"Well, it’s perhaps hardly worth bothering about," the Chief Constable concluded. "The main thing is that even at the lowest estimate she must have swallowed enough of the poison to kill her in a reasonably short time."
With this he seemed satisfied, and after a few questions about the preparation and submission of Markfield’s official report, he took his leave. As he turned away, however, a fresh thought seemed to strike him.
"By the way, Dr. Markfield, do you know if Miss Hailsham’s here this morning?"
"I believe so," Markfield answered. "I saw her as I came in."
"I’d like to have a few words with her," Sir Clinton suggested.
"Officially?" Markfield demanded. "You’re not going to worry the girl, are you? If it’s anything I can tell you about, I’d be only too glad, you know. It’s not very nice for a girl to have the tale going round that she’s been hauled in by the police in a murder case."
The Chief Constable conceded the point without ado.
"Then perhaps you could send for her and we could speak to her in here. It would be more private, and there need be no talk about it outside."
"Very well," Markfield acquiesced at once. "I think that would be better. I’ll send for her now."
He rang a bell and despatched a boy with a message. In a few minutes a tap on the door sounded, and Markfield ushered Norma Hailsham into the room. Inspector Flamborough glanced at her with interest, to see how far his conception of her personality agreed with the reality. She was a girl apparently between twenty and twenty-five, dressed with scrupulous neatness. Quite obviously, she spent money freely on her clothes and knew how to get value for what she spent. But as his eyes travelled up to her face, the Inspector received a more vivid impression. Her features were striking rather than handsome, and Flamborough noted especially the squarish chin and the long thin-lipped flexible mouth.
"H’m!" he commented to himself. "She might flash up in a moment, but with that jaw and those lips she wouldn’t cool down again in a hurry. I was right when I put her down as a vindictive type. Shouldn’t much care to have trouble with her myself."
He glanced at Sir Clinton for tacit instructions, but apparently the Chief Constable proposed to take charge of the interview.
"Would you sit down, Miss Hailsham," Sir Clinton suggested, drawing forward a chair for the girl.
Flamborough noticed with professional interest that by his apparently casual courtesy, the Chief Constable had unobtrusively manœuvred the girl into a position in which her face was clearly illuminated by the light from the window.
"This is Inspector Flamborough," Sir Clinton went on, with a gesture of introduction. "We should like to ask you one or two questions about an awkward case we have in our hands—the Hassendean business. I’m afraid it will be painful for you; but I’m sure you’ll give us what help you can."
Norma Hailsham’s thin lips set in a hard line at his first words, but the movement was apparently involuntary, for she relaxed them again as Sir Clinton finished his remarks.
"I shall be quite glad to give any help I can," she said in a level voice.
Flamborough, studying her expression, noticed a swift shift of her glance from one to the other of the three men before her.
"She’s a bit over-selfconscious," he judged privately. "But she’s the regular look-monger type, anyhow; and quite likely she makes play with her eyes when she’s talking to any man."
Sir Clinton seemed to be making a merit of frankness:
"I really haven’t any definite questions I want to ask you, Miss Hailsham," he confessed. "What we hoped was that you might have something to tell us which indirectly might throw some light on this affair. You see, we come into it without knowing anything about the people involved, and naturally any trifle may help us. Now if I’m not mistaken, you knew Mr. Hassendean fairly well?"
"I was engaged to him at one time. He broke off the engagement for various reasons. That’s common knowledge, I believe."
"Could you give us any of the reasons? I don’t wish to pry, you understand; but I think it’s an important point."
Miss Hailsham’s face showed that he had touched a sore place.
"He threw me over for another woman—brutally."
"Mrs. Silverdale?" Sir Clinton inquired.
"Yes, that creature."
"Ah! Now I’d like to put a blunt question. Was your engagement, while it lasted, a happy one? I mean, of course, before he was attracted to Mrs. Silverdale."
Norma Hailsham sat with knitted brows for a few moments before answering.
"That’s difficult to answer," she pointed out at last. "I must confess that I always felt he was thinking more of himself than of me, and it was a disappointment. But, you see, I was very keen on him; and that made a difference, of course."
"What led to the breaking of your engagement?"
"You mean what led up to it? Well, we were having continual friction over Yvonne Silverdale. He was neglecting me and spending his time with her. Naturally, I spoke to him about it more than once. I wasn’t going to be slighted on account of that woman."
There was no mistaking the under-current of animosity in the girl’s voice in the last sentence. Sir Clinton ignored it.
"What were your ideas about the relations between Mr. Hassendean and Mrs. Silverdale?"
Miss Hailsham’s thin lips curled in undisguised contempt as she heard the question. She made a gesture as though averting herself from something distasteful.
"It’s hardly necessary to enter into that, is it?" she demanded. "You can judge for yourself."
But though she verbally evaded the point, the tone in which she spoke was sufficient to betray her private views on the subject. Then with intense bitterness mingled with a certain malicious joy, she added:
"She got what she deserved in the end. I don’t pretend I’m sorry. I think they were both well served."
Then her temper, which hitherto she had kept under control, broke from restraint:
"I don’t care who knows it! They deserved all they got, both of them. What business had she—with a husband of her own—to come and lure him away? She made him break off his engagement to me simply to gratify her own vanity. You don’t expect me to shed tears over them after that? One can forgive a good deal, but there’s no use making a pretence in things like that. She hit me as hard as she could, and I’m glad she’s got her deserts. I warned him at the time that he wouldn’t come off so well as he thought; and he laughed in my face when I said it. Well, it’s my turn to laugh. The account’s even."
And she actually did laugh, with a catch of hysteria in the laughter. It needed no great skill in psychology to see that wounded pride shared with disappointed passion in causing this outbreak.
Sir Clinton checked the hysteria before it gained complete hold over her.
"I’m afraid you haven’t told us anything that was new to us, Miss Hailsham," he said, frigidly. "This melodramatic business gets us no further forward."
The girl looked at him with hard eyes.
"What help do you expect from me?" she demanded. "I’m not anxious to see him avenged—far from it."
Sir Clinton evidently realised that nothing was to be gained by pursuing that line of inquiry. Whether the girl had any suspicions or not, she certainly did not intend to supply information which might lead to the capture of the murderer. The Chief Constable waited until she had become calmer before putting his next question:
"Do you happen to know anything about an alkaloid called hyoscine, Miss Hailsham?"
"Hyoscine?" she repeated. "Yes, Avice Deepcar’s working on it just now. She’s been at it for some time under Dr. Silverdale’s direction."
Flamborough, glancing surreptitiously at Markfield, noted an angry start which the chemist apparently could not suppress. Put on the alert by this, the Inspector reflected that Markfield himself must have had this piece of information, and had refrained from volunteering it.