The Complete Tommy & Tuppence Collection (106 page)

“What's she like?”

“She was a good bit younger than he was, I should say. Quite a personality.” He nodded his head once or twice. “Yes, quite a personality. You'll find that out I expect.”

He took the picture, handed it down the staircase with instructions to someone below to do it up again.

“Nice for you having so many myrmidons at your beck and call,” said Tommy.

He looked round him, noticing his surroundings for the first time.

“What's this you've got here now?” he said with distaste.

“Paul Jaggerowski—Interesting young Slav. Said to produce all his works under the influence of drugs—Don't you like him?”

Tommy concentrated his gaze on a big string bag which seemed to have enmeshed itself in a metallic green field full of distorted cows.

“Frankly, no.”

“Philistine,” said Robert. “Come out and have a bite of lunch.”

“Can't. I've got a meeting with a doctor at my club.”

“Not ill, are you?”

“I'm in the best of health. My blood pressure is so good that it disappoints every doctor to whom I submit it.”

“Then what do you want to see a doctor for?”

“Oh,” said Tommy cheerfully—“I've just got to see a doctor about a body. Thanks for your help. Goodbye.”

II

Tommy greeted Dr. Murray with some curiosity—He presumed it was some formal matter to do with Aunt Ada's decease, but why on earth Dr. Murray would not at least mention the subject of his visit over the telephone, Tommy couldn't imagine.

“I'm afraid I'm a little late,” said Dr. Murray, shaking hands, “but the traffic was pretty bad and I wasn't exactly sure of the locality. I don't know this part of London very well.”

“Well, too bad you had to come all the way here,” said Tommy. “I could have met you somewhere more convenient, you know.”

“You've time on your hands then just now?”

“Just at the moment, yes. I've been away for the last week.”

“Yes, I believe someone told me so when I rang up.”

Tommy indicated a chair, suggested refreshment, placed cigarettes and matches by Dr. Murray's side. When the two men had established themselves comfortably Dr. Murray opened the conversation.

“I'm sure I've aroused your curiosity,” he said, “but as a matter of fact we're in a spot of trouble at Sunny Ridge. It's a difficult and perplexing matter and in one way it's nothing to do with you. I've no earthly right to trouble you with it but there's just an off chance that you might know something which would help me.”

“Well, of course, I'll do anything I can. Something to do with my aunt, Miss Fanshawe?”

“Not directly, no. But in a way she does come into it. I can speak to you in confidence, can't I, Mr. Beresford?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“As a matter of fact I was talking the other day to a mutual friend of ours. He was telling me a few things about you. I gather that in the last war you had rather a delicate assignment.”

“Oh, I wouldn't put it quite as seriously as that,” said Tommy, in his most noncommittal manner.

“Oh no, I quite realize that it's not a thing to be talked about.”

“I don't really think that matters nowadays. It's a good long time since the war. My wife and I were younger then.”

“Anyway, it's nothing to do with that, that I want to talk to you about, but at least I feel that I can speak frankly to you, that I can trust you not to repeat what I am now saying, though it's possible that it all may have to come out later.”

“A spot of trouble at Sunny Ridge, you say?”

“Yes. Not very long ago one of our patients died. A Mrs. Moody. I don't know if you ever met her or if your aunt ever talked about her.”

“Mrs. Moody?” Tommy reflected. “No, I don't think so. Anyway, not so far as I remember.”

“She was not one of our older patients. She was still on the right side of seventy and she was not seriously ill in any way. It was just a case of a woman with no near relatives and no one to look after her in the domestic line. She fell into the category of what I often call to myself a flutterer. Women who more and more resemble hens as they grow older. They cluck. They forget things. They run themselves into difficulties and they worry. They get themselves wrought up about nothing at all. There is very little the matter with them. They are not strictly speaking mentally disturbed.”

“But they just cluck,” Tommy suggested.

“As you say. Mrs. Moody clucked. She caused the nurses a fair amount of trouble although they were quite fond of her. She had a habit of forgetting when she'd had her meals, making a fuss because no dinner had been served to her when as a matter of fact she had actually just eaten a very good dinner.”

“Oh,” said Tommy, enlightened, “Mrs. Cocoa.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I'm sorry,” said Tommy, “it's a name my wife and I had for her. She was yelling for Nurse Jane one day when we passed along the passage and saying she hadn't had her cocoa. Rather a nice-looking scatty little woman. But it made us both laugh, and we fell into the habit of calling her Mrs. Cocoa. And so she's died.”

“I wasn't particularly surprised when the death happened,” said Dr. Murray. “To be able to prophesy with any exactitude when elderly women will die is practically impossible. Women whose health is seriously affected, who, one feels as a result of physical examination, will hardly last the year out, sometimes are good for another ten years. They have a tenacious hold on life which mere physical disability will not quench. There are other people whose health is reasonably good and who may, one thinks, make old bones. They on the other hand, catch bronchitis, or 'flu, seem unable to have the stamina to recuperate from it, and die with surprising ease. So, as I say, as a medical attendant to an elderly ladies' home, I am not surprised when what might be called a fairly unexpected death occurs. This case of Mrs. Moody, however, was somewhat different. She died in her sleep without having exhibited any sign of illness and I could not help feeling that in my opinion her death was unexpected. I will use the phrase that has always intrigued me in Shakespeare's play,
Macbeth.
I have always wondered what Macbeth meant when he said of his wife, ‘She should have died hereafter.' ”

“Yes, I remember wondering once myself what Shakespeare was getting at,” said Tommy. “I forget whose production it was and who was playing Macbeth, but there was a strong suggestion in that particular production, and Macbeth certainly played it in a way to suggest that he was hinting to the medical attendant that Lady Macbeth would be better out of the way. Presumably the medical attendant took the hint. It was then that Macbeth, feeling safe after his wife's death, feeling that she could no longer damage him by her indiscretions or her rapidly failing mind, expresses his genuine affection and grief for her. ‘She should have died hereafter.' ”

“Exactly,” said Dr. Murray. “It is what I felt about Mrs. Moody. I felt that she should have died hereafter. Not just three weeks ago of no apparent cause—”

Tommy did not reply. He merely looked at the doctor inquiringly.

“Medical men have certain problems. If you are puzzled over the cause of a patient's death there is only one sure way to tell. By a postmortem. Postmortems are not appreciated by relatives of the deceased, but if a doctor demands a postmortem and the result is, as it perfectly well may be, a case of natural causes, or some disease or malady which does not always give outward signs or symptoms, then the doctor's career can be quite seriously affected by his having made a questionable diagnosis—”

“I can see that it must have been difficult.”

“The relatives in question are distant cousins. So I took it upon myself to get their consent as it was a matter of medical interest to know the cause of death. When a patient dies in her sleep it is advisable to add to one's medical knowledge. I wrapped it up a good bit, mind you, didn't make it too formal. Luckily they couldn't care less. I felt very relieved in mind. Once the autopsy had been performed and if all was well, I could give a death certificate without a qualm. Anyone can die of what is amateurishly called heart failure, from one of several different causes. Actually Mrs. Moody's heart was in really very good shape for her age. She suffered from arthritis and rheumatism and occasional trouble with her liver, but none of these things seemed to accord with her passing away in her sleep.”

Dr. Murray came to a stop. Tommy opened his lips and then shut them again. The doctor nodded.

“Yes, Mr. Beresford. You can see where I am tending. Death has resulted from an overdose of morphine.”

“Good Lord!” Tommy stared and the ejaculation escaped him.

“Yes. It seemed quite incredible, but there was no getting away from the analysis. The question was: How was that morphia administered? She was not on morphia. She was not a patient who suffered pain. There were three possibilities, of course. She might have taken it by accident. Unlikely. She might have got hold of some other patient's medicine by mistake but that again is not particularly likely. Patients are not entrusted with supplies of morphia, and we do not accept drug addicts who might have a supply of such things in their possession. It could have been deliberate suicide but I should be very slow to accept that. Mrs. Moody, though a worrier, was of a perfectly cheerful disposition and I am quite sure had never thought of ending her life. The third possibility is that a fatal overdose was deliberately administered to her. But by whom, and why? Naturally, there are supplies of morphia and other drugs which Miss Packard as a registered hospital nurse and matron, is perfectly entitled to have in her possession and which she keeps in a locked cupboard. In such cases as sciatica or rheumatoid arthritis there can be such severe and desperate pain that morphia is occasionally administered. We have hoped that we may come across some circumstance in which Mrs. Moody had a dangerous amount of morphia administered to her by mistake or which she herself took under the delusion that it was a cure for indigestion or insomnia. We have not been able to find any such circumstances possible. The next thing we have done, at Miss Packard's suggestion and I agreed with her, is to look carefully into the records of such deaths as have taken place at Sunny Ridge in the last two years. There have not been many of them, I am glad to say. I think seven in all, which is a pretty fair average for people of that age group. Two deaths of bronchitis, perfectly straightforward, two of flu, always a possible killer during the winter months owing to the slight resistance offered by frail, elderly women. And three others.”

He paused and said, “Mr. Beresford, I am not satisfied about those three others, certainly not about two of them. They were perfectly probable, they were not unexpected, but I will go as far as saying that they were
unlikely.
They are not cases that on reflection and research I am entirely satisfied about. One has to accept the possibility that, unlikely as it seems, there is someone at Sunny Ridge who is, possibly for mental reasons, a killer. An entirely unsuspected killer.”

There was silence for some moments. Tommy gave a sigh.

“I don't doubt what you've told me,” he said, “but all the same, frankly, it seems unbelievable. These things—surely, they can't happen.”

“Oh yes,” said Dr. Murray grimly, “they happen all right. You go over some of the pathological cases. A woman who took on domestic service. She worked as a cook in various households. She was a nice, kind, pleasant-seeming woman, gave her employers faithful service, cooked well, enjoyed being with them. Yet, sooner or later, things happened. Usually a plate of sandwiches. Sometimes picnic food. For no apparent motive arsenic was added. Two or three poisoned sandwiches among the rest. Apparently sheer chance dictated who took and ate them. There seemed no personal venom. Sometimes no tragedy happened. The same woman was three or four months in a situation and there was no trace of illness. Nothing. Then she left to go to another job, and in that next job, within three weeks, two of the family died after eating bacon for breakfast. The fact that all these things happened in different parts of England and at irregular intervals made it some time before the police got on her track. She used a different name, of course, each time. But there are so many pleasant, capable, middle-aged women who can cook, it was hard to find out which particular woman it was.”

“Why did she do it?”

“I don't think anybody has ever really known. There have been several different theories, especially of course by psychologists. She was a somewhat religious woman and it seems possible that some form of religious insanity made her feel that she had a divine command to rid the world of certain people, but it does not seem that she herself had borne them any personal animus.

“Then there was the French woman, Jeanne Gebron, who was called The Angel of Mercy. She was so upset when her neighbours had ill children, she hurried to nurse those children. Sat devotedly at their bedside. There again it was some time before people discovered that the children she nursed
never recovered. Instead they all died.
And
why?
It is true that when she was young her own child died. She appeared to be prostrated with grief. Perhaps that was the cause of her career of crime. If
her
child died so should the children of other women. Or it may be, as some thought, that her own child was also one of the victims.”

“You're giving me chills down my spine,” said Tommy.

“I'm taking the most melodramatic examples,” said the doctor. “It may be something much simpler than that. You remember in the case of Armstrong, anyone who had in any way offended him or insulted him, or indeed, if he even thought anyone had insulted him, that person was quickly asked to tea and given arsenic sandwiches. A sort of intensified touchiness. His first crimes were obviously mere crimes for personal advantage. Inheriting of money. The removal of a wife so that he could marry another woman.