I don’t know what I meant to say to say. The only answer was the bang of the outer door.
Honestly, Harrison, I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t know whether I’ve been a skunk or a moral citizen. I don’t know whether I’ve warned a guilty man, or betrayed an innocent one, or the other way round. But I’m feeling like hell about it, because – well, frankly, because I cannot believe that an innocent man would have such a water-tight alibi.
It’s perfectly obvious he came here to ram the alibi down my throat. But it is an alibi. I’m enclosing the paper with the names and addresses he wrote down so pat. You can investigate it all, if you like, but it’s certain to be sound. He knew it. He was perfectly confident. Besides—
Anyway, I won’t touch it. It makes me sick.
I’ve finished that statement, by the way. Here it is. I hope to God the whole thing comes to nothing and I never hear of it again. I ask you, as a favour, to leave me out of it if you can.
Yours very truly,
J. Munting
51. Statement of Paul Harrison [Continued]
Disregarding the hysterical tone of his last few sentences, I felt that on the whole Munting was right, and had behaved with more discretion and public spirit than I had credited him with.
It was obvious to me that Lathom was losing his nerve. As to his guilt, I had by now no shadow of a doubt. The blatant way in which he had marked his trail, right up from Manaton to London and back again, and his determination to let Munting know all about it, were actions entirely inconsistent with the carelessness of an innocent man. The trouble was that he was now on the alert. At any minute he might take alarm and bolt. On this account, I decided to waste no valuable time in checking his alibi. The fact that he had produced it with such confidence left me no hope of breaking it down; moreover, some of the inquiries were of a sort that could only be made satisfactorily by the police.
It was evident that I must abandon the whole idea of a return to Manaton. Only one possibility was left, namely, that the poison had been left in such a place that my father was bound to add it to the dish of fungi himself; and that this manoeuvre had been carried out before Lathom left for London.
I knew that all the foodstuffs in ‘The Shack’ had been carefully analysed and found harmless, with the exception of the half-eaten dish of fungi itself. I was, therefore, forced to conclude that the poison had been added to the beef stock in which the fungi were stewed. Anything else would be dangerous, for the presence of muscarine in, say, the salt or the coffee would be a circumstance so suspicious as to impress even the coroner’s jury.
There was nothing difficult about this. The stock would have been prepared from Monday’s delivery of shin of beef. It was my father’s habit always to keep a pan of stock simmering on the hob. By Thursday morning there would probably be just sufficient left to cook his evening meal, after which he would boil up the new supply of shin for the rest of the week.
Now, in what form would the poison have been added? Not in the solid form, for my father would have noticed the presence of fungi in his stock. But a teacupful of poisonous liquid might easily have been poured in at any moment. I was, therefore, brought back to my previous idea that Lathom managed to procure the Amanita muscaria and decoct the poison during my father’s absence from the hut.
But how I was ever to prove this, I did not know. I had plenty of evidence of motive and opportunity, but nothing that could put the crime beyond any reasonable doubt in the minds of twelve good and true jury-members. And besides, I was by no means satisfied of Lathom’s ability to identify Amanita muscaria with certainty. Was there no easier and more reliable method by which he might have obtained the stuff? Was it possible, for instance, to buy muscarine? If so, and if one could trace the sale to Lathom, there would be genuine evidence of criminal intent. For what innocent reason could an artist require muscarine?
The difficulties of the thing stared me in the face. Even if muscarine was procurable commercially (which I thought very unlikely, for, so far as I know, it has no medicinal use), it was impossible for me, as a private individual, to broadcast an investigation among all the chemists in the country. Only the police could do that, and I could not set the police to work without producing the very evidence which was the object of the search. There were not only chemists – there were all the research laboratories, too. The thing seemed hopeless.
At this point the word ‘laboratories’ struck a chord in my mind. Had not there been something in the Munting correspondence about a laboratory?
I had not paid much attention to the passage when I first read it, because my mind had been taken up with the idea of Lathom’s having gathered the fungi on the spot And, indeed, the facts had been so buried in a lot of vague twaddle about the origin of life and other futile Muntingesque speculations that I had skimmed the pages over in disgust, but when I turned back to the letter I cursed myself for not having given it fuller consideration before.
Two facts emerged very clearly from the welter of surrounding nonsense:
1. That Lathom had been shown a collection of poisons, apparently kept where anybody could easily get at them; and
2. That Leader had drawn the special attention of the party to certain synthetic, or laboratory-made poisons, indistinguishable by analysis from natural vegetable products.
Here at last was something definite. Supposing that a bottle of muscarine had by any chance formed part of the collection, what was easier than for Lathom to have helped himself to it?’
I did not know whether it was possible for an outside person to penetrate the laboratories of St Anthony’s College unchallenged, but this I could easily find out by the simple process of going there. Probably I should only have to ask to see some doctor or student. Lathom, for instance, could have asked to see this man Leader, whom he already knew. Leader might very well be able to give us some help in the matter. Munting was my point of contact with Leader, and the next step was obviously to go round and get a note of introduction.
Munting, of course, showed great unwillingness to interfere in the matter. His interview with Lathom seemed to have upset him badly. At length, however, I persuaded him that he had a duty in the matter.
‘If you refuse to help me,’ I said, ‘and I am able to prove the murder, you will be something very like an accessory after the fact.’
Mrs Munting, who, in practical common sense, is worth ten of her husband, agreed with this point of view.
‘It would be very unpleasant if you got into trouble about it, Jack. I do think if Mr Lathom really has done this dreadful thing, you oughtn’t to stand in the way of getting it found out. A man like that is very dangerous. And they say that when a poisoner has once committed a murder and got away with it, he is very likely to try it again. It might be you or young Mr Harrison next time.’
‘Do you really think so?’ he muttered unhappily.
‘I do. And oh, Jack! Do think of the awful cruelty of letting that poor man die such a painful, lingering death, all alone in that place, without a soul to come near him. Anyone who could do that would be an absolute monster. I don’t care what excuse he had.’
‘That’s been haunting me,’ said Munting – and he did look very white and ill. ‘All right, Harrison. I’ll see it through. Look here, I’ll come along to the place with you.’
We walked in complete silence till we came to St Anthony’s. There were numbers of people passing in and out through the wide entrance, and nobody took the slightest notice of us.
‘I think the labs are up this staircase,’ said Munting, leading the way. ‘And here’s where we hang up the hats and coats,’ he added, rattling his umbrella into a hat-stand placed inside the heavy swinging door.
‘Is that usual?’ I inquired.
‘We did it last time,’ said Munting, ‘I remember it distinctly. And as the idea is to see whether it’s feasible to roam unchallenged about the place, we may as well look as much like the inhabitants as possible. If Lathom did come
here poison-hunting, he’d scarcely omit that precaution.’
Having thus shed the outward insignia of visitors, we found ourselves in a wide corridor, smelling faintly of chemists’ shops, with numbered doors on either side. A few men in white overalls passed us, but took no notice of us. We walked briskly, as though with a definite objective, and, selecting at random a door near the end of the corridor, pushed it boldly open.
A big room, full of sinks and tables and well-lit by large windows, presented itself to our view. A student sat at a bench near us with his back to the door. He was boiling something in a complicated apparatus of glass tubes over a Bunsen burner. He did not look up. Over by the window four men were gathered round some sort of experiment, which apparently absorbed all their attention. A sixth man, mounted on a pair of steps, was searching for something in a cupboard. He glanced round as we entered, but, seeing that we did not look likely to assist him in finding what he wanted, ignored us, and, coming down, went up to the student with the apparatus.
‘What’s become of . . .?’ (something I didn’t catch) he asked irritably.
‘How should I know?’ demanded the other, who was pouring some liquid into a funnel and seemed annoyed at the interruption. ‘Ask Griggs.’
We backed out again, unregarded, and tried another door. Here we found a small room, with a solitary, elderly man bending over a microscope. He removed his eye from the lens and looked round with a scowl. We begged his pardon and retired. Before we had closed the door, his head was back at the eyepiece again, while his right hand, which had never stopped writing, continued to take notes.
We intruded, with equal ease and equally unchallenged, into a lecture-room, where forty or fifty students were gathered round a demonstrator at a blackboard; into two more laboratories, one empty and the other containing two absorbed men and a dead rabbit, and finally into a fourth laboratory, where a dozen or so students were laughing and talking and seemed to be waiting for somebody.
One of these, having nothing particular to do, came forward and asked if we wanted anybody in particular. Munting replied that he was looking for Mr Leader.
‘Leader?’ said the student. ‘Let me see. He’s a second-year man, isn’t he? Where’s Leader, anybody know?’
A young man in spectacles said he fancied Leader was in Room 27.
‘Oh, yes, to be sure. Try 27 – along the corridor on the right, up the steps and the second door on the left. If he’s not there, I expect they’ll be able to tell you. Not at all, pleasure.’
We found our way to Room 27, and there, among a group of students, found Leader, who greeted Munting with loud demonstrations of joy. I was introduced, and explained that I was anxious for a little information, if he could spare the time.
He led us to a quiet corner, and Munting reminded him of his previous visit with Lathom and the conversation about synthetic poisons. He was only too delighted to assist us, and led us along at once to another room, inhabited only by the usual couple of absorbed men in a far corner, who took no notice of us.
‘Here you are,’ said Leader, cheerfully, displaying an open cupboard stacked with glass bottles. ‘Convincing demonstration of the way we’ve got Mother Nature beat. Synthetic thyroxin – same stuff you produce in your own throat, handy and available without the tedious formality of opening you up. A small daily dose gives you pep. Camphor, our own brand, cures cold and kills beetles. Take a sniff and admire the fine, rich, natural aroma. Cinchona, all my own work, or, strictly speaking, Professor Benton’s. Adrenalin – that’s the stuff to make your hair stand on end; full of kidney punch. Muscarine – not so pretty as scarlet toadstools, but just as good for giving you tummy-ache. Urea—’
‘That’s very interesting, isn’t it?’ said Munting.
‘Very,’ said I. My hand shook a little as I took the bottle from Leader. It was a squat, wide-mouthed glass jar, about half-full of a whitish powder, and clearly labelled ‘Muscarine (Synthetic) C5H15NO8’.
‘It’s rather deadly, I suppose,’ I added, with as much carelessness as I could assume.
‘Fairly so,’ said Leader. ‘Not quite as powerful as the natural stuff, I believe, but quite disagreeable enough. A teaspoonful would settle your hash all right, and leave a bit over for the dog. Nice symptoms. Sickness, blindness, delirium and convulsions.’ He grinned fondly at the bottle. ‘Like to try some? Take it in a little water and the income-tax won’t bother you again.’
‘What’s it made of, Leader?’ asked Munting.
‘Oh – inorganic stuff, you know – all artificial. I couldn’t say offhand. I can look it up if you like.’ He hunted in a locker and produced a notebook. ‘Oh, yes, of course. Cholin. You start with artificial cholin.’
‘What’s that? Something to do with the liver?’
‘Well, yes, in the ordinary way. But you can make it by heating ethene oxide with triethylamine. That gives you your cholin. Then you oxidise it with dilute nitric acid – the stuff you etch with, you know. Result, muscarine. Pretty, isn’t it?’
‘And if you analyse it again chemically, could you tell the difference between that and the real stuff?’
‘Of course not. It is the real stuff. I don’t think we’ve got any of the natural muscarine about the place, or you’d see. But there’s no difference at all, really. Nature’s only a rather clumsy kind of chemist, don’t you see. You’re a chemical laboratory; your body, I mean – so am I – so’s everybody – only rather a careless and inaccurate one, and given to producing unnecessary flourishes and ornaments, like your face, or toadstools. There’s no need to make a toadstool when you want to produce muscarine. If it comes to that, I don’t suppose there’s any real need for your face – from a chemical point of view. We could build you up quite easily in the labs if we wanted to. You’re mostly water, you know, with a little salt and phosphates and all that kind of thing.’
‘Come, Leader, that won’t quite do. You couldn’t make me walk and talk, could you?’ (This was Munting, of course.)
‘Well, no. There’s a trifling hitch there, I admit – always supposing anybody wants to hear your bright conversation.’
‘Then there is something – what I call Life – which you can’t imitate.’
‘Well, yes. But I daresay we shall find it some day. It can’t be anything very out-of-the-way, can it? I mean, there’s an awful lot of it knocking about. The trouble is, one doesn’t seem to be able to find it by chemical analysis. If one could, you know, it would probably turn out to be something quite ordinary, and then one could make it.’
‘The lost formula of Rossum’s Universal Robots, eh?’
‘Very likely,’ said Leader, ‘that’s a play, isn’t it? I never go to high-brow plays. All rot, you know – more in your line. But there it is. Analyse you and you’re just so much dead matter. Analyse toadstools, and you get this muscarine stuff. Makes one think a bit less of the marvels of Nature, don’t it?’
‘Except,’ said Munting, who had by now mounted on his usual hobby-horse, ‘except for the small accident of Life, which is, as you say, a triviality, no doubt, but yet—’
I interrupted him.
‘We don’t want to waste Mr Leader’s time with metaphysics.’
‘No,’ said Munting, obstinately, ‘but what I want to know—’
A tremendous clattering of feet in the corridor heralded the throwing open of the door and the irruption of a large number of young men in overalls.
‘Oh, Lord,’ said Leader, ‘we’ll have to clear out.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I say, do you mind if I barge off? There’s a demonstration I’ve simply got to attend. Nuisance, but I’m rather behind with Dimmock’s subjects. Must mug it up somehow. Awfully pleased to have seen you. Can you find your way out?’
‘Just a moment,’ said Munting. ‘You remember the fellow I brought with me last year – Lathom – the artist?’
‘Yes, of course – the fellow who was so keen on poisons. Asked such a lot of questions about the right dose, and was so struc
k with our synthetic stuff. Didn’t seem able to get over the fact that you couldn’t distinguish artificial muscarine from the natural product by chemical analysis. Very intelligent bloke I thought he was – for an artist. I remember him perfectly. Why?’
‘Have you seen anything of him since?’
‘No. Why?’
‘I just wondered. He said something once about looking you up.’
‘Well, he didn’t. Perhaps he came in the vac. There’s nobody here then, except the swots and the dunces trying to cram themselves for the exams. Tell him to come in term-time. I really must buzz along. I say, come and feed one night, won’t you?’
Munting promised to do so, and Leader escaped, cannoning violently into the demonstrator as he dashed out. We followed, not wishing to be caught and interrogated.
‘That was Benton,’ said Munting, looking back at the closing door. ‘I wish we could have had a word with him. If Leader—’
‘About the origin of life, I suppose? You’re cracked about the origin of life. It’s the origin of death we’re investigating. We’ve got what we came for. It’s clear enough that anybody might have walked in and helped himself to a dose of that stuff. Look at those places we went into. No one to stop us – and it’s term-time, too. In the vac. the place is absolutely deserted. If Lathom was over here in the vac. – and he was. Don’t you remember those letters of Margaret Harrison’s? He was here in July.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Munting, thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I quite see that. But the difficulty is to prove it. Just because it’s so easy to get in, it’s a million to one against anybody having noticed you. And you can’t expect a jury to accept a vague possibility like that. If there was any analysable difference between natural and synthetic muscarine, then, of course, you would have something genuine to go upon. Because it would be quite impossible to eat synthetic muscarine by accident – except in a laboratory. But apparently there is no difference.’
This sobered me. I had been feeling that we were well on the way to solve the problem. But now I saw very clearly that we were just as far away as ever. No jury in the world would accept this involved and unsubstantiated theory. True, people are ready enough to believe that an adulterer is very likely a murderer as well. But if it comes to the question of probability, which will they rather believe? That a man elaborately stole a rare and incomprehensible laboratorly product which none of them have ever heard of, and elaborately administered it under involved and peculiar circumstances? Or that an eccentric experimenter with ‘unnatural’ foods accidentally poisoned himself with toadstools? The answer is obvious.