“No, no.” She hesitated again, oddly, and then in another burst of confidence: “I’m talking about Harold Sage. Perhaps you’ve heard of him too? He’s getting quite famous. He’s — he’s practically thirty.”
“The name seems to strike a chord,” lied Alleyn thoughtfully. The desk telephone rang.
“Will you excuse me?” he asked her, and took off the receiver.
“Hullo? Yes, speaking. Yes. Yes. I see. Thank you very much. I’m engaged at the moment, but if I may I’ll come round and see you to-morrow? Right.” He hung up the receiver. Ruth had just got to her feet.
“I mustn’t keep you, Mr. Alleyn. Only before I go— please, please let me beg you to go no further with these investigations. I’ve — I’ve got a reason — I mean I’m so sure Derry died naturally. It is all so dreadful. If I could be sure you were satisfied— ” She made an ineffectual movement with her hands, a clumsy gesture of entreaty. “Tell me you’ll go no further!” begged Ruth.
“I am extremely sorry,” said Alleyn formally, “but that would be impossible. The post-mortem has already been held. That message gave me the result.”
She stood gaping at him, her mouth half open, her big hands clutching at her bag.
“But what — what is it? What do they say?”
“Your brother died of an overdose of a dangerous drug,” said Alleyn.
She stared at him in utter dismay and then, without another word, turned and blundered out of the room.
Alleyn wrote the name “Harold Sage” in a minute notebook that he carried. Having done so, he stared at it with an air of incredulity, sighed, shut up his book and went to find Fox.
CHAPTER VIII
Hyoscine
Tuesday, the sixteenth. Afternoon.
On the following afternoon, five days after his death, Derek O’Calaghan was buried with a great deal of pomp and ceremony. Alleyn was right about the funeral — there was no demonstration from the late Home Secretary’s obscure opponents, and the long procession streamed slowly down Whitehall without disturbance. Meanwhile the inquest had been resumed and concluded. After hearing the pathologist’s and the analyst’s report, the jury returned a verdict of murder against “a person or persons unknown.” Alleyn had had a few words in private with the pathologist before the inquest opened.
“Well,” said the great man, “there wasn’t much doubt about the hyoscine. The usual dose is a hundredth to a two-hundredth of a grain. My calculations, based on traces of hyoscine found in the organs, show that more than a quarter of a grain had been given. The minimum lethal dose would be something very much less.”
“I see,” said Alleyn slowly.
“Did you expect hyoscine, Alleyn?”
“It was on the tapis. I wish to heaven you hadn’t found it.”
“Yes. Unpleasant business.”
“Do they ever put hyoscine in patent medicines?”
“Oh, yes. Had Sir Derek taken patent medicines?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible.”
“The dosage would be too small to enter into the picture.”
“If he swallowed an entire packet?”
The pathologist shrugged his shoulders. “Would he take an entire packet?” Alleyn did not answer. “I can see you’ve got something in mind,” said the pathologist, who knew him.
“Sir John Phillips injected hyoscine. Suppose O’Callaghan had taken a patent medicine containing the drug?” Alleyn suggested.
“The average injection, as I have said, is about, say, a hundredth of a grain. The amount in patent medicines would be very much less. The two together, even if he had taken quantities of his rot-gut, could scarcely constitute a lethal dose — unless, of course, O’Callaghan had an idiosyncrasy for hyoscine, and even if there was an idiosyncrasy, it wouldn’t account for the amount we found. If you want my private opinion, for what it is worth, I consider the man was murdered.”
“Thank you for all the trouble you have taken,” said Alleyn glumly. “I shan’t wait to hear the verdict; it’s a foregone conclusion. Fox can grace the court for me. There’s one other point. Were you able to find the marks of the injections?”
“Yes.”
“How many were there?”
“Three.”
“Three. That tallies. Damn!”
“It’s not conclusive, Alleyn. There might be a fourth injected where we couldn’t see it. Inside the ear, under the hair, or even into the exact spot where one of the others was given.”
“I see. Oh, well, I must bustle away and solve the murder.”
“Let me know if there’s anything further I can do.”
“Thank you, I will. Good-bye.”
Alleyn went out, changed his mind and struck his head round the door.
“If I send you a pill or two, will you have them dissected for me?”
“Analysed?”
“If you’d rather. Good-bye.”
Alleyn took a taxi to the Brook Street home. He asked a lugubrious individual in a chastened sort of uniform if Sir John Phillips was in the hospital. Sir John had not yet come in. When would he be in? The lugubrious individual was afraid he “reely couldn’t say.”
“Please find someone who can say,” said Alleyn. “And when he’s free give Sir John this card.”
He was invited to wait in one of those extraordinary drawing-rooms that can only be found in expensive private hospitals in the West End of London. Thick carpet, subfusc curtains of pseudo-empire pattern and gilt-legged chairs combined to disseminate the atmosphere of a mausoleum. Chief Inspector Alleyn and a marble woman whose salient features were picked out embarrassingly in gilt stared coldly at each other. A nurse came in starchily, glanced in doubt at Alleyn, and went out again. A clock, flaunted aloft by a defiant bronze-nude, swung its pendulum industriously to and fro for twenty minutes. A man’s voice sounded somewhere and in a moment the door opened and Phillips came in.
He was, as usual, immaculate, a very model for a fashionable surgeon, with his effective ugliness, his eyeglass, his air of professional cleanliness, pointed by the faint reek of ether. Alleyn wondered if the extreme pallor of his face was habitual.
“Inspector Alleyn?” he said. “I am sorry to have kept you waiting.”
“Not a bit, sir,” said Alleyn. “I must apologise for bothering you, but I felt you would like to know the report of the post-mortem as soon as it came through.”
Phillips went back to the door and shut it quietly. His face was turned away from his visitor as he spoke.
“Thank you. I shall be relieved to hear it.”
“I’m afraid ‘relieved’ is scarcely the word.”
“No?”
Phillips faced round slowly.
“No,” said Alleyn. “They have found strongly marked traces of hyoscine in the organs. He must have had at least a quarter of a grain.”
“A quarter of a grain!” He moved his eyebrows and his glass fell to the floor. He looked extraordinarily shocked and astonished. “Impossible!” he said sharply. He stooped and picked up his monocle.
“There has been no mistake,” said Alleyn quietly.
Phillips glanced at him in silence.
“I beg your pardon, inspector,” he said at last. “Of course, you have made certain of your facts, but— hyoscine — it’s incredible.”
“You understand that I shall be forced to make exhaustive inquiries.”
“I — I suppose so.”
“In a case of this sort the police feel more than usually helpless. We must delve into highly technical matters. I will be quite frank with you, Sir John. Sir Derek died of the effects of a lethal dose of hyoscine. Unless it can be proved that he took the drug himself, we are faced with a very serious situation. Naturally I shall have to go into the history of his operation. There are many questions which I should like to put to you. I need not remind you that you are under no compulsion to answer them.”