Till Death Do Us Part

Sir Harvey Gilman's face was so grim that it swallowed up other impressions. Dick noticed that he wore pyjamas and a dressing-gown. His head, shorn of the turban, was now revealed as bald, above the sceptical eyes and sharp-pointed nose and hard sardonic mouth. He looked Dick up and down.

'Annoyed, Mr Markham ?'

Dick made no reply.

'I rather imagine,' said Sir Harvey, 'that I'm the one to be annoyed.' He arched his back, winced, and shut his lips hard before opening them to continue.

'I've proposed a little experiment. The doctor there doesn't seem to approve. But I imagine you'll approve, when you hear my reasons. No, Doctor, you may remain in the room.'

There was a half-smoked cigar on the edge of an ashtray on the writing-table. Sir Harvey picked it up.

'Understand me!' he pursued. 'I don't give a rap for abstract justice. I should not go a step out of my way to inform against anybody. But I am intellectually curious.

I should like, before I die, to know the answer to one of the few problems that ever defeated my friend Gideon Fell.

' If you agree to help me, we may be able to set a trap. If not -' He waved the cigar, put it into his mouth, and found it dead. There was more than a little vindictiveness in his manner. 'Now about this woman, the so-called "Lesley Grant".'

Dick found his voice.

'Let's have it, sir. What were you starting to tell me before this thing happened ?'

'About this woman,' pursued the other in his leisurely way. 'You're in love with her, I suppose? Or think you are?'

' I know I am.'

'That's rather unfortunate,' said Sir Harvey dryly. 'Still, it has happened before.' He turned his head round to the desk-calendar on the writing-table, which registered the date as Thursday, June tenth. 'Tell me. Has she by any chance invited you to dinner at her house, one day this week or next, as a sort of celebration ?'

'As a matter of fact, she has. Tomorrow night. But -'

Sir Harvey looked startled.

' Tomorrow night, eh ?'

What rose most clearly in Dick's mind was the image of Lesley herself, against the background of her house on the other side of Six Ashes. Lesley, with her good temper. Lesley, with her impracticality. Lesley, with her fastidiousness. Lesley, who hated ostentation in any form, and never wore lipstick or jewellery or conspicuous clothes. Yet these retiring qualities were caught together by an intensity of nature which, when she fell in love, seemed to make her utterly reckless in anything she said or did.

All this flashed through his mind as her face rose in front of him, moulded into an image of passion and gentleness that obsessed his mind. Inexplicably, he found himself shouting.

'I can't stand any more of this!' he said. 'What is all this nonsense? What accusation are you making? Are you trying to tell me her name isn't Lesley Grant at all?'

'I am,' answered Sir Harvey. He lifted his eyes. 'Her real name is Jordan. She's a poisoner.'

CHAPTER 4

FOR a space while you might have counted ten, nobody spoke. When Dick did reply, it was as though the meaning of the words had failed to register with him. He spoke without anger, even with a certain casualness.

'That's absurd.'

'Why is it absurd?'

'That little girl?'

' That little girl, as you call her, is forty-one years old.'

There was a chair at Dick's elbow. He sat down in the chair. Colonel Pope, the owner of this cottage, had turned the sitting-room into a place of shabby and slippered comfort. Pipe-smoke had tinged grey the white-plaster walls, and seasoned the oak beams. Round the walls ran a single line of military prints from the early and middle nineteenth century, their colours of battle and uniform softened by time yet still vivid. Dick looked at these pictures, and the colours grew blurred.

'You don't believe me,’ said Sir Harvey calmly. 'I didn't expect you to. But I've phoned London. There'll be a man down from Scotland Yard to-morrow who knows her well. There'll also be photographs and fingerprints.'

'Wait a minute 1 Please 1'

' Yes, young fellow ?'

'What, according to you, is Lesley supposed to have done?'

'She poisoned three men. Two of them were her husbands; that's where she gets her money. The third...' 'What husbands?'

'Does it shock your romantic soul?' inquired Sir Harvey. 'Her first husband was an American corporation lawyer named Burton Foster. Her second was a Liverpool cotton-broker called Davies; I forget his first name. Both were wealthy men. But the third victim, as I was saying...'

Dick Markham pressed his hands to his temples.

'God!' he said. And out of that monosyllable suddenly burst all the incredulousness, all the protest, all the dazed bewilderment which welled up. inside him. He wanted not to have heard; he wanted to blot the last thirty seconds out of his life.

Sir Harvey had the grace to look a little fussed, and to turn his eye away.

' I'm sorry, young fellow' - he flung his dead cigar into the ashtray - 'but there it is.' Then he eyed Dick keenly. 'And if you're thinking...'

'Go on! What was I thinking?'

The other's mouth grew still more sardonic.

'You write psychological tosh about the minds of murderers. I enjoy the stuff; I don't mind admitting it. And among my colleagues I am supposed to have rather a peculiar sense of humour. If you think I am inventing things and playing an elaborate joke on you, by way of poetic justice, get the idea out of your head. My purpose, believe me, is not a joke.'

And, as Dick found out only too soon, it wasn't.

'This woman,' said Sir Harvey clearly, 'is a thoroughgoing bad hat. The sooner you get used to that idea the sooner you'll get over it. And the safer you'll be.'

'Safer?'

'That's what I said.' The ugly stamp appeared again on Sir Harvey's forehead. He twisted his body in the chair, to get a more comfortable position; then, stung with pain, he subsided angrily.

'But that's the trouble,' he went on.' In my estimation, this woman isn't even particularly clever. Yet she goes on, and on, and on, and gets away with it! She's devised a method of murder that beats Gideon Fell as much as it beats me.'

This was the first time that the flat word 'murder' had been applied to Lesley. It opened new chasms and new doors into evil rooms. Dick was still groping blindly.

'Stop a bit!' he insisted. 'A minute ago you said something about fingerprints. You mean she's been on trial ?'

'No. The fingerprints were obtained unofficially. She's never been on trial.'

' Oh ? Then how do you know she's guilty ?'

Exasperation sharpened the other's countenance.

' Won't you believe me, Mr Markham, until our friend arrives from Scotland Yard ?'

'I didn't say that. I ask why you state it as a fact. If Lesley was guilty, why didn't the police arrest her ?'

'Because they couldn't prove it. Three occasions, mind you! And still they couldn't prove it.'

Once more the Home Office pathologist thoughtlessly tried to move his position. Once more pain burnt him. But he was absorbed now. He hardly noticed it. His fingers lifted up and down on the padded arms of the chair. His monkey-bright eyes, fixed on Dick Markham, held so richly sardonic an expression that it might have been one of admiration.

'The police,' he went on, 'will supply exact dates and details. I can only tell you what I know from personal observation. Kindly don't interrupt me more than is necessary.'

'Well?'

'I first met this lady thirteen years ago. Our so-called Government had not yet awarded me a knighthood. I was not yet Chief Pathologist to the Home Office. I often served in the capacity of police-surgeon as well as pathologist One morning in winter - the police, I repeat, can supply dates - we learned that an American named Foster had been found dead in his dressing-room, adjoining the bedroom, of his home in Hyde Park Gardens. I went out there with Chief Inspector Hadley, now Superintendent Hadley.