Murder in the Mill-Race

you may have surmised, as I did, and some of it was told me by Dr. Brown before he died. Here is the story. Brown’s wife went out of her mind, years ago. In the distress induced by this tragedy, he turned to Miss Torrington for sympathy, and eventually she became his mistress. That is a not uncommon occurrence when a middle-aged man becomes very unhappy, and if the woman in the case had been an ordinary woman, the affair might have gone its course and been forgotten, as many such affairs doubtless are. But Miss Torrington wasn’t an ordinary woman. She was avaricious and dominating beneath her habit of meekness. She eventually demanded money, and got it. I laving got it, she hoarded it senselessly, as a miser does hoard. In short, Sister Monica became a miser. This went on for years, and the climax was reached when Brown, having retired from his general practice here, determined to leave Milham in the Moor and go to live in Wiltshire. It was then that Miss Torrington overreached herself. She demanded that Brown marry her. Brown refused. Miss Torrington then told him, in the authentic accent of Victorian melodrama, that she would follow him wherever he went and denounce him’ for what he was. Now Brown was old and tired. He wanted to get away from Milham in the Moor and the domination of Miss Torrington, and the thought of her pursuing him was a nightmare to him. He had realised what she was really like, and also what she was capable of.”

“Is this where the ghost of Nancy Bilton comes in?” asked Ferens.

“Yes—as a ghost to haunt Dr. Brown. He had known all the time that Miss Torrington had come down to the river to meet him the night that Nancy Bilton was drowned. Fie used to meet the Warden behind the sawmill, because he would not have her come to his house to collect the money he gave her, and his heart was so feeble that he could no longer walk up the hill without exhausting himself. The longer he thought about it, the more certain he was that Monica Emily Torrington caught Nancy Bilton spying on them and threw her bodily in the river. Whether it was true we shall never know, but because Brown believed it was true, he persuaded himself that he was justified in finishing Monica Emily as she had finished Nancy Bilton.”

“I follow all that,” said Ferens. “The way she got her tentacles on to him and wouldn’t let him go seems to me to be in character, but why on earth didn’t he give her her money when he was at Gramarye? He went there every week.”

“Hannah supplied the answer to that one,” replied Macdonald. “Years ago the Warden had arranged the etiquette for the doctor’s visit. It was highly ceremonious. Hannah admitted him and marched him upstairs to the Warden in the dispensary. Hannah, in her capacity as nurse, stood at attention all the time while Doctor saw the children. If any were in bed, Hannah accompanied Doctor and Warden to the dormitories, in the correct hospital tradition. Hannah’s eyes were likely to be on them all the time—or almost all the time—and Hannah saw Doctor to the front door.”

“Wait a minute,” said Ferens. “About that medicine which you surmised was laced——”

“It was laced. Brown told me so,” said Macdonald. “I was right there.”

“Then he dispensed it himself?”

“No, he didn’t. He was much too crafty. It came up from the chemist’s.”

“Then how in Hades did he get the alcohol into it? You say Hannah was watching him all the time.”

Macdonald took a script from his pocket. “This is an accurate account of Hannah’s evidence. See if you can spot the loophole,” he said.

Ferens read it carefully. “I don’t see how he could have done it. One can argue she may have kept the medicine in the closed half of the cupboard so that Hannah didn’t see it, but how could he have got at it?”

“When Hannah watched the children go downstairs, all respectful-like, and when the Warden was copying the chemist’s list in her private notebook,” said Macdonald. “If Hannah had seen him fiddling in the medicine cupboard, it would have seemed quite natural. ‘Him had many a good laugh over our medicine cupboard.’ With Hannah out of the room for a couple of minutes, and the Warden busy writing, Brown took his chance and laced the indigestion mixture. To save you further worrying, I may as well tell you that he did come up that hill after he had thrown Monica Emily’s senseless body in the millstream, and emptied her bag of its contents, so that these could be destroyed. With the keys he had taken from her bag he let himself in by the garden door, went up to the dispensary, and emptied out the doped medicine, replacing it by a harmless mixture. Then, because he knew Miss Torrington’s mania for hiding things in odd places, he put the innocent mixtures in Hannah’s cupboard, confidently expecting she’d hand them over to the appropriate authorities. He also removed the bottle of brandy. It sounds complicated, but it was a very logical ingenious plan. It was Hannah throwing the medicine away that scuppered it.”

“I still don’t see why that mattered,” said Anne.

“You’ve an innocent mind, Mrs. Ferens. Brown was wise enough to tell me he had prescribed medicine for the Warden. It was on the chemist’s list. And it was an essential part of his plan that the innocent bottles should be found by us, so that no suspicion should arise in that quarter. I told him that I couldn’t find the bottles. He then began to panic, and determined that something had gone amiss. Fie guessed by this time that Hannah had disposed of the bottles in her cupboard. So he toiled up the hill, arrayed ghostlike in the Warden’s best cloak which he had taken away with him the earlier