“I say—do you mind—I think I’d rather go after all. I feel rather
rotten. I’ll be better in the fresh air.”
“Now, look here,” I said firmly. “We can’t stay shilly-shallying all
night. If you don’t like staying in the house, you’d better go yourself.
But make up your mind, because the quicker we get on to somebody the
better. Get the police and they’ll probably be able to find a doctor.
And you’ll have to give them Mrs. Harrison’s address.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. Yes—I suppose—I suppose—they’d better
break it to her.”
“Somebody’s got to. It’s a beastly business, but you don’t know any
relations you could get hold of, do you?”
“No. Very well. I’ll see to it. Sure you won’t come with me? You don’t
mind staying?”
“The sooner you go, the shorter time I’ll have to stay,” I reminded him.
“Right-ho!” he paused, appeared about to say something, then repeated
“right-oh!” and went out, shutting the door behind him.
Three miles uphill in the dark—it would take him close on the hour,
certainly. Then he had to knock somebody up, find a telephone, if there
was one, get on to the police—say half an hour for that. Then, it all
depended whether there was an available car in the village—whether he
came straight back, or waited for the officials, who would come,
presumably, from Bovey Tracey. I need not, I thought, expect anything to
happen under an hour and three-quarters or so. I suddenly remembered
that I was cold, and started to hunt for kindling. I found some, after a
little search, in an outhouse. The fire consented to light without much
persuasion, and after that, and when I had found and lighted two extra
candles, I began to feel in better condition to take stock of things.
A bottle of Bovril on the mantelpiece presented itself to me with
helpful suggestiveness. I took up the kettle to fill it at the tap. A
glance at the sink nearly turned me from my intention, but I conquered
the sudden nausea and drew my water with care. Impulse would have
flooded the repulsive evidences of sickness away, but as the phrase
flashed through my mind the word “evidence” asserted itself. “I must
preserve the evidence,” I said to myself, and found myself
subconsciously taking note that this trifling episode went to prove—as
I had always believed—that Anatole France was right in supposing that
we always, or at any rate usually, think in actual words.
The Bovril and the psychology together restored my self-confidence. I
began to reconstruct Harrison’s manner of death in my mind. He was quite
stiff. I tried to remember what I had read about _rigor mortis_. One
thinks one knows these things till it comes to the point. My impression
was that rigidity usually set in about six or seven hours after death,
and that it began in the neck and jaw and extended to the limbs and
trunk, going away in the same order, after an interval which I could not
remember. I braced myself up to go back to Harrison and feel him again.
The jaw was rigid, the limbs still fairly flexible. It seemed to me,
then, that he must have died some time that morning. I could not quite
recollect by what train Lathom had said he had come to town, but,
presumably, whenever it was, he had left Harrison fit and well. It was
now getting on for midnight on Saturday. Say Harrison had been dead six
hours—what then? I had no idea how long fungus-poisoning—if it was
fungus-poisoning—took to act. Presumably, it would depend on the amount
taken and the state of the victim’s heart.
What meal was it whose remains lay on the table? I looked into the
cupboard. In it there was a large cottage-loaf, uncut. On the table was
another from which a couple of slices or so seemed to have been taken.
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. If two loaves represented four days’
allowance before the carrier called again, the suggestion was that the
last meal had been taken some time on the Thursday. Say Harrison had
finished up the old loaf on Thursday morning, the remains probably
represented Thursday’s mid-day or evening meal. The cupboard also
contained about a pound of shin of beef, still in the paper in which the
butcher had wrapped it, and smelling and looking rather on the stale
side, a dried haddock, and a large quantity of tinned food. The meat was
not “off,” but the blood had dried and darkened. It looked as though the
carrier had left it on his Thursday’s visit. Evidently, therefore,
Harrison had been alive then to take it in. But since he had not cooked
it, I concluded that he must have been taken ill some time on the
Thursday night or Friday morning.
Pleased with these deductions, I reasoned a little further. How soon
after the meal had the trouble started? He had not cleared the table.
Was he the kind of tidy man who clears as he goes? Yes, I thought he
was. Then the illness had come on fairly soon after the meal. The chair
which had stood before the used plate was now lying on its side, as
though he had sprung up in a hurry and knocked it over. Searching about
on the floor, I came upon a pipe, filled, and scarcely smoked. There was
a cup, half-filled with coffee. I began to see Harrison, his supper
finished, his chair pushed back against the edge of the rug, his pipe
lit up, lingering over his after-dinner coffee. Suddenly he is gripped
with a spasm of pain or nausea. He jumps up, dropping his pipe. The
chair catches the edge of the carpet and falls over as he makes a dash
for the sink. He clings to the edge of it and is horribly sick. What
next?
I took up the candle and went out into the little yard at the back of
the house, where there was the usual primitive country convenience. It
occurred to me, as I pursued my sordid investigations, that the lot of
coroners’ officers, policemen, doctors and detectives was much more
disagreeable than sensational fiction would lead one to suppose. I soon
had enough of the yard and came in again.
After that—the bedroom, I supposed. And whiskey, of course. Pain and
exhaustion would call for spirits. Well, I knew where I had found the
whiskey and the tumbler. Then more sickness—by that time he had been
too bad to move. Then—I did not like the look of the broken bedstead.
How did one die of fungus-poisoning? Not peacefully, I supposed. There
was no peace in that twisted body and face. How long had the agony of
delirium and convulsion lasted? It must be a damnable thing to die in so
much pain, absolutely alone.
I did not like these ideas. I took a sheet from the other bed, and laid
it gently over Harrison’s body, being careful to disturb nothing. Then I
went back and sat by the fire.
At about half-past two, I heard voices outside, and opened the door to
Lathom, a police-sergeant, and a man who was introduced as Dr. Hughes of
Bovey Tracey. He was a brisk and confident middle-aged man, and brought
an atmosphere of reassurance along with him.
“Oh dear, yes,” he said, “I’m afraid he’s quite dead. Been dead for
seven or eight hours, if not more. How very unfortunate!” He drew a pair
of forceps from his pocket and rolled up the dead eyelids delicately.
“Mmm! The pupils are slightly contracted—looks as if your diagnosis
might be correct, Mr. Lathom. Poisoning of some kind seems indicated. No
tablets? Glasses? Anything of that sort?”
I produced the tumbler from under the bedclothes, and explained about
the whiskey-bottle.
“Oh, yes. Here, Sergeant—you’d better take charge of these.”
“The whiskey is all right,” I volunteered. “At least, we both had some
about three or fours ago, without any ill effects.”
“That was rash of you,” said Dr. Hughes, with a sort of grim smile.
“We’ll have to impound it, all the same.”
“The mushrooms are in here, doctor,” said Lathom, anxiously.
“Just a moment. I’ll finish here first.” He felt and flexed the body,
and looked it over carefully. “Was this bed like this when you left him?
No. Broken in a convulsion, probably. Yes. All right, Sergeant, you can
carry on here. I shall want the body and these bedclothes taken down to
the mortuary, just as they are. And any other utensils—”
Lathom pulled my arm. “Let’s clear out of this,” he urged. I stood my
ground. Something—either inquisitiveness or the novelist’s greed for
copy—impelled me to hang about and get in the way.
The doctor finished his investigations and covered the body up again.
“Now then,” he said, “that’s about all I can do for the moment. Where’s
this saucepan you were telling me about? Oh, yes. Fungus of some sort,
obviously, but I can’t say what by looking at it. That will all have to
go to London, Sergeant. When the Superintendent comes he’ll see the
things packed up. I’ll give you the address they’re to go to. Sir James
Lubbock, the Home Office Analyst—here you are, and you’ll see they
telephone him to expect them, won’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What will you do, Sergeant? Hold the fort here till they send down to
relieve you?”
“Yes, sir. The Superintendent will be here very soon, sir, I expect.
They’ve called him up.”
“Very well. Now I’d better be off. I’m wanted for a baby case. You’ll
find me out at Forbes’s place if you want me. Lucky I hadn’t started. I
don’t for a moment suppose anything will happen for hours, but it’s her
first, and they’re naturally fidgety. If I don’t get there pronto, it’ll
be B.B.A., out of pure cussedness, and I shall never hear the last of
it. Well, good night. Sorry I can’t give anybody a lift, but I’m going
out in the opposite direction.”
He hastened out, and we heard his car chug away down the lane. The
sergeant observed that it was a bad business all round, and suggested
that he should take down notes of what Lathom and I could tell him. I
found some logs in the outhouse and piled them on the fire till it
roared up the chimney. More and more I began to feel that this was a
scene from a book; it was like nothing in life at all. It was—hang
it—it was almost cosy. I should have ended, I think, by almost enjoying
it—the policeman’s voice cooing like the note of a fat wood-pigeon, the
ruddy blaze on his round face, the thick thumb that turned the pages of
his notebook, the pink tongue licking the stubby pencil, and Lathom,
talking, answering, explaining so lucidly (he had got over his
nervousness and was childishly eager to tell his story)—I could have
enjoyed it, if it had not been for a fear in the back of my mind.
The sun . . .
You do not want a description of that stiff, cold sunrise. I was facing
the window, and saw it—first a whiteness, then a hardening of the
sky-line—then a bluish reflection on the ceiling—then an uncertain
gleam under the blanket of cloud. The weather was going to change.
I got up and wandered out across the fields. The stream, far off, was
the only voice in the silence, and that was impersonal. It had no blood
nor life behind its chatter.
I wandered to the edge of the slope, where the valley plunged down,
gorse and heath and bracken all jumbled among the grey boulders, and
looked across to where the huge tors humped their granite shoulders over
the heights of Lustleigh Cleave. They looked grim enough.
What I was wondering was just this: Had Harrison ever guessed about his
wife and Lathom? What had Lathom said to him in those long, solitary
days? Had Harrison decided that his best way was to clear out from the
place where he was not wanted? I knew that, for all his irritating
mannerisms, the man had a sterling unselfishness in him—and it would
have been so easy for him—with his knowledge—to make a mistake on
purpose when he was gathering fungi.
Would anyone choose a death so painful? Well—a man only the other day
had committed suicide by pouring petrol over his clothes and setting
himself on fire. And nothing could be made to appear more natural than
this poison-death of Harrison’s. Why had Lathom been so anxious for me
to come down with him? Had he had doubts about his reception? Had he
expected something? Had Harrison—possibly—agreed, promised, even
hinted that Lathom might return to find the way clear? Or had Lathom
spoken some shattering word—shown irrefutable evidence—and left the
facts to do their bitter work?
A cock crew in the valley. A sheep said “Baa!” just behind me, so that I
started and laughed. This kind of thing was morbid, and Harrison was the
very last man to lay violent hands on himself. _He_ clear meekly out to
make way for a rival? Not likely!
I hurried back to the shack. The sergeant was dozing, his belt off and
his tunic unbuttoned. Lathom was staring into the fire with his chin on
his hands.
“Hullo, you two!” I said with unnecessary heartiness. The policeman
jerked awake. “Lor’ bless me,” he muttered apologetically. “I must ’a’
dropped off.”
“Why not?” said I. “Best way to pass the time. Look here, there’s a
pound of sausages in our kit that we brought down last night. How about
a bit of grub?”
We did not care about using any of the pots and pans in that place, so
we whittled a stick to a point, and toasted the sausages on that. They
tasted none the worse.
SECTION TWO
ANALYSIS