It was on Monday, June 2nd, that the Rev. Mr. Anderby had fallen dead on the lawn at White Gables. It was just a week later that Chief-Inspector Macdonald was given a file containing the copious notes collected by the painstaking Inspector Lynch of the county police. Colonel Wragley, the assistant commissioner, entrusted Macdonald with the “Penharden Case” with the comment,
“They’ve waited until everything has happened that could happen—deaths, funerals and disappearance of probable delinquent. Then they ask us to come in and tidy the mess up. Here you are—if you feel like expressing yourself forcibly about it, don’t mind me, Macdonald.”
The assistant commissioner held his Chief Inspector in high esteem: it was true that Macdonald had exasperated him to the point of using “forcible language” himself, on occasion, but Macdonald usually succeeded in “delivering the goods,” and he was a likeable person by and large. His independence of mind, or “damned obstinacy,” was regarded by Wragley as a national characteristic. All Scots were pig-headed and self-opinionated in the assistant commissioner’s opinion, but they also had a native shrewdness and pertinacity which made them valuable in police work. Moreover, long association with Macdonald—they had known one another for ten years—had resulted in something like affection on Wragley’s part for a man who often exasperated him, but for whom he held a very warm regard.
“It’s a change to be called in after the obsequies,” rejoined Macdonald, who had given a quick glance through the neatly typewritten sheets of Lynch’s report, “but as some of the fatalities are apparently several years old, we couldn’t have expected all the subjects to have been kept as exhibits.”
Wragley glanced up at the lean, tanned face of the Chief Inspector to see if there were a smile lurking round the close-shut lips. Even after ten years’ experience of him, Wragley was never sure if Macdonald were enjoying one of his own private jokes, or was making one of those humourlessly obvious statements in which his nation excelled.
“No. I suppose not—but this latest effort—oh, well, see what you can make of it, and then go and collect the woman, wherever she’s got to,” he said breezily, and Macdonald returned a sedate “Very good, sir,” before he retired to his own room to study Lynch’s report.
The said report was a very able production, Macdonald considered, after expending considerable attention on it. It began with a terse description of Mr. Anderby’s death and dossiers of the persons concerned. Mr. Anderby himself was obviously a man of worth and natural goodness, who had had a successful, if not actually distinguished career as parish priest. He had been possessed of private means inherited from his parents, and at his death had been in possession of an income of about £600 a year, which was left to his widow. As though to keep the bonne bouche to the end, Lynch had then gone on to give chapter and verse about the two men who had been present at Mr. Anderby’s death. Major Grendon had been in the Indian Army and had retired ten years ago. There was nothing remarkable about his army career, but he had been a respected and competent officer. He had had about £200 a year in addition to his pension, had lived mainly at his club in London with occasional long visits to a widowed sister in Cheltenham, and had left his property to a nephew in the Rifle Brigade. A note was interpolated in the report stating that his death was dealt with in a further section. Mr. James Knight Lee Gordon had been born in the Dutch East Indies of an American father and a Dutch mother. He had been brought up in Porto Bondo, had travelled considerably, and eventually worked in a rubber plantation in the Federated Malay States. At the age of thirty-five he had forsaken the production of rubber for financial dealings in that commodity on Wall Street, with varying success, and had lived in London for awhile at the age of forty, studying the London markets. He had speculated and lost the greater part of his substance, and had then gone to South America and joined in a ranching venture with Nicholas Dowerby—the father of young Philip Trant, who had lately inherited the title and estates of Lord Trant of Merstham Bois. In recent years Lee Gordon had retrieved his earlier failures on the stock market and again stood in a sound financial position. He had taken White Gables on a quarterly tenancy, with an option to purchase, in order to be near Philip Trant in the adjoining county.
Finally, Lynch came to Mrs. Anderby. The county inspector had been at pains to investigate and to verify the various cases and legacies which Falkland had mentioned, and it seemed clear that ex-Nurse Pewsey had been fortunate, to put the matter at its face value, in receiving legacies from her elderly patients. Then followed, in the report, statements taken from Falkland and Lee Gordon concerning Grendon’s general accusations about Nurse Pewsey. There was a brief dossier describing Falkland, a bachelor of fifty, resident in London, whose career as architect and consultant put him near the front rank of his profession—and a declaration made by him concerning his advice to Major Grendon to make a clear and detailed statement of his ideas concerning Mrs. Anderby. This was borne out by another statement from Lee Gordon, affirming that Major Grendon had repeated Falkland’s advice to him, and stating that he (Lee Gordon) and Grendon had consulted together in order to get mutual corroboration of their recollections of Mr. Anderby’s death and of the events leading up to it. Lee Gordon further stated that Major Grendon had shown him the statement he (Grendon) had made, and Lee Gordon gave it as his opinion that the account was rambling and incoherent and laden with trivial and irrelevant detail. Lee Gordon had last seen Major Grendon on the Wednesday afternoon before his death (which occurred on Wednesday night). Grendon had then stated his intention of going to see Mrs. Anderby herself in order to question her as to various details of the events of Wednesday afternoon. Grendon had left Lee Gordon’s at three o’clock, and had returned to Brook’s house at four-thirty, about half an hour before Falkland himself had arrived back there.
The next portion of the report dealt with Grendon’s death, statements having been taken from Max Brook, Watts (the masseur) and Falkland himself. In his careful painstaking way, Lynch had set forth a full account of Brook’s career. He had done two years’ medical training at St. Joseph’s Hospital, Whitechapel, and had then thrown up his training in favour of osteopathy, working first with an English practitioner and later in an American college of osteopathy. He had graduated at the latter establishment as Doctor of Osteopathy—a title which he did not attempt to use in England. He had practised in the United States and in Paris and worked for some time in Belfort, the Derbyshire spa. Lynch included the police report on Dr. Glaxton’s death, including the conclusion arrived at by the Belfort police that Brook was innocent of any hand in the murder. After the Belfort affair Brook had gone back to the States for three years: on his return to England—a year before Anderby’s death—he had opened his clinic in Penharden and had been very successful.
In his own statement Brook said that Major Grendon had returned to the clinic at four-thirty on Wednesday, in considerable pain from his sciatica, and much too full of his own complaints to wish to give any account of how he had spent his day. Brook said that he had ordered him to bed, had given him a brief treatment after tea, and before he left him for the night had given him another treatment and a concoction of herbs with known soporific effects. Cross-examination had evoked that the final treatment was to some extent hypnotic in character, though Brook had had a lively passage with the coroner concerning hypnosis, its practice and possibilities.
Macdonald relaxed over his study of the report at this stage, and lighted his pipe, chuckling a little. He guessed what the orthodox and rural coroner (a qualified medical man) would think of “hypnotic treatment” by an osteopath. Macdonald was a fair-minded and well-informed man. He knew that osteopaths were occasionally successful in cases where orthodox practitioners failed, and he knew that the sensitive skill of an osteopath’s hand could lull pain in some cases, and thereby induce sleep. To some extent this gift depended on ascendancy of personality—the control of a harassed mind by a calm and controlling one, but in the main it was the actual “manipulation” that was the soporific, and in this sense the treatment was not “hypnotic” in the general use of the word. It induced sleep truly, but not mainly by what is recognized as hypnosis. Macdonald looked forward to meeting Max Brook: judging by the verbatim report of his evidence, he was worth talking to.
Then followed the evidence of Watts, the masseur, who had been woken by Brook when the latter first realized the smell of gas. Together they had gone to Falkland’s room and succeeded in waking him out of a heavy sleep, and they had then hurried down to Grendon’s room. Here they had found the French window and side sash window closed, and the room so full of gas that Watts attested he had had difficulty in getting doors and windows opened fast enough to prevent him growing dizzy from the fumes. Grendon was in bed, lying peacefully on his side, his face only six feet away from the gas fire. Because he disliked facing the light, he slept with his head at the foot of his bed. He had refused to have the position of his bed altered because he had some theory about sleeping in a position lying due north and south.
Falkland gave corroborative evidence about the gas fumes in Grendon’s bedroom when the door was opened, and of Grendon’s fad for sleeping with all the windows opened.
Medical evidence gave the time of death as about two a.m., and the cause of it as coal-gas poisoning. Although there was no evidence to show that his papers had been disturbed, the sheets mentioned by Lee Gordon containing the “statement” about Anderby’s death could not be found. Lee Gordon said that Grendon had used foolscap paper, and though some plain sheets of this paper were found in a drawer, of the statement there was no sign. The verdict at the coroner’s inquest was murder by person or persons unknown. The inquest on Major Grendon had been held on Thursday afternoon; on Friday morning Mr. Anderby’s body had been interred, and Inspector Lynch had spent the day in inquiring into the “allegations” about Nurse Pewsey’s career which had been put forward with due reservations and caution by Falkland.
It was evident to Macdonald, as he studied the evidence, that Lynch had entirely disbelieved the suggestion of her guilt, and that he had an eye on Max Brook as the more probable culprit. Brook had had a very poor time at the coroner’s inquest. He had been asked—very unfairly, Macdonald thought—why he had had gas fires fitted in his patients’ bedrooms, and had replied that in his own experience electric fires were dangerous, both from the point of view of the possibility of causing a fire, and also through inflicting electric shock if they were faulty in any particular. Asked sarcastically by the coroner if he had ever known of a case in which an electric fire had caused death by shock, Brook replied in the affirmative, but refused to give any further information on the point. It seemed that this quite irrelevant issue prejudiced the official mind against him.
The sum total of the whole affair was that Lynch had made no attempt to interrogate Mrs. Anderby immediately. He was a kind-hearted man, and since he did not believe in the possibility of her guilt he had not wished to intrude his questions on the widow on the very day of her husband’s funeral. He had put off calling on her until the next day—with deplorable results. Timing his call for eleven o’clock in the morning, Lynch had found that Mrs. Anderby had gone out. She was still staying at the guest house where she and her husband had been living since they first came to Penharden. She had gone out “for a walk” on the Saturday morning and had not returned. In short, Mrs. Anderby had vanished.
It was at this juncture that the Chief Constable of the county had seen fit to call in Scotland Yard—and Macdonald was rather in agreement with the assistant commissioner’s views. Mr. Anderby was dead—and buried. Major Grendon was dead—and had been buried today—the Monday on which Macdonald received the files of the report and a request for assistance. Mrs. Anderby had gone, no one knew where. There remained Max Brook—and Macdonald chuckled when he read that Inspector Lynch was keeping the osteopath “under observation.” Falkland had returned to town; Lee Gordon was shutting up White Gables, and Max Brook’s other patients had left the clinic. The case was, as Colonel Wragley had said, “in a mess”—and Scotland Yard was expected to clear it up.
It was late afternoon by the time Macdonald had digested the copious report, and it seemed to him that the best thing he could do was to defer his journey to Penharden until the following morning and spend the evening interviewing the one witness who was on the spot in London—Robert Falkland.
A telephone call to the latter’s office evoked the information that Falkland was to be found at his flat in a big block overlooking the Thames, not far away from Macdonald’s own chambers in the Grosvenor Road. The Chief Inspector put through another call and was answered by the architect himself: when Macdonald gave his name and status Falkland gave a short laugh, expressing disgust rather than amusement.
“All right,” he said resignedly. “If you want to talk to me, you’ll find me if you come along now—not that it’s any more than a waste of your time and mine.”
When he was admitted to the architect’s flat and greeted Falkland, Macdonald was careful in his line of approach.
“I’m sorry to bother you again, sir. I realize how irritating it is to be asked questions all over again, and I expect you’ve had more than enough of police inquiries at the hands of the county men.”
Falkland, who had been disposed to be terse with the author of yet another inquisition, was mollified by Macdonald’s words and a bit surprised by his voice and bearing. The quiet voice with its pleasant Scots accent was that of an educated man, and the Chief Inspector was a man with a definite presence. He was far more like a fellow-professional than a policeman, and Falkland felt his initial annoyance die down.
“Oh, well—if you realize that it is irritating, I’ll endeavour not to show symptoms of that sentiment,” replied the architect. “Sit down—and smoke if you’d care to. I admit I’m sick of the police manner and procedure as exemplified by the Penharden detectives. They’ve asked questions, mainly idiotic ones, until I was in the state of mind when ‘Go to hell and stay there!’ seemed the most desirable rejoinder.”
“Asking questions—and being conscious that they’re mainly idiotic ones—can be irritating to the questioner as well as to the questioned,” returned Macdonald, as he sat down in the comfortable chair indicated by Falkland and studied his companion thoughtfully.
“I’ve just had the case handed over to me, complete with copious notes from the inspector in charge. I expect that in the course of your career as architect you have on occasion been commissioned to alter premises which were originally badly planned, badly built, badly lighted, and totally unsuitable for the purpose to which you were asked to adapt them——”
Falkland broke out laughing. “Not a bad analogy,” he replied. “I’ve coped with such jobs often enough and sworn heartily in the coping. In other words you are being asked to elucidate a problem which might have been straightforward if you’d had the planning of it from the beginning, but which is deuced difficult when someone else has messed it up.”
“I’m not suggesting that it was easy,” rejoined Macdonald, “but it’s certainly less easy now, and one of the chief additional difficulties is that a witness like yourself is fed up with answering questions, and consequently disposed to answer in the set form already repeated ad nauseam—and consequently learnt by heart. In other words, all freshness of recollection of possibly essential points is blurred by recollection of what you have already said.” He looked inquiringly at Falkland and then inquired, “Are you in a hurry to get this over—or have you time to spare? If you have, it’s probable you can help me a lot—and frankly I need help.”
“Oh, I’ve plenty of time, and I’ve not the least objection to discussing the business in a general way,” replied Falkland. “I might even become interested again since you’ve got the wits to forsake the ‘routine’ method. It is interesting—damned interesting,” he said. “Not that I imagine there’s any answer but one to the conundrum ‘Who did it?’ The interesting point to me is ‘How did she do it?’ I’ve a fairly ingenious mind but I’m damned if I see how old Anderby was killed. You’ll dig him up again, I suppose, poor old chap?”
“Possibly,” rejoined Macdonald, “but I don’t expect his remains to be—vocal—in any sense.”
He pulled out his pipe and began to fill it from the pouch which Falkland proffered. “Thanks,” he said, and settled himself more comfortably in his chair. “Since you’ve admitted that you’re sick of the ‘routine’ method, let’s try a general discussion instead. You have assumed that there’s only one answer to the problem. That’s prejudging the case. Far better look at it all round.”
“Right. I’m only too anxious to get a fresh viewpoint,” replied Falkland, and Macdonald went on,
“Then consider every single contact in the case, as far as you have been able to observe them, and tell me their names in order of their appearance, as it were.”
“All right. Of necessity I state them from the angle of my own observation. Concerning Anderby’s death, the ‘contacts’ in order of appearance are: first, Grendon, who told me the story; second, myself, because I went round asking questions; third, Lee Gordon, who witnessed the death; fourth, Mrs. Anderby, ditto; fifth, Brook, who discussed it quite intelligently; finally Watts, who assisted in locating the origin of the gas.”
He paused and Macdonald said,
“Very well. That’ll do for a beginning. What do you know of Grendon? You first met at the clinic—and probably considered him an infernal bore.”
“Quite right. I did.”
“What was his main preoccupation? Judging from your evidence, it was a rooted dislike of Mrs. Anderby. He had no feeling about her husband, but he disliked her excessively—and gave you no reason for his dislike.”
“Oh yes, he did. He believed she was in the habit of murdering her elderly patients—and it appears that he was right. Unfortunately for himself, he let her see that he suspected her and was murdered himself. Obviously Mrs. Anderby was the only person with a motive for murdering him.”
“Not of necessity the only person,” replied Macdonald. “Grendon was obviously of an irascible, suspicious temperament, and it’s conceivable he had something to conceal.”
“Maybe he had—but unless Mrs. Anderby murdered him, why did she do a bolt?” He leaned forward, full of eagerness. “Besides, she knew which room Grendon slept in, and that he was a maniac on the point of sleeping with his windows open. Grendon had described his room and all the rest of it over the roast duck at the lunch party. Lee Gordon told the inspector all about that.”
“He did—but that doesn’t prove that it was Mrs. Anderby who turned the gas on,” said Macdonald. “It merely makes it possible for her to have done it. According to the evidence, Mrs. Anderby was asleep in her own room all that night.”
“But dash it all, you can’t prove that!” interrupted Falkland. “No one else was sleeping in the same room as herself.”
“Nor as yourself, nor as Brook, nor as Watts, nor as any of them,” said Macdonald. “However, having examined Major Grendon impartially, take another contact.”
Falkland looked at him with quizzical eyes.
“Myself, for instance.”
“If you care to regard yourself objectively.”
“Why not?” Falkland pondered. “It’s damned odd,” he said. “I was going to say that I’d never had any contact with any of them—but I have. I came in touch with Nurse Pewsey because she nursed my aunt—and I talked to her husband on the golf links.”
“Exactly,” said Macdonald cheerfully, “and continuing the objective method, what were you doing at the time Mr. Anderby died?”
“I was asleep in a deck chair in the garden.” Falkland looked at the other thoughtfully. “I couldn’t prove that,” he said. “No one was about. You could state that I went along to White Gables and killed Anderby. Dash it all, how was he killed?”
“He died of heart failure,” rejoined Macdonald.
“Oh, for the Lord’s sake don’t repeat that gag—it reminds me of poor old Grendon,” said Falkland. “Of course I could have gone downstairs and turned the gas on in his room,” he continued. “It would have been as easy as say so—but why?”
“Obviously, because you’d given yourself away to him over the previous murder,” rejoined Macdonald equably. “One can always supply a motive once the ball is rolling. You see suspicions are easy to utter and often difficult to disprove. Let us take another contact—Brook.”
“I say, are you getting any additional data from this?” inquired Falkland, and Macdonald nodded.
“Oh, yes. Here a little and there a little. I am a picker-up of unconsidered trifles. What about Brook?”
Falkland mused awhile. “I like Brook, you know. I think he’s straight. I should hate to say anything which might make matters worse for him. He’s had a poor deal over this show.”
“Admittedly—but that’s not objective on your part.”
Falkland laughed. “No, confound you, but no human being is ever really impartial. We have our likes and dislikes—and prejudice makes liars of us all, to parody an immortal saying. Brook . . . well, he once treated Anderby, and Mrs. A butted in and warned her husband against osteopaths, but Brook told me he’d examined Anderby and that there was no reason why he should have dropped dead of heart failure.”
“Thanks for that item. It may be valuable,” said Macdonald tranquilly.
“I just don’t believe Brook did it any more than I believe Lee Gordon did it,” said Falkland. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“In Brook’s case you could argue that Mrs. Anderby knew something to his discredit professionally and told her husband about it,” said Macdonald. “Quite frankly, Brook couldn’t afford to have suspicions mooted against him. He’d only just lived down one—incident.”
“Quite—and I’m not helping to provide another,” said Falkland. “I think he’s straight—and I think Grendon’s death was the damnedest bad luck on him.”
“It was certainly undesirable for him,” said Macdonald, and Falkland glanced at the clock.
“Lord! I’d no idea how long we’d been talking!” he exclaimed. “I’ve got a dinner appointment.”
Macdonald promptly got up.
“I won’t keep you then—and many thanks for talking things over in an impartial manner.”
Falkland chuckled. “Touché!” he said. “All the same—I’ve been interested. Talking to you is a different matter from answering Lynch’s tomfool questions. The humorous part of it is that I’ve probably told you a lot more than I told Lynch—in a quite different way.”
“Lynch did a lot of the spade work—and it’s generally a thankless task,” rejoined Macdonald.
Falkland smiled at him. “Dog does not eat dog—and one practitioner upholds another,” he said. “If, in thinking things over, I remember any other irrelevant points, I’ll let you know. Come and see me again and tell me how things go.”
“Thanks,” said Macdonald. He got up, and just as he turned to the door Falkland said,
“Oh, by the way—one point we omitted to mention concerning Mrs. Anderby. The police did suspect something fishy in the matter of Dr. Chenner’s death at Oasthampstead because they made inquiries of the doctor’s servant about her. It’s no use pretending there wasn’t something suspicious there—even though it was impossible to prove anything.”
“And who told you that the police made inquiries?”
Falkland laughed. “Oh—information received, to use your own phrase. I just happened to hear about it in the course of conversation.”
“There seems to have been quite a lot of conversation about Nurse Pewsey,” replied Macdonald, “and the general conclusions are mainly identical.”
“Mainly’s a good word,” laughed Falkland, and he held out his hand in farewell.
Macdonald left him feeling that the time he had spent in talking had not been wasted.