Chapter 19
NINETEEN
“Daisy, could you give us your impressions of how everyone took the news of Birtwhistle’s death? How they looked, what they said and so on? It’s not evidence but it might help to point us in the right direction.”
Daisy thought back to last night. The one thing she could recall clearly was Ruby’s stark-white face when she rushed into the hall and reported that Humphrey was not breathing.
“I’m not sure. It’s all blurred. As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t just an elderly man dying quietly in his own bed, it was a horrible shock because of Sybil’s suspicions.” She hesitated.
“I think I heard a car.” DI Worrall went out to the passage and across to the window. “Yes, that’s Dr. Knox just pulled up,” he said, returning. “I’ll go and fetch him here, shall I, Mr. Fletcher?”
“If you wouldn’t mind. I’d rather he didn’t talk to anyone else first.”
“Just what I was thinking,” said Worrall, pleased, and went out.
“Last night?” Alec prompted Daisy.
“Roger—Dr. Knox—went off immediately with Ruby. He said something reassuring.…”
“Start with that. Try to remember his exact words, and that may lead you to the rest. You have your notebook on you?”
“Always. One never knows when an idea will strike.”
“Good. Write it all down as it comes to you. Just stay where you are and concentrate, and do for pity’s sake try not to interrupt.”
“You’re not making me leave?”
“I don’t want you talking to the others before I do.”
“But last night, and at breakfast … Though no one was talking much at breakfast. Lorna cooked it, just as usual, as if nothing had happened, and—”
“Just write it all down, would you, love? And while you’re about it, try to remember where everyone was earlier in the evening, and what they were doing. I want to get my thoughts in order before I see the doctor.”
“Sorry.” Reluctantly, Daisy tried to concentrate on Ruby’s entrance into the hall with her alarming announcement and plea for Roger’s help.
Simon had gone with them, hadn’t he? And Myra had burst into tears, she was sure of that. She scribbled a few notes as bits and pieces came back to her. Then DI Worrall ushered in Roger Knox, diverting her attention entirely from last night to the present.
She did her best to look as if she was still scouring her memory for details of last night, head down, pencil poised.
Surely Alec didn’t believe she wouldn’t listen?
He knew her better! Perhaps—dared she hope?
—he actually wanted her to listen so that he could ask for her impressions later.
He ought to have realised by now how helpful she could be, although doubtless he’d continue to describe it as meddling.
From the corner of her eye she saw Alec shake hands with Roger, a good sign as he always tried to avoid it with his major suspects. Roger, his eyes on the police officers, didn’t appear to notice Daisy’s presence off to one side.
“Thank you for coming up here, Doctor.”
“I wouldn’t have left this morning,” Roger said dryly, “if it wasn’t that Dr. Harris, though he agreed to act as my locum, wasn’t at all happy about it.
I thought I’d better spare him the morning surgery.
I would have come back anyway, to see Mrs. Birtwhistle, but I was sure you’d have a few questions for me, as Humphrey’s medical attendant. ”
“We do.”
“I assume you want to know whether I ever prescribed chloral hydrate for him. The answer is, certainly not. He was in need of stimulants, not sedatives.”
“What medicines was he taking?”
“Castor oil. Inactivity inhibits the normal motion—”
“Quite. Anything else?”
“Aspirin, to be taken as needed. He had the occasional rheumatic pains common at his age. And nux vomica, which I was reluctant to prescribe, but having already tried all the safer stimulants … However, Ruby—Mrs. Birtwhistle—told me he didn’t take it last night because he was in good form and he wanted a drink or two.
Nux vomica and alcohol taken together often cause some discomfort. ”
“I took all the medicine bottles and pill boxes last night, sir. They’ve gone for analysis.”
Alec nodded approval. “What about mixing chloral and alcohol, Doctor?”
“Both depressants. The alcohol would enhance the effects of the chloral. What’s more, as chloral is bitter-tasting, the particular drink that Humphrey favoured would tend to conceal the taste. He almost always drank pink gin, that is, gin and bitters.”
After a moment’s thoughtful silence, Alec said, “Suggesting that the drug was introduced into his drink.”
“Such would be my assumption.”
“Thank you, this gives us a place to start. Presumably the glass has been washed, but we’ll test the bottles.” He nodded to Worrall, who went out. “Who poured the drinks?”
Roger hesitated. “I can’t believe—”
“Doctor, anyone who dined here last night can tell me. You just happen to be the first person I’m asking.
Let me assure you, we’re not going to jump to the conclusion that the poisoner must be the person who mixed the pink gins.
I would guess it was probably young Birtwhistle, Simon, rather than his father or uncle? ”
“Well, yes, usually.”
“Did he also hand them about?”
“I didn’t get here till after dinner, and I wasn’t paying much attention, but no, I’m pretty sure he didn’t.”
“Who did?” Alec asked patiently.
“Come to think of it, it was one of Myra’s admirers who handed me my whisky. Ilkton or young Carey, I don’t recall which. You know about them, I take it?”
“We have a list of everyone who was here.”
“I’ve told you I wasn’t here for dinner.
If it was similar to the night before, Ilkton and Carey were vying to demonstrate their helpfulness all evening.
The maids go home well before dinner, you see, so the family pitches in, though not in general their guests.
As for after dinner last night, I couldn’t say who took Humphrey his glass, not even whether it was one of those two, I’m afraid. ”
Nor could Daisy remember. She had sat next to Humphrey at dinner, as she had the night before, and near him afterwards, before the card game started. Simon had poured drinks again, before, at, and after dinner, but who had delivered them she had no notion.
“Who else might it have been?”
“Myra was trying—successfully in the end—to persuade everyone to play Happy Families. A restful change after Racing Demon the night before. Ilkton obviously would have preferred bridge or whist, but inevitably succumbed to her wiles. Miss Birtwhistle and Norman had gone off by then. Heaven alone knows how they spend their evenings.”
“Humphrey was drinking a pink gin cocktail when you arrived after dinner, though?”
“That’s what it looked like.”
“Who was sitting nearest to him at that time?”
“His wife, and … yours? Mrs. Fletcher.”
“My wife,” Alec acknowledged. “If you have any doubts of my impartiality—”
“No, no. It was I who felt the local police ought to be made aware of Mrs. Fletcher’s … connections. I admit I hoped it would bring you here. While I’ve no reason to believe Inspector Worrall is not a capable detective, I was afraid there might be complications in the case beyond his competence.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the possibility that Humphrey’s chronic debility was the result of taking a sedative drug, administered with or without his knowledge.”
“With! Why on earth…?”
“This is what you may understand, whereas I very much doubt whether your colleague would. As long as Humphrey was ill, he didn’t have to acknowledge, to himself or anyone else, that Sybil runs rings round him when it comes to writing ability.
As long as he was too ill to sit at his desk and pen the words and sentences himself, he could keep on thinking of her as his secretary. He had an incentive not to recover.”
“I see what you mean. You’re aware of the snag, of course. At least, I assume he wasn’t fit enough to pop into Matlock, see a different doctor, and buy his own prescription?”
“No. Not the slightest possibility.”
“So one way or another, someone else was involved, whether at his bidding or not.”
“You’re right,” Roger said slowly. “I hadn’t really thought it through—tried to avoid thinking about it, as if that would make it go away.
Which makes nonsense of the whole picture.
The only person he would have trusted was Ruby, and it’s inconceivable that she would agree to assist him in ruining his own health. ”
Alec made no comment on this assertion. “Accepting for the moment the hypothesis that someone was drugging him, were the symptoms consistent with long-term use of chloral?”
Roger frowned. “No. Though there’s nothing hard and fast about it, I would have expected—”
“No need to elaborate at this point, thank you. What drug had you in mind? If you went so far as to wonder.”
“Potassium bromide is the obvious choice. No doctor would hesitate to prescribe a low dose for a patient who claimed to have insomnia. He’d have no means of knowing whether such a claim was true or not.
He’d probably advise against taking it regularly for long periods, which could account for Humphrey’s good spells.
But if the supposed patient showed no untoward symptoms and the doctor wasn’t meticulous about checking dates, he might well go on renewing the prescription endlessly. ”
“You, I take it, have not prescribed potassium bromide for anyone in the household?”
“Certainly not!” Roger bristled.
“I had to ask.”
“What’s more, had anyone asked for bromide, or any sedative, in the past—oh, say eighteen months, I should have been on my guard.”
“Eighteen months.”
“A year is not an undue period for recovery from severe pneumonia, especially as Humphrey is—was—no spring chicken. Though the lungs may clear, the general weakness is hard to throw off. It wasn’t until he started to show no further signs of improvement that I began to wonder what was wrong, and then to worry about my inability to diagnose the problem. ”
“Did you call in a colleague for a second opinion?”