“So far as I know, you can’t.”
“I’ve thought of all that. I didn’t kill O’Callaghan. I threatened to kill him. You’ve seen Thoms. Thoms is a decent little ass, but I can see he thinks you suspect me. He’s probably told you I used a lot of water for the injection and then bit his head off because he said so. So I did. He drove me nearly crazy with his bloody facetiousness. Jane — Nurse Harden — told me what you’d said to her. You know a hell of a lot — I can see that. You possibly know what I’m going to tell you. I want her to marry me. She won’t, because of the other business with O’Callaghan. I think she believes I killed him. I think she was afraid at the time. That’s why she was so upset, why she hesitated over the serum, why she fainted. She was afraid I’d kill O’Callaghan. She heard Thoms tell me about that play. D’ypu know about the play?”
“Thoms mentioned that you discussed it.”
“Silly ass. He’s an intelligent surgeon, but in other matters he’s got as much savoir-faire as a child. He’d swear his soul away I didn’t do it and then blurt out something like that. What I want to make clear to you is this. Jane Harden’s distress in the theatre was on my account. She thinks I murdered O’Callaghan. I know she does, because she won’t ask me. Don’t, for God’s sake, put any other interpretation on it. She’s got a preposterous idea that she’s ruined my life. Her nerves are all to blazes. She’s anæmic and she’s hysterical. If you arrest me, she may come forward with some damn’ statement calculated to drag a red herring across my trail. She’s an idealist. It’s a type I don’t pretend to understand. She did nothing to the syringe containing the serum. When Thoms cursed her for delaying, I turned and looked at her. She simply stood there dazed and half fainting. She’s as innocent as — I was going to say as I am, but that may not carry much weight. She’s completely innocent.”
He stopped abruptly. To Alleyn it had seemed a most remarkable little scene. The change in Phillips’s manner alone was extraordinary. The smooth, guarded courtesy which had characterised it during their former interview had vanished completely. He had spoken rapidly, as if urged by some appalling necessity. He how sat glaring at Alleyn with a hint of resigned ferociousness.
“Is that all you came to tell me, Sir John?” asked Alleyn in his most non-committal voice.
“All? What do you mean?”
“Well, you see, you prepared me for a bombshell. I wondered what on earth was coming. You talked of making a clean breast of it, but, forgive me, you’ve told me little that we did not already know.”
Phillips took his time over answering this. At last he said:
“I suppose that’s true. Look here, Alleyn. Can you give me your assurance that you entertain no suspicions as regards Jane Harden?”
“I’m afraid I can’t. I shall consider everything you have told me very carefully, but I cannot, as this stage, make any definite announcement of that sort. Miss Harden is in a very equivocal position. I hope she may be cleared, but I cannot put her aside simply because, to put it baldly, you tell me she’s innocent.”
Phillips was silent. After a moment he clasped his well-shaped, well-kept hands together, and looking at them attentively, began to speak again.
“There’s something more. Has Thoms told you that I opened a new tube of tablets for the hyoscine injection?”
Alleyn did not move, but he seemed to come to attention.
“Oh yes,” he said quietly.
“He has! Lord, what an ingenuous little creature it is! Did you attach any significance to this second tube?”
“I remembered it.”
“Then listen. During the week before the operation I’d been pretty well at the end of my tether. I suppose when a man of my age gets it, he gets it badly — the psychologists say so — and — well, I could think of nothing but the ghastly position we were in — Jane and I. That Friday when I went to see O’Callaghan I was nearly driven crazy by his damned insufferable complacence. I could have murdered him then. I wasn’t sleeping. I tried alcohol and I tried hypnotics. I was in a bad way, Alleyn. Then on top of it he came in, a sick man, and I had to operate. Thoms rubbed it in with his damn-fool story of some play or other. I scarcely knew what I did. I seemed to behave like an automaton.” He stopped short and raised his eyes from the contemplation of his hands. “It’s possible,” he said, “that I may have made a mistake over the first tube. It may not have been empty.”
“Even if the tube had been full,” suggested Alleyn, “would that explain how the tablets got into the measure-glass?”
“I… what do you say?”
“You say that the first tube may not have been empty, and you wish me to infer from this that you are responsible for Sir Derek’s death?”
“I… I… That is my suggestion,” stammered Phillips.
“Deliberately responsible or accidentally?”
“I am not a murderer,” said Phillips angrily.
“Then how did the tablets get into the measure-glass?”
Phillips was silent.
The inspector waited for a moment and then, with an unsual inflexion in his deep voice, he said:
“So you don’t understand the idealistic type?”
“What? No!”
“I don’t believe you.”
Phillips stared at him, flushed painfully and then shrugged his shoulders. “Do you want a written statement of all this?” he asked.
“I don’t think so. Later, if it’s necessary. You have been very frank. I appreciate both the honesty and the motive. Look here — what can you tell me to help yourself? It’s an unusual question from a police officer, but — there it is.”
“I don’t know. I suppose the case against me, apart from the suggestion I have just made, is that I had threatened O’Callaghan, and that when the opportunity came I gave him an overdose of hyoscine. It looks fishy, my giving the injection at all, but it is my usual practice, especially when Roberts is the anæsthetist, as he dislikes the business. It looks still more suspicious using a lot of water. That, again, is my usual practice. I can prove it. I can prove that I suggested another surgeon to Lady O’Callaghan and that she urged me to operate. That’s all. Except that I don’t think— No, that’s all.”
“Have you any theories about other people?”
“Who did it, you mean? None. I imagine it was political. How it was done, I’ve no idea. I can’t possibly suspect any of the people who worked with me. It’s unthinkable. Besides — why? You said something about patent medicines. Is there anything there?”
“We’re on that tack now. I don’t know if there’s anything in it. By the way, why does Dr. Roberts object to giving injections?”
“A private reason. Nothing that can have any bearing on the case.”
“Is it because he once gave an overdose?”
“If you knew that, why did you ask me? Testing my veracity?”
“Put it like that. He was never alone with the patient?”
“No. No, never.”
“Was any one of the nurses alone in the theatre before the operation?”
“The nurses? I don’t know. I wouldn’t notice what they did. They’d been preparing for some time before we came on the scene.”
“We?”
“Thoms, Roberts and myself.”
“What about Mr. Thoms?”
“I can’t remember. He may have dodged in to have a look round.”
“Yes. I think I must have a reconstruction. Can you spare the time to-day or to-morrow?”
“You mean you want to go through the whole business in pantomime?”
“If I may. We can hardly do it actually, unless I discover a P.C. suffering from an acute abscess of the appendix.”