Waiting for Orders (7 page)

‘I’m listening,’ he said irritably.

‘Good.’ Dr Czissar wagged one solemn finger. ‘According to the medical evidence given at the inquest, arsenic was found in the liver, kidneys, and spleen. No?’

Mercer nodded firmly. ‘1.751 grains. That shows that much more than a fatal dose had been administered. Much more.’

Dr Czissar’s eyes gleamed. ‘Ah, yes. Much more. It is odd, is it not, that so much was found in the kidneys?’

‘Nothing odd at all about it.’

‘Let us leave the point for the moment. Is it not true, Assistant-Commissioner Mercer, that all post-mortem tests for arsenic are for arsenic itself and not for any particular arsenic salt?’

Mercer frowned. ‘Yes, but it’s unimportant. All arsenic salts are deadly poisons. Besides, when arsenic is absorbed by the human body, it turns to the sulphide. I don’t see what you’re driving at, Doctor.’

‘My point is, Assistant-Commissioner, that usually it is impossible to tell from a delayed autopsy which form of arsenic was used to poison the body. You agree? It might be arsenious oxide or one of the arsenates or arsenites; copper arsenite, for instance; or it might be a chloride or it might be an organic compound of arsenic. No?’

‘Precisely.’

‘But,’ continued Dr Czissar, ‘what sort of arsenic should we expect to find in a hospital, eh?’

Mercer pursed his lips. ‘I see no harm in telling you, Doctor, that Harold Medley could easily have secured supplies of either salvarsan or neosalvarsan. They are both important drugs.’

‘Ehrlich’s 606 and 914! Yes, indeed!’ said Dr Czissar. He stared at the ceiling. ‘Have you seen any of Helena Murlin’s paintings, Assistant-Commissioner?’

The sudden change of subject took Mercer unawares. He hesitated. Then: ‘Oh, you mean Mrs Medley. No, I haven’t seen any of her paintings.’

‘Such a
chic
, attractive woman,’ said Dr Czissar. ‘After I had seen her at the inquest I could not help wishing to see some of
her work. I found some in a gallery near Bond Street.’ He sighed. ‘I had expected something clever, but I was disappointed. She is one of those who paint what they think instead of what is.’

‘Really? I’m afraid, Doctor, that I must – ’

‘I felt,’ persisted Dr Czissar, bringing his cow-like eyes once more to the level of Mercer’s, ‘that the thoughts of a woman who thinks of a field as blue and of a sky as emerald green must be a little strange.’

‘Modern stuff, eh?’ said Mercer. ‘And now, Doctor, if you’ve finished, I’ll ask you to excuse me. I – ’

‘Oh, but I have not finished yet,’ said Dr Czissar kindly. ‘I think, Assistant-Commissioner, that a woman who paints a landscape with a green sky is not only strange but also interesting, don’t you? I asked the gentleman at the gallery about her. She produces only a few pictures – about six a year. She earns, perhaps, £100 a year from her work. It is wonderful how expensively she dresses on that sum.’

‘She had a rich husband.’

‘Oh, yes. A curious household, don’t you think? The daughter Janet is especially curious. I was so sorry that she was so much upset by the evidence at the inquest.’

‘A young woman probably would be upset at the idea of her brother’s being a murderer,’ said Mercer drily.

‘But to accuse herself so violently of the murder.’

‘Hysteria. You get a lot of it in murder cases.’ Mercer stood up and held out his hand. ‘Well, Doctor, I’m sorry you haven’t been able to upset our case this time. If you’ll leave your address with the Sergeant as you go, I’ll see that you get a pass for the trial,’ he added with relish.

But Dr Czissar did not move. ‘You are going to try this young man for murder, then?’ he said slowly. ‘You have not understood that at which I have been hinting?’

Mercer grinned. ‘We’ve got something better than hints, Doctor – a first-class circumstantial case against young Medley. Motive, time and method of administration, source of the poison. Concrete evidence, Doctor! Juries like it. If you can produce one scrap of evidence to show that we’ve got the wrong man, I’ll be glad to hear it.’

Dr Czissar’s back straightened and his cow-like eyes flashed.
‘I do not like your condescension, Assistant-Commissioner!’ he said sharply. ‘I, too, am busy. I am engaged on a work on medical jurisprudence. I desire only to see justice done. I do not believe that, on the evidence you have, you can convict this young man under English law; but the fact of his being brought to trial could damage his career as a doctor. Furthermore, there is the real murderer to be considered. Therefore, in a spirit of friendliness, I have come to you instead of going to Harold Medley’s legal advisers. I will now give you your evidence.’

Mercer sat down again. He was very angry.

‘Attention, please,’ said Dr Czissar. He raised a finger. ‘Arsenic was found in the dead man’s kidneys. It is determined that Harold Medley could have poisoned his father with either salvarsan or neosalvarsan. There is a contradiction there. Most inorganic salts of arsenic – white arsenic, for instance – are practically insoluble in water, and if a quantity of such a salt had been administered, we might expect to find traces of it in the kidneys. Salvarsan and neosalvarsan, however, are trivalent organic compounds of arsenic, and are very soluble in water. If either of them had been administered through the mouth, we should not expect to find arsenic in the kidneys.’

He paused; but Mercer was silent.

‘In what form, therefore, was the arsenic administered?’ he went on. ‘The tests do not tell us, for they detect only the presence of the element, arsenic. That arsenic will also by that time be present as a sulphide. Let us look among the inorganic salts. There is white arsenic; that is arsenious oxide. It is used for dipping sheep. We should not expect to find it in Brock Park. But Mr Medley was a gardener. What about sodium arsenite, the weed-killer? We heard at the inquest that the weed-killer in the garden was of the kind harmful only to weeds. We come to copper arsenite. Mr Medley was, in my opinion, poisoned by a large dose of copper arsenite.’

‘And on what evidence,’ demanded Mercer, ‘do you base that opinion?’

There is, or there has been, copper arsenite in the Medleys’ house.’ Dr Czissar looked at the ceiling. ‘On the day of the inquest, Assistant-Commissioner, Mrs Medley wore a fur coat. I have since found another fur coat like it. The price of the coat was 400 guineas. Inquiries in Brock Park have told me that this
lady’s husband, besides being a rich man, was also a very mean and unpleasant man. At the inquest his son told us that he had kept his marriage a secret because he was afraid that his father would stop his allowance or prevent his continuing his studies in medicine. Helena Murlin had expensive tastes. She had married this man so that she could indulge them. He had failed her. That coat she wore, Assistant-Commissioner, was unpaid for. You will find, I think, that she had other debts and that a threat had been made by one of the creditors to approach her husband. She was tired of this man, so much older than she was. Perhaps she had a young lover with no money to spend on her. But you will find these things out. She poisoned her husband. There is no doubt.’

‘Nonsense!’ snarled Mercer. ‘Of course, we know that she was in debt, but lots of women are. It doesn’t make them murderers.’

Dr Czissar smiled gently. ‘It was the spinach which the dead man had for luncheon before the symptoms of poisoning began that interested me,’ he said. ‘Why give spinach when it is out of season? Tinned vegetables are not usually given to an invalid with gastric trouble. And then, when I saw Mrs Medley’s paintings, I understood. The emerald sky, Assistant-Commissioner. It was a fine, rich emerald green, that sky – the sort of emerald green that the artist gets when there is aceto-arsenite of copper in the paint. The firm which supplies Mrs Medley with her working materials will be able to tell you when she bought it. I suggest, too, that you take the picture – it is in the Summons Gallery – and remove a little of the sky for analysis. As to the administration, you will find that the spinach was prepared at her suggestion and taken to her husband’s bedroom by her. Spinach is green and slightly bitter in taste. So is copper arsenite.’ He sighed. ‘If there had not been anonymous letters –’

‘Ah!’ interrupted Mercer. ‘The anonymous letters! Perhaps you know –’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Dr Czissar simply. ‘The daughter, Janet, wrote them. Poor child! She disliked her smart stepmother, and wrote them out of spite. Imagine her feelings when she found that she had – how do you say? – put a noose about her brother’s throat. It would be natural for her to try to take the blame herself. Good afternoon, and thank you,’ he added.

‘Good afternoon,’ said Mercer wearily. The telephone rang.

‘The Commissioner to speak to you, Sir,’ said the operator.

‘All right. Hullo … Hullo, Sir Charles. Yes, I did want to speak to you urgently. It was’ – he hesitated – ‘it was about the Brock Park case. I think that we shall have to release young Medley. I’ve got hold of some new medical evidence that – All right, Sir Charles, I’ll come immediately.’

I
T
was generally felt by his subordinates at Scotland Yard that the best time to see Assistant-Commissioner Mercer was while he was drinking his afternoon tea. It was at teatime, therefore, that Detective-Inspector Denton took care to present a verbal report on the Mortons Hind case.

The village of Mortons Hind, Denton reported, was five miles from the market town of Penborough. Near the corner of the Penborough and Leicester roads, and about half a mile from the village, stood Mortons Grange, now the home of Mr Maurice Wretford, a retired City man, and his wife.

At half past three in the afternoon of November 10, Mr Wretford’s chauffeur, Alfred Gregory, forty, had left the Grange to drive his employer’s car to a Penborough garage, which was to hammer out and repaint a buckled wing. The job could not have been finished that day, and Gregory had taken his bicycle with him in the back of the car so that he could ride home. He had never returned to the Grange. At half past five that evening a motorist driving along a deserted stretch of road about a mile from the Grange had seen the bicycle lying in a ditch, and stopped. A few yards away, also in the ditch and dead, had been Gregory. He had a bullet in his head.

The lead bullet, which was of .22 calibre, had entered the left temple, leaving a small, circular wound halfway between the ear and the eye, torn through the brain tissue, and come to rest within half an inch of the upper surface of the left brain and immediately over the shattered sphenoid. There had been two small fractures of the skull extending from the puncture in the temporal bone, but no sign of scorching or powder-marks. This, and the fact that the diameter of the wound had been
less than the diameter of the bullet, had suggested that the shot had been fired at a distance of over six feet from the dead man’s head.

The news of the shooting had spread quickly round the village, and late that night a gamekeeper, Harry Rudder, fifty-two, had reported to the police that that same afternoon he had seen a nineteen-year-old youth, Thomas Wilder, shooting at birds with a rook rifle not far from the spot where Gregory’s body had been found. Wilder had admitted that he had been firing the rifle the previous day, but denied that he had been near the Penborough road. His rifle had been examined and found to be of .22 calibre.

It had not been until later that day that the post-mortem findings given above had been made known to the police. The fatal bullet had been handed to them at the same time. To their disgust, it had been badly distorted by its impact against the bones of the head. Any identification of rifling-marks had thus been rendered impossible. The bullet might have been fired from any .22 calibre weapon. Nevertheless, there had been a circumstantial case of manslaughter against Wilder to be considered. The Chief Constable of the County had decided to enlist the help of the ballistics experts of Scotland Yard.

The coroner had sat with a jury at the inquest. Gregory had had no living relatives. His employer, Mr Wretford, had given woebegone evidence of identification. The ballistics expert, Sergeant Blundell, had later given evidence. The bullet had been fired some distance from the deceased and at a level slightly below that of his head. The witness had agreed that a shot, fired from a rifle held to the shoulder of a man six feet in height (Wilder’s height was six feet) standing in the meadow to the left of the road, at a bird in the tree on the opposite side of the road, could hit a passing cyclist in the head. The jury returned a verdict of ‘Accidental death caused by the criminal negligence of Thomas Wilder’. Young Wilder had been arrested.

Mercer stirred his second cup of tea rather irritably. ‘Yes, yes. All quite straightforward, isn’t it? It’s Blundell’s show now. Send in your report in the usual way.’

‘Yes, Sir – that is to say …’ And then, to Mercer’s amazement, Denton began to blush. ‘It’s straightforward all right, Sir. But’ – he hesitated – ‘but all the same

‘All the same, what?’ demanded Mercer.

Denton drew a deep breath. Then: ‘All the same, Sir, I don’t think Wilder’s guilty, Sir,’ he said.

Mercer’s frown deepened. ‘You don’t, eh? Why? Come on, Denton, I haven’t got all day to waste.’

Denton squirmed on his chair. ‘Well, Sir, it isn’t really my idea at all. It was that Czech refugee who was in the Prague police, that Dr Czissar.’

‘Who did you say?’ asked Mercer ominously.

Denton recognized the tone of voice and blundered on hurriedly. ‘Dr Czissar, Sir. He was at the inquest. He spoke to me afterwards and, seeing that he was a friend of Sir Herbert at the Home Office, I thought I’d better humour him. He …’

But Mercer was scarcely listening. He was seeing a vision: a vision of a plump, pale man with pebble glasses and cow-like brown eyes, of a man wearing a long grey raincoat and a soft hat too large for him, and carrying an unfurled umbrella; of this same man sitting on the chair now occupied by Denton and politely telling him, Mercer, how to do his job. Twice it had happened. Twice had Dr Czissar proved that he was right and that Scotland Yard was wrong. And now.…