“My dear man!”
“I beg your pardon. I was forgetting for the moment. I’m afraid you are getting a little above your job, Charles. So much intelligence will spell either a Chief-Commissionership or ostracism if you aren’t careful.”
“I’ll chance that. Come on—get on with it. Who else is there?”
“There’s Woodward. Nobody could have a better opportunity of tampering with the General’s pillboxes.”
“And I suppose his little legacy might have been a motive.”
“Or he may have been in the enemy’s pay. Sinister menservants so often are, you know. Look what a boom there has been lately in criminal butlers and thefts by perfect servants.”
“That’s a fact. And now, how about the people at the Bellona?”
“There’s Wetheridge. He’s a disagreeable devil. And he has always cast covetous eyes at the General’s chair by the fire. I’ve seen him.”
“Be serious, Peter.”
“I’m perfectly serious. I don’t like Wetheridge. He annoys me. And then we mustn’t forget to put down Robert.”
“Robert? Why, he’s the one person we can definitely cross off. He knew it was to his interest to keep the old man alive. Look at the pains he took to cover up the death.”
“Exactly. He is the Most Unlikely Person, and that is why Sherlock Holmes would suspect him at once. He was, by his own admission, the last person to see General Fentiman alive. Suppose he had a row with the old man and killed him, and then discovered, afterwards, about the legacy.”
“You’re scintillating with good plots today, Peter. If they’d quarreled, he might possibly have knocked his grandfather down—though I don’t think he’d do such a rotten and unsportsmanlike thing—but he surely wouldn’t have poisoned him.”
Wimsey sighed.
“There’s something in what you say,” he admitted. “Still, you never know. Now then, is there any name we’ve thought of which appears in all three columns of our list?”
“No, not one. But several appear in two.”
“We’d better start on those, then. Miss Dorland is the most obvious, naturally, and after her, George, don’t you think?”
“Yes. I’ll have a roundup among all the chemists who may possibly have supplied her with the digitalin. Who’s her family doctor?”
“Dunno. That’s your pigeon. By the way, I’m supposed to be meeting the girl at a cocoa-party or something of the sort tomorrow. Don’t pinch her before then if you can help it.”
“No; but it looks to me as though we might need to put a few questions. And I’d like to have a look round Lady Dormer’s house.”
“For heaven’s sake, don’t be flat-footed about it, Charles. Use tact.”
“You can trust your father. And, I say, you might take me down to the Bellona in a tactful way. I’d like to ask a question or two there.”
Wimsey groaned.
“I shall be asked to resign if this goes on. Not that it’s much loss. But it would please Wetheridge so much to see the back of me. Never mind. I’ll make a Martha of myself. Come on.”
The entrance of the Bellona Club was filled with an unseemly confusion. Culyer was arguing heatedly with a number of men and three or four members of the committee stood beside him with brows as black as thunder. As Wimsey entered, one of the intruders caught sight of him with a yelp of joy.
“Wimsey—Wimsey, old man! Here, be a sport and get us in on this. We’ve got to have the story some day. You probably know all about it, you old blighter.”
It was Salcombe Hardy of the Daily Yell, large and untidy and slightly drunk as usual. He gazed at Wimsey with childlike blue eyes. Barton of the Banner, red-haired and pugnacious, faced round promptly.
“Ah, Wimsey, that’s fine. Give us a line on this, can’t you? Do explain that if we get a story we’ll be good and go.”
“Good lord,” said Wimsey, “how do these things get into the papers?”
“I think it’s rather obvious,” said Culyer, acidly.
“It wasn’t me,” said Wimsey.
“No, no,” put in Hardy. “You mustn’t think that. It was my stunt. In fact, I saw the whole show up at the Necropolis. I was on a family vault, pretending to be a recording angel.”
“You would be,” said Wimsey. “Just a moment, Culyer.” He drew the secretary aside. “See here, I’m damned annoyed about this, but it can’t be helped. You can’t stop these boys when they’re after a story. And anyway, it’s all got to come out. It’s a police affair now. This is Detective-Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard.”
“But what’s the matter?” demanded Culyer.
“Murder’s the matter, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, hell!”
“Sorry and all that. But you’d better grin and bear it. Charles, give these fellows as much story as you think they ought to have and get on with it. And, Salcombe, if you’ll call off your tripe-hounds, we’ll let you have an interview and a set of photographs.”
“That’s the stuff,” said Hardy.
“I’m sure,” agreed Parker, pleasantly, “that you lads don’t want to get in the way, and I’ll tell you all that’s advisable. Show us a room, Captain Culyer, and I’ll send out a statement and then you’ll let us get to work.”
This was agreed, and, a suitable paragraph having been provided by Parker, the Fleet Street gang departed, bearing Wimsey away with them like a captured Sabine maiden to drink in the nearest bar, in the hope of acquiring picturesque detail.
“But I wish you’d kept out of it, Sally,” mourned Peter.
“Oh, God,” said Salcombe, “nobody loves us. It’s a forsaken thing to be a poor bloody reporter.” He tossed a lank black lock of hair back from his forehead and wept.
Parker’s first and most obvious move was to interview Penberthy, whom he caught at Harley Street, after surgery hours.
“Now I’m not going to worry you about that certificate, doctor,” he began, pleasantly. “We’re all liable to make mistakes, and I understand that a death resulting from an overdose of digitalin would look very like a death from heart-failure.”
“It would be a death from heart-failure,” corrected the doctor, patiently. Doctors are weary of explaining that heart-failure is not a specific disease,
