The Man of Gold (17 page)

Hastily Miss Unwin ran her eye over more of the serried ranks of bottles and jars. And, sure enough, the bottle of Fowler’s Solution with its boldly written chemist’s label was only one of a dozen or more of the same sort.

So Mrs Meggs had had arsenic at her disposal, and if she had after all made up her mind to the evil act could she not have given old Mr Partington a much stronger dose or doses than the great Fowler had prescribed when he had invented the solution that bore his name?

Inspector Redderman could hear from the rabbit-skin man that Mrs Meggs had reason to want her employer to die, once he had been told that there existed a source of poison under the old crone’s control. Surely then he would see her at the very least as his prime suspect?

And he would release Richard.

Miss Unwin wondered what time of night it was. Would it be too late to go to the Inspector now? At this moment?

She hurried back to the kitchen where an old, loud-ticking clock stood on the mantel above the range.

Mrs Miller had gone to bed and had left no light in the big room. But there was a glow reflected from the dying fire. Miss Unwin reached up, took down the clock and peered hard.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. At last her eyes grew accustomed enough to the gloom to make out the two big black hands.

Midnight.

Midnight already. Where had the time gone to? And, of course, at midnight Inspector Redderman would be safe in his bed. And Richard, poor Richard, would be lying on
the hard bench in his cell, all unknowing that he need lie there no longer.

If Inspector Redderman took the sensible view.

But that would have to be tomorrow.

‘Vilkins,’ Miss Unwin called to her friend still in Mrs Meggs’s bottle-ranged lair. ‘Dear, we should go to bed now, I must be up betimes in the morning.’

‘Lord, yes. I’m sleepy as a squirrel.’

But if Vilkins was sleepy, and doubtless slept, Miss Unwin was by no means so. She may have dozed unwittingly for an hour or two. But next morning as soon as it was light she got out of bed convinced that she had not closed her eyes once all night.

Over and over in her mind she had rehearsed what she was going to say to Inspector Redderman. She had convinced herself before she had been in bed a quarter of an hour that all would depend on the way she was able to put her case. That she seemed to have strong facts to offer the Inspector, facts that ought to speak for themselves, she soon forgot. No, it was the way she would marshal her evidence, the logic she herself would present, that was going to mean freedom for Richard or trial for his life. She felt utterly convinced of it.

And, worse, before she lapsed unknowingly into the first of her short spells of sleep, she had convinced herself, too, that if Richard were brought to trial he would be found guilty. The fact of his complete innocence would not be enough. Inspector Redderman would amass such a pile of evidence against him, would brief the prosecuting counsel with such cleverness, that Richard would stand no chance. A great injustice would be done, and the man she loved would perish on the gallows, condemned as the murderer of his own father.

So it was in no very fit state that she set out next day to go to the police office.

Her head ached. Her mouth felt dry. The tea that she
had swallowed at breakfast had seemed brackish as sea-water. Her limbs were heavy. And as for her thoughts, they might, she believed, be so many whirling sheets of paper tossed in a gale so far were they from being in any order.

Not that she had not tried to marshal them. She had risen much too early to go round to the police office, and so, once again neglecting the poor twins, she had on the excuse of having the headache taken half an hour in privacy to attempt to get her case as well put together as she could. She had sat and written out the heads of what she had to say, and then had solemnly gone over them one by one fleshing them out with words. At the time it had seemed to her that she had got the whole into very tolerable order. But now, walking leadenly along the Harrow Road in the direction of the police station, she found she was unable to remember a single one of all the forceful, logical sentences she had put together.

She halted and searched in her pocket for the little memorandum sheet she had made up. She took it out and read it over. Yes, that was what she had to say.

Standing just where she was, she screwed the paper into a roll and pushed it into her glove and in her mind began her recitation to Inspector Redderman once again. ‘Inspector, I have come across, largely by accident, some important information which I think you should have. I know that once before I came to you No. No, that particular plea she had resolved to keep to the end, if it was still needed. So what was going to come after …
information which I think you should have?

Her mind was blank and she felt her head jangling as if some harsh irregular music was going on inside it. She opened her fist to consult her cues again. The wretched sheet of paper was so crushed as to be unreadable.

Thank you, lady, thank you. A poor man’s blessing on you. First of the day and good luck it’ll bring you.’

What was this?

A strident voice in her ear.

She looked round. There was an organ-grinder at the pavement’s edge, his circular drum of an instrument perched on its single stick and on his shoulder, trembling with either perpetual excitement or an ague, his monkey.

That had been the music she had believed was solely in her head. And the man must have thought she had stopped for him and had a coin in her glove instead of that terrible sere wed-up paper.

Hastily she opened her purse, found a halfpenny, put it in the fellow’s little cloth bag and walked off. Then, before she rightly knew it, she found herself on the steps of the police office.

No help for it now. She could not turn tail. However much of a jumble her once carefully arranged thoughts were, she could not decline to put them in front of Inspector Redderman and leave Richard still at his mercy.

‘Yes, mum,’ the sergeant at the counter said. ‘Inspector Redderman’s been here this quarter of an hour. Punctual to the dot is the Inspector, never known him miss.’

‘Then I can see him?’

‘I’ll have you shown up straight away, mum. You’ve been to see the Inspector before, ain’t you? About the vicious murder at the pin works, if I mistake not.’

‘Then please have me taken to him,’ Miss Unwin said in a cold fury.

So, without a chance to pause and try for a last time to get some order into her thoughts, she found herself once again facing Inspector Redderman.

He was alone in his room, a quiet figure seated at that bare table on which everything was arranged with such exact neatness. It was neatness and exactitude reflected very well in the man himself with his tightly buttoned coat, his neckcloth neatly arranged to the last fold, his unemphatic features and the short grey crop of his hair.

‘Miss Unwin,’ he said as soon as she was shown in. ‘You have something new to tell me?’

There was an edge of doubt in his tone. Miss Unwin decided that he thought that a person like herself, a woman, could well be so foolish as to come to him a second time with no more to say than she had had at the first.

And with that suspicion all the wild jumble of thoughts that had lain in her head ordered themselves as if at a touch of a master conjuror’s wand.

‘Yes, Mr Redderman,’ she said, ‘I have come across, largely by accident, some important new information which I think you should have.’

After that there rolled out, as neat and precise as the Inspector himself could have made them, the various points that she had intended he should learn from her.

He listened gravely and without showing any sign of either liking or disliking what he was hearing. At last she finished.

‘Poisons,’ he said. ‘You appear to know a great deal more about such matters than young ladies should.’

It was not the response Miss Unwin had expected. But at least, she thought, he seems to have accepted that the argument I have put has some validity.

‘My knowledge is easily enough explained,’ she replied. ‘I have made it my business in the past few days to acquaint myself with what I could of the subject.’

‘Indeed? And how have you done that, Miss?’

‘By reading
Potherton on Poisons,’
Miss Unwin replied, with not a little pride.

‘Potheterton on Poisons
, eh?’

The Inspector seemed impressed.

‘A great work,’ he went on. ‘Indeed, Professor Potherton is the authority on the subject.’

He cast her a quick shrewd glance.

‘But how did you come to lay your hands on such a volume?’ he asked.

‘I – I purchased it, Inspector. From a bookshop in Oxford Street.’

‘Indeed? And paid a pretty price for it, no doubt. Now, I wonder why you should have done that. Not many governesses of my acquaintance would be so willing to sacrifice three guineas or more of their hard-earned stipend.’

‘I – I felt an obligation to do so. To – To do what I could to relieve – to relieve my employer of a shadow unjustly cast upon him.’

‘Very commendable. A young lady to go to such lengths for a gentleman who has had her in his employ, if I’m right, only some four or five months.’

Miss Unwin felt she had no answer to that. And she was sure, too, that Inspector Redderman had drawn his own conclusions as to her motive. Nor was it a false deduction.

‘So, Miss Unwin,’ he went on, having looked at her so hard and long that she had not been able to prevent her gaze dropping. ‘So let us come to the bottles of Fowler’s Solution. Found in the room formerly occupied by Mrs Meggs, you say?’

‘I do. To my mind they are strong evidence.’

‘Oh, yes. No doubt to your mind they are.’

Miss Unwin bristled.

‘Are you telling me, Inspector, that such evidence means nothing?’

‘No. No, not at all. Such evidence would mean a very great deal, if you had not thought that it would do so in advance.’

For a moment Miss Unwin did not understand what had been said. Then she saw it.

She almost leapt up from her chair.

‘Are you saying that I am a liar? Do you mean to imply that I have planted evidence against an innocent old woman?’

The Inspector was not one whit discomposed.

It is something which a man of my experience might expect,’ he replied, ‘when he has cause to believe that the person putting that evidence in front of him is deeply interested in the gentleman hitherto held for inquiry.’

‘But I –But I –’

Miss Unwin fell silent. She was not going to deny the truth of what the Inspector had said. That would be to deny the love she felt for Richard Partington. But almost equally she felt that she could not admit that love. To do so would be to admit to the Inspector that his evil suspicions might be justified.

Almost she got up and left the room without a word. But her common sense asserted itself just in time. She thought what the situation really was and, after a moment’s pause, she told Inspector Redderman.

‘You are quite mistaken, sir, if you think that I have done anything as criminal as to falsify evidence. I would scorn to do so. But, more, I think I can show you conclusively that nothing of the kind has taken place.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Yes, indeed, Mr Inspector. It so happens that the new cook at the house, a person who could have no possible interest in telling other than the truth, looked into that room of Mrs Meggs’s on her arrival. She saw it was so cluttered with bottles and jars that she refused to use it. But she can tell you that nothing has been disturbed in there. You can go yourself and see the evidence, a number of bottles labelled Fowler’s Solution. Then I hope you will be convinced.’

Inspector Redderman did not immediately answer. He sat, still as ever, and simply gave the matter thought.

Then at last he spoke.

‘Very well, Miss Unwin,’ he said. ‘I shall have to verify what you have told me, of course. But I can see no reason why Mr Richard Partington should remain at the police office any longer.’

Richard looked tired and not a little ill when he was brought up from some nether region of the police station to be reunited with Miss Unwin. Seeing him pale and drawn, she wanted to take him by his hands and tell him that all would be well from now on. She wanted, indeed, in some deeper part of her mind to do more, to take him in her arms.

But in the lobby of the police station with Inspector Redderman, grey and self-contained, looking on she could do neither of those things.

‘Good morning, sir,’ she said. ‘I trust you are none the worse for your long stay here.’

‘Miss Unwin,’ he said, surprised that she should be there. ‘This – This is an unexpected pleasure.’

The Inspector stepped half a pace forward.

‘Not really unexpected, Mr Partington,’ he said. ‘I think I can say that you owe your being at liberty to step outside now almost entirely to this young lady. She has been unremitting in her efforts to persuade me that I should look elsewhere in this business. Altogether unremitting.’

And Miss Unwin saw him regard Richard with a look so keen that the least betrayal of feelings would not escape him.

But it was no minute sign that Richard gave of what his feelings were. He coloured up in an instant. A look of warm gratitude shone from his eyes.

‘Miss Unwin,’ he said. ‘Harriet, how can I ever thank you?’

Inspector Redderman permitted himself a small inclination of the head as much as to say
Ah, yes, so I was right
.

‘I should not, if I were you, express too fervant thanks,’ he said drily. ‘I feel bound to warn you that, though I see the need at present to conduct investigations elsewhere, I do not necessarily consider I have asked you everything I may wish to.’

With that quietly spoken warning singing in their ears, Richard and Miss Unwin left the police station.

Miss Unwin turned in the direction of the house and the pin works expecting that they would walk along there together. But Richard, with a sudden burst of energy, vigorously hailed a passing hansom.