I was in Africa when the news of my father’s death reached me. The work
on which I was engaged was nearly completed, and I at once made
arrangements for handing over the concluding portions of the job and
returning to England. It took a little time to settle all this and to
arrange for my journey to the coast, and it was not till the 6th of
January, 1930, that I arrived in London.
From the moment that I heard the cause of death assigned, I was
positively convinced that there was no accident about it. My father’s
expert knowledge of fungi was very great; and he was a man of almost
exaggerated precision in matters of this kind. It was entirely
incredible to me that he could ever have mistaken a stool of _Amanita
muscaria_ for _Amanita rubescens_, even in the gathering of it; far more
so that he could have peeled and prepared the fungus for eating without
noticing the difference. To the average coroner’s jury, accustomed to
dealing with schoolchildren and trippers, such a mistake would no doubt
seem perfectly natural; but my father was no more likely to take
_Muscaria_ for _Rubescens_ than to take a piece of cast-iron for a piece
of chilled steel. I immediately scouted the whole idea of accident. Two
possibilities remained for me to investigate. Either my father, in his
unselfish devotion to the worthless woman he had married, had destroyed
himself by a painful method which would look like accident and so disarm
suspicion; or else he had been murdered. In either case, I was
determined that the woman should not benefit by the crime which she had
caused.
Feeling as I did towards Margaret Harrison, I could not bring myself to
take up my residence at my father’s house. I therefore took a room at an
hotel in the Bloomsbury district, which has the advantage of being
central, and set myself to examine the problem under all its aspects.
I read and re-read carefully all the newspaper reports of the inquest,
and also all the letters which my father had written to me during the
last two years. The most important of these latter I have included among
the documents submitted to you. There was another, the essentials of
which are covered by Mr. Munting’s statement, which mentioned that Miss
Agatha Milsom had had to be “put away,” and that the character of Mr.
Munting was accordingly considered to have been cleared from suspicion.
I fastened at once upon this incident. I had naturally never believed
that Miss Milsom’s version of this episode was the true one. I believed
my father to have been quite correct in his original suspicions. Miss
Milsom’s illness had, I decided, enabled Munting to pull the wool over
his victim’s eyes very nicely. Margaret Harrison and Munting had been
corresponding all along, until the convenient decease of my father set
them free to come together again after a decent interval.
This suggestion led me directly to the idea of suicide. In some way my
father’s eyes had been opened to what was going on; and the agent must
undoubtedly have been Lathom. He was Munting’s friend and, deliberately
or unconsciously, he must have let fall some words during his stay at
“The Shack” which made the situation plain. I thought it probable that
this young man had played a double-faced part, and forwarded Munting’s
interests under pretence of being friendly with my father. As regards
the idea of murder, Munting appeared to have an alibi. His arrival with
Lathom on the Saturday night had been witnessed, and I did not think it
likely that he could have made any earlier appearance in that
sparsely-populated district without being seen. It seemed possible that
he and Lathom had been confederates, and committed the murder in
collusion; but at the moment I was inclined to think that my father had
been hounded into self-destruction by this precious pair, or rather
trio.
It seemed to me that any first step must be to see Margaret Harrison.
She would learn before long that I was in London, from my father’s
solicitors, with whom I necessarily had business. It was better,
therefore, to call on her at once, both to prevent her from suspecting
my suspicions and to keep up appearances in the eyes of the
neighbourhood.
Accordingly, I went round to Whittington Terrace on the day after my
arrival. I sent up my name by the maid (a new girl since my time), and,
after a short interval, Margaret Harrison came down to me. She was
dressed in deep mourning, very fashionably cut, and came up to me with
the gushing manner which I had always so greatly disliked.
“Oh, Paul!” she said, “isn’t this terrible? How dreadful it has been for
you, poor dear, all that long way away! I am so glad you have managed to
get home!”
“If you are,” I said, “it must be for the first time on record.”
Her face took on the sulky look I knew so well.
“I knew you never liked me, Paul,” she said, “but surely this is hardly
the time to bear a grudge.”
“Perhaps not,” said I, “but it hardly seems worth while to pretend that
you are delighted to see me.”
“As you like,” she replied. “We may as well sit down, anyway.”
She sat down, and I went over and stood by the window.
“You are staying here, of course?” she inquired, after a short silence.
I replied that I preferred to live at an hotel for the present, because
it was more convenient for business.
“Of course,” she said, “you will have a lot of things to see about. I
quite understand. I kept the house on, because I didn’t know what your
plans would be. But perhaps you think it would be better to give it up?”
“Do just as you like,” I answered. “The furniture is yours, I believe?”
“Yes; but this place is really more than I want when I am by myself.
Besides”—here she gave an affected shudder—“it seems, well, haunted,
rather. If you are not coming here, I think I shall give it up and take
a couple of rooms somewhere. I can look after your things till you get
settled.”