The Man of Gold (19 page)

The doctor paused and looked at the rich new Turkey carpet at his feet.

‘But is that all you have to say, sir?’

‘No. No, it is not. Ahem. The fact is that I have to make something of a confession.’

‘Indeed, Doctor? But I am sure it cannot be to any very grave crime.’

The doctor flushed angrily.

‘It is not to any crime whatsoever,’ he said. ‘It is to – to a certain lack of foresight, if you will. Hardly more than that.’

Again he paused. But this time Miss Unwin thought better of urging him on. At last with another little cough he resumed.

‘The fact of the matter is that, although I undertook myself since it is somewhat of an interest of mine to carry out the tests on the – er – cadaver to ascertain whether death was due to arsenic, I –1 …’

‘That is Marsh’s Test?’ Miss Unwin inquired.

Doctor Sumsion looked very put out.

‘How – How does a young lady like you know of such things?’ he demanded.

‘I have made it my business to learn, sir,’ Miss Unwin replied. ‘I obtained Professor Potherton’s book on poisons and read as much of it as I was able.’

The doctor looked at her down his nose.

‘I would not have expected a lady would have been able
to read such a work at all,’ he said. ‘However, that is scarcely the point.’

‘The point being,’ Inspector Redderman put in, ‘that Doctor Sumsion unfortunately did not draw all the conclusions he might have from his tests. Since you suggested the possible source of the poison to us, Miss Unwin, we have thought it advisable to consult Professor Potherton himself.’

‘And, well, the fact of the matter is,’ the doctor resumed, ‘that the amount of arsenic – er – present was not enough to have brought about death. It was, however, consonant with a small regular ingestion of arsenic in the form of Fowler’s Solution, which, as perhaps you may not know, is prescribed as a tonic’

Miss Unwin did, of course, know about Fowler’s Solution as a tonic But something else a great deal more pressing than any chagrin she might have felt at the doctor’s repeated assumption of her ignorance was now in the forefront of her mind.

She turned to the Inspector.

‘Mr Redderman,’ she said, ‘does this mean that some other poison was responsible for Mr Partington’s death and that such ideas as we may have had about it are no longer valid?’

‘Yes,’ said the Inspector. ‘That is precisely what it does mean, Miss Unwin. Some poison other than arsenic was employed.’

Miss Unwin felt her whole world turned topsy-turvy by what she had heard. She longed to be able to go somewhere quiet and work out in peace all the logical implications. But she had to stay a good while longer in the drawing room and listen to Doctor Sumsion telling and re-telling the details of it all in an effort to put his amateur scientific efforts into a better light. Inspector Redderman said almost nothing while the doctor was doing his best to alter the facts, and Richard was totally silent.

His air of utter crestfallenness, indeed, added another strand, and a strong one, to the tangled web which Miss Unwin wanted so badly to have time and peace to unravel.

It was only when Doctor Sumsion had at last put things as much to his satisfaction as he could with the declaration that ‘of course even Professor Potherton has not yet concluded all the tests necessary to ascertain just what the deleterious element is’ that he eventually ceased to speak.

Then the Inspector put in his word.

‘So I will bid you goodbye, Mr Partington,’ he said. ‘But I would be failing in my duty if I let you believe that I do not expect to see you again. We are back to where we were before, you know. And to me the answer that provides fewest difficulties must always seem the likeliest.’

Richard drew himself up to his full, not very great, height.

‘I think, Inspector,’ he said, ‘that I have told you everything you have any right to demand of me.’

‘That may be so, sir. But I will not baulk the issue. This is a matter where I, and not you, decide what rights I have.’

And with that he picked up his hat, turned on his heel and marched off. Doctor Sumsion, having looked once round the room and perceived he was the sole visitor, uttered a word of farewell and departed in his turn.

‘Oh, Miss Unwin,’ Richard said dolefully, the moment the door had closed behind him. ‘What shall we do now? We are just where we were. The man is right. All your efforts on my behalf seem to have come to nothing.’

‘Then perhaps you should take back the present you pressed on me for those efforts,’ Miss Unwin said, uttering in her confusion of mind the first words that came into her head. ‘I dare say Messrs Asprey will return the money you paid for it.’

At least, she thought to herself, one piece of good may come out of this.

‘No. No, never,’ Richard answered. ‘Miss Unwin, Harriet, what you did you did. That, later, things came to this pass takes away none of the merit of your actions.’

Miss Unwin looked at him. His open round face was suffused with new colour. He was plainly in the grip of high emotion.

In two seconds more, she thought to herself, he will make me a formal proposal.

‘Sir, sir,’ she broke out. ‘I must – the children. I must return to them. I left them without any task to do. They will be up to mischief. I must go.’

She hurried to the door, wrenched it open and ran upstairs.

All she knew at this moment was that, for whatever reason, she did not want to hear what Richard Partington was plainly on the point of saying to her. It had been her hope, hardly admissible even to herself in her most private thoughts, that Richard might utter to her the words he had been on the point of saying just a moment
before. They would have answered her deepest hopes. But she knew, too, with iron certainty that for some reason or none she did not want to hear them now.

And, besides, the children really might be up to some mischief. They had, after all, been left abruptly and without having been given anything to do. Thanks, too, to Doctor Sumsion’s exculpatory burblings, she herself had been away much longer than she had thought likely.

So duty did call.

It was not much mischief that she found the twins in, merely that they were eating sugar-plums from an enormous box which their father had bought in Bond Street after getting his much more expensive gift for their governess. But it was within an hour of dinner, and the girls knew well that at such a time sweet things were forbidden.

‘I hoped you could be trusted, even though I had set you no task,’ Miss Unwin said, as she took the box of plums and locked it away.

‘But you did set us no task,’ Louisa answered, ‘so really it is you who should be having your sugar-plums locked away.’

‘No, Louisa.’

Louisa did not continue. She could recognise the note of danger. But Maria, always the quieter follower yet with a strain of loyalty in her that was willing to venture into risk, did not let the argument drop.

‘But, Miss, it isn’t fair that we should be punished when we had not been helped to be good.’

‘Is it not, Maria? Ask yourself that again.’

Solemnly and in silence Maria did ask herself the question. And came to the same conclusion.

‘I still think it’s unfair, Miss. You know we had a very hard life till – till Grandpapa died. We did. You know we did. So we ought to have more help than other little girls.’

‘Yes,’ added Louisa, coming back into the fray refreshed, ‘especially from a governess papa took on
particularly to help us. And especially when he gives her gifts.’

Miss Unwin felt outraged.

That gift, that so pretty brooch with its heart shape outlined in tiny pearls, she had hidden away at once in the back of the drawer in her room where she kept her handkerchiefs and collars. Neither of the girls had any business to go prying there. And yet they had done so, and had guessed how she had come by such a valuable object.

What more had they guessed? Had they jumped to the real reason why their father had made her the gift? Not because she had done something to free him from Inspector Redderman’s clutches but because he was going to ask her to become their stepmother.

‘Louisa,’ she said, trying to restrain the anger that boiled up in her.
⁴
I had made up my mind to restore the sugar-plums to you. Maria’s reasoning seemed to me very good. But after what I have just learnt you will not see that box again for one whole week. And you may think yourselves lightly dealt with if that is all the punishment you receive.’

Silence then. A silence between the three of them that lasted until each of the girls was in bed with the curtains drawn round her.

It was only then that Miss Unwin thought she could have her longed-for opportunity of thinking hard and carefully about the consequences of the unexpected reversal of all her hopes that prosy old Doctor Sumsion had brought about. Once again she made the excuse to Richard of needing to prepare the twins’ lessons for next day. She saw he was pathetically anxious for her company after dinner, but she steeled her heart.

Until she had had that long session of hard thought, until she had settled the pros and cons thoroughly in her own mind, she dare not risk what a stay in Richard’s company might bring.

It might bring – if she spoke truly to herself she was
certain that it would bring – those words that Richard had been about to pronounce immediately after Doctor Sumsion’s visit. And though she longed to hear those words and knew her answer would surely be a fervent ‘Yes’, she knew, too, that she was not yet ready to hear them. She would not be ready until she had straightened out two things in her head. First, what should she think and do about the new situation that had arisen over old Mr Partington’s death. And, second, that awkward burr of doubt which had appeared in her mind almost at the moment of her triumph in securing Richard’s release, the unease she felt over the absurdly expensive gift he had thrust upon her.

But she was not to get her period of quiet reflection.

‘’Ere, is what I ‘eard true?’

Vilkins had thrust open the door of her room.

‘Vilkins. How – how do you know there is anything to be true or not to be true?’

‘Listening at the drawing-room door, wasn’t I?’

‘Vilkins, dear.’

‘Oh, come on, Unwin, a girl’s got to protec’ ‘erself in this life, ain’t she? An’ got to look arter ‘er friends too.’ Miss Unwin smiled.

‘Well, dear, I must confess I am glad you did do what you did to look after me. I am certainly in trouble again. Worse trouble, I somehow think, than I was in before.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Vilkins agreed promptly. ‘You are worse now, Unwin. A ‘ole lot worse, if you ask me. You see, before this you knew what it was what poisoned the old man an’ all you ‘ad to do was go about looking till you found someone as ‘ad it. But now … Now you don’t even know so much as what to look for.’

Miss Unwin sighed.

Vilkins had done her exercise in logic for her, and had done it well. There might be other complications she had to think out, but the main difficulty that confronted her had been put fair and squarely before her.

‘Yes, you’re right,’ she said. ‘And – And, well, dear, you know my secret. So I am still faced with trying to make Inspector Redderman look further than his nose.’

‘Yeh. I ‘eard that bit, too, just afore I made meself scarce. ‘Im an’ ‘is answer that provides fewest difficulties. That was it, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. Yes, it was. In some ways, though, I hardly blame him. He knows old Mr Partington was poisoned, and he has to ask himself who had most to gain by his death. Well, it’s clear who that is, and there is nothing Richard – nothing Mr Partington can do to prove beyond doubt that he is not the person responsible. So in a way the Inspector is right to think as he does.’

‘Well,’ Vilkins said, ‘I s’pose ’e may ’ave got the correc’ answer too.’

‘No, Vilkins. No.’

‘Well, all right, all right. But you said it yourself, there’s nothing your Richard’s been able to do to prove as ‘ow ‘e ain’t the one.’

‘No. No, I know that you are right in logic, and I must bear the thought as well as I may. But, surely, surely, someone else who could possibly have given the poison, whatever it is, must have done so.’

‘Well, there’s that old devil over Ratcliff ’Ighway. Or is she off the ‘ook now?’

‘Because it wasn’t arsenic that was the poison? Well, I suppose that does make it a lot less likely that Mrs Meggs is to blame. But it is still possible she was the one who gave him whatever other poison it was.’

‘But she wouldn’t of found it so easy to get ‘old of something else, would she?’

‘No, I imagine she would not, though we don’t really know till Professor Potherton has found out just what the poison was.’

‘An’ ‘ow long’s ‘e going to be over that? What’s ‘e do? Smell it or something?’

‘I don’t exactly know, dear. There are dozens and
dozens of tests for various substances, or so I gathered from the professor’s own book.’

‘An’ I don’t suppose anybody’ll be good enough to tell us when they do know,’ Vilkins said in her gloomiest tone.

‘No, you’re right again there. So what am I to do?’

‘Well, there’s always that Captain Fulcher you were so keen on ’aving strung up for the job.’

‘Oh, Vilkins, don’t say that. I’m not anxious to see anybody hanged. But – But –’

‘But you’re a bit less keen on seeing your Richard on the end of a rope than someone else, ain’t you?’

‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

‘Then who do you want to see there?’

‘Who do I think is most likely to have done the thing that they deserve to be hanged for? I suppose Captain Fulcher, as you say. But my efforts there came to precious little.’

‘Well, what about that sister of ’is then?’

‘I know so little about the life she led here in London,’ Miss Unwin answered. ‘I don’t know whether she would have been able to obtain a poison, any poison, whatever poison was used.’

She sighed.

‘But you can find out, can’t you?’ said Vilkins.

‘Yes,’ said Miss Unwin. ‘Yes, at least I can do that, or try to do it. To find out about Miss Cornelia Fulcher’s life up here in London when she was letting all the world believe she was down in the West Country.’