John Carr - Till Death Do Us Part

There had been urgency in Cynthia's voice, and bewilderment, and something like relief. Dick turned to stare at her. 'Then what the devil's the matter with the fellow?' 'I don't know.'

' Sir Harvey!' yelled Dick, putting his mouth close against the window.' Sir Harvey Gilman!'

There was no reply.

Dick glanced from one window to the other. He inspected the first, then the second. Since the cottage was built rather low against the ground, the lower sills of the windows were not much above the level of his waist. They were ordinary sash-windows, fastening with metal catches on the inside. By putting one knee on the outer sill, and hauling himself up with a hand on the frame at each side, Dick was able to see through the glass that both windows were locked on the inside.

A very ugly notion began to creep through his mind now.

'Wait here a minute,' he said to Cynthia.

Hurrying to the front door, he found it unlocked and only partly on the latch above two stone steps. He threw it open, and found himself in the small modern-looking hall he remembered from last night.

On his left, he also remembered, was the door leading into the sitting-room. If he opened this door now, it would bring him into the sitting-room at a point behind the back of the motionless figure seated at the table. But he was not able to open this door, though he wrenched with violent hands at the knob. It was fastened on the inside.

He tore out into the front garden again, where Cynthia was still staring through the window.

'You know,' she declared, 'there's something awfully queer about him. His face seems a funny colour. Bluish? Or is that the effect of the light? And there's something about his mouth: is it froth? And ... Dick! what on earth are you doing?'

With a hazy idea that the bullet-hole might be required as evidence, Dick did not touch that right-hand window. Instead he went to the other window. From the unkempt grass of the garden he picked up half a brick, and flung it at the window with a crash that brought glass rattling down in shards.

From that stuffy room, very distinct in morning air, stirred a breath which drifted out of the window with a small but perceptible odour of bitter almonds. It came at their faces in a wave. Cynthia, beside him, put a hand on his arm.

'It - it smells like finger-nail varnish,' she said. 'What is it?'

'Prussic acid.'

Reaching inside the shattered window, Dick put up his hand, unlocked the catch of the window, and pushed it up. Then he hauled himself up across the sill and dropped into the room amid crunching glass.

The bitter-almonds odour was more distinct now. It required some effort to go close and touch that body, but Dick did it. The man he knew as Sir Harvey Gilman had been dead for only a few minutes, since the body was still almost at blood-heat. It was still dressed in pyjamas and dressing-gown; the velour-covered easy-chair supported it upright except for the lolling head, and gave an appearance of ease to the arms along the arms of the chair. But the cyanosis and froth of prussic-acid poisoning, the half-open eye, showed with hideous plainness when you went closer.

Dick glanced across at the door leading to the hall.

Frantically he went over and inspected it. The key was turned in the lock, and a small tight-fitting bolt was solidly pushed fast on the inside.

Of the two windows which constituted the only other entrance, one window now had its lower glass shattered, and the other bore a bullet-stamp a few inches below the joining of the sashes. But there could be no doubt - Dick himself could swear, however much the police might disbelieve him - that both windows had been locked on the inside too.

'So,' Dick remarked aloud, 'he said it couldn't possibly happen to him?'

It was only then that he noticed something else.

The light of the hanging lamp caught a faint gleam near the floor beside the easy-chair: a smallish hypodermic syringe, with slender glass barrel and nickelled plunger. It had dropped beside the chair, sticking point upwards in the carpet, as though it had fallen there from the dead man's relaxing fingers. It set the seal of finality on this wicked scene, while the odour of hydrocyanic acid seemed to grow even more overpowering in a stuffy room, and daylight broadened fully outside the windows. Another suicide.

CHAPTER 8

DICK was still standing by the door, trying to arrange thoughts that would not cohere, when he heard a scraping noise at the window. Cynthia with supple agility had swung herself through, and landed on her feet lightly, like a cat, amid broken glass.

Her face was composed but concerned - concerned, you would have said, more for Dick Markham than for the shrivelled figure in the chair.

' This is dreadful!' she said, and then, as though conscious of the weakness of these words, added, 'Simply dreadful!' in a flat positive tone before going on: 'You said prussic acid, Dick. Prussic acid's a poison; isn't it?'

'Yes. Very much so.'

Cynthia cast a glance of repulsion at the chair.

'But what on earth happened to the poor man?'

'Come here,' requested Dick. 'Er - are you all. right?'

'Oh, dear, yes. Perfectly all right.’ It would take more than this to upset Cynthia. She went on with vehemence: 'But it is horrible and ghastly and everything else! You mean someone gave him some poison?'

'No. Look here!'

As she circled round the writing-table, he pointed to the hypodermic needle stuck point upright in the floor. Then - which required more steeling of the nerves - he leaned across the body and lifted the left arm from the elbow. Its loose dressing-gown and pyjama sleeves fell away, exposing a thin hickory-like arm streaked with blue congested veins. The injection with the hypodermic had been clumsily made: you could see the tiny fleck of dried blood against the forearm.

'Dick! Wait! Ought you to be doing that?' ‘Doing what?'

'Breaking windows, and touching things, and all the rest of it? In those books you've loaned me ... heaven knows some of them are difficult to understand; nasty people!... but they always say you must leave everything as it is. Isn't that right ?'

'Oh, yes,' he said grimly. 'I'm going to catch the devil for doing this. But we've got to know!'

The blue eyes studied him.

'Dick Markham, you look absolutely frightful. Didn't you go to bed at all last night ?' 'Never mind that now!'

'But I do mind it. You never get any proper rest, especially when you're working. And there's something on your mind that's worrying you. I could tell that last night.'

' Cynthia, will you please look at this ?'

'I am looking at it,' answered Cynthia, though she looked away instead, and clenched her hands.

"This is suicide,' he explained, impressing it on her by fashioning the words with careful violence. 'He took a hypodermic full of hydrocyanic acid - there it is! - and injected it into his left arm. You yourself can testify,' he swept his arm round, 'that this room is locked up on the inside? So that proves (don't you see) that nobody tried to kill him?'

'But, Dick! Somebody did try to kill him! Somebody shot at him with a rifle!'

'The bullet didn't hit him, did it?'

'No,' returned Cynthia, 'but that jolly well wasn't for want of trying!' Her breast rose and fell. She added: 'Is it about Lesley?'

Dick swung round.

'Is what about Lesley?'

'This thing that's worrying you,' said Cynthia with simple feminine directness. ' Why should you think it's about Lesley ?' 'What else could it be?' inquired Cynthia. She did not stop to explain the logic of this remark, but went on: 'That horrid little man,' and .she pointed to the figure in the chair, 'has been upsetting everything and everybody at Six Ashes. First there was the accident with the rifle yesterday afternoon. Of course it was an accident' - briefly, the blue eyes seemed to ponder - 'but it does seem queer that somebody deliberately tried to shoot him this morning. And, on top of that, you say he poisoned himself with what's-its-name acid'