“We think so. Hinton wanted Mrs. Mundill in hospital.”
“That wouldn’t have done for a murderer,” said Leeyes.
“No.”
“So Peter Hinton had to go?” grunted Leeyes.
“Exactly.” Sloan cleared his throat. “I—that is, we—think that he came back one day and challenged Mundill.”
“And that was his undoing?”
“It was. He was a threat, you see, to the successful murder of Mrs. Mundill.”
Talk of successful murders always upset the superintendent. “Do you mean that, Sloan?”
“I do, sir,” said Detective Inspector Sloan seriously. “It was as near perfect as they come. We would never have known about the murder of Mrs. Mundill if he hadn’t killed the young man too.”
Leeyes didn’t like the sound of that. “How perfect?”
“Arsenic, at a guess.”
“You can’t have a perfect murder with arsenic.”
“You can if it’s diagnosed and treated as cancer of the stomach,” said Sloan.
“But what doctor would…”
“An old doctor who has had a letter from another doctor saying that that was what was wrong.”
Leeyes whistled. “Clever.”
“Very clever,” said Sloan. “Each year the Mundills went at Easter to housekeep for a locum tenens. Mundill’s sister is married to a single-handed general practitioner in Calleford. While Mrs. Mundill was there she had her first attack of sickness. The locum—a Dr. Penthwin—arranged for her to have an X-ray at Calleford Hospital.”
“But it would be normal,” objected Leeyes at once.
“Of course it would, sir,” said Sloan, “but that doesn’t matter.”
“No?”
“All that matters is the letter that the Mundills bring back from Dr. Penthwin to their own doctor at Collerton, Dr. Gregory Tebot.”
“A forgery?” said Leeyes.
“From start to finish,” said Sloan who had seen it now.
“Mundill writes it himself in the locum’s name on professional writing paper. His brother-in-law knows nothing about it—neither does the locum, for that matter. Anyway Dr. Penthwin’s soon gone. Dr. Tebot gets the letter which he thinks is from Dr. Penthwin and starts treating Mrs. Mundill for an unoperable cancer of the stomach.”
“Most doctors would,” agreed Leeyes reluctantly.
“Mundill sees that the doses of arsenic follow the course of the disease,” said Sloan. “Peter Hinton spotted it was arsenic, I’m sure about that. He’d asked if her eyes kept on watering. That’s what put us onto it too.”
Leeyes grunted. “Mundill had long enough to look it all up in the books while he was over there.”
“He’d even,” said Sloan, “had long enough to go through the patients’ medical records until he finds a letter with the wording pretty nearly the same as he wants.”
“Clever,” said Leeyes again. A whole new vista of medical murder opened up before him. “Has it been done before, do you think?”
“Who can say?” said Sloan chillingly. “Anyway, Dr. Tebot isn’t going to start on fresh X-rays or anything like that, is he? He wouldn’t see any need for them.”
“The nearly perfect murder,” said Leeyes.
“There was something else going for him, too, sir.”
“What was that?”
“Celia Mundill didn’t want to be cremated.”
“And that suited the husband, I’m sure,” said Leeyes.
“Cremation requires two medical certificates,” said Sloan. “Burial only one.” He’d leetured Crosby on the burial of victims of murder. A grave was the best place of all.
“The nearly perfect murder,” said Leeyes again.
“He almost spoilt it, sir.”
“How come?”
“Gilding the lily.” It was surprising how often that happened with murderers. They wouldn’t—couldn’t—leave well alone.
“What lily?”
“The grave, sir. Mundill insisted on his wife being buried by the water’s edge where the river floods.”
“To help wash the arsenic away,” said Leeyes. He cast his mind back. “That’s been done before, hasn’t it?”
“And to aid decomposition,” completed Sloan. “I don’t know how much it would have helped but I daresay he thought that if anyone got any bright ideas after he married Mrs. Feckler…”
Leeyes grunted. “He was going to marry her, was he?”
“He was,” said Sloan. “On his wife’s money. Financially he had nothing to lose by her death and a lot to gain.”
“That’s always dangerous,” said the voice of experience.
“Mundill had a life interest in his wife’s estate,” said Sloan, “but he wanted a little capital too.”
“Don’t we all,” said Leeyes.
“That,” said Sloan manfully, “is why he sold a picture that wasn’t his to sell.”
“Ha.”
“And blamed its disappearance on Peter Hinton.”
“An opportunist if ever there was one,” commented Leeyes.
“What put the girl’s life in danger,” said Sloan, “was her spotting the report of the sale in the daily paper.”
It had been a close thing yesterday.
“If it hadn’t been for that, eh, Sloan, Mundill might have got away with murder.”
“I’m sure I hope not, sir,” said Sloan.
“And the fisherman,” said Leeyes. “Why did he have to go?”
“We think,” said Sloan slowly, “that Boiler must have been trying to apply a little pressure to Mundill.”
“Why?”
“He wasn’t a nice man,” said Sloan obliquely. “He could easily have known all about Mundill’s visits to Mrs. Feckler’s cottage. He was about at all hours remember and not very scrupulous.”
“He could have spotted that sand-hopper creature.” Leeyes had seen the report on
“That was probably what took him up river the first time,” said Sloan, “but I think it may have been his cousin Ted who gave him the real clue.”
“Cousin Ted? You’ll have to do better than that for the coroner, Sloan.”
“Ted Boiler is the village undertaker.”
“What about it?”
“Mundill wouldn’t have the coffin screwed down.” The exhumation of Celia Mundill had begun that morning. A loose coffin lid had been the first thing that they had found.
“Ted Boiler didn’t give it much thought but he did happen to mention it to his cousin.”
“Horace Boiler.”
“Precisely, sir. It probably didn’t mean anything to Horace either until he saw the girl beside her aunt’s grave on Tuesday afternoon and realised how near the water it was.”
“And so he put two and two together?”
“He probably just thought he would tackle Mundill about it.”
Leeyes nodded. “By then, of course, Mundill will have got an appetite for murder.”
“It grows,” said Sloan. That was one area where policemen and psychologists were at one. An appetite for murder grew on itself. “Besides, sir, he couldn’t risk Boiler raising any doubts about Celia Mundill just when he was concentrating on keeping suspicion away from the body in the water.”
