Hogenauer says cheero, walks out of the door accompanied by the doctor, gets into his car, and is driven away. Antrim takes a stroll out on the headland to look at the sea for ten or fifteen minutes, and then returns home. Time, ten-thirty.'
There was a pause. With infinite labour H.M. propelled himself up from his chair, and lumbered over to the half-open door of the surgery or dispensary. We followed him. The inner room was long but very narrow, a sort of cubicle. At the end, on the narrow side of the oblong, there was a French window giving on the rear lawn. There was an ordinary sash-window in the right-hand wall. On the two other
walls were shelves ranked with bottles, chiefly of the 10fluid-ounce size used by chemists, with wooden cupboards under the shelves. Another green-shaded lamp hung over a bench set with a tap and sink, a pair of scales, and a neat series of glass funnels.
H.M. reached up and plucked down a corked bottle on whose plain white label was printed in ink, SOD. BROM. Dose 5-30 gr.
'Ordinarily, d'ye see this kind of mix-up couldn't have happened,' he went on. 'Look at the other bottles. Most of 'em come from the ordinary chemical supply houses. They've got the labels worked into the glass itself, so there can't be any mistake, and they've got glass stoppers. And now take a look at this.'
From the extreme end of a shelf he took down another bottle, the same size and also corked. It had a red label, on which were typed the words, STRYCHNINE FORMAS, Poison, C21H22O2 N2HCOOH. Dose 1/c4 gr. Except for their labels, the two bottles looked exactly alike. The bromide bottle was half full, the strychnine bottle almost empty. Under their light their contents shone like snow.
''For purity',' said H.M. 'Look at the little jokers. Now, then. Before Hogenauer came, did somebody sneak in here with fake labels, and switch the bottles? It'd 'a' been quite easy, you know.' He pointed a big flipper at the French window. 'I'm authorized to say that that window's never locked, not up until the time Antrim goes to bed. And after Hogenauer had gone. why, nothin' simpler than to creep in again and change 'em back. Remember, for ten or fifteen minutes Antrim was taking a stroll along the headland. The place was open.'
'But why change them back?' I asked. 'It seems unnecessary fastidiousness.'
'It does,' agreed H.M. 'Now take the alternative theory. Did somebody, in the middle of the night, creep in here when everybody was abed? Had Mrs. Antrim honest-to-God given a real bromide to Hogenauer earlier, and did the murderer come in here and arrange the trappings as Stone suggested? Take a look at that.'
He nodded owlishly towards the sash-window in the right-hand wall. I was nearest it, and I did not need a magnifying-glass to see what had happened. The catch of the window had been broken, evidently by a long knife inserted from outside. On the inner sill there were some long, curious scratches.
Evelyn, who had been growing more and more bewildered, pushed the hair out of her eyes and stared at H.M.'s curious expression.
'What about it?' she asked. 'It seems straightforward enough. Stone was right after all. The murderer climbed in here after they'd gone to bed-'
'And yet, d'ye know,' said H.M., 'I'm inclined to doubt whether that lock was busted from outside.'
He waddled into the room at his near-sighted stride, pulling the glasses up and down his nose. This time he consented to take off his hat, which restored the old H.M. Returning to his chair, he sat down and looked at the skull facing him on the desk-blotter; he was very nearly as bald as the skull itself; and they were a queer pair to be looking at each other in the hygienic, unloved light of a doctor's office.
'All I'm sure of,' he added blankly, 'is that the murderer's under this roof right now.
'Y'know, my fatheads, every time I play this game of chase-the-murderer I find I'm in a new path or two. I learn something. You've called this case a sort of puppet show affair; and, by a stroke of intelligence that ain't usual with any of you, you're right in more senses than one. It's also like a Punch and Judy show in that everything is the wrong way around. In an ordinary murder-investigation, first of all we stumble over the corpse on the floor, with six suspects gibberin' around it. Then we line up the suspects, and we question 'em thoroughly. If you, Ken, were chroniclin' the case, you'd devote the first half-dozen chapters to an exhaustive questioning giving intimate details about the suspects, a suggestive leer or two they might make, and their replies to the query as to where they were on the night of June fifteenth. Afterwards you could go skylarkin'. Afterwards you could go off to the house in the marches, the fight in the dentist's office, the rescue of the wench (if any), and let the evidence rest until it had to be pulled out of the hat at the end.
'That's normal. But, burn me, in this business we got it all turned round backwards. The skylarkin,' the Harlequinad-ein-Suburbia, had to come first. You acted your summer pantomime before anybody (including myself) quite knew what was goin' on. And when we did learn what was goin' on it still didn't make sense about the murder. Consequently, at long last, we start to question the suspects.
'We couldn't have questioned 'em before this, because we didn't have the vital evidence. It wouldn't have been any good to fire the where-were-you-between-the-hours-of question at 'em: we still don't know just when and how that poison was handed over to Hogenauer. It all whittles down to that one point. And we've got to attack 'em with the new evidence that's been discovered. That new evidence consists of two wildly unrelated questions: (1) Is L. alive, or isn't be? (2) How does the presence or absence of L. concern the question of the counterfeit money? Uh-huh. At first glance it seems like tryin' to find the relation of a cactus-plant to a bucket of herring: but when we relate them two facts together we're goin' to have the truth. So the people will be brought in here, one by one-and we've got to find the truth before dawn.'
'And I suppose you've got some notion as to what the truth is?' Charters asked irritably.
'Me? Sure I have, son.'
'Nonsense. This mystification '
'You want to bet, hey?' said H.M., leering. 'Davis!'
It was the blast which scattered his lady typists like autumn leaves, and it brought in Sergeant Davis convinced that trouble was brewing.
'In they'll come, one by one,' pursued H.M., rather drowsily, 'and — yes, I think we'll begin with Mrs. Antrim. Go and fetch her, sergeant. Place your bets, ladies and gents. Who's guilty? I tell you, my fatheads, somebody's goin' to have to do some tall-buskined actin' within the next half-hour.'
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Three Telephones
H.M. was right. It was as though we saw all these people in a new light. We knew them, yet we did not know them, and now we should come to know what they were really like. It occurred to me that I had met each of them when I was under a disguise or mask of some sort: it would be a curious study to see Mrs. Antrim's reactions when she found the Compleat Policeman sitting by the desk in ordinary clothes. H.M. evidently thought so too.
Mrs. Antrim came in at a free stride. Only her face was uncertain. The first person she looked at was Evelyn, and the two took each other's measure. Mrs. Antrim looted more brushed and neat than she had seemed at 'The Larches.' Her dark-yellow hair was parted and drawn tightly over the ears. Her eyelids seemed a trifle puffy, but the broad mouth was composed. She now wore a brown coat over the white silk blouse; her fingers plucked upwards at the sleeves. When Charters pushed out a chair for her, she was on such an edge of nerves that the way she thanked him was almost coquettish. Then she saw me sitting by the desk. She did not start or make any gesture: people do not do such things, especially women. It was only that her eyes looked a little more strained.
'Siddown, ma'am,' said H.M., with a gentle thunder. 'Now, now, you don't want to get the breeze up, a goodlookin' sex-appealin' gal like you! I say, we're sorry to, have upset the place like this, bargin' in, and —'
She seemed puzzled, and looked round. 'Oh-that? That's all right. I don't mind. I couldn't have slept anyway. But why do you want me in here again? What more can I tell you? I've told you everything about the poison. I've told you everything that happened to me tonight-last night at M — Moreton Abbot.' Her gaze went just past me. 'I also told it to a policeman there, who turned out to be a bogus policeman. I suppose he was one of your men. Do you think it's fair?'
'Fair, ma'am? Is what fair?'
She opened her mouth, and shut it again. 'What did you want to ask me?'
