‘So she didn’t take the news very well,’ Mo said.
‘I think that’s the understatement of the year.’
It was Friday evening and the two friends were having supper together at Fran’s cottage.
‘I tried to tell her that times were changing, but I’m afraid she just wouldn’t listen. She kept going on and on about how I wouldn’t care if she died of shame – as if anyone ever really did that – and then she started crying and said she couldn’t eat her dessert. Oh, it was all just as horrible as I knew it would be.’
‘Surely she can see that you are entitled to try and find happiness with someone else?’
‘On the contrary, I think my mother feels I’d be far better off living like a nun and becoming some kind of saintly figure, doing good deeds in the parish.’
‘Good Lord!’
‘Not so much the Good Lord, but certainly getting on for Saint Agnes.’
Mo laughed. ‘I bet you haven’t told her anything about Tom Dod and the dastardly deeds in Durley Dean. Talking of which, what news on the case?’
‘I spoke to Tom briefly on the telephone just before you got here, though actually we talked more about all this trouble in America. I wanted to know what he makes of it all. I really don’t understand stocks and shares.’
‘Oh, I leave all that sort of thing to Terence. I suppose it’s rather like that grubby business involving that nasty fellow Hatry, who was up to no good on the London Stock Exchange.’
‘This sounds far worse,’ Fran said. ‘People have been ruined overnight. Some have even jumped off bridges and thrown themselves under railway trains, according to the newspapers.’
‘Dear me,’ Mo said. ‘One doesn’t usually associate that kind of hysteria with Americans. Sounds more like the Italians or the French.’
‘Tom says it is going to cause a lot more uncertainty and hardship.’
‘Well, yes,’ said Mo, who never liked dwelling on anything unpleasant for long and had taken no particular interest in the so-called Wall Street Crash. ‘But what did Tom have to say, if anything, about the mysterious demises in Durley Dean?’
‘Nothing very much,’ Fran said. ‘There’s nothing new from Aunt Hetty, and Tom is no wiser than we are about why Doctor Owen would pretend to be at a football match when he wasn’t there.’
‘Well, he was obviously up to no good!’ Mo was emphatic. ‘I know I had previously made the vicar odds-on favourite, but that was before evidence started stacking up against the doctor.’
‘I’ve been thinking some more about the doctor,’ Fran said. ‘He is sort of on the spot in every case. Though I can’t really see a motive …’
‘The man’s a homicidal maniac. He doesn’t need a motive.’
‘Setting aside the question of motive, I started thinking about Mrs Ripley’s medicine. Suppose when Doctor Owen visited the day before she died he gave her something else to take, which she didn’t mention to anyone else?’
‘That’s a good idea. I wonder what it could have been.’
‘It would be odd, though, that she didn’t take it until lunchtime the next day.’
‘Maybe she was just following his instructions.’
‘Well, yes, perhaps,’ Fran said. ‘But then I sort of dismissed the idea, because Doctor Owen wouldn’t have been able to guarantee that Mrs Ripley wouldn’t mention this new medication to anyone else – and if she had, then when she became ill after lunch suspicion would naturally have fallen on the new medicine. The other thing is that in the normal scheme of things she would have kept it in the cabinet over the washbasin with all her other medicines and asked Mademoiselle Bertillon to fetch it for her when she fetched the stuff she was already taking.’
‘You’re right, of course.’ Mo sounded somewhat disappointed.
‘Hold on a minute.’
‘What? Where are you going?’
‘I’m just going to fetch my notebook. I want to see exactly what was said about the original medicine.’
Fran returned a moment later, turning the pages of her notebook as she spoke. ‘Goodness, this is scratty handwriting. It’s really difficult, trying to make notes while people are talking. Ah, yes, here it is … When we went to see Doctor Owen, he told us that on his first visit to Mrs Ripley he prescribed her a couple of days’ supply of the mixture of powdered rhubarb, soda and bismuth, and then when he went back on the third day of her illness he prescribed her some more. That’s two lots of medicine, but no one else ever mentions this second bottle.’
Mo considered the problem for a moment. ‘If he said “prescribed” rather than “gave” then presumably he wouldn’t have had an additional bottle with him. It would need to have been made up when he got back to his surgery, and he would probably have dropped it off when he visited next day.’
‘By which time Mrs Ripley was already dead.’
‘On the other hand, if she didn’t have very much of the stuff to start with, she might have been running out, in which case he would have either dropped it off or sent it round sooner. Let me think … those little bottles generally hold about a dozen teaspoonfuls. How often did Mrs Ripley have to take her medicine?’
‘Four times a day, one dose at each mealtime and one with a milky drink before bed.’
‘So if Mrs Ripley took a dose on the afternoon that Doctor Owen first saw her and then one with her supper and another at bedtime, that’s three doses. She would have taken four each day on the next two days, so the breakfast time dose on the day she died would have finished off the bottle and she would have needed to start the new bottle of medicine at lunchtime.’
‘Oh my goodness!’ Fran said. ‘I think we may be on to something here.’
‘Did the French governess mention anything about it being a new bottle of medicine?’
‘No, but of course she may have forgotten. Remember no one appreciated the potential significance of details like that at the time, because they all assumed Mrs Ripley had died of natural causes.’
‘Look out,’ Mo said. ‘Something’s fallen out of your notebook.’
Fran bent to retrieve the sheet of paper. ‘It’s nothing much,’ she said, glancing at it. ‘Just a few points I jotted down last Saturday evening when I tried to undertake a review of the evidence. A lot of good that did. I never even noticed the point about the medicine.’
‘Better look through them again now, in case anything else ties the doctor in,’ Mo suggested.
‘Very well then.’ Fran shoved another log on to the fire, then resumed her place in the armchair and began to read from her sheet of paper. ‘Mr Vardy disliked Reverend Pinder so much that he had a different clergyman conduct his funeral.’
‘I don’t see there’s anything much in that,’ Mo said. ‘Move on.’
‘Miss Rose says things in such a way that she misleads people without actually lying to them.’
‘The diplomatic lie. Well, we all do that.’ Mo affected a regretful tone. ‘So-o-o-o sorry I can’t make it, darling, but I have something else on.’
‘Doctor Owen was not at the football match on Saturday afternoon.’
‘We’re still no wiser on that score, though we suspect he was bashing that poor old chap over the head.’
‘Mrs Smith claimed that she tried to call on Mrs Ripley during her last illness, but Mrs Ripley wasn’t well enough to see her.’
‘That’s the diplomatic lie again, surely? Mrs Ripley wouldn’t have wanted to see Mrs Smith because the woman’s such a frightful idiot. What’s odd about that?’
‘Only that no one else mentioned her calling.’
‘Probably thought it didn’t matter. You and Tom were only asking about people who actually got into the sick room, where they would have had a chance to get at Mrs Ripley’s food and medicine. Mrs Smith didn’t gain access to the house, so that puts her out of it completely.’
‘Oh my goodness,’ Fran repeated. She reached for her notebook again and began to rifle through it.
‘Darling, whatever is the matter? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost and it’s still almost a week to Hallowe’en.’
‘Here it is.’ Fran was as breathless as if she’d been running a race. ‘Mrs Smith told us that when her brother was busy she used to help him out by answering the telephone and that sort of thing, and also that she had even helped out in the dispensary on a few occasions when he was very tied up. We know that Doctor Owen was extremely busy on the first day of Mrs Ripley’s illness and also on the day that Mrs Ripley died. He told us his sister dropped off the first lot of medicine for him. Suppose it was Mrs Smith, rather than her brother, who dispensed the second lot of medicine and took it round to the house?’
‘But hold on—’ Mo began.
Fran had sprung to her feet again. ‘I’m just fetching my address book,’ she said. ‘I need to make a couple of urgent telephone calls.’