John Carr - Till Death Do Us Part

A rather cruel smile pinched in the wrinkled flesh round his mouth.

'Your studies, Mr Markham' - he spread out his fingers '- your studies, I say, will have taught you about hydrocyanic, or prussic, acid. Swallowed, it is agonizing but rapid. Injected into the blood-stream, it is agonizing but even more rapid.

'In Foster's case, suicide seemed plain. No man in his senses allows a murderer to inject him, neatly in a vein, with a hypodermic smelling of bitter almonds from ten feet away. The windows of the dressing-room were locked on the inside. The door was not only bolted on the inside, but had an immensely heavy chest of drawers drawn across it The servants had great difficulty in breaking in.

'We reassured the stricken widow, who had just returned home in prostration and floods of tears. Her grief, delicate creature as she was,' became quite touching.'

Dick Markham tried to hold hard to reason.

'And this widow,' he said,' was - ?'

'It was the woman who called herself Lesley Grant. Yes.'

Again there was a silence.

'We now come to one of those coincidences mistakenly supposed to be more common in fiction than in real life. Five years later, some time in the spring, I happened to be in Liverpool, giving testimony at the Assizes. Hadley was also there, on a completely different matter. We ran into each other at the sessions-house, where we met the local Superintendent of Police. In passing the time of day, the Superintendent said...'

Here Sir Harvey cast up his eyes.

'He said, "Rather queer suicide out Prince's Park way. Man killed himself with prussic add in a hypodermic. Elderly chap, but plenty of money; good health; no troubles. Still, there's no doubt about it. The inquest's just over now." He nodded along the hall. And we saw somebody, in black coming along that dirty hall, amid a group of sympathizers. I'm pretty tough, young man. I'm not easily impressed. But I've never forgotten the look on Hadley's face when he turned round and said, "By God, it's the same woman"’

The words were bald enough. Yet they had an intolerable vividness.

Quietly, as Sir Harvey Gilman musingly ceased to speak, Dr Middlesworth crossed the room, circled round the big writing-table, and sat down in a creaky basket-chair near the windows.

Dick started a little. He had completely forgotten the doctor. Even now Middlesworth did not comment or obtrude into the conversation. He merely crossed his long legs, propping a bony elbow on the arm of the chair and his chin in his hand, and stared with thoughtful eyes at the tan-shaded lamp over the writing-table.

'You're telling me,' snarled Dick Markham, 'or trying to tell me, it was Lesley again ? My Lesley ?'

'Your Lesley. Yes. Slightly second-hand.'

Dick started to get up from his chair, but sat down again.

His host had no notion of being offensive. You could guess that he was merely trying, like a surgeon, to cut out of Dick Markham's body, with a sharp knife, what he considered a malignant growth.

' Then,' he added,' the police did start an investigation.'

'With what result?'

'With the same result as before.' .

'They proved she couldn't have done it ?'

'Excuse me. They proved that they couldn't prove it. As in Foster's case, the wife had been away from home that night...'

'Alibi?'

'No provable alibi, no. But it wasn't necessary.' ' Go on, Sir Harvey.'

'Mr Davies, the Liverpool broker,' continued the other, 'had been found lying across the desk in his so-called

"den". And once more the room was locked up on the inside.'

Dick pressed a hand across his forehead. 'Securely?' he demanded.

'The windows were not only locked, but had wooden-barred shutters as well. The door had two bolts - new, tight-fitting bolts which couldn't be tampered with - one at the top, and one at the bottom. It was a big, florid, old-fashioned house; that room could be sealed up inside like a fortress. Nor was that all.

'Davies, they showed, had begun life as a dispensing chemist. He was well acquainted with the odour of prussic acid. He couldn't have injected the stuff into his own arm by accident, or by somebody's telling him it was a harmless concoction. If this wasn't suicide, it was murder. Yet there had been no struggle and no drugging. Davies was a gross old man, but he was still a big man: he wouldn't have submitted tamely to a needle redolent of hydrocyanic acid. And the room remained locked up on the inside.'

Sir Harvey pursed up his lips, cocking his head on one side the better to admire this.

'The very simplicity of the thing, gentlemen, drove the police mad. They felt certain; yet they couldn't prove.'

'What,' asked Dick, fighting black things in his own mind, 'what did Les ... I mean, what did the wife say to this?'

'She denied it was murder, of course.' 'Yes; but what did she say?’

'She was simply wide-eyed and horrified. She said she couldn't understand it She admitted she was the girl who had married Burton Foster, but said the whole thing was a dreadful coincidence or mistake. What could the police answer to that?'

'Did they do anything else?'

'Investigated her, naturally. What little could be found out' 'Well?'

'They tried to get her on my charge,' said Sir Harvey.

'And they couldn't. No poison could be traced to her. She'd married Davies under a false name; but that's not illegal unless there's a question of bigamy or fraud. There was no such question. Full-stop.' 'And then?'

The pathologist lifted his shoulders, and winced again. His wound, or the emotion caused by it, had begun to madden him.

'The final step in her progress I can tell you very briefly. I didn't see it happen. Neither did Hadley. The pretty widow, now with quite a sizeable fortune, simply disappeared. I more or less forgot her. It was three years ago that a friend of mine living in Paris, to whom I'd once told the lady's story as a classic example, sent me a cutting from a French newspaper.

'The press-cutting reported an unfortunate suicide in the Avenue George V. The victim was M. Martin Belford, a young Englishman, who had a flat there. It appeared that he had just become engaged to be married to a certain Mademoiselle Lesley Somebody - the name escapes me now - whose house was in the Avenue Foch.

'Four days later he dined with this lady at her home, as a sort of celebration of the engagement. He left the house at eleven o'clock that night, apparently in the best of health and spirits. He went home. Next morning he was found dead in his bedroom. Do I need to tell you under what circumstances?'

'The same?'

'Exactly the same. Room locked up, in the comprehensive French style. Intravenous poisoning by hydrocyanic acid.'

'And then?.'

Sir Harvey stared at the past.

' I sent the cutting to Hadley, who got in touch with the French police. Even those realists wouldn't hear of anything but suicide. The newspaper reporters, who are allowed a broader style than they are here, spoke in tones of tragedy and sadness' about mademoiselle. "Cette belle anglaise, très chic, très distinguée." They suggested that there had been a lovers' tiff, which mademoiselle didn't like to admit; and in a fit of despair the man had gone home and killed himself.'

In the creaky basket-chair across the room, Dr Middlesworth took out a pipe and blew down the stem.

It gave him something to do; it eased, Dick knew, his acute discomfort. And it was the doctor's presence, representing Six Ashes and normality, which made the whole affair so grotesque. The faces of Mrs Middlesworth, of Mrs Price, of Lady Ashe, of Cynthia Drew, floated in front of his mind.

'Look here,' Dick burst out 'This whole thing is impossible.'

' Of course,' agreed Sir Harvey. 'But it happened.'