Chapter 1

DR. SHEPPARD AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE

Mrs. Ferrars died on the night of the 16th–17th September—a Thursday. I
was sent for at eight o’clock on the morning of Friday the 17th. There
was nothing to be done. She had been dead some hours.

It was just a few minutes after nine when I reached home once more. I
opened the front door with my latch-key, and purposely delayed a few
moments in the hall, hanging up my hat and the light overcoat that
I had deemed a wise precaution against the chill of an early autumn
morning. To tell the truth, I was considerably upset and worried. I am
not going to pretend that at that moment I foresaw the events of the
next few weeks. I emphatically did not do so. But my instinct told me
that there were stirring times ahead.

From the dining-room on my left there came the rattle of tea-cups and
the short, dry cough of my sister Caroline.

“Is that you, James?” she called.

An unnecessary question, since who else could it be? To tell the
truth, it was precisely my sister Caroline who was the cause of my few
minutes’ delay. The motto of the mongoose family, so Mr. Kipling tells
us, is: “Go and find out.” If Caroline ever adopts a crest, I should
certainly suggest a mongoose rampant. One might omit the first part
of the motto. Caroline can do any amount of finding out by sitting
placidly at home. I don’t know how she manages it, but there it is. I
suspect that the servants and the tradesmen constitute her Intelligence
Corps. When she goes out, it is not to gather in information, but to
spread it. At that, too, she is amazingly expert.

It was really this last named trait of hers which was causing me these
pangs of indecision. Whatever I told Caroline now concerning the demise
of Mrs. Ferrars would be common knowledge all over the village within
the space of an hour and a half. As a professional man, I naturally
aim at discretion. Therefore I have got into the habit of continually
withholding all information possible from my sister. She usually finds
out just the same, but I have the moral satisfaction of knowing that I
am in no way to blame.

Mrs. Ferrars’ husband died just over a year ago, and Caroline has
constantly asserted, without the least foundation for the assertion,
that his wife poisoned him.

She scorns my invariable rejoinder that Mr. Ferrars died of acute
gastritis, helped on by habitual over-indulgence in alcoholic
beverages. The symptoms of gastritis and arsenical poisoning are not,
I agree, unlike, but Caroline bases her accusation on quite different
lines.

“You’ve only got to look at her,” I have heard her say.

Mrs. Ferrars, though not in her first youth, was a very attractive
woman, and her clothes, though simple, always seemed to fit her very
well, but all the same, lots of women buy their clothes in Paris and
have not, on that account, necessarily poisoned their husbands.

As I stood hesitating in the hall, with all this passing through my
mind, Caroline’s voice came again, with a sharper note in it.

“What on earth are you doing out there, James? Why don’t you come and
get your breakfast?”

“Just coming, my dear,” I said hastily. “I’ve been hanging up my
overcoat.”

“You could have hung up half a dozen overcoats in this time.”

She was quite right. I could have.

I walked into the dining-room, gave Caroline the accustomed peck on the
cheek, and sat down to eggs and bacon. The bacon was rather cold.

“You’ve had an early call,” remarked Caroline.

“Yes,” I said. “King’s Paddock. Mrs. Ferrars.”

“I know,” said my sister.

“How did you know?”

“Annie told me.”

Annie is the house parlormaid. A nice girl, but an inveterate talker.

There was a pause. I continued to eat eggs and bacon. My sister’s nose,
which is long and thin, quivered a little at the tip, as it always does
when she is interested or excited over anything.

“Well?” she demanded.

“A bad business. Nothing to be done. Must have died in her sleep.”

“I know,” said my sister again.

This time I was annoyed.

“You can’t know,” I snapped. “I didn’t know myself until I got there,
and I haven’t mentioned it to a soul yet. If that girl Annie knows, she
must be a clairvoyant.”

“It wasn’t Annie who told me. It was the milkman. He had it from the
Ferrars’ cook.”

As I say, there is no need for Caroline to go out to get information.
She sits at home, and it comes to her.

My sister continued:

“What did she die of? Heart failure?”

“Didn’t the milkman tell you that?” I inquired sarcastically.

Sarcasm is wasted on Caroline. She takes it seriously and answers
accordingly.

“He didn’t know,” she explained.

After all, Caroline was bound to hear sooner or later. She might as
well hear from me.

“She died of an overdose of veronal. She’s been taking it lately for
sleeplessness. Must have taken too much.”

“Nonsense,” said Caroline immediately. “She took it on purpose. Don’t
tell me!”

It is odd how, when you have a secret belief of your own which you do
not wish to acknowledge, the voicing of it by some one else will rouse
you to a fury of denial. I burst immediately into indignant speech.

“There you go again,” I said. “Rushing along without rhyme or reason.
Why on earth should Mrs. Ferrars wish to commit suicide? A widow,
fairly young still, very well off, good health, and nothing to do but
enjoy life. It’s absurd.”

“Not at all. Even you must have noticed how different she has been
looking lately. It’s been coming on for the last six months. She’s
looked positively hag-ridden. And you have just admitted that she
hasn’t been able to sleep.”

“What is your diagnosis?” I demanded coldly. “An unfortunate love
affair, I suppose?”

My sister shook her head.

“_Remorse_,” she said, with great gusto.

“Remorse?”

“Yes. You never would believe me when I told you she poisoned her
husband. I’m more than ever convinced of it now.”

“I don’t think you’re very logical,” I objected. “Surely if a woman
committed a crime like murder, she’d be sufficiently cold-blooded to
enjoy the fruits of it without any weak-minded sentimentality such as
repentance.”

Caroline shook her head.

“There probably are women like that—but Mrs. Ferrars wasn’t one of
them. She was a mass of nerves. An overmastering impulse drove her on
to get rid of her husband because she was the sort of person who simply
can’t endure suffering of any kind, and there’s no doubt that the wife
of a man like Ashley Ferrars must have had to suffer a good deal——”

I nodded.

“And ever since she’s been haunted by what she did. I can’t help
feeling sorry for her.”

I don’t think Caroline ever felt sorry for Mrs. Ferrars whilst she was
alive. Now that she has gone where (presumably) Paris frocks can no
longer be worn, Caroline is prepared to indulge in the softer emotions
of pity and comprehension.

I told her firmly that her whole idea was nonsense. I was all the more
firm because I secretly agreed with some part, at least, of what she
had said. But it is all wrong that Caroline should arrive at the truth
simply by a kind of inspired guesswork. I wasn’t going to encourage
that sort of thing. She will go round the village airing her views, and
every one will think that she is doing so on medical data supplied by
me. Life is very trying.

“Nonsense,” said Caroline, in reply to my strictures. “You’ll see. Ten
to one she’s left a letter confessing everything.”

“She didn’t leave a letter of any kind,” I said sharply, and not seeing
where the admission was going to land me.

“Oh!” said Caroline. “So you _did_ inquire about that, did you? I
believe, James, that in your heart of hearts, you think very much as I
do. You’re a precious old humbug.”

“One always has to take the possibility of suicide into consideration,”
I said repressively.

“Will there be an inquest?”

“There may be. It all depends. If I am able to declare myself
absolutely satisfied that the overdose was taken accidentally, an
inquest might be dispensed with.”

“And are you absolutely satisfied?” asked my sister shrewdly.

I did not answer, but got up from table.