‘On what you have told me, I don’t see that we can make a move. We’ve got to have some evidence.’
Dr. Griffiths slowly produced a specimen jar from his pocket. ‘That’ll tell you whether there’s anything in what I have been saying or not.’ The other stared at the object on the desk between them. ‘I took a sample of Stone’s urine. Don’t know what made me do it. I suppose I was instinctively worried about the poor chap’s attack.’
Inspector Owen moved briskly to the door, and called. Sergeant Parry, tall, clean-shaven, young, came in. ‘This is Dr. Griffiths. The specimen jar on the table is his. That’s so isn’t it, Doctor?’ Inspector Owen’s tone was suddenly official.
‘Yes, it is.’
Inspector Owen turned to the police-sergeant. ‘I want you to take possession of it. I am going to ring the Divisional Superintendent to see if it will be all right for you to take it to the police laboratory at Cardiff. Get the Super on the phone for me.’
Inspector Owen spoke on the telephone to the Superintendent of the division, Caernarvon, a case of suspected poisoning reported, and should he send Sergeant Parry to the laboratory at Cardiff with the specimen? Would that be all right?
All right by him, the Superintendent said and Inspector Owen hung up.
‘Sergeant Parry will take it down to Cardiff,’ he said to Dr. Griffiths.
‘Meanwhile, what about Stone?’
‘What about him?’
‘I mean, giving him a warning?’
‘You think it necessary?’
Dr. Griffiths gave a helpless shrug. ‘I’m not used to coping with suspected murder every day. I think it would be wise for him to keep away from Merrill. Until we know the truth one way or the other.’
‘I think I’d better keep quiet about it,’ Inspector Owen said. ‘If I looked in on him it might only arouse comment. You do it. You could drop a hint when you next see him. Tell him not to accept any more invitations from Merrill for the time being.’
Dr. Griffiths gave the other a nod and stood up slowly. ‘Thanks,’ he said. He smiled more cheerfully. ‘I feel a bit of a load off my mind.’
‘Not to worry,’ the other said. ‘It’s probably a false alarm, and if it is, it’s a secret between you and me. I’ll let you know what I hear from Cardiff.’
Sergeant Parry took a train early that afternoon to Cardiff, the specimen-jar bulging his jacket pocket. It was a tedious journey with two changes. He reached the laboratory at five o’clock and handed the jar to Dr. Richards, with a request for the usual analysis to be made. ‘Come back in an hour; I’ll tell you what the reaction is,’ Richards said.
Inspector Owen got the news on the telephone an hour later. Immediately after he had hung up on Sergeant Parry, he phoned Dr. Griffiths. ‘You don’t need to worry over your doubts about doing the right thing,’ he said, ‘if the information I’ve just received from Cardiff is correct.’
Next he phoned Caernarvon and spoke to the Superintendent, who in turn spoke to the Chief-Constable, named Pritchard. ‘I’ll get in touch with Scotland Yard,’ Pritchard said. He put a call through to London, and a few minutes later he was speaking to the Assistant Commissioner, Crime.
2.
That same evening Philip Vane was chatting over a drink with a caller at his flat in Jermyn Street, and he was saying he had been up at Castlebay in North Wales. His caller said what a coincidence, because he happened to know that Superintendent Larrabee had left a couple of hours ago for Castlebay. Larrabee had taken Detective-Sergeant Pitt with him, and the murder bag.
Vane suddenly recalled Dr. Griffiths landing the boss-trout, and muttering the name of Mrs. Merrill. Vane had seen Merrill a couple of days before in Castlebay. He had been with Dr. Griffiths who had told him that he had attended Merrill’s wife, who had died a few months before. Why, Vane was now asking himself, had Dr. Griffiths been so interested in a patient who had died, so that it had taken his mind off the boss-trout? Doctors aren’t usually all that anxious about a dead patient, they have enough thinking about their live ones.
Was Dr. Griffiths’s sudden interest in Mrs. Merrill for a special reason, the same reason which had sent the two Scotland Yard detectives heading for North Wales? And whereas Dr. Griffiths might no longer be interested in the late Mrs. Merrill, Superintendent Larrabee might be very interested in her death, and what lay behind it.
After Vane’s caller had gone he phoned a couple of people and then he drove through the night to arrive at Conway in the early hours. He had a feeling he would do better not to stay at Castlebay, instead he had fixed a room at the hotel at Conway.
He went down to breakfast at eight-thirty. As he went into the coffee room, there at a corner table sat Superintendent Larrabee and Detective-Sergeant Pitt.
CHAPTER FOUR
Superintendent Larrabee and Detective-Sergeant Pitt left the hotel at Conway in a police car Inspector Owen had sent, and a little while later they were in his office at Castlebay police station. Sergeant Pitt stood by the corner of the desk. Inspector Owen and Sergeant Parry sat facing the others.
‘I have asked Dr. Griffiths and Mr. Stone to come in, in case you would like to see them,’ Inspector Owen said. ‘They are outside, now. Dr. Griffiths will probably want to get away.’
Dr. Griffiths came in and sat down in front of Superintendent Larrabee, as Inspector Owen introduced them.
‘I see you attended the Merrills from about the time they first came to Castlebay,’ the Scotland Yard man said, glancing up from the papers before him.
‘I attended Mrs. Merrill. They came here about three years ago. Nothing ever seriously wrong with her, until she had her last illness. In January, six months ago.’
‘And you also attended her husband, Mr. Merrill?’
‘I think the first time would be about three or four months back. He was suffering from fibrositis, nothing serious. But, of course, I had got to know him well through my visits to his wife.’
‘Mrs. Merrill was ill for how long?’
‘She was ill for about a month.’
‘You saw her husband during this last illness?’
Dr. Griffiths nodded. ‘He was always inquiring how she was, and seemed very concerned that the illness was proving so obstinate to cure.’
‘Did you find his attitude during her illness the least suspicious?’
‘Naturally I didn’t, otherwise I certainly should not have given the death certificate.’
Larrabee flashed him a bleak smile. Dr. Griffiths wondered if he was sounding pompous. ‘It showed she died from Bright’s Disease,’ the detective said. ‘You know anything about their private lives?’
‘Nothing very much,’ Dr. Griffiths smiled back. ‘And if I did I shouldn’t think it was my duty to tell you.’
‘I understand. So far as you know they were living happily together?’
‘So far as I know.’
‘About how old was Mrs. Merrill?’
‘She was thirty-seven when she died.’
‘Her husband was younger, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, he’d be about thirty-three.’
‘It comes to this, then, Doctor. You felt no suspicion whatever about Mrs. Merrill’s death until you attended Mr. Stone the other night. Is that right?’
‘Yes; frankly, I don’t quite know why, but I thought he might be suffering from some form of poisoning, that’s why I took a specimen. I told Inspector Owen here,