He turned to Wimsey with some excitement.
“Hallelujah Dawson walked into Lloyds Bank in Stepney yesterday morning and presented Mary Whittaker’s cheque for £10,000, drawn on their Leahampton branch to Bearer, and dated Friday 24th. As the sum was such a large one and the story of the disappearance was in Friday night’s paper, they asked him to call again. Meanwhile, they communicated with Leahampton. When the news of the murder came out yesterday evening, the Leahampton manager remembered about it and phoned the Yard, with the result that they sent round this morning and had Hallelujah up for a few inquiries. His story is that the cheque arrived on Saturday morning, all by itself in an envelope, without a word of explanation. Of course the old juggins chucked the envelope away, so that we can’t verify his tale or get a line on the postmark. Our people thought the whole thing looked a bit fishy, so Hallelujah is detained pending investigation—in other words, arrested for murder and conspiracy!”
“Poor old Hallelujah! Charles, this is simply devilish! That innocent, decent old creature, who couldn’t harm a fly.”
“I know. Well, he’s in for it and will have to go through with it. It’s all the better for us. Hell’s bells, there’s somebody at the door. Come in.”
“It’s Dr. Faulkner to see you, sir,” said the constable, putting his head in.
“Oh, good. Come in, doctor. Have you made your examination?”
“I have, Inspector. Very interesting. You were quite right. I’ll tell you that much straight away.”
“I’m glad to hear that. Sit down and tell us all about it.”
“I’ll be as brief as possible,” said the doctor. He was a London man, sent down by Scotland Yard, and accustomed to police work—a lean, grey badger of a man, businesslike and keen-eyed, the direct opposite of the “tutster” who had annoyed Parker the evening before.
“Well, first of all, the blow on the head had, of course, nothing whatever to do with the death. You saw yourself that there had been next to no bleeding. The wound was inflicted some time after death—no doubt to create the impression of an attack by a gang. Similarly with the cuts and scratches on the arms. They are the merest camouflage.”
“Exactly. Your colleague—”
“My colleague, as you call him, is a fool,” snorted the doctor. “If that’s a specimen of his diagnosis, I should think there would be a high death-rate in Crow’s Beach. That’s by the way. You want the cause of death?”
“Chloroform?”
“Possibly. I opened the body but found no special symptoms suggestive of poisoning or anything. I have removed the necessary organs and sent them to Sir James Lubbock for analysis at your suggestion, but candidly I expect nothing from that. There was no odour of chloroform on opening the thorax. Either the time elapsed since the death was too long, as is very possible, seeing how volatile the stuff is, or the dose was too small. I found no indications of any heart weakness, so that, to produce death in a healthy young girl, chloroform would have had to be administered over a considerable time.”
“Do you think it was administered at all?”
“Yes, I think it was. The burns on the face certainly suggest it.”
“That would also account for the handkerchief found in the car,” said Wimsey.
“I suppose,” pursued Parker, “that it would require considerable strength and determination to administer chloroform to a strong young woman. She would probably resist strenuously.”
“She would,” said the doctor, grimly, “but the odd thing is, she didn’t. As I said before, all the marks of violence were inflicted postmortem.”
“Suppose she had been asleep at the time,” suggested Wimsey, “couldn’t it have been done quietly then?”
“Oh, yes—easily. After a few long breaths of the stuff she would become semiconscious and then could be more firmly dealt with. It is quite possible, I suppose, that she fell asleep in the sunshine, while her companion wandered off and was kidnapped, and that the kidnappers then came along and got rid of Miss Findlater.”
“That seems a little unnecessary,” said Parker. “Why come back to her at all?”
“Do you suggest that they both fell asleep and were both set on and chloroformed at the same time? It sounds rather unlikely.”
“I don’t. Listen, doctor—only keep this to yourself.” He outlined the history of their suspicions about Mary Whittaker, to which the doctor listened in horrified amazement.
“What happened,” said Parker, “as we think, is this. We think that for some reason Miss Whittaker had determined to get rid of this poor girl who was so devoted to her. She arranged that they should go off for a picnic and that it should be known where they were going to. Then, when Vera Findlater was dozing in the sunshine, our theory is that she murdered her—either with chloroform or—more likely, I fancy—by the same method that she used upon her other victims, whatever that was. Then she struck her on the head and produced the other appearances suggestive of a struggle, and left on the bushes a cap which she had previously purchased and stained with brilliantine. I am, of course, having the cap traced. Miss Whittaker is a tall, powerful woman—I don’t think it would be beyond her strength to inflict that blow on an unresisting body.”
“But how about those footmarks in the wood?”
“I’m coming to that. There are one or two very odd things about them. To begin with, if this was the work of a secret gang, why should they go out of their way to pick out the one damp, muddy spot in twenty miles of country to leave their footprints in, when
