Allport shook his head. “No, Doctor, if you think that, then you don’t yet understand Miss Hunter—I do not myself entirely—there are still certain points that I can’t set down even a mad woman’s reasons against, but I do understand her better than that. You see, above everything else she was cruel. She knew well enough that Miss Summerson would be in an agony of apprehension until the key was returned, and it was that which gave her pleasure. It was typical of a hundred other cruelties that Miss Summerson has suffered, some of them merely petty, many of them worse.”
The Tundish seemed to be content with the explanation. I, too, had questions I wanted to ask, but I was too eager to hear the rest of his story to frame them, and the little man continued without further interruption.
“Well, that is how Miss Hunter secured the key. There was nothing actually criminal in the giving of it, but later, Miss Summerson’s reticence was of course a punishable offense. She has begged me to tell you, Doctor, that in spite of everything she would have come forward had you been arrested. I have told you, as I promised I would, and you must take it for what it is worth.
“However, if she endangered you all by the one act, she certainly saved your life, Janet, over the matter of the vitriol, When she asked for the key, which according to promise was already overdue, it was not forthcoming, and a bottle of vitriol was demanded against its return. Fortunately, and we all know now how very fortunate it was, they were interrupted before the exchange could be made, and it gave Miss Summerson an opportunity to decant the contents of an old sulphuric acid bottle and substitute medicinal paraffin for it.
“And now I want you to try to understand the difficulty of my position on the morning after the murder. There was ample evidence to have warranted the arrest of the doctor here. He made up the fatal draft; he knew all about and had access to the poison; and both he and Miss Palfreeman had lived in Shanghai and had almost certainly been acquainted there. There was a possible motive—after the inquiry an obvious one—the key of the locked bedroom door was found in his pocket.”
“What!” The Tundish exclaimed with unusual excitement.
“Yes, in the pocket of your indoor coat, Doctor. I had my reasons for saying it was found elsewhere. For one thing, I wanted to observe Miss Hunter when I made the statement, to see how she would take it. I wish now that I had thought of some other place in which to have said I had hidden it, but I could not have foreseen the consequences of my deception.”
“But China! How could you possibly have known at your round-table inquiry that I had lived in China and had met Miss Palfreeman there?”
“My dear Doctor,” the little man laughed complacently, “we live in civilized times—times of telephones and medical directories, for instance. Within five minutes of Mr. Jeffcock’s call to the police station on Wednesday morning, I was asking Scotland Yard to look up your record in the directory, and to find out if you were known by repute to any of the medical staff. Inspector Brown’s superintendent knew exactly which players in the tournament were staying with Dr. Hanson, and before we came to Dalehouse inquiries with regard to Mr. Jeffcock’s antecedents and the rest of the party were already on foot. We did not know Miss Palfreeman’s address, but you kindly furnished us with that before we even had to ask you for it. It was not a difficult matter for Scotland Yard to ascertain that Miss Palfreeman’s uncle had been for a time in Shanghai, that her father, who was a government official, had committed suicide there, and that you had lived there too and were almost certainly acquainted with all three of them.”
“Yes, of course. How perfectly simple! But the quarrel! What about that? Neither the medical directory nor the girl at the telephone exchange could help you there.”