The room was light. It was morning, and here, on the bed-table, was her breakfast, deposited some time ago, as she realised when she came to pour out her tea. How done-up she must have been to sleep like this! She would have gone on sleeping, too, but for this ringing in her ear.
How incredibly stupid of her! It was the telephone, at her side. She picked up the gold-lacquered instrument, heard Colin Ladbroke’s voice, and remembered her appointment with the barrister. Ten o’clock it was fixed for, and it was now after nine.
She was making a dash for the nearest taxi-rank when Gaylord came running after her to say that here was Mr. Blundell’s car, and he had been told to take her wherever she wanted to go. Now it came back to her. She had been offered the Sunbeam for as long and as often as she might care to use it. Uncle Nick on the whole preferred the runabout—or so he had firmly insisted.
Oh, well, why not? It was late, and she might as well save the taxi fare. She sank into the luxurious seat, instructed Gaylord to drive her to the Inner Temple, and tried as the grey streets flashed past to recapture some details of the interminable evening. Over sole with mushroom sauce and pheasant shot by Lord Limpsfield the previous week-end Uncle Nick had offered her kindly advice, not failing to make plain to her that from now on she must be guided entirely by Adrian’s counsel.
“He’ll most likely put you on to a reliable private inquiry man, who’ll begin snooping round trying to collect evidence against some one of those present. I’ll come in for my share in due course. Oh, yes, I shall! For which reason it won’t do for me to express any more opinions. I shall have to lie low and mind my manners.”
The recollection of such painful jocularities caused her to writhe. They were about all, however, she seemed able to remember with any degree of clearness.
At the Temple she dismissed the car, and climbed two flights of stone stairs to a door bearing a long list of names in black letters. A pasty-faced youth with a pen behind his ear showed her into a room whose shabbiness was relieved by some good Persian rugs and a few old maps framed and hung on the olive-green walls. Presently the door opened and Michael Hull came in.
He was a staid man of forty-odd, with grave, prominent black eyes under spiky brows which gave him the look of a highly-conservative black-beetle. Seating himself across a mahogany table from herself, he swung an eye-glass, and coughed tentatively. At once Diana felt, with a sinking heart, that his attitude was one of extreme pessimism. At the same time he seemed to her wholly conscientious and determined to put up a hard fight for his client.
He asked her a great many searching questions, at first about the late Mrs. Somervell. She answered with perfect candour, emphasising her belief that Adrian had never made the slightest attempt to curry favour with Rose.
“He couldn’t. He’s too indifferent. Besides, it hadn’t ever occurred to him he had anything to gain by it.”
“H’m!” The eye-glass continued to swing. “Was Mrs. Somervell aware of your engagement to her stepson?”
Diana coloured as she replied that till more than a week after the death there had been no engagement.
“I see.” The unexpressive answer made her supremely uncomfortable. “And now, perhaps you will tell me exactly what you said last evening to Doctor Ladbroke. Don’t omit anything.”
Diana complied. When she came to her own now-extinct supposition regarding her mother’s murder she saw the beetling brows draw together with marked incredulity.
“I quite see how absurd it is now,” she apologised, “but I did have some reason for thinking it before. Don’t you agree?”
“Well—my opinion is of no consequence.” He cleared his throat and leant forward gravely. “Now, Miss Lake, it’s as well to grasp at once that we’re confronted with a case which to outward seeming is practically cast-iron. There is the strongest kind of a motive, there is opportunity coupled with the requisite medical knowledge, and in addition material evidence of the most damning kind. I’m referring, of course, to the actual poison found in Dr. Somervell’s pocket.”
“Put like that, it does sound utterly hopeless,” returned Diana steadily. “And yet I know, if you don’t, that he simply could not have done this murder, or even thought of it. One of the three people I’ve been telling you about must be guilty. I suppose we must make it four people, if we include my godfather, Mr. Blundell. I’ve given a possible reason in each of three cases. Surely that’s something to go on?”
“Oh, obviously! We must make investigations immediately, as regards motive and the possession of aconite. Now, let me see.” He began jotting down notes on a clean sheet of paper. “Mr. Arenson,” he murmured, “Mr. Blundell, whom you quite naturally count out—and the housekeeper’s nephew. Is that the list?”
“You’re leaving out Miss Dilworth, the secretary. Didn’t I tell you I considered her by far the most likely suspect?”
With a slight start Michael Hull looked up—and this time with a distinct gleam of pity in his prominent eyes.
“The secretary! Oh-ah! I sincerely ask your pardon, Miss Lake. My fault entirely. The fact is, Miss Dilworth happens to be the individual who first reported a suspicion of foul play.”
The room reeled. Elsie, herself? At one stroke Diana saw the secretary transformed from a scheming murderess to a furtive onlooker, taking note of what went on and quietly resolving to act as an instrument of justice. All her calculations were wrecked. Elsie, present in that dining-room. . . . What had she actually witnessed?
It was the first question Diana managed to utter, and the answer brought infinite relief. Miss Dilworth had seen nothing, only made certain shrewd deductions which later on were proved correct to the last detail. She had, it appeared, made her statement to the Home Office under seal of strict secrecy. Quite understandably she did not wish her name to be made public until it was established that murder had been done.
“However,” continued Hull, “I found out quite easily exactly what did happen. Here is the Home Office communication, if you care to look at it.”
Diana scarcely glanced at the paper handed her. Things were still spinning round.
“But why did she give this information?” she whispered. “What could have been her object?”
“She declared she felt it a public duty.”
“Duty! I don’t believe it. She did it purely out of revenge.”
Hull looked shocked and alarmed.
“Really, my dear Miss Lake!” he protested. “I must beg you most earnestly not to make assertions of that kind. Don’t you see how they would inevitably be construed?”
“I don’t, I’m afraid.”
“It might be assumed that Miss Dilworth was a party to the deed. That after being repulsed by Dr. Somervell she decided to denounce him.”
“Oh!” Diana bit her lip. “All the same, I stick to my opinion. She undoubtedly believed Adrian was guilty of murder, but that only proves she knew he was going to inherit Mrs. Somervell’s money, which fact she could have learned from the will itself when she witnessed it. As you know, she failed to turn up at either the inquest or the examination. She’s hiding—because having done this impulsive thing she’s simply sick with remorse.”
“We must not draw hasty conclusions,” the barrister counselled her. “Possibly she did act on an impulse she has since regretted, but we are not yet justified in going further than that, if as far.”
“Was she calm or upset when she saw the Home Office people?” asked Diana pointedly. “Have you spoken to them personally to find out?”
“I have. She was highly agitated.”
“I knew it!” declared Diana in triumph. “She’s not quite sane.”
“Sane or not,” retorted Hully dryly, “she was right in her facts, and I was going to add she seems to have given those facts in such a convincing way as to command attention. You may not realise it, but the Home Office receives thousands of such stories. Out of them only a very few are considered worth more than a cursory investigation.”
“Did she say the poison would be found in Dr. Somervell’s pocket?”
“Oh, no, not that! I’ll read you a precis of her statement.” Adjusting his eye-glass, Hull read out: “She spoke of the will she had been asked to witness only two days prior to the victim’s death. Second, she expressed certainty that the chief beneficiary would be discovered to be, financially speaking, in very low waters.”
“There was never any secret about that,” interposed Diana. “What else did she say?”
“That the beneficiary had been seeing the victim frequently, was on exceedingly friendly terms with her, and had been a guest at the meal immediately following which the fatal attack began. She also spoke in detail of the victim’s symptoms, mentioning in particular the partial paralysis of the lips and tongue, wrongly attributed to stroke. In addition, she called attention to the fact that Mrs. Somervell’s own doctor did not attend her, and that the partner who was called in was a total stranger, knowing nothing of her general constitution. Lastly Miss Dilworth gave her own firm belief that death was due to raw aconite root, mixed with the horseradish sauce on the victim’s plate at the time a second helping was taken.”
Diana leant forward excitedly.
“She actually said it was aconite?” she demanded.
“She did, but her guess is less astonishing than you may think. She explained that she had just read a novel in which a murder committed in this way was minutely described; that after the death she recalled having seen the horseradish sauce, whereupon she questioned the housekeeper very closely, consulted the Medical Jurisprudence in Mr. Blundell’s library, and put two and two together. Quite accurately, as I need not remark.”
“Mr. Hull,” said Diana, “you may swallow that story. I don’t. If Elsie Dilworth knew what poison had been used, or any poison for that matter, it was because she’d used it herself. I thought for a moment my theory about her was blown to atoms, but it isn’t. She committed this murder—and for the very reason I’ve given—in order to force Adrian Somervell to marry her!”
The barrister looked at her with puzzled interest. Evidently he did not follow her argument. Perhaps, indeed, he fancied her a bit mad. She explained almost impatiently.
“She’s a determined woman, Mr. Hull. She put doubts into Petty’s mind hoping Mr. Blundell would hear of them and ask for the exhumation himself, but when nothing happened she took matters into her own hands. She meant to place Adrian in danger of arrest, but to get hold of the stuff she’d dropped into his pocket in time to prevent it’s being found by the police. He couldn’t have been indicted on the will alone, could he?”
“Well—perhaps not,” admitted Hull cautiously. “But how do you suggest she failed to forestall the police? It was, if I may say so, a vital slip.”
“Adrian was avoiding her,” said Diana slowly. “After that Sunday he never saw her at all till she came to the hospital almost grovelling and begged him to—I’ve got it!” she cried. “That night he had on his new suit!”
“New suit?”
“Of course! And the aconite was in his old one, hanging in his wardrobe. She couldn’t tell him about it, for he’d have gone straight home and got rid of the stuff. When she saw the clothes he was wearing her gun was spiked. No wonder she’s acting like a mad woman. Who wouldn’t, in her place?”
It seemed to her the black eyes held a shade more respect.
“Well, well! This must be gone into. We may possibly be able to find some other occasion when Miss Dilworth tried to get into personal contact with our client, or else to obtain access to his room. She must certainly be located, though I warn you it will at this date be extremely difficult to secure proof of her guilt.”
He moved the papers about on his desk, and added that there might be a simpler explanation for the secretary’s erratic behaviour.
“She’s impetuous, obviously. No doubt hysterical. A woman of her age and habitual restraint frequently does go off the deep end under emotional stress such as she, on your showing, has been subjected to. Isn’t it probable she realised her proper course would have been to acquaint Mr. Blundell with her suspicions, and that after her rash act she shrank from facing his very natural displeasure? It would account for her resignation, and—supposing she had left behind some memoranda or diary she was anxious to retrieve—for her visiting his home when he was not there. You say she also went up to Mrs. Somervell’s flat? To see the housekeeper, perhaps. She would not have known the old woman was gone.”
“But why did she steal my letters?” objected Diana, unconvinced.
“If you’ll forgive my saying so, you may have lost the letters during the course of the day. I don’t think I should build too much on that incident.”
Diana was silenced, but only partly shaken.
“I dare say you are aware,” resumed the barrister, “that Mr. Blundell also requested the Home Office to perform an autopsy?”
“Did he?” The news took her by surprise. “When?”
“Not just at first. I understand it was after inquiries had begun, and following unexpected information given him by”—he hesitated—“well, in fact, your mother. The date was—yes, here it is—the late afternoon of November second.”
She nodded. It was not astonishing after all. He had been going on his mission when she met him outside her door and was so struck by his odd manner.
As she had expected, she was strongly advised to keep her engagement concealed from every one except the private agent to whom the inquiries were to be entrusted.
“There are cases,” Hull explained tactfully, “where a wife or a fiancée may tend to influence a jury in the right direction, but here it may have an undesirable result. We don’t want to—to strengthen a motive already—in the public eye—overwhelmingly strong.”
The agent he had selected was a man called Mortimer Bream, shrewd, and completely trustworthy. She was to tell him everything and at once. In fact, Hull had taken the liberty of arranging for her to meet Bream in a quiet restaurant, situated in the Strand, at one o’clock. Would that be convenient?
It was nearly one now. Diana left the office, took a restless turn along the Embankment, and walked through Villiers Street to the place of meeting.