Where's the 'phone?'
'Uh?' he said. 'Then who was making those noises? Who?’
'Never mind that. Where's the 'phone?'
'There's no 'phone,' said Bowers blankly, and the ground went from under my feet. 'No 'phone. The governor don't like 'em.' He was still held by that curious dullness of shock, without thought for more than the figure in the chair, and he spoke in an almost ordinary tone. 'I say, it's all wrong. The furniture's all changed about!'
'What?'
''Strue. Look: move the light. That big desk where he
you know,' he nodded, 'that's usually in front of the other window.' He indicated another hanging lampcord by the window nearer us, with a brown-and-yellow lamp-shade patterned in German lettering. 'And that shade is always on the other light. That clock over the mantel — it don't belong there: it belongs on the wall opposite. Them long pipes should be on the big desk. The chairs are all changed…. For God's sake get some light!'
I thought it was safe to let go his arm now. I hurried over and picked up the bulb from the desk, telling Bowers to throw the switch from the door. And, just before he did so, the cupboard door opened.
Bowers gave a yelp as something came out. I almost missed getting the light into the socket, but it went on: it was a 200 watt bulb, and it made a naked glare which momentarily blinded both of us. Whatever had come out of the cupboard did not make a run for the door, or even move fast. On the contrary, the figure sat down in a chair..
Then we found ourselves looking at a very pale, very quiet-faced woman sitting bolt upright in the wing-chair. Though her breast rose and fell perkily, she eyed us as calmly as she could. She was very good-looking in spite of a somewhat blunt nose and broad mouth; her dark-yellow hair was parted in the middle and drawn over her ears, and her blue eyes were reddish round the lids. She wore a tweed suit with a white silk blouse and dark tie, and her fingers were gripped round a snakeskin handbag. As though to show how cool she was, she took a packet of cigarettes and a lighter out of the handbag. Then she lit a cigarette, although the flame of the lighter at first missed it altogether.
'I thought I had better come out,' she said, 'before I made a spectacle of myself, being dragged out. I suppose you'll want this?'
Again she reached into the handbag, and took out a small corked bottle about a third full of a whitish crystalline powder.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Four cuff-links
'This-?' I said. I moved over automatically, and took the bottle. It was labelled in neat handwriting, 'Potassium bromide. Half a teaspoonful in half a glass of water when required. L.D.A.'
The woman, despite her fierce ease of manner, was nearly at a collapse after the long strain.
'At least I shall be able to get out of here,' she said. 'That bottle, officer, contains strychnine salts. You can see, or your — your coroner will be able to see, that poor Mr. Hogenauer died of strychnine poisoning. Bit there's one thing I must tell you now. If there's any fault in this, it's mine. My husband had nothing to do with it. He's just beginning his career… ' She beat her fist softly on the arm of the chair, and her voice grew jumpy again. 'I don't know what happened, but it's all my fault.'
'You're Mrs. Antrim, aren't you?'
She stared up. 'You know about it already? Then Larry — my husband — Dr. Antrim-?'
'I saw him at the Chief Constable's this evening,' I said evasively. 'What happened?'
'That's what I don't know! Mr. Hogenauer was a patient of my husband's. He came to the house last night… ' She paused, and looked at Bowers in appeal. 'You remember. You were with him. You're Mr. Hogenauer's servant, aren't you?'
'Yes'm,' replied Bowers, who was pressing his hands together. The curve of his slicked hair bad come into shreds. 'When the governor went out, which wasn't often, he hired a car at the garage and I drove him.'
'He talked with my husband,' continued Mrs. Antrim, nodding carefully at the pattern in the carpet. 'The doctor gave him bromide; ordinary nerve-sedative. I manage the doctor's surgery: I mean the dispensing part of it. I studied medicine; I don't mind death, as a rule.'
She looked sharply sideways, and back again, and held the cigarette to her lips.
'Well, I took down off the shelf what I thought was the bromide bottle; ordinary ten-fluid-ounce bottle. It was labelled bromide, it was in the right place, and it looked In any case, I weighed out what I thought was a quarter- ounce of bromide, as the doctor had directed me, and put it into a half-ounce bottle. That's the bottle you've got there.
'It wasn't until this evening that I was in the surgery again. Then I noticed that the ten-ounce bromide bottle on the shelf was now about half-full, whereas the night before it had been almost empty after I took out the dose. I couldn't imagine what had happened. Then I began to get panicky especially when I found that the label was a little gummy, as though something had been pasted over it.
'I looked everywhere on the shelves. The only sign of something wrong was that the bottle of strychnine had been pushed back out of line on the shelf. It was the same size as the bromide bottle. Its label was gummy. And it was nearly empty, just as I remembered the bottle from which I had given Mr. Hogenauer the dose.
'Then I knew. Somebody had switched the bottles. Some body had pasted a bromide label over the strychnine, and a strychnine label over the bromide. And, in mistake for bromide, I had given Mr. Hogenauer 120 grains, or a quarter-ounce, of pure strychnine salts. And, after I had done that,
somebody went into the surgery again, pulled off the fake labels, and put the bottles back in their proper places.
'It would have been easy to get into the surgery,' she added blankly. 'There's a French window, and we never keep it locked up until the time my husband goes to bed at night.'
True or not — and I supposed they were true — here were some very startling statements. I had to keep a wooden face, but I wondered how I could question her without betraying myself. Ordinary G.P.'s as a rule, do not keep such an enormous quantity of strychnine at hand; they have no use for it, since in its medical form it comes in preparations already made up. And above all they do not usually keep it in ten-fluid-ounce bottles displayed conspicuously on a shelf.
'Excuse me, ma'am,' I said, 'but that's rather a lot of poison, isn't it? How much of the stuff have you got there?'
'Sometimes as much as two ounces. I–I don't, suppose I can make it clear to you, but my husband specializes in nervous and heart diseases. That's the reason for the strychnine formate.{'Strychninae Formas (C,H,2O2N2, H.COOH) occurs in the form of a white crystalline powder composed of small acicular crystals. It is soluble in water (about 1 in 5) and in alcohol. Strychnine formate is used as a nerve stimulant and muscular tonic with other formates in the preparation of compound syrups and elixirs. It has been administered hypodermically in doses of 0.001 gramme (%7 grain)'-British Pharmaceutical Codex (1934), p. 1019.} He does a tremendous lot of work with it; he's consultant for the Ken Hill Hospital, and he's very keen on handling their cases. Ordinarily, of course, a doctor hasn't time to make up his own strychnine solutions, but Larry insists on doing it. The-the bottle had the required red label. I don't want you to think
She looked round dazedly for a place to put the cigarette, and I took it out of her hand and threw it into the empty grate. She leaned her head quietly against the back of the chair, but the muscles of her throat were working. 'I wonder,' she said, 'whether I could have some brandy? I've been locked up in this room '
'Sorry, ma'am,' Bowers told her hoarsely, 'but the poor old governor was a t.t. There's nothing in the house, only…' I could have sworn there was a tear in the corner of his eye. He nodded towards the glass and the bottle of mineral-water on the centre table. It was the 'Eisenwasser' with the blue-and-red label, the same sort of bottle as those over which l; had stumbled at the back gate of the house.
'Don't touch that, you fool!' I said. 'That's probably the glass be drank from. He mixed himself what he thought was a bromide in that mineral-water — '
'Yes, I thought of that,' said Mrs. Antrim, sitting up, quickly, 'but how was it he didn't know straightaway he
