Part 12

“Poor thing. But I’m afraid some of our visitors will. And they had better not, you know.” At last he got rid of the lady and turned the key in the lock and stood looking at it. “Yes, quite natural, but very convenient,” said he, and turned away from it and contemplated a big easy chair. The loose cushion on the seat showed that somebody had been sitting in it, a fact not in itself remarkable. But there was a tiny smear of blood on the arm still wet. He picked up the cushion. On the under side was a larger smear of blood. Mr. Fortune’s brow contracted. “The unknown murderer cuts her throat--comes over here--makes a mess on the chair--turns the cushion over--and sits down--to watch the woman die. This is rather diabolical.” He began to wander round the room. It offered him no other signs but some drops of blood on the hearthrug and the hearth. He knelt down and peered into the fire, and with the tongs drew from it a thin piece of metal. It was a surgical knife. He looked at the dead woman. “From your hospital equipment, Dr. Hall. And Edith Baker is a nurse. And Edith Baker had ‘a girlish passion’ for you. I wonder.”

Some one was trying the door. He unlocked it, to find an inspector of police. “I am Reginald Fortune,” he explained. “Here’s your case.”

“I’ve heard of you, sir,” said the inspector reverently. “Bad business, isn’t it? I’m sure it’s very lucky you were here.”

“I wonder,” Reggie murmured.

“Could it be suicide, sir?”

Reggie shook his head. “I wish it could. Not a nice murder. Not at all a nice murder. By the way, there’s the knife. I picked it out of the fire.”

“Doctor’s tool, isn’t it, sir? Have you got any theory about it?” Reggie shook his head. “There’s the girl who gave the alarm: she’s a nurse in the hospital, I’m told.”

“I don’t know the girl,” said Reggie. “You’d better see what you make of the room. I shall be downstairs.”

In the big hall the decorations and the Christmas tree with its ungiven presents glowed to emptiness and silence. Joan Amber came forward to meet him. He did not speak to her. He continued to stare at the ungiven presents on the Christmas tree. “What do you want to do?” she said at last.

“This is the end of a perfect day,” said Mr. Fortune. “Poor kiddies.”

“The matron packed them all off to their dormitories.”

Mr. Fortune laughed. “Just as well to rub it in, isn’t it?”

Miss Amber did not answer him for a moment. “Do you know, you look rather terrible?” she said, and indeed his normally plump, fresh-coloured, cheery face had a certain ferocity.

“I feel like a fool, Joan. Where is everybody?”

“She sent everybody away too.”

“She would. Great organizer. No brain. My only aunt! A woman’s murdered and every stranger who was in the place is hustled off before the police get to work. This isn’t a crime, it’s a nightmare.”

“Well, of course they were anxious to go.”

“They would be.”

“Reggie, who are you thinking of?”

“I can’t think. There are no facts. Where’s this matron now?”

The inspector came upon them as they were going to her room. “I’ve finished upstairs, sir. Not much for me, is there? Plenty downstairs, though. I reckon I’ll hear some queer stories before I’ve done. These homes are always full of gossip. People living too close together, wonderful what bad blood it makes. I----” He broke off and stared at Reggie. From the matron’s room came the sound of sobbing. He opened the door without a knock.

The matron sat at her writing-table, coldly judicial. A girl in nurse’s uniform was crying on the bosom of Lady Chantry, who caressed her and murmured in her ear.

“Sorry to interrupt, ma’am,” the inspector said, staring hard.

“You don’t interrupt. This girl is Edith Baker, who seems to have been the last person who saw Dr. Hall alive and was certainly the first person who saw her dead.”

“And who was very, very fond of her,” Lady Chantry said gently. “Weren’t you, dear?”

“I’ll have to take her statement,” said the inspector. But the girl was torn with sobbing.

“Come, dear, come.” Lady Chantry strove with her. “The Inspector only wants you to say how you left her and how you found her.”

“Edith, you must control yourself.” The matron lifted her voice.

“I hate you,” the girl cried, and tore herself away and rushed out of the room.

“She’ll have to speak, you know, ma’am,” the inspector said.

“I am very sorry to say she has always had a passionate temperament,” said the matron.

“Poor child!” Lady Chantry rose. “She was so fond of the doctor, you see. I’ll go to her, matron, and see what I can do.”

“Does anyone here know what the girl was up to this afternoon, ma’am?” said the inspector.

“I will try to find out for you,” said the matron, and rang her bell.

“Well, well,” said Reggie Fortune. “Every little helps. You might find out what all the other people were doing this afternoon.”

The matron stared at him. “Surely you’re not thinking of the visitors, Mr. Fortune?”

“I’m thinking of your children,” said Reggie, and she was the more amazed. “Not a nice murder, you know, not at all a nice murder.”

And then he took Miss Amber home. She found him taciturn, which is his habit when he is angry. But she had never seen him angry before. She is a wise woman. When he was leaving her: “Do you know what it is about you, sir?” she said. “You’re always just right.”

When the Hon. Sidney Lomas came to his room in Scotland Yard the next morning, Reggie Fortune was waiting for him. “My dear fellow!” he protested. “What is this? You’re not really up, are you? It’s not eleven. You’re an hallucination.”

“Zeal, all zeal, Lomas. The orphanage murder is my trouble.”

“Have you come to give yourself up? I suspected you from the first, Fortune. Where is it?” He took a copy of the “Daily Wire” from the rack. “Yes. ‘Dr. Reginald Fortune, the eminent surgeon, was attending the function and was able to give the police a first-hand account of the crime. Dr. Fortune states that the weapon used was a surgical knife.’ My dear fellow, the case looks black indeed.”

Reggie was not amused. “Yes. I also was present. And several others,” he said. “Do you know anything about any of us?”

Lomas put up his eyeglass. “There’s a certain bitterness about you, Fortune. This is unusual. What’s the matter?”

“I don’t like this murder,” said Reggie. “It spoilt the children’s party.”

“That would be a by-product,” Lomas agreed. “You’re getting very domestic in your emotions. Oh, I like it, my dear fellow. But it makes you a little irrelevant.”

“Domestic be damned. I’m highly relevant. It spoilt the children’s party. Why did it happen at the children’s party? Lots of other nice days to kill the resident medical officer.”

“You’re suggesting it was one of the visitors?”

“No, no. It isn’t the only day visitors visit. I’m suggesting life is real, life is earnest--and rather diabolical sometimes.”

“I’ll call for the reports,” Lomas said, and did so. “Good Gad! Reams! Barton’s put in some heavy work.”

“I thought he would,” said Reggie, and went to read over Lomas’s shoulder.

At the end Lomas lay back and looked up at him. “Well? Barton’s put his money on this young nurse, Edith Baker.”

“Yes. That’s the matron’s tip. I saw the matron. One of the world’s organizers, Lomas. A place for everything and everything in its place. And if you don’t fit, God help you. Edith Baker didn’t fit. Edith Baker has emotions. Therefore she does murders. Q.E.D.”

“Well, the matron ought to know the girl.”

“She ought,” Reggie agreed. “And our case is, gentlemen, that the matron who ought to know girls says Edith Baker isn’t a nice young person. Lomas dear, why do policemen always believe what they’re told? What the matron don’t like isn’t evidence.”

“There is some evidence. The girl had one of these hysterical affections for the dead woman, passionately devoted and passionately jealous and so forth. The girl had access to the hospital instruments. All her time in the afternoon can’t be accounted for, and she was the first to know of the murder.”

“It’s not good enough, Lomas. Why did she give the alarm?”

Lomas shrugged. “A murderer does now and then. Cunning or fright.”

“And why did she wait for the children’s party to do the murder?”

“Something may have happened there to rouse her jealousy.”

“Something with one of the visitors?” Reggie suggested. “I wonder.” And then he laughed. “A party of the visitors went round the hospital, Lomas. They had access to the surgical instruments.”

“And were suddenly seized with a desire for homicide? They also went to the gymnasium and the kitchen. Did any of them start boiling potatoes? My dear Fortune, you are not as plausible as usual.”

“It isn’t plausible,” Reggie said. “I know that. It’s too dam’ wicked.”

“Abnormal,” Lomas nodded. “Of course the essence of the thing is that it’s abnormal. Every once in a while we have these murders in an orphanage or school or some place where women and children are herded together. Nine times out of ten they are cases of hysteria. Your young friend Miss Baker seems to be a highly hysterical subject.”

“You know more than I do.”

“Why, that’s in the evidence. And you saw her yourself half crazy with emotion after the murder.”

“Good Lord!” said Reggie. “Lomas, old thing, you do run on. Pantin’ time toils after you in vain. That girl wasn’t crazy. She was the most natural of us all. You send a girl in her teens into the room where the woman she is keen on is sitting with her throat cut. She won’t talk to you like a little lady. The evidence! Why do you believe what people tell you about people? They’re always lying--by accident if not on purpose. This matron don’t like the girl because she worshipped the lady doctor. Therefore the girl is called abnormal and jealous. Did you never hear of a girl in her teens worshipping a teacher? It’s common form. Did you never hear of another teacher being vicious about it? That’s just as common.”

“Do you mean the matron was jealous of them both?”

Reggie shrugged. “It hits you in the eye.”

“Good Gad!” said Lomas. “Do you suspect the matron?”

“I suspect the devil,” said Reggie gravely. “Lomas, my child, whoever did that murder cut the woman’s throat and then sat down in her easy chair and watched her die. I call that devilish.” And he told of the blood-stains and the turned cushions.

“Good Gad,” said Lomas once more, “there’s some hate in that.”

“Not a nice murder. Also it stopped the children’s party.”

“You harp on that.” Lomas looked at him curiously. “Are you thinking of the visitors?”

“I wonder,” Reggie murmured. “I wonder.”

“Here’s the list,” Lomas said, and Reggie came slowly to look. “Sir George and Lady Bean, Lady Chantry, Mrs. Carroway,”--he ran his pencil down--“all well-known, blameless busybodies, full of good works. Nothing doing.”

“Crab Warnham,” said Reggie.

“Oh, Warnham: his wife took him, I suppose. She’s a saint, and he eats out of her hand, they say. Well, he was a loose fish, of course, but murder! I don’t see Warnham at that.”

“He has an eye for a woman.”

“Still? I dare say. But good Gad, he can’t have known this lady doctor. Was she pretty?” Reggie nodded. “Well, we might look for a link between them. Not likely, is it?”

“We’re catching at straws,” said Reggie sombrely.

Lomas pushed the papers away. “Confound it, it’s another case without evidence. I suppose it can’t be suicide like that Bigod affair?”

Reggie, who was lighting a cigar, looked up and let the match burn his fingers. “Not suicide. No,” he said. “Was Bigod’s?”

“Well, it was a deuced queer death by misadventure.”

“As you say.” Reggie nodded and wandered dreamily out.

This seems to have been the first time that anyone thought of comparing the Bigod case to the orphanage murder. When the inquest on the lady doctor was held the police had no more evidence to produce than you have heard, and the jury returned a verdict of murder by some person or persons unknown. Newspapers strove to enliven the dull calm of the holiday season by declaiming against the inefficiency of a police force which allowed murderers to remain anonymous, and hashed up the Bigod case again to prove that the fall of Sir Humphrey Bigod into his chalkpit, though called accidental, was just as mysterious as the cut throat of Dr. Hall. And the Hon. Sidney Lomas cursed the man who invented printing.

These assaults certainly did not disturb Reggie Fortune, who has never cared what people say of him. With the help of Joan Amber he found a quiet remote place for the unhappy girl suspected of the murder (Lady Chantry was prettily angry with Miss Amber about that, protesting that she wanted to look after Edith herself), and said he was only in the case as a philanthropist. After which he gave all his time to preparing his house and Miss Amber for married life. But the lady found him dreamy.

It was in fact while he was showing her how the new colours in the drawing-room looked under the new lighting that Dr. Eden called him up. Dr. Eden has a general practice in Kensington. Dr. Eden wanted to consult him about a case: most urgent: 3 King William’s Walk.

“May I take the car?” said Reggie to Joan. “He sounds rattled. You can go on home afterwards. It’s not far from you either. I wonder who lives at 3 King William’s Walk.”

“But it’s Mrs. Warnham!” she cried.

“Oh, my aunt!” said Reggie Fortune; and said no more.

And Joan Amber could not call him out of his thoughts. She was as grave as he. Only when he was getting out of the car, “Be good to her, dear,” she said gently. He kissed the hand on his arm.

The door was opened by a woman in evening-dress. “It is Mr. Fortune, isn’t it? Please come in. It’s so kind of you to come.” She turned to the maid in the background. “Tell Dr. Eden, Maggie. It’s my little boy--and we are so anxious.”

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Warnham.” Reggie took her hand and found it cold. The face he remembered for its gentle calm was sternly set. “What is the trouble?”

“Gerald went to a party this afternoon. He came home gloriously happy and went to bed. He didn’t go to sleep at once, he was rather excited, but he was quite well. Then he woke up crying with pain and was very sick. I sent for Dr. Eden. It isn’t like Gerald to cry, Mr. Fortune. And----”

A hoarse voice said “Catherine, you oughtn’t to be out there in the cold.” Reggie saw the gaunt face of Captain Warnham looking round a door at them.

“What does it matter?” she cried. “Dr. Eden doesn’t want me to be with him, Mr. Fortune. He is still in pain. And I don’t think Dr. Eden knows.”

Dr. Eden came down in time to hear that. A large young man, he stood over them looking very awkward and uncomfortable.

“I’m sure Dr. Eden has done everything that can be done,” said Reggie gently. “I’ll go up, please.” And they left the mother to her husband, that flushed, gaunt face peering round the corner as they kept step on the stairs.

“The child’s seven years old,” said Eden. “There’s no history of any gastric trouble. Rather a good digestion. And then this--out of the blue!” Reggie went into a nursery where a small boy lay huddled and restless with all the apparatus of sickness by his bed. He raised a pale face on which beads of sweat stood.

“Hallo, Gerald,” Reggie said quietly. “Mother sent me up to make you all right again.” He took the child’s hand and felt for the pulse. “I’m Mr. Fortune, your fortune, good fortune.” The child tried to smile and Reggie’s hands moved over the uneasy body and all the while he murmured softly nonsense talk. . . .

The child did not want him to go, but at last he went off with Eden into a corner of the room. “Quite right to send for me,” he said gravely, and Eden put his hand to his head. “I know. I know. It’s horrible when it’s a child. One of the irritant poisons. Probably arsenic. Have you given an emetic?”

“He’s been very sick. And he’s so weak.”

“I know. Have you got anything with you?”

“I sent home. But I didn’t care to----”

“I’ll do it. Sulphate of zinc. You go and send for a nurse. And find some safe milk. I wouldn’t use the household stuff.”

“My God, Fortune! Surely it was at the party?”

“Not the household stuff,” Reggie repeated, and he went back to the child. . . .

It was many hours afterwards that he came softly downstairs. In the hall husband and wife met him. It seemed to him that it was the man who had been crying. “Are you going away?” Mrs. Warnham said.

“There’s no more pain. He is asleep.”

Her eyes darkened. “You mean he’s--dead?” the man gasped.

“I hope he’ll live longer than any of us, Captain Warnham. But no one must disturb him. The nurse will be watching, you know. And I’m sure we all want to sleep sound--don’t we?” He was gone. But he stayed a moment on the doorstep. He heard emotions within.

On the next afternoon Dr. Eden came into his laboratory at St. Saviour’s. “One moment. One moment.” Reggie was bent over a notebook. “When I go to hell they’ll set me doing sums.” He frowned at his figures. “The third time is lucky. That’s plausible if it isn’t right. Well, how’s our large patient?”

“He’s doing well. Quite easy and cheerful.”

Reggie stood up. “I think we might say, thank God.”

“Yes, rather. I thought he was gone last night, Fortune. He would have been without you. It was wonderful how he bucked up in your hands. You ought to have been a children’s specialist.”

“My dear chap! Oh, my dear chap! I’m the kind of fellow who would always ought to have been something else. And so I’m doing sums in a laboratory which God knows I’m not fit for.”

“Have you found out what it was?”

“Oh, arsenic, of course. Quite a fair dose he must have had. It’s queer how they always will use arsenic.”

Eden stared at him. “What are we to do?” he said in a low voice. “Fortune, I suppose it couldn’t have been accidental?”

“What is a child likely to eat in which he would find grains of accidental arsenic?”

“Yes, but then---- I mean, who could want to kill that child?”

“That is the unknown quantity in the equation. But people do want to murder children, quite nice children.”

Eden grew pale. “What do you mean? You know he’s not Warnham’s child. Warnham’s his step-father.”

“Yes. Yes. Have you ever seen the two together?”

Eden hesitated. “He--well, he didn’t seem to take to Warnham. But I’d have sworn Warnham was fond of him.”

“And that’s all quite natural, isn’t it? Well, well. I hope he’s in.”

“What do you mean to do?”

“Tell Mrs. Warnham--with her husband listening.”

Dr. Eden followed him out like a man going to be hanged.

Mrs. Warnham indeed met them in her hall. “Mr. Fortune,”--she took his hand, she had won back her old calm, but her eyes grew dark as she looked at him--“Gerald has been asking for you. And I want to speak to you.”

“I shall be glad to talk over the case with you and Captain Warnham,” said Reggie gravely. “I’ll see the small boy first, if you don’t mind.” And the small boy kept his Mr. Fortune a long time.

Mrs. Warnham had her husband with her when the doctors came down. “I say, Fortune,” Captain Warnham started up, “awfully good of you to take so much trouble. I mean to say,”--he cleared his throat--“I feel it, you know. How is the little beggar?”

“There’s no reason why he shouldn’t do well,” Reggie said slowly. “But it’s a strange case. Captain Warnham. Yes, a strange case. You may take it, there is no doubt the child was poisoned.”

“Poisoned!” Warnham cried out in that queer hoarse voice.

“You mean it was something Gerald shouldn’t have eaten?” Mrs. Warnham said gently.

“It was arsenic, Captain Warnham. Not much more than an hour before the time he felt ill, perhaps less, he had swallowed enough arsenic to kill him.”

“I say, are you certain of all that? I mean to say, no doubt about anything?” Warnham was flushed. “Arsenic--and the time--and the dose? It’s pretty thick, you know.”

“There is no doubt. I have found arsenic. I can estimate the dose. And arsenic acts within that time.”

“But I can’t believe it,” Mrs. Warnham said. “It would be too horribly cruel. Mr. Fortune, couldn’t it have been accident? Something in his food?”

“It was certainly in his food or drink. But not accident, Mrs. Warnham. That is not possible.”

“I say, let’s have it all out, Fortune,” Warnham growled. “Do you suspect anyone?”

“That’s rather for you, isn’t it?” said Reggie.

“Who could want to poison Gerald?” Mrs. Warnham cried.

“He says some one did,” Warnham growled.

“When do you suppose he took the stuff, Fortune? At the party or after he came home?”

“What did he have when he came home?”

Warnham looked at his wife. “Only a little milk. He wouldn’t eat anything,” she said. “And I tasted his milk, I remember. It was quite nice.”

“That points to the party,” Eden said.

“But I can’t believe it. Who could want to poison Gerald?”

“I’ve seen some of the people who were there,” Eden frowned. “I don’t believe there’s another child ill. Only this one of the whole party.”

“Yes. Yes. A strange case,” said Reggie. “Was there anyone there with a grudge against you, Mrs. Warnham?”

“I don’t think there’s anyone with a grudge against me in the world.”

“I don’t believe there is, Catherine,” her husband looked at her. “But damn it. Fortune found the stuff in the child. I say, Fortune, what do you advise?”

“You’re sure of your own household? There’s nobody here jealous of the child?”

Mrs. Warnham looked her distress. “I couldn’t, I couldn’t doubt anybody. There isn’t any reason. You know, it doesn’t seem real.”

“And there it is,” Warnham growled.

“Yes. Well, I shouldn’t talk about it, you know. When he’s up again take him right away, somewhere quiet. You’ll live with him yourself, of course. That’s all safe. And I--well, I shan’t forget the case. Good-bye.”

“Oh, Mr. Fortune----” she started up and caught his hands.

“Yes, yes, good-bye,” said Reggie, and got away. But as Warnham let them out he felt Warnham’s lean hand grip into his arm.

“A little homely comfort would be grateful,” Reggie murmured. “Come and have tea at the Academies, Eden. They keep a pleasing muffin.” He sank down in his car at Eden’s side with a happy sigh.

But Eden’s brow was troubled. “Do you think the child will be safe now, Fortune?” he said.

“Oh, I think so. If it was Warnham or Mrs. Warnham who poisoned him----”

“Good Lord! You don’t think that?”

“They are frightened,” said Reggie placidly, “I frightened ’em quite a lot. And if it was somebody else--the child is going away and Mrs. Warnham will be eating and drinking everything he eats and drinks. The small Gerald will be all right. There remains only the little problem, who was it?”

“It’s a diabolical affair. Who could want to kill that child?”

“Diabolical is the word,” Reggie agreed. “And a little simple food is what we need,” and they went into the club and through a long tea he talked to Eden of rock gardens and Chinese nursery rhymes.

But when Eden, somewhat dazed by his appetite and the variety of his conversation, was gone, he made for that corner of the club where Lomas sat drinking tea made in the Russian manner. He pointed a finger at the clear weak fluid. “It was sad and bad and mad and it was not even sweet,” he complained. “Take care, Lomas. Think what’s happened to Russia. You would never be happy as a Bolshevik.”

“I understand that the detective police force is the one institution which has survived in Russia.”

“Put down that repulsive concoction and come and take the air.”

Lomas stared at him in horror. “Where’s your young lady? I thought you were walking out. You’re a faithless fellow, Fortune. Go and walk like a little gentleman.” But there was that in Reggie’s eye which made him get up with a groan. “You’re the most ruthless man I know.”

The car moved away from the club and Reggie shrank under his rug as the January east wind met them. “I hope you are cold,” said Lomas. “What is it now?”

“It was nearly another anonymous murder,” and Reggie told him the story.

“Diabolical,” said Lomas.

“Yes, I believe in the devil,” Reggie nodded.