“I can’t say. We can certainly put it up to counsel and see what he thinks of it.”
“It’s valid, too,” Hellyer persisted. “People like Jane don’t do murder if they are in their right minds, not unless they’re really in a corner, then they do it more cleverly. Certainly they don’t murder perfect strangers. Clearly, the drug caused an hallucination sufficiently vivid to confuse her to a point where she was unable to make a proper distinction between the actual and the hypothetical. She got into a state where she believed the mirage was real, and acted accordingly.”
“Yes. Yes. I suppose one might put it that way,” agreed the solicitor. He looked down again at the pile of paper before him. The whole account is, of course, unreasonable,” he said, “and yet it is pervaded throughout with such an air of reasonableness. I wonder…” He paused pensively, and went on: “This expendability of the male, Hellyer. She doesn’t seem to find it so much incredible, as undesirable. That seems odd in itself to a layman who takes the natural order for granted, but would you, as a medical scientist, say it was, well, not impossible, in theory?”
Dr Hellyer frowned.
“That’s very much the kind of question one wants more notice of. It would be very rash to proclaim it impossible.
Considering it purely as an abstract problem, I can see two or three lines of approach… Of course, if an utterly improbable situation were to arise calling for intensive research, research, that is, on the sort of scale they tackled the atom, well, who can tell…?” He shrugged.
The solicitor nodded again.
“That’s just what I was getting at,” he observed. “Basically it is only just such a little way off the beam; quite near enough to possibility to be faintly disturbing. Mind you, as far as the defence is concerned, her air of thorough conviction, taken in conjunction with the near-plausibility of the thing will probably help. But, for my part, it is just that nearness that is enough to make me a trifle uneasy.”
The doctor looked at him rather sharply.
“Oh, come! Really now! A hardboiled solicitor, too! Don’t tell me you’re going in for fantasy-building. Anyway, if you are, you’ll have to conjure up another one. If Jane, poor girl, has settled one thing, it is that there’s no future in this particular fantasy. Perrigan’s finished with, and all his work’s gone up in smoke and fire.”
“H’m,” said the solicitor, again. “All the same, it would be more satisfactory if we knew of some way other than this”—he tapped the pile of papers—“some other way in which she is likely to have acquired some knowledge of Perrigan and his work. There is, as far as one knows, no other way in which he can have come into her orbit at all—unless, perhaps, she takes an interest in veterinary subjects?”
“She doesn’t. I’m sure of that,” Hellyer told him, shaking his head.
“Well, that, then, remains one slightly disturbing aspect. And there is another. You’ll think it foolish of me, I’m sure and no doubt time will prove you right to do so but I have to admit I’d be feeling just a bit easier in my mind if Jane had been just a bit more thorough in her enquiries before she went into action.”
“Meaning?” asked Dr Hellyer, looking puzzled.
“Only that she does not seem to have found out that there is a son. But there is, you see. He appears to have taken quite a close interest in his father’s work, and is determined that it shan’t be wasted. In fact he has already announced that he will do his best to carry it on with the very few specimens that were saved from the fire…
“Laudably filial, no doubt. All the same it does disturb me a little to find that he, also, happens to be a D. Sc., a biochemist; and that, very naturally, his name, too, is Perrigan… “
Odd
When, on a day in the late December of 1958, Mr Reginald Aster called upon the legal firm of Cropthorne, Daggit, and Howe, of Bedford Row, at their invitation, he found himself received by a Mr Fratton, an amiable young man, barely out of his twenties, but now head of the firm in succession to the defunct Messrs C, D&H.
And when Mr Aster was informed by Mr Fratton that under the terms of the late Sir Andrew Vincell’s will he was a beneficiary to the extent of six thousand Ordinary Shares in British Vinvinyl, Ltd., Mr Aster appeared, as Mr Fratton expressed it to a colleague later, to miss for a while on several plugs.
The relevant clause added that the bequest was made “in recognition of a most valuable service which he once rendered me.” The nature of this service was not specified, nor was it any of Mr Fratton’s business to enquire into it, but the veil over his curiosity was scarcely opaque.
The windfall, standing just then at 83s .6d. per share, came at a fortunate moment in Mr Aster’s affairs. Realisation of a small part of the shares enabled him to settle one or two pressing problems, and in the course of this reordering, the two men met several times. At length there came a time when Mr. Fratton, urged on by curiosity, stepped slightly closer to the edge of professional discretion than he usually permitted himself, to remark in a tentative fashion: “You did not know Sir Andrew very well, did you?”
It was the kind of advance that Mr Aster could easily have discouraged had he wished to, but, in fact, he made no attempt at parry. Instead, he looked thoughtful, and eyed Mr. Fratton with speculation.
“I met Sir Andrew once,” he said. “For perhaps an hour and a half.”
“That is rather what I thought,” said Mr. Fratton, allowing his perplexity to become a little more evident. “Sometime last June, wasn’t it?”
“The twenty-fifth of June,” Mr. Aster agreed.
“But never before that?”
“No, nor since.”
Mr Fratton shook his head uncomprehendingly.
After a pause Mr Aster said: “You know, there’s something pretty rum about this.”
Mr Fratton nodded, but made no comment. Aster went on: “I’d rather like to well, look here, are you free for dinner tomorrow?”
Mr. Fratton was, and when the dinner was finished they retired to a quiet corner of the club lounge with coffee and cigars. After a few moments of consideration Aster said: “I must admit I’d feel happier if this Vincell business was a bit clearer. I don’t see, well, there’s something altogether offbeat about it. I might as well tell you the whole thing. Here’s what happened:”
The twenty-fifth of June was a pleasant evening in an unpleasant summer. I was just strolling home enjoying it. In no hurry at all, and just wondering whether I would turn in for a drink somewhere when I saw this old man. He was standing on the pavement in Thanet Street, holding on to the railings with one hand, and looking about him in a dazed, glassy-eyed way.
Well, in our part of London, as you know, there are plenty of strangers from all over the world, particularly in the summer, and quite a few of them look a bit lost.
But this old man, well on in the seventies, I judged was not that sort. Certainly no tourist. In fact, elegant was the word that occurred to me when I saw him. He had a grey, pointed beard, carefully trimmed, a black felt hat meticulously brushed; a dark suit of excellent cloth and cut; his shoes were expensive; so was his discreetly beautiful silk tie. Gentlemen of this type are not altogether unknown to us in our parts, but they are likely to be off, their usual beat; and alone, and in a glassy-eyed condition in public, they are quite rare. One or two people walking ahead of me glanced at him briefly, had the reflex thought about his condition, and passed on. I did not; he did not appear to me to be ordinarily fuddled more, indeed, as if he were frightened… So I paused beside him.