Poisons and Pipes
Roger did not see the inspector again that day till supper, when he
was obviously tired out and disinclined to talk. He referred in terms
of gentle sarcasm to Roger’s breach of trust, though quite without
heat, his attitude being one rather of disillusionment than anger; one
gathered that the person he really blamed for the business was
himself, for being such a consummate idiot as to trust a journalist.
He listened to Roger’s explanation and apologies and accepted the
latter, but retaliated, as the culprit had foreseen, by refusing to
utter a single word about the case.
The inquest was duly opened the following morning, but though Roger
attended in a spirit of pious hope nothing of the least importance
transpired. Twelve solemn rustics viewed the body and then sat
perspiring in the village schoolroom, and that was practically all
that happened. Almost the only witness was the stout landlady, who was
able to give evidence of identity and who also had been the last
person to see the deceased alive. She agreed, in the time-hallowed
formula, that he had then seemed in his usual health and spirits, and
added, with more originality, that had he been there when she heard of
his death the Coroner could have knocked her down with a feather. She
was going on to add a good deal more, but was held with a testy hand.
Inspector Moresby deposed to finding the body, and Roger, somewhat to
his surprise, was called to give corroborative evidence. As to who the
dead man really was, the inspector preserved a strict silence; and
whether the Coroner had been taken into the secret or not, the court
was apparently content to accept the Rev. Meadows as a chance visitor
to Ludmouth on a prolonged stay and made no inquiry into his
antecedents. The whole proceedings had not lasted more than a
quarter-of-an-hour when, Dr. Young being called and stating his
inability to give the cause of death, the enquiry was adjourned for
this to be ascertained and the Coroner formally ordered a post-mortem
to be made.
Naturally the news of this second death increased the public interest
in the Ludmouth Mystery, as it was now generally called, and in spite
of Inspector Moresby’s careful reticence popular imagination was not
slow to link the two tragedies together. Newspapers which had hitherto
paid little attention to the affair made haste to send down their own
representatives, and Roger had cause half-a-dozen times a day to
congratulate himself on his foresight in preventing all other
intruders from finding foothold in the Crown. To all enquirers the
landlord, that mountainous man, presented an ox-like front of stolid
imperturbability: they couldn’t have a room, for why? there wasn’t
one, that was why. Even offers of double or treble the market-price
failed to move him. He seemed to have conceived a bovine affection for
Roger (opposites, it has already been said, do sometimes make for a
male friendship), and followed out his guest’s wishes to the letter,
bewildered but faithful. By way of some return Roger felt compelled to
drink as much beer as he could possibly contain.
__________________________________________________________________
Thereafter matters progressed for the next ten days or so, inasmuch as
the actual case was concerned, not at all. Indeed so far as Roger
could see the whole thing was over, bar the shouting. The finding of
poison of some description in the body and the subsequent verdict
(after Inspector Moresby had unfolded the real story) of suicide
during temporary insanity, was practically a foregone conclusion.
Roger’s articles in the _Courier_ grew shorter and shorter as he found
it increasingly difficult to find anything new to say, and he would
have given them up altogether had the editor not made it a personal
favour that he should carry them up to the adjourned inquest in order
to help the paper as much as possible over the slack season. And all
the time Inspector Moresby gave a really first-class imitation of a
sphinx, so far as any unusual happenings in Ludmouth were concerned.
During these days Roger converted for the most part what had been
chiefly a duet during the proceeding week, into a trio. The original
members made no audible protest, but whatever their real feelings on
the point Roger saw no reason why, having brought Anthony for the
express purpose of keeping him company, he should be callously
abandoned to loneliness just because his susceptible cousin’s fancy in
companionship happened to have strayed temporarily elsewhere—or so at
any rate he phrased it to himself; for after all, one could hardly
expect Roger to admit, even privately, to jealousy of a young man
nearly a dozen years his junior. At other times he told himself
seriously that it was no less than his duty to break up his cousin’s
_tête-à-têtes_ with a young woman of (when all was said and done)
distinctly doubtful origin and antecedents; it might be an awkward
thing, Roger pointed out earnestly to himself, were Anthony to become
in any way _involved;_ his mother would have a good deal to say about
it, and she would certainly say it, and forcibly, to him. Roger
continued to martyr himself to duty.
In the course of his devotion to this stern mistress, he observed
Margaret closely. Now that she had been definitely cleared of the
horrible suspicion of causing her cousin’s death, her demeanour had
altered perceptibly. The iron self-control which she must have been
exerting during that week was relaxed, and signs of a corresponding
reaction were not infrequent. At one moment she would be more
self-reliant than she had appeared before, and less dependent upon
their strength; at another she would laugh almost hysterically and
propose the maddest escapades on the spur of the moment. Anthony she
kept continually upon tenterhooks of bewilderment, treating him one
day as if she were seriously in love with him and the next as if he
bored her beyond words.
Roger was convinced that there was really nothing of the coquette in
her, that she was as straightforward and unguileful as he could wish a
girl to be, so that he found himself at times seriously perturbed
about her. The place, he felt sure, exercised a distressing effect
upon her, and he continued to urge her to leave it, if only for a
temporary holiday. Her manner of receiving these suggestions was on a
par with the rest of her behaviour: one day she would say shortly that
it was quite impossible for the moment, that she must stay and look
after George till everything had quite blown over; on another she
would jump eagerly at the idea and begin to discuss, quite seriously,
the feasibility of flying over to Paris and embarking on a hectic
European tour the very next day—yet when it came to the point of a
final decision it was always the first mood which prevailed with her.
In some vague way Roger felt a certain responsibility for her, and it
worried him more than he would have cared to admit.
Inspector Moresby evidently also felt that the case was only marking
time during these days, pending definite confirmation of the existence
of poison in the body from Sir Henry Griffen, the Home Office analyst,
for he took the opportunity of going over to Sandsea for a couple of
days to resume his interrupted holiday with his wife and family. It
seemed as if he was anxious not to lose touch with Ludmouth, however,
for he only took two days when he might have taken five, and was back
again at the inn considerably before Roger expected him.
As for Anthony, that young business man began to feel seriously
alarmed as the days went by that he would have to return to London
before the adjourned inquest brought the case definitely to an end. He
had only got three weeks’ holiday, and already two of them were gone.
Careful though he had been to conceal any exuberant display of
admiration, Anthony really had found himself profoundly impressed by
Roger’s handling of the case and his laying bare of its hidden core
which even such a tough bird as Inspector Moresby had failed to
uncover, and it would have broken his heart to be compelled to leave
before all the threads were finally unravelled and the last knots
smoothed out.
Fortunately he was not called upon to do so. The Rev. Samuel had died
on a Tuesday; on the following Friday the inspector had gone over to
Sandsea, returning on Sunday evening; on the next Thursday, exactly a
fortnight after his arrival in Ludmouth, Roger was sitting alone with
the inspector after supper—and for once Inspector Moresby was not
feeling quite so official as usual.
It happened like this:
“I wonder,” Roger had said, “when you’ll hear from Sir Henry about the
cause of death.”
And the inspector replied, surprisingly: “Oh, I heard yesterday
morning!” He may have felt tempted to bite his tongue out immediately
afterward, but indubitably that is what Inspector Moresby replied.
“You did?” squeaked Roger. “Inspector, you—you taciturn devil!”
The inspector applied himself to such small remnants of beer as were
still to be found at the bottom of his tankard. “Perhaps it was about
time for me to be a little more taciturn than I have been sometimes,”
he remarked with ominous application from its depths.
“But I’ve grovelled about that,” Roger said eagerly. “Simply
grovelled. Also I’ve explained it all away. Nothing like that will
ever occur again.—Inspector, you—you _are_ going to tell me what Sir
Henry said, aren’t you?”
The inspector, having arrived at the regretful conclusion that his
tankard really was empty this time, replaced it on the table. “No, Mr.
Sheringham, sir,” he said with a good deal of firmness. “I’m not.”
“Oh, you are!” Roger wailed. “Don’t you remember? Think again. You—you
are, really.”
“I’m really not,” retorted the inspector still more firmly.
They eyed one another in silence.
“Have some more beer!” said Roger helpfully.
“Are you trying to bribe me, sir?” asked the inspector sternly.
“Certainly I am,” Roger replied with dignity. “Do you want everything
put into blatant words?”
“Then thank you, sir,” said the inspector. “I could do with another
pint on a night like this.”
Roger went with alacrity to the door. “Not a quart?” he suggested,
“Come, it’s a hot night as you say. What about a gallon? No? You’re no
sportsman, I’m afraid.” He shouted out the order to the landlord and
returned to his seat.
“Seriously, though, sir,” the inspector resumed, “I’m afraid I can’t
say anything about Sir Henry’s report. You’ll have to wait for the
inquest. It’ll all come out then.”
“And when’s that?”
“It was adjourned to to-day week, if you remember.”
“Oh, Lord!” Roger groaned. “I can’t possibly wait till then.”
“Looks as if you’d have to, doesn’t it?” said the inspector, with
hypocritical sympathy.
The landlord brought in two pint tankards of beer and retired again,
breathing heavily.
Roger raised his. “Well, here’s confusion to you,” he said with deep
gloom.
“Best luck, sir,” returned the inspector politely.
They eyed one another above their respective rims. Then each set down
his tankard and laughed.
“You were going to tell me all the time, weren’t you?” said Roger
confidently.
“Well, I ought not to, you know, Mr. Sheringham,” the inspector
demurred. “Still, I mustn’t forget that it was you who put me on to
the man in the first place, must I?”
“You must not,” Roger agreed with feeling.
“But this really isn’t for publication, mind. In fact I’d rather you
undertook not to tell a single living soul. It’s only on that
condition I can say anything to you.”
“Not even Anthony?”
“Not even Mr. Walton.”
“Not even Anthony it is, then,” Roger said cheerfully. “Shoot! What
was the poison?”
“Aconitine.”
Roger whistled. “Aconitine, was it? By Jove! That explains the
rapidity, of course. But it’s not exactly a common one, by any means.
Lamson’s specialty, eh? I wonder how Meadows got hold of it.”
“Exactly,” agreed the inspector laconically.
“Aconitine!” observed Roger in deep thought. “Well, well! Of course
one of the merits of aconitine is the smallness of the fatal dose.
Somewhere about one-tenth of a grain, or less, isn’t it? But that
doesn’t usually kill for three or four hours. This must have been a
good deal more than a fatal dose to work so quickly.”
“It was. At least a grain, Sir Henry reckons.”
“Yes, probably all that. Always the way with the lay suicide, of
course, to give himself about ten times as much as he needs. You know
that better than I do, no doubt. But aconitine’s about the last thing
I was expecting, I must say. I should have put my money on arsenic, or
strychnine, or even prussic acid; something more easily procurable
than aconitine, at any rate.”
“The symptoms showed it couldn’t be any of those three.”
“Yes, that’s right; they did, of course. Still aconitine is a bit
unexpected. Weren’t you surprised?”
“I’m never surprised at anything, sir.”
“Aren’t you really? _Blasé_ fellow! I am, and aconitine is one of the
agents. I wonder how he _did_ manage to get hold of it. Forged a
medical prescription, I suppose. Have you any idea how he took it? In
his breakfast coffee, or something like that?”
“Sir Henry found no trace of it in any of the breakfast things.”
“Oh? Did he take it neat, then? Rather unpleasant. And not very safe
either; a grain of the stuff wouldn’t be much larger than a big pin’s
head.”
“Sir Henry found a considerable quantity of it,” said the inspector
steadily, “mixed up with the contents of the tobacco-jar.”
“The tobacco-jar?” echoed Roger in incredulous tones.
“He also found it,” pursued the inspector, “in the pipe which Meadows
had been smoking, particularly in the stem. He says there can be no
doubt that that was the vehicle through which it entered his system.
There was no trace of it in anything else.”
“His—his _pipe!_” Roger stammered, staring at his companion with round
eyes. “But—but in that case——!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Well—that seems to put suicide almost out of the question!”
“Exactly,” agreed the inspector blandly.
Roger continued to stare at him. “Good Heavens, you don’t mean——?”
“What, sir?”
“That—well, that somebody else poisoned him?”
“There can’t be a shadow of doubt about it,” said the inspector with
the utmost cheerfulness. “The Rev. Samuel never committed suicide at
all. He was murdered!”