The Craig Poisoning Mystery (Musaicum Murder Mysteries). Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ let him, Houghton, call for him around seven tomorrow morning. It was a fearful hour, but he would be most grateful.

      Gilchrist, who had intended spending the week-end in the country in any case, said that he had no objection to the idea, supposing, of course, that the usual formalities were complied with...and that he liked to get up early.

      Houghton thanked him and assured him he would be called up shortly by a Dr. Lindrum who had charge of the case. After ringing off, Houghton tackled that young man next.

      Lindrum seemed delighted at the suggestion of getting Dr. Gilchrist of the Imperial Research Laboratory down to see Craig, but doubted if Craig would welcome the idea of another doctor overhauling him. Houghton assured him that he would overcome any objections of his cousin's, and again Bob Lindrum seemed delighted to hear it.

      At his very unusually early breakfast next morning, Houghton told his man to take particular care of a book which would probably arrive by the morning post, and to telephone to him at Woodthorp Manor, when it came.

      In the car, Gilchrist asked for the first time for general particulars of the man whom they were going to see.

      Houghton explained that his cousin, Ronald Craig, had come down to spend a week-end with a relative's widow living at Woodthorp Manor, and had caught a chill on arriving. As he had had malaria several times, he and the local medical man, Dr. Lindrum, thought that he had got another bout of his old enemy, but that was nearly a month ago now, and Ronald Craig was still in bed.

      "He's getting very anxious about himself," he added, "and I'm very fond of him. He was a good pal to me once when I was in a hole. From a letter I got from him yesterday, he seems to think that he is going to die."

      "Well, so he is," was the uncompromising retort. "We all are!"

      "Ah, but not yet! Not at only forty. And just about to be married." Houghton spoke with energy. "Not if I can help it!"

      A thrush burst into song as they turned in the main street of the little village. Gilchrist commented on the pleasure of hearing such music.

      "My cousin's fiancée says that thrushes are the guardian angels of Woodthorp Manor, there are so many. That's the place over there!" Houghton waved a hand to a small, unpretentious house with a good deal of ivy doing its best to pry the bricks apart. As they turned in at the gates—there seemed to be no lodge-keeper—another thrush stopped its rippling song to stare down at them. Gilchrist had no idea that thrushes looked so fierce. Its eyes were the cruellest that the analyst had ever encountered. Not the eyes of a guardian angel. Who was it who said, Ubi aves, ibi—?"

      A half-strangled cry came from Houghton.

      "The blinds, man. Look at the blinds!"

      Gilchrist looked. As they swept up to the front door, the blinds were being pulled down consecutively in room after room. Houghton was out and onto the steps in a flash, Gilchrist with him. Before Houghton could touch the door, it opened, and a man, obviously a superior servant of some kind, stood there. He looked very pale. It was Match, the butler.

      "Oh, sir—I'm very glad to see you!" He hardly needed to say more. His face told what had happened before he went on, "Mr. Craig has just died, sir."

      "Just died!" Houghton looked stunned.

      Match drew out his watch. "Just a quarter of an hour ago, sir."

      It was not yet nine o'clock.

      "Dr. Lindrum upstairs?"

      "No, sir. He was kept away all night by a maternity case. But he's started for here at last. He'll arrive any minute now. We tried for Dr. Williams, but he was away too. There's been a bad fire over at Chesham Millwall. Poor Mr. Craig." Match shook his head with a look of retrospective pity. "It was awful, sir. Till just at the end. The end was peaceful."

      Gilchrist turned to go back to his car. There would be no consultation now.

      "Don't go!" Houghton said brokenly. "Lindrum won't be long. And we shall want you."

      It was irregular, but Gilchrist asked Match a few questions, at first almost automatically, then with alert interest. At one of the replies he shot a sudden swift glance at Houghton, who was listening closely. Houghton's eyes were on the doctor's face, but they could read nothing there.

      Match explained that the nurse had just gone to lie down, utterly worn out with trying to cope with the hours of agony that had preceded her patient's death. The ladies had also gone back to their bedrooms. When Gilchrist finally stood silent, looking at a hunting print on the wall as though it very much puzzled him, Houghton touched his arm and motioned to the stairs. Gilchrist followed him. Match would have preceded them, but Houghton made him a sign to stay where he was. The butler, however, came on up.

      "Here's the key to the room, sir," he said, handing it over. One of Gilchrist's swift glances ran over him, but Match stepped down again with his eyes on the ground.

      Houghton took the key without comment, and going on up, unlocked the door.

      The bed was covered with a sheet. Beneath it, as they turned it back, lay Ronald Craig's dead body. Houghton stood for a long moment looking down at his cousin with the grieved and horrified expression of a man who does not want to believe the evidence of his eyes, then he turned away.

      "There's a letter, or part of a letter, rather, which he meant to send me yesterday, I think. It hadn't come before we left town. I wonder if it's lying about anywhere..."

      Gilchrist had only eyes for the body before him. Bending down, he studied it with the same kind of attention, though in a heightened degree, that he had paid to the final answers of the butler.

      Houghton meanwhile found a bunch of keys on the corner of the mantel, and unlocking the writing cabinet went systematically through it. There was no "part of a letter" inside. He had just relocked it, when Lindrum hurried in. He, too, went to the bed for a second, before he shook hands with Houghton, who introduced the doctor from London.

      "It's too late for a consultation," Lindrum said, shaking his head sorrowfully. "Terribly sorry I couldn't get here last night," he went on to Houghton, speaking in a voice that sounded genuinely pained. "But it was touch and go all night long with a confinement case, and Dr. Williams couldn't come either, most unfortunately. He was kept at the hospital owing to a fire that injured a lot of people." Lindrum turned to the bed again. "Not that we could have done anything. Though it was so frightfully sudden...malaria and dysentery are tricky things apart, let alone combined...Well, I have the death certificate with me and—"

      "I want a word with you, Dr. Lindrum," Gilchrist interrupted. "I'm too late for a consultation, as you say, but I should like to talk the illness over with you." There was an undercurrent of command in Gilchrist's tone.

      Houghton said that he would wait in the library to hear their conclusions, and would they kindly lock the door and bring him the key when they had done? He particularly requested that no one was to be allowed to enter on any pretext whatever.

      The two doctors assured him that they would do as he wished, but, in point of fact, they scarcely heard him. As soon as the door had closed, Gilchrist wheeled on the other man.

      "Look here, were you giving him arsenic, and was it an overdose? Do you do your own dispensing?"

      Lindrum stared at the speaker with dropped jaw.

      "Speak, СКАЧАТЬ