On the afternoon after my interrogation by the police Mrs Perriton presented herself at our house and, having known me since I weighed twelve pounds or less, made no bones about running me to earth in the corner of the old walled fruit garden where I was working.
I greeted her with muddy hands and clod-covered boots, and she waved such details aside with her umbrella.
‘I knew you wouldn’t come to tea with me if I asked you, Douglas,’ she said, showing her huge teeth in a horse-like grin, ‘so the mountain has come to Mahomet. No, never mind your mud, my dear boy, and go on with what you’re doing. I can talk while you’re working, and so can you. It’s about this dreadful business at Oswald’s Gable.’
‘If you’ve come to pump me, Mrs Perriton,’ I grinned back, ‘I warn you that I don’t know any more than you do.’
‘Nonsense! You know a great deal more. But I haven’t come to pump you – though you can perhaps tell me that there’s no truth in this ridiculous rumour one hears everywhere that they’re going to arrest Angela Waterhouse?’
‘I’m pretty sure they’re not.’
‘But they’d like to if they could, eh?’ Mrs Perriton said shrewdly. ‘Preposterous! Angela Waterhouse hasn’t got the guts to murder a fly. Why, she doesn’t even hunt. You’d better tell the police that, by the way. Now if it was Rona Brougham…’
‘Rona?’ I echoed, astonished.
Mrs Perriton laughed loudly. ‘Yes. Or Frances. Or you. Or Glen Brougham. Or a dozen others. Or myself, for that matter. Why, we’ve all got the courage, if we might not have the inclination. And we’ll all come under suspicion sooner or later, mark my words.’
I laughed. The idea of Mrs Perriton under suspicion of murder seemed to me amusing.
Mrs Perriton shook her head at me. ‘Yes, laugh if you will, my dear boy, but it’s true. This is going to be a very horrible scandal; and anyone who knew that poor Mr Waterhouse at all is going to have his or her name mentioned in a most unpleasant way, just as surely as half my girls are mentioning that man Freeford who had the bad luck to be dismissed from Mr Waterhouse’s employment just a week before he died.’
‘I didn’t know John had dismissed anyone. Who was he? A labourer?’
‘Yes, I think so. At any rate he had been engaged in helping Mr Waterhouse with his building. But I’m afraid he’s a bad lot. Things had disappeared before where he was employed and you know what men are about their tools. I believe it was a favourite hammer, which Mr Waterhouse found in Freeford’s tool bag, that caused the trouble. Freeford, of course, swore he’d only borrowed it, but Mr Waterhouse said he didn’t want men who borrowed his tools. I’m afraid Freeford got very drunk at the Goat that same evening and said some exceedingly foolish things, which of course he would never have dreamed of when he was sober.’
‘This is all news to me,’ I said. ‘You seem to be very well up in details, Mrs Perriton.’
‘My girls tell me a great deal,’ replied Mrs Perriton simply. ‘In fact they sometimes tell me a great deal too much, about things I would rather not know… Still,’ she went on more briskly, ‘that is not what I want to talk to you about. It’s Mitzi Bergmann.’
‘Mitzi?’
‘Yes, she has to go back to Germany. You know what the police need. Are they likely to raise any objection?’
‘When does she want to go?’
‘At once. Today, if she could. Certainly tomorrow.’
‘But it’s the inquest the day after tomorrow. She can’t possibly leave before that. Hasn’t she been subpoenaed?’
‘Yes, that’s just what I’ve been telling the silly child; but she only weeps and says she must go at once.’
‘Why must she go?’
‘She says her parents need her.’
‘Are they ill?’
‘Not that I know of. They simply need her, all of a sudden.’
‘Selfish little brat,’ I commented indignantly. ‘She doesn’t like the scandal and wants to clear out – leaving Angela and Rona and everyone else in the lurch. Doesn’t she realise that now of all times she’s likely to be needed most?’
‘I suggested something like that to her, but she only weeps louder and says she must go at once. I’m not altogether sure that it’s only selfishness, Douglas.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I believe she’s had orders,’ said Mrs Perriton, looking like a mystery horse.
I leaned on my fork. ‘What orders?’
‘We-ell…’ Mrs Perriton obviously prepared to make revelations. ‘I’ve been in close touch with the girl this last year or more. Perhaps she’s told me rather more than she’s told other people. She felt drawn to me, you see, because I used to know Germany so well myself, before the war. Anyhow, she told me some astonishing things. Did you know, for instance, that there is an organisation in London, working directly under the embassy, which keeps track of every single German citizen in this country?’
‘I’d heard something like it.’
‘It’s a Nazi organisation, of course. Mitzi is a Nazi, naturally. Well, she has to be,’ defended Mrs Perriton quickly. ’It’s not worth any German’s while not to be. And she has parents in Germany. They’d get at them. Anyhow, Mitzi is a Nazi; she’s been through the Deutsches Mädel-Bund, or whatever it’s called, and she has to take her orders from this organisation in London. And it’s my belief they’ve ordered her back to Germany.’
‘But why should they?’ I could not make head or tail of Mrs Perriton’s story, but I was convinced that she had something behind it. Mrs Perriton may be a fussy old lady, but she is no fool.
‘Ah, that I don’t know. But did you know Mitzi went up to London yesterday – without leave? She simply went. And yesterday evening she came round to our house with her eyes all red, saying she must go back to Germany at once. In fact if you ask me the girl’s been very queer ever since John Waterhouse died.’
‘She’s been upset, naturally,’ I suggested.
‘Upset? Oh yes. Almost too much upset. But what with? Not only grief, I’d warrant; because while he was alive Mitzi didn’t seem any too favourably impressed with Mr Waterhouse.’
‘What?’ I said, genuinely surprised. ‘Why, she was devoted to him. And I know he liked her. They used to tease each other all the time. I’ve often heard him ragging her about the Nazi system and so forth.’
‘A mistake.’ Mrs Perriton shook her head. ‘A great mistake, to rag any German. The Germans have no sense of humour about themselves. It makes me doubt very much whether they can really come from the same stock as ourselves. I know that Mitzi felt Mr Waterhouse’s ragging very much. She could not bear that anyone shouldn’t admire her beloved Germany, and she has a very simple way of getting over the defects of the Nazi system: she doesn’t believe they exist. Show her the most sober and categorical account in a reputable newspaper of some case of persecution in Germany, and she’ll say flatly: “It isn’t true.” ’
I sighed. ‘Yes, that’s part of the trouble. Still, what bearing has this on John’s death?’
Mrs Perriton looked grave. ‘I don’t suppose it has any. But I don’t think that child ought to be allowed to slip out of the country, as she undoubtedly intends to do, until the mystery of Mr Waterhouse’s death has been cleared up. After all, as one living in the house she must have some information of importance to give the police.’
‘But what do you want me to do, Mrs Perriton?’
‘I thought,’ said Mrs Perriton naïvely, ‘that you might like to drop a hint to the police to warn her that she mustn’t run away.’
‘Oh!’ I said blankly. ‘Is that what you thought?’
‘Well, perhaps not all thought.’ Mrs Perriton laughed hugely but rather artificially. ‘You can try and guess the rest.’
4
I did not drop a hint to the police. It was none of my business, and I was not going
to be officious. And in consequence (at least, I suppose it was in consequence) Mitzi did go – the next afternoon, with nothing but a small attaché case in her hand and leaving all her belongings behind.
The newspapers made a sensation of it, of course. DISAPPEARANCE OF STAR WITNESS ON EVE OF INQUEST. NAZI FLEES TO NATIVE GERMANY, and all the rest of it. But that was nothing to the sensation caused in the village. With instant unanimity everyone jumped to the conclusion that Mitzi was the murderess, and had now fled the country in the approved way. And certainly the flight looked bad enough. What was the reason for it? That it must be a guilty one the village took for granted, and rumours of every fantastic description seemed to put themselves immediately and automatically into circulation. The least of these was that Mitzi, having made her way out of the grounds of Oswald’s Gable, had met a large black saloon car, obviously by pre-arrangement, with drawn blinds and a sinister Teuton at the wheel, and been instantly whisked into the unknown.
As a matter of fact this rumour was not without foundation. The police eventually traced Mitzi to Harwich and on board a boat for Rotterdam, and she undoubtedly was conveyed away from our neighbourhood in a car which she must have met at some fixed place by appointment; but where the car came from, whose it was and who drove it remained a mystery.
This touch of the genuine thriller naturally brought our excitement up to boiling point, as well as justifying the hints already thrown out by the newspapers; and it was to be expected that the inquest would prove a popular attraction as great as any cup tie.
The sensation of Mitzi’s disappearance was, however, the only new event that happened during this period, and it added to rather than elucidated the general mystery of John’s death.
One result on the ordinary person was that one felt that one had to discuss the case and go on discussing it. Frances and I talked about it for two solid hours after tea without arriving at any conclusion; for though we felt that we two alone knew the real truth about John’s death, we could not make out how this new development concerning Mitzi fitted in. Then Frances had an idea.
‘Go and ring up Glen and ask him to dinner,’ she said. ‘He’s all alone, with Rona away. And he might have some news.’
Glen, however, would not come to dinner, having a patient to see after surgery, but threw out a casual invitation to me to drop round during the evening and drink a mug of ale. I accepted with alacrity.
5
Visiting a doctor on a friendly instead of a professional basis is always a haphazard affair. Barely had I been furnished with a chair in Glen’s sitting-room and the promised mug of ale, when the interruption came and he was summoned from the room to see an untimely patient.
Returning in a couple of minutes, he dropped a pile of books on my knees with a grin.
‘Here’s something to keep you occupied. I shall be about twenty minutes.’
I looked at the titles. They were Taylor’s Medical Jurisprudence, the Pharmaceutical Codex and a couple of other standard works on the use of drugs in medicine. I opened the first, looked up ‘arsenic’ in the index, and was at once engrossed.
When Glen came back, half an hour later, I was able to feel that I now knew as much about arsenic as he did.
‘A good deal more than I knew a fortnight ago,’ he commented drily when I remarked as much. ‘Poisons don’t enter into the ordinary GP’s work, and one soon forgets what one had to mug up about them. That’s why so many poisoners get away with it.’
I referred to one of the books. ‘Well, you saw the postmortem. Was there any fatty degeneration of the liver?’
He grinned. ‘Certainly not extreme, no.’
‘Was there any running of the eyes during life?’
‘No, there was not. And no rash, no thickening of the skin of the palms and soles, no falling out of the hair, no shingles, pains in the limbs, or muscular weakness. If there had been, I might have stood a chance of diagnosing arsenical poisoning – though I doubt if I should have been even then. Who would ever have connected it with old John?’
‘In other words,’ I pursued, ‘it was a case of acute arsenical poisoning and not chronic?’
He nodded. ‘Without any doubt. I hope the other chaps are managing to ram that into the heads of the police. It makes all the difference.’
‘Of course it does,’ I agreed out of my new knowledge. ‘It fixes the time within pretty narrow limits when the dose must have been taken. Why? Have the police other views?’
Glen snorted. ‘They’ve been trying to work on the theory that John was poisoned by repeated small doses; and all those twinges of indigestion he had, like the one that evening when we were all dining there, were the results of new doses. It’s that confounded Cyril’s idea, and he’s managed to persuade the police it’s the right one. It fits in with the fool theory about Angela, you see.’
‘The police are still convinced it was Angela?’
‘Up to now they are. Let’s hope Scotland Yard will show them a little sense.’
‘Scotland Yard?’ I echoed.
‘Yes. That’s not for publication, but I believe the Chief Constable’s insisted on calling them in since Mitzi got away from under the noses of our chaps.’
I whistled. ‘That sounds like business. Glen…do you still believe it was murder?’
Glen shrugged his shoulders. ‘What else could it have been? John wasn’t the chap to suicide himself in any case, and certainly not without the usual note to the coroner.’
‘There’s always accident,’ I said carefully. ‘By the way, what’s your idea of the time when the fatal dose must have been swallowed?’
‘Well, as near as one can judge, sometime in the middle of the morning. Between 11 a.m. and twelve probably covers it.’
‘Almost simultaneously with his taking the treble dose of your medicine,’ I said in a tone that I hoped sounded easy. ‘I suppose you didn’t put any arsenic in that, by mistake for soda bicarb, did you?’
Glen laughed. ’It’s the sort of mistake any doctor might make, isn’t it? But it’s funny you should say that, because believe it or not but the police have got some sort of bee in their bonnets about that medicine. Apparently it was thrown away after John died, and they can’t find it. Timms was here this morning, asking me all sorts of damn fool questions about where I kept my arsenic and so on. I’m afraid I put the old chap’s back up by laughing at the idea.’
‘Very funny,’ I said, and reflected that I should be able to tell Frances that, whatever suspicions we might share, they certainly had never occurred to Glen himself. Indeed, so lightly had he taken my tentative hint that I was almost convinced myself for the moment that the medicine must be as innocent as Glen obviously believed it to be.
Glen refilled our mugs with the excellent brown ale which he always kept in cask in his cellar.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘look out for some fun tomorrow.’
I pricked up my ears. ‘At the inquest?’
‘Yes. I understand the police have one or two things up their sleeves which are expected to cause some small stir.’
‘What things?’
‘I’ve no idea. But as the road signs say, I have been warned.’
chapter seven
All About Arsenic
The inquest was held in the village schoolroom. It opened at eleven o’clock, and before half-past nine a crowd had gathered round the building through which Frances and I and the other witnesses had to push our way by force. I believe not a few enterprising persons had actually run excursions from Torminster and other parts of the neighbourhood, and I heard afterwards that the trains from London had been unprecedentedly crowded.
The arrangements made inside by the police were primitive but adequate. A couple of tables and some half-dozen chairs at one end of the room were provided for the Coroner, the Chief Constable, Superintendent Timms, a certain Mr Archibald Bell
ew who (as we learned in feverish whispers) was to watch the proceedings on behalf of Angela, another barrister who was to watch them for the Treasury, and Angela’s solicitor. School forms along one side of the room accommodated us witnesses, and on the other side tables and more forms supplemented by some rough benches had been set out for the large numbers of journalists who were expected.
Rona, arriving just after ourselves, found a place next to Frances and informed her that she had succeeded in persuading or bullying a certificate from the doctor excusing Angela, who really was not fit to attend.
We then waited a quarter of an hour, feeling exactly like the urchins whose places we had usurped. During the interval Glen came in and dropped with a bored air into the seat next to me, and Harold took up a position beyond Rona.
Harold, of course, had gossip to whisper.
‘I suppose you know,’ he informed us, ‘that they’re going all out for a verdict against Angela?’
We intimated that we did not know.
‘Oh yes,’ he asserted. ‘Then they’d have to arrest her, you see. That’s why they didn’t press for her attendance. They don’t want her weeping in the witness-box and getting the sympathy of the jury. You see.’
‘How do you know all these things, Harold?’ Frances demanded sceptically.
Harold looked mysterious. ‘You’ll see,’ he said.
In due course the Coroner appeared, various conferences took place between the different officials, all looking most important, and eleven local farmers and other worthies were sworn in as a jury. I was glad to see a good friend of mine, one Thomas Cullom, of Handacott Farm, from whom I bought most of my manure, appointed foreman. Cullom was a sensible man and not likely to be too amenable to pressure – if indeed there was any truth in Harold’s suggestion.
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