I asked him why he was so anxious to tell me all this.
“To tell your pal Harrison,” he snapped back. “He seems blasted anxious to stick his nose into my concerns. Tell him to keep out of it. I don’t like the swine.”
“I don’t see,” I said, “why you should work yourself up into this extraordinary state of mind because a man has made a few ordinary inquiries about his father. Unless, of course, you have anything special to hide.”
This seem to sober him down. He pulled his face into something more nearly resembling amiability and then suddenly began to laugh.
“I’m sorry. I lost my temper rather. Anything to hide? Good God, no—except that I’m sorry Harrison has got on to—that business with Margaret, you know. She must have let something out, accidentally. But I’ll swear the old man never knew a word about it. Not a damn thing. He was as right as rain—best of pals, and all that. But I don’t like that pup of his.”
I put down the pen with which I had been fidgeting all this time, got up and went and stood by him on the hearthrug.
“Lathom,” I said, “why did you come here?”
He looked at me, and for a moment I thought he was on the point of getting something off his chest. I had a horrible fear of what it might be. If he had spoken, I really do not know what I should have said or done. I might—I don’t know. I was really quite horribly frightened.
But nothing came of it. He shifted his gaze and said, in a curious, embarrassed way:
“I’ve told you. I wanted to know what you’d done with Harrison—to find out how the matter stood. Afraid it’s been awkward for you. I didn’t quite realise. It can’t be helped. He’d have to know sometime, anyhow. I’d better be going.”
He held out his hand. In the state things were in, I could not take it. Either I was being a perfect Judas Iscariot, in which case I hadn’t the face to give him my hand, or else he was, in which case I felt I would rather be excused. It was all so involved that at the moment I was completely incapable of deciding anything.
“Oh!” he said. “I’ve said one or two things, haven’t I? All right. Sulk about it if you like. I’m damned if I care.”
He slammed out. After a moment I went after him. “Lathom!” I called.
I don’t know what I meant to say to him. The only answer was the hang of the outer door.
Honestly, Harrison, I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t know whether I’ve been a skunk or a moral citizen. I don’t know whether I’ve warned a guilty man, or betrayed an innocent one, or the other way round. But I’m feeling like hell about it, because—well, frankly, because I cannot believe that an innocent man would have such a watertight alibi.
It’s perfectly obvious he came here to ram the alibi down my throat. But it is an alibi. I’m enclosing the paper with the names and addresses he wrote down so pat. You can investigate it all, if you like, but it’s certain to be sound. He knew it. He was perfectly confident. Besides—
Anyway, I won’t touch it. It makes me sick.
I’ve finished that statement, by the way. Here it is. I hope to God the whole thing comes to nothing and I never hear of it again. I ask you, as a favour, to leave me out of it if you can.
51
Statement of Paul Harrison [Continued]
Disregarding the hysterical tone of his last few sentences, I felt that on the whole Munting was right, and had behaved with more discretion and public spirit than I had credited him with.
It was obvious to me that Lathom was losing his nerve. As to his guilt, I had by now no shadow of a doubt. The blatant way in which he had marked his trail, right up from Manaton to London and back again, and his determination to let Munting know all about it, were actions entirely inconsistent with the carelessness of an innocent man. The trouble was that he was now on the alert. At any minute he might take alarm and bolt. On this account, I decided to waste no valuable time in checking his alibi. The fact that he had produced it with such confidence left me no hope of breaking it down; moreover, some of the inquiries were of a sort that could only be made satisfactorily by the police.
It was evident that I must abandon the whole idea of a return to Manaton. Only one possibility was left, namely, that the poison had been left in such a place that my father was bound to add it to the dish of fungi himself; and that this manoeuvre had been carried out before Lathom left for London.
I knew that all the foodstuffs in The Shack had been carefully analysed and found harmless, with the exception of the half-eaten dish of fungi itself. I was, therefore, forced to conclude that the poison had been added to the beef-stock in which the fungi were stewed. Anything else would be dangerous, for the presence of muscarine in, say, the salt or the coffee would be a circumstance so suspicious as to impress even the coroner’s jury.
There was nothing difficult about this. The stock would have been prepared from Monday’s delivery of shin of beef. It was my father’s habit always to keep a pan of stock simmering on the hob. By Thursday morning there would probably be just sufficient left to cook his evening meal, after which he would boil up the new supply of shin for the rest of the week.
Now, in what form would the poison have been added? Not in the solid form, for my father would have noticed the presence
