There seemed little doubt about the genuineness of Lady Blatchett’s loss. The police went about the busy elimination of suspects. Gladys the housekeeper had an unsullied ten years’ record and a further twelve years to her credit of faithful if not devoted service to her ladyship. Dr. Fable appeared to be a blameless practitioner and, successful, debonair and extremely well-to-do, hardly susceptible to suspicion of elaborate and well planned theft. Desiccated Miss Hodge had been twenty years in the service of this doctor or that, without a blot on her escutcheon. Enquiries in neighbouring houses were in progress, of course; but meanwhile all that remained was the little clutch of patients. And one was Miss Comfort—limpidly innocent—one, the ultra respectable mother-to-be from an address in Kensington; and the third the funny little man with the bottle of pink medicine. The police may be forgiven for concentrating with some intensity upon the little man; and since he had not gone at all into Miss Hodge’s office, for leaving this sanctum to the last in their investigations of Dr. Fable’s premises.
Miss Comfort slid up close to Miss Hodge as they sat awaiting dismissal from the police station. ‘I say, Miss Hodge, it’s a little bit awkward. I left my pills in your room.’
‘Yes, I found them,’ said Miss Hodge. ‘I put the box on my shelf.’
‘The thing is… It’s because of Dr. Fable,’ said Patsy, raising troubled blue eyes to Miss Hodge’s sharp grey elderly ones. ‘I mean, they’re—well, you know, sort of pep pills. I don’t think he really ought to have given them to me only I—I pleaded with him. I’m trying to fight it; I told him the tale a bit, he doesn’t know I’m not supposed to be on them.’ She insisted: ‘It would be so awful if through helping me he got any—well, any kind of horrid publicity. You know how ugly it can be and the press will be swarming around here soon.’
‘What can I do about it?’ said Miss Hodge.
‘If you just wouldn’t mention my having left them? Could you perhaps sort of whisk them out of sight before they start looking round your office? It’s for his sake. I do like him so much. And I think you do too?’ said Patsy, half tender, half teasing.
‘I’ll see that it’s all right,’ said Miss Hodge gruffly.
‘And not say a word to him? I swore to him I wouldn’t tell a soul, not even you.’
‘I’ll keep it to myself,’ said Miss Hodge.
A further examination, increasingly penetrating, produced nothing in the little man that might have been ‘taken internally’ along with the pink medicine. His finger-prints on the other hand were highly revealing. For Mr. Smith, the agreeable stranger of the Green Man, proved to be none other than Edgar Snaith, jewel thief, with a long and unbeautiful history behind him. He appeared to have arrived but recently in London, though a familiar face—and set of finger-prints—further up north. Usually worked with accomplices, varying them frequently. Certainly was not known ever to have associated with Dr. Fable, Miss Hodge, the pregnant lady—or Miss Comfort. Did prove, however, to have scraped acquaintance with the now deeply penitent Gladys (currently undernotice of dismissal) and had certainly elicited from her a great deal of information about Lady Blatchett’s ménage and regime. Witnesses attested to his having been seen at her front door on the previous evening; but agreed with Gladys’s indignant avowal that he had been (almost) immediately sent away; and both Gladys and Lady Blatchett herself could testify to the pearls having been in her ladyship’s possession long after he had gone. He had turned up at Dr. Fable’s two mornings earlier, declaring himself the victim of mysterious pains, his regular practitioner having been left behind when he came south. Had been a little insistent upon a second appointment being fixed for eleven o’clock this morning.
By this time it was not remarkable if the gregarious Miss Comfort, still caged up—though with all courtesy—at the police station, had fallen into chat with her fellow sufferers. The little man, however, proved resistant to her blandishments. ‘A fine mess of things you’ve made for me, Miss! The pain come on frightful and I took a swig of me stuff to ease it. What else do I carry it round for? And as for the picture—it’s my belief he’s got it upside-down, I was trying to see how it’d look if I righted it.’ Miss Comfort sh’sh’d him, to the great disappointment of everyone else present, and his voice died away to a reproachful grumble. Miss Comfort could be seen to be defending her actions. In fact she was saying, ‘It all went fine, Edgar. The Desiccated’s got them. You’ve drawn off the hunt most beautifully.’