The False Inspector Dew

to escape across the ocean on a small steamship and the captain was suspicious.'

'Crippen was a murderer.'

Alma brushed that aside. 'You told me Lydia has booked your passages on the Mauretania.'

'Yes, but I'm not going now.'

'Just suppose for a moment that you did go, not with Lydia, but with me. I would travel as Mrs Baranov. It wouldn't be a difficult part to play, darling. No-one would suspect us, because no-one would know any different. We would be in America in six days and live there for ever as man and wife!'

'But what about Lydia?'

'Chloroform.'

'I think I need a cigar.' He put one in his mouth and broke two matches trying to light it. 'Are you serious about this?'

'Absolutely.'

'I couldn't do it — not even to Lydia.'

'You can. You're very brave. You saved your father from drowning.'

He managed to smile. 'It isn't exactly the same thing.'

'Please don't laugh at me. This isn't some absurd idea that just occurred to me. I've been planning it for days. Don't you see? By booking for the voyage already, Lydia has given us the chance to succeed where Dr Crippen and his Ethel failed.'

A voice asked, 'Did you want some more hot water, dears?'

They both looked up at the waitress. Her face showed only the weariness of a long day at work.

'No, thank you,' said Walter. He paid for the teas and they left the shop.

The sun was shining thinly.

'They were caught because Inspector Dew found the remains of Mrs Crippen under the floor in the cellar,' said Walter.

'There is another thing,' said Alma, ignoring Walter's observation as they walked up the Hill together. 'If I take Lydia's place, I can copy her signature. I can write you a cheque for the sale of your practice. I can write any number of cheques. We can live in style and you can be the most successful dentist in America.'

'Using Lydia's money?'

'It would be criminal not to use it, darling,' said Alma, and she squeezed his arm.

'That's clever.' He smiled. 'That really is rather clever.'

'I shall have to use her passport, but that ought to be all right. We're about the same height and we both have brown eyes. She's darker than I am, but you couldn't tell from a photograph. Nobody looks like their passport photograph anyway. And you'll be there to vouch for me.'

'There must be a flaw in this.'

'Darling, there isn't. If we give Lydia the chloroform the night before we sail, none of her friends will miss her. She'll have signed the papers for the solicitor. The bank will have transferred her money to America. We simply step aboard that liner and start our new life together. Our honeymoon.'

Walter looked dazed. He had obviously been staggered by the boldness of the plan. His first reaction had been to reject it, then to look for faults in it. Now he was seriously considering it. Alma could see it in his eyes. He was coming to terms with the necessity of chloroforming Lydia.

He raised more difficulties, but they were details only. He asked what Alma would say to Mrs Maxwell, and what she would do about the house on Richmond Hill. He asked about her family and friends.

From the nature and manner of his questions, it was clear that Walter was prepared to be convinced. Alma told him what she would say to Mrs Maxwell. She told him there were people at the church who would rent the house. She would tell them she was going to winter on the continent. She would tell her closest friends. She had no immediate family. She could be ready in a week.

Walter listened carefully. Then he was silent for a time.

Alma walked beside him up the Hill. She contained herself. She didn't want to rush him into a decision. She wanted him to see the soundness of the plan. She was confident that it would work.

At last he spoke. 'We'll have to think of what to do with her.'

From the way he said it, Alma knew that he had been persuaded.

PART THREE

The Knockout

1

To Alma, the plan to do away with Lydia and escape with Walter to America was more romantic then anything in Ethel M. Dell. It made The Knave of Diamonds seem insipid. It was wicked and audacious and it would bind her more strongly to Walter than any ceremony of marriage. Their secret would unite them for ever. They would live in luxury in Manhattan, and Walter would be the finest dentist in New York. They would take trips to Niagara and Nantucket and New Orleans and San Francisco. Mentally she was still touring the United States when Walter, firmly bogged down in England, said, 'We really ought to decide what to do with her.'

'Do with her?'

'Lydia.'

'But we decided, darling.'

'No, I don't mean that. I mean after that. Where shall we put her?'

'Oh.'

They were sitting on a bench in the Richmond Terrace Gardens. It was one of those brilliant September evenings when every detail of the Thames Valley was picked out by the low-angled sun. Filaments of cirrus cloud lay across the sky becoming pinker by the minute.

'Dr Crippen buried his wife in the cellar,' observed Alma.

'And Inspector Dew went down there with a spade.'

'Horrid Inspector Dew.'

Walter gave a shrug. 'Just doing his job.'

'How about the garden?'

He shook his head, it's like a bowling green. We have an ex-serviceman to look after it five mornings a week. He was an officer in the Guards. Nothing escapes him.'

'Could you put her in the bath and say she was drowned by accident?'

'It's been tried.'

'It's so maddening!' cried Alma in frustration. 'Everything else works perfectly.'

'It's a practical problem, my dear,' said Walter. 'Getting excited about it isn't any help.'

Alma was actually pleased by this mild reproof. Walter was treating her like a wife already. And his concern to perfect the plan removed any doubts she had that he was determined to see it through. He was as calm and deliberate as if they were discussing a simple extraction in the surgery.

She said, 'If we had a car, we could leave her somewhere.'

'No,' said Walter. 'That won't do. Someone would find her soon enough. Have you heard of Bernard Spilsbury?'

'The pathologist?'

'That fellow doesn't simply name a cause of death; he announces the murderer's size in hats and where he buys his shirts and how he likes his eggs done. We can't afford to leave a body.'

As Alma felt the shock of words like murderer and body,