CHAPTER I

DR. SHEPPARD AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE

Mrs. Ferrars died on the night of the 16th–17th September—a Thursday. I

was sent for at eight o’clock on the morning of Friday the 17th. There

was nothing to be done. She had been dead some hours.

It was just a few minutes after nine when I reached home once more. I

opened the front door with my latch-key, and purposely delayed a few

moments in the hall, hanging up my hat and the light overcoat that

I had deemed a wise precaution against the chill of an early autumn

morning. To tell the truth, I was considerably upset and worried. I am

not going to pretend that at that moment I foresaw the events of the

next few weeks. I emphatically did not do so. But my instinct told me

that there were stirring times ahead.

From the dining-room on my left there came the rattle of tea-cups and

the short, dry cough of my sister Caroline.

“Is that you, James?” she called.

An unnecessary question, since who else could it be? To tell the

truth, it was precisely my sister Caroline who was the cause of my few

minutes’ delay. The motto of the mongoose family, so Mr. Kipling tells

us, is: “Go and find out.” If Caroline ever adopts a crest, I should

certainly suggest a mongoose rampant. One might omit the first part

of the motto. Caroline can do any amount of finding out by sitting

placidly at home. I don’t know how she manages it, but there it is. I

suspect that the servants and the tradesmen constitute her Intelligence

Corps. When she goes out, it is not to gather in information, but to

spread it. At that, too, she is amazingly expert.

It was really this last named trait of hers which was causing me these

pangs of indecision. Whatever I told Caroline now concerning the demise

of Mrs. Ferrars would be common knowledge all over the village within

the space of an hour and a half. As a professional man, I naturally

aim at discretion. Therefore I have got into the habit of continually

withholding all information possible from my sister. She usually finds

out just the same, but I have the moral satisfaction of knowing that I

am in no way to blame.

Mrs. Ferrars’ husband died just over a year ago, and Caroline has

constantly asserted, without the least foundation for the assertion,

that his wife poisoned him.

She scorns my invariable rejoinder that Mr. Ferrars died of acute

gastritis, helped on by habitual over-indulgence in alcoholic

beverages. The symptoms of gastritis and arsenical poisoning are not,

I agree, unlike, but Caroline bases her accusation on quite different

lines.

“You’ve only got to look at her,” I have heard her say.

Mrs. Ferrars, though not in her first youth, was a very attractive

woman, and her clothes, though simple, always seemed to fit her very

well, but all the same, lots of women buy their clothes in Paris and

have not, on that account, necessarily poisoned their husbands.

As I stood hesitating in the hall, with all this passing through my

mind, Caroline’s voice came again, with a sharper note in it.

“What on earth are you doing out there, James? Why don’t you come and

get your breakfast?”

“Just coming, my dear,” I said hastily. “I’ve been hanging up my

overcoat.”

“You could have hung up half a dozen overcoats in this time.”

She was quite right. I could have.

I walked into the dining-room, gave Caroline the accustomed peck on the

cheek, and sat down to eggs and bacon. The bacon was rather cold.

“You’ve had an early call,” remarked Caroline.

“Yes,” I said. “King’s Paddock. Mrs. Ferrars.”

“I know,” said my sister.

“How did you know?”

“Annie told me.”

Annie is the house parlormaid. A nice girl, but an inveterate talker.

There was a pause. I continued to eat eggs and bacon. My sister’s nose,

which is long and thin, quivered a little at the tip, as it always does

when she is interested or excited over anything.

“Well?” she demanded.

“A bad business. Nothing to be done. Must have died in her sleep.”

“I know,” said my sister again.

This time I was annoyed.

“You can’t know,” I snapped. “I didn’t know myself until I got there,

and I haven’t mentioned it to a soul yet. If that girl Annie knows, she

must be a clairvoyant.”

“It wasn’t Annie who told me. It was the milkman. He had it from the

Ferrars’ cook.”

As I say, there is no need for Caroline to go out to get information.

She sits at home, and it comes to her.

My sister continued:

“What did she die of? Heart failure?”

“Didn’t the milkman tell you that?” I inquired sarcastically.

Sarcasm is wasted on Caroline. She takes it seriously and answers

accordingly.

“He didn’t know,” she explained.

After all, Caroline was bound to hear sooner or later. She might as

well hear from me.

“She died of an overdose of veronal. She’s been taking it lately for

sleeplessness. Must have taken too much.”

“Nonsense,” said Caroline immediately. “She took it on purpose. Don’t

tell me!”

It is odd how, when you have a secret belief of your own which you do

not wish to acknowledge, the voicing of it by some one else will rouse

you to a fury of denial. I burst immediately into indignant speech.

“There you go again,” I said. “Rushing along without rhyme or reason.

Why on earth should Mrs. Ferrars wish to commit suicide? A widow,

fairly young still, very well off, good health, and nothing to do but

enjoy life. It’s absurd.”

“Not at all. Even you must have noticed how different she has been

looking lately. It’s been coming on for the last six months. She’s

looked positively hag-ridden. And you have just admitted that she

hasn’t been able to sleep.”

“What is your diagnosis?” I demanded coldly. “An unfortunate love

affair, I suppose?”

My sister shook her head.

“_Remorse_,” she said, with great gusto.

“Remorse?”

“Yes. You never would believe me when I told you she poisoned her

husband. I’m more than ever convinced of it now.”

“I don’t think you’re very logical,” I objected. “Surely if a woman

committed a crime like murder, she’d be sufficiently cold-blooded to

enjoy the fruits of it without any weak-minded sentimentality such as

repentance.”

Caroline shook her head.

“There probably are women like that—but Mrs. Ferrars wasn’t one of

them. She was a mass of nerves. An overmastering impulse drove her on

to get rid of her husband because she was the sort of person who simply

can’t endure suffering of any kind, and there’s no doubt that the wife

of a man like Ashley Ferrars must have had to suffer a good deal——”

I nodded.

“And ever since she’s been haunted by what she did. I can’t help

feeling sorry for her.”

I don’t think Caroline ever felt sorry for Mrs. Ferrars whilst she was

alive. Now that she has gone where (presumably) Paris frocks can no

longer be worn, Caroline is prepared to indulge in the softer emotions

of pity and comprehension.

I told her firmly that her whole idea was nonsense. I was all the more

firm because I secretly agreed with some part, at least, of what she

had said. But it is all wrong that Caroline should arrive at the truth

simply by a kind of inspired guesswork. I wasn’t going to encourage

that sort of thing. She will go round the village airing her views, and

every one will think that she is doing so on medical data supplied by

me. Life is very trying.

“Nonsense,” said Caroline, in reply to my strictures. “You’ll see. Ten

to one she’s left a letter confessing everything.”

“She didn’t leave a letter of any kind,” I said sharply, and not seeing

where the admission was going to land me.

“Oh!” said Caroline. “So you _did_ inquire about that, did you? I

believe, James, that in your heart of hearts, you think very much as I

do. You’re a precious old humbug.”

“One always has to take the possibility of suicide into consideration,”

I said repressively.

“Will there be an inquest?”

“There may be. It all depends. If I am able to declare myself

absolutely satisfied that the overdose was taken accidentally, an

inquest might be dispensed with.”

“And are you absolutely satisfied?” asked my sister shrewdly.

I did not answer, but got up from table.