Two more steps fractured her skull, broke her left collarbone and smashed the base of her spine. The final step on the first flight sent another piece of rib through her heart.
She rolled onto the first landing and then proceeded down the second flight. And then onto the third.
It was Betty Thorndike who found Harriet.
She had called around on her way back from Edna Clark’s house, just to see if Harriet was all right. Of course, she wasn’t.
By Monday afternoon, it was all over bar the shouting. And as far as Malcolm Broadhurst was concerned, there would be little of that. He had been to see Edna Clark on the Sunday afternoon, with both of the Merkinson sisters lying on metal trays in the cold and strangely-smelling basement of Halifax General.
In the silent loneliness of Edna’s kitchen, the widow had told him everything that Harriet had told her. Broadhurst put the rest of it together himself.
He had spoken with his boss at Halifax CID and they had agreed between the two of them that there was little to be achieved by releasing all of the gory details. They decided that Hilda had been a keen promoter of animal rights, using her position at the centre to obtain vital information of the testing Ian Arbutt was carrying out-hence the break-in.
Harriet, meanwhile, had been unable to come to terms with her sister’s death and had hanged herself. Only a slight discrepancy in timing suggested that such might not be the case and nobody would hear about that discrepancy. Now the two of them were united again… in whatever routine they could arrange.
Edna Clark cried when the policeman explained what he had organized. It meant that her life had been partially restored. To all intents and purposes, she was still the grieving widow of a fine and upstanding member of the Luddersedge community. Betty Thorndike, who had not said anything to anyone about Harriet Merkinson’s revelations – and had had no intention of doing so-consoled Edna and assured her that everything was all right.
“He was a good man,” Edna whispered into her friend’s shoulder. “Deep down,” she added.
“I know he was, love,” Betty agreed. “They all are-deep down.”
Driving back to Halifax late afternoon on Monday, there was just one thing that niggled Malcolm Broadhurst. He could not understand why Ian Arbutt had seemed somehow relieved-albeit momentarily-when he was told of Hilda’s unfortunate accident.
But the policeman did not believe Arbutt was in any way involved in either the break-in or Arthur Clark’s murder. There was another story there, somewhere, as, of course, there always is.
Contrary to the Evidence by Douglas Newton
Douglas Newton (1885-1951) was a prolific writer of books, articles and stories for well over forty years. He achieved a certain fame when his novel War (1914), which pretty much predicted and depicted the First World War, appeared a few months before the real War broke out. He did it all again with The North Afire (1914), which looked at the future conflict in Northern Ireland. A journalist by profession, Newton was selected to accompany the future Edward VIII on his tour of Canada just after the War and wrote about it in Westward with the Prince of Wales (1920). Newton was immensely prolific, so much so that despite having some fifty books published, that represents scarcely a tenth of his total output for magazines during the 1920s and 1930s. One such series that never made it into book-form featured Paul Toft, an investigator who served as an unofficial consultant for the police, but who acted on intuition and instinct rather than hard facts and deduction. The series ran in Pearson’s Magazine during the mid-1930s and includes the following ingenious and near perfect crime.
We sat in the room where old Stanley Park had died so suddenly that morning. As the witnesses unfolded the story, even Paul Toft seemed to grow a mere huddle of sharp knees and elbows in his arm-chair, while Inspector Grimes became a bouncing mass of irritation as he realised that he had been dragged out to Friars’ Vale on the mere reasonless suspicions of a headstrong young woman. The local police sergeant and I sympathised with him.
This was no crime, but a sheer waste of time.
Gerald Park was perfectly frank about the part he had played in the tragedy of his uncle’s death.
He had come out from Stripe to old Stanley Park to borrow money. He hadn’t had much hope of getting it, he admitted, because there was bad blood between him and his uncle – who had kicked him out of this very house for stealing, less than a month ago. He was so desperately hard up, however, he had had to make the try.
He had come out by train to Friars’ Vale Halt and had taken a taxi from there. He had timed himself to arrive about 10.30, because that was the time his uncle always read his papers in this sitting-room. He let himself in with the door-key he had kept when his uncle had turned him out. He did that because he knew that if he rang, Mrs Ferris, his uncle’s housekeeper and only servant, would not let him in. It would have been more than her place was worth, seeing how his uncle had come to hate him.
Anyhow, his idea was to slip in quietly, getting into his uncle’s presence before anything could intervene. But “springing” himself on the old man like that had proved to be a horrible mistake. His uncle saw him even before he could get into the room, and rose from his arm-chair by the fire with such a snarl of rage that Gerald stopped dead in the very doorway.
The old man made furious gestures at him to get out. Gerald spoke, attempting to placate him, but that only made matters worse. At the sound of his nephew’s voice, old Stanley Park took a step forward as though he meant to throw the weedy young man out with his own hands – and then, quite suddenly, he crumpled up and fell to the floor.
Gerald, terrified, sure that the old man had had a stroke at the sight of him, called over his shoulder to Grass, the taxi-man – for the thing had happened so swiftly that he had never even moved inside the sitting-room door. Grass ran in and together they went to the old man. Or, rather, Gerald left that to Grass, who was more competent, while he himself ran back into the hall and called out to Mrs Ferris in the kitchen, before hurrying across the hall into the dining-room to get brandy from the cellarette.
Mrs Ferris was coming up the hall as he came out with the brandy, and they went into the sitting-room together. By then Grass was sure that there was very little hope for old Stanley, though on Gerald’s instructions he drove at once for a doctor, there being no telephone in the house. Mrs Ferris had, meanwhile, taken charge of the old man, Gerald standing by doing anything she ordered. But it was plain there was nothing to be done, and indeed old Stanley was dead before the doctor arrived, about ten minutes later.
Gerald Park, a weedy, rather slick fellow in the early twenties, was clad in smart clothes now gone to seed, rather shamefacedly “supposed” that the sight of him had given his uncle the shock that killed him. He admitted his uncle had good cause for anger against him – he’d behaved like a heartless young fool. Although his uncle had taken him into his home when his father died a few years ago, and had been as kind as his strict nature allowed, he, Gerald, had played fast and loose, got himself into bad company and ways and ended-well, by robbing his uncle on the sly.
He hadn’t any excuse. Of course, he’d hoped to pay the money back sometime, and he probably would have if someone hadn’t sneaked to his uncle and so caused the final explosion. After that he hadn’t a chance. His uncle was terribly down on that sort of thing. He’d been absolutely beside himself with fury and had turned Gerald out of his house then and there. That was his way. Drove his own nephew right out of his life from that moment, warning him never on any account to show his face in Friars’ Vale again.