“Odd, in a way, how so much of this affair started right here in the Prince Regent’s Hospital.”
Saying this, Colin Ladbroke ran a critical eye over the green-walled private room which was Diana’s temporary abode, gave a keener glance to the array of bottles on the mantel, and smiled at his patient, who was regarding him in mystification.
“Do you mean because Adrian worked here?” she asked curiously.
“Oh, Lord, no! Haven’t I developed that feature of it? Never mind. I’ll tack it on to our coming symposium. Yes, it began here—and here it will end quite soon now, for I hear our company just getting out of the lift. What’s wrong?” as a sudden flutter agitated the neat bedclothes. “Lost something?”
“My powder-puff, silly! Don’t you dare open that door till I’ve found it.”
“I see.” He nodded dryly. “Feeling pretty bucked with yourself, aren’t you?”
Not entirely, as it happened. Adrian on the threshold brought back painfully the memory of the rift which, during her tribulations, she had scarcely troubled about. In a crucial moment she had doubted him. He had been hurt in a vital spot, and however much he might pretend, the wound unwittingly dealt him might never be quite healed. Her first glimpse of him, she felt, would be the test, thinking which she tried to subdue the sudden, nervous tremor of her heart, which on the least provocation, now, behaved in a tiresome fashion.
The host was welcoming his three self-conscious guests.
“Well, well! Are we all met? Flock in, and sit where you can.”
In tramped Inspector Headcorn, a patch over his eye, but looking preternaturally smart in a tight blue serge suit with a carnation in his button-hole. On his heels came Mortimer Bream, natty, but unnoticeable as the grey linoleum on the floor. Behind these two, hanging back a little with detached diffidence, appeared Adrian, newly released from the condemned cell.
His face had sharpened, and he had lost most of his nut-brown tan, but otherwise he seemed exactly the same as before, quiet, a shade preoccupied, his brown eyes thoughtful behind his spectacles, a muscle in his cheek twitching sensitively. Diana hardly dared look at him. The hand she gave him was cold, and she was quick to notice he did not retain it beyond a single, brief pressure. A leaden lump came in her throat, her eyes misted over; and then, as he turned away she saw what somehow might be the omen she was seeking. He was wearing his dark-red tie. . . .
“Drinks, drinks!” carolled Colin, aware of the awkward tension, if not of its cause. “Here, jail-bird, shove some ice into this shaker while I do a spot of uncorking. Inspector, what’s on your mind? You’re looking dashed portentous.”
Clearing his throat rumblingly, Headcorn asked if Miss Lake had been informed of the latest sensation.
“Not yet. I was leaving it for you. Oh, you can spill it now! She’s well equal to this particular shock.”
“Shock?” echoed Diana, trembling in spite of herself. “Oh! What is it now?”
“No need to brace yourself,” said the Inspector, with a comforting glance. “At noon yesterday, directly your recovery had been announced in the papers, the Minister of Arterial Highways, Sir Norbury Penge, put a bullet through his brain.”
The full history of events was not yet compiled. Minor phases of it might remain apocryphal; but the following version, pieced together from various sources and supplemented by later discoveries, may be taken as a fairly accurate one:
Rose Somervell, for some weeks prior to her death, had believed that her devoted Nick was hiding from her a matter of importance, and that this matter involved Nick’s friendship with Lord Limpsfield and Sir Norbury Penge, who had begun to pay frequent visits to the flat below hers, but whom she was never asked to meet. She pried and wheedled, but was put off in the most unsatisfactory, and, to her, humiliating fashion. She made guesses, and sometimes her stabs came perilously near the mark. Finally, from Vichy, whither she had been packed to get her out of the way, she wrote glibly of her acquaintance with the one man to whom the least mention of her suspicions would have proved fatal—Sir Francis Dugdale, secretary to the Home Secretary, and—by the devil’s own luck—Limpsfield’s bitterest political opponent. As yet, be it understood, she knew nothing. Well, then, she must continue to know nothing. Future conferences, hitherto so safely conducted in Blundell’s library, must, on her return, be transferred elsewhere. Rose, with her monkeyish fondness for meddling, must be given no leeway.
Here we must digress to the Indian, Haji. Herbert Woodford, then employed at the Prince Regent’s Hospital, Gower Street, had in his statement declared that the student, during public-house chats, had confided his acute worry over the girl, Frieda Klapp. She was being run by Haji for disreputable purposes, and now she was not only holding out on him, but sucking him dry under threat of writing his strict father in Bombay a full account of the situation. The talks between Woodford and the harassed Indian turned upon the removal of troublesome persons with least risk of exposure, and Woodford jokingly paraded the medical knowledge he had picked up at his post. Aconite was advocated. Easy to obtain, equally easy to administer in food, it could kill in an apparently natural manner, and—more important—would defy detection in human remains provided no immediate examination was made. Woodford fetched along a specimen of the cultivated plant to show what it was like, explaining that the wild variety was far more deadly. Haji, though admitting he had seen monkshood growing in India, professed ignorance of its properties. He asked many questions, and was obligingly answered.
Woodford made another interesting communication. By experiment he had learned to impregnate smoking tobacco with scopolomin, and following a demonstration he agreed to supply his friend with a quantity of the drug, filched from the hospital stores. At this point matters rested, till, out of the blue, Frieda Klapp died, with her last conscious gasp screaming that her Indian protector had poisoned her. She was heard, gossip buzzed, and an order was given for an inquest.
Haji had carefully given his victim the emetic and dose of oil which could reasonably be counted on to eliminate from her system all solid matter; but faced with an inquiry, he went to pieces and frantically sought legal advice. Woodford obtained the name of Nicholas Blundell, who, before consenting to help Haji, exacted a complete confession. The demoralised Indian made a clean breast of his crime, not omitting to mention the drugged cigarettes which for days before death had kept Frieda in a state of quiescent torpor. The effect of the scopolomin was to soothe her and made her forget from moment to moment impressions just received. She was too lethargic to write the letter she was threatening to write, and if she noticed the bitter ingredient in her curry she forgot it directly. If she had not soon afterwards felt too ill to continue smoking she would not have uttered her strident accusations, the result of a general suspicion lurking in her brain.
Abdulmajid babbled—and Blundell listened, shrewdly concluding there was probably little cause for panic, so long as the post-mortem was delayed long enough for the putrefactive elements in the body to neutralise the poisonous principle. Whether or not he pulled wires to ensure this delay cannot positively be known, but as the August Bank Holiday with its suspension of activity occurred just then, the chances are he sat tight and let matters take a normal course. What concerned him personally was that he had been presented gratis with a safe, practically-tested method of death-dealing, to keep up his sleeve and use if and when occasion should require, and, in addition, he had got absolute power over an unscrupulous youth, whom he might, if he so desired, employ as a tool. Advising Haji against allowing the drug to be found in his possession, he took over the latter’s supply of scopolomin and kept it, first learning exactly how the stuff had been used. Already, no doubt, he realised that under certain circumstances drugged tobacco might serve him to advantage. To prevent Haji from slipping away from him, he made generous advances of cash—and, ever cautious, he saw to it that Woodford, the go-between, was given the wherewithal to quit London. He may not, thus early, have been definitely plotting what presently became a necessity. He did, however, foresee that Woodford could, in possible circumstances, represent an embarrassment.
We now come to Rose Somervell’s return from France. By chance, or design, it took place a day sooner than expected, and Blundell was not warned. Travelling with Petty by the late boat-train Rose reached Queen’s Close at eleven at night, saw Limpsfield’s car before the door, and instantly thought of the secret which was being kept from her. Very likely at this period the inner staircase was freely used by both parties. At all events, it was open now, and into it, like a naughty child, the old actress promptly slipped to see what she could overhear. Just as she had anticipated, a three-cornered conference was in progress. Half-gloating, half-angry, she managed to glean quite enough to make her wait till the clients—clients, forsooth!—had departed so that she could flaunt her triumph in Nick’s face, and haul him over the coals for his shabby treatment of her.
Rose’s moral fibres were not shocked. Possibly she did not fully grasp what the conspiracy meant, or how, if so much as a breath of it got abroad, its three principals would each be ruined. What she did see was that Nick, her trusted crony, had hit on a marvellous road to wealth, and not let her profit by it. Safe Consols—bah! She would show him—and forthwith she did, telling him straight out that unless he lifted her capital from his humdrum, small-paying investments and put it into the glittering Penge scheme she would appeal to Lord Limpsfield himself and demand her share of the spoils. She would have done this—Blundell did not doubt it—and if denied participation she would grumble loudly to every one she knew, not excluding her new lion, Sir Francis Dugdale, whom she proposed to invite for dinner the moment he was at home. However, she could not be permitted to enter into the scheme, for the truth was that, satisfied or disgruntled, Rose Somervell simply could not hold her tongue. Shrewd in some ways, she was notoriously stupid in this. She gossiped, she prattled. There never had been any trusting her, and since she had grown a constant brandy-tippler any prudence she might once have possessed was gone beyond recall. It was a fact Blundell had to face. As to his feelings, nothing need now be said. Suffice it to state, the situation was desperate. Rose must be suppressed, the only question being how?
Blundell realised he must make no hasty move, purely because of the will Rose had made—or told him she had made—in his favour. Once the forty-odd thousand pounds would have been extremely desirable. Now, with a huge fortune at stake and a life-ambition dangling precariously, he regarded it merely as an obstacle to be cleared from his path. Unless that damnable document were destroyed or rescinded, suspicion, if a slip should occur, would inevitably point to himself. He thought of the scopolomin and saw a way out of his difficulty. By drugging Rose’s cigarettes he could with impunity make a thorough search for the will. He experimented, tried the cigarettes on himself, and kept Rose supplied with them. Promptly she began to doze off at odd moments; but although he hunted high and low the will was not to be found. Did it mean no such will existed, or that it was hidden where he would never discover it? He did not know, and he dared not inquire. He therefore boldly decided to guard against a will turning up after the death by seeing Rose’s money bequeathed to some one else, thus cancelling any previous disposition of property and, in the event of complications, providing a scape-goat on whom suspicion would conveniently fall. He thought of Joe Somervell’s impecunious son, at present in London. Who would suit his purpose better than Adrian, of whom Rose had once been mildly fond? Only on the off-chance would harm come to him. If all went well, the young man would merely gather in a welcome windfall.
The legal brain worked quickly. Rose’s interference and threats had been jokingly dealt with her feathers smoothed by the assurance that all along she had been intended to benefit by the scheme once developments justified it. She was made to see that if a word of the venture got out the high prices Penge was paying for land would be so cut down that profits would be conspicuously lessened. Her greed could appreciate this argument. Solemnly she promised to whisper no syllable—and she did do her best, though there was reason to fear that the very next evening she let slip a mysterious hint or so to her friend, Margaret Fairlamb, over a glass of brandy. It was her last meeting with Margaret—her last with any one outside the household, except Adrian Somervell, who, within a few days, was forcibly brought to her notice. By this time she was placidly subjugated to the scopolomin. Like a sleek cat, she browsed and forgot, undisturbed by the plot to rob her of her life.
She drowsily resented Nick’s impetuous presentation of her former stepson, whom she did not at all care to see. However, vanity woke when reason slumbered; she was flattered by what she considered a tribute to her still-potent charms, and inclined to encourage Adrian’s visits. Blundell arranged everything—the theatre party, the week-end at his cottage, even the call at tea-time just before the will was to be signed. It was he who wrote the note of invitation, wording it in such a way that the recipient need not answer it. It was not hard to imitate Rose’s handwriting so that it would pass muster with a man who had not seen it for ten years. He knew that the note would not be preserved, and that if Adrian did come Rose would believe he came of his own accord. Rose herself gave the verbal invitation to Sunday lunch, Blundell having suggested it.
On the Friday before the appointed day Blundell brought Rose what he represented to be a transfer of stock, the first step towards her sharing in the new venture. She had signed many transfers, none of which she ever troubled to read. Without putting on her glasses she complacently signed her name; and she was so well drugged after a long succession of cigarettes as to retain no memory of there having been two witnesses in the room instead of the customary one. It is true her anger flared up for a second when her befogged eye rested on the secretary, but what did that matter, since she made no remark on the nature of the paper being witnessed? The next moment she had forgotten Elsie Dilworth, forgotten Gaylord, forgotten all she had been doing. The will had been duly signed, and was now in Blundell’s pocket.
The actual murder requires little mention. Blundell obtained his small parcel of grated aconite-root from Haji, who went into the country to obtain a fresh plant. Haji, completely in the solicitor’s power and dependent on his bounty, could not well refuse orders. He passed the parcel to Blundell in a lonely spot in the park, and was not once allowed to come near either the Fetter Lane office or the flat. As Blundell himself did the carving he found no difficulty in dropping a little shredded aconite into the remainder of sauce on Rose’s plate. The whole thing was simplicity itself—and yet, out of the very convenience of opportunity the secretary, self-invited to the scene, got her first important “hunch!”
Elsie Dilworth, be it understood, was the one unforeseen spoke in Blundell’s wheel. We now turn to her part in the affair.