“I’ll be as brief as possible,” said the doctor. He was a London man, sent down by Scotland Yard, and accustomed to police work- a lean, grey badger of a man, business-like and keen-eyed, the direct opposite of the “tutster” who had annoyed Parker the evening before.
“Well, first of all, the blow on the head had, of course, nothing whatever to do with the death. You saw yourself that there had been next to no bleeding. The wound was inflicted some time after death-no doubt to create the impression of an attack by a gang. Similarly with the cuts and scratches on the arms. They are the merest camouflage.”
“Exactly. Your colleague-”
“My colleague, as you call him, is a fool,” snorted the doctor. “If that’s a specimen of his diagnosis, I should think there would be a high death-rate in Crow’s Beach. That’s by the way. You want the cause of death?”
“Chloroform?”
“Possibly. I opened the body but found no special symptoms suggestive of poisoning or anything. I have removed the necessary organs and sent them to Sir James Lubbock for analysis at your suggestion, but candidly I expect nothing from that. There was no odour of chloroform on opening the thorax. Either the time elapsed since the death was too long, as is very possible, seeing how volatile the stuff is, or the dose was too small. I found no indications of any heart weakness, so that, to produce death in a healthy young girl, chloroform would have had to be administered over a considerable time.”
“Do you think it was administered at all?”
“Yes, I think it was. The burns on the face certainly suggest it.”
“That would also account for the handkerchief found in the car,” said Wimsey.
“I suppose,” pursued Parker, would it would require considerable strength and determination to administer chloroform to a strong young woman. She would probably resist strenuously.”
“She would,” said the doctor, grimly, “but the odd thing is, she didn’t. As I said all before, all the marks of violence were inflicted postmortem.”
“Suppose she had been asleep at the time,” suggested Wimsey, “couldn’t it have been done quietly then?”
“Oh, yes- easily. After a few long breaths of the stuff she would become semiconscious and then could be more firmly dealt with. It is quite possible, I suppose, that she fell asleep in the sunshine, while her companion wandered and was kidnapped, and that the kidnappers then came along and got rid of Miss Findlater.”
“That seems a little unnecessary,” said Parker. “Why come back to her at all?”
“Do you suggest that they both fell asleep and were both set on and chloroformed at the same time? It sounds rather unlikely.”
“I don’t. Listen, doctor- only keep this to yourself.”
He outlined the history of their suspicions about Mary Whittaker, to which the doctor listened in horrified amazement.
“What happened,” said Parker, “as we think, is this. We think that for some reason Miss Whittaker had determined to get rid of this poor girl who was so devoted to her. She arranged that they should go off for a picnic and that it should be known where they were going to. Then, when Vera Findlater was dozing in the sunshine, our theory is that she murdered her- either with chloroform or-more likely, I fancy- by the same method she used upon her other victims, whatever that was. Then she struck her on the head and produced the other appearances suggestive of a struggle, and left on the bushes a cap which she had previously purchased and stained with brilliatine. I am, of course, having the cap traced. Miss Whittaker is a tall, powerful woman-I don’t think it would be beyond her strength to inflict that blow on an unresisting body.”
“But how about these footmarks in the wood?”
“I’m coming to that. There are one or two very odd things about them. To begin with, if this was the work of a secret gang, why should they go out of their way to pick out the one damp, muddy spot in twenty miles of country to leave their footprints in, when almost anywhere else they could have come and gone without any recognisable traces at all?”
“Good point,” said the doctor. ̶o;And I that, that they must have noticed they’d left a cap behind. Why not come back and remove it?”
“Exactly. Then again. Both pairs of shoes left prints entirely free from the marks left by wear and tear. I mean that there were no signs of the heels or soles being worn at all, while the rubbers on the larger pair were obviously just out of the shop. We shall have the photographs here in a moment, and you will see. Of course, it’s not impossible that both men should be wearing brand new shoes, but on the whole, it’s unlikely.”
“It is,” agreed the doctor.
“And now we come to the most suggestive thing of all. One of the supposed men had very much bigger feet than the other, from which you would expect a taller and possibly heavier man with a longer stride. But on measuring footprints, what do we find? In all cases- the big man, the little man, the woman- we have exactly the same length of stride. Not only that, but footprints have sunk into the ground to precisely the same depth, indicating that all three people were of the same weight. Now, the other discrepancies might pass, but that is absolutely beyond the reach of coincidence.”
Dr. Faulkner considered this moment.
“You’ve proved your point,” he said at length. “I consider that absoloutely convincing.”
“It struck even Sir Charles Pillington, who is none too bright,” said Parker. “I had the greatest difficulty in preventing him from blurting out the extraordinary agreement of the measurements to that Evening Views man.”
“You think, then, that Miss Whittaker had come provided with these shoes and produced the tracks herself.”
“Yes, returning each time through the bracken. Cleverly done. She had made no mistake about superimposing the footprints. It was all worked out to a nicety- each set over and under the two others to produce the impression that three people had been there at the same time. Intensive study of the works of Mr. Austin Freeman, I should say.”
“And what next?”
“Well, I think we shall find that this Mrs. Forrest, who we think has been her accomplice all along, had brought her car down-the big car, that is- and was waiting there for her. Possibly she did the making of the footprints while Mary Whittaker was staging the assault. Anyhow, she probably arrived there after Mary Whittaker and Vera Findlater had left the Austin and departed to the hollow on the downs. When Mary Whittaker had finished her part of the job, they put the handkerchief and the magazine called The Black Mask into the Austin and drove off in Mrs. Forrest’s car. I’m having the movements of the car investigated, naturally. It’s a dark blue Renault four-seater, with Michelin ballon-tyres, and the number is XO4247. We know that it returned to Forrest’s garage on the Monday night with Mrs. Forrest in it.”
“But where is Miss Whittaker?”
“In hiding somewhere. We shall get her all right. She can’t get money from her own bank- they’re warned. If Mrs. Forrest tries to get money for her, she will be followed. So if the worst comes to the worst, we can starve her out in time with any luck. But we’ve got another clue. There has been a most determined attempt to throw suspicion on an unfortunate relative of Miss Whittaker’s- a black Nonconformist parson, with the remarkable name of Hallelujah Dawson. He has certain pecuniary claims one Miss Whittaker- not legal claims, but claims which any decent and humane person should have respected. She didn’t respect them, and the poor old man might well have been expected to nurse a grudge against her. Yesterday morning he tried to cash a Bearer cheque of hers for £10,000, with a lame-sounding story to the effect that it had arrived by the first post, without explanation, in an envelope. So of course, he’s had to be detained as one of the kidnappers.”
“But that is very clumsy, surely. He’s almost certain to have an alibi.”