The Chinese Poison
That evening the four younger members of our party went to a scratch
gramophone dance and The Tundish and I were left to our own devices.
He had tried to persuade them not to go on account of the heat, and
had been particularly emphatic so far as Margaret was concerned.
Stella did look a little fagged and pale, but my partner seemed in the
best of spirits, and I could not understand why he should think that
she especially required rest.
Supper was late, as they dressed before they had it, but they did get
away at length, and we went into the dispensary to get some medicine
for my cold. While he was measuring it out I wandered aimlessly round
the room glancing at the bottles on the shelves. The labels were
written in so neat a hand that I asked him who had done them.
“Oh, that is one of Miss Summerson’s jobs,” he replied.
“And does Miss Summerson deal with the high finance in addition to her
other duties?” I asked, standing in front of what looked liked a heavy
safe.
“That is the poison cupboard,” he laughed, and taking a small key from
his waistcoat pocket he opened the door.
I was astonished at the number of bottles it contained. On the lower
shelves were the larger ones which I assumed held the poisons more
commonly used, but the top shelf was packed with diminutive bottles of
uniform shape and size. There was one, however, that differed from the
rest, and that was the most peculiar little bottle I have ever set my
eyes on. It was like a miniature flagon of Burgundy in shape, but it
had an exceptionally long and slender neck that was fitted with a
large glass stopper of a flat irregular design, giving it the
appearance of some delicate imitation toadstool rearing its head above
its little neighbors.
“What an extraordinary number of poisons!” I exclaimed. “Surely all
these are not the normal requirements of a country doctor’s practise?”
And I took up the funny flagon as I spoke to examine it more closely.
“Be careful—put it back—put it down, man,” he almost shouted at me,
and banging the door shut as soon as he had seen me restore the weird
little bottle safely to its old position, he dragged me to the sink
and made me rinse my hands in some strong disinfectant.
I should have been amused, had he not been so obviously alarmed, and I
protested that I might have been handling a bomb that had the fuse
alight by all the fuss he made about it.
“A bomb’s a plaything for a baby in a pram compared with that dear
little bottle,” he laughed, and went on to explain that Hanson was by
way of being a bit of a specialist in the study of poisons, and that
the little flagon I had handled so carelessly contained a very deadly
and almost unknown poison, that he, The Tundish, had been fortunate in
securing for his collection from central China.
The tiny bottle apparently contained enough to finish off the whole of
Merchester, and as yet they had not succeeded in finding any antidote
to its action. A colorless fluid with a distinctive taste and smell,
it was immediately narcotic, but it engendered a sleep from which no
one ever woke. The body of the victim looked exactly as though it had
passed out of a peaceful slumber into death, except for the eyes; and
they, in addition to the usual contraction of the pupils due to a
narcotic, were horribly suffused with blood. It seems that had any of
the poison got on to my fingers from the side of the bottle and had I
then allowed them to touch my lips, so deadly was the stuff that he
might have been unable to save my life.
All this he told me as I disinfected my hands at the sink, and by the
time he had finished I began to think that I had had a lucky escape
and I was no longer inclined to laugh at his considerate alarm. My
hands properly rinsed and dried, we went back into the drawing-room to
finish our pipes before going to bed; The Tundish told some
interesting tales about his life in China, where he had gone out to
live with an uncle when he was twenty-four and had only returned a few
years ago. Then our conversation turned to tennis and the tournament,
and I was telling him of the interest Miss Palfreeman had aroused as
she joined us in the tent at lunch-time, when he interrupted me.
“You know it’s a most extraordinary coincidence—” he began, with
something akin to excitement in his usual level voice, and then
instead of telling me what the curious coincidence was, his statement
dwindled into indecision and he sat thoughtfully watching the blue
smoke spirals that curled to the ceiling from his pipe.
“Well?” I asked after a pause, turning to look at him in surprise.
But there he sat staring vacantly at nothing, his face an
expressionless mask, his eyes introspective and dead. They regained
their normal twinkle as I watched, and he continued, “Oh, nothing
really—nothing at all—only something that something you said reminded
me of. Now I’m sure it’s time that you went off to bed.”
We said good night at the bottom of the stairs, and with my foot on
the bottom step I asked him what on earth had made him say that Miss
Hunter in particular looked as though she needed rest. I can not think
what made me ask the question, and it had no sooner crossed my lips
than I realized how indiscreet it was. He looked at me quizzically.
“Should a doctor tell!—eh?”
I apologized profusely.
“Well, there is no harm done, and I don’t mind telling you—no, after
all, I think that perhaps I had better not.”
I thought how annoying his little habit of starting out on some
interesting confidential statement and then breaking off in the middle
of it was, but obviously I could not press him, and I said good night
again and went up-stairs to bed.
To bed but not to sleep. For interminable hours I checked the quarters
chimed by the great cathedral clock. And when sleep did come it was
thin and dream-streaked. Once more I was in the dispensary standing in
front of the poison cupboard with the murderous little bottle of
poison in my hands. The Tundish—not the placid kindly man to whom I
had said good night, but a man with the face of a devil enraged—came
rushing at me round the table in the middle of the room. “Put it down,
you damned fool,” he yelled, and seizing me by the arm he twisted it
back until my hand was thrust inside the safe. Then in a flash his
anger was gone, The Tundish was masked and placid again, and, looking
at me with a pleasant quiet smile, he said in the friendliest and
silkiest of voices: “Poisoned, I fancy, my dear Jeffcock—better have
it off,” and he closed the heavy door with a crash, severing my hand
above the wrist.
I heard a tinkle of broken glass as the baby flagon dropped among its
deadly little comrades, and then a plop as my own severed hand reached
the bottom of the safe and I awoke with a start to hear a door really
banging in the hall below. Then giggles, and Stella’s carrying,
high-pitched voice: “Oh! for heaven’s sake don’t make me laugh any
more, my sides are sore and aching as it is.” Next a noisy laugh from
Ralph, and Kenneth whispering—he meant it for a whisper—and urging him
not to wake up Jeffcock and The Tundish.
The dancers were back home and coming up-stairs to bed. They laughed
and played about on the landing, and made as much noise again in
urging one another to stop. I thought how selfish and inconsiderate
they were. Then I heard Stella and Ralph go up to the landing above
and their doors bang shut. It was nearly three o’clock when at last I
fell into a quiet and untroubled sleep.
I woke surprisingly refreshed and got down-stairs to find The Tundish
seated in lonely state at the head of the breakfast table. He greeted
me with his friendly smile, asking whether I had been able to sleep
through the dancing party’s united efforts to keep one another quiet.
He told me that the thermometer had already beaten the record of
yesterday at the same time, and that we were in for a frizzly time at
the club.
Stella came in just as we were finishing our last cups of coffee and I
noticed at once how wretchedly tired and pale she looked. The doctor
remarked on it too, and she told us that she had hardly slept and had
wakened almost too weary to dress. On learning that she had been
sleeping badly for some nights he promised to put up a mild narcotic
for her to take that night. He was kindness and tact itself in that he
made no reference to the dance and his own neglected advice, but
Stella almost snubbed him for his trouble, and hardly bothering to
thank him turned to me with some casual remark or other.
Ethel, with Kenneth and Ralph, came in as the doctor was talking to
Stella, and Margaret, pink and white and full-blown, Margaret smiling
to herself, followed them a moment later. I was looking at her as she
came in through the door, and whether I unconsciously stared a little
I don’t know, but the pleasant smile vanished, to be replaced by an
unpleasant frown.
The Tundish was right. We had a very warm time at the club that day,
but in spite of my cold I enjoyed the tennis and in spite of her
conversation I enjoyed my partner. She and I had lunch alone together,
and Stella was one of the many subjects we discussed.
“Do you think that she is very bewitching?” she asked.
“She is certainly more than ordinarily pretty,” I replied, “but as to
being bewitching that is another matter.”
“Oh! Don’t make any mistake of that sort. Ninety-nine times out of a
hundred it’s one and the same thing. A pretty face and a good figure
seem to meet the case with most men.”
“I did not know we were discussing a case at all,” I laughed.
But she closed the conversation by adding: “Fine feathers make fine
birds,” and she said it very impressively, though for the life of me I
could not see the connection.
I played a number of matches during the day, and I did fairly well,
but tennis has nothing to do with this story and there is only one
little incident that I need describe. It was just after tea and I was
in the umpire’s chair. I had to keep my attention closely on the game,
both of the men having a service that was difficult to follow, but as
I sat perched in my lofty seat, I noticed Ethel and The Tundish
conversing very earnestly together.
A few minutes later I heard Ethel say: “Well, it’s spoiling
everything, and I certainly wouldn’t have offered to put her up for
the tournament if you hadn’t been so insistent.”
They were the full width of the court and then another space away, but
the whispered words came to my sensitive ears with every inflection of
Ethel’s voice distinct and clear. I could hear the annoyance in it as
though it were to me she had whispered and not to the doctor away
across the court. I wondered to which of the two girls she referred—my
partner or Stella—why it, whatever it was, was spoiling everything,
and why The Tundish should have to suggest that either of them should
be invited to Dalehouse. The more I thought of it the less I
understood it, but Ethel was quite right about our party, there was
something the matter with it—something that I couldn’t quite put my
finger on was just spoil——
“Wake up, umpire.”
I did with a jerk, to find that they had played two unregistered
points while my thoughts had wandered. It was a long, three-set match
and when I took the result in to the referee’s tent, although it was
getting late he put me on to play, and I was the last of our party to
leave the club.
By the time I reached Dalehouse the others had nearly finished supper.
There was a sudden lull in the conversation as I came into the room
and I felt certain that I had been the subject of their talk; I
quickly gathered from their subsequent remarks that Ethel had felt
that one of the other two men should have waited for me at the ground.
It was quite absurd, of course, but her quick little temper was easily
roused, especially so if she imagined that one of her friends had been
slighted, and apparently she had not hesitated to lay down the law on
the matter.
I did my best to smooth things over, but if at lunch-time on the
previous day I had felt that the gaiety of our party was forced and
rang false, I had no doubt at all on this occasion, that the general
feeling of irritation was genuine enough. The very flies seemed to
have caught the disease and to be more persistent than usual in their
attempts to annoy.
The Tundish was the only one of us to make the least attempt at
general politeness, and he, I believe, was secretly amused at our
united and childish ill-humor. Stella was positively rude when he
reminded her of the medicine that he had had sent up to her room.
First she refused to take it at all. Then she would take it at once,
and there was another little scene before she could be persuaded to
obey the doctor’s wishes and wait for an hour after her meal.
The two boys had left the room while we were pacifying Stella, but
when Ethel suggested that the four of us should have a quiet game of
bridge while The Tundish did some work in the dispensary and she and
Margaret descended to the basement to tackle some ironing, the boys
were nowhere to be found.
Ethel seemed absurdly put out over so trivial a matter. She went into
the dispensary with The Tundish and I overheard her say: “It’s
abominably rude of Kenneth to leave Francis alone with nothing to do,
and I shall tell him so when he gets back,” and I must admit that I
was childishly gratified that she should care enough about my comfort
to risk having words with Kenneth. Truly, along with the rest, I was
feeling the heat.
My ears must have been in a hypersensitive condition, for I had heard
Ethel in the dispensary quite plainly, and a little time later as I
stood at the telephone in the hall trying to get a connection through
to Brenda, I heard The Tundish talking to Stella in the drawing-room
though the door was half closed. It was a moment before I realized
that I was listening to a confidential conversation and then it was
too late.
It was the doctor speaking in his most persuasive voice: “Look here,
Stella, I am most truly sorry about it, but until I saw you at the
club, I really had no idea that the Stella Palfreeman Ethel spoke of
was the ‘Dumps’ I used to know in Shanghai.”
Then I got my connection and heard no more for a short time, but
Brenda was out and my conversation with the maid was brief, and they
were still talking together when I put the receiver up. It was Stella
speaking this time and she was not so clear. Her voice came and went
in broken snatches as though some one were opening the door and
closing it again; a few words clear and distinct and then a blank.
“——it’s as well I came ... the Hansons certainly ought to be
told ... your abominable share ... father’s death.... I shall
tell them!”
Evidently it was the end of the conversation, for as I was hurrying
away from my embarrassing position, The Tundish came out of the
drawing-room and met me in the hall on his way back to the dispensary.
He smiled at me pleasantly, appearing quite unmoved by the words I had
overheard, and I thought to myself that whatever else he may have
learned by his long residence among the Chinese, he had certainly
acquired their proverbial bland impassivity.
I wandered into the garden, where long evening shadows were creeping
across the lawn, and sat down in one of the wicker chairs that stood
beneath the cedar, my thoughts turning naturally to what I had
overheard. Now I began to understand better why Stella had dropped her
glass. The little scene in the luncheon tent came back to me. Stella’s
momentary hesitation when the doctor held out his hand; the doctor,
suave and unperturbed, taking the less convenient seat.
Then I remembered what I had overheard between Ethel and The Tundish
as I sat in the umpire’s chair and endeavored to connect the one
conversation with the other. Had Ethel referred to Stella when she
said that she would not have asked her unless he had persuaded her to
do it? But they had met only the week before at Camford—or was it
possible that he had seen Stella’s name in the paper and had written
asking Ethel to invite her to Dalehouse? In that case Ethel probably
knew something about the mystery—if mystery there was—and the doctor
had lied when he spoke to Stella in the drawing-room. And if the
reference had not been to Stella, then it must have been to Margaret,
my partner, and that was equally inexplicable, for what possible
reason could Ethel have for saying that Margaret was spoiling
everything? True, there was her rather inane conversation, but they
were old friends, and Ethel must have known all about that. No—I
decided that she must have meant Stella, and no sooner had I come to
the decision, than I felt equally convinced that the doctor did not
look like a liar.
Miss Summerson had lied in the dispensary—the place seemed full of
lies and ill temper. As I sat pondering under the cedar with its
far-spread boughs black against the sky, a couple of bats went
fluttering in the fading light and somehow their floppy uncertain
flight seemed symbolic of deceit and lying too. The half-hour after
nine came floating across the still calm air from the clock in the
cathedral tower. Looming big and white over the black of the shadowed
garden wall, it looked ghostly, I thought, and seemed less real than
the bats and the shadows themselves. I rose and went back to the house
full of a vague uneasiness and wishing that I was home.
Stella was still tucked up on the settee immersed in a book and
obviously desiring neither company nor conversation, so I picked up
the daily paper.
I could not have been seated for more than five minutes when the bell
at the consulting-room entrance began to peal, and a few moments later
Ethel appeared at the drawing-room door asking me if I would go to the
doctor in the dispensary. There had been a motor accident and he
required my help. I found a small boy of about eight stretched out on
the couch. He had been badly cut by the broken glass and his poor
little face made a pitiful sight as the tears trickled down through
the blood. It fell to Ethel’s lot to look after the parents, who were
distracted to incapacity, and to mine to hold the child while the
doctor swabbed and stitched and bandaged.
I was astounded at the way he handled that small boy. His deft fingers
moved at such lightning speed that the bandages seemed to fly into
place of their own volition, and all the time he worked he was
chatting kindly to the boy and giving me instructions. How can I
describe it—unadulterated genius—magical—a superman at work on work he
loved. Anyhow, incredible as it may sound, the job was completed and
he was lifting the patient into the taxi that Ethel had sent for, as
the cathedral clock chimed ten.
Have I described The Tundish as impassive and imperturbable—a man with
a face like a mask that nothing could move? That was not the man who
had bent tenderly over the morsel of damaged humanity that I had held
in my arms. No nurse could have been more gentle; no mother more
anxiously loving. Night and day, ice and fire, could not have differed
more.
I was alone with Ethel for a moment while the doctor was talking at
the side of the taxi, and she asked me with an amused little flicker
of a smile whether I had been impressed.
“Why, the man must be a marvel,” I replied. “Please don’t spoil it by
telling me that all G. P.’s can manage such things with similar
proficiency.”
“My dear old thing,” she laughed, “did daddy never tell you about our
Tundish? He is supposed to be one of the best surgeons in the country,
and with children he is almost uncanny. When he left Shanghai they
broke their yellow little hearts in dozens. Now he is resident doctor
at a large children’s home in London, merely because he is so
passionately fond of them and has money enough to do as he likes. But
here he comes, and he wouldn’t thank me, or any one else, for singing
his praises.”
Ethel returned to Margaret and the ironing, and the doctor and I went
back to the drawing-room where Stella was still reclining on the
settee. He told her that she could take her draft any time she liked,
said good night to us both and went up-stairs to bed. Stella answered
all my attempts at conversation with a disheartening “yes” or “no” and
after pottering about for a time, I left her too, intending to follow
the doctor’s example.
I met the boys in the hall, however, and we all three proceeded to the
basement to find out what progress the laundresses were making. The
hot weather had played havoc with our things, and they had kindly
undertaken them. We were vastly amused at the results of their labors,
a few pairs of socks and a badly scorched shirt of my own apparently
representing the work of something over an hour. They pleaded the
interruption of the accident, a defective electric iron, the stained
condition of the socks which they had had to rewash, and lastly that
they had dealt with several garments of the feminine gender which
their maidenly modesty did not allow them either to mention or
produce.
Ethel retaliated by asking for details of Kenneth’s and Ralph’s
movements since supper-time and refused to be satisfied with the reply
that they had been for a stroll to get cool. She asked them to state
specifically where they had been, and they looked, I thought, not a
little confused. Kenneth definitely reddened, and she was unkind
enough to call our general attention to the fact, and to say that his
efforts to get cool must have sent a rush of blood to the head. We
stood chafing one another pleasantly in this way for some little time,
and I dare say it was after half past ten when I left them at it and
went to bed.
I switched on the landing light from the bottom of the stairs, and
when I got to the top I found that The Tundish had written out a
notice and had stuck it up above the landing switch, so that we should
all see it on our way to bed. It read:
PLEASE LET A FELLOW GET SOME SLEEP TO-NIGHT AND DON’T WAKE HIM UP
BY TELLING ONE ANOTHER TO BE QUIET.
_Sgd._, THE TUNDISH.
I took it down and going into my room I found that the ink in my
fountain pen was identical in color—as I half expected it would be,
having filled it only the previous day from the ink-well in the
consulting-room—and that by writing with the back of the nib I could
imitate the thin strokes with which the doctor had written, I quickly
added the words:
DARK DEEDS ARE DONE AT NIGHT
and stuck it up again in its old position. I made what I thought a
very creditable copy of the doctor’s print, having imitated to a
nicety his flat-topped _a_’s and sloping _d_’s. My forgery completed,
I got into bed.
The others came up before I got to sleep and I heard them discussing
it in whispers and then a little later calling out to one another to
“Just come and look here,” with a great deal of laughing and running
about from room to room. Next I heard Kenneth say: “Shall we go and
pull him out of bed?” and Ethel reply that she believed it was I and
not The Tundish at all. This was followed by a declaration that,
whoever it was, they would deal with him to-morrow, and the household
gradually settled down into silence and sleep.
Next morning, Wednesday, I was up betimes and out in the garden before
breakfast. The Tundish joined me there. We were just going in in
answer to the gong when he said: “By the way, your addition to my
little effort of last night was remarkably apt, for I played Old Harry
with all their bedrooms before I went to bed.” He went on to tell me
that he had made a realistic skeleton with the aid of a bag of golf
clubs in Kenneth’s bed, sticking the clubs down the legs and arms of
his pajamas and utilizing a pair of shoe trees for the ears. Ethel’s
bed he had peppered with tennis and golf balls carefully placed
beneath the under blanket, and Margaret’s and Ralph’s had also
received treatment.
In spite of the merry twinkle in his eyes, such a practical joke
seemed to be entirely out of keeping with his character, and although
I am sure I gave no visible signs of my surprise, he might almost have
read my thoughts, for he said at once, “Yes, I surprised myself too,
but I fancy that I must have been a trifle fey last night. I shall
have to look out to-night though, for they are sure to attempt
revenge.”
I told him of the whispered conversation I had overheard on the
landing, and he suggested that as I might be going home before night,
we should attempt to make them believe that I had really been the
culprit. We both of us agreed that a too nice adherence to the truth
was not essential in the matter of a practical joke. “No, we will both
of us lie like troopers,” he said as we took our seats at the table,
and whether I succeeded or not, he certainly kept his promise to the
full.
We arranged that we would both make out that we knew nothing about
either the notice or the raided beds, but that my denials should be
less assertive than his so that their suspicions would gradually turn
in my direction. We had great difficulty, however, at least I had, not
to give ourselves away by laughing when the others came into the room.
They came in procession, marching solemnly round the table, Kenneth
chanting, “Oyez! Oyez! a trial will be held.” Ethel led the van
bearing the notice on a large tray held out at arm’s length. Then came
Ralph carrying Kenneth’s pajamas and the golf bags and clubs, together
with a collection of tennis and golf balls and other evidence. Kenneth
followed, arrayed in an old cap and gown of Hanson’s, and Margaret
brought up the rear as train bearer to Kenneth.
They drew up in a row in front of us and said in unison—there had
evidently been a rehearsal, “There sits the culprit,” but we noticed
with secret satisfaction that while Margaret and Kenneth pointed at
The Tundish, Ethel and Ralph were pointing at me.
It seems that up to this point in telling my story I must be
constantly detailing trivial matters which can have no possible
interest taken by themselves, and yet which have a real bearing on the
more important later events. Kenneth’s inquiry into the doings of the
previous night was amusing at the time, and I don’t mean it unkindly,
but I am sure he enjoyed showing Ethel how acute an inquirer he could
be, but it is not a matter of sufficient apparent importance to set
out at any length. And yet I think we were all of us to go over every
word that was spoken at the breakfast table, time and again in our
minds afterward, wondering what possible bearing they could have on
the terrible tragedy that was so soon to befall us.
I was sitting at right angles to The Tundish, who was at one end of
the table, and Kenneth handed him the notice and took his seat at the
other side of the table opposite to me, saying, “Well, a confession
won’t earn a free pardon, but it may certainly incline us to temper
justice with mercy.”
The Tundish turned the paper round and round, pretending to examine it
with surprise and care. “And what may this be?” he said at last. “I
see that it has been written in my name, but apart from that it seems
to be reasonable enough, and it expresses what I actually felt very
aptly indeed.”
“You didn’t write it, then, and stick it up on the landing?”
“My dear boy, I am really far too old for that sort of childishness.
Besides, I ask you, if I had been the author, should I have bothered
to print my name at the bottom instead of signing it in the ordinary
way? No, I think we shall find that the guilty party is seated
immediately to my left, and if you haven’t foolishly smudged it all
over, we shall probably find his fingerprints.” He was sprinkling the
notice with salt and blowing it off again into Kenneth’s bacon as he
spoke, while I protested loudly that I could not understand what they
were all of them talking about.
Am I doing Kenneth an injustice, I wonder, and do I exaggerate his ill
temper and puerile behavior? Then, I had not realized how jealous he
was of the doctor, and could make no allowances for it, but oh! how
easily he “rose” and how absurdly he showed his dislike! He resented
the “My dear boy,” and he did not like the salt being blown into his
bacon, but he endeavored to imitate the doctor’s bantering tones.
“My dear Tundish,” he said, “I happen to know that rough paper of that
description does not show fingerprints.” It was a poor imitation—as
well might a cow pretend to be a swan—and even then he could not
maintain the role he tried to play, adding with some heat, “You may be
a very good surgeon, but you’re a very good liar too. Do you mean to
tell me that you didn’t upset all our beds last night?”
The Tundish never turned a hair as he replied, “I never did anything
of the sort. Was your bed upset, Jeffcock?” He could certainly lie
magnificently and he looked the essence of simple injured innocence.
“Of course his bed wasn’t touched,” Ethel chipped in, endeavoring to
save Kenneth from making a complete fool of himself, “for the simple
reason that he upset the rest.”
I in turn denied her accusations and that I had any knowledge of the
affair. I pointed out that the inquiry was entirely irregular,
inasmuch as Kenneth himself, who was acting as the judge, and the
others who presumably represented the jury, were all claimants in the
action as well, which was a manifestly absurd position. My chief
concern, I went on to add, was on account of Ethel, as it went to my
heart to think that she was the affianced bride of a young man who had
so little knowledge of the world that he could be duped by the
statements of such an obvious liar as The Tundish, but I am such a
duffer at acting that quite unconsciously my denials only emphasized
my guilt, and I did more to confuse them than the doctor himself.
Kenneth, who had regained some of his usual equanimity, next produced
paper and pencils, and asked us both to repeat the notice from memory,
but this gave no very definite results.
I tried to visualize the doctor’s rather peculiar printing. I
remembered his sloping d’s and flat-topped a’s and made my attempts as
much like the original as I could, but I went badly astray over some
of the other letters. The Tundish, on the other hand, did his best to
repress his normal style, but just failed to succeed, with the result
that both our duplicates held certain resemblances to the one that had
been placed over the switch, and neither was quite like it.
It was The Tundish who pointed out that any of the party in addition
to ourselves might equally have been responsible. That either Ethel or
Margaret might quite easily have slipped up-stairs from the basement
during the evening, and that as a matter of fact their poor
performance as laundresses was probably due to their absence and not
to the reasons they had alleged. That Miss Palfreeman had been left
all alone while we had been engaged with the injured child. That
Kenneth and Ralph had pretended to spend a whole evening strolling
about to get cool, but that they obviously had some hidden secret and
were unwilling to give any details of their movements. And finally
that whichever of them had done it, he or she would certainly have
upset his or her own bed as a blind for the rest of us and that the
fact that neither his bed nor mine had been touched was a most
important piece of evidence in our favor.
In the end, after much argument, carried on pleasantly by all of us
with the exception of Kenneth, who seemed incapable of differentiating
between an argument and a dispute, they had to admit that each one of
us had had the opportunity of spending at least a quarter of an hour
up-stairs without being missed by the rest, and though suspicion
remained divided, we had lied so well that they were not only in doubt
as to which of us was guilty, but they really began to wonder whether
we were either of us responsible at all.
When we had concluded that no conclusion could be reached, Ethel got
up from the table saying that she would run up-stairs and find out
whether Stella was getting up or whether she might not like her
breakfast sent up to her room. She was back in a couple of minutes and
although I was seated with my back to the door I could tell at once by
the way she almost stumbled into the room, that there was something
serious amiss. She hardly had breath enough to speak, but at last she
managed to get out:
“Tundish, I’m frightened—do come and look at Stella—oh! I’m so
afraid.”
The Tundish jumped to his feet saying, “What on earth is the matter?”
and hurried after her out of the room, leaving us to wonder what could
have caused her extreme agitation. He returned in less than five
minutes and stood in the doorway looking at us as we sat round the
table. I have said, looking at us, but I very much doubt if he saw us
at all, for he stood there in the doorway like a man in a trance,
muttering away to himself again and again:
“I can’t have made a mistake. No, I simply can’t have made a mistake.”
I can see the scene again all as clearly as this paper I am writing
on. Ralph, who was seated next to me with his back to the door,
looking over his shoulder, held his cup of coffee in mid-air. Kenneth,
on the point of lifting a piece of bacon on his fork, held it poised.
Margaret, sitting opposite, looked pale and scared, and we were all
looking first at the doctor and then at one another, while he stood
muttering in the doorway and gazing into space. It was almost as
though some magician had suddenly thrown an evil spell which we none
of us could break.
He seemed to come back to life quite suddenly and to realize the
amazement with which we were watching him, then, after a moment’s
hesitation, he said, “Stella is dead and I’ve every reason to believe
that she’s been poisoned. Please all of you stay here for a few
minutes until I come back.”
There was one wild, piercing shriek and Margaret burst into
half-hysterical sobs. It was horrible. First the silence while we
waited, amazed, for the doctor to speak, then the appalling words he
spoke in his quiet level voice, and then the sudden piercing shriek
that filled the sunlit room.