by Carola Dunn
“Heavens, what a mouthful! I’ll fetch him for you, him or Norman.”
“Oh no, Mrs. Fletcher, that would never do. We’ll go back to Mr. Humphrey’s office and you sit yourself down comfortable by the fire.”
“Comfortable and inconspicuous?” she suggested.
“That’s the ticket. You’ve had plenty of practice, I see!”
Sitting at Humphrey’s desk, he read quickly, underlining bits in pencil and making notes in the margins. Daisy tried to review mentally everything she had heard. She couldn’t put it together to make a coherent story pointing at Lorna or anyone else as the poisoner. She had missed too much, she decided. Somewhere in the missing parts was the answer.
But she had a feeling she had failed to spot the significance of something she did know, or omitted to put two facts together. She hoped Alec would be more percipient.
Worrall emerged from his reading with a frown. “Very neat, Mrs. Fletcher, very complete, only reports never quite give you the feel of a person. What’s your opinion of young Simon?”
“I thought he was sincere.”
“And what he said of people’s movements last night?”
“It doesn’t contradict anything I remember. He didn’t try to make it seem he had no opportunity, either.”
“Ah, but he’s a clever one, isn’t he?”
“He certainly likes to think so. You mean, he might have worked out that you’d be suspicious if he’d given himself an alibi?”
“And there’d always be the chance that someone else would contradict it.”
“But, you know, though he had time to go to a chemist’s shop when he said he was at a pub, I can’t see that he could possibly have managed to see a doctor to get a prescription in the time available after we all came down from the Hydro.”
“He could have visited a doctor earlier. In Leeds, even. Could have had it filled there and waited to use it till there were plenty of people in the house. It’d’ve looked pretty funny if his father’d been done in just after he came home from the university. Lor’, if we have to check all the chemists in Leeds…!”
“Let’s hope it won’t come to that.”
“The Chief Inspector seems certain Miss Birtwhistle is involved.”
“It doesn’t look good for her. Only for the bromide, though.”
“Two poisoners in one household’s stretching it a bit!”
“Not if it’s Lorna and Norman. Perhaps he found out what she was doing and decided to take it one step further. Perhaps he even hoped she’d get the blame.”
“I don’t recall you saying they disliked each other.”
“No, it’s just a possibility. They could equally well be in league. I really have no idea how they feel about each other.”
The inspector sighed. “Something else that needs finding out. And people wonder why we have to interview them more than once! First time round, we don’t properly know what questions we ought to be asking. But I’ll tell you this, Mrs. Fletcher, if it all comes down to trying to find a medicine bottle on the farm, we’re sunk.”
He went out gloomily. Daisy seized her chance to appropriate the last biscuit on the plate. She would have liked more coffee, but it had been brought in cups, not a pot.
She wondered whether to take the tray to the kitchen, as Alec had promised Betty, or would Worrall return and find her missing? Before she decided, Etta crept in.
“Good, you’ve come for the tray.”
The maid let out a startled squeak. “Oh, madam, I didn’t know you was still here.”
“I’m just waiting for the inspector.”
Etta cast a frightened glance at the door.
“He doesn’t bite, you know. But if you’ll answer a question for me, then he won’t have to ask you.”
“Oh, madam! I’ll try, madam.”
“It’s very simple,” Daisy reassured her. “How do Miss Lorna and Mr. Norman get on with each other?”
“I’m sure I can’t say, madam.”
“Come along, Etta, you must have noticed whether they’re friendly or not.”
“Oh, madam, it’s not my place to talk about…”
“I suppose you’re right.” Daisy heaved a sigh. “You ought to be telling the police, not me.”
“Oh no, madam, I didn’t mean … The truth is, they don’t hardly say a word to each other at all. Unless maybe evenings, when me and Betty go home. What’ve they got to talk about, after all? He don’t care ’bout housekeeping and she don’t care ’bout farming.”
Depressing, Daisy thought, but no doubt true.
“Any road, Mr. Norman’s out all day most days, ’cepting dinnertime—what you’d call lunch, madam. And when Mr. Simon and Miss Myra’s not here, nor Miss Monica that’s such a chatterbox you wouldn’t believe!—mostly it’s Mrs. Humphrey and Mrs. Sutherby that talks, not Miss Lorna.”
Daisy sighed again, a genuine sigh this time. She had hoped for something worth reporting to Alec, whether sightings of Lorna and Norman with their heads together in a corner or the pair of them quarrelling noisily. Apparently, two less likely conspirators would be hard to find.
“Thank you, Etta,” she said. “Are you and Betty preparing lunch? Or dinner?”
“Yes, madam. The inspector said to make lots and lots of samwidges because Mrs. Humphrey’s not fit and Miss Lorna … He said the man from Scotland Yard’s tooken her away.”
“That’s right.”
“Oh, madam!” But Etta’s mind was on the fearful responsibility of preparing lunch without supervision. “Betty’s worried the bread’ll run out afore we’ve made enough for everyone.”
“Baked potatoes in their jackets?” Daisy suggested. “Or scones or something like that?”
“Oh, yes, madam, thank you. There’s lots of ’taties and Betty makes ever such good scones. Even Mrs. Humphrey says so.”
“There you are then. You’d better go and get on with it.”
Etta bobbed a curtsy and scuttled out with the tray.
Out in the passage, cups rattled, Etta squeaked, and Worrall said, “Careful, young woman!”
The inspector came in, followed by Ilkton’s servant, the small sandy man in black who rejoiced in the imposing name of Archibald MacGillivray. Or perhaps he hated it. His face was as bland and impassive as was proper to a gentleman’s gentleman. When Worrall sat down behind the desk and waved him to a seat, he chose to remain standing, hands folded in front of him.
Worrall asked for his name, occupation, and address for the record. Without a trace of a Scots accent, he gave two addresses, one of which Daisy recognized as a very superior and expensive block of flats in Mayfair, the other a country house in Lincolnshire. Ilkton’s background was such that he must move in the same elevated sphere as Lucy and Gerald. He might even be an acquaintance of theirs. Daisy wondered whether the Bincombes’ paths had ever crossed Myra’s when that young lady was living in her other world.
“How long have you worked for Mr. Ilkton?” the inspector asked.
“Six months. And it probably won’t be much longer. This is the second time Mr. Ilkton has come to visit this farm.” He pronounced the word with distaste. “And I don’t mind telling you, it’s not what I’m used to. Even without this … this murder.”
“Very unfortunate,” Worrall agreed. “I’m hoping you’ll be able to help us clear it up, so that you’ll be able to leave the farm. They say the onlooker sees most of the game, so I expect you’ve a very good notion what’s been going on in the household. Give me a bird’s-eye view, so to speak, of the people involved.”
“I fear that is quite impossible,” MacGillivray said stiffly. “There being no housekeeper’s room—indeed, no staff worth speaking of—I’ve kept myself to myself. Apart from taking care of Mr. Ilkton’s clothes, and polishing his motor-car, which is not something I’d normally demean myself with, but lacking a chauffeur in the house, and no nearby service facilities, I’ve taken it upon myself to keep up its appearance as best I can.”
“I’m sure Mr. Ilkton appreciates your care.”
“Him! He doesn’t even notice. Eyes for nothing but that young woman, and if he’s going to marry a girl from a farm— Well, I assure you, I can get a good position elsewhere at any time without scarcely lifting a finger.”
“So, as you were saying, Mr. MacGillivray, you’ve kept yourself to yourself, but a noticing person such as a gentleman’s gentleman must be has surely formed his own opinions of the family—”
“Indeed, I have not! The doings of farmers can be of no interest to one who has had the opportunity to observe the aristocracy in most of the best houses in the kingdom. Here, I have even been forced to take my meals on a tray in my room, since the family is constantly in and out of the kitchen.”
“Very shocking,” Worrall commiserated, almost ready to give up. “But you’ve observed the young … person Mr. Ilkton intends to make his bride.”
“In and out of the kitchen! Helping to serve at meals! I have observed Miss Olney in other company, admittedly. Pretty enough manners, I dare say, but no breeding. Thoroughly unsuitable.” He sniffed. “With proper training, she might make a passable lady’s maid.”
The inspector stroked his face to conceal a smile. Daisy was amused at the notion of the volatile Myra as a lady’s maid, but also angry on her behalf. She was a nice girl who was making the best of her opportunities, performing a skilful balancing act between two worlds. True, she was not a suitable wife for Ilkton: She deserved better than that conceited snob.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. MacGillivray,” said Worrall, despairing of extracting anything useful. “I’ll let you go back to your room.”
The manservant departed at a dignified pace.
“As snooty as his master,” Daisy observed.
“Dead useless. I hope the Chief Inspector’s getting on faster than I am!”
TWENTY-EIGHT
On arriving at Matlock police station, Alec had deposited Miss Birtwhistle, sullen and silent as ever, in a typically dingy and depressing interview room, with a cup of muddy coffee and a constable standing at the door.
The mass of charred material from her grate was rushed off to the analyst in Derby.
Awaiting Alec in a minimally more congenial office was the young constable sent to call at every chemist’s shop in Matlock and its associated villages, Matlock Green, Matlock Bridge, Matlock Bank, and Matlock Bath, not to mention Matlock Dale and Dimple. Still red-faced and puffing from his strenuous bicycle-ride, PC Phipps stood stiffly at attention as Alec and Piper entered.
Alec sat down at the desk. Ernie Piper took a seat nearby. “Go ahead, Officer,” Alec invited.
Phipps turned slowly through the pages of his notebook, found his place, and started reading in a monotone.
“‘In accordance with instructions, I proceeded to—’”
“No, no,” Alec said, trying to conceal his impatience. One couldn’t expect a country constable to equal the quick wits of a Scotland Yard detective constable, or even an ordinary uniformed bobby of the Metropolitan Police. “I don’t need every word. Can you pick out the relevant parts for me?”
Phipps blenched. “I’ll try, sir. Umm…” He turned a couple more pages, seeking inspiration. “What it boils down to, really, sir, is four of ’em filled prescriptions for chloral yesterday, but none of ’em was for any one of the names I was told. They was all personally known to the chemists, sir.”
“Damn!”
“Then I was sent back to Asbury’s, sir, down by the bridge, about the bromide. Sergeant Cappendell said to find out the doctor who prescribed the stuff to Miss Birtwhistle. We got more doctors hereabouts than most towns this size,” Phipps confided, “acos of the sick people coming to stay at the hydros. The smaller ones don’t employ their own medical men. Mr. Asbury said it was Dr. Harris wrote the prescription.”
“Harris.” The name rang a bell.
“Dr. Knox’s locum last night, sir,” Piper reminded him. It was the sort of detail Piper always had at his fingertips, like sharp pencils.
Sometimes Alec wondered whether he relied too often on Ernie’s memory, his own atrophying from lack of use. “We’ll have to see Dr. Harris,” he said. “Piper, see if you can set up an appointment, will you? Or at least discover where we’re likely to find him at this hour.”
“Happen he’ll be at home, sir,” put in PC Phipps. “Getting on a bit, he is, and don’t do more home visits than he has to these days.” He tilted his hand in a significant gesture: Dr. Harris was a tippler.
Alec nodded to Piper, who went out, there being no telephone in the room. “Anything else that struck you, Officer?”
“Well, sir, Mr. Asbury did mention that he’d warned Miss Birtwhistle about taking the stuff all the time.” He consulted his notebook. “‘Long-term use,’ is what he said.”
“He didn’t say how long Miss Birtwhistle has been taking it?”
“No, sir.” Phipps crimsoned. “I didn’t think to ask, sir. I can go back…”
“That’s all right. We’ll get on to it.” Thanking him, Alec dismissed him to go and write up his report, in which, no doubt, he would “proceed according to instructions.”
Things looked black for Lorna Birtwhistle on the bromide front. However, the fatal dose of chloral was far more important, and the lack of information about its origin was exceedingly frustrating. Two possibilities remained: Someone had obtained it some time ago and awaited an opportunity to use it; or Norman Birtwhistle had got hold of it on his journey to Derby. In either case, the likelihood was that it had been prescribed by a Matlock doctor.
He should have asked Phipps just how many doctors and chemists dwelt in the Matlocks. It looked as if it might be necessary to visit all the former and revisit all the latter, checking past records.
Piper returned. “Dr. Harris is at home, Chief. He takes a nap after lunch, his wife said, so we’d best go right away. But Miss Birtwhistle—”
“Let her stew in her own juice for a while. She can be thinking about how she’s going to explain why she tried to destroy the bromide.”
Superintendent Aves delayed them for a few minutes. He was hoping to have his decision to ask the deputy CC to call in the Yard justified by their rapid progress in solving the case.
He was not very happy to hear that they had been “sidetracked,” as he put it, by the issue of Humphrey Birtwhistle’s long illness.
“When there’s a murderer at large,” he pointed out, his moustache bristling, “I’m not going to be able to fob off the press with an arrest for grievous bodily harm, if that’s what it amounts to. The fellow from the Derby Telegraph is already hounding me.”
“I don’t know about that, sir,” said Alec. “It seems to me, if you put it to him right, he can make a good story of a woman deliberately dosing her brother to keep him in poor health, for years. Not that we’re at the point where you can say much more than that someone is helping us with our enquiries.”
Aves grunted. “We don’t want too good a story, come to that, or we’ll have the London papers round our necks. I can’t think how it got about, how the Telegraph obtained the news,” he added crossly. Alec raised his eyebrows. “Oh, I know,” Aves went on even more crossly, “a small town, everyone knows everyone else’s business. Police coming and going, making enquiries. The fellow even knows chloral was used.”
“Between the switchboard girls and the chemists’ shops, it was bound to come out. With luck, it may help us to have that information in the paper. Someone somewhere must know where the damn stuff came from.”
The superintendent brightened. “I should confirm the chloral, then?”
“Yes, by all means, sir.”
“It’s something to give him, at any rate. Better not go out through the front lobby. He’s lying in wait and you don’t want him getting his hooks into you.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll just have a word with your inspector—Kennedy, is it? And then we’ll sneak out the back way.”
Inspe
ctor Kennedy, stout, round-faced, his moustache slightly bushier than his super’s but no rival to Tom Tring’s, absorbed with gratification the Scotland Yard man’s praise of his constable’s thoroughness and ability to summarise. He was less pleased to hear that the same ground might have to be covered again.
“’Fraid so,” said Alec, “unless Dr. Harris has and is willing to give us the information we need.”
“But checking back records! How far back? Days? Weeks? Months?”
“Good question. I don’t know how long the stuff remains effective after dispensing, but I presume any chemist can tell us.”
“My men do have a lot of country to patrol, Chief Inspector. Wild goose chases…”
Piper cleared his throat.
“I’ll put DC Piper here on it,” said Alec. “It’s the sort of detail work he’s best at.”
Somewhat mollified, Kennedy offered, “Phipps can show him on a map the best route to cover all the chemists’ shops.”
“Thank you. Piper, you’d better come with me to see Dr. Harris first, in case his records have to be gone through. We must get going. We don’t want to interrupt his lunch.”
Leaving by the back door, they made their way to Dr. Harris’s house and surgery on Dimple Road, near the bottom of the hill, fortunately.
Ernie looked up the hill, gazed round at the lie of the land—rising in all directions from the river, and said, “I hope I’m not going to have to cycle from chemist’s to chemist’s! I’m out of practice.”
“Out of shape. It’s too easy to hop on a bus or take the tube in town.”
“A sight quicker.” Ernie rapped on the doctor’s green front door with the brass staff-and-serpent knocker.
A parlourmaid in white cap and apron opened the door. “Ooh, you’ll be the detectives from Scotland Yard? Doctor’s waiting for you. Please to come this way.”
Alec and Piper exchanged a look. Small town—everyone knew everyone else’s business.
She ushered them into a small waiting room. A miscellany of well-worn chairs lined two walls, all unoccupied as surgery hours were over. Cane-bottomed, rush-bottomed, Windsor, no two matched. They looked as if they had been picked up here and there secondhand and had a hard life since.
