I
“Not what you’d call conclusive,” said Sergeant Wetherall with his usual gloom.
Craddock was reading through the report on Harold Crackenthorpe’s alibi for 20th December.
He had been noticed at Sotheby’s about three-thirty, but was thought to have left shortly after that. His photograph had not been recognized at Russell’s tea shop, but as they did a busy trade there at teatime, and he was not an habitué, that was hardly surprising. His manservant confirmed that he had returned to Cardigan Gardens to dress for his dinner-party at a quarter to seven—rather late, since the dinner was at seven-thirty, and Mr. Crackenthorpe had been somewhat irritable in consequence. Did not remember hearing him come in that evening, but, as it was some time ago, could not remember accurately and, in any case, he frequently did not hear Mr. Crackenthorpe come in. He and his wife liked to retire early whenever they could. The garage in the mews where Harold kept his car was a private lockup that he rented and there was no one to notice who came and went or any reason to remember one evening in particular.
“All negative,” said Craddock, with a sigh.
“He was at the Caterers’ Dinner all right, but left rather early before the end of the speeches.”
“What about the railway stations?”
But there was nothing there, either at Brackhampton or at Paddington. It was nearly four weeks ago, and it was highly unlikely that anything would have been remembered.
Craddock sighed, and stretched out his hand for the data on Cedric. That again was negative, though a taxi-driver had made a doubtful recognition of having taken a fare to Paddington that day some time in the afternoon “what looked something like that bloke. Dirty trousers and a shock of hair. Cussed and swore a bit because fares had gone up since he was last in England.” He identified the day because a horse called Crawler had won the two-thirty and he’d had a tidy bit on. Just after dropping the gent, he’d heard it on the radio in his cab and had gone home forthwith to celebrate.
“Thank God for racing!” said Craddock, and put the report aside.
“And here’s Alfred,” said Sergeant Wetherall.
Some nuance in his voice made Craddock look up sharply. Wetherall had the pleased appearance of a man who has kept a titbit until the end.
In the main the check was unsatisfactory. Alfred lived alone in his flat and came and went at unspecified times. His neighbours were not the inquisitive kind and were in any case office workers who were out all day. But towards the end of the report, Wetherall’s large finger indicated the final paragraph.
Sergeant Leakie, assigned to a case of thefts from lorries, had been at the Load of Bricks, a lorry pull-up on the Waddington- Brackhampton Road, keeping certain lorry drivers under observation. He had noticed at an adjoining table, Chick Evans, one of the Dicky Rogers mob. With him had been Alfred Crackenthorpe whom he knew by sight, having seen him give evidence in the Dicky Rogers case. He’d wondered what they were cooking up together. Time, 9:30 p.m., Friday, 20th December. Alfred Crackenthorpe had boarded a bus a few minutes later, going in the direction of Brackhampton. William Baker, ticket collector at Brackhampton station, had clipped ticket of gentleman whom he recognized by sight as one of Miss Crackenthorpe’s brothers, just before departure of eleven-fifty-five train for Paddington. Remembers day as there had been story of some batty old lady who swore she had seen somebody murdered in a train that afternoon.
“Alfred?” said Craddock as he laid the report down. “Alfred? I wonder.”
“Puts him right on the spot, there,” Wetherall pointed out.
Craddock nodded. Yes, Alfred could have travelled down by the 4:33 to Brackhampton committing murder on the way. Then he could have gone out by bus to the Load of Bricks. He could have left there at nine-thirty and would have had plenty of time to go to Rutherford Hall, move the body from the embankment to the sarcophagus, and get into Brackhampton in time to catch the 11:55 back to London. One of the Dicky Rogers gang might even have helped move the body, though Craddock doubted this. An unpleasant lot, but not killers.
“Alfred?” he repeated speculatively.
II
At Rutherford Hall there had been a gathering of the Crackenthorpe family. Harold and Alfred had come down from London and very soon voices were raised and tempers were running high.
On her own initiative, Lucy mixed cocktails in a jug with ice and then took them towards the library. The voices sounded clearly in the hall, and indicated that a good deal of acrimony was being directed towards Emma.
“Entirely your fault, Emma,” Harold’s bass voice rang out angrily. “How you could be so shortsighted and foolish beats me. If you hadn’t taken that letter to Scotland Yard—and started all this—”
Alfred’s high-pitched voice said: “You must have been out of your senses!”
“Now don’t bully her,” said Cedric. “What’s done is done. Much more fishy if they’d identified the woman as the missing Martine and we’d all kept mum about having heard from her.”
“It’s all very well for you, Cedric,” said Harold angrily. “You were out of the country on the 20th which seems to be the day they are inquiring about. But it’s very embarrassing for Alfred and myself. Fortunately, I can remember where I was that afternoon and what I was doing.”
“I bet you can,” said Alfred. “If you’d arranged a murder, Harold, you’d arrange your alibi very carefully, I’m sure.”
“I gather you are not so fortunate,” said Harold coldly.
“That depends,” said Alfred. “Anything’s better than presenting a cast-iron alibi to the police if it isn’t really cast-iron. They’re so clever at breaking these things down.”
“If you are insinuating that I killed the woman—”
“Oh, do stop, all of you,” cried Emma. “Of course none of you killed the woman.”
“And just for your information, I wasn’t out of England on the 20th,” said Cedric. “And the police are wise to it! So we’re all under suspicion.”
“If it hadn’t been for Emma—”
“Oh, don’t begin again, Harold,” cried Emma.
Dr. Quimper came out of the study where he had been closeted with old Mr. Crackenthorpe. His eye fell on the jug in Lucy’s hand.
“What’s this? A celebration?”
“More in the nature of oil on troubled waters. They’re at it hammer and tongs in there.”
“Recriminations?”
“Mostly abusing Emma.”
Dr. Quimper’s eyebrows rose.
“Indeed?” He took the jug from Lucy’s hand, opened the library door and went in.
“Good evening.”
“Ah, Dr. Quimper, I should like a word with you.” It was Harold’s voice, raised and irritable. “I should like to know what you meant by interfering in a private and family matter, and telling my sister to go to Scotland Yard about it.”
Dr. Quimper said calmly:
“Miss Crackenthorpe asked my advice. I gave it to her. In my opinion she did perfectly right.”
“You dare to say—”
“Girl!”
It was old Mr. Crackenthorpe’s familiar salutation. He was peering out of the study door just behind Lucy.
Lucy turned rather reluctantly.
“Yes, Mr. Crackenthorpe?”
“What are you giving us for dinner tonight? I want curry. You make a very good curry. It’s ages since we’ve had curry.”
“The boys don’t care much for curry, you see.”
“The boys—the boys. What do the boys matter? I’m the one who matters. And, anyway, the boys have gone—good riddance. I want a nice hot curry, do you hear?”
“All right, Mr. Crackenthorpe, you shall have it.”
“That’s right. You’re a good girl, Lucy. You look after me and I’ll look after you.”
Lucy went back to the kitchen. Abandoning the fricassée of chicken which she had planned, she began to assemble the preparations for curry. The front door banged and from the window she saw Dr. Quimper stride angrily from the house to his car and drive away.
Lucy sighed. She missed the boys. And in a way she missed Bryan, too.
Oh, well. She sat down and began to peel mushrooms.
At any rate she’d give the family a rattling good dinner.
Feed the brutes!
III
It was 3 a.m. when Dr. Quimper drove his car into the garage, closed the doors and came in pulling the front door behind him rather wearily. Well, Mrs. Josh Simpkins had a fine healthy pair of twins to add to her present family of eight. Mr. Simpkins had expressed no elation over the arrival. “Twins,” he had said gloomily. “What’s the good of they? Quads now, they’re good for something. All sorts of things you get sent, and the Press comes round and there’s pictures in the paper, and they do say as Her Majesty sends you a telegram. But what’s twins except two mouths to feed instead of one? Never been twins in our family, nor in the missus’s either. Don’t seem fair, somehow.”
Dr. Quimper walked upstairs to his bedroom and started throwing off his clothes. He glanced at his watch. Five minutes past three. It had proved an unexpectedly tricky business bringing those twins into the world, but all had gone well. He yawned. He was tired—very tired. He looked appreciatively at his bed.
Then the telephone rang.
Dr. Quimper swore, and picked up the receiver.
“Dr. Quimper?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Lucy Eyelesbarrow from Rutherford Hall. I think you’d better come over. Everybody seems to have taken ill.”
“Taken ill? How? What symptoms?”
Lucy detailed them.
“I’ll be over straight away. In the meantime…” He gave her short sharp instructions.
Then he quickly resumed his clothes, flung a few extra things into his emergency bag, and hurried down to his car.
IV
It was some three hours later when the doctor and Lucy, both of them somewhat exhausted, sat down by the kitchen table to drink large cups of black coffee.
“Ha,” Dr. Quimper drained his cup, set it down with a clatter on the saucer. “I needed that. Now, Miss Eyelesbarrow, let’s get down to brass tacks.”
Lucy looked at him. The lines of fatigue showed clearly on his face making him look older than his forty-four years, the dark hair on his temples was flecked with grey, and there were lines under his eyes.
“As far as I can judge,” said the doctor, “they’ll be all right now. But how come? That’s what I want to know. Who cooked the dinner?”
“I did,” said Lucy.
“And what was it? In detail.”
“Mushroom soup. Curried chicken and rice. Syllabubs. A savoury of chicken livers and bacon.”
“Canapés Diane,” said Dr. Quimper unexpectedly.
Lucy smiled faintly.
“Yes, Canapés Diane.”
“All right—let’s go through it. Mushroom soup—out of a tin, I suppose?”
“Certainly not. I made it.”
“You made it. Out of what?”
“Half a pound of mushrooms, chicken stock, milk, a roux of butter and flour, and lemon juice.”
“Ah. And one’s supposed to say ‘It must have been the mushrooms.’”
“It wasn’t the mushrooms. I had some of the soup myself and I’m quite all right.”
“Yes, you’re quite all right. I hadn’t forgotten that.”
Lucy flushed.
“If you mean—”
“I don’t mean. You’re a highly intelligent girl. You’d be groaning upstairs, too, if I’d meant what you thought I meant. Anyway, I know all about you. I’ve taken the trouble to find out.”
“Why on earth did you do that?”
Dr. Quimper’s lips were set in a grim line.
“Because I’m making it my business to find out about the people who come here and settle themselves in. You’re a bona fide young woman who does this particular job for a livelihood and you seem never to have had any contact with the Crackenthorpe family previous to coming here. So you’re not a girl-friend of either Cedric, Harold or Alfred—helping them to do a bit of dirty work.”
“Do you really think—?”
“I think quite a lot of things,” said Quimper. “But I have to be careful. That’s the worst of being a doctor. Now let’s get on. Curried chicken. Did you have some of that?”
“No. When you’ve cooked a curry, you’ve dined off the smell, I find. I tasted it, of course. I had soup and some syllabub.”
“How did you serve the syllabub?”
“In individual glasses.”
“Now, then, how much of all this is cleared up?”
“If you mean washing up, everything was washed up and put away.”
Dr. Quimper groaned.
“There’s such a thing as being overzealous,” he said.
“Yes, I can see that, as things have turned out, but there it is, I’m afraid.”
“What do you have still?”
“There’s some of the curry left—in a bowl in the larder. I was planning to use it as a basis for mulligatawny soup this evening. There’s some mushroom soup left, too. No syllabub and none of the savoury.”
“I’ll take the curry and the soup. What about chutney? Did they have chutney with it?”
“Yes. In one of those stone jars.”
“I’ll have some of that, too.”
He rose. “I’ll go up and have a look at them again. After that, can you hold the fort until morning? Keep an eye on them all? I can have a nurse round, with full instructions, by eight o’clock.”
“I wish you’d tell me straight out. Do you think it’s food poisoning—or—or—well, poisoning.”
“I’ve told you already. Doctors can’t think—they have to be sure. If there’s a positive result from these food specimens I can go ahead. Otherwise—”
“Otherwise?” Lucy repeated.
Dr. Quimper laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Look after two people in particular,” he said. “Look after Emma. I’m not going to have anything happen to Emma….”
There was emotion in his voice that could not be disguised. “She’s not even begun to live yet,” he said. “And you know, people like Emma Crackenthorpe are the salt of the earth… Emma—well, Emma means a lot to me. I’ve never told her so, but I shall. Look after Emma.”
“You bet I will,” said Lucy.
“And look after the old man. I can’t say that he’s ever been my favourite patient, but he is my patient, and I’m damned if I’m going to let him be hustled out of the world because one or other of his unpleasant sons—or all three of them, maybe—want him out of the way so that they can handle his money.”
He threw her a sudden quizzical glance.
“There,” he said. “I’ve opened my mouth too wide. But keep your eyes skinned, there’s a good girl, and incidentally keep your mouth shut.”
V
Inspector Bacon was looking upset.
“Arsenic?” he said. “Arsenic?”
“Yes. It was in the curry. Here’s the rest of the curry—for your fellow to have a go at. I’ve only done a very rough test on a little of it, but the result was quite definite.”
“So there’s a poisoner at work?”
“It would seem so,” said Dr. Quimper dryly.
“And they’re all affected, you say—except that Miss Eyelesbarrow.”
“Except Miss Eyelesbarrow.”
“Looks a bit fishy for her….”
“What motive could she possibly have?”
“Might be barmy,” suggested Bacon. “Seem all right, they do, sometimes, and yet all the time they’re right off their rocker, so to speak.”
“Miss Eyelesbarrow isn’t off her rocker. Speaking as a medical man, Miss Eyelesbarrow is as sane as you or I are. If Miss Eyelesbarrow is feeding the family arsenic in their curry, she’s doing it for a reason. Moreover, being a highly intelligent young woman, she’d be careful not to be the only one unaffected. What she’d do, what any intelligent poisoner would do, would be to eat a very little of the poisoned curry, and then exaggerate the symptoms.”
“And then you wouldn’t be able to tell?”
“That she’d had less than the others? Probably not. People don’t all react alike to poisons anyway—the same amount will upset some people more than others. Of course,” added Dr. Quimper cheerfully, “once the patient’s dead, you can estimate fairly closely how much was taken.”
“Then it might be…” Inspector Bacon paused to consolidate his idea. “It might be that there’s one of the family now who’s making more fuss than he need—someone who you might say is mucking in with the rest so as to avoid causing suspicion? How’s that?”
“The idea has already occurred to me. That’s why I’m reporting to you. It’s in your hands now. I’ve got a nurse on the job that I can trust, but she can’t be everywhere at once. In my opinion, nobody’s had enough to cause death.”
“Made a mistake, the poisoner did?”
“No. It seems to me more likely that the idea was to put enough in the curry to cause signs of food poisoning—for which probably the mushrooms would be blamed. People are always obsessed with the idea of mushroom poisoning. Then one person would probably take a turn for the worse and die.”
“Because he’d been given a second dose?”
The doctor nodded.
“That’s why I’m reporting to you at once, and why I’ve put a special nurse on the job.”
“She knows about the arsenic?”
“Of course. She knows and so does Miss Eyelesbarrow. You know your own job best, of course, but if I were you, I’d get out there and make it quite clear to them all that they’re suffering from arsenic poisoning. That will probably put the fear of the Lord into our murderer and he won’t dare to carry out his plan. He’s probably been banking on the food-poisoning theory.”
The telephone rang on the inspector’s desk. He picked it up and said:
“OK. Put her through.” He said to Quimper, “It’s your nurse on the phone. Yes, hallo—speaking… What’s that? Serious relapse… Yes… Dr. Quimper’s with me now… If you’d like a word with him….”
He handed the receiver to the doctor.
“Quimper speaking… I see… Yes… Quite right… Yes, carry on with that. We’ll be along.”
He put the receiver down and turned to Bacon.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Alfred,” said Dr. Quimper. “And he’s dead.”
Chapter Nineteen