Penberthy sat with a white face and said nothing.
“You see,” went on Wimsey, “if once they get her into the dock, she’ll always be a suspected person. Even if the jury believe her story—and they may not, because juries are often rather stupid—people will always think there was ‘something in it.’ They’ll say she was a very lucky woman to get off. That’s damning for a girl, isn’t it? They might even bring her in guilty. You and I know she isn’t—but—you don’t want the girl hanged, Penberthy, do you?”
Penberthy drummed on the table.
“What do you want me to do?” he said at last.
“Write a clear account of what actually happened,” said Wimsey. “Make a clean job of it for these other people. Make it clear that Miss Dorland had nothing to do with it.”
“And then?”
“Then do as you like. In your place I know what I should do.”
Penberthy propped his chin on his hands and sat for some minutes staring at the works of Dickens in the leather-and-gold binding.
“Very well,” he said at last. “You’re quite right. I ought to have done it before. But—damn it!—if ever a man had rotten luck …
“If only Robert Fentiman hadn’t been a rogue. It’s funny, isn’t it? That’s your wonderful poetic justice, isn’t it? If Robert Fentiman had been an honest man, I should have got my half-million, and Ann Dorland would have got a perfectly good husband, and the world would have gained a fine clinic, incidentally. But as Robert was a rogue—here we are …
“I didn’t intend to be such a sweep to the Dorland girl. I’d have been decent to her if I’d married her. Mind you, she did sicken me a bit. Always wanting to be sentimental. It’s true, what I said—she’s a bit cracked about sex. Lots of ’em are. Naomi Rushworth, for instance. That’s why I asked her to marry me. I had to be engaged to somebody, and I knew she’d take anyone who asked her …
“It was so hideously easy, you see … that was the devil of it. The old man came along and put himself into my hands. Told me with one breath that I hadn’t a dog’s chance of the money, and in the next, asked me for a dose. I just had to put the stuff into a couple of capsules and tell him to take them at 7 o’clock. He put them in his spectacle-case, to make sure he wouldn’t forget them. Not even a bit of paper to give me away. And the next day I’d only to get a fresh supply of the stuff and fill up the bottle. I’ll give you the address of the chemist who sold it. Easy?—it was laughable … people put such power in our hands. …
“I never meant to get led into all this rotten way of doing things—it was just self-defense. I still don’t care a damn about having killed the old man. I could have made better use of the money than Robert Fentiman. He hasn’t got two ideas in his head, and he’s perfectly happy where he is. Though I suppose he’ll be leaving the Army now … As for Ann, she ought to be grateful to me in a way. I’ve secured her the money anyhow.”
“Not unless you make it clear that she had no part in the crime,” Wimsey reminded him.
“That’s true. All right. I’ll put it all on paper for you. Give me half an hour, will you?”
“Right you are,” said Wimsey.
He left the library and wandered into the smoking-room. Colonel Marchbanks was there, and greeted him with a friendly smile.
“Glad you’re here, Colonel. Mind if I come and chat to you for a moment?”
“By all means, my dear boy. I’m in no hurry to get home. My wife’s away. What can I do for you?”
Wimsey told him, in a lowered voice. The Colonel was distressed.
“Ah, well,” he said, “you’ve done the best thing, to my mind. I look at these matters from a soldier’s point of view, of course. Much better to make a clean job of it all. Dear, dear! Sometimes, Lord Peter, I think that the War has had a bad effect on some of our young men. But then, of course, all are not soldiers by training, and that makes a great difference. I certainly notice a less fine sense of honor in these days than we had when I was a boy. There were not so many excuses made then for people; there were things that were done and things that were not done. Nowadays men—and, I am sorry to say, women too—let themselves go in a way that is to me quite incomprehensible. I can understand a man’s committing murder in hot blood—but poisoning—and then putting a good, ladylike girl into such an equivocal position—no! I fail to understand it. Still, as you say, the right course is being taken at last.”
“Yes,” said Wimsey.
“Excuse me for a moment,” said the Colonel, and went out.
When he returned, he went with Wimsey into the library. Penberthy had finished writing and was reading his statement through.
“Will that do?” he asked.
Wimsey read it, Colonel Marchbanks looking over the pages with him.
“That is quite all right,” he said. “Colonel Marchbanks will witness it with me.”
This was done. Wimsey gathered the sheets together and put them in his breast-pocket. Then he turned silently to the Colonel, as though passing the word to him.
“Dr. Penberthy,” said the old man, “now that that paper is in Lord Peter Wimsey’s hands, you understand that he can only take the course of communicating with the police. But as that would cause a great deal of unpleasantness to yourself and to other people, you may wish to take another way out of the situation. As a doctor, you will perhaps prefer to make your own arrangements. If not—”
He drew out from his jacket-pocket the thing which he had fetched.
“If not, I happen to have brought this with me from my private locker. I am placing
