Maureen looked at him puzzled.
“The milk? But no one’s had a chance to…” Her voice died away.
Masterson said: “No one’s had a chance to poison it? Never mind. Just go ahead. I want you to do precisely what you did last time.”
She filled a large jug with hot water from the tap then stood the unopened bottle in it for a few seconds to warm the milk. Receiving Masterson’s impatient nod to get on with it she prised the cap off the bottle and poured the liquid into a glass measuring jug. Then she took a glass thermometer from the instrument trolley and checked the temperature of the liquid. The class watched in fascinated silence. Maureen glanced at Masterson. Receiving no sign, she took up the esophageal tube and inserted it into the rigid mouth of the doll. Her hand was perfectly steady. Lastly she lifted a glass funnel high over her head and paused. Masterson said:
“Go ahead, Nurse. It isn’t going to hurt the doll to get a bit damp. That’s what it’s made for. A few ounces of warm milk isn’t going to rot its guts.”
Maureen paused. This time the fluid was visible and all their eyes were on the white curving stream. Then suddenly the girl paused, arm still poised high, and stood motionless, like a model awkwardly posed.
“Well” said Masterson: “Is it or isn’t it?”
Maureen lowered the jug to her nostrils, then without a word passed it to her twin. Shirley sniffed and looked at Masterson.
“This isn’t milk, Is it? It’s disinfectant You wanted to test whether we really could tell?”
Maureen said: “Are you telling us that it was disinfectant last time; that the milk was poisoned before we took the bottle out of the fridge.”
“No. Last time the milk was all right when you took it out of the fridge. What did you do with the bottle once the milk had been poured into the measuring jug?”
Shirley said: “I took it over to the sink in the corner and rinsed it out I’m sorry I forgot I should have done that earlier.”
“Never mind. Do it now.”
Maureen had placed the bottle on the table by the side of me sink, its crumpled cap at its side. Shirley picked it up. Then she paused. Masterson said very quietly:
“Well?”
The girl turned to him, perplexed.
“There’s something different, something wrong. It wasn’t like this.”
“Wasn’t it? Then think. Don’t worry yourself. Relax. Just relax and think.”
The room was preternaturally silent Then Shirley swung round to her twin.
“I know now, Maureen! It’s the bottle top. Last time we took one of the homogenized bottles from the fridge, the kind with the silver cap. But when we came back into the demonstration room after breakfast it was different Don’t you remember? The cap was gold. It was Channel Island milk.”
Nurse Goodale said quietly from her chair: “Yes. I remember too. The only cap I saw was gold.”
Maureen looked across at Masterson in puzzled inquiry.
“So someone must have changed the cap?”
Before he had a chance to reply they heard Madeleine Goodale’s calm voice.
“Not necessarily the cap. Somebody changed the whole bottle.”
Masterson did not reply. So the old man had been right! The solution of disinfectant had been made up carefully and at leisure and the lethal bottle substituted for the one from which Morag Smith had drunk. And what had happened to the original bottle? Almost certainly it had been left in the small kitchen on-the Sisters’ floor. Wasn’t it Sister Gearing who had complained to Miss Collins that the milk was watery?
II
Dalgliesh’s business at the Yard was quickly completed and by eleven o’clock he was in North Kensington.
Number 49 Millington Square, W.10, was a large dilapidated Italianate house fronted with crumbling stucco. There was nothing remarkable about it. It was typical of hundreds in this part of London. It was obviously divided into bed-sitting-rooms since every window showed a different set of curtains, or none, and it exuded that curious atmosphere of secretive and lonely over-occupation which hung over the whole district Dalgliesh saw that there was no bank of bell pushes in the porch and no neat list of the tenants. The front door was open. He pushed through the glass paneled door which led to the hall and was met at once by a smell of sour cooking, floor polish and unwashed clothes. The walls of the hall had been papered with a thick encrusted paper, now painted dark brown, and glistening as if it exuded grease and perspiration. The floor and staircase were laid with a patterned linoleum, patched with a brighter newer design where the tears would have been dangerous, but otherwise torn and unmended. The paintwork was an institutional green. There was no sign of life but, even at this time of the day, he felt its presence behind the tightly closed and numbered doors as he made his way unchallenged to the upper floors.
Number 14 was on the top floor at the back. As he approached the door he heard the sharp staccato clatter of typing. He knocked loudly and the sound stopped. There was a wait of more than a minute before the door half opened and he found himself facing a pair of suspicious and unwelcoming eyes.
“Who are you? I’m working. My friends know not to call in the mornings.”
“But I’m not a friend. May I come in?”
“I suppose so. But I can’t spare you much time. And I don’t think it’ll be worth your while. I don’t want to join anything! I haven’t the time. And I don’t want to buy anything because I haven’t the money. Anyway, I’ve got everything I need.” Dalgliesh showed his card.
“I’m not buying or selling; not even information which is what I’m here for. It’s about Josephine Fallon. I’m a police officer and I’m investigating her death. You, I take it, are Arnold Dowson.”
The door was opened wider.
“You’d better come in.” No sign of fear but perhaps a certain wariness in the gray eyes.
It was an extraordinary room, a small attic with a sloping roof and a dormer window, furnished almost entirely with crude and unpainted wooden boxes, some still stenciled with the name of the original grocer or wine merchant They had been ingeniously fitted together so that the walls were honey-combed from floor to ceiling with pale wooden cells, irregular in size and shape and containing all the impedimenta of daily living. Some were stacked close with hard-backed books; others with orange paper-backs. Another framed a small two-bar electric fire, perfectly adequate to heat so small a room. In another box was a neat pile of clean but unironed clothes. Another held blue-banded mugs and other crockery, and yet another displayed a group of objets trouvis, sea-shells, a Staffordshire dog, a small jam jar or bird feathers. The single bed, blanket-covered, was under the window. Another up-turned box served as a table and desk. The only two chain were the folding canvas type sold for picnicking. Dalgliesh was reminded of an article once seen in a Sunday color supplement on how to furnish your bed-sitting-room for under £50. Arnold Dowson had probably done it for half the price. But the room was not unpleasing. Everything was functional and simple. It was perhaps too claustrophobic for some tastes and there was something obsessional in the meticulous tidiness and the way in which every inch of space had been used to the full which prevented it from being restful. It was the room of a self-sufficient, well-organized man who, as he had told Dalgliesh, plainly had everything he wanted.
The tenant suited the room. He looked almost excessively tidy. He was a young man, probably not much over twenty, Dalgliesh thought. His fawn polo-neck sweater was clean, with each cuff neatly turned back to match its fellow, and the collar of a very white shirt visible at the neck. His blue jeans were faded but unstained and had been carefully washed and ironed. There was a crease down the center of each leg and the ends had been turned up and stitched carefully into place. It gave an oddly incongruous effect to such an informal outfit He wore leather sandals of the buckled style normally seen on children, and no socks. His hair was very fair and was brushed into a helmet which framed his face in the manner of a medieval page. The face beneath the sleek fringe was bony and sensitive, the nose crooked and too large, the mouth small and well shaped with a hint of petulance. But his most remarkable feature were his ears. They were the smallest Dalgliesh had every seen on a man, and were without color even at the tips. They looked as if they were made of wax. Sitting on an upturned orange box with his hands held loosely between his knees and his watchful eyes on Dalgliesh, he looked like the centerpiece of a surrealist painting; singular and precise against the multi-cellular background. Dalgliesh pulled out one of the boxes and seated himself opposite the boy. He said: