“I’ve no doubt she did,” growled the old man. “And how much farther does that get you? You’ve got your analyst’s report, and you’ve got the evidence I gave you about the bottle of brandy. You say it’s gone. Well, where do you think it went to? Do you think Hannah Barrow drank it?”
“No, I don’t,” replied Macdonald.
“Then what more evidence do you want? If you put the facts you’ve got before a jury, do you suppose they wouldn’t be satisfied?”
“It’s not my job to satisfy a jury. It’s my job to get all the available facts, not for a jury in the first case, but for my superior officers and for the Director of Public Prosecutions. And there are a number of facts for which I have not yet found explanations.”
“D’you think Hannah Barrow can supply the explanations?”
“Not the explanations, no, though she has produced some interesting facts. I’m hoping that you can help me with some of the explanations.”
“I’ve been doing my best,” rejoined Dr. Brown. “What’s your trouble now?”
“You told me that you prescribed for Miss Torrington recently—a sedative and an indigestion mixture.”
“Quite right. I also told you that she probably poured the stuff down the sink.”
“She didn’t do that. Bismuth was found by the analyst——”
“I know that. Good God, are you going to tell me now the woman was poisoned?” snapped out old Brown.
“No, sir. She was drowned, after being rendered unconscious, or at any rate incapacitated, by a blow on the base of her skull. But since she had the medicine you prescribed, I can’t understand why we haven’t found the bottles or any remains of the medicine. You may consider that fact so trivial as to be irrelevant. I do not. It’s just an odd fact which ought to be explained.”
“Well, I suppose you know your job,” sighed the old man. “Admittedly I can’t see what you’re getting at, but I’ll do my best to help. I ordered her physic a fortnight ago. The mixtures should have lasted a week. I repeated the order, without consulting Sister Monica about it, a week ago. The chemist will tell you that.”
“Yes, sir. I have verified that. So it’s to be assumed that there were several doses left of the second batch—a three days’ supply. But there’s no trace of the bottles, and Mrs. Higson, who always washes out the bottles before they are sent back to the chemist, knows nothing about them.”
“All right, all right,” growled Dr. Brown. “You’re very thorough. I grant you that. You want all your t’s crossed and your i’s dotted. Very commendable. How long have you been on the job here? Tell me that.”
“Since midday yesterday, sir.”
“A day and a half, eh? And you reckon you’ve got things taped, including the aberrations and eccentricities of a woman like Sister Monica. I tell you, that woman was about as complex as an anthill. She’d got her own peculiar pretensions. One of them was that good health is a matter of faith. She preached it to all and sundry. ‘Keeping well is will power,’ she’d say. And to prescribe medicine for her was tantamount to insulting her. When I ordered her physic I didn’t believe she’d take it, but you say she did take it. Very well, I’ll accept your word for it, but I’ll tell you this. She’d have seen to it that no one saw her take it, and that no one in that house knew she was taking it.”
“I follow that quite clearly,” put in Macdonald. “It’s in character with what Hannah said about her.”
“It is, is it? Well, you can take it from me that those bottles of physic you’re so worried about are in the house somewhere. Not in the medicine cupboard. Dear me, no. Hannah Barrow may be an illiterate, but she knows the size and shape and colour and name of every bottle and box and tin in that cupboard. She’s had twenty years to learn them in. Sister Monica wouldn’t have put her own bottles of physic anywhere that Hannah could see ’em.” He broke off and pointed a finger at Macdonald. “You’re going to tell me you’ve searched the entire house, you and that young fellow you brought with you——”
“No, sir. I’m not going to tell you anything of the kind. I haven’t had time to search the house. I’ve been too busy getting acquainted with the people who revolve around the case, what we call the contacts.”
“Well, you’re honest. I’ll say that for you,” said the old man. “I’m not belittling what you’ve done, Chief Inspector. You’ve routed out more than I’d have believed possible in the time you’ve been here, and pretty fools you’ve made some of us look, I admit it. But if, for your own reasons, you want to find those bottles of physic, you go and look for them. They’re there somewhere, where she hid them. She loved hiding things. She’d put things away in the linen cupboards, in the clothes cupboards, in the sewing room, in the store cupboard, in any one of those elaborate hoards of impedimenta she delighted in. You’ll have a job, I promise you, but you’ll find the stuff if you go on looking long enough. If you’re going to do it this evening, I wish you joy of it. They didn’t wire the place properly when they put electricity in: took the Warden’s advice and economised by not putting lights in the linen room and cupboards and so forth: penny wise, pound foolish—the very places you wanted artificial light, because there aren’t any windows.”
“I’ll leave it till morning, when the sun’s at its brightest,” said Macdonald. “In any case, I don’t want to go there again this evening and make any more disturbance. In my judgment, Mrs. Higson can look after Hannah all right.”
“In your judgment,” echoed the old man wearily. “I suppose we’ve got to trust your judgment. You’ve had precious little reason to
