‘What in hell brings you to this part of the world?’ Merrill’s smile came back again as Sergeant Parry opened the door as if he’d heard someone outside, then he closed it and stood with his back to it.
‘We have come to invite you to assist us in the inquiries we are making about Mr. Stone’s illness,’ Superintendent Larrabee said. He made it sound reasonably conversational.
Merrill frowned. ‘I know he’s been sick, but he’s all right again now; I spoke to him on the phone yesterday. Anyway, I should have thought Dr. Griffiths was the person you want. He’s Stone’s doctor and all that.’
‘You see,’ Superintendent Larrabee said, ‘Mr. Stone was all right when he came to dinner at your house. But he was taken ill soon after he arrived home. I believe you were not taken ill?’ He made it sound halfway between a statement of fact and a question.
‘No, I was all right.’
‘And his wife was not taken ill?’
‘Mrs. Stone was all right; yes.’
‘Can you explain why Mr. Stone alone should have been taken ill?’
Merrill shot him a look, his eyebrows drew together; his pale blue eyes glittered. ‘What the devil is this? Why should I know any more than anyone else why he was ill?’
‘You can’t imagine why he should have been found to have been suffering from arsenical poisoning?’
‘Arsenical poisoning? Good God, was that what it was? But look here, Inspector Owen,’ and he turned to the uniformed figure. ‘You’re not suggesting I gave him arsenic, are you?’
‘At the moment, sir,’ Superintendent Larrabee said quietly, and Merrill’s gaze came back to him, ‘we’re not suggesting anything. I’m merely trying to ascertain the facts. Would you care to make a statement?’
‘I don’t mind making a statement,’ Merrill said briskly. ‘But I don’t see what the matter has got to do with me. What do you want to know?’
The detective didn’t answer him. He sat there for a moment, pinching his thin nose with a bony finger and thumb. He spoke very softly. ‘And then there’s your late wife; we may have to make some inquiries about her.’
Merrill scowled at him incredulously. ‘My late wife?’
‘She died suddenly, didn’t she?’
‘Hardly, poor darling, she was ill some few weeks, but again I suggest you’d better ask Dr. Griffiths about that. He knows all about it.’ He stared at them, his look searching their faces, one after the other; then he shrugged as if he had suddenly been transported to another plane of thought. ‘But if you want a statement from me, about her or Stone, you can have it. I’ve nothing to hide.’
‘You understand you are not obliged to say anything.’ The other’s tone was extremely warm and sympathetic. ‘But anything you do say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence.’
‘What does all that twaddle mean?’ Merrill’s voice was suddenly irritable.
‘It’s the usual caution to make quite clear that the statement you make is a purely voluntary one, and that it may be used in evidence if there should be any proceedings.’
‘Any proceedings?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘All right,’ Dick Merrill said, with a glance round as if humouring his visitors. ‘I’m quite willing to make a statement.’
‘To assist us in our inquiries?’
‘If I can help you, I will.’
What he said was carefully written down by Sergeant Parry; and when the statement was completed Inspector Owen read it over to Merrill, who sat back listening.
‘I have never had any arsenic in my possession,’ his statement said. ‘I have never had any need for it. I recall now that my wife may have had some arsenic for use in the garden. We had a fairly large garden at the back of our house, known as Fancy. I remember now the lawn at the back became infested with weeds, and my impression is that my wife purchased some arsenic to kill them.
‘I think I may have suggested that she could get some arsenic from a local chemist for use in killing weeds. I’m almost sure it was Ivor Pryce. I think Ellen, my wife, always went to Pryce. She would be well-known there. So far as I know she used the arsenic for killing weeds.
‘If any was left over it must have been thrown away, because I haven’t seen any since. I certainly have not ever had any either at home or at my office. I think my wife got the arsenic two or three months before she died. She died last January.’
Dealing with her death, Inspector Owen read out what Merrill had said: ‘My wife and I lived fairly happily together. I married her nine years ago. She was five years older than I. She had been left quite a bit of money by her father, and quite frankly I suspected that people thought I married her simply for that. But although I was not deeply in love with her, I was very fond of her.
‘Mrs. Stone and I were no more than friends. My wife was ill for about a month, and then she died. She had been getting very depressed at times, and I used to wonder whether she had taken anything to end her life. But she plainly hadn’t, because I understood from Dr. Griffiths that she had died from Bright’s Disease and acute gastritis.’
Dealing with Stone’s illness: ‘It is a complete mystery to me. If Mr. Stone suffered from arsenical poisoning, I’ve no idea where the poison came from. It certainly did not come from me. I have no motive whatever for seeking to put an end to his life.’
Merrill put his signature to each page of the statement, and Inspector Owen folded it and put the sheets of paper in his inside pocket. Superintendent Larrabee said the police would pursue their inquiries, and that if they needed any further information he had no doubt that Merrill would give them what assistance he could.
‘Any time,’ Merrill said.
Superintendent Larrabee said he would like to know who looked after Mrs. Merrill during her illness. Merrill said they had a housemaid named Gwladys Williams.
Sergeant Parry dropped the others back at the police station, and went over in the police car to interview Gwladys Williams in a nearby village, where she lived with her widowed mother. What she told him led him to ask her to come along to the police station and meet Inspector Owen and the men from Scotland Yard.
‘I did not like the way Mr. Merrill was carrying on,’ she said bluntly to Superintendent Larrabee. ‘I never liked him very much. I’m sure he was already deceiving her with Mrs. Stone before his wife died. Anyway, you know Mrs. Stone used to come to Fancy after Mrs. Merrill died.’
Inspector Owen looked surprised. Gossip had not got hold of this titbit.
‘I saw her there with him kissing one night. I heard him say: ‘Why don’t you leave him?’ And Mrs. Stone said: ‘I can’t do that, Dick, much as I love you.’ ‘
The conference at the Castlebay police station late that same afternoon reviewed the way things looked. And it did not look too simple to handle.
‘He’s a cool customer,’ Superintendent Larrabee said, as he sat in Inspector Owen’s office with the latter and Sergeant Pitt over a cup of tea. ‘Got his wits about him. He knew perfectly well that his wife had bought arsenic and that we shouldn’t have much difficulty in tracing it. So he slips in that she was buying it for killing weeds. You’ll call on Pryce and all other chemists in the district, Serg.’
Sergeant Pitt nodded, while Larrabee turned to Inspector Owen. ‘You remember he even went so far as to say that he may have suggested to his wife that she should buy arsenic for spraying and killing weeds. Very frank of him. Or could be he’s relying on the fact