As a thief in the night

by R. Austin Freeman

“Not at all, Mayfield,” said he. “The superintendent is here on the same business as you are, and when I tell him that you have commissioned me to investigate this case, he will realize that we are colleagues.”

I am not sure that the superintendent realized this so very vividly, but it was evident that Thorndyke’s information interested him. Nevertheless he waited for me and Thorndyke to make the opening moves and only relaxed his caution by slow degrees.

“We were remarking when you came in,” he said, at length, “what a curiously baffling case this is, and how very disappointing. At first it looked all plain sailing. There was the lady who used to prepare the special diet for the unfortunate man and actually take it up to him and watch him eat it. It seemed as if we had her in the hollow of our hand. And then she slipped out. The arsenic that was found in the stomach seemed to connect the death with the food; but then there was that confounded bottle of medicine that seemed to put the food outside the case. And when we came to reckon up the evidence furnished by the medicine, it proved nothing. Somebody put the poison in. All of them had the opportunity, more or less, and all about equally. Nothing pointed to one more than another. And that is how it is all through. There is any amount of suspicion; but the suspicion falls on a group of people, not on any one in particular.”

“Yes,” said Thorndyke, “the issues are most strangely confused.”

“Extraordinarily,” said Miller. “This queer confusion runs all through the case. You are constantly thinking that you have got the solution, and just as you are perfectly sure, it slips through your fingers. There are lots of clues—fine ones; but as soon as you follow one up it breaks off in the middle and leaves you gaping. You saw what happened at the search, Mr. Mayfield.”

“I saw the beginning—the actual search; but I don’t know what came of it.”

“Then I can tell you in one word. Nothing. And yet we seemed to be right on the track every time. There was that secret drawer of Mr. Wallingford’s. When I saw that packet of white powder in it, I thought it was going to be a walk-over. I didn’t believe for a moment that the stuff was cocaine. But it was. I went straight to our analyst to have it tested.”

As the superintendent was speaking I caught Thorndyke’s eye, fixed on me with an expression of reproachful inquiry. But he made no remark and Miller continued: “Then there were those two empty bottles. The one that I found in the library yielded definite traces of arsenic. But then, whose bottle was it? The place was accessible to the entire household. It was impossible to connect it with any one person. On the other hand, the bottle that I found in Miss Norris’s cupboard, and that was presumably hers—though she didn’t admit it—contained no arsenic; at least the analyst said it didn’t, though as it smelt of lavender and had a red stain at the bottom, I feel convinced that it had had Fowler’s Solution in it. What do you think, Doctor? Don’t you think the analyst may have been mistaken?”

“No,” Thorndyke replied, decidedly. “If the red stain had been due to Fowler’s Solution there would have been an appreciable quantity of arsenic present; probably a fiftieth of a grain at least. But Marsh’s test would detect a much smaller quantity than that. If no arsenic was found by a competent chemist who was expressly testing for it, you can take it that no arsenic was there.”

“Well,” Miller rejoined, “you know best. But you must admit that it is a most remarkable thing that one bottle which smelt of lavender and had a red stain at the bottom, should contain arsenic, and that another bottle, exactly similar in appearance and smelling of lavender and having a red stain at the bottom, should contain no arsenic.”