Chapter IX: In the Surgery

That speech of Dr. Mitsand’s about Podmore awakens hope in Robert Faunthorpe’s breast. If there has been murder done, if Stephen Trenchard has not been in some distracted hour his own destroyer, this man is surely more likely to have been the murderer than any one else under that roof. He has had access to his master at all hours of the night--in those silent hours when the rest of the household has been locked in sleep. He may have stolen the plate, made away with the valuables committed to his charge, and may have been tempted to make away with his master in order to escape the punishment of his dishonesty. Or he may have known himself to be a legatee under his master’s will, and may have done this foul deed to expedite fortune. So Dr. Faunthorpe reasons with himself during his dismal homeward walk.

Marion and Jenny are sitting in the parlour at work when he goes in. The tea-tray still adorns the table.

‘How white and tired you look, uncle!’ exclaims Marion. ‘You’d like some tea, wouldn’t you? I’ve saved the teapot.’

‘Thank you, my dear. I’ll take a cup of tea,’ says the doctor faintly. He sinks into a chair with a weary sigh. His parish patients have been neglected to-day, and conscience pricks him. They will be coming presently, poor things, with their burns and scalds, and boils, and whitlows, and festers, and all that variety of thorns in the flesh to which poverty is subject, and he will have to brace his nerves and attend to them. But for the moment he feels prostrate.

Marion shakes the teapot vigorously, and pours out a liquid not very unlike that infusion of senna which the parish patients consume by the pailful.

‘There, uncle, that’ll do you good. Run to the kitchen, Jenny, and get the hot cake we saved for uncle Robert;’ and Jenny rushes off and returns swiftly with a crisp and greasy bannock, which the doctor is wont to enjoy above all other delicacies.

‘Any news of Sibyl?’ asks Marion.

‘No, my dear,’ sighs the doctor.

‘Strange, isn’t it?’ exclaims Marion.

‘Very strange, my dear. I begin to feel very uneasy about your poor sister. What could have induced her to take such a step? At such a time too!’

‘Just at the time when she ought to have been thinking about her mourning,’ says Marion.

‘I hope she hasn’t committed suicide,’ cries Jenny, with a strangled sob.

‘Jane,’ exclaims the doctor, severely, ‘I am shocked at your suggesting anything so dreadful. Your sister is a Christian, I hope.’

‘Of course, but she might have been unhappy, poor thing. I dare say she detested that horrid Mr. Pilgrim, and uncle Trenchard tried to force her into marrying him, and then perhaps she got frightened and miserable, and was driven to p--p--poison herself,’ concludes Jenny with a burst of sobs.

The little doctor starts in his chair as if he had been shot, and puts down his cup and saucer with a trembling hand.

‘How dare you say such things, Jane?’ he demands, severely. He is very angry when he calls his youngest niece Jane. ‘How dare you mention such a thing as poison in connection with your sister’s name? Where should she get poison, I should like to know? How should she get it?’

‘If--if she wanted it very badly she might get it in the surgery,’ whimpers Jenny.

‘Not without my knowledge. I have forbidden every one in this house to touch a single bottle in my surgery.’

‘Yes, uncle,’ falters Jenny, recalling the many half-hours in which she has diverted herself with those very bottles; ‘but if Sibyl wanted anything very badly, some laudanum for the toothache, for instance, and you happened to be out at the time, she might not stand upon--what’s its name?’

‘What is the girl driving at?’ cries Marion, in a disgusted tone.

‘What do you mean, Jenny?’ says Dr. Faunthorpe, nervously. ‘If there is anything in your knowledge that I ought to be told, speak out, and for God’s sake speak only the truth to me, and hold your tongue to all the rest of the world about it,--and you too, Marion. This is more serious than either of you can imagine.’

‘Sibyl had the toothache one afternoon when she was here--about a fortnight or three weeks ago, perhaps,--or she had been having the toothache very badly, she said, and couldn’t get any sleep, and she wanted some laudanum.’

‘Laudanum?’ cries Dr. Faunthorpe, relieved. ‘Is that all?’

‘Yes, but laudanum’s poison, isn’t it, uncle Robert, if you take enough of it? I told her where the laudanum was kept, and she got up on the step-ladder and took some in a little bottle out of one of your drawers. But there was one thing that struck me as very mysterious.’

‘What was that?’

‘Does laudanum ever smell of bitter almonds?’

‘No, child!’ cries the doctor, with a start.

‘Well, then, this did, ever so strong. The smell of it made me feel quite queer. But Sibyl declared it was laudanum, and that my smell must be all wrong.’

‘But you would know opium, surely, a dark brown liquid?’

‘Yes, but I didn’t see this. Sibyl had her back towards me while she was filling the little bottle. I only smelt it. When I asked her to show me the bottle, she refused, and called me a stupid. But I’m positive it smelt of bitter almonds; and Sibyl looked quite pale and faint afterwards, as if the smell had upset her too.’

‘Can this be true?’ cries the doctor, profoundly agitated.

‘Pray don’t put yourself out of the way about it, uncle,’ exclaims Marion, soothingly. ‘Sibyl might have taken all the poisons in the surgery, and no harm need come of it. She’s a great deal too fond of herself and her pretty looks to commit suicide. I dare say she’s with her grand friends at the How, flirting with Sir Wilford Cardonnel, and enjoying herself ever so.’

‘But if she were at the How she would have heard of Mr. Trenchard’s death by this time.’

‘I don’t know about that.’

‘I must send to the How. I must send to every place where is a chance of finding her. It is most vital that she should return without delay.’

‘Yes,’ says Marion. ‘She ought to see about her mourning; and if she is to be uncle Trenchard’s chief heiress it certainly looks queer for her to be out of the way at such a time.’

Dr. Faunthorpe sighs and says no more. The bell rings at this moment, and he goes to his surgery to see a parish patient, who has brought the latest variety in scalds for his inspection. A whitlow drops in five minutes afterwards, followed by an interesting case of enlarged glands wrapped in flannel, after which comes a promising whooping-cough, and on the heels of that a very fair specimen of incipient measles. These occupy Dr. Faunthorpe till nine o’clock, and he has but just dismissed the measles with a comforting dose of senna when a bell rings sharply--not the surgery bell this time. He is standing in the passage when it rings, and he opens the door himself, and admits a respectable-looking stranger, of business-like aspect and middle age.

‘Dr. Faunthorpe, I believe?’

‘Yes, I am Dr. Faunthorpe.’

‘Can I have a few words with you in your surgery?’

‘A patient,’ thinks the doctor, as he ushers the visitor into his stuffy den, heated like an oven by the gas, and odorous with senna and peppermint.

‘I may as well come straight to business, Dr. Faunthorpe,’ says the stranger directly the door is shut. ‘You were present at the post-mortem this afternoon, and you know that Mr. Trenchard has been poisoned with prussic acid. My name is Judbury, and I belong to the Krampston police force. I am sent here by our chief to look into this business. My duty is to find out where that prussic acid was bought. Now, before I go to the chemists shops, Dr. Faunthorpe, I want to know if it came out of your surgery, as there is reason to suppose it did.’

‘What reason can there be to suppose any such thing?’

‘Never you mind that. You’ll be summoned to appear at the inquest to-morrow, and you’ll be asked certain questions, I dare say. I want to see your bottle of dilute prussic acid.’

‘Suppose I tell you that I keep no such thing in my surgery?’

‘Then I should have to look for myself. I’ve got authority to search your surgery. You’d better let me see the bottle. It’ll come to the same thing in the end.’

Very pale, and with a sinking of his heart which he has never felt before in all his patient life, Robert Faunthorpe drags the step-ladder to the recess of the fireplace, and mounts to look for the dark blue bottle.

Mr. Judbury follows him to the steps, and eyes him as a cat eyes a mouse during the operation.

Poor Dr. Faunthorpe’s hand trembles a little as he takes down the fatal bottle, and before he can examine it Mr. Judbury’s firm fingers have taken it from him.

‘How much acid do you suppose you had in the bottle, sir?’ asks Judbury.

‘I really can’t say to a nicety--it’s a drug I rarely use--perhaps a matter of two ounces.’

‘And there isn’t an ounce here.’

‘But I can’t be positive,’ exclaims the doctor, profoundly agitated. ‘I tell you it’s ever so long since I used any. I can’t be called upon to state the quantity. It may have evaporated.’

‘I understand. But your impression is that you had two ounces. The bottle doesn’t look as if it had been disturbed lately; the dust’s pretty thick upon it,’ says Mr. Judbury, taking it to the gas burner and examining it closely.

‘Do you see this, Dr. Faunthorpe?’ he asks, pointing to the side of the dark blue bottle.

‘This’ is the impression of two slim fingers on the dust-whitened glass. Two streaks of blue show where two fingers have grasped the bottle.

‘That’s the mark of a hand, sir,’ says the detective decisively, ‘a woman’s or a child’s.’

‘Jenny, my youngest niece, may have tampered with the bottle,’ stammers the doctor, beside himself with fear and trouble. ‘She has been forbidden to touch anything, but she’s a tiresome child, and may----’

‘Send for Miss Jenny, sir, and let us ask her all about it,’ says Mr. Judbury.

Robert Faunthorpe could cut out his tongue for having uttered the girl’s name. Jenny will come, and under this horrible man’s cross-questioning will say something to implicate Sibyl. Horrors are thickening round this miserable house. Is this the hour they have all hoped and waited for, the hour which was to bring Stephen Trenchard’s days to an end, and be the beginning of his kindred’s prosperity?

Seeing the doctor hesitate, Mr. Judbury makes bold to ring the bell for himself. It is answered by Hester, looking daggers. She hates to be disturbed at her supper. It may be only bread and cheese, or the scrapings of some bone or pie dish, or the greasy remnants of hashed mutton, washed down with a mug of table beer, but she likes to eat her meal in peace.

‘What is it, sir?’ she asks, snappishly.

‘Send Miss Jane here,’ falters the doctor.

Jane comes and is questioned about the blue bottle. She fences with her questioner at first, and looks as if the rack itself would not twist an admission of any kind out of her; but subjected to Mr. Judbury’s insidious process of interrogation, she finally tells the whole story of Sibyl’s coming into the surgery to get some laudanum, and the mysterious smell of bitter almonds, and the bottle which Sibyl filled and would not let her see.

‘Thank you, miss,’ says Judbury, approvingly. ‘I think we must get you to appear before the coroner to-morrow.’

‘Jane,’ exclaims the doctor when Mr. Judbury had made his bow and departed, ‘you have put a rope round your sister’s neck.’