"The Croft-Thornton Institute," said the inspector, promptly.
"Bull’s eye, I believe," the Chief Constable ejaculated. "You could hardly jam more T’s together in English than there are in these three words. Let’s sift ’em out."
The Inspector bent eagerly forward to see if the necessary letters could be found. Sir Clinton separated the ones which he required for the three words, and the arrangement stood thus:
HYOSCINE THE CROFT-THORNTON
INSTITUTE AAA CC D E HH OO SS TT
W JUSTICE.
"I think this is getting outside the bounds of mere chance," Sir Clinton adjudged, with more optimism in his tone. "Now we might go a step further without straining things, even if it’s only a short pace. Let’s make a guess. Suppose that it’s meant to read: "Hyoscine at the Croft-Thornton Institute." That leaves us with the jumble here:
AA CC D E HH OO SS T W
"What do you make of that, Inspector?"
"The start of it looks like ACCEDE—no, there’s only one E," Flamborough began, only to correct himself.
"It’s not ACCEDE, obviously, Let’s try ACCESS and see if that’s any use."
The Chief Constable shifted the letters while the Inspector, now thoroughly interested, watched for the result.
"If it’s ACCESS then it ought to be ACCESS TO," Sir Clinton suggested. "And that leaves A, D, HH, O, W."
One glance at the six letters satisfied him.
"It’s panned out correctly, Inspector. There isn’t a letter over. See!"
He rearranged the lettering, and the inspector read the complete message:
WHO HAD ACCESS TO HYOSCINE AT THE CROFT-THORNTON INSTITUTE. JUSTICE.
"The chances of an anagram working out so sensibly as that are pretty small," Sir Clinton said, with satisfaction. "It’s a few million to one that we’ve got the correct version. H’m! I don’t know that Mr. Justice has really given us much help this time, for the Croft-Thornton was an obvious source of the drug. Still, he’s doing his best, evidently; and he doesn’t mean to let us overlook even the obvious, this time. I’m prepared to bet that we get the key to this thing by the next post. Mr. Justice wouldn’t leave the matter to the mere chance of our working the thing out. Still it’s some satisfaction to feel that we’ve done without his assistance.
Flamborough occupied himself with copying the cypher and its solution into his notebook. When he had finished, Sir Clinton lit a cigarette and handed his case to the Inspector.
"Let’s put officialism aside for a few minutes," the Chief Constable proposed. "No notes, or anything of that sort. Now I don’t mind confessing, Inspector, that we aren’t getting on with this business at all well. Short of divination, there seems no way of discovering the truth, so far as present information goes. And we simply can’t afford to let this affair go unsolved. Your Whalley person seems to be our best hope."
The Inspector evidently found a fresh train of thought started in his mind by Sir Clinton’s lament.
"I’ve been thinking over that set of alternatives you put down on paper the other day, sir," he explained. "I think they ought to be reduced from nine to six. It’s practically out of the question that young Hassendean was shot twice over by pure accident; so it seems reasonable enough to eliminate all that class from your table."
He put his hand in his pocket and produced a sheet of paper which had evidently been folded and unfolded fairly often since it had been first written upon.
"If you reject accident as a possibility in Hassendean’s case," he continued, "then you bring the thing within these limits here."
He put his paper down on the table and Sir Clinton read the following:
"Now I think it’s possible to eliminate even further than that, sir, for this reason. There’s a third death—the maid’s at Heatherfield—which on the face of it is connected in some way with these others. I don’t see how you can cut the Heatherfield business away from the other two."
"I’m with you there, Inspector," Sir Clinton assured him.
Flamborough, obviously relieved to find that he was not going to be attacked in the flank, pursued his exposition with more confidence.
"Who killed the maid? That’s an important point. It wasn’t young Hassendean, because the maid was seen alive by Dr. Ringwood immediately after young Hassendean had died on his hands. It certainly wasn’t Mrs. Silverdale, because everything points to her having died even before young Hassendean left the bungalow to go home and die at Ivy Lodge. Therefore, there was somebody afoot in the business that night who wouldn’t stick at murder to gain his ends, whatever they were."
"Nobody’s going to quarrel with that, Inspector."
"Very good, sir," Flamborough continued. "Now, with that factor at the back of one’s mind, one might review these six remaining cases in the light of what we do know."
"Go ahead," Sir Clinton urged him, covertly amused to find the Inspector so completely converted to the method which at first he had decried.
"Case A, then," Flamborough began. "A double suicide. Now I don’t cotton much to that notion, for this reason. If it was suicide, then one or other of them must have had possession of hyoscine in quantity sufficient to kill both of them. So I judge from the quantity found in her body. Now no hyoscine was in young Hassendean’s system. His eyes were quite normal and there was no trace of the stuff in the stomach, as they found when they sent to your London friend on the question. From what I’ve seen of young Hassendean’s diary, and from what we’ve picked up about him from various sources, he wasn’t the sort of person to go in for needless pain. If he’d shot himself at all, it would have been in the head. And if he’d had hyoscine at hand, he wouldn’t have shot himself at all. He’d have swallowed a dose of the poison instead, and gone out painlessly."
"Correct inference, I believe," Sir Clinton confirmed. "I don’t say it’s certain, of course."
"Well, then, what holds in Case A, ought to hold also in the other two cases—C and E—where it’s also a question of young Hassendean’s suicide. So one can score them off as well."
"Not so fast," Sir Clinton interrupted. "I don’t say you’re wrong; but your assumption doesn’t cover the cases. In Case A you assumed that Mrs. Silverdale committed suicide—ergo, she had hyoscine in her possession. But in Case C, the assumption is that she died by accidental poisoning; and before you can eliminate suicide on young Hassendean’s part, you’ve got to prove that he had the hyoscine in his possession. I’m not saying that he hadn’t. I’m merely keeping you strictly to your logic."
Flamborough considered this for a few moments.
"Strictly speaking, I suppose you’re right, sir. And in Case E, I’d have to prove that he poisoned her wilfully, in order to cover the case of his having hyoscine in his possession. H’m!"
After a pause, he took up the table afresh.
"Let’s go back to Case B, then: a double murder. That brings in this third party—the person who did for the maid at Heatherfield, we’ll say; and the fellow who broke the window. There were signs of a struggle in that room at the bungalow, you remember. Now it seems to me that Case B piles things on too thick, if you understand what I mean. It means that Mrs. Silverdale was murdered by poison and that young Hassendean was shot to death. Why the two methods when plain shooting would have been good enough in both cases? Take the obvious case—it’s been at the back of my mind, and I’m sure it’s been at the back of yours too, that Silverdale surprised the two of them at the bungalow and killed them both. Where does the poison come in? To my mind we ought to put a pencil through Case B. It’s most improbable."