IC raddock had to wait a few minutes whilst Quimper finished his evening surgery, and then the doctor came to him.
He looked tired and depressed1.
He offered Craddock a drink and when the latter accepted he mixed one for himself as well.
“Poor devils,” he said as he sank down in a worn easy-chair. “So scared and so stupid—no sense. Had a painfulcase this evening. Woman who ought to have come to me a year ago. If she’d come then, she might have beenoperated on successfully. Now it’s too late. Makes me mad. The truth is people are an extraordinary mixture ofheroism and cowardice2. She’s suffering agony, and borne it without a word, just because she was too scared to comeand find out that what she feared might be true. At the other end of the scale are the people who come and waste mytime because they’ve got a dangerous swelling3 causing them agony on their little finger which they think may becancer and which turns out to be a common or garden chilblain! Well, don’t mind me. I’ve blown off steam now. Whatdid you want to see me about?”
“First, I’ve got you to thank, I believe, for advising Miss Crackenthorpe to come to me with the letter thatpurported to be from her brother’s widow.”
“Oh, that? Anything in it? I didn’t exactly advise her to come. She wanted to. She was worried. All the dear littlebrothers were trying to hold her back, of course.”
“Why should they?”
The doctor shrugged4 his shoulders.
“Afraid the lady might be proved genuine, I suppose.”
“Do you think the letter was genuine?”
“No idea. Never actually saw it. I should say it was someone who knew the facts, just trying to make a touch.
Hoping to work on Emma’s feelings. They were dead wrong, there. Emma’s no fool. She wouldn’t take an unknownsister-in-law to her bosom5 without asking a few practical questions first.”
He added with some curiosity:
“But why ask my views? I’ve got nothing to do with it?”
“I really came to ask you something quite different—but I don’t quite know how to put it.”
Dr. Quimper looked interested.
“I understand that not long ago—at Christmas-time, I think it was—Mr. Crackenthorpe had rather a bad turn ofillness.”
He saw a change at once in the doctor’s face. It hardened.
“Yes.”
“I gather a gastric6 disturbance7 of some kind?”
“Yes.”
“This is difficult… Mr. Crackenthorpe was boasting of his health, saying he intended to outlive most of his family.
He referred to you—you’ll excuse me, Doctor….”
“Oh, don’t mind me. I’m not sensitive as to what my patients say about me!”
“He spoke8 of you as an old fuss-pot.” Quimper smiled. “He said you had asked him all sorts of questions, not onlyas to what he had eaten, but as to who prepared it and served it.”
The doctor was not smiling now. His face was hard again.
“Go on.”
“He used some such phrase as—‘Talked as though he believed someone had poisoned me.’”
There was a pause.
“Had you—any suspicion of that kind?”
Quimper did not answer at once. He got up and walked up and down. Finally, he wheeled round on Craddock.
“What the devil do you expect me to say? Do you think a doctor can go about flinging accusations9 of poisoninghere and there without any real evidence?”
“I’d just like to know, off the record, if—that idea—did enter your head?”
Dr. Quimper said evasively:
“Old Crackenthorpe leads a fairly frugal10 life. When the family comes down, Emma steps up the food. Result—anasty attack of gastro-enteritis. The symptoms were consistent with that diagnosis11.”
Craddock persisted.
“I see. You were quite satisfied? You were not at all—shall we say—puzzled?”
“All right. All right. Yes, I was Yours Truly Puzzled! Does that please you?”
“It interests me,” said Craddock. “What actually did you suspect—or fear?”
“Gastric cases vary, of course, but there were certain indications that would have been, shall we say, moreconsistent with arsenic12 poisoning than with plain gastro-enteritis. Mind you, the two things are very much alike. Bettermen than myself have failed to recognize arsenic poisoning—and have given a certificate in all good faith.”
“And what was the result of your inquiries13?”
“It seemed that what I suspected could not possibly be true. Mr. Crackenthorpe assured me that he had similarattacks before I attended him—and from the same cause, he said. They had always taken place when there was toomuch rich food about.”
“Which was when the house was full? With the family? Or guests?”
“Yes. That seemed reasonable enough. But frankly14, Craddock, I wasn’t happy. I went so far as to write to old Dr.
Morris. He was my senior partner and retired15 soon after I joined him. Crackenthorpe was his patient originally. I askedabout these earlier attacks that the old man had had.”
“And what response did you get?”
Quimper grinned.
“I got a flea16 in the ear. I was more or less told not to be a damned fool. Well”—he shrugged his shoulders—“presumably I was a damned fool.”
“I wonder,” Craddock was thoughtful.
Then he decided17 to speak frankly.
“Throwing discretion18 aside, Doctor, there are people who stand to benefit pretty considerably19 from LutherCrackenthorpe’s death.” The doctor nodded. “He’s an old man—and a hale and hearty20 one. He may live to be ninetyodd?”
“Easily. He spends his life taking care of himself, and his constitution is sound.”
“And his sons—and daughter—are all getting on, and they are all feeling the pinch?”
“You leave Emma out of it. She’s no poisoner. These attacks only happen when the others are there—not when sheand he are alone.”
“An elementary precaution—if she’s the one,” the inspector21 thought, but was careful not to say aloud.
He paused, choosing his words carefully.
“Surely—I’m ignorant on these matters—but supposing just as a hypothesis that arsenic was administered—hasn’tCrackenthorpe been very lucky not to succumb22?”
“Now there,” said the doctor, “you have got something odd. It is exactly that fact that leads me to believe that Ihave been, as old Morris puts it, a damned fool. You see, it’s obviously not a case of small doses of arsenicadministered regularly—which is what you might call the classic method of arsenic poisoning. Crackenthorpe hasnever had any chronic23 gastric trouble. In a way, that’s what makes these sudden violent attacks seem unlikely. So,assuming they are not due to natural causes, it looks as though the poisoner is muffing it every time—which hardlymakes sense.”
“Giving an inadequate24 dose, you mean?”
“Yes. On the other hand, Crackenthorpe’s got a strong constitution and what might do in another man, doesn’t dohim in. There’s always personal idiosyncrasy to be reckoned with. But you’d think that by now the poisoner—unlesshe’s unusually timid—would have stepped up the dose. Why hasn’t he?
“That is,” he added, “if there is a poisoner which there probably isn’t! Probably all my ruddy imagination fromstart to finish.”
“It’s an odd problem,” the inspector agreed. “It doesn’t seem to make sense.”
II
“Inspector Craddock!”
The eager whisper made the inspector jump.
He had been just on the point of ringing the front doorbell. Alexander and his friend Stoddart-West emergedcautiously from the shadows.
“We heard your car, and we wanted to get hold of you.”
“Well, let’s come inside.” Craddock’s hand went out to the door bell again, but Alexander pulled at his coat withthe eagerness of a pawing dog.
“We’ve found a clue,” he breathed.
“Yes, we’ve found a clue,” Stoddart-West echoed.
“Damn that girl,” thought Craddock unamiably.
“Splendid,” he said in a perfunctory manner. “Let’s go inside the house and look at it.”
“No,” Alexander was insistent25. “Someone’s sure to interrupt. Come to the harness room. We’ll guide you.”
Somewhat unwillingly26, Craddock allowed himself to be guided round the corner of the house and along to thestableyard. Stoddart-West pushed open a heavy door, stretched up, and turned on a rather feeble electric light. Theharness room, once the acme27 of Victorian spit and polish, was now the sad repository of everything that no onewanted. Broken garden chairs, rusted28 old garden implements29, a vast decrepit30 mowing- machine, rusted springmattresses, hammocks, and disintegrated32 tennis nets.
“We come here a good deal,” said Alexander. “One can really be private here.”
There were certain tokens of occupancy about. The decayed mattresses31 had been piled up to make a kind of divan,there was an old rusted table on which reposed33 a large tin of chocolate biscuits, there was a hoard34 of apples, a tin oftoffees, and a jig-saw puzzle.
“It really is a clue, sir,” said Stoddart-West eagerly, his eyes gleaming behind his spectacles. “We found it thisafternoon.”
“We’ve been hunting for days. In the bushes—”
“And inside hollow trees—”
“And we went through the ash bins—”
“There were some jolly interesting things there, as a matter of fact—”
“And then we went into the boiler35 house—”
“Old Hillman keeps a great galvanized tub there full of waste paper—”
“For when the boiler goes out and he wants to start it again—”
“Any odd paper that’s blowing about. He picks it up and shoves it in there—”
“And that’s where we found it—”
“Found WHAT?” Craddock interrupted the duet.
“The clue. Careful, Stodders, get your gloves on.”
Importantly, Stoddart-West, in the best detective story tradition, drew on a pair of rather dirty gloves and took fromhis pocket a Kodak photographic folder36. From this he extracted in his gloved fingers with the utmost care a soiled andcrumpled envelope which he handed importantly to the inspector.
Both boys held their breath in excitement.
Craddock took it with due solemnity. He liked the boys and he was ready to enter into the spirit of the thing.
The letter had been through the post, there was no enclosure inside, it was just a torn envelope—addressed to Mrs.
Martine Crackenthorpe, 126 Elvers Crescent, N.10.
“You see?” said Alexander breathlessly. “It shows she was here— Uncle Edmund’s French wife, I mean—the onethere’s all the fuss about. She must have actually been here and dropped out somewhere. So it looks, doesn’t it—”
Stoddart-West broke in:
“It looks as though she was the one who got murdered— I mean, don’t you think, sir, that it simply must have beenher in the sarcophagus?”
They waited anxiously.
Craddock played up.
“Possible, very possible,” he said.
“This is important, isn’t it?”
“You’ll test it for fingerprints37, won’t you, sir?”
“Of course,” said Craddock.
Stoddart-West gave a deep sigh.
“Smashing luck for us, wasn’t it?” he said. “On our last day, too.”
“Last day?”
“Yes,” said Alexander. “I’m going to Stodders’ place tomorrow for the last few days of the holidays. Stodders’
people have got a smashing house— Queen Anne, isn’t it?”
“William and Mary,” said Stoddart-West.
“I thought your mother said—”
“Mum’s French. She doesn’t really know about English architecture.”
“But your father said it was built—”
Craddock was examining the envelope.
Clever of Lucy Eyelesbarrow. How had she managed to fake the post mark? He peered closely, but the light wastoo feeble. Great fun for the boys, of course, but rather awkward for him. Lucy, drat her, hadn’t considered that angle.
If this were genuine, it would enforce a course of action. There….
Beside him a learned architectural argument was being hotly pursued. He was deaf to it.
“Come on, boys,” he said, “we’ll go into the house. You’ve been very helpful.”
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depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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cowardice
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| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
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swelling
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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gastric
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disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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9
accusations
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| n.指责( accusation的名词复数 )；指控；控告；（被告发、控告的）罪名 | |
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frugal
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| adj.节俭的，节约的，少量的，微量的 | |
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diagnosis
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| n.诊断，诊断结果，调查分析，判断 | |
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arsenic
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| n.砒霜，砷；adj.砷的 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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flea
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| n.跳蚤 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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succumb
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| v.屈服，屈从；死 | |
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chronic
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| adj.(疾病)长期未愈的，慢性的；极坏的 | |
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inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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insistent
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| adj.迫切的，坚持的 | |
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unwillingly
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| adv.不情愿地 | |
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acme
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| n.顶点，极点 | |
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rusted
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| v.（使）生锈( rust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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implements
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| n.工具( implement的名词复数 )；家具；手段；[法律]履行（契约等）v.实现( implement的第三人称单数 )；执行；贯彻；使生效 | |
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decrepit
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| adj.衰老的，破旧的 | |
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mattresses
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| 褥垫，床垫( mattress的名词复数 ) | |
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disintegrated
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| v.（使）破裂[分裂，粉碎]，（使）崩溃( disintegrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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reposed
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| v.将（手臂等）靠在某人（某物）上( repose的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hoard
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| n./v.窖藏，贮存，囤积 | |
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boiler
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| n.锅炉；煮器(壶，锅等) | |
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folder
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| n.纸夹，文件夹 | |
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fingerprints
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| n.指纹( fingerprint的名词复数 )v.指纹( fingerprint的第三人称单数 ) | |
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