Unnatural death
enough to get drunk on the strength of it. He now admits that his
“hobby” is his legitimate work for society, and has developed sufficient
interest in public affairs to undertake small diplomatic jobs from time
to time under the Foreign Office. Of late he has become a little more
ready to show his feelings, and a little less terrified of having any to
show.
His latest eccentricity has been to fall in love with that girl whom he
cleared of the charge of poisoning her lover. She refused to marry him,
as any woman of character would. Gratitude and a humiliating inferiority
complex are no foundation for matrimony; the position was false from the
start. Peter had the sense, this time, to take my advice. “My boy,” said
I, “what was wrong for you twenty years back is right now. It’s not the
innocent young things that need gentle handling—it’s the ones that have
been frightened and hurt. Begin again from the beginning—I warn you that
you will need all the self-discipline you have ever learnt.”
Well, he has tried. I don’t think I have ever seen such patience. The
girl has brains and character and honesty; but he has got to teach her
how to take, which is far more difficult than learning to give. I think
they will find one another, if they can keep their passions from running
ahead of their wills. He does realise, I know, that in this case there
can be no consent but free consent.
Peter is forty-five now, it is really time he was settled. As you will
see, I have been one of the important formative influences in his
career, and on the whole, I feel he does me credit. He is a true
Delagardie, with little of the Wimseys about him except (I must be fair)
that underlying sense of social responsibility which prevents the
English landed gentry from being a total loss, spiritually speaking.
Detective or no detective, he is a scholar and a gentleman; it will
amuse me to see what sort of shot he makes at being a husband and
father. I am getting an old man, and have no son of my own (that I know
of); I should be glad to see Peter happy. But as his mother says, “Peter
has always had everything except the things he really wanted,” and I
suppose he is luckier than most.
Paul Austin Delagardie
CONTENTS
_PART I_
_Chapter_ _Page_
I. Overheard 3
II. Miching Mallecho 11
III. A Use for Spinsters 17
IV. A Bit Mental 27
V. Gossip 35
VI. Found Dead 44
VII. Ham and Brandy 59
VIII. Concerning Crime 68
IX. The Will 77
_PART II_
X. The Will Again 85
XI. Cross-Roads 99
XII. A Tale of Two Spinsters 114
XIII. Hallelujah 123
XIV. Sharp Quillets of the Law 130
XV. Temptation of St. Peter 141
XVI. A Cast-Iron Alibi 150
XVII. The Country Lawyer’s Story 156
XVIII. The London Lawyer’s Story 165
_PART III_
XIX. Gone Away 179
XX. Murder 193
XXI. By What Means? 201
XXII. A Case of Conscience 213
XXIII. —and Smote Him, Thus 227
Part I
THE MEDICAL PROBLEM
“_But how I caught it, found it, came by it,
What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn._”
_Merchant of Venice_
CHAPTER I
Overheard
“_The death was certainly sudden, unexpected, and to me mysterious._”
_Letter from Dr. Paterson to the Registrar in the case of Reg. v.
Pritchard_
“But if he thought the woman was being murdered—”
“My dear Charles,” said the young man with the monocle, “it doesn’t do
for people, especially doctors, to go about ‘thinking’ things. They may
get into frightful trouble. In Pritchard’s case, I consider Dr. Paterson
did all he reasonably could by refusing a certificate for Mrs. Taylor
and sending that uncommonly disquieting letter to the Registrar. He
couldn’t help the man’s being a fool. If there had only been an inquest
on Mrs. Taylor, Pritchard would probably have been frightened off and
left his wife alone. After all, Paterson hadn’t a spark of real
evidence. And suppose he’d been quite wrong—what a dust-up there’d have
been!”
“All the same,” urged the nondescript young man, dubiously extracting a
bubbling-hot Helix Pomatia from its shell, and eyeing it nervously
before putting it in his mouth, “surely it’s a clear case of public duty
to voice one’s suspicions.”
“Of _your_ duty—yes,” said the other. “By the way, it’s not a public
duty to eat snails if you don’t like ’em. No, I thought you didn’t. Why
wrestle with a harsh fate any longer? Waiter, take the gentleman’s
snails away and bring oysters instead. .. .. . No—as I was saying, it
may be part of _your_ duty to have suspicions and invite investigation
and generally raise hell for everybody, and if you’re mistaken nobody
says much, beyond that you’re a smart, painstaking officer though a
little over-zealous. But doctors, poor devils! are everlastingly walking
a kind of social tight-rope. People don’t fancy calling in a man who’s
liable to bring out accusations of murder on the smallest provocation.”
“Excuse me.”
The thin-faced young man sitting alone at the next table had turned
round eagerly.
“It’s frightfully rude of me to break in, but every word you say is
absolutely true, and mine is a case in point. A doctor—you can’t have
any idea how dependent he is on the fancies and prejudices of his
patients. They resent the most elementary precautions. If you dare to
suggest a post-mortem, they’re up in arms at the idea of ‘cutting poor
dear So-and-so up,’ and even if you only ask permission to investigate
an obscure disease in the interests of research, they imagine you’re
hinting at something unpleasant. Of course, if you let things go, and it
turns out afterwards there’s been any jiggery-pokery, the coroner jumps
down your throat and the newspapers make a butt of you, and, whichever
way it is, you wish you’d never been born.”
“You speak with personal feeling,” said the man with the monocle, with
an agreeable air of interest.
“I do,” said the thin-faced man, emphatically. “If I had behaved like a
man of the world instead of a zealous citizen, I shouldn’t be hunting
about for a new job today.”
The man with the monocle glanced round the little Soho restaurant with a
faint smile. The fat man on their right was unctuously entertaining two
ladies of the chorus; beyond him, two elderly habitués were showing
their acquaintance with the fare at the “Au Bon Bourgeois” by consuming
a Tripes à la Mode de Caen (which they do very excellently there) and a
bottle of Chablis Moutonne 1916; on the other side of the room a
provincial and his wife were stupidly clamouring for a cut off the joint
with lemonade for the lady and whisky and soda for the gentleman, while
at the adjoining table, the handsome silver-haired proprietor, absorbed
in fatiguing a salad for a family party, had for the moment no thoughts
beyond the nice adjustment of the chopped herbs and garlic. The head
waiter, presenting for inspection a plate of Blue River Trout, helped
the monocled man and his companion and retired, leaving them in the
privacy which unsophisticated people always seek in genteel tea-shops
and never, never find there.
“I feel,” said the monocled man, “exactly like Prince Florizel of
Bohemia. I am confident that you, sir, have an interesting story to
relate, and shall be greatly obliged if you will favour us with the
recital. I perceive that you have finished your dinner, and it will
therefore perhaps not be disagreeable to you to remove to this table and
entertain us with your story while we eat. Pardon my Stevensonian
manner—my sympathy is none the less sincere on that account.”
“Don’t be an ass, Peter,” said the nondescript man. “My friend is a much
more rational person than you might suppose to hear him talk,” he added,
turning to the stranger, “and if there’s anything you’d like to get off
your chest, you may be perfectly certain it won’t go any farther.”
The other smiled a little grimly.
“I’ll tell you about it with pleasure if it won’t bore you. It just
happens to be a case in point, that’s all.”
“On _my_ side of the argument,” said the man called Peter, with triumph.
“Do carry on. Have something to drink. It’s a poor heart that never
rejoices. And begin right at the beginning, if you will, please. I have
a very trivial mind. Detail delights me. Ramifications enchant me.
Distance no object. No reasonable offer refused. Charles here will say
the same.”
“Well,” said the stranger, “to begin from the very beginning, I am a
medical man, particularly interested in the subject of cancer. I had
hoped, as so many people do, to specialise on the subject, but there
wasn’t money enough, when I’d done my exams., to allow me to settle down
to research work. I had to take a country practice, but I kept in touch
with the important men up here, hoping to be able to come back to it
some day. I may say I have quite decent expectations from an uncle, and
in the meanwhile they agreed it would be quite good for me to get some
all-round experience as a GP. Keeps one from getting narrow and all
that.
“Consequently, when I bought a nice little practice at . . .—I’d better
not mention any names, let’s call it X, down Hampshire way, a little
country town of about 5,000 people—I was greatly pleased to find a
cancer case on my list of patients. The old lady—”
“How long ago was this?” interrupted Peter.
“Three years ago. There wasn’t much to be done with the case. The old
lady was seventy-two, and had already had one operation. She was a game
old girl, though, and was making a good fight of it, with a very tough
constitution to back her up. She was not, I should say, and had never
been, a woman of very powerful intellect or strong character as far as
her dealings with other people went, but she was extremely obstinate in
certain ways and was possessed by a positive determination not to die.
At this time she lived alone with her niece, a young woman of
twenty-five or so. Previously to that, she had been living with another
old lady, the girl’s aunt on the other side of the family, who had been
her devoted friend since their school days. When this other old aunt
died, the girl, who was their only living relative, threw up her job as
a nurse at the Royal Free Hospital to look after the survivor—my