Ngaio Marsh - The Nursing Home Murder

He screwed up his face and did complicated things with his fingers. “Twenty-fives into ones, you can’t. No, anyway you don’t want to. Drat. Wait a bit.” He opened his eyes suddenly and began to speak rapidly. “The twenty-five-minim syringe could hold a twentieth of a grain of hyoscine, and the vet’s pump could hold eleven thirty-seconds of a grain. There!” he added proudly.

“Quite correct — good for you!” shouted Thoms, clapping the inspector on the back.

“There’s more to come. I can do better than that. Eleven thirty-seconds is three thirty-seconds more than a quarter, which is only eight thirty-seconds. How’s that?”

“Brilliant, but I don’t see the application?”

“Don’t you?” asked Alleyn anxiously. “And yet I know I thought it rather important a moment ago. Ah, well — it’s gone now. I’ll just write the others down.”

Mr. Thoms moved to his elbow and looked curiously at his tiny hieroglyphics.

“I can’t see,” complained Alleyn and walked over to the light.

Mr. Thoms did not follow and so did not see the last of his minute entries, which read:

“The large syringe could hold a little over the amount found at the P.M.”

He shut his little book tenderly and put it in his pocket.

“Thank you a thousand times, Mr. Thoms,” he said. “You’ve made it very easy for me. Now there’s only one more person I’ve got to see to-day and that’s Dr. Roberts. Can you tell me where I’ll find him?”

“Well, he’s not the usual anæsthetist here, you know. He does a lot of Dr. Grey’s work for him. Hasn’t been in since this affair. I should think at this time you’d find him at his private address. I’ll ring up his house if you like.”

“That’s very good of you. Where does he live?”

“Not sure. His name’s Theodore. I know that because I heard Grey calling him Dora. Dora!” Mr. Thoms laughed extensively and led the way to a black hole with a telephone inside it.

He switched on a light and consulted the directory.

“Here we are. Roberts, Roberts, Roberts. Dr. Theodore. Wigmore Street. That’s your man.”

He dialled the number. Alleyn leant patiently against the door.

“Hullo. Dr. Robert’s house? Is he in? Ask him if he can see Inspector— ” He paused and put his hand over the receiver. “Alleyn, isn’t it? Yes — ask him if he can see Inspector Alleyn if he comes along now.”

Thoms turned towards Alleyn. “He’s in — that’ll be all right, I expect. Hullo, is that you, Roberts? It’s Thoms here. Inspector Alleyn has just been over the O’Callaghan business with me. They’ve found hyoscine — quarter of a grain. That makes you sit up. What? I don’t know. Yes, of course it is. Well, don’t get all agitated. They’re not going to arrest you. Ha ha ha! What! All right — in about twenty minutes, I should think. Look out, my boy — don’t give yourself away— what!”

He hung up, and taking Alleyn by the elbow, walked with him to the front door.

“Poor old Roberts is in an awful hum about it, spluttering away down the telephone like I don’t know what. Well, let me know if there’s anything more I can do.”

“I will indeed. Thank you so much. Good night.”

“Good night. Got a pair of handcuffs for Roberts? Ha ha ha!”

“Ha ha ha!” said Alleyn. “Good night.”

Tuesday, the sixteenth. Afternoon and evening.

Dr. Roberts lived in a nice little house in Wigmore Street. It was a narrow house with two windows on the first floor, and on the street level was a large vermilion front door that occupied a fair proportion of the wall.

A man-servant, small and cheerful to suit the house, showed Alleyn into a pleasant drawing-room-study with apple-green walls and bookshelves, glazed chintz curtains, and comfortable chairs. Above the fireplace hung an excellent painting of lots of little people skating on a lake surrounded by Christmas trees. A wood fire crackled on the hearth. On a table near the bookcase was a sheaf of manuscript weighted down by the old wooden stethoscope that Mr. Thoms had found so funny.

After an appreciative glance at the picture, Alleyn walked over to the bookcase, where he found a beguiling collection of modern novels, a Variorum Shakespeare that aroused his envy, and a number of works on heredity, eugenics and psycho-analysis. Among these was a respectable-looking volume entitled Debased Currency , by Theodore Roberts. Alleyn took it out and looked at the contents. They proved to be a series of papers on hereditary taints. Roberts evidently had read them at meetings of the International Congress on Eugenics and Sex Reform.

Alleyn was still absorbed in this evidence of Roberts’s industry when the author himself came in.

“Inspector Alleyn, I believe,” said Roberts.

With a slight effort Alleyn refrained from answering “Dr. Roberts, I presume.” He closed the book over his thumb and came forward to meet the anæsthetist. Roberts blinked apprehensively and then glanced at the volume in the inspector’s hand.

“Yes, Dr. Roberts,” said Alleyn, “you’ve caught me red-handed. I never can resist plucking from bookshelves and I was so interested to see that you yourself wrote.”

“Oh,” answered Roberts vaguely, “the subject interests me. Will you sit down, inspector?”

“Thank you. Yes, the problems of heredity have an extraordinary fascination, even for a layman like myself. However, I haven’t come here to air my ignorance of your country, but to try and fill out some of the blanks in my own. About this O’Callaghan business— ”

“I am extremely sorry to hear of the result of the autopsy,” said Roberts formally. “It is terribly distressing, shocking, an irreplaceable loss.” He moved his hands nervously, gulped, and then added hurriedly: “I am also exceedingly distressed for more personal reasons. As anæsthetist for the operation I feel that I may be held responsible, that perhaps I should have noticed earlier that all was not well. I was worried, almost from the start, about his condition. I said so to Sir John and to Thoms.”

“What did they answer?”

“Sir John was very properly concerned with his own work. He simply left me to deal with mine, after, I think, commenting in some way on my report. I do not remember that Thoms replied at all. Inspector Alleyn, I sincerely hope you are able to free Sir John from any possibility of the slightest breath of suspicion. Any doubt in that direction is quite unthinkable.”

“I hope to be able to clear up his part in the business as soon as the usual inquiries have been made. Perhaps you can help me there, Dr. Roberts?”

“I should be glad to do so. I will not attempt to deny that I am also very selfishly nervous on my own account.”

“You gave no injection, did you?”

“No. I am thankful to say, no.”

“How was that? I should have imagined the anæsthetist would have given the camphor and the hyoscine injections.”

Roberts did not speak for a moment, but sat gazing at Alleyn with a curiously helpless expression on his sensitive face. Alleyn noticed that whenever he spoke to Roberts the doctor seemed to suppress a sort of wince. He did this now, tightening his lips and drawing himself rigidly upright in his chair.

“I–I never give injections,” he said. “I have a personal and very painful reason for not doing so.”

“Would you care to tell me what it is? You see, the fact that you did not give an injection is very important from your point of view. You did not see the patient while he was conscious and so — to be frank — could hardly have poured hyoscine down his throat without someone noticing what you were up to.”