Chapter 24 #2
Daisy heard the rustle of paper as he spread out his sheet of newspaper and dumped the contents of the wastepaper basket. “Tangles of grey hair cleaned from a hairbrush, bits of paper … Here, look at this! A torn-up receipt from Asbury’s.”
“Asbury’s?” Tom asked.
“The chemist’s,” the constable told him. “Right by the bridge in Matlock it is.”
Daisy pushed the door open another few inches, enough to watch as Bagshaw sorted out eight scraps of paper from the other odds and ends. Worrall took them from him and pieced them together on the bed.
“Yesterday’s date all right. But it’s not for chloral. Chloral is dispensed as a liquid.”
Tom, peering over his shoulder, rumbled, “What’s it for?”
“‘Miss Birtwhistle, the powders, one at bedtime as needed,’” Worrall read, then, energized, “Could be bromide. Come on, fellows, we’ve got to find the stuff. Sergeant, check the bathroom, would you?”
Daisy hastily backed away. Tom came out, saw her, and raised his eyebrows. Since his forehead reached all the way to the nape of his neck, it was rather like a couple of hairy caterpillars shuffling sideways up an egg.
“Just patrolling.”
“But you heard.”
“Well, yes. It rather looks as if Sybil was right.”
“Sybil? I haven’t heard a lot of the story yet, remember.” As he spoke, he crossed the passage and went into the bathroom.
Daisy followed and leant on the doorpost, watching him turn out the contents of a small, white-painted cabinet. “She wouldn’t hide anything in here. Several people use this bathroom. Sybil is Mrs. Sutherby, my friend. Humphrey’s … secretary.”
“Mistress?” Tom asked bluntly.
“Heavens no! It’s just complicated.”
“The Chief’ll explain if I need to know. Nothing in here.” He straightened and looked round for other possible hiding places.
“You know Humphrey Birtwhistle had been ill for years? Never properly recovered from pneumonia? Sybil was afraid someone was drugging him with some sedative.”
“Sleeping powders, such as potassium bromide. It doesn’t look good for Miss Birtwhistle, but let’s not jump to conclusions. I’ll take this wastebasket across and let Bagshaw deal with it.”
“May I come?”
“No. But you can lurk and I won’t give you away.”
Daisy stretched up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
Standing outside the door of Lorna’s bedroom, she listened to mutterings of, “Nothing here,” and tried to think what the discovery of the chemist’s receipt meant.
As Tom said, they mustn’t jump to conclusions.
Perhaps Lorna had trouble sleeping and took a bromide now and then “as needed.” In that case, they should be easily available, in the drawer of her bedside table, or at least in her chest-of-drawers.
Perhaps the prescription was for some quite different medicine.
But why should she hide the powders if they were for her own legitimate use?
Sybil hadn’t discussed her fears with any of the household, let alone Lorna, so she couldn’t know there was a suspicion of Humphrey having been drugged for years.
On the other hand, supposing her responsible for that, why get a new prescription when she was about to finish off her victim with a different drug?
“Those papers in the fireplace…” said DI Worrall. “Could they have been papers—those little envelopes—of bromide?”
“Better look for yourself, sir.”
“Hmm.”
After a moment’s silence, Tom said, “Don’t think so, but that’s just the top layer. At a guess, they’re pages from the Illustrated London News—I noticed a few were torn out. Should we check what’s underneath?”
“Yes, go ahead.”
A poker clinked against the iron grate.
“Ah!” said Tom. “Half a mo, I’ve got a torch in my pocket.”
Daisy was irresistibly drawn to the doorway. The three men were crouching by the fireplace.
“Well I’ll be damned!” the inspector exclaimed. “What d’you make of this, Mr. Tring?”
“She tried to destroy the medicine by burning the packages. When it wouldn’t burn—it looks as if it half melted—she burnt more paper on top of the mess to conceal it.” Tom raised his voice slightly. “Would she have cleaned out her own grate, Mrs. Fletcher?”
Abashed, Daisy stepped into the room. “Last night, when Sybil and I came to tell her that her brother was dead, she didn’t have a fire at all.
Assuming she never did, or seldom, the maids probably wouldn’t come in here to do it without being given a specific order.
My guess is she’d have felt pretty safe until she had time to deal with it. ”
Worrall stood up. “She must have realised we’d search.”
“I expect so, though I’d be very surprised if she had any idea how thorough modern detectives are.
She doesn’t seem to read widely.” Daisy pointed at the small table by the bed, which held only a prayer book on top of the diminished Illustrated London News.
“They don’t get a daily newspaper. That magazine is not noted for detailed descriptions of police methods.
And she’s pretty isolated up here on the farm.
She wouldn’t have had much, if any, contact with the police.
I could be wrong, but I didn’t get the impression she has friends in Matlock, just went down for shopping and so forth. ”
“And picking up prescriptions,” Worrall said grimly. “Bagshaw, collect a good sample of that mess in a clean envelope. It’ll have to be analysed. Assuming it’s bromide, Mr. Tring, as the doctor suggested, or even some other sedative, what do you think it means?”
“Ah, meaning! I leave that sort of thing to the Chief. Young Piper’s getting to be a fair hand at theorising, too, I must admit.”
If Daisy theorised, Alec called it guesswork, but it came to the same thing. She hadn’t actually worked out a theory yet, though, so she held her tongue.