CHAPTER XIX
THE HAIRPIN CLUE
In point of fact the first real clue I secured in this case consisted of that hairpin I found on the floor of the lower cellar, though its bearing on the mystery was not at first apparent. But it introduced me to a new set of circumstances and took me a step or two on the road I wished to travel. Until then I had been wandering round and round in a circle. My first thought was that the hairpin belonged to Kitty Clevedon and that she had deliberately deceived me when she declared that she had not visited the cellar prior to conducting Thoyne and myself thither. My suspicion was that she had been there and that she had found and removed some traces of her brother—that she was, in fact, still playing a game of bluff; though I did not believe that this time Thoyne was in it. She was hoodwinking him as well as myself.
I set a watch on the cellar beneath the ruined wing, making myself a hiding-place by clearing out some of the furniture in one corner and restacking it so as to leave a narrow passage in which I could conceal myself if I wished. And I set little traps of a very simple description, but sufficient to show me on my next visit that somebody had been there in my absence and had penetrated to the lower chamber by way of the swinging flagstone; but I was more than astonished when during one of my periods, behind my little rampart, I discovered that the visitor was not Kitty Clevedon at all, but—Nora Lepley.
In all my imaginings my thoughts had never once turned to her. She came in without faltering or hesitation, as one who knew her way intimately, and swung open the trap-door, which she propped up by means of a board. Then, taking the short ladder which I have already mentioned, and which I knew by means of my little arrangements had been used during my absence, she let it down, and by it descended to the lower cellar.
As soon as her head had disappeared I crept to the opening on hands and knees and saw her lift out a rough block of stone which concealed a small opening not unlike a natural cupboard. Then she took a small flash-lamp from the pocket of her big apron and sent a beam of light into the hollow place, but situated as I was I could not see whether she put anything in or took something out. For a minute or two she stood pondering almost as if she were trying to make up her mind on some doubtful point, then with a quick sigh she replaced the lamp in her pocket and restored the stone.
I flitted back swiftly and noiselessly to my own corner whence I watched her return from the lower depths, close down the stone and lay the ladder along the wall, all with sedate, unhurried movements, as one who had no reason to fear interruption. When she was quite safely away, and I followed her to make sure, I went in my turn into the lower cellar to investigate that little cupboard. It was evidently her own private safe, containing all sorts of oddments a young girl might hide away when she found too many prying eyes at home—a bundle of letters, an envelope containing £20 in Treasury notes, some oddments of jewellery and so on.
But what most attracted my attention, because they were in such curious contrast with the rest of the collection, were a drinking-glass and a small phial wrapped in white paper. I picked the latter up and noticed a number of figures lightly pencilled on the wrapper arranged in double column thus:
| 9.37 | 3.17 |
| 11.21 | 4.28 |
| 12.18 | 5.19 |
| 1.34 | 6.37 |
What they could mean I could not imagine, nor did I worry very long about them. I removed the wrapper, to find inside a small phial labelled “Pemberton’s Drops,” which were described as “a safe remedy for headache, sleeplessness, and all nerve troubles.” The dose was forty drops to be taken in water or other liquid. I turned the bottle over and saw a circular, red label, not much larger than a sixpence, on which was printed in small, white letters “Grainger, Midlington”—obviously the chemist from whom Nora Lepley had purchased her sleeping drug. I could well understand that she did not want her friends to know that she took an hypnotic composition of this character.
Almost without knowing what I was doing I removed the cork, and then with a sudden jerk realised what it was I had stumbled upon. I smelt the unmistakable odour of bitter almonds. Whatever the phial had contained when Grainger of Midlington sold it to Nora Lepley, it was nearly full now of a strong solution of hydrocyanic acid. I took up the glass, but it was perfectly dry and odourless, despite which I had no doubt that it had been the vehicle by which Sir Philip Clevedon had taken the poison.