Unnatural death
able to count the ampullæ of morphine and found them all satisfactorily
accounted for. There were no signs of the patient having tried to move
or strain herself, or of her having knocked against anything. The little
night-table was pushed aside, but that had been done by the niece when
she came in and was struck by her aunt’s alarmingly lifeless
appearance.”
“How about the broth and the milk pudding?”
“That occurred to me, also—not in any sinister way, but to wonder
whether she’d been having too much—distended stomach—pressure on the
heart, and that sort of thing. However, when I came to look into it, it
seemed very unlikely. The quantity was so small, and on the face of it,
two hours were sufficient for digestion—if it had been that, death would
have taken place earlier. I was completely puzzled, and so was the
nurse. Indeed, she was very much upset.”
“And the niece?”
“The niece could say nothing but ‘I told you so, I told you so—I knew
she was worse than you thought.’ Well, to cut a long story short, I was
so bothered with my pet patient going off like that, that next morning,
after I had thought the matter over, I asked for a post-mortem.”
“Any difficulty?”
“Not the slightest. A little natural distaste, of course, but no sort of
opposition. I explained that I felt sure there must be some obscure
morbid condition which I had failed to diagnose and that I should feel
more satisfied if I might make an investigation. The only thing which
seemed to trouble the niece was the thought of an inquest. I said—rather
unwisely, I suppose, according to general rules—that I didn’t think an
inquest would be necessary.”
“You mean you offered to perform the post-mortem yourself.”
“Yes—I made no doubt that I should find a sufficient cause of death to
enable me to give a certificate. I had one bit of luck, and that was
that the old lady had at some time or the other expressed in a general
way an opinion in favour of cremation, and the niece wished this to be
carried out. This meant getting a man with special qualifications to
sign the certificate with me, so I persuaded this other doctor to come
and help me to do the autopsy.”
“And did you find anything?”
“Not a thing. The other man, of course, said I was a fool to kick up a
fuss. He thought that as the old lady was certainly dying in any case,
it would be quite enough to put in, Cause of death, cancer; immediate
cause, heart failure, and leave it at that. But I was a damned
conscientious ass, and said I wasn’t satisfied. There was absolutely
nothing about the body to explain the death naturally, and I insisted on
an analysis.”
“Did you actually suspect—?”
“Well, no, not exactly. But—well, I wasn’t satisfied. By the way, it was
very clear at the autopsy that the morphine had nothing to do with it.
Death had occurred so soon after the injection that the drug had only
partially dispersed from the arm. Now I think it over, I suppose it must
have been shock, somehow.”
“Was the analysis privately made?”
“Yes; but of course the funeral was held up and things got round. The
coroner heard about it and started to make inquiries, and the nurse, who
got it into her head that I was accusing her of neglect or something,
behaved in a very unprofessional way and created a lot of talk and
trouble.”
“And nothing came of it?”
“Nothing. There was no trace of poison or anything of that sort, and the
analysis left us exactly where we were. Naturally, I began to think I
had made a ghastly exhibition of myself. Rather against my own
professional judgment, I signed the certificate—heart failure following
on shock, and my patient was finally got into her grave after a week of
worry, without an inquest.”
“Grave?”
“Oh, yes. That was another scandal. The crematorium authorities, who are
pretty particular, heard about the fuss and refused to act in the
matter, so the body is filed in the church-yard for reference if
necessary. There was a huge attendance at the funeral and a great deal
of sympathy for the niece. The next day I got a note from one of my most
influential patients, saying that my professional services would no
longer be required. The day after that, I was avoided in the street by
the Mayor’s wife. Presently I found my practice dropping away from me,
and discovered I was getting known as ‘the man who practically accused
that charming Miss So-and-so of murder.’ Sometimes it was the niece I
was supposed to be accusing. Sometimes it was ‘that nice Nurse—not the
flighty one who was dismissed, the other one, you know.’ Another version
was, that I had tried to get the nurse into trouble because I resented
the dismissal of my fiancée. Finally, I heard a rumour that the patient
had discovered me ‘canoodling’—that was the beastly word—with my
fiancée, instead of doing my job, and had done away with the old lady
myself out of revenge—though why, in that case, I should have refused a
certificate, my scandal-mongers didn’t trouble to explain.
“I stuck it out for a year, but my position became intolerable. The
practice dwindled to practically nothing, so I sold it, took a holiday
to get the taste out of my mouth—and here I am, looking for another
opening. So that’s that—and the moral is, Don’t be officious about
public duties.”
The doctor gave an irritated laugh, and flung himself back in his chair.
“I don’t care,” he added, combatantly, “the cats! Confusion to ’em!” and
he drained his glass.
“Hear, hear!” agreed his host. He sat for a few moments looking
thoughtfully into the fire.
“Do you know,” he said, suddenly, “I’m feeling rather interested by this
case. I have a sensation of internal gloating which assures me that
there is something to be investigated. That feeling has never failed me
yet—I trust it never will. It warned me the other day to look into my
income-tax assessment, and I discovered that I had been paying about
£900 too much for the last three years. It urged me only last week to
ask a bloke who was preparing to drive me over the Horseshoe Pass
whether he had any petrol in the tank, and he discovered he had just
about a pint—enough to get us nicely half-way round. It’s a very lonely
spot. Of course, I knew the man, so it wasn’t _all_ intuition. Still, I
always make it a rule to investigate anything I feel like investigating.
I believe,” he added, in a reminiscent tone, “I was a terror in my
nursery days. Anyhow, curious cases are rather a hobby of mine. In fact,
I’m not just being the perfect listener. I have deceived you. I have an
ulterior motive, said he, throwing off his side-whiskers and disclosing
the well-known hollow jaws of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”
“I was beginning to have my suspicions,” said the doctor, after a short
pause. “I think you must be Lord Peter Wimsey. I wondered why your face
was so familiar, but of course it was in all the papers a few years ago
when you disentangled the Riddlesdale Mystery.”
“Quite right. It’s a silly kind of face, of course, but rather
disarming, don’t you think? I don’t know that I’d have chosen it, but I
do my best with it. I do hope it isn’t contracting a sleuth-like
expression, or anything unpleasant. This is the real sleuth—my friend
Detective-Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard. He’s the one who really
does the work. I make imbecile suggestions and he does the work of
elaborately disproving them. Then, by a process of elimination, we find
the right explanation, and the world says, ‘My god, what intuition that
young man has!’ Well, look here—if you don’t mind, I’d like to have a go
at this. If you’ll entrust me with your name and address and the names
of the parties concerned, I’d like very much to have a shot at looking
into it.”
The doctor considered a moment, then shook his head.
“It’s very good of you, but I think I’d rather not. I’ve got into enough
bothers already. Anyway, it isn’t professional to talk, and if I stirred
up any more fuss, I should probably have to chuck this country
altogether and end up as one of those drunken ship’s doctors in the
South Seas or somewhere, who are always telling their life-history to
people and delivering awful warnings. Better to let sleeping dogs lie.
Thanks very much, all the same.”
“As you like,” said Wimsey. “But I’ll think it over, and if any useful
suggestion occurs to me, I’ll let you know.”
“It’s very good of you,” replied the visitor, absently, taking his hat
and stick from the man-servant, who had answered Wimsey’s ring. “Well,
good night, and many thanks for hearing me so patiently. By the way,
though,” he added, turning suddenly at the door, “how do you propose to
let me know when you haven’t got my name and address?”
Lord Peter laughed.
“I’m Hawkshaw, the detective,” he answered, “and you shall hear from me
anyhow before the end of the week.”
CHAPTER III
A Use for Spinsters
“_There are two million more females than males in England and Wales!
And this is an awe-inspiring circumstance._”
Gilbert Frankau
“What do you really think of that story?” inquired Parker. He had
dropped in to breakfast with Wimsey the next morning, before departing
in the Notting Dale direction, in quest of an elusive anonymous
letter-writer. “I thought it sounded rather as though our friend had
been a bit too cocksure about his grand medical specialising. After all,
the old girl might so easily have had some sort of heart attack. She was
very old and ill.”
“So she might, though I believe as a matter of fact cancer patients very
seldom pop off in that unexpected way. As a rule, they surprise
everybody by the way they cling to life. Still, I wouldn’t think much of
that if it wasn’t for the niece. She prepared the way for the death, you
see, by describing her aunt as so much worse than she was.”
“I thought the same when the doctor was telling his tale. But what did
the niece do? She can’t have poisoned her aunt or even smothered her, I
suppose, or they’d have found signs of it on the body. And the aunt
_did_ die—so perhaps the niece was right and the opinionated young
medico wrong.”
“Just so. And of course, we’ve only got his version of the niece and the
nurse—and he obviously had what the Scotch call ta’en a scunner at the
nurse. We mustn’t lose sight of her, by the way. She was the last person
to be with the old lady before her death, and it was she who
administered that injection.”
“Yes, yes—but the injection had nothing to do with it. If anything’s
clear, that is. I say, do you think the nurse can have said anything
that agitated the old lady and gave her a shock that way. The patient
was a bit gaga, but she may have had sense enough to understand
something really startling. Possibly the nurse just said something
stupid about dying—the old lady appears to have been very sensitive on
the point.”
“Ah!” said Lord Peter, “I was waiting for you to get on to that. Have
you realised that there really is one rather sinister figure in the
story, and that’s the family lawyer.”
“The one who came down to say something about the will, you mean, and
was so abruptly sent packing.”
“Yes. Suppose he’d wanted the patient to make a will in favour of
somebody quite different—somebody outside the story as we know it. And
when he found he couldn’t get any attention paid to him, he sent the new
nurse down as a sort of substitute.”
“It would be rather an elaborate plot,” said Parker, dubiously. “He
couldn’t know that the doctor’s fiancée was going to be sent away.
Unless he was in league with the niece, of course, and induced her to
engineer the change of nurses.”
“That cock won’t fight, Charles. The niece wouldn’t be in league with
the lawyer to get herself disinherited.”