Mortimer Bream embarked on his task with the deepest pessimism. If there was anything in Miss Lake’s theories—which he regretfully doubted—he did not see the slightest possibility of proving it. No eyewitness had seen the accused drop grated aconite on the victim’s plate, but the same truth applied to the other potential suspects. None of the latter was in the least likely to have aconite in his possession now, nor would it be easy to discover when or where the said poison had been obtained.
Aconite—otherwise monkshood—grew all over England, both wild and in gardens. You could dig it up yourself, but you could not buy the raw article anywhere, for the simple reason that neither chemist nor herbalist stocked it. In October there would still have been plenty of it about. You had only to identify the spiky leaves in the absence of the purplish, bell-like flowers—and any person could obtain coloured plates and full information from a library, as Bream himself had just done. Somervell would probably know all about it. The secretary-woman had openly declared her sources of knowledge. Unfortunately it was Somervell who had inherited the victim’s money, all but the small pickings.
“Oh, I dare say he’s guilty,” grumbled Bream. “He’d been seeing a lot of the old lady, and it looks as though he has a way with the opposite sex. It wouldn’t be the first time a nice, sensible girl like Miss Lake has been taken in by a scoundrel. After all, what do her beliefs boil down to? Just this—that no man with a murder on his conscience could have shown such total lack of concern for his own safety. Poor girl! I could tell her of cases . . .”
Brilliant men, too. Why, there were classic examples of the most staggering carelessness! What about Professor Webster, of Boston, who had allowed human remains and even a distinctive dental-plate to be discovered in his own laboratory, the place of all others likely to be searched? Webster, ambitious for advancement, had been in a chronic state of financial embarrassment. Somervell might not turn out to be heavily in debt, but he had admitted wanting both further study and marriage—with a bank-balance, on the day of his arrest, amounting to ninety-five pounds, seven shillings and twopence! In the circumstances any jury would think that he had brushed the lining of his pocket, only not thoroughly enough. Altogether matters looked blightingly bad, and on closer scrutiny they might look worse.
And yet, this Indian. . . . Had he followed Miss Lake in by chance or for the purpose of overhearing her conversation? To Bream a vast deal depended on settling this question, and during the few minutes he had left his companion in the passage to the Temple he had done his best to accomplish it.
In the restaurant again, he took a good look at the dark-skinned youth, who lounged at his ease, blowing smoke-rings towards the ceiling. He seemed neither hurried nor worried. Whatever his intention might have been, one would say he now had nothing weighty on his mind. His face seen in profile showed a flattish nose, a sleepy, sloe-black eye with a hint of cunning in the set of it, a sensual mouth, and inky hair plastered back, glistening like a crow’s wing. Though broad of shoulder, he had delicate hands; but what chiefly struck Bream was the extreme newness and foppishness of his clothes. All he wore looked just out of the shop—pointed, brown shoes of reversed calf, loud, fawn-coloured tweeds, orange knitted pullover, green striped tie. He looked well-pleased with himself. When a waitress passed he reached amorously for her hand, nothing abashed at the coldness of her glance.
“Packet of Players,” said Bream as the girl drew near, and as he spoke he retired behind the cash-desk. “That one of your regulars?”
“Who? Oh, him!” She tossed a scornful head. “No, and what’s more he’d better keep clear of our place, unless he’s looking for a good box on the ear!”
Only a casual, then.
“Too bad,” reflected Bream, disappointed. “There did seem just a faint chance that some one of our line-up wanted to keep close watch on the defence’s operations. It would have meant the possibility of a vulnerable spot we ourselves haven’t yet seen. Oh, well, I’ll know this boy amongst a thousand. That’s something.”
After bidding Diana good-bye, he made at once for the Bloomsbury Street Boarding-house which had been the prisoner’s home, and held a talk with the soft and blowsy landlady. It was clear she had till lately warmly approved of her American guest, who had been prompt of pay, uncritical of board and bed, and, though never exactly a chatty young man, worthy of respect and liking.
“I keep asking myself how ever he could have done it!” she mourned. “It’s hard to believe even now when there does seem no doubt of it at all. It puts me in mind of that Frenchman the papers was so full of just after the war. Murdered ever so many poor women just for their savings. What was his name, now?”
“Landru?”
“That’s it. Well, then, every one of those girls thought what a nice man he was, didn’t they? Not that all of them were girls. It’s the old ones that seem to fall hardest for soft soap, as I dare say you’ve noticed. Yet Dr. Somervell never seemed to me to . . . but there, I suppose I only saw the one side of him. Rose Walsh—why, I remember her, a good thirty years back, when I first came to London! Meg of Mayfair I saw her in. Sixty-three, wasn’t she? I’d have given her all that and more.”
Bream asked if it was true that for a time Dr. Somervell had been rather thick with a woman-guest called Dilworth. The landlady bristled, almost affrontedly.
“Thick!” she snorted. “I’d have said the thickness was all on her side. I’m sure I used to feel quite sorry for the poor boy. If ever a man was run after! Why, she fastened on to him like a leech—and the fixing-up she did to herself, getting that mousy hair of hers permed and dyed! Some days she did look a fair show. She must have been spending all she made on clothes, all for the one purpose—and it never came off—at least,” she corrected herself, “not as she wanted.”
“Who was Miss Dilworth? Did you know anything about her?”
“Not a blessed thing. In the main she was very stand-offish, never talked about herself. I couldn’t even have said how she got her living till after she was gone and a gentleman she was secretary to called round to see if I had her new address—which I hadn’t. A very kind sort of man he seemed. He was quite worried about her. Yes, she was a queer mixture. I never could make her out.”
Bream inquired if Miss Dilworth ever went into the country? He was told that she did, on Saturday afternoons or Sundays, in good weather, taking her golf clubs, though she never said what golf course she visited.
“I’m telling you, she was that close-mouthed about her doings. You can’t surely think she was mixed up in this murder?”
“I have a lot to check up on,” explained Bream, “if Dr. Somervell is to put up a good defence.”
He next asked if Miss Dilworth had ever paid by cheque, learned that this sometimes was the case, and secured the name and branch of her bank, also the date of her departure—sixteenth of October.
“Early in the morning she popped off. Must have spent the whole night packing, for at a quarter to eight she’d got all her belongings down here ready to load on to a taxi. That’s what first showed me something odd had happened—and before breakfast was over I’d heard all about it.”
Willingly the speaker launched on an account of what, evidently, had caused lively excitement—and it was amusing to see her wavering between the horror she felt in duty bound to feel towards the doctor, and the indignant sympathy he had recently inspired. She herself had slept through the disturbance, occupying, as she did, a folding-cot in the office; but those above had all been startled by Miss Dilworth’s hysterical screams. Miss Walsover—such a nice, bright girl, book-keeping at a library—had been positive murder was being committed. Only old Mr. Lampson, however—he was a chartered accountant, very accurate in his statements—had been an eyewitness.
“Soon after the rumpus began, he came out in his pyjamas to see what it was about—and there was the doctor, dressed, and carrying Miss Dilworth, in a regular Mae West get-up, across the passage to her own room. Kicking and crying she was—and he was red in the face. He put her down inside her door, banged it shut, and turned to find Mr. Lampson standing there. Not one question would he answer. He just banged into his room, and locked himself in.”
Bream wished to know if Dr. Somervell drank. The landlady heatedly denied the suggestion. No, she was certain it was nothing of that kind. It was just that he couldn’t stick the persecution.
“Though you may guess the stories that got round. It’s true for a time he had been going to her room a good bit. She invited him—I’ve heard her; and in the beginning Miss Walsover made one of the party till, as she says, she felt Miss Dilworth was tired of being chaperoned. Only a little after that we all noticed the doctor was veering off, and Miss Dilworth getting so haggard and desperate-looking you’d have said she was just preparing to chuck herself in the river. Whatever did happen, I for one stick to it she was to blame, for she took the lead, and at her age she’d ought to know better.”
Bream was growing more and more depressed. It did not require these ill-veiled hints to make him envisage an all-too-familiar situation. It was true that Miss Dilworth might have had the most urgent of reasons for forcing Somervell into marriage, even though it took a crime to accomplish it; but unluckily the thing cut two ways.
Suppose Somervell, anxious to marry Diana Lake, had suddenly found himself faced with awkward consequences? Money alone hushes up an affair of that kind. Without it all future happiness might be wrecked.
Keeping to his main object, he tried to find out whether Miss Dilworth had written to the doctor and made any attempt to see him. The landlady did not know.
“She said she would call in for any letters that might come for her, and so she did, more than once, though I never saw her. Maybe Kate, the doormaid, can tell you something.”
Kate, a wild Irish rose with untidy black eyebrows, declared that during the first week Miss Dilworth had called twice, taken her letters out of the rack, and left immediately. She must have come a third time at the lunch-hour when the door was sometimes left ajar, for some circulars addressed to her disappeared; but it was unlikely she had seen Dr. Somervell, since it was a weekday, and but for Sundays the doctor did not return for lunch. Neither Kate nor her mistress knew Miss Dilworth’s writing well enough to say if she had communicated with any one here by post. Definitely she had not telephoned.
None of this was at all satisfactory. In thoughtful mood Bream turned his steps towards the Holborn branch of the Essex and Home Counties Bank to see what he could learn there.
It seemed that for the past eight years Elsie K. Dilworth had kept an account which at no time had been overdrawn. The manager described her as a very reserved, business-like woman who seldom discussed her personal life. The oldest cashier recalled that once, in a rare burst of confidence, she had told him what an extremely good berth she had, and how her employer, unlike former ones, treated all his staff like human beings.
Latterly, though, Miss Dilworth had appeared restless, fed up with life in general, and in a vague way had spoken of making a change. It was about this time that a distinct alteration in her style of dress was remarked.
“When did she last come in?” Bream wanted to know.
He was informed that on the morning of second November Miss Dilworth, looking ill and harassed, had drawn a cheque to self for the unusually large sum of forty pounds. Since then she had not been seen. A Mr. Blundell, for whom she had worked, had called by in his efforts to locate her, but even now, after several weeks, there had been no news. Wherever she was, she was paying cash, for no cheques had been received. Her pass-book was to hand, and this—although by now the manager was rubbing his chin dubiously—the detective was allowed to examine.
Bream noticed that the disbursements, regular and strictly limited till last July, from then onward took a sharp up-curve. All at once Miss Dilworth had spent lavishly, and to judge by the names to which payments had been made all her extravagance had been in the matter of wearing apparel. It was out of the question that a solicitor’s secretary could spend like amounts with only her salary to depend on, generous though that salary evidently had been. Had she private means? Bream glanced at the adjacent column, ran back over the preceding pages, and gave a start. Most assuredly this was the case!
At irregular intervals over the past six years sums of varying amount had been deposited. They ranged from eighteen to eighty-seven pounds, eleven shillings. During the first three years they were few in number, but they had increased in size and frequency till the largest and last, paid in on twelfth of October of the present year. To sum it up, Elsie Dilworth had been receiving from a source unspecified anywhere from a hundred and fifty to two hundred a year over and above her stated earnings.
What did it mean?