The Nursing Home Murder

“Oh, murder!” Nigel apostrophised.

“You may say so.”

“Have some port.”

“Thank you. It sounded so incredibly far-fetched that I simply hadn’t the nerve to confide in Fox. I carried on with all the others — Mr. Sage and his remedies, Phillips and his girl, Banks and the Bolshies. Well, the patent medicine Sage provided through Miss O’Callaghan—‘Fulvitavolts,’ he calls it — has an infinitestimal amount of hyoscine. The second lot that Miss O’Callaghan administered in the hospital was an unknown quantity until I got the remnant from her. Of course, the fact that he had been responsible for O’Callaghan taking any hyoscine at all threw our Harold into a fearful terror, especially as he was one of the Lenin Hall lot. He tried to get me to believe the second concoction was a doctor’s prescription, and very nearly led himself into real trouble. We have since found that this drug, too, only contained a very small amount of hyoscine. Exit Mr. Sage. Banks might have substituted hyoscine for camphor when she prepared the syringe, but I found that the stock solution of hyoscine contained the full amount minus one dose that was accounted for. She might have smuggled in another somehow, or she might have filled up the jar afterwards, but it didn’t seem likely. Phillips remained and Phillips worried me terribly. He loomed so large with his threats, his opportunity, his motive. Roberts paled beside him. I caught myself continually opposing these two men. After all, as far as one could see, Roberts had had no chance of giving a hypodermic injection, whereas Phillips, poor devil, had had every opportunity. I staged the reconstruction partly to see if there was any way in which Roberts could have done it. I called for him at his house. Now, although I had asked Phillips specifically to have the anæsthetic appliance, Roberts was coming away without it. When I reminded him, he went and got it. I noticed that he wasn’t keen on my handling it, and that several times he touched the nuts. It was perfectly reasonable, but it made me look at them and kept them in my mind. Remember I was by no means wedded to my fantastic idea — rather the reverse. I was ashamed of it and I still reasoned, though I did not feel, that Phillips was the principal suspect. We watched them all closely. Then came the fluke — the amazing, the incredible fluke. Old Marigold lost her nerve and did a trip over the cruet-thing that holds the gasometers, Thoms helped Roberts, in a way, by a spirited rendering of the jack-in-office. Thoms is a bit of a funk and he was scared. He made a rumpus. If it hadn’t been for my ‘idea,’ I shouldn’t have watched Roberts. As it was, he gave a magnificent performance. But he went green round the gills and he was most careful to let no one touch the nuts. As a matter of fact, I believe Thoms’s funk was entirely superfluous — it is most unlikely that the cylinder would blow up. Think what a shock it must have been to Roberts. Suppose the syringe had fallen out! Practically an impossibility— but in the panic of the moment his imagination, his ‘guilty knowledge’ if you like, would play tricks with his reason. I rather felt I had allowed mine to do the same. My dears, my head was in a whirl, I promise you.”

“But when,” asked Angela, “did Dr. Roberts inject the hyoscine?”

“I think soon after the patient was put on the table. The screen over the chest would hide his hands.”

“I see.”

“After the reconstruction Roberts wouldn’t leave us alone. He hung about in the theatre, intent, of course, on keeping me away from the cruet. Fox, bless his heart, rumbled this ruse and staged a bogus telephone call. He saw I wanted to be rid of Roberts. As soon as we were alone I fell on the cruet, and, after a nerve-racking fumble, unearthed the syringe. Eureka! Denouement! Fox nearly had a fit of the vapours.”

“So you arrested him there and then!” cried Angela.

“No. No, I didn’t. For one thing I hadn’t a warrant and for another — oh, well— ”

Alleyn rested his nose on his clasped hands.

“Now what’s coming?” asked Angela.

“I rather liked the little creature. It would have been an unpleasant business pulling him in there. Anyway, I went off and got a warrant, and Fox and Boys accompanied him home. They watched him carefully in case he tried to give himself the coup de grâce, but he didn’t. When I arrested him he had, I believe, a sudden and an appalling shock, a kind of dreadful moment of lucidity. He fought us so violently that he seemed like a sane man gone mad, but I believe he was a madman gone sane. It only lasted a few minutes. Now I don’t think he cares at all. He has made a complete confession. He’s batty. He’ll have to stand his trial, but I think they’ll find that the nut in the cruet-stand is not the only one loose. It may even be that Roberts, recognizing the taint of madness in himself, felt the eugenic urge the more strongly and the need for eliminating the unfit. In that point of view there is precisely the kind of mad logic one would expect to find in such a case.”

“If it hadn’t been for the matron’s trip, would you never have got him?” asked Nigel.

“I think we should — in the end. We should have got his history from Canada and Australasia. It’s coming through now. When it’s complete I am pretty certain we shall find a series of deaths after anæsthetics given by Roberts. They will all prove to be cases where there were signs of hereditary insanity. I shouldn’t mind betting they correspond with the notches on the stethoscope — minus one.”

“Minus one?” asked Nigel.

“He added a fresh notch, no doubt, on Thursday, the eleventh. The last one does look more recent, although he’d rubbed a bit of dirt into it. You may think, as judges say when they mean you ought to think, that it was an extremely rum thing for him to leave the syringe in the cruet after the job was done. Not so rum. It was really the safest place imaginable. Away from there it would have been a suspicious-looking object, with a nut, instead of the ordinary top, to the piston. I believe that extraordinary little man filled it up with hyoscine whenever he was called out to give an anæsthetic to someone he did not know, just on the off-chance the patient should turn out to be what I understand sheep-farmers call a ‘cull.’ It’s a striking example of the logic of the lunatic.”

“Oh,” cried Angela, “I do hope they find him insane.”

“Do you?”

“Don’t you?”

“I hardly know. That means a criminal lunatic asylum. It’s a pity we are not allowed to hand him one of his own hypodermics.”

There was a short silence.

“Have some port?” said Nigel.

“Thank you,” said Alleyn. He did not pour it out, however, but sat looking abstractedly into the fire.

“You see,” he murmured at last, “he’s done his job. From his point of view it’s all a howling success. He does nothing but tell us how clever he’s been. His one anxiety is lest he may not be appreciated. He’s busy writing a monograph for which all your gods of Fleet Street, Bathgate, will offer fabulous prices. At least he is assured of competent defense.”

“What about Sir John Phillips and Jane Harden?” ‘ asked Angela.

“What about them, Miss Angela?”

“Is she going to marry him now?”

“How should I know?”

“She’ll be a fool if she doesn’t,” said Angela emphatically.

“I’m afraid you’ve got the movie-mind. You want a final close-up. ‘John — I want you to know that— that— ’ Ecstatic glare at short distance into each other’s faces. Sir John utters an amorous growl: ‘You damned little fool,’ and snatches her to his bosom. Slow fade-out.”

“That’s the stuff,” said Angela. “I like a happy ending.”

“We don’t often see it in the Force,” said Alleyn.

“Have some port?”

“Thank you.”

The End