This is a work of fiction, and all the characters in the book are drawn from the author's imagination. If any names or titles belonging to living persons have been used, this has been done inadvertently and no reference to such person or persons is intended.
CHAPTER I
I WANT you to understand, Mr. Jellipot, that this is a quite unofficial visit," Inspector Combridge said, as he sat down.
"Yes. Yes, of course," the solicitor answered. "Always glad to see you, Inspector." His thought was: "He wouldn't say that, if it were no more than a friendly call." But they were old friends, with a mutual confidence in each other's discretion, and if Inspector Combridge chose to preface whatever he might have to say in that manner, it was not Mr. Jellipot's disposition to challenge it.
"The fact is, I've recommended a client to you, and I'm not sure that you'll thank me for what I've done."
"If you've arrested anyone," Mr. Jellipot said cautiously, "of whose guilt you are less than sure, I should be unlikely to refuse to do anything in my power - - "
"I haven't arrested anyone," the inspector answered, with some natural irritation, the reply inevitably bringing recollection of the recent Attic Murder case to his mind, when he had been unfortunate enough to put two innocent persons, one after the other, into the dock, before Mr. Jellipot's diffident but acute assistance had enabled him to snap handcuffs upon the guilty man. "I haven't arrested anyone, and I don't know that there'll be any occasion to do so. I don't arrest people unless I have got really good grounds for concluding that I am putting them where they ought to be; and I shouldn't be likely to arrest anyone and ask you to get them off in the same breath."
"No," Mr. Jellipot agreed thoughtfully, without appearing to notice the irritation he had aroused, "I can see that. It isn't likely you would."
After saying this, he remained silent, waiting for his visitor to continue, and Inspector Combridge controlled his momentary annoyance to ask, in a friendlier voice: "I expect you've read something of the Hamilton case?"
"No, I can't say that I have. I suppose it's some criminal matter that's in the Press? But The Times Law Reports are about all that I get time to look at most days now."
"Well, you wouldn't see it mentioned in them. Not yet, anyway. And there really hasn't been much published, nor much happened as yet.
"Mrs. Hamilton was a wealthy widow, who lived at East Grinstead. Her only companion, beside the domestic staff, was a stepdaughter, Ada Hamilton. Mrs. Hamilton was an elderly lady with that indefinite complaint a weak heart, and Ada nursed her.
"She had no children of her own, and her husband had left his estate tied up, so that she had the income - a matter of about two thousand pounds yearly - for life, with reversion to his daughter by an earlier marriage - the Ada I've mentioned.
"Mrs. Hamilton died about three weeks ago. Her doctor certified the cause of death without showing any hesitation, and she was buried in the ordinary course.
"But on the day she was buried the coroner had an anonymous letter. It came too late for him to stop the interment, even had he been of a mind to do so on no better evidence, but he had a consultation subsequently
with Mrs. Hamilton's medical attendant, Dr. Burfoot - quite a good man, by the way - and after that he applied to the Home Office for an exhumation order."
"Which, of course, he got?"
"Yes. There was no difficulty. The relatives raised no objection, and of course it wouldn't have made much difference if they had, unless to draw suspicion upon themselves. But in fact Ada - the only one closely concerned - appeared to think it a good idea. That's the one point in her favour."
"Then you are going to tell me that she is accused of poisoning her stepmother?"
"Not at all. If anyone did poison her, I should say that there wouldn't be much doubt as to who it was, but we don't know that she's been poisoned at all. The adjourned inquest's on Friday morning, and Sir Lionel Tipshift's to have his report ready by then."
"You've no idea what it's likely to be?"
"Not the least. Sir Lionel very properly deferred the autopsy until Dr. Burfoot could be present, and I understand that the result of an analysis of some of the internal organs won't be known till tomorrow afternoon."
"But I suppose you may often get a hint of what it's most likely to be?"
"Yes. Sometimes we do. But in this case Sir Lionel Tipshift and Dr. Burfoot say the same thing, that it's better to be dumb till they're quite sure."
"That sounds reasonable," Mr. Jellipot suggested.
"Yes. They evidently agreed upon it after the first examination was made. It's an attitude you can take either way."
"Yes, so you can. But what is it you want me to do, if that's how the case stands, and who for?"
"Miss Ada Hamilton asked me to recommend her to a good solicitor. She wants to find out who wrote the anonymous letter."
"Well, it seems a sensible step to take. But it's not quite in my line. I'm not a detective agency."
"No. I suppose you'd instruct a suitable office, if you take the thing up at all."
"Probably I should. I suppose the coroner's got the letter now?"
"Yes, it's his property. But you could inspect. There'd be no difficulty about that."
"What sort does Miss Hamilton appear to be?" Inspector Combridge hesitated. She may be quite a respectable young woman. She's not my style. She doesn't look like a murderess, or talk like one for that matter, but then I never knew one who did."
"And you have known several?" Mr. Jellipot enquired, checking the value of the inspector's evidence with his usual precision.
Inspector Combridge observed the implication of this question without offence. He replied, after consideration: "Yes. Four. Only one that we were able to hang, but the others were quite as sure."
"Then you can speak with more than common experience. . . The young lady was able to influence you sufficiently for you to recommend her to me?"
The inspector received this with rather less complaisance than the implication which he had answered previously. He said: "Well, I like to be fair. And I thought I could put her on to you better while there's no accusation against her than I might afterward. . . Besides, it can't hurt us to know who wrote the letter, whether it were well founded or not. Rather the other way."
"Yes, I see that. By the way, it sounds like the kind of investigation that will require out-of-pocket payments. Has Miss Hamilton any means of her own?"
"I understand that she comes into her father's estate, now that her stepfather's dead. I don't know beyond that."
"But if she murdered her stepmother she wouldn't benefit under that will."
"No, I suppose not."
"Well, I'll do what I can if she comes to me."
Mr. Jellipot said this without enthusiasm, and Inspector Combridge, feeling no certainty of the wisdom of what he had done, got up to go.
CHAPTER II
THE inspector was half-way to the door when Mr. Jellipot delayed him with a further question.
"By the way, to whose benefit would it be if Ada Hamilton should lose her rights under her father's will? I mean, do you happen to know who is the next heir?"
"Not certainly. There's a cousin, Vincent, who'd probably benefit more or less. I don't know whether there may be anyone nearer than he."
"You don't connect him with it, anyway?"
"No, I rather wish that I could."
There was a tone of bitterness in the inspector's voice which Mr. Jellipot was not likely to pass unremarked.
"It sounds," he said, "as though you have met him before."
"So I have. As a matter of fact, I'm the one man living who can give him a clean bill of innocence in this matter. If there were any foul play about Mrs. Hamilton's death, he's about the only man in England of whom I can swear to my certain knowledge that he wasn't concerned. You see I had him under observation at the time in connection with a different charge."
"Something you can't tell me now?"
"I don't see why I shouldn't. We had an information laid against him for obtaining money by false pretences. It was one of those cases which no reasonable person could doubt, but which fell short of what you lawyers call proof. For about a fortnight I shadowed him everywhere that he went, trying to pick up the missing link in the chain, and I've got a record of his every movement when he was outside his own bedroom, and every telephone call that he made, or which was put through to him."
"That," Mr. Jellipot considered, "may prove to be very important to him, if there should have been a crime, and he be an innocent man."
"So it may; though it wasn't exactly the object I had in view. But I don't suppose you'd care to hear the whole tale. It's a bit long, and you looked busy when I came in."
"So I was," Mr. Jellipot admitted, "and every minute that I spend talking with you means that I shall have to work later tonight; but if I'm to take a case up at all I like to know as much as I can about the people concerned; so if your own time will allow - - "
"Well, you can have it for what it's worth. But as to it having any connection with Mrs. Hamilton's death, you'll understand, when you hear, that there's none at all. It's only importance is that it shows that Vincent wasn't concerned.
"The first I heard of it was when the landlord of the Rolfe Hotel came to us at Scotland Yard and said he'd been done out of five hundred pounds, and would the Public Prosecutor take it in hand?
"The Rolfe is a medium-class hotel near Victoria Station. We've nothing against it, or the landlord - Wall his name is, Nicholas Wall - except that it's mostly patronized by bookmakers and sporting men of the louder type.
"Wall's tale was that Vincent Hamilton had been staying at his hotel for about six weeks. He had been introduced by a regular customer, a man named Baildon, who admitted it, and appeared to have acted in good faith. There's nothing known against Baildon, and all he said about Vincent seems to have been from his own knowledge, and to have been substantially true.
"Vincent paid his bills regularly, without questioning the amounts, and spent a large part of his days in his landlord's company, gaining his confidence, and preparing in other ways for the coup that he had in mind.
"He showed at times considerable sums in notes in his wallet when he was paying his bills, and other signs of having money readily at command, but he didn't flaunt it or boast. He lost a bet for a couple of pounds and paid it cheerfully, treating it lightly, as though the money were nothing to him.
"Then one afternoon he came in after 4 p.m. and told some plausible tale about suddenly wanting five hundred pounds which he must have in cash, and could Wall lend it to him till the morning?
"Nicholas Wall is one of those foolish men who think their money is most secure if they keep it under their own eyes and their own keys. He says he had about two thousand pounds in his safe, mostly in bank-notes, at the time, and he lent the money quite readily - rather proud, I'm inclined to think, that he could show his ability to find such an amount at a moment's notice."
"It sounds very unwise," Mr. Jellipot said, "but you haven't told me the false pretence. I suppose Hamilton represented that he had expectations or means of repayment that don't exist?"
"No. I can't say he did that. He seems to have said very little. He just mentioned that he wanted the money, and let Nicholas Wall push it into his hands. But it was a swindle all right, and must have been planned with knowledge that Wall kept a large sum handy in cash."
"For a hotel proprietor, Mr. Wall appears to have been of an unusually trustful nature."
"Yes. That's how it looks. But he'd been duped in a cunning way, which is where the false pretences come in.
"It began with someone ringing Vincent Hamilton up, and starting conversations in which large investments were proposed in an easy way. The operator - a young fellow who is Wall's nephew - listened-in at the switch-board, and became interested.
"In one instance only, there was a message 'phoned for Hamilton when he was out, which the operator had to take down, advising him to buy Amalgamated Oils heavily for a rise.
"But these 'phone calls are not evidence against him, particularly unless we can produce the man who sent them, which, so far, we have been unable to do; and as an additional difficulty, for the sake of the reputation of the hotel, Wall is reluctant to make public the fact that Hamilton's telephone conversations were overheard."
"I suppose it frequently happens under such conditions?"
"Yes. Almost normally, you might say. As a fact, the telephone gives an illusion of privacy that doesn't exist. There's always the possibility that an operator will overhear conversations that interest her because she knows the parties concerned, or because she has had her curiosity aroused as to what's going on, and no doubt such knowledge is often abused.
"But in using the public service there is the safeguard that the operators are pledged to secrecy, and most of them value their jobs too much to risk telling anything that might get them into trouble; and, beside that, they're mostly too busy to listen-in. There's a measure of safety in the number of conversations they have to handle.
"But a hotel switch-board is a very different proposition. We had a case under investigation a few months ago in which a female operator at a prominent West-End hotel had acquired a small fortune by judicious black-mail based on the information she tapped. She passed it on to a man with whom she was in partnership, and his victims couldn't guess how he obtained the knowledge on which he worked."
"I have no doubt you are right," Mr. Jellipot agreed; "if people were more discreet in their occasions of speech, we lawyers would have comparatively little to do."
"Well, you ought to know best about that; but I should say that my job would be a lot harder than it is now. Nine times out of ten it's because people can't keep their tongues still that we get on the track of the man we want, or the proof we need. . . . But you can see that it wouldn't do Nicholas Wall any good for him to go into the box to say that he was deceived as to Hamilton's financial position by the fact that he or his staff listened-in to conversations that came through on the 'phone.
"And, beyond that, we couldn't base a charge upon such evidence without setting up that it would be a reasonable presumption on Hamilton's part that the hotel staff would act in that manner. And if Wall had been prepared to do that, you wouldn't get any jury to convict on such grounds.
"No. We had to tell him that he had been done in a way that the law couldn't reach, unless we could obtain some separate evidence to support the charge, and in the endeavour to get that we started tapping Hamilton's telephone conversations ourselves, and I followed him everywhere that he went, and checked up the record of almost everyone that he spoke to for the next fortnight. But I had to own that I'd drawn a blank, and at last we advised Wall to take civil proceedings for anything they may be worth, which will probably not be much."
"You might," the solicitor suggested, "have traced the notes, and seen whether whatever Hamilton did with them was consistent with the excuse on which they were borrowed."
"Why," Inspector Combridge smiled good-humouredly, "we actually thought of that! But we drew a blank again. The notes were banked in Manchester by a bookmaker who said he'd taken them the previous day, for a starting-price bet made on the course. The money was said to have been put on a favourite who didn't win.
"We couldn't say that this wasn't consistent with the excuse on which Hamilton borrowed the money, because anyone attending the Manchester races would have had to leave next morning before the hour when the banks open."
"You don't think that that may have been the true explanation, and the money really been lost?"
"No, I don't. I don't think it was ever risked on a bet at all. It was just a plot, very carefully thought out, to get five hundred pounds out of Wall's pocket in a way that the law couldn't reach, and the worst of it is that it seems to have come off successfully."
"At which," Mr. Jellipot observed, "you are naturally somewhat annoyed. But I suppose you will get him another time, if you don't now. The present point is that you are in a position to prove that he could have had no connection with Mr. Hamilton's death, if it were the result of foul play, which is no more than a suspicion as yet, based on the disreputable assertion of an anonymous letter.
"But if a crime should have been committed, such as would shut out the daughter from benefiting under the will, doesn't it suggest that Mr. Wall may get paid after all?"
"You mean that Vincent Hamilton may come into part of the estate?"
"It is at least a possible contingency, in which event you will observe that Nicholas Wall must be included among those who would benefit by the alleged crime."
Mr. Jellipot made this remark in no more than a jesting way and Inspector Combridge took it for the whimsical absurdity that it was, until memory of how the solicitor had once before produced what had seemed to him to be an incredibly improbable murderer entered his mind, and led him to say: "I suppose you're not going to ask me to arrest Wall as the guilty man?"
Mr. Jellipot was a quiet-mannered lawyer, who might smile at times, but from whom open laughter was seldom heard. Now he rejected this fantastic theory with as broad a smile as he was likely to show, but with the precision of statement which was equally characteristic of his legal habitudes.
"No, I don't think I shall ask you to do that. Even if we assume - and it is a large assumption at present - that Mrs. Hamilton has died from other than what are usually described as natural causes, the proposition would still appear to involve that Nicholas Wall must have suborned Ada Hamilton to murder her stepmother (as he could himself have had no direct access to the deceased) with the attractive prospect of being hanged for murder and losing her inheritance, so that it might pass to Vincent Hamilton and become available to discharge his debts, her conviction being a necessary precedent to the culmination at which he aimed. . . . No, I think a more plausible theory would be required."
"So," Inspector Combridge replied, "it appeared to me." He rose to go as he spoke and, as he did so, an office-boy entered, with a slip of paper, which he handed to Mr. Jellipot, who read it and said: "Yes, I will see her myself. Ask her to wait a moment. . . . It is Miss Hamilton," he explained as the boy retired. "I suppose I had better hear what she has to say." His thought was that if Vincent Hamilton were a fair specimen, Inspector Combridge had introduced him to a particularly disreputable family, and probably to a case which he would have much preferred not to have in his highly respectable office. But he only added: "Perhaps it will be best for you to go out by the other door."
CHAPTER III
ADA HAMILTON entered Mr. Jellipot's ofiice. She was a rather tall, blonde girl of about twenty, with large grey eyes which could become innocent and appealing with instant ease on all appropriate occasions, heavily carmined lips, and a complexion which looked as though it might have been good without the artificial assistance which it had certainly had.
"Inspector Combridge," she said, in a pleasantly-modulated, rather nervous voice, "advised me to come and see you."
Mr. Jellipot was a middle-aged bachelor whose associations with women had been for many years almost entirely professional. In that capacity he observed them from many angles, though most usually as the occasions of trouble, and frequently as its active originators also. He was a man of much natural insight, and with a capacity for logical deduction which had enabled him to reach the truth of two baffling crimes when their professional investigators had failed to find it, and although the bulk of his practice was not of a criminal character.
Given the necessary data, he would be less likely than a younger man either to fail in judgment of a woman's character, or to be deflected from a considered opinion by any cajolery that she might attempt. But it remained that a younger man, and particularly one leading a less secluded life, might be better able to assess the significances of Miss Hamilton's appearance, and of the war-paint which she had considered appropriate for the present call. As it was, he was conscious of a slight attraction, a faint repulsion, and a more definite distaste for this business which Inspector Combridge had thrust upon him.
He showed, however, nothing of these feelings in the quiet cordiality with which he received his visitor, and guided her to the padded comfort of the low chair which was placed for single clients (or for the most important among several), at the left side of his desk.
"Yes," he said, "I know Inspector Combridge. You must tell me what I can do for you."
Gaining confidence from the cordiality of his voice, and a somewhat deceptive diffidence of manner which was habitual to him, she came to the point with a simple directness which he approved.
"I've come to see you about an anonymous letter that's made a great deal of trouble. I want to find out who wrote it."
"Anonymous letters," he replied, "usually do. They can rarely be justified either ethically or on practical grounds. I have always advised that they should be disregarded in the absence of corroboration of a most definite kind."
"Mr. Lamson didn't take it that way."
"Mr. Lamson being the coroner?"
"Yes. It was about my stepmother's death. It was a wicked letter, as well as a silly one. It suggested that someone had poisoned her."
"And the coroner took it seriously?"
"Yes. He got an order for exhumation. It seems a dreadful thing that someone can make so much trouble without signing his name."
"His?"
"His or hers. I don't know. I wish I did."
Mr. Jellipot, remembering Inspector Combridge's statement that Miss Hamilton had favoured the exhumation, had to remind himself of the danger of forming opinions beyond the logic of the known facts, and that he had accepted her as his client, and must dispose his mind to adopt her interests as his own. But his question was blunt, though it was gently put: "You did not approve the exhumation?"
"Of course not. Who would? But I thought it best to pretend I did. I thought if I seemed unwilling they might suppose there really was something wrong, and be more likely to do it than if I said that I didn't care."
There was a disarming frankness about this explanation, even though it admitted that she could show a different attitude toward those she wished to mislead.
Mr. Jellipot said only: "Probably you were right. . . . I suppose you are not in any doubt yourself as to the cause of Mrs. Hamilton's death?"
"If you mean do I think anyone poisoned her, not the least. The idea's absurd. As though anyone would! Why, there was no one who went near her except myself, and sometimes one of the maids. And mother and I usually ate the same things, so that cook would have done us both in at the same time, if she'd wanted to. But why should she? Besides, she isn't the sort."
"You were with your stepmother most of the time?"
"Yes. Especially during the last fortnight. She didn't seem really ill, but she wasn't well enough to go out, and Dr. Burfoot came in once or twice, and said he thought someone ought to be with her, in case anything happened suddenly; so, of course, I stayed in."
"Yes. Naturally. So you feel sure that the result of the enquiry will be to show that Mrs. Hamilton died from natural causes?"
"Yes, there's no doubt about that. What I mean to find out is who wrote that beastly letter."
"The adjourned inquest will be on Friday? So I believe it has been announced in the press. You don't think we'd better delay enquiries till after that? - Till it's been proved that it was a baseless insinuation?"
"No. I don't see why we should."
"Very well. I'm not sure that I do, either. I suppose you've no idea who may have written it?"
"Not the least. I've tried to imagine who could, but I can't even make a sensible guess."
She said this was an apparent sincerity, but it was not a reply which Mr. Jellipot was disposed to take without further effort.
"I am sure," he said, "that you will realize the importance of giving me all the information and assistance you can, if my services are to be of any benefit to you. Any suggestion, however improbable it may seem - - "
"Yes," she answered, "of course I understand that. But I haven't the least idea. . . . "That," she added, giving him an appealing glance, "is why I have come to you."
"Very well," he said, "if that's really all you can say, I'd better have a look at the letter itself, and see what can be done. . . . Do you wish me to attend the inquest on your behalf? But probably there's already someone representing the family interests there?"
"I'd much rather you did, if you don't mind."
"Very well. If those are your instructions, I will attend to watch your interests only. You had better let me have your telephone number, in case I want to see you again before then."
He rose as he spoke, and Ada Hamilton took the hint, and rose also. She gave the number he required, shook hands, and went with no more than one appealing, confident glance. He considered, when she had gone, that it was improbable that the writer could be traced before the resumed inquest would be held, and that enquiries might best be made when its results would be known; but it could do no harm to Ada Hamilton for it to appear that she was boldly seeking to discover the authorship in advance of whatever revelation there might be to come. Was that her real object, he wondered? Was he acting for a murderess, as clever as she was wicked, who was making him the catspaw of the attitude of innocence which she had resolved to assume? Who had even got round Inspector Combridge, which he did not think that most criminals found it easy to do?
He did not think that she had the appearance of a woman who would be likely to poison members of her family (even stepmothers, who are traditionally unloved!), but he remembered the inspector's experienced verdict that murderers seldom do.
Well, he was in for it now! And it was his evident duty to consider his client innocent in the absence of conclusive contrary evidence. He had better see the letter - and perhaps have a talk with the coroner's officer - and perhaps a few words with Dr. Burfoot also, if he could think of a sufficient excuse.
Confound Inspector Combridge! he concluded, with unusual violence of thought, why couldn't he leave him alone? He neither wished to defend a murderess, nor to be occupied in investigating a mare's nest, or running the writer of a wickedly mischievous letter to earth, after it had missed fire. He was a conveyancing lawyer, with his hands full of business of more respectable and probably more remunerative descriptions. Why couldn't Combridge leave him alone?
CHAPTER IV
MR. JELLIPOT telephoned the coroner's office immediately after Ada Hamilton's departure, and received the expected assurance that, as her solicitor, he would be free to inspect the anonymous letter which had originated the enquiry, and beyond that, that Mr. Lamson would be grateful for any assistance he might be able to render in the difficult task of tracing its writer.
He made an appointment for ten-thirty on the following morning, and deferred further consideration of the matter in the meantime to meet the claims of more urgent business.
He called at Mr. Lamson's office at the appointed time, and was received by that gentleman himself with a gratifying cordiality.
The English coroner is usually a member of the medical or legal profession, his duties requiring a combination of the qualifications of these learned specialists, and his attitude toward, and mode of conducting, the investigations he undertakes is inevitably biased by the profession to which he belongs.
Mr. Lamson was a solicitor, who had been the practising head of the well-known firm of Lamson & Pendleton, before he had nominally rather than actually retired, on undertaking the duties of his present office.
"The fact is, Mr. Jellipot," he said at once, "that it's one of those border-line cases where it might be said that there was no justification for applying for an exhumation order at all, and though I shouldn't like you to misunderstand me to say that I hope there has been any foul play, it's a fact that, unless that should be proved by the medical evidence, it will leave me with a feeling that I've done an almost indefensible thing.
"It's easy to say that, if there be any suspicion raised, however baseless it may be, it's best for the relatives themselves that there should be a proper enquiry, such as will dispose of it effectually; but, on the other hand, it would be a monstrous state of affairs if any malicious scoundrel, or perhaps a mere practical joker, could put respectable people to the annoyance of a post-mortem enquiry of this kind by merely sending me an anonymous letter."
"Then I may conclude that, apart from the letter you mention, there is at present no suspicious circumstance in connection with Mrs. Hamilton's decease?"
"Nothing but that, and a telephone call of the same category - I'll show you our record of that - so that the case depends absolutely upon the nature of the medical analyst's report. And, between ourselves, I never like these murder cases overmuch that are based entirely upon evidence of that kind. We have to take the words of experts on matters we don't understand at all, and they don't only contradict each other, they all talk about scientific facts as though they were of an unchangeable certainty, and we know all the time that they are clever guesses at best, and half the things that we were taught yesterday are denied today."
Mr. Jellipot did not entirely agree. He thought that a case of alleged murder raises two distinct questions. Has a murder been done? And, if so, by whom?
With the second of these questions the medical expert may have no concern; but, in regard to the first, his observations of the effects which poisons produce in the bodies of those they destroy are evidence of a most important, and may be of an essential kind. But his duty to his present client certainly did not require that he should emphasize this orthodox view, so he turned the subject by saying: "I am instructed by Miss Ada Hamilton personally. I suppose that I shall be in order in appearing at the inquest on her behalf? I mean, there must almost certainly be solicitors who have been dealing with the family's financial affairs, and who have already assumed that they are in order in acting in this capacity?"
"Yes, there is such a firm. Ord, Ord, & Shaftsbury, in Carthill Gardens. They have dealt for many years, I am told, with matters connected with the estate. But I don't think they would consider themselves as having any duty to Ada Hamilton personally. Perhaps rather the other way. I believe they were Mrs. Hamilton's solicitors rather than her husband's, and she transferred everything to them when he died. Ada Hamilton would be a mere stepchild to them. . . . But here comes the letter."
As he spoke, a clerk entered the room, bringing the letter in a glass-covered case, which Mr. Lamson removed with the remark, as he passed it over: "It has been examined for finger-prints with an absolutely negative
Mr. Jellipot looked at a piece of rather coarse white writing-paper, on which was printed in clumsy capitals:
"MRS. HAMILTON OF 33A GRAFTON TERRACE DIED OF HEART FAILURE, I DON'T
THINK! TELL THEM TO LOOK FOR A
RARE DRUG. AND DON'T FORGET THAT
MOST STEPMOTHERS ARE BEST OUT OF
THE WAY, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY'VE GOT EVERYTHING TILL THEY DIE."
Mr. Jellipot turned the paper over in his hand, and found that no inspiration came.
"The writer," he said, "makes his meaning clear. But I am afraid that the discovery of his identity raises questions which are somewhat out of my range. May I ask whether you have any ground for suspecting who it may be?"
"No. I wish we had. I can tell you this. The paper and envelope are of the same quality, and were probably purchased together. They were manufactured by a Maidstone firm, who make them up into shilling packets of cheap stationery, which they supply to between one and two hundred London customers, and to many others throughout the country. The ink used is Stephens' blue-black. There was a minute grease-spot on the back of the envelope, which the Scotland Yard analyst who has been kind enough to give me his assistance believes to be New Zealand butter.
"You will see that the wording and composition indicate a person of some education, and of sufficient intelligence to avoid the common trick of mis-spelling the words. The absence of finger-marks suggests that the letter was the result of a deliberate and careful plot.
"The police would be as glad as myself to interview the writer, and ask him a few pointed questions; but they regard it as practically impossible to prove the authorship of such a document, unless the writer does something foolish by which he gives himself away."
"Whoever wrote it," Mr. Jellipot suggested, "must have been acquainted with the family affairs, and with the provisions of Mr. Hamilton's will. He or she suggests a knowledge of the drug with which the alleged murder was committed. It appears that such knowledge could be possessed by few, and the area of enquiry must be correspondingly narrow."
"So it does," Mr. Lamson agreed, "though the number of such persons is larger than you might suppose at a first guess, and unfortunately includes no one to whom a particular suspicion can be attached.
"Inspector Combridge - a most efficient man in my Judgment, though his reputation needs no endorsement by me - made a list of over fifty people to whom those conditions might possibly apply, which subsequent scrutiny reduced to about half the number, which is not certainly complete, as it is evident that anyone might be in Ada Hamilton's confidence sufficiently to become suspicious, of whom we may have obtained no knowledge at all."
"But not many who would have any financial interest in the matter?
"No. But can we conclude certainly that the writer must be found within that category? Might he or she not be impelled by an abstract desire to promote the interests of justice, if something had been indiscreetly confided, or overseen or heard, which indicated the crime?"
Mr. Jellipot accepted this theoretic possibility in a somewhat absent-minded manner. He was more interested in the revelation of the extent to which Inspector Combridge had been investigating the origin of the letter himself before recommending Miss Hamilton to engage him upon the same quest. He felt, with a mild resentment, that it was unreasonable to ask him to undertake such a matter, in which those who specialized in detective work were admittedly on a cold scent. Still, it was open to him to instruct a private agency to undertake that which was outside the range of his own office, and certainly beyond his own inclination, if not his dignity, to pursue personally. Probably Combridge had expected him to do this, while appearing for Ada Hamilton at the inquest, and using the information he might obtain as her interests might require.
These reflections, instantly made, led him, by an apparent process, to ask: "I suppose Vincent Hamilton's on the list?"
Mr. Lamson smiled slightly. "Yes. He certainly is! I expect Inspector Combridge told you about him. He put him first, and, if he'd known how to do it, he'd have ended where he began.
"But there's really nothing to identify the letter with him more than a dozen others, probably more. And, if you give it a moment's thought, you'll see that the fact that we may be able to say that this letter was written by one of two or three dozen people doesn't help us as much as anyone might suppose.
"Whoever wrote it must be prepared for the possibility of being questioned, and isn't likely to admit it. He can't be taken by surprise. He'll probably deny it just as convincingly as the others will do who are quite innocent. And when you've questioned them all, what have you done beyond putting the writer more on his guard than he was before?
"No, I should say it's the better plan to be quiet till you've got something better to go on, or until the writer does something further that helps to give him away."
"You said there was a telephone message, following this letter?"
"So I did. I'm coming to that. I ought to explain to you that when I got the letter I didn't act instantly. At least, not in any way that could be publicly known.
"I wasn't at all sure that it deserved anything better than the hottest part or the fire, but I sent my assistant to interview Dr. Burfoot confidentially, and to ask him if he had given his certificate of death without hesitation, or whether there had been any element of doubt, or suspicious symptoms which had come under his notice.
"Dr. Burfoot acted as it might be expected he would. He came round to see me himself, and was extremely frank in the statement he made.
"He said that, rightly or wrongly, the idea of foul play had never entered his mind. He had thought the cause of death to be simple and obvious in the case of an elderly patient who had been troubled with valvular weakness for several years, and whom he had seen two days previously.
"He said that when he saw her then she had been in worse health than a fortnight before, and though he was rather surprised to be called in hurriedly two days later, and to find her dead when he arrived, there was nothing abnormal or improbable in such an event, and after he had heard Miss Ada's account of what had occurred, he gave the certificate without hesitation crossing his mind.
"He said that he was still of opinion that Mrs. Hamilton had died in a natural way, and from the causes which his certificate set out; but as to denying the possibility that death might have been caused or hastened by the administration of some poisonous drug - well, it was more than he, or any other doctor, without a post-mortem, could do.
"If I asked his opinion, it was still that she had died a natural death, and it was an opinion which it would take more than an anonymous letter to shake. He based that opinion both on his medical knowledge, and his observation of the people concerned.
"But if I asked him for a professional assurance that the death had been correctly set out on the certificate, he was bound to reply that he could not give it, and that it was a question that nothing short of a post-mortem examination would answer with final certainty."
"The certificate of death," Mr. Jellipot remarked, "seems to have been rather carelessly given. Perhaps it would not be going beyond the facts to conclude that they often are?"
"Yes. That is commonly true, though every doctor would not be as frank as Dr. Burfoot in such admission. Indeed, what else can you expect? In an enormous majority of cases the remotest suspicion does not arise, and yet, in a very large proportion of such deaths, it would be impossible, without a post-mortem, to rule out the remote contingency that some form or degree of poisoning - some deliberate hastening of death - may have occurred.
"But what practice would a doctor be likely to keep if it became known that he had a disposition to bring to my notice the fact that poison could not be absolutely ruled out as a possibility when his patients died?
"Actually, there are few doctors within my district in whom I should have as much confidence as in Dr. Burfoot to detect anything of an illicit kind, should it actually occur."
"So that, I suppose," Mr. Jellipot concluded, "Dr. Burfoot's statement left you very much where you were before?"
"Yes, except that he himself suggested that, with my permission, he should mention the anonymous letter to Ada Hamilton, and ask her whether she could suggest anything as to its origin, and also whether she would be disposed to raise any objection if I should consider an exhumation desirable.
"He did this, and reported to me two days later that Miss Hamilton, while showing some natural indignation, and professing incredulity, had said that, if the allegation were taken seriously, whatever investigation might be considered necessary would have her consent. And the same morning I was rung up here, presumably by the writer of the anonymous letter, who may have feared that his first shot had missed fire, as the days passed, and he could observe nothing occur.
"A call came through from a 'Mr. Nimmo,' who said that he wished to speak to me personally on a matter he could not discuss with others. The clerk who took the call had the wit to think there was something queer about the name and the manner of the request, and had a word with me before putting me through, as a result of which I told him to listen-in, and if he thought there was a cause, to get the telephone operator on another line and ask them to check up the number from which the call came.
"One result of this was that both Pierce and I heard the first message, which was all that mattered - after that I was merely occupied in trying to prolong the conversation so that the speaker might be caught, if possible, and we agreed the words immediately afterwards, and I had them written down. This is what they were: 'I just thought I should like to know what you're doing about the Hamilton murder case. You've had time enough to split it wide open now, if you know your job.'
"I replied that if I were speaking to the writer of an anonymous letter which I had received during the previous week, I could only tell him that a properly signed statement would have immediate attention.
"To which he replied, as nearly as we could recall it: 'So that's it, is it? A signed statement? No, I don't think I will. There's a law of libel, you know; and, after all, it's your duty, not mine. I think I've done enough in giving you the straight tip.'
"After that, I suggested that, if he were afraid to make a signed statement, perhaps he wouldn't mind calling here, and giving what information he could, which would be treated confidentially, at least unless, or until, it should be substantiated by our own investigations.
"I didn't suppose he would come. I was just trying to hold him to the phone as long as possible. But he only said: 'Not for yours truly. If you won't act, you'll find I'll make it public another way,' and then rang off before I had time to reply."
"You didn't trace him, of course?"
"No. It appeared that he was speaking from one of the call-boxes in the Underground station at Piccadilly Circus. You can judge what chance there would be that anyone would notice him there.
"I dare say it wasn't thirty seconds before Scotland Yard was informed, and probably not half-a-minute longer before the station police were at the box, but a young woman had just entered it, who had nothing to do with the matter. She said she had seen no one come out. It had been vacant as she approached. In fact, no one could be found who had observed anything of the previous occupant of the box."
"It appears," Mr. Jellipot remarked, "to help us so far that it eliminates any woman suspects, if I infer correctly from what you say that you are clear that it was a man who spoke; and there is the possibility that you might recognize the voice, if you should hear it again."
"Yes. Perhaps I might. But I can't say that it would be easy to do. My impression was that it was intentionally indistinct, and disguised by a nasal intonation."
"A nasal voice," Mr. Jellipot commented, "is naturally suggestive of an American origin. Isn't 'split it wide open' an American idiom?"
"Yes. Familiar to everyone who attends the cinemas. There's no reliance on that."
Mr. Jellipot felt that he had learnt all he could from this source, and more than most coroners might have been willing to tell.
With a few words of appropriate thanks, and a remark that he would be at the inquest on Friday, he got up to go.
CHAPTER V
MR. JELLIPOT returned to his office in some uncertainty of decision as to whether he should do anything further in the matter until after the adjourned inquest had been held.
The investigation which had been thrust upon him was not one which he was disposed to continue personally. He considered that his time was too valuable, and his dignity was not free from hazard.
He was at this time the head of a large and busy office, his practice having rapidly grown since his acquaintance with Sir Reginald Crowe, the chairman of the London and Northern Bank, had led to a considerable proportion of the legal business which the bank controlled being placed in his hands. He did not expect to call upon clients: they came to him.
He saw that this enquiry was of a nature to be undertaken by a private detective agency, who would probably handle it far more efficiently than he would himself.
But he hesitated to call in such a firm a mere twenty-four hours before the inquest would be held, and the result of the post-mortem known.
Tomorrow, his client would either be under grave suspicion, if not actual accusation of murder, or the writer of the anonymous letter would be shown to have circulated a scandalous and malicious lie.
In the latter case, the writer would probably be liable both for civil damages and to criminal prosecution. In the former, he might have little to fear from any legal process, and to discover him might even be to provide an additional, and perhaps deadly witness for the prosecution of Ada Hamilton.
Every instinct of legal caution urged him to wait, but he did not forget that his instructions were of an opposite purpose. Ada Hamilton had said that she wished the enquiry to be pressed forward at once, putting the question of murder aside as a fantastic improbability. What right had he to delay, or deviate from, those instructions on an assumption that his client might be guilty of the alleged crime?
From another angle, he felt that he would be glad to know definitely, before he should go into court tomorrow, what was the nature of the case with which he would have to deal, and both considerations led him to consider whether there were no means by which he could learn the result of the autopsy that afternoon.
There were two people who could probably tell him - Dr. Burfoot, and Sir Lionel Tipshift, who had conducted the post-mortem on behalf of the Crown. No doubt, when the result were known, the coroner also would be promptly informed.
But in the case of Sir Lionel Tipshift it was improbable that direct enquiry would be met by anything better than a blank refusal, and with both him and the coroner an enquiry was open to the objection that it was not in Miss Hamilton's interest that he should appear to be anxious, as though anticipating an incriminating result.
Dr. Burfoot remained. Here also a direct enquiry in advance of the inquest might be rebuffed, but why not seek an interview with him as soliciting his aid in the discovery of the anonymous letter-writer? If he could engage the doctor in such conversation, he thought it improbable that he could avoid, by implication if not by explicit statement, revealing that which the post-mortem had shown.
The result of these reflections was that he rang up Dr. Burfoot's address during the afternoon, and was not sorry to learn that he was out. He was expected back before six. Would he be free after that? His surgery hours were from 7.0 to 8.0 p.m. Very well, please tell him, when he should come in, that Mr. Jellipot would call upon him at 6.30 p.m. That should give him leisure for a meal, and yet with no opportunity to cancel the appointment, for Mr. Jellipot would have left his office before the time at which he was expected to return from his afternoon round.
As he journeyed to the doctor's residence on a bus-top (for though of ample means, and capable of substantial generosities, he was of habitual frugality in his personal expenditure) Mr. Jellipot faced the question of what his future course of action should be if it should appear that Mrs. Hamilton had died by a poisoner's hands.
In that event, he was already sufficiently familiar with the facts to see that Ada Hamilton was probably, if not certainly guilty of murder in one of its basest forms, and his inclination would be to retire from the case. He was not normally a criminal lawyer, and Inspector Combridge should have known him too well to thrust such business upon him. Yet he felt that justice would require that he should not take that course unless he were satisfied that there was no reasonable doubt of the guilt of this unwelcome client, and for that question to be resolved it might become necessary to examine exhaustively all methods by which the fatal substance could have been accidentally or deliberately taken, or administered by someone, other than Ada, who would have had the necessary access to the invalid.
Among these last he observed that Dr. Burfoot must be included, and though he did not regard it as a reasonable supposition that a medical practitioner of whom the coroner had spoken favourably should have poisoned a remunerative patient, with nothing apparent to be gained by her death, yet he was led to consider, as an abstract question, how easily a doctor could increase the mortality among those he attended, if he were of a disposition to do so, either from experimental or sadistic motives, with the comfortable knowledge that his own signature would be accepted as sufficient assurance that they had not been hastened to death. . . .
Dr. Burfoot, a tall, spare man whose sixty-five years had not reduced the alert activities either of mind or body, received him with courtesy, and with no lack of frankness when he learnt the business on which he came.
"I have no doubt," he said, "that as solicitor to Miss Hamilton - or indeed, to any member of the family of the deceased - you are entitled to all the information that I can give you. And," he added with gravity, "I wish it were of an opposite kind to what it is.
"I consider that I was invited to be present at the autopsy as representing Mrs. Hamilton's family, as well as being the one who had signed the death-certificate which was anonymously challenged, and which, I am sorry to say, in the light of our present knowledge, was inadequate, if not precisely incorrect.
"My own position is of minor importance, but on that point Sir Lionel Tipshift was generous enough to say that he would himself have given the same certificate under similar circumstances.
"I certified Mrs. Hamilton's death as being due to cardiac failure, as in fact it was. I attributed that condition to a diseased valvular condition for which I had attended her for several years, and as recently as the fortnight before she died. It was a natural deduction, but, as we now know, it was wrong.
"I must tell you that I had not the faintest suspicion of foul play at the time, and even now I find it difficult to believe.
"Up to a point, the post-mortem confirmed my own certification. There was no doubt that heart failure was the primary cause of death. "It is also established beyond doubt that the organs were free from any of the familiar poisons, such as are most often used either criminally or for self-destruction, and to that extent I am absolved from having overlooked symptoms such as a medical man should be alert to observe.
"But Sir Lionel, who, in such matters, has a far wider experience than my own, was intrigued by certain conditions of the aorta, into the technical details of which I need not enter, but which I will own (between ourselves) that I should not have regarded as sufficiently abnormal to arouse suspicion."
"Perhaps," Mr. Jellipot suggested mildly, "that may have been because they were actually innocent?"
"I am afraid not. Sir Lionel observed that these conditions were at least consistent with those which occur as the result of the injection of a certain drug which has only become very recently known, and which is now being used in dentistry as a local anæsthetic.
"I do not mean to imply that it can have any fatal, or even detrimental effect upon the heart when used in the local manner that dental surgery requires, but it appears that there have been extensive vivisectional experiments carried out recently upon various animals, including a number of dogs, of which Sir Lionel Tipshift has been cognizant, to ascertain whether it could be safely used in larger quantities, and for major operations, the result of which has been the disconcerting discovery that it is likely to act upon the motor nerves in a peculiar manner, causing paralysis of various muscles, including that of the heart, and Sir Lionel thought that he observed indications similar to those which he had seen in the hearts of animals who had died from that cause.
"It therefore became necessary to have a further analysis directed to the detection of this drug, for which no previous test had been made, and I regret to say that the result is to justify Sir Lionel's suspicions, and to make it a scientific certainty that Mrs. Hamilton received a fatal dosage, either in her food or by intravenous injection, within a few hours of her death."
"If," Mr. Jellipot observed, "it should be regarded as an admitted fact that Mrs. Hamilton died from this obscure form of poisoning, we should still, I suggest, be a very long way from concluding that it had been deliberately administered, either with or without criminal intention, and still further from identifying any individual with such an action."
Dr. Burfoot did not assent. He became silent, and when at last he spoke his voice had an increased gravity: "You will understand, of course, that I am neither making nor suggesting anything against Miss Hamilton. I am simply telling you what the police are certain to discover, and of which, therefore, you, as her solicitor, should be equally informed. But it is a fact that, until a few weeks ago, Miss Hamilton was employed as secretary-receptionist by a firm of dentists in Corbin Street - at the moment, I do not recall the name."
"Where she would have had access to this drug?"
"I cannot answer that. Most probably, yes."
"Can you say why she left?"
"I believe it was because her stepmother felt increasingly unfit to be left alone."
Mr. Jellipot saw some support in that statement for argument that Mrs. Hamilton had died from a natural cause. Weeks before, she had been conscious of failing health, and unwilling to be left. In that condition, she had looked to her stepdaughter for help, and the sacrifice of her own career, showing confidence, and probably affection, which seemed to have been reciprocated, or why had Ada consented to give up the salary, and with it the measure of independence, she had? In the absence of anything more than a vague suspicion being directed against her, a clever counsel could surely make something of that!
But his next thought was that it could be as easily used in a directly opposite way. The stepmother, who had been hated before, became an intolerable nuisance when she required that Ada should give her whole time to waiting upon her sick and elderly whims. And so the evil thought comes to her stepdaughter's mind that she can be removed in this easy, unguessable manner, being the invalid she already is, and no longer control the wealth, and consume the time, which those who are still young can put to better uses than she.
"You have known the family a good many years, Dr. Burfoot?" he asked.
"Yes. Almost all my professional life."
"I am in a different position. I have only been consulted during the last twenty-four hours, and Ada Hamilton is a stranger to me. I will tell you frankly that it is a case I do not like.
"I have never felt a disposition to specialize in criminal business, although I have been professionally concerned by a combination of circumstances in one or two notorious cases, and nothing would incline me to give my time to working up the defence of a suspected poisoner, except a conviction that I were acting for a person innocently accused. Will you be good enough to tell me - of course in the strictest confidence - whether it is a case in which you think I should be further concerned?"
Dr. Burfoot did not refuse to reply, but he did not appear to find the question easy to answer. He sat with his legs crossed, and a foot moving restlessly, on which his eyes fell, and Mr. Jellipot was content to wait for him to speak at his own time.
He said at last: "You ask me a very difficult question, but I think the right reply is that I am aware of no suspicious or detrimental circumstance other than that of which you are already informed.
"Beside that, there is the question of the anonymous letter. It seems to me that if you could discover its writer, and the circumstances which caused it to be written, you could judge the facts of the case much better than you can now."
Mr. Jellipot approved the discretion of this reply, which reminded him that he had intended to make that letter an excuse for his call, which he had found it needless to use. He now asked, in a more genuine mood: "I suppose you are not able to help me with any suggestion as to who it might be?"
"No, I can't say that I am. If we - if anyone - were to assume that Ada Hamilton procured the drug from the stock of the dentists by whom she was employed, it might be worth while to look for the writer of the letter in the same direction. But that's a mere guess, and you might think it to be the kind that anyone who is defending her innocence ought not to make."
"Miss Hamilton's instructions to me," Mr. Jellipot replied, "were to find the writer of the letter, by any possible means. She professed this to be her first anxiety, putting aside the idea that her stepmother had really been poisoned as something too fantastic to entertain."
"That is a very natural attitude if she be innocent, as I should like to believe."
"And otherwise," Mr. Jellipot reflected aloud, "the discovery might be of less than no assistance to her."
Dr. Burfoot did not dissent from this conclusion, and Mr. Jellipot, with a remark that they would meet again in the morning, got up to go.
His mind had clarified itself since the question of the letter had been discussed.
Ada Hamilton had instructed him to discover its origin, without consideration of consequences. If she were not guilty, it was the wisest thing she could do. If he accepted her protestation of innocence, and carried out her instructions successfully, there could be no blame to himself, even though she had lied to him and the result should be to ensure her condemnation.
He decided to concentrate upon this investigation, and not, in the absence of unexpected developments, to abandon the case before he had run the writer to earth; after which he would act according to the circumstances as he would then judge them to be.
CHAPTER VI
IT was obvious that the course on which Mr. Jellipot had resolved must involve his appearance as Miss Hamilton's solicitor at the coroner's court, for the inquest was to be held at 10.30 a.m. on Friday, and it was Thursday evening when he parted from Dr. Burfoot. It was too late to return to his office, and as he sat in the Wimbledon train on his way home to a dinner which must be held back somewhat later than his usual hour, he realized that he could do little more toward tracing the authorship of the letter until after tomorrow's enquiry; and though he might feel that he had been drawn into a case from which he would be glad to retire, his sense of professional honour would not therefore permit him to fail his client, be she poisoner or what else she might, so long as he should continue to represent her.
He considered later, as he surrendered to his solitary bachelor vice of an after-dinner cigar, that it was due to her that she should be informed of the result of the post-mortem before going into court tomorrow, and that a conference with her would be desirable.
He had her address, and there would still be time for him to write, asking her to call upon him at 9.30 a.m. tomorrow. But he also had her telephone number, which supplied a speedier and less troublesome method of communication. Remembering this, he decided to ring her up.
He got through at once, and heard her voice in reply.
"Oh, yes, Mr. Jellipot, it's I speaking. Have you found anything out?" There was a note of excitement in the words, as though of a pleased anticipation of what she would be likely to hear.
"No. Not about the matter on which you primarily consulted me. I have made some enquiries, but so far with no more than negative results, which is, perhaps, all that you could reasonably anticipate in so short a time. But I have received information in reference to the enquiry tomorrow which makes it desirable that I should see you beforehand."
"You mean you've not found out anything about that beastly letter, but you want to see me before the inquest about something else?"
Her voice sounded flat and disappointed, as though anything else must be subordinate in importance to that which she had asked him to do. Was she acting, he wondered, or was she really oblivious of the potential seriousness of her own position? He felt that her attitude made it more important that he should talk plainly to her, and his professional caution was disturbed by the bluntness of her reply to the careful vagueness of his own allusions.
"Yes," he said. "It is necessary for me to see you. I am speaking from Wimbledon, where I live. Perhaps it would be possible for you to come over to see me tonight? A taxi would do it in half an hour."
"I don't know," she said.
"Perhaps I could." There was indecision, even unwillingness in the voice. "The fact is," she added, "I was just going out when you rang up."
Her casual treatment of the matter increased the urgency of the occasion to his mind.
"Unless," he said, "it is a matter of very great importance, I think it might be wiser to put it aside. I could discuss the matter at more leisure than may be possible in the morning."
"I can't say it's exactly that. I was going out with a friend. Can't you tell me now what it is you want me to know?"
"I'm afraid not. The telephone is not, for several reasons, a desirable medium of communication."
"Oh, well. If it's really something you can't say on the 'phone!" There was a mingling of exasperation and resignation in her voice as she added: "I suppose I'd better come now. What a curse the whole thing is!"
He gave her his address, to which she answered: "Yes, I've got that down. I'll come at once. It's very good of you to be troubling about it at this time of night."
He was mollified by this somewhat belated recognition of his efforts on her behalf, though no nearer to a decision as to whether he was about to receive a criminal of a particularly objectionable kind, or an innocent girl who was still without adequate consciousness of the peril in which she stood. With whom, he wondered, had she been intending to spend the evening? If he should ask her that, would her reply give him the name he sought? Certainly, if so, she could not suspect the truth. But was it not the admitted position that neither she nor others were yet able to guess that name? And who more likely than one she regarded as a friend, and with whom she went out at night? Who probably had access to the house, with opportunities to observe what occurred, and to whom her confidences might be given? Yet was not this supposition coming near to assume that she was the murderess that Dr. Burfoot's information had appeared to indicate? And, if the facts were faced, was not that almost certainly what she was?
Well, he would assume nothing. He would wait to hear what she had to say. The position of a suspected and possibly innocent girl was hard indeed if her own solicitor were not prepared to hear her case with an open and friendly mind.
So he told himself as he reviewed the position until, in a rather shorter time than he had expected, her taxi was at the door.
CHAPTER VII
IT may be a measure of the degree of the reluctant suspicion with which Mr. Jellipot regarded his un-sought client that he was conscious of being unexpectedly reassured, even relieved, by her words and manner as she appeared at this second interview.
Afterward, suspicion and doubt might return, as in fact they did, but it remained, and is fair to observe, that the dubiety of the mental conception which he had been forming of her during the day was relieved and diminished, for the moment at least, by this second personal contact.
"I hope," she said, "I didn't sound too ungrateful when I tried to get out of coming. I'm awfully grateful really for all the trouble you're taking. I know solicitors don't reckon to see people like this after office hours. But the fact was that I'd promised to go out with a friend, and I hated putting him off at the last minute. And, beside that, we were going to a picture I particularly wanted to see."
"I am sorry," he said, "to have caused you to break your appointment, but the fact is that I saw Dr. Burfoot this afternoon, and he told me something I thought that you ought to know."
She said nothing to that, and though he saw that the words gained her attention, her manner was not that of one whose liberty, even life itself, might hang on the next words she should hear. But it is notorious that women at such junctures as this, can act better than men, appearing to be their superiors (if that be the word) both in duplicity and self-control.
"You are already aware," he went on, feeling that that which he had to tell should not be abruptly approached, and commencing, as it were, some distance away, "that the inquest, after a merely formal opening, was adjourned to allow time for Sir Lionel Tipshift, who usually acts for the Home Office in these matters, to conduct a post-mortem examination, at which Dr. Burfoot was invited to be present, which was due to him, as well as being in your own interest, because he had given the death certificate which was challenged by the anonymous letter.
"I am sorry to say that the result of the post-mortem is to suggest that Mrs. Hamilton did not die from what is generally known as natural causes.
Miss Hamilton looked somewhat troubled, but more decidedly puzzled, by this information. She said: "I don't quite know what you mean."
"I might have been plainer. Sir Lionel Tipshift's opinion is that death resulted from the administration of a poisonous drug."
"I don't believe anything of the kind! He wouldn't have found that unless he'd been told to look for it before he began."
"I don't think that we can dismiss it quite as lightly as that. I understand it to be a conclusion which Dr. Burfoot does not dispute."
"Dr. Burfoot! I should have thought he would have had more sense."
"You mean that you would still wish me to contend that your stepmother died from natural causes, even against the medical evidence with which we shall now be confronted?"
"I'm quite sure she did, if you mean that. But if they've made up their minds to say something different, I don't think we need bother so much. I don't suppose they'd alter if we talked to them all day. . . . But what I mean is that they wouldn't have found anything of the kind if they hadn't been told what they were to look for before they began. . . . It's the man who wrote that letter we ought to find, if we want to clear the thing up."
"I am inclined to agree with you about that. But I want you to understand first the position which we shall have to face tomorrow. Sir Lionel's evidence, as I am told, will suggest that Mrs. Hamilton died as a result of taking one or more doses of an obscure drug, which has only recently been discovered, and which is used as a local anaesthetic for tooth-extractions."
"But it sounds absurd! She hadn't been near a dentist for years. Not as far as I know, and I think I should."
"Dr. Burfoot told me that you held a secretarial appointment until recently with a firm of dentists."
"But what - - " She stopped abruptly, and her face whitened beneath the cosmetics which were less conspicuous now than they had been in the clearer daylight. "You don't mean that they will say that I had anything to do with getting it for her?"
"It is improbable that any suggestion will be made without evidence in its support. What I am asking now is that you will give me all the facts you can, so that I shall not be unprepared to deal with whatever I may have to meet."
"But - I don't see how I can guess that. I don't know what you want me to say, except that it's all lies, as I'm sure it is."
"Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"
"No, of course not. I'll tell you anything that I can."
"That will be the best help you can give me, if you will do it without reserve. You may be invited to give evidence tomorrow, though you will be under no obligation to do so, and if it have no other advantage it may clarify your own mind as to the circumstances concerning which you may be asked. . . . You were, until lately, in the employment of a firm of dentists?"
"Yes - Lobbs & Rider in Corbin Street."
"What were your duties there?"
"I used to receive the patients, and deal with the correspondence, and keep the books, and make out the accounts."
"You did not act as nurse or assistant in the dentistry itself in any capacity?"
"Oh, no. I wasn't trained for that kind of work. I shouldn't have liked it at all."
"Had you anything to do with the administration of anæsthetics?"
"Nothing at all."
"You had access to them?"
"I - I don't know. I never thought about it. I suppose I had."
"How and when?"
"It would depend upon where they were kept. I never thought about it. I used to stay sometimes after the others had left, if there were letters to get off."
Mr. Jellipot paused upon this. It was his own business to accept his client's statements in the absence of contradictory evidence, but she might have to tell her tale to those who would receive it in an opposite spirit. The duties she had described did not seem very onerous, nor likely to require that she would be detained after others had left.
"I am not conversant," he said, "with the details of the organization of the staff of a dental surgery, but the duties you have described struck me as being unusually restricted. Is it a large firm?"
"There's Mr. Lobbs. Mr. Rider's dead. There's Phil - Mr. North, who came into the firm last year. And there's Mr. Riddlestone. They divide the patients between them. Then there's the anæsthetist, Dr. Addison. And there are two workmen on the top floor. And there were Nurse Proctor and I."
"I see. Quite a large establishment. And you were fully occupied with the duties of which you have told me?"
"Yes. More or less. I don't say I was overworked. There were times when I was busy, and others when I was slack."
"You have said that you had nothing to do with the anæsthetics. But you would hear talk about the work that went on? You would know more or less what was being done?"
"Not to understand. I know that Dr. Addison was always trying everything new, and Mr. Lobbs didn't approve."
"Dr. Addison is a regular member of the firm?"
"Not exactly. He was paid so much for each case at which he assisted. I know that, because I had to make up his accounts, and he was always bothering about them. He was usually hard up, and wanting to draw money before it was due."
"Tell me this, and please be careful to be exact. Did you ever, under whatever circumstances, have occasion to take home any drug or chemical from the surgery, and, if so, was it left where Mrs. Hamilton might have got to it accidentally or by design?"
"No, I'm quite certain I never did."
"Did anyone else connected with the firm ever visit your home?"
"Mr. North has been."
"And met Mrs. Hamilton?"
"Oh, yes."
"So that you cannot say that he may not have brought such a drug into the house?"
"It doesn't sound likely, does it?"
"No. But we may be dealing with unlikely events. You can't say that he didn't?"
"He isn't the sort to do anything silly."
Mr. Jellipot had an inspiration. "It was he with whom you would have been going out tonight?"
"Yes."
"You are good friends?"
"Yes. Quite."
"More than friends, may I ask?"
"We're engaged if you mean that."
"Why exactly did you resign your position?"
"I haven't exactly resigned. I stayed away because my stepmother wasn't fit to be left, and they were kind enough to get someone temporary. I'm expecting to go back on Monday week."
"I want you to consider for a moment the matter of the anonymous letter. If we take it as a fact that Mrs. Hamilton died through the action of a certain drug, as I have little doubt that she did, and if it prove to be the case, as it almost certainly will, that that drug is in the possession of Lobbs & Rider, it will be an inevitable consequence that enquiry will be directed to connect these two circumstances. And as you say that you were not the medium by which it was conveyed, any possible alternative will be probed, and in the interests of justice - of your own interests, if you will allow me to say so - it is essential that such scrutiny should be made.
"Now in that connection it appears that whoever wrote that letter must have had some knowledge of, or some means of making a correct guess at the cause of Mrs. Hamilton's death, and that appears to make it probable, though not certain, that it was written by someone on the Corbin Street premises, or connected therewith."
"I don't quite see that, but I've always said that if we could find out who wrote the letter the whole thing would be cleared up. And I feel sure you'll find some way of getting him caught."
As she said this, Miss Hamilton raised her eyes to Mr. Jellipot's face with a pathetic and yet confident appeal to which he was not insensible. She had become increasingly nervous and perturbed in manner as the conversation proceeded, but whether this was because she had gradually come to realize the seriousness of her own position, or that, as the conversation lengthened, she had failed to maintain a mask which had at first been deliberately assumed, Mr. Jellipot was still in doubt when he reviewed the interview through the hours of an unusually wakeful night.
He said now: "You can trust me to do my best. I can't promise success. You tell me that Mr. North is the only one connected with the firm who ever came to your home?"
"He didn't write the letter, if you mean that. The idea's simply absurd."
"Probably so. But if you wish me to clear you from - I should say to clear up the whole matter, you must be content for me to examine every possibility without exception. . . . Shall you wish to give evidence tomorrow, if you should be asked?"
"I don't see why I shouldn't. There isn't much I could say."
"Neither, at present, do I. And if there is no reason why you shouldn't, there remains a strong reason why you should. But you must leave me to decide that at the time. It is enough for the moment that you will not be unwilling to do so.
"But let me give you one final word of advice. If you go into the witness-box, answer every question accurately; and if you don't understand why it is asked be all the more careful to be exact and explicit in your reply. But don't go beyond the replies to say other things, unless I myself invite you to do so.
"And unless you are asked directly, in which case you should tell the truth, it will be needless to mention Dr. Addison's impecuniosity, or the fact that, when you left Lobbs & Rider, you had any expectation of going back."
With these words, and after offering some refreshment, which she declined, Mr. Jellipot let his visitor go.
He was in a vague way rather better impressed by her personality than he had been at the earlier interview, though he was still in an active doubt.
But, whatever might be the truth, he saw that, by her own account, the case against her was likely to be even stronger than he had feared.
Dr. Addison was chronically short of money, sponging upon the firm, and it was she who made out the statements against which his cheques were issued! And it was he who would be in primary control of the poison by which her stepmother died.
Mr. North was on a footing of friendly intimacy. He came to the house at times. What were the relations, what the understanding, between the two? Her stepmother's death would give her freedom - and wealth which they might be planning to share!
Then she had not left her position. A temporary assistant had been installed. Was not this coming very near to anticipating the event which would leave her free to return? Capable of innocent construction, perhaps; but how damaging it could be made in a clever advocate's mouth!
The point most in her favour was the seemingly unconscious frankness with which she told him of these disconcerting circumstances. Was it the simplicity of innocence, or the cleverness of a woman who saw the necessity of winning him to her side, and was frank about matters which she was shrewd enough to see it would be less dangerous to admit than deny?
Well, it came back to the question of the writer of the letter from which all this had begun. Discover that, and it would be a different problem, and one which should be simpler to solve.
But first, there would be the inquest with which to deal.
CHAPTER VIII
INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE entered the coroner's court feeling rather uncomfortable. He had known Mr. Jellipot both as colleague and opponent, and learnt to respect him in both capacities, and, beyond that, a cordiality of friendship had developed from these associations which he would not willingly lose.
He was conscious of a complication of motives in introducing Ada Hamilton, for one of which at least Mr. Jellipot could not be expected to thank him.
There had been a quite genuine doubt as to her guilt or innocence, and a willingness to recommend her to a lawyer who, in spite of a hesitant and somewhat diffident manner, and a habit of protesting (with some truth) that he had a very limited experience in the criminal courts, had proved on more than one occasion that he had qualities of insight and tenacity which had brought a storm-beaten bark to unexpected harbour.
Then there had been a less defensible willingness to present the lawyer with what appeared to be the insoluble problem of the anonymous letter. Let Jellipot try his hand at real detective work himself, and he would be able to admire with a finer discrimination the difficult, thankless art that was so much less spectacular than a law-court triumph - which would often appear as simple after its solution as it had looked baffling before. He knew that in his heart he had not really expected him to succeed.
But he would not have directed Miss Hamilton to Mr. Jellipot's office had he known, or even expected, the nature of Sir Lionel Tipshift's report, which had reached his office a few hours later.
He knew that Mr. Jellipot did not ordinarily seek, or accept criminal business. He knew that it must divert his mind from work of a far more remunerative character. He knew that it was personal friendship for himself which had weighed down a doubtful scale, and that, apart from that, Mr. Jellipot would have replied at once that the matter was not one for which he had inclination or time. Looked at in that way, he felt that he had done rather a caddish thing, which even the apology which he was prepared to make could not adequately adjust.
He met Mr. Jellipot in the outer corridor. "I am afraid," he said, "I brought you a bad egg for breakfast yesterday. If I'd really thought - - "
Mr. Jellipot understood him very well, and though he had no intention of making it a cause of quarrel, he was still less inclined to accept condolences, or to enter into conversation based on the assumption that his client was a guilty woman.
He would have liked to reply that Miss Hamilton was a very charming young lady, and a client whom he was honoured to have, but his habitual caution, and a timely memory of the proverb that he laughs longest who laughs last, caused him to leave the words unsaid. "I am sure you did not expect it," he replied pleasantly, "or you would not have recommended Miss Hamilton to me. But, if I may venture an opinion upon a case which I have not yet had sufficient time to study with the care it requires, I should say that there may be surprises for all of us."
He left Inspector Combridge vaguely uncomfortable, and went in to the court in a more combative mood than he had been feeling a moment before.
He sat down with Ada Hamilton immediately behind him, and an elderly lawyer, with a parchment-like many-wrinkled face, whom he recognized as Dudley Ord, at his side.
"I have been instructed," he said to him, "by Miss Ada Hamilton. I understand that you appear for the family of the deceased. Miss Hamilton appeared to think that you would expect her to be represented separately."
Mr. Ord said: "Quite so. It is in fact a relief. We are solicitors for Mrs. Hamilton's family - for the Sheldon interests. Had Miss Hamilton come to us, we should have felt compelled to decline."
The words were dryly, not rudely, said, and it may have been from an actual intention of showing that he had meant no personal discourtesy that Mr. Ord added: "I heard, as I came in, that Tom Bellman's been briefed this morning for the police." But Mr. Jellipot took this to mean that his client was to be started on her way to the hangman's shed, and that Ord, Ord & Shaftsbury wished to keep as distant from such contamination as the fact that Lilian Sheldon had married Ada Hamilton's father would enable them to do, and his resentment rose.
Apart from that, the information was ominous, though he was glad to have it. Tom Bellman was a criminal barrister who was frequently briefed for the Crown in important cases, but not usually in such as required subtle or difficult advocacy. Tom Bellman would take his case as a bull charges a gate. He might be out-argued on points of law, or pulled up at times by a judge of equal personality to his own, but he could talk to a jury in a way that they understood, and his reputation for shrewd remorseless bullying in cross-examination would often keep a prisoner out of the box who would have told his tale, either true or false, if he had been faced by a milder counsel.
If it had been decided to brief Tom Bellman since yesterday afternoon, it meant that the Crown had decided that murder had been done, and that there could be no defence that his sledge-hammer would not be equal to batter down.
Showing no sign of these thoughts, Mr. Jellipot replied: "Oh, Bellman, is it? Thanks for telling me. I think I met him once at a dinner - perhaps two years ago. I thought him rather an - an emphatic man."
The conversation went no further, for at that moment Mr. Lamson entered and took his seat, and a minute later, while the jury were being sworn, Tom Bellman also appeared, with the instructing solicitor at his side, and their attendant clerks behind them.
CHAPTER IX
SIR LIONEL TIPSHIFT was in the box. "There was indication," he was saying, "of a paralysis of the heart muscle which must have preceded, and indeed been the immediate cause of death.
"The condition was new to me, excepting only as I had observed it in post-mortems upon non-human subjects which had been subjected to injections of a little-known drug which has been recently used as a local anæsthetic and which, with your permission, I will call x."
"Do I understand, Sir Lionel," the coroner interposed, "that you regard it as contrary to public policy that it should be openly mentioned?"
"I suggest that it may be undesirable."
"Very well. It is possible that there may be no necessity to do so. Pray go on."
"I proposed to Dr. Burfoot, who assisted me at the post-mortem, that portions of the liver and spleen, in which organs such a drug would most certainly be found, should be sent in sealed jars to separate analysts - Drs. Campbell Richie and Victor Southfield - so that the necessary tests should be made."
"Is that the usual procedure under such circumstances?"
"No. It was an additional precaution."
"And the result was that both these analyses discovered the drug x to be present in fatal quantities?"
"Yes."
"In view of which, can you state definitely that the drug x was the cause of Mrs. Hamilton's death?"
"I should say that it is beyond reasonable doubt."
The coroner's glance travelled along the row of legal gentlemen before him. "Any questions you would like to put to the witness?" he asked.
Mr. Bellman looked the indifference he felt. He was satisfied that Sir Lionel's evidence, as it had been fluently given in reply to his apposite questions, was of an impregnable quality. Experienced barrister and experienced witness were equally indifferent to any attack that might be launched by solicitors less practised than themselves upon the battle-fields of the criminal courts.
Mr. Ord shook his head.
Mr. Jellipot rose diffidently. "This mysterious drug," he said, " - this drug x - is one to which you had been giving special attention of late, apart from which you might not have suspected its presence?"
"Yes."
"Rather a curious coincidence, is it not?"
"Scarcely that, I should say."
"It is not scheduled as a poison?"
"At present, no."
"Dr. Burfoot had previously certified without hesitation that this was a case of natural death from old-standing disease?"
"So I am informed. I may say that I think any doctor might have done so on the facts as he knew them. I feel sure that I should have done the same."
"Thank you, Sir Lionel."
Mr. Jellipot sat down with a feeling that he would have done better to have said nothing.
It might be well, in a case of this kind, and as a general procedure, to challenge every statement in every possible way, and it was true that there is little an expert witness can say that another expert will not contradict with an equal confidence. But Mr. Jellipot had had no opportunity either to call conflicting experts or to have the medical evidence reviewed. He had had no possible time to read up the authorities himself, and he was therefore unprepared for a duel with such a witness.
Beside which, he could not deny to his own mind that though the element of coincidence might be present, its importance was discounted by the fact that Sir Lionel had recognized the fatal symptoms before the analyses which had justified his suspicions Mr. Jellipot was not one of those lawyers who are never satisfied except by the sound of their own tongues, and it appeared to him that if by any means it might be possible to defend his client from the suspicion which was surely settling upon her, with the slow relentless certainty which is usual to English judicial process, it would not be that of disputing over the drug which had caused Mrs. Hamilton's death.
He was conscious also that it was a doubtful policy for him, as Ada Hamilton's solicitor, to appear anxious to refute this evidence. There is a folly known as fitting the cap to your own head, and Sir Lionel Tipshift, a man of fine presence, a bald height of forehead, and a pleasant resonant voice, gave his evidence with an aloof air of disinterested impartiality which was of more value to impress a jury than all the expert knowledge that he certainly had.
So Mr. Jellipot felt that it would have been as well, if not better, to have kept his seat, and when Doctors Richie and Southfield followed Sir Lionel into the box, and gave their evidence in technical language not always easy to follow, they were allowed to go without any questions from him.
After that came a surprise. Mr. Lamson summoned Inspector Combridge to his desk, and there was an interval of some minutes while they talked together in voices too low to be audible to the curious court. And then the coroner turned to the jury to say: "Gentlemen, as it would, in any event, be impossible to complete the case today, and an adjournment will be necessary, I have decided that this will be a convenient point at which to take it.
"The adjournment will be sine die, by which you will understand that your attendance will not be required unless you receive a further summons stating the time and place at which I shall require your assistance."
Ada Hamilton, being unused to the procedure on such occasions, and ignorant both of the law and custom by which they were ruled, heard these words with bewilderment, and rose mechanically rather than with any clear purpose, in harmony with the movements that were now stirring around her.
"What does it mean?" she asked Mr. Jellipot, as he also rose, and turned toward her.
"Is it all over now?"
"I'm afraid we mustn't expect that. It means that the coroner won't do anything more at present, because Inspector Combridge is taking it in hand. . . . It means, among other things, that we must trace the writer of that letter as promptly as possible. . . . You had better go home now, and come to my office, say at eleven-thirty tomorrow morning. I don't suppose there'll be much done in any direction before then."
Miss Hamilton said she would do that, and left the court, still in some bewilderment as to the legal significance of what had occurred.
She was relieved that she had not been called upon to go into the box herself, which is an ordeal most women dread, even in matters in which they are not directly concerned; but she was becoming conscious of the remorseless indifferent leisureliness of the law, that, like a slow patient bloodhound, pursued its prey without heeding the pace of its victim's flight, be it fast or slow, knowing that it was on a scent that it would not lose. Was it on her own track that the bloodhound commenced to bay? It was a thought she could not avoid after the conversation she had had with Mr. Jellipot the night before, and it stirred her heart to a panic fear.
She did not think that anyone, even Inspector Combridge, had any wish to cause her trouble or grief. Indeed, it was he who had recommended her to the lawyer in whom she had come to think already that the hope of her safety lay. But there was no comfort in that. The bloodhound had no animosity toward the stranger on whose scent he was put. He did what he was told, being the tool of a greater power. And so it was with these men who fulfilled the law. Coroner, jury, detectives, lawyers and judges, they were all like the tools of a blind terrible force which they could not rule if they would, any more than she. They might have no animosity against her. They might be sorry for what they did. But they would make no difference for that. . . . She had read that they would even be kind to a man they would hang in the next hour: that they would give him a special choice of foods for his breakfast before he died. There seemed something monstrous in that. Something more unnatural, more sinister, than if they had torn him to pieces in a heat of indignation against whatever wrong he had done. . . . To be kind to a man whom you will inexorably combine to hang in the next hour!
But they would say he is not to be hanged by them, but by the black shadow of law that is over all. . . . To be hanged! With a sudden shock of fearful, incredulous, realization she saw it as a shadow that darkened over herself, that reached for her with grasping hands. . . . That was what Mr. Jellipot's hints and questions had meant her to understand. Step by step they would go on to decide that her stepmother had been poisoned . . . that no one but she could have done it . . . that it must be she . . . that it was she. They would say that she had done it for the money her father left. . . . They would do all this in a slow, considerate, impersonal way, and would treat her kindly before she died. For they hang women as well as men. They would do all this unless Mr. Jellipot should find some means to turn them aside, which she saw that she would be powerless to do. . . .
She became aware that she had reached home with this fear stunning her mind, though she could not recall the way she had come, or that she had opened the door. But the telephone was ringing urgently now, and she took the receiver up with a shaking hand.
The voice she heard brought her back to the normal current of life, as though she were sharply waked from a fearful dream. It said: "That you, dear? Yes, I thought you'd be back by now. . . . Yes, I dropped in at the court. . . . No, you couldn't have seen me, because I hurried back here as soon as I saw that the old josser was closing down for the day. I thought you might like to go on the river this afternoon, and I'd come back and clear up so that I could get off by when you would be ready. . . . Or of course I'll call for you, if you like. . . . Very well, that will be better still. Victoria Underground, at three prompt. Main entrance. I'll be there a little before. Goodbye, darling. Be as quick as you can."
"All right, Phil, I'll be there."
The nightmare fear had passed with the cheerful, confident words, and she was back in the waking world. It couldn't really happen to her.
CHAPTER X
MR. JELLIPOT and Inspector Combridge were alike in thinking that the discovery of the author of the anonymous letter had become the central factor of the situation with which, from their different angles, they were required to deal. They differed only in the intention with which they looked to a common goal.
Inspector Combridge regarded the case as having reached a stage with which he was continually familiar, and at which his real difficulties would commence. He had demonstrated a crime. He had identified the criminal beyond serious doubt. He had still to obtain evidence of guilt in a form in which it could be presented to a jury, with the assurance that it would win the verdict that his own credit required.
He had arrived at the cause of death. Poison. That, he thought, was a fact that even Mr. Jellipot's tenacious ingenuity would be unable to shake. He could show motive and opportunity. That was much, but he knew it to be far less than enough. There was the possibility of self-destruction to be eliminated. There w as the means by which the poison could have been - if possible the actual proof of how it had been - obtained to discover before he would reach a stage at which he could even ask for a warrant to be made out.
He was not depressed or discouraged by any confronting difficulty in obtaining the proofs he needed. Such problems had been his daily routine during fifteen years of growing responsibility, and of the confidence of his superiors. And the fact that the drug was new and little known might seem an obstacle at the first, but would probably prove to be of an opposite value by limiting the extent of the enquiries which were involved.
But, before all, he saw the letter as the key by which the truth would be reached. For of one thing there could be no reasonable doubt. The man who wrote it knew.
He had not made so wild a guess as it would have been had he no knowledge of what he wrote. He was not found as yet, and the prospect of finding him might not have been greatly increased by enlisting Mr. Jellipot's efforts on the same trail, but the inspector did not doubt, now that he had a definite case of murder with which to deal, that patience and industry would have the reward that they had often brought him before.
Mr. Jellipot saw the letter in the same light, as being at the core of the problem he sought to solve. He differed only in regarding it as a key to the truth without allowing himself to assume that it would supply proof of his client's guilt.
On the contrary, he had deliberately resolved to assume her innocence, telling himself that it was only on that presumption that he could do justice to the possibility - however small - that it might be actually true. If she were innocent, then there must be another explanation of what had occurred, and, by exhaustion of the logical possibilities of the case, that solution should not be overlooked. But he saw, like the inspector, that if the origin of the letter could be discovered, his problem would be likely to take a much simpler form.
He spent a wakeful night in speculations the improbabilities of which were evident, even while they were formed in his active brain; and he had got no further than to decide that he would make no decision until he had had another talk with Miss Hamilton when he arrived at his office next morning, and was informed almost immediately that Inspector Combridge had called to see him.
He was not entirely surprised, in view of the fact that the inspector had introduced Ada Hamilton, and of the friendship which existed between them, for he saw it to be mutually necessary that they should define the degree of confidence which should exist between them if he should continue to represent the interests of the suspected woman.
"It's this Hamilton case," the inspector said at once, as he sat down. "I thought I'd like to know whether you're throwing it up after what we heard yesterday?"
"My instructions," Mr. Jellipot replied, with his usual quiet geniality, "were to trace the writer of an anonymous letter which has caused a great deal of trouble already, and appears likely to cause more. I did not observe anything in the evidence to which we listened yesterday to reduce the importance of that enquiry . . . Indeed," he concluded, with some increased animation, as though a further light came to his mind while he spoke, "rather the other way!"
The inspector allowed a slight smile to disturb his usual seriousness. "Oh, well," he said, "if you're going to take it like that!"
"The enquiry," Mr. Jellipot continued with a resumed placidity, "is, as I pointed out to you at the time, outside the compass of my usual professional activities, and it was therefore one which I undertook with reluctance, and at which I am quite likely to fail. But unless Miss Hamilton prefers to place it in more competent hands - which I should approve - I do not see how I can decline the assistance which I have undertaken to give."
"The question is," the inspector asked bluntly, "how far we can work together, as we shall both be on the same track?"
"Miss Hamilton is due to call here in about twenty minutes, and I should suppose that she will be at least as punctual as ladies usually are. Would you care to remain, so that we can have a frank conference together?"
Inspector Combridge stared at the solicitor in a moment of puzzled doubt, though he was not usually a slow-witted man. Was the proposal seriously meant? Anyway, it was something he could not do. "No," he said, "I don't think I could do that."
As Mr. Jellipot regarded him silently, he added: "I suppose you mean that I've answered my own question?"
"Yes. I should say you have."
"Well, if it's understood that we're on opposite sides, I don't see why - - "
The tone was one of conciliation and it is improbable that Inspector Combridge was about to say anything of an unfriendly character, but the sentence was never finished, for Mr. Jellipot interrupted with more warmth than he often showed.
"My dear Combridge, I cannot possibly pass that word. We are not on opposite sides at all! I am an officer of the court, and it is my desire that the guilty shall be punished, and that the innocent shall go free."
"Oh, well, of course, you won't expect me to say that I want anything different from that! But all the same - - "
The point," Mr. Jellipot, who had quickly regained his usual equanimity, replied, "is sufficiently obvious."
The inspector rose to go. "I don't think," he said, "that I should care to meet Miss Hamilton here, and talk to her as though I'm taking her part, but I think she should be asked to make a statement of what she knows; and if you'd care to make an appointment, you could be present, to see we don't put anything in that isn't fair to herself - - "
If I should advise my client to make a signed statement to the police? But that is what I shall be particularly unlikely to do."
Inspector Combridge went at this without further words, and, as he did so, Miss Hamilton was shown in through the opposite door, as had happened two days before, but on this occasion she did not enter alone.
CHAPTER XI
"THIS," Miss Hamilton said, "is Mr. North. He thought he'd like to come with me, if you wouldn't mind."
"Not at all," Mr. Jellipot said with sincerity, "I am pleased to meet him."
He looked at a man upon whom his thoughts had fixed in the night as one of the three among whom the coroner's anonymous correspondent would almost certainly be found. The fact of this visit did not decrease that suspicion. But it would certainly save his time, and might radically alter the procedure on which he had decided, if all the suspects would be sufficiently obliging to come to him.
He now observed a young man on whom Nature had bestowed little original beauty, and to which accident had added a broken nose. He was short, thick, with black straight hair, and heavy black eyebrows over small deep-set eyes of no certain colour, set in a sallow face. He was well-groomed, and gave Mr. Jellipot, at this first glance, the impression of a man who would be competent to carry through what he undertook: who would push his way through a crowd who might be ruthless in what he did for his own release, if he should be caught in a closing trap. On the whole, this first impression did nothing to lessen the suspicion already formed.
"I thought," Philip North said, "that I might be able to tell you some things that you ought to know."
"I shall be very glad to hear them. At present I know very little about this matter. Very little indeed."
(By all means let the dentist talk, if he were willing to do so. It would be far better than asking questions, which would reveal, more or less, what was in his mind. But as to believing what he heard - well, he must not be prejudiced either way.)
"I was in court yesterday morning, and I heard Sir Lionel Tipshift's evidence. There's no doubt about the drug he meant. It's a preparation put on the market recently by a firm that specializes in anæsthetics. It isn't sold in the chemists' shops, and I should think it would be hard to obtain by anyone outside the professions. The firm circularizes dentists and supplies it direct. It isn't on the scheduled list of poisons, as Sir Lionel said, but on the other hand its existence isn't generally known."
"It has probably been advertised in your periodicals?"
"Yes. And there have been articles and correspondence about it."
"Which would give it a form of publicity which might come under the notice of almost anyone?"
"Yes. To a limited extent."
Mr. Jellipot became aware that he was himself altering the character of the interview. He had seen the advantage of letting his visitor talk freely, but he had, from professional habit, already begun to interpose questions which had obstructed the natural course of the narrative. He said: "I am sorry I interrupted. Pray go on, Mr. North. I expect you have yourself had some clinical opportunities of observing how this drug acts as a local anæsthetic?"
"Yes. We were one of the first to try it - that is, after the dental hospitals had taken it up. Our Dr. Addison is always keen on anything new. And, on the whole, we have been very well satisfied with its results for single extractions. But we found it unsuitable for more extensive use. If it were injected in more than infinitesimal quantities, patients would complain that the jaw was numbed for some time subsequently. We had one case that approached temporary paralysis, and after that Mr. Lobbs didn't favour its use, particularly as there were reports of similar experiences at the hospitals.
"But we've still got some of it in stock, and when Sir Lionel Tipshift spots it as the cause of Mrs. Hamilton's death (and his opinion's about the best you can have: you can't go beyond that), and Miss Hamilton having been at the office - well, someone's almost sure to put the two things together, and I thought we'd better come and have a straight talk with you at once, and see what can be done."
"It is the wisest course you could adopt," Mr. Jellipot said, with the inevitable reservation that he was presuming the innocence of both his visitors, of which he was less than sure.
"It is impossible for any solicitor to do justice to a position of this difficulty unless he be fully informed of every circumstance bearing upon it, however trivial it may seem to be."
"Well, we're here to talk. I suppose I needn't tell you that Ada didn't give Mrs. Hamilton any of the stuff. Of course, that's absurd. But she says more than that. She says she never had anything to do with it at all. She says she couldn't possibly have taken any of it home with her, and I don't believe Mrs. Hamilton ever came up the stairs at Corbin Street in her life. And if so, we've got to trace it to some other source, however queer it may seem to be."
"I am sure you recognize, Mr. North, that it is immensely improbable that such a coincidence should occur as that there should be two channels through which this obscure poison could be introduced into Mrs. Hamilton's house."
"Yes. I suppose it is. But Ada says she's quite sure You can't get beyond that."
Mr. Jellipot turncd his glance upon Miss Hamilton, who had not spoken as yet. Her face looked white and strained, and she had kept her eyes fixed upon her companion the while he spoke, as though relying dumbly upon him to pull her through. Had she been the foolish tool of a crime which she might not even have understood at the time, and was she now looking to the actual criminal to guard her from the danger to which she had fallen under the influence of his stronger will?
Or was she a poisoner who relied upon his affection, and her own hardy lying, to draw her back from the edge of the pit upon which she stood?
Or - and perhaps most likely of all - were they involved to an equal depth in the plot which had seemed so safe, and which, but for that anonymous letter, would have succeeded so simply? A plot by which the girl would have been relieved from the companionship of a woman she most probably hated, as having taken her father's affections, and who held possession of the wealth which she herself would know better how to spend, and by which they would have been free to marry and share the spoils of their secret crime?
With these doubts in a mind which he was still resolved to keep wide open to whatever further evidence might appear, Mr. Jellipot asked: "Could you swear definitely that, so far as you are aware, Miss Hamilton was not concerned with the anæsthetics used in your surgeries, nor even cognizant of them?"
"No, you couldn't go quite as far as that. She'd have to admit that she wrote out the orders for them, and checked the accounts for payment. And I've talked to her about this one myself more than once, though I can't say she took much notice of what I said."
"I never listened to Phil when he talked shop after we'd got away. I wasn't interested enough."
There was a tone of sincerity - or was it desperation? - in this interjected protest. Mr. Jellipot said: "Yes, I expect you were more interested in other things," and turned his attention back to Mr. North to ask: I expect you sometimes called yourself at Mrs. Hamilton's residence?"
"Yes. I went there to dinner two or three times."
"And Mrs. Hamilton welcomed you as her step-daughter's friend?"
"Oh, yes. She was always friendly and hospitable."
"Did she ever discuss drugs or anæsthetics with you at any time?"
"Never at all."
"Or did you discuss them before her?"
"No, never at all. It isn't a professional custom to talk about such matters. We should be talking about our patients next thing, if we did that. And it isn't a subject that people like. When they meet us socially they prefer to forget us in our professional capacity. Of course, talking to Ada was different between ourselves."
"Yes, I see. Then you are absolutely unable to suggest any way in which this drug could have been conveyed to Mrs. Hamilton from your Corbin Street office, or how it could have been taken by her either deliberately or by inadvertence?"
"No. And we say it didn't come from Corbin Street, whether people believe it or not. . . . I can't suggest anything except that Dr. Burfoot may have tried it on her, and made a mistake that he isn't anxious to let out."
"It is a possibility," Mr. Jellipot admitted, "which has been in my own mind, and which, on the information you have given me, we may be able to check. But, apart from that, you have no suggestion to make?"
"Not except that I should be glad to see the letter that's at the bottom of all the fuss. If I could tell the handwriting it might get us a long way."
"So it might. But I should not advise you to anticipate any result from your own inspection. If you can identify the hand-writing, it will be more than those who are expert in these matters have been able to do.
"But there will be no difficulty in arranging for you to see it. It has, I believe, been already handed over by Mr. Lamson to the police. . . . Suppose you come in on Monday, say at 3.0 p.m. - can you manage that? - and I will arrange to go with you to Scotland Yard, which will, I suggest, be better than that you should go there alone?"
"Yes, I'll do that. I suppose Ada'd better come too?"
"No. It will not be necessary. . . . I think, Miss Hamilton, it would be better for you to go home, and leave Mr. North and me to do the worrying over this matter. You can be sure that the truth will come out at last. But don't talk to anyone, particularly not to the police, however kind - or otherwise - they may seem to be. You need say no more than that I have told you to refer them to me."
They went away, leaving Mr. Jellipot well content. He did not think that Philip North would be of much assistance in identifying the letter, but he thought he might talk rather differently if Miss Hamilton were not there; and if everyone concerned would be good enough to walk into his office and be equally voluble - well, there oughtn't to be much trouble in finding out where the truth lay.
CHAPTER XII
MR. NORTH arrived punctually on Monday at 3.0 p.m., and Mr. Jellipot told him at once that he had arranged for them to attend together at Scotland Yard to inspect the letter at four; but that is no evidence that he could not have. fixed the appointment for half an hour earlier, had he preferred to do so.
The fact was that he had contrived an interval for the conversation which he regarded as the most important part of the afternoon's programme, and he was pleased to find that Mr. North was as ready of speech as he had been at the earlier interview.
"I thought," he began in the courteous, almost deprecating tone which was habitual to him, except only when his well-regulated emotions would occasionally escape control, "that as you are kind enough to interest yourself in this matter, the short interval might not be wasted, if we find ourselves able to discuss it with a freedom which might be difficult in Miss Hamilton's presence."
"Well, I'm here to do that. It seems to me that she may find herself in a bad jam."
"In such matters it is my observation that the innocent seldom have any prolonged anxiety. Speaking in the strictest confidence, Mr. North, and remembering that I am acting entirely in Miss Hamilton's interests, will you tell me if you have any reason to doubt the truth of what actually occurred?"
The question was somewhat ambiguously put, and, even so, Mr. Jellipot did not frame it without some doubt of its fundamental propriety troubling his mind. But it was asked at least as much to test Philip North himself as the conduct of the girl whom it more directly concerned.
He found that the question was met with a puzzled and angry frown. "She didn't poison Mrs. Hamilton, if you mean that."
The words were blunt, even to rudeness, but Mr. Jellipot showed no sign of offence. "Whatever my question may be fairly taken to imply," he said mildly, "which is a point we need not turn aside to discuss, I am pleased to know that your confidence in my client is so complete. It increases my own confidence in my ability to solve the difficult problem which I have undertaken on her behalf. . . . Mr. North, I am sure you will appreciate the importance, in Miss Hamilton's own interest, of my being correctly informed on all the details of these events. Will you tell me further whether you would say that Miss Hamilton is always exactly truthful in what she says?"
"She can fib a bit now and then."
"Normally, or only when under exceptional stress?"
"Oh, when women do. They're mostly the same about that, as far as they come my way."
Mr. Jellipot, a man of precise thought and of words carefully picked, hesitated to take this view. "You may have been unfortunate," he replied, "in the ladies whose society you have been privileged to enjoy. But I suppose you allude to minor and perhaps venial inaccuracies of speech, such as may be induced by courtesy or diffidence, or may even be of a sportive kind."
"Yes, I suppose that's about it."
Mr. Jellipot changed the subject to ask: "I suppose you have no suggestion to make as to who the writer of the anonymous. letter might possibly be?"
"No. I wish I had. I think that's about the biggest mystery of the whole thing."
"You would not agree that it was most probably written by someone in your own offices?"
"I can see that it looks that way, more or less, but all the same I don't think that it was. I think I know them too well."
"Dr. Addison?"
Mr. North looked surprised, not being aware of the knowledge of the Corbin Street staff which Mr. Jellipot had already obtained. "Yes," he said, "I know what you mean, but he's not that sort all the same."
"Well, you know them better than I. But people will sometimes do some surprising things. . . . Suppose we take Mrs. Hamilton's relatives, if you feel you can give your own office a clean bill. What about Vincent Hamilton?"
Mr. North loo