Kerry said not a word, and Margaret raised her head and looked at him pathetically.
“I can see that you have no pity for the victims of this ghastly vice, Inspector Kerry,” she said.
“I haven’t!” he snapped fiercely. “I admit I haven’t, miss. It’s bad enough in the heathens, but for an Englishwoman to dope herself is downright unchristian and beastly.”
“Yet I have come across so many of these cases, during the war and since, that I have begun to understand how easy, how dreadfully easy it is, for a woman especially, to fall into the fatal habit. Bereavement or that most frightful of all mental agonies, suspense, will too often lead the poor victim into the path that promises forgetfulness. Rita Irvin’s case is less excusable. I think she must have begun drug-taking because of the mental and nervous exhaustion resulting from late hours and over-much gaiety. The demands of her profession proved too great for her impaired nervous energy, and she sought some stimulant which would enable her to appear bright on the stage when actually she should have been recuperating, in sleep, that loss of vital force which can be recuperated in no other way.”
“But opium!” snapped Kerry.
“I am afraid her other drug habits had impaired her will, and shaken her self-control. She was tempted to try opium by its promise of a new and novel excitement.”
“Her husband, I take it, was ignorant of all this?”
“I believe he was. Quentin—Mr. Gray—had no idea of it either.”
“Then it was Sir Lucien Pyne who was in her confidence in the matter?”
Margaret nodded slowly, still tapping the blotting-pad.