Chapter VIII.
Dr. Hanson’s Case-Book
For pleasure or comfort of any sort it was too hot in the wall-girt garden, but merely to be away from the house brought a certain sense of ease and rest. Sitting under the old shady cedar it was easier to keep dark thoughts away, and difficult to realize that the homely looking red-brick house was a shelter for murder and crime. Difficult to realize that at some hour during the previous night the little Chinese flagon had been secretly lifted from its place on the shelf among its almost equally deadly little neighbors. Lifted, oh! so gently, and the queer flat stopper quietly removed from its fragile slender neck. Then just a tilt, and drip, drip, drip, a few drops added to the contents of a tapering glass, and at some hour of the hot still night, poor Stella had slipped out of sleep into death.
Whose hand, I wondered, had set that murderous little bottle back in its place? Was it a hand that trembled and shook? Or was it steady and deft like the hands I had seen so swiftly busy with the bandages round a small boy’s face?
Inspector Brown’s two gardeners were making laborious work of their search. The end of the roof where the ivy grew was full in the blaze of the sun, and coats and waistcoats were in turn discarded. There were intervals for chatty little rests and the mopping of faces. In three-quarters of an hour a very small bit of the roof had been dealt with, and I calculated that it would be dark before the whole could be cleared unless Progress was speeded up.
The inspector was evidently of the same opinion, for he came in while we were watching and we soon heard his loud-voiced complaints across the lawn. A little later the party was increased to three.
They cleared the roof methodically, a foot at a time. When the main strands of the tangled growth had been cut and disentangled, they were carefully shaken out and thrown to the lawn below. The loose leaves on the roof were examined and put into a bucket. These having been removed, the smaller bits were collected together and riddled through a sieve. The siftings were swept aside and the remainder carefully searched. Then another few strands were cut and the process repeated.
Margaret and I watched them idly as we sat, their clippings and the noise of the bucket as it was handled up and down from the roof punctuating our desultory conversation. I fancy we were both meditating with lazy inconsequence on the day’s events and our few remarks reflected our meditations.
“We are sure to have some of them down from the club to make inquiries this evening,” I said.
“Yes. It will be rather awkward, won’t it?”
A long pause in which I puffed away leisurely at my pipe and she lay back gently rotating her red parasol.
“Don’t you think we ought to have some definite understanding about what we are all of us going to say when callers do appear? We are sure to have no end directly it gets about. The Hansons know nearly every one there is to know in Merchester and I can assure you from my own experience, that we simply can’t be beaten where curiosity is concerned.” She moved her chair round as she spoke to get a better view of the surgery wing.
“I think that you are right,” I said, knocking the ashes out of my pipe. “I’ll have a word with the doctor about it.”
“He would deal with them better than any of us,” she agreed, “but he may not be here all the time, and I can’t imagine that either Ethel or Kenneth would excel at the job. They are both too——” She paused for a word.
“Exactly,” I laughed, “they are both of them too—— and you can leave it at that.”
We fell back on our meditations, and I thought what a peaceful drowsy scene it would have made if only the men at work on the roof had been gardeners indeed, and Margaret and I the remnant of some pleasant social gathering. Gardeners pruning an ivy tree for next year’s more vigorous growth—hope for the future and life! Plain clothes policemen searching for a piece of poisoned glass—murder and death! The cathedral chimes rang out again and roused us both. It was six o’clock. We had sat in the garden for nearly an hour. We got up and went back to the house, she to go to Ethel, and I to find The Tundish.
He was in the dispensary—the coolest spot in the house—his feet on the desk in front of him and his chair tilted back to a dangerous angle. He was scowling at a manuscript in which he was deeply engrossed.
Now, I had anticipated his pleasant, “Hello! Jeffcock,” but I was met with a frown and a curtly spoken “Well?” It was the first time I had seen him either bothered or abrupt. The heat of the past few days, which had prostrated the rest of us and made us irritable and touchy, had not been sufficient to sap his energy or sour his sweet temper. I remembered that, in addition to facing the appalling position in which he found himself here at Dalehouse, he had had to rush away directly after breakfast to some other scene of illness and distress. He had hurried back through the sweltering heat to meet the aspersions of Allport and the angry attack of Kenneth. Throughout the fevered day he had been calm, kindly and unruffled. A “rock” as Ethel had whispered, for all of us to lean on.
I was surprised, therefore, to find him frowning and sharp-spoken, and he either saw my surprise or else he read my thoughts, for he closed the book with a bang, took his feet off the desk, and stood up saying, “Sorry, Jeffcock old man, but I’ve got an incipient hump.”
“In my opinion, you’ve been through enough to turn you into a veritable dromedary, so far as humps are concerned,” I answered.
“Oh! that—you mean my strong position as favorite for the gallowsstakes? No, my dear Jeffcock, to be perfectly truthful, that bothers me not at all. Death is a friend we shall all have to shake by the hand. It’s this depressing little record of unwholesome happenings and disease that nearly gave me a fit of the blues.”
I looked at the book with interest.
“It’s Hanson’s case-book,” he answered my unspoken question. “Such books should be burned. Burned and then the ashes scattered at sea, for half the world’s unhappiness springs from the disorders that we doctors write up so secretly in our case-books and keep hidden away under lock and key.” He flicked the pages between finger and thumb with a look of sad disgust as he spoke.
“Ugh!” he said, as he replaced the book in a drawer in the desk, which he pushed home with an angry bang.
I asked him what he thought we ought to say to any callers who might come, and whether we had not better have some agreement among ourselves as to how much information we were to give them when they came.
“Why, yes, of course we must,” he said pleasantly. “I hope that I shan’t have to go out again to-night, and probably I had better see any one who calls while I am here. I shall be able to choke them off more easily than Ethel would, and it will appear quite natural for me to explain that she has gone to lie down and rest. Then at supper-time we can decide together what to say to all the Merchester busybodies to-morrow. It surprises me that we have not been pestered with callers already. It is all over the city, I know, for half a dozen of my patients found it difficult to hide their curiosity, when I was out on my rounds this afternoon. You will see that quite apart from the kindly concern of Hanson’s more intimate friends, half Merchester will be calling or ringing us up during the next twenty-four hours. They will come for subscriptions, to borrow books, and to be treated for imaginary complaints. Anything, in fact, that will give them a chance to satisfy their ghoulish curiosity, and here is the first of them now, unless I am very much mistaken.”
The bell had begun to ring as he was speaking, and Annie announced Rushton, the secretary of the tennis club. He was asking for Ethel. We had him shown into the dispensary.
After shaking hands with us and refusing to sit down, as he wanted to get back to the club as soon as he could, he came to the object of his visit with commendable brevity. He hoped that it was not true that Miss Palfreeman was dead, but that she was merely ill, as Mr. Bennett had told them when he called at the club to scratch our names in the morning. He was a rather nervous little man, at the best of times, and it was obvious that he was not enjoying his visit.
“It is unfortunately only too true,” The Tundish replied. “She died at some hour during the night, and Miss Hanson had the shock of trying to wake her up this morning.”
“Oh! I say, I am so sorry. And is it true that there is to be an inquest?”
“Yes, that is true too. No one was with her when she died, and I am unable to certify the cause of her death. We have consulted the police, and they tell us that an inquest can’t possibly be avoided.”
Rushton stood embarrassed, and muttering, “Oh dear, how sad! How very, very sad!” Ill at ease, he was tracing half-circles on the cork matting with the toe of his shoe.
“Look here, I don’t want to add to your troubles,” he said, looking up suddenly, as though he had made up his mind to go through with an unpleasant task, “but I thought I ought to tell Miss Hanson about it at once. I wanted to see her and tell her. There are all manner of things being whispered about at the club.”
He hesitated again uncomfortably, and then went on with a sort of nervous rush. “They are saying that the police have been in and out of the house all day long. That Miss Palfreeman was murdered, that you have all of you been detained, and that you, Dr. Wallace, were seen being driven off to the police station itself under escort. There are all sorts of whisperings, and each that I have overheard has been a little more gruesome than the last. It’s beastly unpleasant news to have to give you, but I really felt that some one ought to come and let you know of the things that are being said.”
“It has been exceedingly kind and considerate of you,” The Tundish reassured him. “From the questions I was asked and the looks that I got—looks that I could almost overhear!—when I paid a few professional visits this afternoon, I guessed that some such stories must be afloat. The facts, however, are as I have told you. Miss Palfreeman’s death is at present a mystery to us all. She was rather overtired, but otherwise in normal health when she retired for the night. The police have moved her body to the mortuary so that a careful examination can be made. There is to be an inquest, and Mr. Jeffcock here, and the others, have been asked to remain in Merchester until it is over. That is really all that we can tell you. We are nearly as much in the dark as any one else. It is a very painful position without exaggeration, and if you can help to thin out some of the rumors that are thickening the air we shall all be not a little grateful.”
“Oh, I will. I most certainly will. I’ll do everything I possibly can.” He retreated nervously.
The doctor, I felt, had not been overconvincing. Rushton, I am sure, really came to us out of kindness and because he felt that some one ought to warn us of what was being said, however unpleasant the task might be. But if he had no suspicions of his own before he came, the doctor’s so-called explanations would most surely have aroused them. A doctor in the house—a mysterious death which the doctor would not certify—a body removed to the mortuary by the police, and an inquest—an unpleasant string of facts to have to admit! Add a little imagination, a dash or two of spite, and a misunderstanding here and there as the details are whispered by one scandal-loving cathedral matron to the next, and it is easy to realize that the final story might even outcrimson the actual facts. The Tundish had done his best, but it was very evident that until the whole abominable business was properly cleared up, and Stella’s murderer discovered and caught, nothing that we could say or do would silence the gossip that was about.
“That is the first of a great many kindly people who will make it their business to call because they felt that we ought to know of the awful things that are being said,” The Tundish remarked, with a wry grimace.
“Don’t you think that he really did feel like that?”
“Oh yes, yes! And so will many of the others who come for the same purpose. But they will one and all go away to strengthen the rumors of which they came to warn us. I’m not blaming them—it’s human nature. We shall find it rather trying, though, I fancy. It’s half past six. I’ll just run up-stairs and find out how Ethel is getting on, and then if it is not too hot for you I’ll join you in the garden for a stroll.”
I agreed, and went out through the front door, round the end of the house, and into the garden behind. The heat was still devastating. Not a leaf was astir. Not even a stray wisp of cloud broke the pale blue of the sky, a blue that faded imperceptibly into a misty white above the top of the high garden wall.
Inspector Brown’s three men were still busy with the ivy on the roof, and the heap on the lawn had grown to a goodly size. Nearly three-quarters of the roof had been cleared. The inspector himself stood watching them at work, peaked hat in hand, his red round face looking like a damp boiled beet-root from underneath his handkerchief, which he had knotted at the corners and placed on his head for protection against the sun. He beckoned to me as I rounded the end of the house, and I went and stood by his side.
“You’re making good progress,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Have you found what you were looking for?”
“Yes.”
“But you are going to clear the lot while you are about it, eh!”
“Yes.” And looking at me queerly, and mimicking the little exclamation with which I had finished my own sentence, he added, “There might be something else, eh!”
He continued to stare, his eyes looking for all the world like a couple of bright blue buttons stuck in his big red face, and then he surprised me by asking, “Do your initials happen to be F. H., Mr. Jeffcock?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
But I never got an answer to my question. He turned abruptly and walked away, ignoring me rudely and completely. I half thought of following him to make further inquiry, but his broad solid back and his thick bull neck both looked unresponsive, so I mastered my curiosity, and crossing the lawn to the cedar tree, sat down in the shade to wait for The Tundish.
I was beginning to think that he must have forgotten me, when Margaret hurried to me. “He wants us both in the dispensary,” she said, before she reached me, and turned quickly back to the house beckoning me to follow.
He got up from the desk as we entered, and placed the prescription book, in which he had been writing, on the table that stood in the middle of the room. Then he took three bottles and a taper medicine glass from the shelves over the bench, and put them on the table by the book. He was solemn and portentous. Margaret and I were silent as we stood and watched him.
“I am going to prepare some medicine for Ethel,” he informed us when he had got everything ready, “and in the circumstances I feel that I should like you to see me make it up. I can’t explain my wish in so many words; in fact, I really don’t quite know why I want you to be here. If I wanted to poison Ethel, I could of course do it with the greatest ease while you both stand looking on. For instance, you can check the prescription which I have written out in full, and you can check the bottles with the prescription, but you can’t possibly be sure that I haven’t already tampered with the bottles. So you see it is all rather farcical, and yet I do very definitely feel that I should like you to witness me making it up.”
I was aghast at the horrible suggestion his words contained, but he stood smiling at us pleasantly, imperturbable, inscrutable.
“I think that I can understand your feelings a little,” Margaret said inaptly, “you’re afraid it might somehow happen again. Is Ethel really ill then?”
“No, oh no, not exactly ill, but the bang on her mouth has loosened one tooth and some of the others have had a nasty jar. It has given her neuralgia and I want her to have a comfortable night if she can. We still have some unpleasant hours ahead, I fear.”
He was making up the medicine as he spoke, pouring first from one and then from the other bottles—a series of simple acts which he seemed to invest with some quality of magic. The glass lightly held between finger and thumb might have stood on a slab of stone for steadiness. Each ingredient trickled quickly yet surely to fill it to within a hair’s breadth of the graduation mark against which he had placed his thumb. Not once did he have to make an addition or adjustment, and so quick and precise was it all that he had finished while he was answering Margaret’s question, and the simple every-day movements took on the aspect of a conjuring trick.
We initialed the labels of the bottles he had used and the prescription he had written in the book after checking the one with the other.
Margaret, too, had evidently been impressed by his sleight of hand, for she said, “And now shall I sit on a broomstick, and whisk it up-stairs to Ethel?” It was the most original remark I had ever heard her make.
“No thanks, I’ll take it up myself.”
Margaret reddened, but he smiled at her coolly, adding, “I want to have a chat with her,” and he picked up the glass and was gone.
We didn’t say anything, but if looks could speak——? I think we were both of us wondering why he should have bothered to ask us to see him prepare the medicine, and then having had us for witnesses, have refused to let Margaret take it up to Ethel. He could have gone up with her for his little chat. It was queer and extraordinary. I could not understand it.