Callers for Dr Morelle Page 3

  He glanced out of the porch at the window with the edge of light round the curtains. Why was the light on? He supposed she could have gone out and forgotten it. Or left it on so that anyone passing, a tramp or someone like that, would not guess that the place was unoccupied. A dozen reasons went through his mind which would explain the silence that had greeted his arrival.

  He realized he ought to have given it more thought. He had been so buoyed up by wishful thinking, he had failed to foresee a dozen eventualities which could easily have prevented Julie from expecting him. It would explain the non-arrival of any hired car to meet him. It would explain why he was standing here, soaked to the skin and bedraggled, wretched and his spirits rapidly sinking to a low ebb.

  Or even if the damned telegram had reached her, she may have had previous commitments which had prevented her from meeting him at the station or being at the cottage. He looked about him for signs of a note which she might have written him and left by the door. But there was nothing.

  His mind harrowed with conjecture he tried to decide what he should do. Hadn’t Thelma said something about a village pub? He’d better make tracks for that, and get out of his wet clothes and put a warm drink and some food inside him. And yet he hated the idea of going away. Julie might turn up at any minute for all he knew.

  He gripped the door-handle and turned it. The door did not open. It was locked. The thought that had occurred to him of waiting for her in the cottage died.

  Still refusing to give up hope, not wanting to go away, he stepped out of the porch and leaving his suitcase where it was, made his way round to the back.

  He made out the black silhouette of the small copse at the end of the garden. The night sky appeared lighter now, stars were beginning to pierce the darkness over-head. Only the distant mutter of thunder, that was all that was left of that sudden, short-lived storm. Stumbling against a brimming-over water-butt, he came to the back door.

  There was still silence inside the cottage. He saw no light anywhere.

  A feeling of desperation swept over him. His nerves were edgy with fatigue and hunger, his spirits dejected by the sequence of irritating incidents that seemed to have heaped themselves one after another upon him from the moment he had stepped off the train at Little Tiplow. How much longer would he have to hang around in his soaked clothes and sopping shoes?

  On an impulse he tried the back door latch. To his astonishment, it yielded to his first touch. The door opened.

  What had happened, he decided was that Julie had gone out, locking the front door behind her, forgetting that the back door was unlocked. It was not unlike her to do something like that.

  For a moment he hesitated, then he stepped inside. He found his lighter and snapped it alight.

  The flickering yellow flame showed him that he was in a small kitchen. He looked around for a light-switch. He saw it beside another door which was open onto a short passage, beyond which, to his right, lay the front room whose light he had seen behind the curtains. There was silence, except for the loud ticking of the kitchen clock on the wall. He gave a little start as he heard a clatter in the front room.

  ‘It’s me,’ he called out. ‘Phil. Anybody at home? Julie, you there?’

  His voice seemed to linger in the eerie stillness, then die away.

  And then quite suddenly an inexplicable dread surged through him to the exclusion of every other emotion. His heart thudded heavily; the back of his throat was dry, and a chilling sensation beginning underneath his scalp, moved slowly down his spine. The abysmal dread was gnawing at his very soul, and as he stood there hesitating he could not shake it off.

  ‘Hell’s bells,’ he said aloud, and shook his head as if to clear the mist of apprehension that had engulfed him.

  Before him showed the light streaming from the lighted room. A staircase was on his right, and he glanced up into the darkness. On his left, opposite the staircase was a large cupboard door. It was open an inch or so.

  He went forward slowly, indecisively.

  Ahead of him at the end of the dim passage, but caught in the edge of light which came from the room on the right, he saw something which lay on the door-mat. He stood outside the room eyeing it miserably, and then he bent down and picked up the telegram.

  So it had been delivered all right. But not in time to catch her before she went out.

  He turned towards the sitting-room, he could see the red flicker of a fire, its embers were dying down. He smelled the tang of smoke, and then saw that a piece of charred log had fallen out onto the hearth.

  That must have been the clatter which he had heard a few minutes before.

  So Julie must have been at home earlier that evening. The fire could only mean that. And that telegram had arrived too late.

  Risky of her, he thought, frowning a little to himself, leaving the fire burning like that, without any guard to prevent embers from falling and perhaps reaching the rug which lay only a foot or two from the fire-place. It was that in his mind which prompted him to step into the room.

  He went over and picked up the piece of log, its aromatic tang stronger in his nostrils. He put it back on the fire, and sparks flew up. He straightened himself and turned to look round the warm, comfortable room.

  That was when he saw the figure sprawled on the divan, her head thrown back, the eyes staring open, the mouth drawn over clenched teeth, the face twisted in agony.

  Chapter Five

  Phil Stone sat, his gaze fixed on the Coroner’s chair which was on a dais at one end of the room in the town hall which served as the Coroner’s Court. The light-painted walls of the room were plain and drab-looking, the curtains which were drawn back looked nondescript and faded, only the September morning sunlight which streamed through the tall windows brought a look of cheerfulness to the surroundings.

  Thelma Grayson sat beside him, quiet and calm, but her beautiful features were pale and drawn, her eyes shadowed with grief.

  The room was fairly full. There were rustlings and whisperings, the scrape of a chair. The jury, composed of eleven Hatford residents, sat in their places already; local tradesmen and business men, clerks and artisans, called from their everyday occupations to listen to the story of Julie Grayson’s death and return their verdict upon how that death had come about.

  It awaited only the arrival of the Coroner himself for the proceedings to start.

  And while the Court waited, Phil’s mind was going over again for the thousandth time that dreadful night at Lilac Cottage.

  How he had managed to pull himself together after the first shock of seeing that frightful sight on the divan, how he had made vain efforts to revive Julie, trying to bring back warmth and movement in the stiffening, cooling, contorted body. Realizing how hopeless his efforts were, he had looked round for a telephone. Remembering there wasn’t one, he had rushed out of the cottage to fetch help, even although he knew it was too late.

  He remembered finding his way along the dark roads to the village, and the Half Moon Inn where he had phoned the local policeman, who had gone with him to Lilac Cottage. That was after the doctor had been sent for, and Phil had phoned Thelma.

  Then there had been the police-inspector and his sergeant from Hatford. The inspector had questioned him, while the sergeant had roamed round the cottage, the first shock beginning to recede and a cold, empty feeling taking its place. Then the ambulance from Hatford to take Julie’s body to the mortuary in the town.

  It was Phil who had drawn attention to the telegram, and explained how it came to be sent. Later, he learned that the postman’s son had been interviewed, and had given his explanation about the telegram being delivered when he had a free moment.

  ‘Lilac Cottage was in darkness,’ he told the police. ‘I couldn’t make anyone hear, so I thought they was out. Just shoved the telegram through the letter-box, and biked home quick. There was a storm coming on.’

  That fixed the time. Julie must already have been dead when Thelma’s telegram arrived. W
ould it have saved her, if she had read it? Over and over again Phil had asked himself that agonized question.

  He glanced at Thelma now, as she sat, composed and pale, only her shadowed eyes showing the torment she suffered.

  She had not been at the Charlotte Street flat when he had telephoned. He had forgotten about that at the time, remembering it only when he heard the no reply burr-burr. And so he had got on to the Black Moth, and while he waited for her to come to the phone, he could hear the dance-music behind her, and he had tried to work out words and phrases, a way in which he could soften the shock of what he was going to tell her.

  ‘Thelma,’ he had said to her when he had heard her voice, the dance-music still there incongruously behind her, ‘I’m afraid you must brace yourself for — for a shock’

  ‘What’s wrong, Phil? Julie ill?’

  Her words overlapped his as he was saying: ‘It’s bad news, I’m afraid. It’s —’

  ‘Bad news?’ It seemed to him that there had been no alarm in her voice. ‘Phil, you haven’t had a row?’

  Why should she have said that? It had gone through his mind at the time. Why should she have thought that he and Julie had quarrelled? But he had been too preoccupied to find the words to tell her that Julie was dead. Somehow he got the words out. The dance-music was still there behind her.

  ‘I must come down,’ she had said. ‘I’ll come down right away.’

  It was as if she was speaking automatically, as if the real truth of what had happened had not sunk in.

  ‘But — how?’

  ‘I’ll get a hired car.’

  She had arrived at Lilac Cottage two hours later, in a black saloon hired car. Phil was awaiting her. Julie’s body had been taken away. Phil had accompanied her to Hatford police-station, and then to the mortuary, to identify her sister. She was the dead girl’s only living relative.

  And Phil was recollecting how in the police-car she had said to him, her voice low and suppressed: ‘I must see her. I want to remember.’

  The strange phrase had stuck in Phil’s mind ever since. He recalled her evasiveness when he had arrived unexpectedly at the flat at Charlotte Street.

  He had remembered wondering at the time why Julie had gone down to Lilac Cottage alone, and that Thelma’s explanation that she had taken a week’s holiday while the new show was being rehearsed at the Black Moth had sounded vaguely unconvincing even to Phil, whose knowledge of the workings of show-business was nil.

  ‘Why should she have done it?’ he had asked her.

  And she had looked at him mutely, dry-eyed, frighteningly self-possessed. It was after they had come from the mortuary, and he had stood with her and the police-officer silently staring down at Julie as she lay in the cold, hygienic surroundings, Thelma had formally identified her.

  ‘What could she have been so unhappy about?’ he’d said.

  ‘Phil,’ was all she had said, ‘if only that telegram had arrived in time.’

  That telegram that might have saved her life. If Julie had known that he was on his way, she might not have been lying there. But it didn’t explain why she had killed herself, it didn’t explain Thelma’s evasive reply to his question. Julie, she’d said, had not been happy lately.

  The rustle of the Court fell away into silence, broken by the loud tones of the policeman who acted as Coroner’s Officer.

  ‘The Court will rise.’

  Phil and Thelma, with the jury, the medical and police witnesses, reporters from the local papers, and the scattering of people in the public seats rose as the Coroner entered through a doorway behind his chair.

  A brisk little man, he nodded as he sat down. He was grey-haired, a sallow fine-lined lawyer’s face, serious now as he looked round the court through gold-rimmed pince-nez.

  ‘The Court is open.’

  The Coroner paused for a few moments, then he turned to the jury, who sat somewhat self-consciously on his right. The police-officer read out the eleven names. When that was over the Coroner cleared his throat.

  ‘We are called here to-day to inquire into the circumstances surrounding the death of Miss Julie Grayson, and your duty will be to inquire how, when and where the deceased came by her death. All relevant witnesses will be called. You will hear all the evidence, and you will be asked to give your verdict as representatives of the public at this inquest. I will give you all the guidance you need. Do not hesitate to ask any question if there is a point on which any of you is not satisfied. Is that understood?’

  A portly, red-faced man who looked like a butcher, and who had been elected foreman of the jury by the others, said:

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then we may proceed.’ The Coroner took off his pince-nez, put them on again and glanced at the sheaf of papers on the baize-covered table before him, and spoke to the officer.

  ‘Call the first witness.’

  The policeman from Little Tiplow was the first into the witness-box on the Coroner’s left and took up the Bible.

  ‘I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

  The truth, Phil thought bitterly, the truth was that the girl he loved had been found racked and tormented, dead, and not all the paraphernalia in the wide world could bring her back to life again.

  ‘You are the police-officer in charge at Little Tiplow?’ the Coroner asked him.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Please proceed.’

  The round-faced policeman cleared his throat and glanced at his notebook.

  ‘At approximately 9.55 p.m. on September 6th last, I was called from the police-station to the Half Moon Inn, Little Tiplow. There I met Mr. Phil Stone, who informed me he had found a young woman dead at Lilac Cottage. He had just come from the cottage to get help. After sending someone for Dr. Walsh, who was out on a confinement, I proceeded to Lilac Cottage with Mr. Stone. I found the front door locked, but gained entrance through the kitchen door, which was on the latch. The lights were on in the kitchen and in the sitting-room, where I found the deceased lying on a divan covered by a raincoat.’

  Phil heard the slight gasp of an indrawn breath beside him and felt Thelma’s arm, quivering and tense against his. His hand went to hers, comfortingly. Her hand was as cold as ice beneath his. He was seeing again the scene in the sitting-room before he went to the Half Moon Inn.

  He could recall trying to force his numbed brain to take control of his thoughts and actions once more. He had glanced around the sitting-room, looking for a glass or phial which must have contained the poison. He searched the floor by the divan. There was nothing. How had she taken the deadly poison? Into his mind had flashed stories he had heard of people on the run, escaped criminals who had carried poison capsules on them, sometimes in their mouths, so that they could cheat their pursuers at the last moment. Something like that must have come into Julie’s hands.

  Like a man in a dream he had taken off his raincoat and placed it tenderly over her. He wanted to remember her as she had been, as she was in the photograph in his pocket, not as she was now, her face contorted in a grin of agony.

  He had gone out through the back door, pausing to pick up his suitcase from the porch then putting it down again, and hurrying down the lane, in what he took to be the direction of the village.

  The policeman in the witness-box was continuing in stilted official phrases: ‘I ascertained that the deceased was dead. I questioned Mr. Stone further as to how he came to discover the deceased, and during the course of these questions Dr. Walsh arrived. I therefore left the doctor and Mr. Stone at the cottage, and proceeded to the police-station to telephone the police-station at Hatford, then I returned to Lilac Cottage, where Dr. Walsh and Mr. Stone were waiting for me.’

  ‘When you first examined the deceased did you form any opinion of the cause of her death?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the policeman said. ‘I was of the opinion that she had taken poison.’

  ‘No doubt you exam
ined the room. Was there any indication of how the deceased had administered the poison to herself?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘No glass, no bottle, no phial, which had contained it?’

  ‘I examined the divan and the floor around it, I found nothing of the sort, or any sign that any such object had fallen there.’

  ‘Thank you, you have given the Court a very clear idea of the situation as you found it. Please remain in case I should have any further questions to ask you. Call the next witness.’

  ‘Call Dr. Leonard Walsh.’

  Phil remembered the first time he had seen Dr. Walsh battling his way through the storm on his bicycle, that night.

  ‘The Court has been told that you were called to Lilac Cottage, Dr. Walsh,’ the Coroner said. ‘Will you tell us what conclusions you came to as a result of your examination of the deceased?’

  ‘I examined Miss Grayson,’ Dr. Walsh said. ‘She had been dead for about an hour, I should say. The cause of death was immediately obvious to me. She had been poisoned by a dose of cyanide. There were the characteristic symptoms — extreme dilation of the eyes, the teeth clenched, the rigid contortion of the body and the clenched hands, blueness of the face and lips, and bitter odour of almonds about the mouth.’ He paused, shrugging his shoulders. ‘There was nothing I could do.’

  ‘Death would have ensued very quickly?’

  ‘Immediately. It was obviously a large dose, and failure of the heart and respiration would have resulted in a matter of seconds, preceded by convulsions.’

  ‘You knew the deceased?’

  ‘Not exactly. I knew she and her sister lived at Lilac Cottage. I had seen them both in the village. But she never came to me for treatment at any time.’

  ‘Can you give us any idea how the poison was taken?’

  ‘Apart from the fact that it was taken through the mouth, no sir.’

  ‘I mean, was it swallowed from a glass, or phial?’

  ‘Since there were no signs of a glass or anything which could have held the poison, I can only assume it was swallowed in a capsule or something of that kind.’