“Well, it wasn’t for his beauty, I should think.”
“No?—but there must have been a reason. Dante, you may remember, once painted an angel. Do you know the limerick about the old man of Khartoum?”
“What did he do?”
“He kept two black sheep in his room. They remind me (he said) Of two friends who are dead. But I cannot remember of whom.”
“If that reminds you of anybody you know, I don’t care much for your friends. I never saw an uglier mug.”
“He’s not beautiful. But I think the sinister squint is chiefly due to bad drawing. It’s very difficult to get eyes looking the same way, when you can’t draw. Cover up one eye, Charles—not yours, the portrait’s.”
Parker did so.
Wimsey looked again, and shook his head.
“It escapes me for the moment,” he said. “Probably it’s nobody I know after all. But, whoever it is, surely this room tells you something.”
“It suggests to me,” said Parker, “that the girl’s been taking more interest in crimes and chemistry stuff than is altogether healthy in the circumstances.”
Wimsey looked at him for a moment.
“I wish I could think as you do.”
“What do you think?” demanded Parker, impatiently.
“No,” said Wimsey. “I told you about that George business this morning, because glass bottles are facts, and one mustn’t conceal facts. But I’m not obliged to tell you what I think.”
“You don’t think, then, that Ann Dorland did the murder?”
“I don’t know about that, Charles. I came here hoping that this room would tell me the same thing that it told you. But it hasn’t. It’s told me different. It’s told me what I thought all along.”
“A penny for your thoughts, then,” said Parker, trying desperately to keep the conversation on a jocular footing.
“Not even thirty pieces of silver,” replied Wimsey, mournfully.
Parker stacked the canvasses away without another word.
XIX
Lord Peter Plays Dummy
“Do you want to come with me to the Armstrong woman?”
“May as well,” said Wimsey, “you never know.”
Nurse Armstrong belonged to an expensive nursing home in Great Wimpole Street. She had not been interviewed before, having only returned the previous evening from escorting an invalid lady to Italy. She was a large, good-looking, imperturbable woman, rather like the Venus of Milo, and she answered Parker’s questions in a cheerful, matter-of-fact tone, as though they had been about bandages or temperatures.
“Oh, yes, constable; I remember the poor old gentleman being brought in, perfectly.”
Parker had a natural dislike to being called constable. However, a detective must not let little things like that irritate him.
“Was Miss Dorland present at the interview between your patient and her brother?”
“Only for a few moments. She said good afternoon to the old gentleman and led him up to the bed, and then, when she saw them comfortable together, she went out.”
“How do you mean, comfortable together?”
“Well, the patient called the old gentleman by his name, and he answered, and then he took her hand and said, ‘I’m sorry. Felicity; forgive me,’ or something of that sort, and she said, ‘There’s nothing to forgive; don’t distress yourself, Arthur,’—crying, he was, the poor old man. So he sat down on the chair by the bed, and Miss Dorland went out.”
“Nothing was said about the will?”
“Not while Miss Dorland was in the room, if that’s what you mean.”
“Suppose anybody had listened at the door afterwards—could they have heard what was said?”
“Oh, no! The patient was very weak and spoke very low. I couldn’t hear myself half she said.”
“Where were you?”
“Well, I went away, because I thought they’d like to be alone. But I was in my own room with the door open between, and I was looking in most of the time. She was so ill, you see, and the old gentleman looked so frail, I didn’t like to go out of earshot. In our work, you see, we often have to see and hear a lot that we don’t say anything about.”
“Of course, Nurse—I am sure you did quite right. Now when Miss Dorland brought the brandy up—the General was feeling very ill?”
“Yes—he had a nasty turn. I put him in the big chair and bent him over till the spasm went off. He asked for his own medicine, and I gave it to him—no, it wasn’t drops—it was amyl nitrate; you inhale it. Then I rang the bell and sent the girl for the brandy.”
“Amyl nitrate—you’re sure that’s all he had?”
“Positive; there wasn’t anything else. Lady Dormer had been having strychnine injections to keep her heart going, of course, and we’d tried oxygen; but we shouldn’t give him those, you know.”
She smiled, competently, condescendingly.
“Now, you say Lady Dormer had been having this, that and the other. Were there any medicines lying about that General Fentiman might have accidentally taken up and swallowed?”
“Oh, dear no.”
“No drops or tabloids or anything of that kind?”
“Certainly not; the medicines were kept in my room.”
“Nothing on the bedside table or the mantelpiece?”
“There was a cup of diluted Listerine by the bed, for washing out the patient’s mouth from time to time, that was all.”
“And there’s no digitalin in Listerine—no, of course not. Well now, who brought up the brandy-and-water?”
“The housemaid went to Mrs. Mitcham for it. I should have had some upstairs, as a matter of fact, but the patient couldn’t keep it down. Some of them can’t, you know.”
“Did the girl bring it straight up to you?”
“No—she stopped to call Miss Dorland on the way. Of course, she ought to have brought the brandy at once and gone to Miss Dorland afterwards—but it’s anything to save trouble with these girls, as I daresay you know.”
“Did Miss Dorland bring it straight up—?” began Parker. Nurse Armstrong broke in upon him.
“If you’re thinking, did she put the digitalin into the brandy, you can dismiss that from your mind, constable. If he’d had as big a dose as
