I
Over the telephone, Craddock’s voice came in sharp disbelief.
“Alfred?” he said. “Alfred?”
Inspector Bacon, shifting the telephone receiver a little, said: “You didn’t expect that?”
“No, indeed. As a matter of fact, I’d just got him taped for the murderer!”
“I heard about him being spotted by the ticket collector. Looked bad for him all right. Yes, looked as though we’d got our man.”
“Well,” said Craddock flatly, “we were wrong.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Craddock asked:
“There was a nurse in charge. How did she come to slip up?”
“Can’t blame her. Miss Eyelesbarrow was all in and went to get a bit of sleep. The nurse had five patients on her hands, the old man, Emma, Cedric, Harold and Alfred. She couldn’t be everywhere at once. It seems old Mr. Crackenthorpe started creating in a big way. Said he was dying. She went in, got him soothed down, came back again and took Alfred in some tea with glucose. He drank it and that was that.”
“Arsenic again?”
“Seems so. Of course it could have been a relapse, but Quimper doesn’t think so and Johnstone agrees.”
“I suppose,” said Craddock, doubtfully, “that Alfred was meant to be the victim?”
Bacon sounded interested. “You mean that whereas Alfred’s death wouldn’t do anyone a penn’orth of good, the old man’s death would benefit the lot of them? I suppose it might have been a mistake—somebody might have thought the tea was intended for the old man.”
“Are they sure that that’s the way the stuff was administered?”
“No, of course they aren’t sure. The nurse, like a good nurse, washed up the whole contraption. Cups, spoons, teapot—everything. But it seems the only feasible method.”
“Meaning,” said Craddock thoughtfully, “that one of the patients wasn’t as ill as the others? Saw his chance and doped the cup?”
“Well, there won’t be anymore funny business,” said Inspector Bacon grimly. “We’ve got two nurses on the job now, to say nothing of Miss Eyelesbarrow, and I’ve got a couple of men there too. You coming down?”
“As fast as I can make it!”
II
Lucy Eyelesbarrow came across the hall to meet Inspector Craddock. She looked pale and drawn.
“You’ve been having a bad time of it,” said Craddock.
“It’s been like one long ghastly nightmare,” said Lucy. “I really thought last night that they were all dying.”
“About this curry—”
“It was the curry?”
“Yes, very nicely laced with arsenic—quite the Borgia touch.”
“If that’s true,” said Lucy. “It must—it’s got to be—one of the family.”
“No other possibility?”
“No, you see I only started making that damned curry quite late—after six o’clock—because Mr. Crackenthorpe specially asked for curry. And I had to open a new tin of curry powder—so that couldn’t have been tampered with. I suppose curry would disguise the taste?”
“Arsenic hasn’t any taste,” said Craddock absently. “Now, opportunity. Which of them had the chance to tamper with the curry while it was cooking?”
Lucy considered.
“Actually,” she said, “anyone could have sneaked into the kitchen whilst I was laying the table in the dining room.”
“I see. Now, who was here in the house? Old Mr. Crackenthorpe, Emma, Cedric—”
“Harold and Alfred. They’d come down from London in the afternoon. Oh, and Bryan—Bryan Eastley. But he left just before dinner. He had to meet a man in Brackhampton.”
Craddock said thoughtfully, “It ties up with the old man’s illness at Christmas. Quimper suspected that that was arsenic. Did they all seem equally ill last night?”
Lucy considered. “I think old Mr. Crackenthorpe seemed the worst. Dr. Quimper had to work like a maniac on him. He’s a jolly good doctor, I will say. Cedric made by far the most fuss. Of course, strong healthy people always do.”
“What about Emma?”
“She has been pretty bad.”
“Why Alfred, I wonder?” said Craddock.
“I know,” said Lucy. “I suppose it was meant to be Alfred?”
“Funny— I asked that too!”
“It seems, somehow, so pointless.”
“If I could only get at the motive for all this business,” said Craddock. “It doesn’t seem to tie up. The strangled woman in the sarcophagus was Edmund Crackenthorpe’s widow, Martine. Let’s assume that. It’s pretty well proved by now. There must be a connection between that and the deliberate poisoning of Alfred. It’s all here, in the family somewhere. Even saying one of them’s mad doesn’t help.”
“Not really,” Lucy agreed.
“Well, look after yourself,” said Craddock warningly. “There’s a poisoner in this house, remember, and one of your patients upstairs probably isn’t as ill as he pretends to be.”
Lucy went upstairs again slowly after Craddock’s departure. An imperious voice, somewhat weakened by illness, called to her as she passed old Mr. Crackenthorpe’s room.
“Girl—girl—is that you? Come here.”
Lucy entered the room. Mr. Crackenthorpe was lying in bed well propped up with pillows. For a sick man he was looking Lucy thought, remarkably cheerful.
“The house is full of damned hospital nurses,” complained Mr. Crackenthorpe. “Rustling about, making themselves important, taking my temperature, not giving me what I want to eat—a pretty penny all that must be costing. Tell Emma to send ’em away. You could look after me quite well.”
“Everybody’s been taken ill, Mr. Crackenthorpe,” said Lucy. “I can’t look after everybody, you know.”
“Mushrooms,” said Mr. Crackenthorpe. “Damned dangerous things, mushrooms. It was that soup we had last night. You made it,” he added accusingly.
“The mushrooms were quite all right, Mr. Crackenthorpe.”
“I’m not blaming you, girl, I’m not blaming you. It’s happened before. One blasted fungus slips in and does it. Nobody can tell. I know you’re a good girl. You wouldn’t do it on purpose. How’s Emma?”
“Feeling rather better this afternoon.”
“Ah, and Harold?”
“He’s better too.”
“What’s this about Alfred having kicked the bucket?”
“Nobody’s supposed to have told you that, Mr. Crackenthorpe.”
Mr. Crackenthorpe laughed, a high, whinnying laugh of intense amusement. “I hear things,” he said. “Can’t keep things from the old man. They try to. So Alfred’s dead, is he? He won’t sponge on me anymore, and he won’t get any of the money either. They’ve all been waiting for me to die, you know—Alfred in particular. Now he’s dead. I call that rather a good joke.”
“That’s not very kind of you, Mr. Crackenthorpe,” said Lucy severely.
Mr. Crackenthorpe laughed again. “I’ll outlive them all,” he crowed. “You see if I don’t, my girl. You see if I don’t.”
Lucy went to her room, she took out her dictionary and looked up the word “tontine.” She closed the book thoughtfully and stared ahead of her.
III
“Don’t see why you want to come to me,” said Dr. Morris, irritably.
“You’ve known the Crackenthorpe family a long time,” said Inspector Craddock.
“Yes, yes, I knew all the Crackenthorpes. I remember old Josiah Crackenthorpe. He was a hard nut—shrewd man, though. Made a lot of money,” he shifted his aged form in his chair and peered under bushy eyebrows at Inspector Craddock. “So you’ve been listening to that young fool, Quimper,” he said. “These zealous young doctors! Always getting ideas in their heads. Got it into his head that somebody was trying to poison Luther Crackenthorpe. Nonsense! Melodrama! Of course, he had gastric attacks. I treated him for them. Didn’t happen very often—nothing peculiar about them.”
“Dr. Quimper,” said Craddock, “seemed to think there was.”
“Doesn’t do for a doctor to go thinking. After all, I should hope I could recognize arsenical poisoning when I saw it.”
“Quite a lot of well-known doctors haven’t noticed it,” Craddock pointed out. “There was”—he drew upon his memory—“the Greenbarrow case, Mrs. Teney, Charles Leeds, three people in the Westbury family, all buried nicely and tidily without the doctors who attended them having the least suspicion. Those doctors were all good, reputable men.”
“All right, all right,” said Doctor Morris, “you’re saying that I could have made a mistake. Well, I don’t think I did.” He paused a minute and then said, “Who did Quimper think was doing it—if it was being done?”
“He didn’t know,” said Craddock. “He was worried. After all, you know,” he added, “there’s a great deal of money there.”
“Yes, yes, I know, which they’ll get when Luther Crackenthorpe dies. And they want it pretty badly. That is true enough, but it doesn’t follow that they’d kill the old man to get it.”
“Not necessarily,” agreed Inspector Craddock.
“Anyway,” said Dr. Morris, “my principle is not to go about suspecting things without due cause. Due cause,” he repeated. “I’ll admit that what you’ve just told me has shaken me up a bit. Arsenic on a big scale, apparently—but I still don’t see why you come to me. All I can tell you is that I didn’t suspect it. Maybe I should have. Maybe I should have taken those gastric attacks of Luther Crackenthorpe’s much more seriously. But you’ve got a long way beyond that now.”
Craddock agreed. “What I really need,” he said, “is to know a little more about the Crackenthorpe family. Is there any queer mental strain in them—a kink of any kind?”
The eyes under the bushy eyebrows looked at him sharply. “Yes, I can see your thoughts might run that way. Well, old Josiah was sane enough. Hard as nails, very much all there. His wife was neurotic, had a tendency to melancholia. Came of an inbred family. She died soon after her second son was born. I’d say, you know, that Luther inherited a certain—well, instability, from her. He was commonplace enough as a young man, but he was always at loggerheads with his father. His father was disappointed in him and I think he resented that and brooded on it, and in the end got a kind of obsession about it. He carried that on into his married life. You’ll notice, if you talk to him at all, that he’s got a hearty dislike for all his own sons. His daughters he was fond of. Both Emma and Edie—the one who died.”
“Why does he dislike the sons so much?” asked Craddock.
“You’ll have to go to one of these new-fashioned psychiatrists to find that out. I’d just say that Luther has never felt very adequate as a man himself, and that he bitterly resents his financial position. He has possession of an income but no power of appointment of capital. If he had the power to disinherit his sons he probably wouldn’t dislike them as much. Being powerless in that respect gives him a feeling of humiliation.”
“That’s why he’s so pleased at the idea of outliving them all?” said Inspector Craddock.
“Possibly. It is the root, too, of his parsimony, I think. I should say that he’s managed to save a considerable sum out of his large income—mostly, of course, before taxation rose to its present giddy heights.”
A new idea struck Inspector Craddock. “I suppose he’s left his savings by will to someone? That he can do.”
“Oh, yes, though God knows who he has left it to. Maybe to Emma, but I should rather doubt it. She’ll get her share of the old man’s property. Maybe to Alexander, the grandson.”
“He’s fond of him, is he?” said Craddock.
“Used to be. Of course he was his daughter’s child, not a son’s child. That may have made a difference. And he had quite an affection for Bryan Eastley, Edie’s husband. Of course I don’t know Bryan well, it’s some years since I’ve seen any of the family. But it struck me that he was going to be very much at a loose end after the war. He’s got those qualities that you need in wartime; courage, dash, and a tendency to let the future take care of itself. But I don’t think he’s got any stability. He’ll probably turn into a drifter.”
“As far as you know there’s no peculiar kink in any of the younger generation?”
“Cedric’s an eccentric type, one of those natural rebels. I wouldn’t say he was perfectly normal, but you might say, who is? Harold’s fairly orthodox, not what I call a very pleasant character, coldhearted, eye to the main chance. Alfred’s got a touch of the delinquent about him. He’s a wrong ’un, always was. Saw him taking money out of a missionary box once that they used to keep in the hall. That type of thing. Ah, well, the poor fellow’s dead, I suppose I shouldn’t be talking against him.”
“What about…” Craddock hesitated. “Emma Crackenthorpe?”
“Nice girl, quiet, one doesn’t always know what she’s thinking. Has her own plans and her own ideas, but she keeps them to herself. She’s more character than you might think from her general appearance.”
“You knew Edmund, I suppose, the son who was killed in France?”
“Yes. He was the best of the bunch I’d say. Goodhearted, gay, a nice boy.”
“Did you ever hear that he was going to marry, or had married, a French girl just before he was killed?”
Dr. Morris frowned. “It seems as though I remember something about it,” he said, “but it’s a long time ago.”
“Quite early on in the war, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Ah, well, I dare say he’d have lived to regret it if he had married a foreign wife.”
“There’s some reason to believe that he did do just that,” said Craddock.
In a few brief sentences he gave an account of recent happenings.
“I remember seeing something in the papers about a woman found in a sarcophagus. So it was at Rutherford Hall.”
“And there’s reason to believe that the woman was Edmund Crackenthorpe’s widow.”
“Well, well, that seems extraordinary. More like a novel than real life. But who’d want to kill the poor thing—I mean, how does it tie up with arsenical poisoning in the Crackenthorpe family?”
“In one of two ways,” said Craddock; “but they are both very farfetched. Somebody perhaps is greedy and wants the whole of Josiah Crackenthorpe’s fortune.”
“Damn fool if he does,” said Dr. Morris. “He’ll only have to pay the most stupendous taxes on the income from it.”
Chapter Twenty