Dorothy Sayers - The Documents in the Case

‘Sorry, old man,’ he said at last. ‘Silly of me to make an ass of myself. Bit of a startler, isn’t it? But your face — oh, Lord! — if you could have seen yourself! It was priceless.’

He began to giggle again.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ said I. ‘We’ve got no time for hysterics. Something’s got to be done.’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘Yes — something must be done. A doctor, or something. All right, old man. Give me another drink and I’ll be as right as rain.’

I gave him another small one and took some myself. That seemed to clear my mind a little.

‘How far are we from Manaton?’

‘About three miles, I think — or a little over.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I suppose somebody there will have a telephone, or can send a messenger. One of us had better get along there as fast as possible and get on to the police?’

‘Police?’

‘Yes, of course, you ass. They’ve got to know.’

‘But you don’t suppose there’s anything wrong about it?’

‘Wrong? Well, there’s a dead man — that’s pretty wrong, I should think. He must have died of something. Did he have a heart, or fits, or anything?’

‘Not that I know of.’

I surveyed the distasteful bed again.

‘It looks more as though — he’d eaten something—’

I stopped, struck by an idea.

‘Let’s look at the things in the other room,’ I said. Lathom jumped to his feet.

‘When I left him he said something about fungi — he was going to get some special kind—’

We went out. In a saucepan on the table was a black, pulpy mess. I sniffed it cautiously. It had a sourish, faintly fungoid odour, like a cellar.

‘Oh, Lord,’ whimpered Lathom, ‘I knew it would happen some day. I told him over and over again. He laughed at me. Said he couldn’t possibly make a mistake.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but it looks rather as if he had. Poor devil. Of course, it would happen the very day there was nobody here to help him. I suppose he was absolutely on his own. Didn’t any tradesmen call, or anything?’

‘The carrier comes over on Mondays and Thursdays with supplies,’ said Lathom, ‘and takes the orders for the next visit.’

‘No milkman? No baker?’

‘No. Condensed milk, and the carrier brings the bread. If there’s nobody in he just puts the things on the window-sill.’

‘I see.’ It seemed to me pretty ghastly. ‘Well,’ I went on, ‘will you go or shall I?’

‘We’d better both go, hadn’t we?’

‘Nonsense.’ I was positive about this. I don’t know why, except that it seemed damnable, somehow, to leave Harrison’s body alone, when leaving it could do no possible harm. ‘If you don’t feel fit to go, I will.’

‘Yes — no!’ He looked about him uneasily. ‘All right, you go. It’s straight up the hill, you can’t miss it.’

I took up my hat, and was going, when he called me back.

‘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 midday 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?