Chapter X.Information ReceivedFor the next day or two, Sir Clinton's interest in the Hassendean case appeared to have faded out; and Inspector Flamborough, after following up one or two clues which eventually proved useless, was beginning to feel perturbed by the lack of direct progress which the investigation showed. Rather to his relief, one morning the Chief Constable summoned him to his office. Flamborough began a somewhat apologetic account of his fruitless investigations; but Sir Clinton cut him short with a word or two of appreciation of his zeal.“Here's something more definite for you to go on,” he suggested. “I've just had a preliminary report from the London man whom we put on to search for the poison. I asked him to let me have a private opinion at the earliest possible moment. His official report will come in later, of course.”“Has he spotted it, sir?” the Inspector inquired eagerly.“He's reached the same conclusion as I did—and as I suppose you did also,” Sir Clinton assured him.Flamborough looked puzzled.“I didn't spot it myself,” he confessed diffidently. “In fact, I don't see how there was anything to show definitely what stuff it was, barring dilatation of the eye-pupils, and that might have been due to various drugs.”“You should never lose an opportunity of exercising your powers of inference, Inspector. I mustn't rob you of this one. Now put together two things: the episode of the mixed melting-point and the phrase about his ‘triumph’ that young Hassendean wrote in his journal. Add the state of the girl's pupils as a third point—and there you are!”Flamborough pondered for a while over this assortment of information, but finally shook his head.“I don't see it yet, sir.”“In that case,” Sir Clinton declared, with the air of one bestowing benevolence, “I think we'd better let it dawn on you slowly. You might be angry with yourself if you realised all of a sudden how simple it is.”He rose to his feet as he spoke.“I think we'll pay a visit to the Croft-Thornton Institute now, and see how Markfield has been getting along with his examination. We may as well have a check, before we begin to speculate too freely.”They found Markfield in his laboratory, and Sir Clinton came to business at once.“We came over to see how you were getting on with that poison business, Dr. Markfield. Can you give us any news?”Markfield indicated a notebook on his desk.“I've got it out, I think. It's all there; but I haven't had time to write a proper report on it yet. It was——”“Hyoscine?” Sir Clinton interrupted.Markfield stared at him with evident appreciation.“You're quite right,” he confirmed, with some surprise. “I suppose you've got private information.”The Chief Constable evaded the point.“I'm asking this question only for our own information; you won't be asked to swear to it in court. What amount of hyoscine do you think was in the body, altogether? I mean, judging from the results you obtained yourself.”Markfield considered for a moment.“I'm giving you a guess, but I think it's fairly near the mark. I wouldn't, of course, take my oath on it. But the very smallest quantity, judging from my results, would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of seven or eight milligrammes.”“Have you looked up anything about the stuff—maximum dose, and so forth?” Sir Clinton inquired.“The maximum dose of hyoscine hydrobromide is down in the books as six-tenths of a milligramme—about a hundredth of a grain in apothecaries’ weights.”“Then she must have swallowed ten or twelve times the maximum dose,” Sir Clinton calculated, after a moment or two of mental arithmetic.He paused for a space, then turned again to Markfield.“I'd like to see the hyoscine in your store here, if you can lay your hands on it easily.”Markfield made no objection.“If you'd come in yesterday, the bottle would have been here, beside me. I've taken it back to the shelf now.”“I suppose you borrowed it to do a mixed melting-point?” Sir Clinton asked.“Yes. When there's only a trace of a stuff to identify, it's the easiest method. But you seem to know something about chemistry?”“About enough to make mistakes with, I'm afraid. It simply happened that someone described the mixed melting-point business to me once; and it stuck in my mind. Now suppose we look at this store of yours.”Markfield led them along a passage and threw open a door at the end.“In here,” he said.“You don't keep it locked?” Sir Clinton inquired casually, as he passed in, followed by the Inspector.“No,” Markfield answered in some surprise. “It's the general chemical store for this department. There's no point in keeping it locked. All our stuffs are here, and it would be a devilish nuisance if one had to fish out a key every time one wanted some chloroform or benzene. We keep the duty-free alcohol locked up, of course. That's necessary under the Customs’ regulations.”Sir Clinton readily agreed.“You're all trustworthy people, naturally,” he admitted, “It's not like a place where you have junior students about who might play thoughtless tricks.”Markfield went over to one of the cases which lined the room, searched along a shelf, and took down a tiny bottle.“Here's the stuff,” he explained, holding it out to the Chief Constable. “That's the hydrobromide, of course—a salt of the alkaloid itself. This is the compound that's used in medicine.”Now that he had got it, Sir Clinton seemed to have little interest in the substance. He handed it across to Flamborough who, after looking at it with would-be sagacity, returned it to Markfield.“There's just one other point that occurs to me,” the Chief Constable explained, as Markfield returned the poison-bottle to its original place. “Have you, by any chance, got an old notebook belonging to young Hassendean on the premises? Anything of the sort would do.”The Inspector could make nothing of this demand and his face betrayed his perplexity as he considered it. Markfield thought for a few moments before replying, evidently trying to recall the existence of any article which would suit Sir Clinton's purpose.“I think I've got a rough notebook of his somewhere in my room,” he said at last. “But it's only a record of weighings and things like that. Would it do?”“The very thing,” Sir Clinton declared, gratefully. “I'd be much obliged if you could lay your hands on it for me now. I hope it isn't troubling you too much.”It was evident from Markfield's expression that he was as much puzzled as the Inspector; and his curiosity seemed to quicken his steps on the way back to his room. After a few minutes’ hunting, he unearthed the notebook of which he was in search and laid it on the table before Sir Clinton. Flamborough, familiar with young Hassendean's writing, had no difficulty in seeing that the notes were in the dead man's hand.Sir Clinton turned over the leaves idly, examining an entry here and there. The last one seemed to satisfy him, and he put an end to his inspection. Flamborough bent over the table and was mystified to find only the following entry on the exposed leaf:Weight of potash bulb=50.7789grs.Weight of potash bulb + CO₂=50.9825grs.───────────Weight of CO₂=0.2046grs.“By the way,” said Sir Clinton casually, “do you happen to have one of your own notebooks at hand—something with the same sort of thing in them?”Markfield, obviously puzzled, went over to a drawer and pulled out a notebook which he passed to the Chief Constable. Again Sir Clinton skimmed over the pages, apparently at random, and then left the second book open beside the first one. Flamborough, determined to miss nothing, examined the exposed page in Markfield's notebook, and was rewarded by this:—Weight of U-tube=24.7792gms.Weight of U-tube + H₂O=24.9047gms.───────────Weight of H₂O=0.1255gms.“Damned if I see what he's driving at,” the Inspector said savagely to himself. “It's Greek to me.”“A careless young fellow,” the Chief Constable pronounced acidly. “My eye caught three blunders in plain arithmetic as I glanced through these notes. There's one on this page here,” he indicated the open book. “He seems to have been a very slapdash sort of person.”“An unreliable young hound!” was Markfield's slightly intensified description. “It was pure influence that kept him here for more than a week. Old Thornton, who put up most of the money for building this place, was interested in him—knew his father, I think—and so we had to keep the young pup here for fear of rasping old Thornton's feelings. Otherwise. . . .”The gesture accompanying the aposiopesis expressed Markfield's idea of the fate which would at once have befallen young Hassendean had his protector's influence been withdrawn.The Chief Constable appeared enlightened by this fresh information.“I couldn't imagine how you came to let him have the run of the place for so long,” he confessed. “But, of course, as things were, it was evidently cheaper to keep him, even if he did no useful work. One can't afford to alienate one's benefactors.”After a pause, he continued, reverting apparently to an earlier line of thought:“Let's see. You made out that something like twelve times the normal dose of hyoscine had been administered?”Markfield nodded his assent, but qualified it in words:“That's a rough figure, remember.”“Of course,” Sir Clinton agreed. “As a matter of fact, the multiple I had in my mind was 15. I suppose it's quite possible that some of the stuff escaped you and that your figure is an under-estimate?”“Quite likely,” Markfield admitted frankly. “I gave you the lowest figure, naturally—a figure I could swear to if it came to the point. As it's a legal case, it's safer to be under than over the mark. But quite probably, as you say, I didn't manage to isolate all the stuff that was really present; and I wouldn't deny that the quantity in the body may have run up to ten milligrammes or even slightly over it.”“Well, it's perhaps hardly worth bothering about,” the Chief Constable concluded. “The main thing is that even at the lowest estimate she must have swallowed enough of the poison to kill her in a reasonably short time.”With this he seemed satisfied, and after a few questions about the preparation and submission of Markfield's official report, he took his leave. As he turned away, however, a fresh thought seemed to strike him.“By the way, Dr. Markfield, do you know if Miss Hailsham's here this morning?”“I believe so,” Markfield answered. “I saw her as I came in.”“I'd like to have a few words with her,” Sir Clinton suggested.“Officially?” Markfield demanded. “You're not going to worry the girl, are you? If it's anything I can tell you about, I'd be only too glad, you know. It's not very nice for a girl to have the tale going round that she's been hauled in by the police in a murder case.”The Chief Constable conceded the point without ado.“Then perhaps you could send for her and we could speak to her in here. It would be more private, and there need be no talk about it outside.”“Very well,” Markfield acquiesced at once. “I think that would be better. I'll send for her now.”He rang a bell and despatched a boy with a message. In a few minutes a tap on the door sounded, and Markfield ushered Norma Hailsham into the room. Inspector Flamborough glanced at her with interest, to see how far his conception of her personality agreed with the reality. She was a girl apparently between twenty and twenty-five, dressed with scrupulous neatness. Quite obviously, she spent money freely on her clothes and knew how to get value for what she spent. But as his eyes travelled up to her face, the Inspector received a more vivid impression. Her features were striking rather than handsome, and Flamborough noted especially the squarish chin and the long thin-lipped flexible mouth.“H'm!” he commented to himself. “She might flash up in a moment, but with that jaw and those lips she wouldn't cool down again in a hurry. I was right when I put her down as a vindictive type. Shouldn't much care to have trouble with her myself.”He glanced at Sir Clinton for tacit instructions, but apparently the Chief Constable proposed to take charge of the interview.“Would you sit down, Miss Hailsham,” Sir Clinton suggested, drawing forward a chair for the girl.Flamborough noticed with professional interest that by his apparently casual courtesy, the Chief Constable had unobtrusively manœuvred the girl into a position in which her face was clearly illuminated by the light from the window.“This is Inspector Flamborough,” Sir Clinton went on, with a gesture of introduction. “We should like to ask you one or two questions about an awkward case we have in our hands—the Hassendean business. I'm afraid it will be painful for you; but I'm sure you'll give us what help you can.”Norma Hailsham's thin lips set in a hard line at his first words, but the movement was apparently involuntary, for she relaxed them again as Sir Clinton finished his remarks.“I shall be quite glad to give any help I can,” she said in a level voice.Flamborough, studying her expression, noticed a swift shift of her glance from one to the other of the three men before her.“She's a bit over-selfconscious,” he judged privately. “But she's the regular look-monger type, anyhow; and quite likely she makes play with her eyes when she's talking to any man.”Sir Clinton seemed to be making a merit of frankness:“I really haven't any definite questions I want to ask you, Miss Hailsham,” he confessed. “What we hoped was that you might have something to tell us which indirectly might throw some light on this affair. You see, we come into it without knowing anything about the people involved, and naturally any trifle may help us. Now if I'm not mistaken, you knew Mr. Hassendean fairly well?”“I was engaged to him at one time. He broke off the engagement for various reasons. That's common knowledge, I believe.”“Could you give us any of the reasons? I don't wish to pry, you understand; but I think it's an important point.”Miss Hailsham's face showed that he had touched a sore place.“He threw me over for another woman—brutally.”“Mrs. Silverdale?” Sir Clinton inquired.“Yes, that creature.”“Ah! Now I'd like to put a blunt question. Was your engagement, while it lasted, a happy one? I mean, of course, before he was attracted to Mrs. Silverdale.”Norma Hailsham sat with knitted brows for a few moments before answering.“That's difficult to answer,” she pointed out at last. “I must confess that I always felt he was thinking more of himself than of me, and it was a disappointment. But, you see, I was very keen on him; and that made a difference, of course.”“What led to the breaking of your engagement?”“You mean what led up to it? Well, we were having continual friction over Yvonne Silverdale. He was neglecting me and spending his time with her. Naturally, I spoke to him about it more than once. I wasn't going to be slighted on account of that woman.”There was no mistaking the under-current of animosity in the girl's voice in the last sentence. Sir Clinton ignored it.“What were your ideas about the relations between Mr. Hassendean and Mrs. Silverdale?”Miss Hailsham's thin lips curled in undisguised contempt as she heard the question. She made a gesture as though averting herself from something distasteful.“It's hardly necessary to enter intothat, is it?” she demanded. “You can judge for yourself.”But though she verbally evaded the point, the tone in which she spoke was sufficient to betray her private views on the subject. Then with intense bitterness mingled with a certain malicious joy, she added:“She got what she deserved in the end. I don't pretend I'm sorry. I think they were both well served.”Then her temper, which hitherto she had kept under control, broke from restraint:“I don't care who knows it! They deserved all they got, both of them. What business had she—with a husband of her own—to come and lure him away? She made him break off his engagement to me simply to gratify her own vanity. You don't expect me to shed tears over them after that? One can forgive a good deal, but there's no use making a pretence in things like that. She hit me as hard as she could, and I'm glad she's got her deserts. I warned him at the time that he wouldn't come off so well as he thought; and he laughed in my face when I said it. Well, it's my turn to laugh. The account's even.”And she actually did laugh, with a catch of hysteria in the laughter. It needed no great skill in psychology to see that wounded pride shared with disappointed passion in causing this outbreak.Sir Clinton checked the hysteria before it gained complete hold over her.“I'm afraid you haven't told us anything that was new to us, Miss Hailsham,” he said, frigidly. “This melodramatic business gets us no further forward.”The girl looked at him with hard eyes.“What help do you expect from me?” she demanded. “I'm not anxious to see him avenged—far from it.”Sir Clinton evidently realised that nothing was to be gained by pursuing that line of inquiry. Whether the girl had any suspicions or not, she certainly did not intend to supply information which might lead to the capture of the murderer. The Chief Constable waited until she had become calmer before putting his next question:“Do you happen to know anything about an alkaloid called hyoscine, Miss Hailsham?”“Hyoscine?” she repeated. “Yes, Avice Deepcar's working on it just now. She's been at it for some time under Dr. Silverdale's direction.”Flamborough, glancing surreptitiously at Markfield, noted an angry start which the chemist apparently could not suppress. Put on the alert by this, the Inspector reflected that Markfield himself must have had this piece of information, and had refrained from volunteering it.“I meant as regards its properties,” Sir Clinton interposed. “I'm not an expert in these things like you chemical people.”“I'm not an alkaloid expert,” Miss Hailsham objected. “All I can remember about it is that it's used in Twilight Sleep.”“I believe it is, now that you mention it,” Sir Clinton agreed, politely. “By the way, have you a car, Miss Hailsham?”“Yes. A Morris-Oxford four-seater.”“A saloon?”“No, a touring model. Why do you ask?”“Someone's been asking for information about a car which seems to have knocked a man over on the night of the last fog. You weren't out that night, I suppose, Miss Hailsham?”“I was, as it happened. I went out to a dance. But I'd a sore throat; and the fog made it worse; so I came away very early and got home as best I could. But it wasn't my car that knocked anyone down. I never had an accident in my life.”“You might have been excused in that fog, I think, even if you had a collision. But evidently it's not your car we're after. What was the number of the car we heard about, Inspector?”Flamborough consulted his notebook.“GX.9074, sir.”“Say that again,” Markfield demanded, pricking up his ears.“GX.9074 was the number.”“That's the number of my car,” Markfield volunteered.He thought for some time, apparently trying to retrace his experiences in the fog. At last his face lighted up.“Oh, I guess I know what it is. When I was piloting Dr. Ringwood that night, a fellow nearly walked straight into my front mudguard. I may have hurt his feelings by what I said about his brains, but I swear I didn't touch him with the car.”“Not our affair,” Sir Clinton hastened to assure him. “It's a matter for your insurance company if anything comes of it. And I gathered from Dr. Ringwood that you didn't exactly break records in your trip across town, so I doubt if you need worry.”“I shan't,” said Markfield, crossly. “You can refer him to me if he comes to you again.”“We'd nothing to do with the matter,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “He was told he'd get the owner's address from the County Council. I expect he got into a calmer frame of mind when he'd had time to think.”He turned to Miss Hailsham, who seemed to have recovered complete control over herself during this interlude.“I think that's all we need worry you with, Miss Hailsham. I'm sorry that we put you to so much trouble.”As a sign that the interview was at an end, he moved over to open the door for her.“I certainly don't wish you success,” she said icily, as she left the room.“Well, I think that's all we have to do here, Inspector,” Sir Clinton said as he turned back from the open door. “We mustn't take up any more of Dr. Markfield's time. I don't want to hurry you too much,” he added to Markfield, “but you'll let us have your official report as soon as you can, won't you?”Markfield promised with a nod, and the two officials left the building. When they reached headquarters again, Sir Clinton led the way to his own office.“Sit down for a moment or two, Inspector,” he invited. “You may as well glance over the London man's report when you're about it. Here it is—not for actual use, of course, until we get the official version from him.”He passed over a paper which Flamborough unfolded.“By the way, sir,” the Inspector inquired before beginning to read, “is there any reason for keeping back this information? These infernal reporters are all over me for details; and if this poison affair could be published without doing any harm, I might as well dole it out to them to keep them quiet. They haven't had much from me in the last twenty-four hours, and it's better to give them what we can.”Sir Clinton seemed to attach some importance to this matter, for he considered it for a few seconds before replying.“Let them have the name of the stuff,” he directed at last. “I don't think I'd supply them with any details, though. I'm quite satisfied about the name of the drug, but the dose is still more or less a matter of opinion, and we'd better not say anything about that.”Flamborough glanced up from the report in his hand.“Markfield and the London man both seem to put the dose round about the same figure—eight milligrammes,” he said.“Both of them must be super-sharp workers,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “I don't profess to be a chemist, Inspector, but I know enough about things to realise that they've done a bit of a feat there. However, let's get on to something more immediately interesting. What did you make of the Hailsham girl?”“What did I make of her?” Flamborough repeated, in order to gain a little time. “I thought she was more or less what I'd expected her to be, sir. A hard vixen with a good opinion of herself—and simply mad with rage at being jilted: that's what I made of her. Revengeful, too. And a bit vulgar, sir. No decent girl would talk like that about a dead man to a set of strangers.”“She hadn't much to tell us that was useful,” Sir Clinton said, keeping to the main point. “And I quite agree with you as to the general tone.”Flamborough turned to a matter which had puzzled him during their visit to the Institute:“What did you want young Hassendean's notebook for, sir? I didn't quite make that out.”“Why, you saw what I got out of it: arithmetical errors which proved conclusively that he was a careless worker who didn't take any trouble at all to verify his results.”“I had a kind of notion that you got more out of it than that, sir, or you wouldn't have asked to see Markfield's notebook as well. It doesn't take someone else's notebook to spot slips in a man's arithmetic, surely.”Sir Clinton gazed blandly at his subordinate:“Now that you've got that length, it would be a pity to spoil your pleasure in the rest of the inference. Just think it out and tell me the result, to see if we both reach the same conclusion independently. You'll find a weights-and-measures conversion table useful.”“Conversion table, sir?” asked the Inspector, evidently quite at sea.“Yes. ‘One metre equals 39·37 inches,’ and all that sort of thing. The sort of stuff one used at school, you know.”“Too deep for me, sir,” the Inspector acknowledged ruefully. “You'll need to tell me the answer. And that reminds me, what made you ask whether the dose could have been fifteen times the maximum?”The Chief Constable was just about to take pity on his subordinate when the desk-telephone rang sharply. Sir Clinton picked up the receiver.“. . . Yes. Inspector Flamborough is here.”He handed the receiver across to the Inspector, who conducted a disjointed conversation with the person at the other end of the wire. At length Flamborough put down the instrument and turned to Sir Clinton with an expression of satisfaction on his face.“We're on to something, sir. That was Fossaway ringing up from Fountain Street. It seems a man called there a few minutes ago and began fishing round to know if there was any likelihood of a reward being offered in connection with the bungalow case. He seemed as if he might know something, and they handed him over to Detective-Sergeant Fossaway to see what he could make of him. Fossaway's fairly satisfied that there's something behind it, though he could extract nothing whatever from the fellow in the way of definite statements.”“Has Fossaway got him there still?”“No, sir. He'd no power to detain him, of course; and the fellow turned stubborn in the end and went off without saying anything definite.”“I hope they haven't lost him.”“Oh, no, sir. They know him quite well.”“What sort of person is he, then?”“A nasty type, sir. He keeps one of these little low-down shops where you can buy a lot of queer things. Once we nearly had him over the sale of some postcards, but he was too clever for us at the last moment. Then he was up in an assault case: he'd been wandering round the Park after dark, disturbing couples with a flash-lamp. A thoroughly low-down little creature. His name's Whalley.”Sir Clinton's face showed very plainly his view of the activities of Mr. Whalley.“Well, so long as they can lay their hands on him any time we need him, it's all right. I think we'll persuade him to talk. By the way, was this lamp-flashing stunt of his done for æsthetic enjoyment, or was he doing a bit of blackmailing on the quiet?”“Well, nobody actually lodged a complaint against him; but there's no saying whether people paid him or not. His record doesn't make it improbable that he might do something in that line, if he could manage to pull it off.”“Then I'll leave Mr. Whalley to your care, Inspector. He sounds interesting, if you can induce him to squeak.”
For the next day or two, Sir Clinton's interest in the Hassendean case appeared to have faded out; and Inspector Flamborough, after following up one or two clues which eventually proved useless, was beginning to feel perturbed by the lack of direct progress which the investigation showed. Rather to his relief, one morning the Chief Constable summoned him to his office. Flamborough began a somewhat apologetic account of his fruitless investigations; but Sir Clinton cut him short with a word or two of appreciation of his zeal.
“Here's something more definite for you to go on,” he suggested. “I've just had a preliminary report from the London man whom we put on to search for the poison. I asked him to let me have a private opinion at the earliest possible moment. His official report will come in later, of course.”
“Has he spotted it, sir?” the Inspector inquired eagerly.
“He's reached the same conclusion as I did—and as I suppose you did also,” Sir Clinton assured him.
Flamborough looked puzzled.
“I didn't spot it myself,” he confessed diffidently. “In fact, I don't see how there was anything to show definitely what stuff it was, barring dilatation of the eye-pupils, and that might have been due to various drugs.”
“You should never lose an opportunity of exercising your powers of inference, Inspector. I mustn't rob you of this one. Now put together two things: the episode of the mixed melting-point and the phrase about his ‘triumph’ that young Hassendean wrote in his journal. Add the state of the girl's pupils as a third point—and there you are!”
Flamborough pondered for a while over this assortment of information, but finally shook his head.
“I don't see it yet, sir.”
“In that case,” Sir Clinton declared, with the air of one bestowing benevolence, “I think we'd better let it dawn on you slowly. You might be angry with yourself if you realised all of a sudden how simple it is.”
He rose to his feet as he spoke.
“I think we'll pay a visit to the Croft-Thornton Institute now, and see how Markfield has been getting along with his examination. We may as well have a check, before we begin to speculate too freely.”
They found Markfield in his laboratory, and Sir Clinton came to business at once.
“We came over to see how you were getting on with that poison business, Dr. Markfield. Can you give us any news?”
Markfield indicated a notebook on his desk.
“I've got it out, I think. It's all there; but I haven't had time to write a proper report on it yet. It was——”
“Hyoscine?” Sir Clinton interrupted.
Markfield stared at him with evident appreciation.
“You're quite right,” he confirmed, with some surprise. “I suppose you've got private information.”
The Chief Constable evaded the point.
“I'm asking this question only for our own information; you won't be asked to swear to it in court. What amount of hyoscine do you think was in the body, altogether? I mean, judging from the results you obtained yourself.”
Markfield considered for a moment.
“I'm giving you a guess, but I think it's fairly near the mark. I wouldn't, of course, take my oath on it. But the very smallest quantity, judging from my results, would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of seven or eight milligrammes.”
“Have you looked up anything about the stuff—maximum dose, and so forth?” Sir Clinton inquired.
“The maximum dose of hyoscine hydrobromide is down in the books as six-tenths of a milligramme—about a hundredth of a grain in apothecaries’ weights.”
“Then she must have swallowed ten or twelve times the maximum dose,” Sir Clinton calculated, after a moment or two of mental arithmetic.
He paused for a space, then turned again to Markfield.
“I'd like to see the hyoscine in your store here, if you can lay your hands on it easily.”
Markfield made no objection.
“If you'd come in yesterday, the bottle would have been here, beside me. I've taken it back to the shelf now.”
“I suppose you borrowed it to do a mixed melting-point?” Sir Clinton asked.
“Yes. When there's only a trace of a stuff to identify, it's the easiest method. But you seem to know something about chemistry?”
“About enough to make mistakes with, I'm afraid. It simply happened that someone described the mixed melting-point business to me once; and it stuck in my mind. Now suppose we look at this store of yours.”
Markfield led them along a passage and threw open a door at the end.
“In here,” he said.
“You don't keep it locked?” Sir Clinton inquired casually, as he passed in, followed by the Inspector.
“No,” Markfield answered in some surprise. “It's the general chemical store for this department. There's no point in keeping it locked. All our stuffs are here, and it would be a devilish nuisance if one had to fish out a key every time one wanted some chloroform or benzene. We keep the duty-free alcohol locked up, of course. That's necessary under the Customs’ regulations.”
Sir Clinton readily agreed.
“You're all trustworthy people, naturally,” he admitted, “It's not like a place where you have junior students about who might play thoughtless tricks.”
Markfield went over to one of the cases which lined the room, searched along a shelf, and took down a tiny bottle.
“Here's the stuff,” he explained, holding it out to the Chief Constable. “That's the hydrobromide, of course—a salt of the alkaloid itself. This is the compound that's used in medicine.”
Now that he had got it, Sir Clinton seemed to have little interest in the substance. He handed it across to Flamborough who, after looking at it with would-be sagacity, returned it to Markfield.
“There's just one other point that occurs to me,” the Chief Constable explained, as Markfield returned the poison-bottle to its original place. “Have you, by any chance, got an old notebook belonging to young Hassendean on the premises? Anything of the sort would do.”
The Inspector could make nothing of this demand and his face betrayed his perplexity as he considered it. Markfield thought for a few moments before replying, evidently trying to recall the existence of any article which would suit Sir Clinton's purpose.
“I think I've got a rough notebook of his somewhere in my room,” he said at last. “But it's only a record of weighings and things like that. Would it do?”
“The very thing,” Sir Clinton declared, gratefully. “I'd be much obliged if you could lay your hands on it for me now. I hope it isn't troubling you too much.”
It was evident from Markfield's expression that he was as much puzzled as the Inspector; and his curiosity seemed to quicken his steps on the way back to his room. After a few minutes’ hunting, he unearthed the notebook of which he was in search and laid it on the table before Sir Clinton. Flamborough, familiar with young Hassendean's writing, had no difficulty in seeing that the notes were in the dead man's hand.
Sir Clinton turned over the leaves idly, examining an entry here and there. The last one seemed to satisfy him, and he put an end to his inspection. Flamborough bent over the table and was mystified to find only the following entry on the exposed leaf:
“By the way,” said Sir Clinton casually, “do you happen to have one of your own notebooks at hand—something with the same sort of thing in them?”
Markfield, obviously puzzled, went over to a drawer and pulled out a notebook which he passed to the Chief Constable. Again Sir Clinton skimmed over the pages, apparently at random, and then left the second book open beside the first one. Flamborough, determined to miss nothing, examined the exposed page in Markfield's notebook, and was rewarded by this:—
“Damned if I see what he's driving at,” the Inspector said savagely to himself. “It's Greek to me.”
“A careless young fellow,” the Chief Constable pronounced acidly. “My eye caught three blunders in plain arithmetic as I glanced through these notes. There's one on this page here,” he indicated the open book. “He seems to have been a very slapdash sort of person.”
“An unreliable young hound!” was Markfield's slightly intensified description. “It was pure influence that kept him here for more than a week. Old Thornton, who put up most of the money for building this place, was interested in him—knew his father, I think—and so we had to keep the young pup here for fear of rasping old Thornton's feelings. Otherwise. . . .”
The gesture accompanying the aposiopesis expressed Markfield's idea of the fate which would at once have befallen young Hassendean had his protector's influence been withdrawn.
The Chief Constable appeared enlightened by this fresh information.
“I couldn't imagine how you came to let him have the run of the place for so long,” he confessed. “But, of course, as things were, it was evidently cheaper to keep him, even if he did no useful work. One can't afford to alienate one's benefactors.”
After a pause, he continued, reverting apparently to an earlier line of thought:
“Let's see. You made out that something like twelve times the normal dose of hyoscine had been administered?”
Markfield nodded his assent, but qualified it in words:
“That's a rough figure, remember.”
“Of course,” Sir Clinton agreed. “As a matter of fact, the multiple I had in my mind was 15. I suppose it's quite possible that some of the stuff escaped you and that your figure is an under-estimate?”
“Quite likely,” Markfield admitted frankly. “I gave you the lowest figure, naturally—a figure I could swear to if it came to the point. As it's a legal case, it's safer to be under than over the mark. But quite probably, as you say, I didn't manage to isolate all the stuff that was really present; and I wouldn't deny that the quantity in the body may have run up to ten milligrammes or even slightly over it.”
“Well, it's perhaps hardly worth bothering about,” the Chief Constable concluded. “The main thing is that even at the lowest estimate she must have swallowed enough of the poison to kill her in a reasonably short time.”
With this he seemed satisfied, and after a few questions about the preparation and submission of Markfield's official report, he took his leave. As he turned away, however, a fresh thought seemed to strike him.
“By the way, Dr. Markfield, do you know if Miss Hailsham's here this morning?”
“I believe so,” Markfield answered. “I saw her as I came in.”
“I'd like to have a few words with her,” Sir Clinton suggested.
“Officially?” Markfield demanded. “You're not going to worry the girl, are you? If it's anything I can tell you about, I'd be only too glad, you know. It's not very nice for a girl to have the tale going round that she's been hauled in by the police in a murder case.”
The Chief Constable conceded the point without ado.
“Then perhaps you could send for her and we could speak to her in here. It would be more private, and there need be no talk about it outside.”
“Very well,” Markfield acquiesced at once. “I think that would be better. I'll send for her now.”
He rang a bell and despatched a boy with a message. In a few minutes a tap on the door sounded, and Markfield ushered Norma Hailsham into the room. Inspector Flamborough glanced at her with interest, to see how far his conception of her personality agreed with the reality. She was a girl apparently between twenty and twenty-five, dressed with scrupulous neatness. Quite obviously, she spent money freely on her clothes and knew how to get value for what she spent. But as his eyes travelled up to her face, the Inspector received a more vivid impression. Her features were striking rather than handsome, and Flamborough noted especially the squarish chin and the long thin-lipped flexible mouth.
“H'm!” he commented to himself. “She might flash up in a moment, but with that jaw and those lips she wouldn't cool down again in a hurry. I was right when I put her down as a vindictive type. Shouldn't much care to have trouble with her myself.”
He glanced at Sir Clinton for tacit instructions, but apparently the Chief Constable proposed to take charge of the interview.
“Would you sit down, Miss Hailsham,” Sir Clinton suggested, drawing forward a chair for the girl.
Flamborough noticed with professional interest that by his apparently casual courtesy, the Chief Constable had unobtrusively manœuvred the girl into a position in which her face was clearly illuminated by the light from the window.
“This is Inspector Flamborough,” Sir Clinton went on, with a gesture of introduction. “We should like to ask you one or two questions about an awkward case we have in our hands—the Hassendean business. I'm afraid it will be painful for you; but I'm sure you'll give us what help you can.”
Norma Hailsham's thin lips set in a hard line at his first words, but the movement was apparently involuntary, for she relaxed them again as Sir Clinton finished his remarks.
“I shall be quite glad to give any help I can,” she said in a level voice.
Flamborough, studying her expression, noticed a swift shift of her glance from one to the other of the three men before her.
“She's a bit over-selfconscious,” he judged privately. “But she's the regular look-monger type, anyhow; and quite likely she makes play with her eyes when she's talking to any man.”
Sir Clinton seemed to be making a merit of frankness:
“I really haven't any definite questions I want to ask you, Miss Hailsham,” he confessed. “What we hoped was that you might have something to tell us which indirectly might throw some light on this affair. You see, we come into it without knowing anything about the people involved, and naturally any trifle may help us. Now if I'm not mistaken, you knew Mr. Hassendean fairly well?”
“I was engaged to him at one time. He broke off the engagement for various reasons. That's common knowledge, I believe.”
“Could you give us any of the reasons? I don't wish to pry, you understand; but I think it's an important point.”
Miss Hailsham's face showed that he had touched a sore place.
“He threw me over for another woman—brutally.”
“Mrs. Silverdale?” Sir Clinton inquired.
“Yes, that creature.”
“Ah! Now I'd like to put a blunt question. Was your engagement, while it lasted, a happy one? I mean, of course, before he was attracted to Mrs. Silverdale.”
Norma Hailsham sat with knitted brows for a few moments before answering.
“That's difficult to answer,” she pointed out at last. “I must confess that I always felt he was thinking more of himself than of me, and it was a disappointment. But, you see, I was very keen on him; and that made a difference, of course.”
“What led to the breaking of your engagement?”
“You mean what led up to it? Well, we were having continual friction over Yvonne Silverdale. He was neglecting me and spending his time with her. Naturally, I spoke to him about it more than once. I wasn't going to be slighted on account of that woman.”
There was no mistaking the under-current of animosity in the girl's voice in the last sentence. Sir Clinton ignored it.
“What were your ideas about the relations between Mr. Hassendean and Mrs. Silverdale?”
Miss Hailsham's thin lips curled in undisguised contempt as she heard the question. She made a gesture as though averting herself from something distasteful.
“It's hardly necessary to enter intothat, is it?” she demanded. “You can judge for yourself.”
But though she verbally evaded the point, the tone in which she spoke was sufficient to betray her private views on the subject. Then with intense bitterness mingled with a certain malicious joy, she added:
“She got what she deserved in the end. I don't pretend I'm sorry. I think they were both well served.”
Then her temper, which hitherto she had kept under control, broke from restraint:
“I don't care who knows it! They deserved all they got, both of them. What business had she—with a husband of her own—to come and lure him away? She made him break off his engagement to me simply to gratify her own vanity. You don't expect me to shed tears over them after that? One can forgive a good deal, but there's no use making a pretence in things like that. She hit me as hard as she could, and I'm glad she's got her deserts. I warned him at the time that he wouldn't come off so well as he thought; and he laughed in my face when I said it. Well, it's my turn to laugh. The account's even.”
And she actually did laugh, with a catch of hysteria in the laughter. It needed no great skill in psychology to see that wounded pride shared with disappointed passion in causing this outbreak.
Sir Clinton checked the hysteria before it gained complete hold over her.
“I'm afraid you haven't told us anything that was new to us, Miss Hailsham,” he said, frigidly. “This melodramatic business gets us no further forward.”
The girl looked at him with hard eyes.
“What help do you expect from me?” she demanded. “I'm not anxious to see him avenged—far from it.”
Sir Clinton evidently realised that nothing was to be gained by pursuing that line of inquiry. Whether the girl had any suspicions or not, she certainly did not intend to supply information which might lead to the capture of the murderer. The Chief Constable waited until she had become calmer before putting his next question:
“Do you happen to know anything about an alkaloid called hyoscine, Miss Hailsham?”
“Hyoscine?” she repeated. “Yes, Avice Deepcar's working on it just now. She's been at it for some time under Dr. Silverdale's direction.”
Flamborough, glancing surreptitiously at Markfield, noted an angry start which the chemist apparently could not suppress. Put on the alert by this, the Inspector reflected that Markfield himself must have had this piece of information, and had refrained from volunteering it.
“I meant as regards its properties,” Sir Clinton interposed. “I'm not an expert in these things like you chemical people.”
“I'm not an alkaloid expert,” Miss Hailsham objected. “All I can remember about it is that it's used in Twilight Sleep.”
“I believe it is, now that you mention it,” Sir Clinton agreed, politely. “By the way, have you a car, Miss Hailsham?”
“Yes. A Morris-Oxford four-seater.”
“A saloon?”
“No, a touring model. Why do you ask?”
“Someone's been asking for information about a car which seems to have knocked a man over on the night of the last fog. You weren't out that night, I suppose, Miss Hailsham?”
“I was, as it happened. I went out to a dance. But I'd a sore throat; and the fog made it worse; so I came away very early and got home as best I could. But it wasn't my car that knocked anyone down. I never had an accident in my life.”
“You might have been excused in that fog, I think, even if you had a collision. But evidently it's not your car we're after. What was the number of the car we heard about, Inspector?”
Flamborough consulted his notebook.
“GX.9074, sir.”
“Say that again,” Markfield demanded, pricking up his ears.
“GX.9074 was the number.”
“That's the number of my car,” Markfield volunteered.
He thought for some time, apparently trying to retrace his experiences in the fog. At last his face lighted up.
“Oh, I guess I know what it is. When I was piloting Dr. Ringwood that night, a fellow nearly walked straight into my front mudguard. I may have hurt his feelings by what I said about his brains, but I swear I didn't touch him with the car.”
“Not our affair,” Sir Clinton hastened to assure him. “It's a matter for your insurance company if anything comes of it. And I gathered from Dr. Ringwood that you didn't exactly break records in your trip across town, so I doubt if you need worry.”
“I shan't,” said Markfield, crossly. “You can refer him to me if he comes to you again.”
“We'd nothing to do with the matter,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “He was told he'd get the owner's address from the County Council. I expect he got into a calmer frame of mind when he'd had time to think.”
He turned to Miss Hailsham, who seemed to have recovered complete control over herself during this interlude.
“I think that's all we need worry you with, Miss Hailsham. I'm sorry that we put you to so much trouble.”
As a sign that the interview was at an end, he moved over to open the door for her.
“I certainly don't wish you success,” she said icily, as she left the room.
“Well, I think that's all we have to do here, Inspector,” Sir Clinton said as he turned back from the open door. “We mustn't take up any more of Dr. Markfield's time. I don't want to hurry you too much,” he added to Markfield, “but you'll let us have your official report as soon as you can, won't you?”
Markfield promised with a nod, and the two officials left the building. When they reached headquarters again, Sir Clinton led the way to his own office.
“Sit down for a moment or two, Inspector,” he invited. “You may as well glance over the London man's report when you're about it. Here it is—not for actual use, of course, until we get the official version from him.”
He passed over a paper which Flamborough unfolded.
“By the way, sir,” the Inspector inquired before beginning to read, “is there any reason for keeping back this information? These infernal reporters are all over me for details; and if this poison affair could be published without doing any harm, I might as well dole it out to them to keep them quiet. They haven't had much from me in the last twenty-four hours, and it's better to give them what we can.”
Sir Clinton seemed to attach some importance to this matter, for he considered it for a few seconds before replying.
“Let them have the name of the stuff,” he directed at last. “I don't think I'd supply them with any details, though. I'm quite satisfied about the name of the drug, but the dose is still more or less a matter of opinion, and we'd better not say anything about that.”
Flamborough glanced up from the report in his hand.
“Markfield and the London man both seem to put the dose round about the same figure—eight milligrammes,” he said.
“Both of them must be super-sharp workers,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “I don't profess to be a chemist, Inspector, but I know enough about things to realise that they've done a bit of a feat there. However, let's get on to something more immediately interesting. What did you make of the Hailsham girl?”
“What did I make of her?” Flamborough repeated, in order to gain a little time. “I thought she was more or less what I'd expected her to be, sir. A hard vixen with a good opinion of herself—and simply mad with rage at being jilted: that's what I made of her. Revengeful, too. And a bit vulgar, sir. No decent girl would talk like that about a dead man to a set of strangers.”
“She hadn't much to tell us that was useful,” Sir Clinton said, keeping to the main point. “And I quite agree with you as to the general tone.”
Flamborough turned to a matter which had puzzled him during their visit to the Institute:
“What did you want young Hassendean's notebook for, sir? I didn't quite make that out.”
“Why, you saw what I got out of it: arithmetical errors which proved conclusively that he was a careless worker who didn't take any trouble at all to verify his results.”
“I had a kind of notion that you got more out of it than that, sir, or you wouldn't have asked to see Markfield's notebook as well. It doesn't take someone else's notebook to spot slips in a man's arithmetic, surely.”
Sir Clinton gazed blandly at his subordinate:
“Now that you've got that length, it would be a pity to spoil your pleasure in the rest of the inference. Just think it out and tell me the result, to see if we both reach the same conclusion independently. You'll find a weights-and-measures conversion table useful.”
“Conversion table, sir?” asked the Inspector, evidently quite at sea.
“Yes. ‘One metre equals 39·37 inches,’ and all that sort of thing. The sort of stuff one used at school, you know.”
“Too deep for me, sir,” the Inspector acknowledged ruefully. “You'll need to tell me the answer. And that reminds me, what made you ask whether the dose could have been fifteen times the maximum?”
The Chief Constable was just about to take pity on his subordinate when the desk-telephone rang sharply. Sir Clinton picked up the receiver.
“. . . Yes. Inspector Flamborough is here.”
He handed the receiver across to the Inspector, who conducted a disjointed conversation with the person at the other end of the wire. At length Flamborough put down the instrument and turned to Sir Clinton with an expression of satisfaction on his face.
“We're on to something, sir. That was Fossaway ringing up from Fountain Street. It seems a man called there a few minutes ago and began fishing round to know if there was any likelihood of a reward being offered in connection with the bungalow case. He seemed as if he might know something, and they handed him over to Detective-Sergeant Fossaway to see what he could make of him. Fossaway's fairly satisfied that there's something behind it, though he could extract nothing whatever from the fellow in the way of definite statements.”
“Has Fossaway got him there still?”
“No, sir. He'd no power to detain him, of course; and the fellow turned stubborn in the end and went off without saying anything definite.”
“I hope they haven't lost him.”
“Oh, no, sir. They know him quite well.”
“What sort of person is he, then?”
“A nasty type, sir. He keeps one of these little low-down shops where you can buy a lot of queer things. Once we nearly had him over the sale of some postcards, but he was too clever for us at the last moment. Then he was up in an assault case: he'd been wandering round the Park after dark, disturbing couples with a flash-lamp. A thoroughly low-down little creature. His name's Whalley.”
Sir Clinton's face showed very plainly his view of the activities of Mr. Whalley.
“Well, so long as they can lay their hands on him any time we need him, it's all right. I think we'll persuade him to talk. By the way, was this lamp-flashing stunt of his done for æsthetic enjoyment, or was he doing a bit of blackmailing on the quiet?”
“Well, nobody actually lodged a complaint against him; but there's no saying whether people paid him or not. His record doesn't make it improbable that he might do something in that line, if he could manage to pull it off.”
“Then I'll leave Mr. Whalley to your care, Inspector. He sounds interesting, if you can induce him to squeak.”