was murdered.”
“It certainly looks like it.” And Daisy could not conceive of any reason for Roger to invent a story that led inexorably to such a devastating conclusion.
TWENTY
Mrs. Sutherby came in looking cold and frightened. Alec moved over to the fireplace.
“Come and sit here, Mrs. Sutherby.” He picked up the blue shawl Daisy had left behind. “Put this round you. The room had no fire and it’s just beginning to warm up.”
Obediently she took the shawl and, with shaking hands, draped it about her shoulders. She dropped into a chair as if her legs would barely hold her. “I’m not really cold, I’m…”
“Afraid.” Alec sat down in the second armchair. “Murder is frightening. It’s not something even we in the police ever get used to, the deliberate taking of a human life. But I don’t think the thought of murder—the idea of it—is really what you’re afraid of, is it?”
“A murderer … in the house…”
“That’s not it, either.” He tried to sound gentle yet determined. She’d been widowed young, he recalled Daisy telling him. At this moment she looked fragile, despite her sturdy figure, but she must be tougher than she looked to have built a new life for herself and her daughter. “I’m not an ogre, you know.”
She managed to smile. “That’s more or less what Daisy said. You don’t believe Roger—Dr. Knox—killed Humphrey, do you?”
“I think it highly unlikely.”
“He wouldn’t. He’s the kindest of men. He’d never harm anyone, even if he weren’t a doctor.”
“I’m interested to hear why you think I might suspect him, what motive you would ascribe to him. It might help me to understand the motive of the actual culprit.”
“I can’t see how.” She blushed. “It’s private and personal.”
“Mrs. Sutherby, in a murder investigation, even the most personal matters cannot remain private. Very often, in what you might call a domestic murder, relationships are all-important.”
“Didn’t Daisy tell you?”
“No. How she interprets your dealings with Dr. Knox is of little use to me compared with your own words.” To say nothing of the fact that Daisy had refused to talk about the couple.
“And Roger?”
“Dr. Knox preserved a gentlemanly reticence on the subject.”
“He would.” Another smile, not forced this time: She was relaxing a bit. “I suppose it’s up to me, then. Will you have to tell Inspector Worrall?”
“Only if it seems likely to be useful. And it won’t be made public unless it turns out to be material evidence, in my view a remote possibility.”
Her colour deepened and she looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap. “Roger wants to marry me. I’m very fond of him, but … You see, I’ve been supporting myself and my daughter for a good many years now, doing work I enjoy, for the most part making my own decisions, not even having to deal with the dull business of keeping house. I’m used to being independent, and I can’t easily give that up.”
“Very understandable. But, with your employer gone…?”
“Did Daisy tell you about … the books?”
“That you’ve been writing them since Birtwhistle fell ill, yes
.”
“It’s not that simple. We’ve worked together. The stories are still Humphrey’s. I don’t know whether I could write a book without his ideas to start from, and if I could, under my own name, it might be years before I made a living at it. If it was just me … But I have to consider Monica. I’d have to try for an ordinary secretarial job, which wouldn’t pay nearly enough for her to go to a private school. We’d be pinching and scraping to get by.”
“So Dr. Knox might reasonably expect that Birtwhistle’s death would make his offer of marriage and a comfortable home well-nigh irresistible.”
“Yes. But even if he were the kind of man who might commit murder—and of an old friend—it’s not as if we’re madly in love.”
Her last statement was unconvincing, as if she herself were not convinced by it. Alec wanted to tell her not to confuse “madly in love” and “deeply in love.” She had probably been madly in love with her husband. She must have been very young, and she hadn’t been granted time for their love to deepen—or to dissipate.
The same was true of Daisy and her fiancé, also killed in the War. Much as he hated to admit it to himself, Alec still felt a twinge of jealousy on the rare occasions when the thought of the man Daisy had once been engaged to crossed his mind.
Alec had no way of comparing their experience with his own. He had been madly in love with Joan, his first wife, but they had had years together with their love growing stronger. Losing her to the post-War influenza pandemic had been agony.
And that was a train of thought not to be encouraged.
His daughter and his work had pulled him through. The same was very likely true of Sybil Sutherby, making it that much more difficult to give up her job voluntarily.
The job had vanished with Birtwhistle’s death. On the face of it, she had every reason to want him alive.
“Have I helped?”
“A little.” This sort of case almost always started off with a process of elimination. While Sybil and Knox could not be dropped from his list, they had moved to the bottom, always to be desired when it came to those whom Daisy had taken under her wing. “Tell me about Humphrey Birtwhistle. I have no real sense of what sort of man he was.”
“He was always kind and polite to me, generous, too. And kind to Monica, or I couldn’t have stayed in the first place. Not that he’s terribly interested in children—there are very few in his books. I don’t know what sort of father he was when Simon and Myra were small children. Myra was five or six, I think, when the Birtwhistles took her in. I’ve just picked up bits of family history here and there, I’m afraid, apart from Humphrey’s salad days, of course.”
“I’m more interested in his recent interactions with Simon and Miss Olney.”
“He didn’t take much notice of Myra. I’m afraid no one did, except her endless string of beaux. Daisy pointed it out, and I feel guilty about neglecting her, poor girl, especially as she’s always been very sweet with Monica.”
“Did Myra ever appear to resent the general neglect?”
“Not at all. She’s a good-natured girl, happy-go-lucky. She’s away a lot of the time, visiting friends. She seems to have an endless supply. She comes here when she runs out of money before the end of the quarter. I always assumed that was the only reason she visited, but I gather she told Daisy something about depending on us—or rather, on the Birtwhistles—for a respectable family background.”
“Which will hardly be enhanced by a murder in the family.”
“Very much the reverse. Besides, she couldn’t possibly have been giving Humphrey daily doses of some drug or other. She’s elsewhere most of the time. The same applies to Simon. He was away at university during term-time.”
“It would certainly appear that neither could be responsible for the long-term poisoning, if any.”
“I don’t know why I ever thought it could be them!”
“It’s hard to see clearly through one’s fears. What about Simon and his father since he’s been home?”
“Not good. About a year ago, Simon started to grow too big for his boots, fancying himself as a member of the literary avant garde. He announced that he despised Humphrey’s books and, what’s more, had no intention of becoming a sheep farmer, thus offending both his father and his uncle. But it’s just a stage he’s going through, I’m sure.”
Alec remembered that stage. His father, a bank manager, had strongly opposed his going into the police. Alec had followed his own road, and rarely regretted it, but there had been a degree of estrangement for a while. “Very likely,” he said.
“Doesn’t every child start out believing his parents know everything? Then he discovers they’re not omniscient after all, and then he reaches an age where he deludes himself that he’s the one who knows everything.”
“A new seven ages of man?”
“I’ve only got as far as three, though I dare say I could develop it further if I made the effort. What I’m attempting to say is that at his age it’s normal, if not universal, for father and son to be at odds. Simon’s trying to prove himself, and as he hasn’t got much to show, he’s set about it by belittling others. My brother was just the same.”
“You have a brother?” Alec wasn’t sure why he was surprised. He’d taken for granted that Sybil lacked a family to help her in her widowhood.
“I do. He’s a clergyman, working his way up through the cathedral hierarchy in Norwich. He’s always struggled with a feeling that he ought to be supporting me, a desire for an unpaid housekeeper, and a strong disinclination to introduce a child into his household. We exchange birthday and Christmas cards. But that’s beside the point. Humphrey himself was about the same age as Simon is now when he ran away to America, as Daisy pointed out to him.”
Alec laughed. “Daisy would.”
“Humphrey liked her. He pretty much ignored our other guests. Ilkton and Carey, I mean. He was good at ignoring people. I suppose he had to learn the art when he came home from America with his bride to a less than rapturous welcome from his brother and sister.”
“Ah yes, Norman and Lorna Birtwhistle. Tell me about them.”
“I hardly know them,” she said awkwardly. “You may think that’s not possible after living in the same house for years, but they’ve always managed to ignore me, the way Humphrey ignored them. When I first came to Eyrie Farm, I had to be very firm with Miss Birtwhistle about not helping with the housekeeping. I was employed as a secretary, not a maid or a kitchen skivvy. She didn’t take it kindly and she’s scarcely spared me a word since. You’ll have to talk to them. I wish you luck; they’re both of them taciturn in the extreme.”
“All right. That leaves Mrs. Birtwhistle. Daisy told me you like her.”
“So anything I say in her favour is liable to be biased?”
“It’s something I have to take into account. As with everything Daisy tells me, too. Ruby Birtwhistle, please.”
“She’s been invariably kind to me. I’ve never seen any signs of strife between her and Humphrey, and she cared for him in his illness with unfailing patience. As you’re going to take anything I say with a pinch of salt, I’ll stop there.”
“For now,” Alec said with a smile.
She was a different woman from the terrified creature who had crept into his lair. Sometimes he wondered whether it would be easier to use the tactics of those police officers who worked by intimidating witnesses and suspects, rather than trying to set them at ease. He always decided in the end that the old proverb was right: honey catches more flies—though Daisy claimed he could, with a single glance, freeze an evildoer to the marrow of his bones.
He asked Sybil for a description of people’s movements on the previous evening, but for the most part she was unable to add to what Daisy and Knox had told him. She and Daisy had indeed sat on either side of Birtwhistle at dinner, as Knox had surmised, but they had been talking and she hadn’t paid attention to who brought the drinks, as one doesn’t notice a waiter in a restaurant. One new fact eme
rged: Ruby had helped her husband to bed.
“When she came back, I heard her tell Roger that Humphrey had suddenly become sleepy and rather dizzy. Roger went to see him.”
Daisy would doubtless have got round to that if they hadn’t been interrupted by the doctor’s arrival, and Knox likewise if the question of bottles had not diverted their course. There was definitely something to be said for being alone with one’s witness in a quiet room at a police station.
Having a spare constable to guard the door and run errands would be a major improvement. Alec frowned, wondering where the troops had got to.
Sybil Sutherby looked at him questioningly.
“I’m expecting some colleagues,” he explained. “DS Tring and DC Piper—”
“DS? DC?”
“Sorry. Detective Sergeant and Detective Constable. My men from Scotland Yard. Daisy knows them well. And at least one local officer will be coming up from Matlock.”
Some of her new ease evaporated. “We’re going to have police ‘crawling all over the house,’ as Simon so charmingly put it?”
“I dare say there will be a certain amount of crawling involved,” Alec admitted.
“I don’t want my daughter to come home to a swarm of coppers—I hope that’s not an offensive term?”
“Not at all. We use it ourselves.”
“Will you be finished by the weekend?”
“I have no idea, can’t promise anything.”
“I’d better write to Monica’s headmistress and ask if she can stay at school, or go home with a friend. Oh hell! as my cowboys are wont to say. If ever I’m tempted to commit murder, I’ll remind myself just how inconvenient the consequences are for innocent and guilty alike!”
“Rather more so for the guilty, I hope. But you’re right. The deliberate taking of a life always has reams of unintended, unforeseen, unimagined consequences and often disrupts the lives of those who have little connection with either the victim or the villain.”
“I can’t claim that distance. After years working closely with Humphrey, I…” She bit her lip but couldn’t stop the tears flowing.
