"I must, of course. He won't tell me a thing, beyond a string of long words I shan't understand, but it wouldn't do for me not to see him."
"I was thinking that it is a waste of time. He will cover up for his patient."
"I know that. And if I didn't go and see him, what would happen? - Did you question the doctor? — No. - Why not? - Because I knew he'd only tell me a pack of lies. You can just see me falling into that one, can't you?"
"There is that, of course," admitted the Inspector. "But will you tell me this? - If Mr.. Poulton knew that his lady was taking drugs, why is it only now that he puts her in a Home to be cured of it? You would say it was a verra bad moment to choose, for it would be bound to make us suspicious."
"I wouldn't say anything of the sort. In her state, she'd be liable to give herself away, not to mention him. He knows very well she'd break up under close questioning. What's more, her source of supply has dried up, and that's going to send her pretty well haywire. He's running far less risk this way than if he let her traipse around on the loose. I daresay it was Seaton-Carew's death that persuaded her to consent to go and be cured, too. You can't go shoving people into hospital to be cured of the drug habit without they do consent, you know."
"I do, of course."
"And furthermore," Hemingway continued, "he may well have hoped we shouldn't search Seaton-Carew's flat, or, if we did search it, that we shouldn't find any of the stuff. I wonder if the fellow had any on him, the night he was done in? Lady Nest wasn't under the influence when we saw her: she was hungry for it. Quite possible that he was to have slipped over a little packet to her during the evening. Whoever murdered him would have had plenty of time to have slid his fingers into his breastpocket, and taken out any little parcel he found there."
"It is a theory," said Grant. "You would never prove it."
"There's quite a few things that go to build up a case that never get proved," replied Hemingway. "We'd better bite off a bit of lunch now; and after that you can go and see whether you can prove Beulah Birtley was telling the truth when she said Mrs. Haddington had been in that cloakroom after she left the wire there. I don't suppose Mrs. H. encourages her servants to stop in bed a minute longer than they need, and if that housemaid's been having this forty-eight hour 'flu, she'll very likely be on view again by now. I don't need you in Harley Street, and I'll go back to the Yard when I'm through there. I want to have a careful look at one or two of the exhibits. Come on!"
At three o'clock, having been kicking his heels for some time in the waiting-room, he was ushered into Dr Westruther's consulting-room, a gracious apartment, decorated in shades of grey, which ranged from palest pearl-grey on the walls and in the windows, whose lights were veiled by curtains of diaphanous chiffon, to a deep elephant-grey on the floor. A few chaste Chinese prints hung on the walls; and a magnificent screen of muttonfat jade stood in the centre of the mantelshelf, flanked by two Blanc-de-Chine Kuan-Yin figures of the Ming period. Hemingway, his feet sinking into the heavy-pile carpet, found himself wondering whether the doctor's more neurotic patients were soothed by this subdued but expensive decor. Dr Westruther enjoyed a reputation for dealing almost exclusively with wealthy, society women. He was not precisely known to the police, but once or twice the breath of ugly scandal had wafted perilously near to him. He had a controlling interest in an extremely luxurious Nursing Home, where the staff was paid with unusual generosity; he was always very well dressed, affecting the cutaway morning coat and butterfly collars of a more sartorial age; he owned, besides the house in Harley Street, a charming riverside residence at Marlow; and he generally managed to spend several weeks of the year at Biarritz, or Juan-les-Pins.