Death at Breakfast. John Rhode

all the row was about.’

      So there had been a row. Hanslet had already suspected as much. And then he had a bright idea. ‘Look here, Miss Harleston!’ he said. ‘I’m going to put you under the care of a friend of mine. He’ll send a message for you to your brother, and do anything else you want him to. Now, run upstairs and put on your hat, and we’ll go out and get a taxi.’

      He watched her go upstairs and into a bedroom, the door of which she shut behind her. It might have been her brother’s room, but he had to take that risk. However, she appeared again a few minutes later, dressed to go out and carrying her bag. Hanslet met her at the foot of the stairs. ‘Perhaps you had better give me your keys,’ he suggested.

      Without protest she handed over a bunch, which Hanslet put in his pocket. ‘Now, I’ll just write a note to this friend of mine,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll be ready to start.’

      He took out his notebook, and scribbled a few lines on a blank leaf. ‘Dear Jimmy. This is Miss Janet Harleston. Keep your eye on her till further orders. Let her send any messages she likes, but secure a copy of them. She is not, at present, to be detained.’

      They went out of the house together, and walked as far as the Fulham Road. Here Carling was still on duty. Hanslet beckoned to him, and drew him aside. ‘Get a taxi, and take this lady to the Yard,’ he said. ‘She’s not under arrest, so treat her as politely as you can. When you get there, ask for Inspector Waghom and give him this note.’

      Carling saluted. A purring taxi was stopped, and he helped Janet into it, clambering in beside her. Hanslet watched them drive off. He went to a nearby telephone box, and put through two calls, one to the divisional police surgeon, the other to the police ambulance station. Then he returned to number eight, Matfield Street, where he went into the sitting-room and sat down in the most comfortable chair. He was in no hurry. Plenty of time to get things straight in his mind before he started looking about.

      The case was a very simple one. The dead man and his sister had been the sole occupants of the house. That cleared a bit of complications out of the way, at the very start. There was no uncertainty as to the cause of death. Oldland had said that it had been due to acute poisoning. Oldland was a cautious chap. He would not have committed himself so definitely, if he had not been certain.

      In such a case, there were three possibilities to be considered. In the first place, accident. For instance, Harleston might have put poison in his early tea, in mistake for his usual daily dose of Kruschen. In the second place, suicide. He might deliberately have poisoned himself, though this, on the face of it, seemed unlikely. And in the third and last place, murder. The poison might have been administered by somebody with intent to kill.

      If the evidence pointed to murder, there was only one person upon whom suspicion could fall. His half-sister. Nobody else had had access to him, by her own admission. The visionary figure standing on the doorstep, even had he really existed, could have had no connection with the crime, since Harleston had obviously taken the poison before he appeared on the scene.

      Hanslet had not been very favourably impressed by Janet Harleston. She had told her story readily enough. Almost too readily, perhaps. But she had displayed very little sign of grief at her brother’s death. She had almost given Hanslet the impression that the event was a relief to her. She showed a lack of half-sisterly feeling, to say the least of it. And, by her own confession, she had quarrelled with her brother, as recently as the previous day.

      The superintendent rose from his chair, passed into the hall, and went upstairs. He opened the door of the room into which he had seen Janet go. Her bedroom, quite obviously, from the articles which it contained. This room had a window looking out over Matfield Street. Next to it was a smaller room, used as a box-room. On the other side of the landing were two doors, one leading into a bathroom and lavatory, the other into a second bedroom. Both these rooms had windows looking out at the back of the house, over the tiny plot of untended garden.

      This second bedroom was certainly the one occupied by Victor Harleston. The bed was unmade, and his striped pyjamas had been carelessly thrown upon it. Hanslet’s eye was immediately caught by the tray which stood on the table beside the bed. This was obviously the tray upon which Janet Harleston had brought her brother’s early tea. Hanslet examined the objects which stood upon it. A tea-pot, about one-third full of tea, now cold. A cup and saucer, the former containing dregs. A sugar-basin, with a few lumps of sugar in it, and a milk-jug, about half-full.

      Hanslet examined the room with considerable care. But he could find nothing unusual about it, nothing for instance, which might suggest poison. There was no bottle or other receptacle which seemed in any way suspicious. He passed into the bathroom. This was in a state of considerable disorder, but again it appeared to contain nothing suspicious. He went downstairs again. The ground floor of the house he had already explored, and he continued his way to the basement. Here he found a kitchen, pantry, scullery and larder. There was nothing in any of them beyond the usual food and appliances to be expected in such places.

      He was still poking about when he was summoned by a loud knocking on the front door. His visitor proved to be the police surgeon, Doctor Bishop.

      ‘Well, Superintendent, what have you got here?’ the latter asked in a business-like tone.

      ‘Come inside,’ Hanslet replied, ‘and I’ll show you.’

      The two went into the sitting-room where the body still lay. Doctor Bishop listened attentively to the superintendent’s account of what had happened.

      ‘Oldland,’ he said. ‘Yes, I know him. Very sound chap. If he said the man died of acute poisoning, you may take it that he did. Your trouble is I suppose, to find out where the poison came from.’

      ‘I’ve a pretty good idea of that already,’ Hanslet replied. ‘Look here, doctor. The man had a cup of tea soon after seven. He had nothing else until he drank a cup of coffee about half an hour later. Immediately after taking the coffee he was violently ill. No amount of poison in the coffee would act so quickly as that, would it?’

      ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Doctor Bishop thoughtfully. ‘It would seem more reasonable to suspect the tea.’

      ‘That’s just what I thought. Now then, doctor, if you’ll be good enough to come upstairs I’ll show you the whole outfit still untouched.’

      They went up to Harleston’s bedroom. Dr Bishop removed the lid of the teapot and sniffed its contents.

      ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, ‘I shouldn’t care to drink that tea. Here, smell it for yourself.’

      Hanslet followed his example.

      ‘It smells to me more like rank tobacco than tea,’ he said.

      ‘Yes,’ replied Dr Bishop. ‘And that’s the characteristic odour of nicotine, a most virulent poison of which two or three drops would probably be fatal. I don’t think you need look much further for the cause of this man’s death. But what I can’t understand is how he came to drink the decoction which smells like this. And it probably tastes even filthier than it smells, but I shouldn’t advise you to try. I’ll take the contents of the teapot and the dregs in the cup and send them to the Home Office for analysis.’

      ‘We’d better look round and see if there’s any more nicotine about the place, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Just to make sure.’

      They searched the house, but without any further results. The coffee on the dining-room table had no suspicious smell, but Dr Bishop decided to send this for analysis just as a matter of precaution. The food in the kitchen and larder appeared to be equally free from nicotine. And then it occurred to Hanslet that if Janet Harleston had administered the poison, the most likely place to look for it was in her room. They went upstairs again. Conspicuous in the centre of Janet’s dressing table was a bottle labelled ‘eau-de-Cologne’ and containing a liquid of a dark brown colour. Dr Bishop looked at this suspiciously.

      ‘I’ve never seen eau-de-Cologne that colour before,’ he said.

      He took the stopper from the bottle and applied