The Story Behind the Verdict/Chapter 4

Dr. Ince, who was the first witness to enter the box, said that on the evening of the i6th inst. he was called out about 8.30. His wife had been indisposed and was already in bed. He was detained all night at a confinement case, and knew nothing of the circumstances until he returned home about seven in the morning to find the street main overflowing, water flooding the gutters, a policeman on the doorstep, a fireman in the dining-room, two salvage men on the staircase, disorder and a smell of smoke throughout the house. He heard that his wife had been severely burnt and was now in St. Michael's Hospital. He went round there as soon as he had washed and changed his clothes.

He explained that he was a St. Michael's man himself and had no difficulty in obtaining admittance even at that early hour. He found his wife conscious, although in considerable pain. She told him that she had had a cigarette in bed and must have fallen asleep. The first thing she remembered was a feeling of suffocation, then all at once she saw that the bedclothes were in flames and the room full of smoke. She remembered her terror and frantic attempts to reach the bell.

Dr. Ince was visibly affected in recalling his wife's words. In reply to a question he said he believed she was in the habit of taking hot whisky or rum and water by way of a nightcap. She was a heavy sleeper.

Dr. Ernest Trollope, the next witness, senior house physician at St. Michael's, deposed that Mrs. Ince was brought there about eleven o'clock on the night of the 16th inst., suffering from extensive burns, which he proceeded to describe, and also from shock. The burns were dressed with boracic lotion, and she was given an ounce of brandy. Dr. Trollope then detailed the further treatment, and said the patient progressed satisfactorily during the two days she remained in the hospital. At the expiration of which time, at the request of her husband, but with his own full concurrence, she was removed to a nursing home in Fitzroy Gardens, where she passed into the care of Dr. Leonard Boyne.

"She died, I believe, two days later?" the coroner asked.

"Four days later," Dr. Trollope corrected.

"Do you attribute her death in any way to her removal to the home?"

"I know nothing of the case after she left the hospital," the witness answered punctiliously and a little stiffly.

Dr. Leonard Boyne was then called. But he was not in court, and Dr. Ince rose in his place and asked if he might make a statement. Leave having been given, he said Dr. Boyne had been offered, and accepted, a post in the Midlands, and it having been advisable to proceed to take up his duties at once, he (Dr. Ince) thought it unnecessary for him to remain in London for the purpose of giving evidence here. His good friends. Sir Daniel Custance and Dr. Gregory, two of the most distinguished physicians in London, had seen his wife in consultation, separately and together, during the four days she was in the nursing home in Fitzroy Gardens. They were both in court, and ready to tell the jury what had occurred.

The two distinguished physicians, one after the other, gave practically identical evidence. Sir Daniel said that at Dr. Ince's request he saw the deceased on the morning of the 20th inst., two days after she had left the hospital, and again in the afternoon with Dr. Gregory. Jaundice had appeared, and the patient was obviously extremely ill. Dr. Leonard Boyne was present as well as Dr. Ince. They all agreed in diagnosing a duodenal ulcer that had opened into the bile duct, a not uncommon result of shock from extensive burning. She died on the fourth day, the colour and general condition confirming their diagnosis.

The coroner asked Dr. Gregory if he was right in assuming that the actual cause of death was acute jaundice, accruing on the shock of the burns.

Dr. Gregory made a few technical observations which puzzled and bored the jurymen, but was understood to agree on the whole with the coroner's summary.

The jury were then directed to their finding, and a verdict of "Death from misadventure" was placed on record. There was no post-mortem.

But for the interest in the verdicts of coroners' juries taken by that well-known and brilliant young littérateur, Mr. Keightley Wilbur, nothing more might ever have been heard of this case, which, superficially at least, appeared of an ordinary nature, concealing no story and suggesting nothing unusual or significant. Mr. David Devenish, of the Daily Grail, was quite satirical when Keightley brought up the subject over luncheon at the Savoy grill.

"You are suffering from inquestitis. Having made up your mind that the object of an inquiry before a coroner is always to conceal a story or a crime, you will soon be at the point where no one will be run over or fall from a ladder, where no cyclist will collide with a cow, where there won't be a breakdown in the tube, or a railway accident, a fire or a fall of masonry, without your seeing some, thing mysterious in the occurrence."

"The Dominie Devenish! Thanks, dear sir, for your little lecture. Have you by any chance read the evidence in this case?"

"I have."

"And seen nothing unusual in it?"

"The woman smoked in bed and set the bed-clothes on fire. Possibly she had a posset and slept heavily. No, I can't say I saw anything at all out of the way in that."

"Well, I will presently add a little more to your meagre information and inadequate imagination. But first I'll order lunch. What are you going to have? What a sybarite you are! Foie gras and entrecote à la minute." To the attendant waiter he added: "Bring me two poached eggs on anchovy toast and a cup of coffee." And then went on: "Do you happen to know Dr. Ince?"

"Even so."

"You know he has a large theatrical practice?"

"That, too."

"And meets most attractive and beautiful women?"

"Are you going to suggest that he left his confinement case, rushed back to Clarges Street and committed arson in order to rid himself of his wife?"

"Is thy servant a dog?"

"You don't mind if I go on with my lunch, do you? You asked me if I knew Dr. Ince. I have known him more or less well for a number of years. I don't want to interrupt your ride on your fiery and untamed hobby-horse, but I am going to suggest that in this particular instance you are riding for a fall. Ince is a very good fellow."

"Did you know his wife?"

"I knew he had a wife."

"And that she was not Milly Mordaunt."

"Milly Mordaunt!" David answered with a touch of scorn.

"Milly is all that you imply; more. But her red hair and skeletonia are quite attractive," Keightley answered, thoughtfully stirring his coffee.

"If you wish to suggest that Ince was on friendly or even intimate terms with Milly I may tell you it is secret de Polichinelle."

"But I don't, oh sapient sir! Ince's wife was an octoroon, ignorant, jealous of him, and, of late, had acquired the habit of lifting the little finger."

"According to Milly?"

"According to Milly. I admit of this last item she was my informant."

Keightley was quite good-tempered, David's satire made no impression on him.

"Ride on," said the journalist.

"Ince is of attractive appearance, popular with women, clever in his profession, a rising man. You will admit that he was handicapped by such a wife as I describe?"

"But I won't admit that he set her on fire, and then went back to tell Milly."

"Don't you think it a curious thing that the doctor in charge of the case was not there to give evidence? That his place was taken by two consultants who, as you know, are more or less dependent on general practitioners; professors of medical etiquette, skilled in the art of non-committal."

"It had not occurred to me."

"The truth now. Am I not beginning to interest you?"

"Every man is interesting when on his hobby." David leaned back in his chair and used his tooth-pick. "I am going to have an omelette au rhum, so you may bolt along, over any obstacles or tracts of flat commonplaces. What else have you learnt from Milly about Ince's wife? By the way, Ince will not materially improve his position if he made a funeral pyre for his wife in order to marry Milly!"

"You think badly of her?" Keightley asked with uplifted eyebrows.

"Don't be absurd."

"She is one of the best dancers on the variety stage," he said meditatively.

"Possibly."

"However, that is not the point. Every man to his taste. You, for instance, may prefer musical comedy."

David reddened, and Keightley at once apologised.

"Sorry. It slipped out."

There was one subject never mentioned between those two men; Keightley had forgotten, and now apologised. They were friends, almost intimates. The link that bound them was one of common interests and daily association. They frequented the same eating-houses, were members of the same clubs. But there were deep-lying and essential differences between them. Devenish was a man of reticences and reserves, ten years, at least, the other's senior. Keightley Wilbur was an easier man to summarise. The essence of him was an acute and almost passionate egotism. He was ultra-modern, and until recently one had said that nothing absorbed him but literature and his own contribution to it. David Devenish was watching his new development closely, and although aware of its origin, wondered what it portended and where it would lead.

Now, when Keightley persisted in pursuing the Ince matter and was urgent for his sympathy, he soon yielded.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked.

"You've got your fellows at the Daily Grail who are a cross between reporters and detectives. Find out for me, through them, where Ince was all that night—at what confinement?"

"Anything else?" David asked him with a dry smile. "Do you want to know whether it was a boy, or a girl, or twins?"

Keightley disregarded him and went on:

"And whether Dr. Leonard Boyne took up that appointment What was the appointment in the Midlands that was so urgent Dr. Boyne could not even delay to take it up for a couple of days? Who obtained it for him?"

"Milly has nothing to do with your particular interest in this case, by the way, I suppose? You are not trying to cut out Ince, by any chance?"

"I've done with women, my dear fellow," Keightley sighed sententiously. "I've no use for them."

"Oh, yes, of course; I forgot that. You are nearly twenty-eight, and an anchorite. …"

"I'll tell you an astonishing thing: you won't believe it, but I'll tell you all the same. There is only one woman in the world that I care to talk to for more than half an hour at a time, who has the brains to understand and the capacity to hold me."

"And this remarkable and unique woman?"

"My mother."

David had almost forgotten that Wilbur possessed such a luxury, although he had more than once been entertained at their house.

"And I suppose you are an only son?"

Keightley smiled and knew what the supposition meant. But he did not resent it, rather the contrary.

"She knew I was a genius before the world did."

"And is she pleased that you are now devoting yourself to the coroners' courts?"

"Whatever I do is right in her eyes."

"I suspected it," David replied unfeelingly.

Two or three evenings later, Keightley, seeing Ellaline Blaney supping with David as usual, strolled up to them.

"Sit down," said David: "I've got some news for you."

"And I for you," answered Keightley, sending for a chair, and telling Ellaline at the same time that he had been at the Gaiety that night and found her in fine voice.

"Dr. Ince was not engaged on the whole of the evening of the 16th at a case, as he testified. He supped with Milly Mordaunt at Murray's."

"Good. And now for mine. If Dr. Leonard Boyne took up an appointment in the Midlands his people knew nothing about it. My mother met his sister at a bridge party. She said her brother had been ill, was suffering from a nervous breakdown. My mother asked who was attending him, and she said 'Dr. Ince.’"

"Is that that nice Dr. Ince who comes to all our first nights?" Ellaline asked innocently. "Wasn't that awfully sad about his wife? Did you see it in the papers? She was smoking in bed and set the clothes on fire. I've never had a cigarette in bed since," she went on, "except in the mornings."

"I did not know you knew Ince," David said to her.

"Oh, everybody knows Dr. Ince," she answered, "he's such a dear. I think his eyes are so beautiful, don't you? He's been awfully kind to lots of girls I know."

"Do you know Milly Mordaunt?" Keightley asked quickly, unthinkingly.

"No, I do not," Ellaline answered with a toss of her head, and emphatically, her colour rising. "I don't know any of that sort."

"My apologies."

But she was offended with him after that and would hardly speak. He left them shortly. He had forgotten there are as many grades in the half as in the whole world, and that the great music-hall artiste might not be considered a fit associate for the  of the musical comedy stage.

"Will you be here to-morrow? I'll see you to-morrow, then," Keightley said to David as he went. He had a sense of relief in escaping, and was glad that it was David and not he who would have Ellaline's wrath to assuage. But he was amused, too, and thought Milly might be. Milly really moved in most excellent society; Keightley himself had met her in the company of an English duchess, an American divorce, and a Russian millionaire, when she was playing in the revue at the Calambra Palace Theatre.

When Keightley Wilbur got home it was somewhere about three in the morning, for he had stayed late at the Garrick Club discussing crime with Harry Irving. He went straight to his mother's room.

"Are you awake, mater?" he asked, after knocking at the door, but going in without waiting for the answer.

"Well, if I were not, I am. You have taken care of that."

Keightley's mother was almost as unusual as himself, and would have had a personality if his had not absorbed it. Left a widow at six and twenty, with one little boy who already represented the past, the present, and the future, she had set her entire mentality and heart on becoming the perfect mother. She would have accomplished it but that he developed too quickly for her, and she became instead an intimate and appreciative companion: their relationship really rare and wonderful. For she respected his intellect and he admitted that it proved her own.

"You must get hold of that sister of Boyne's and find out where he is. I couldn't go to bed without telling you. I've got Devenish interested now, and H. B. We must find out what happened. I woke you, didn't I?"

"It doesn't matter: I can sleep to-morrow. I wish I could remember the woman's name."

"Why, Boyne, of course."

"No, she was married. I'll think of it presently. If not, I can find out from Mrs. Charteris."

"The thing has got on my mind. I feel as badly about it as Macphail did over the Mornington Ransby matter. I'm perfectly certain Ince killed his wife, and I must know how he did it. I can't paint"

"You never could, you know," she reminded him, "nor even draw."

"I mean I can't write."

"Never mind, you still dress very well."

"Quite true, old woman. What a comfort you are to me. You'll find out, won't you, as quickly as possible? If you've been in bed since ten you've had quite a lot of sleep already. You could ring up Mrs. Charteris as early as nine, I should think."

"But you don't want to be called so soon?"

"I? No! But I want it all cut and dried when I do get up. I don't want to have to wait. I want Leonard Boyne's sister's name and address; and to hear how one can get at her."

"I'll do my best."

She never even mentioned that she had not gone to bed at ten but at one, and that she, too, liked to sleep late in the morning.

With his shaving water at eleven o'clock next day Keightley got a pencilled note from his mother.

"Dr. Leonard Boyne's sister is Mrs. Devereux, 204 Lexham Gardens. Her brother is staying with her. I can ask her here to dinner and bridge if you like, and put you next to her at the table."

"Say the answer is 'Yes, please, and the sooner the better,’" he told the man.

He heard later on, before he went out, that a little party of six had been arranged for the following evening. His mother told him.

"You can talk to Mrs. Devereux as long as you like without spoiling the game. If you want to go out afterwards it leaves us a table of five."

"If the entire selection of a mother had been left to me I should have chosen you. I can never be sufficiently grateful to my father for having made the discovery in time."

At fifty it is good that a woman who has never had a lover should find one in her son. Mrs. Wilbur was the happiest of her sex and bore the impress of it on her young and distinguished face. Both mother and son had the same bright dark eyes and slender grace.

On the night of the bridge party, in her clinging black crêpe de chine dress and fine rope of pearls, she justified his quickly forthcoming admiration; her neck was thin and white, almost like a girl's, and her hair was sleek and black like his own.

"We're a handsome couple," was all he actually said when he met her in the drawing-room, but she saw the appreciation in his eyes.

"It's a pity your nose is so long," was her reply.

He walked over to the looking-glass and adjusted his tie.

"Is it? I rather like it."

Then the first of the guests were announced. Three of them were merely people who played bridge; a bald stockbroker, a heavy major, and a flat-chested woman with restless, bony hands. Mrs. Devereux, who was assigned to Keightley, was young, rather pretty, and nervously flirtatious. Keightley's reputation was known to her, and she was soon all in a flutter with his strange speeches and implication of having become immediately enamoured. Her hair was fair and as fluffy as her mind. Although she had not thought of it before, she was soon persuaded her husband did not understand her, and that there were depths in her, hitherto unrevealed, to which Keightley Wilbur alone had the key. Keightley did this sort of thing very well indeed, although he was seldom able to keep it up for any length of time. Before dinner was over Alma Devereux was persuaded her host's desire to meet her brother was due to the necessity he felt of getting into closer touch with herself and she had already invited him to tea!

"Leonard is a little like me in some things: we are very fond of each other, but he is not at his best just now. Did you see that case in the paper about a Mrs. Ince who was burnt to death? She was a patient of his, and he was fearfully upset when she died like that."

"I think I did see something about it. He gave evidence at the inquest, didn't he?"

"Oh, no. Dr. Ince thought it better not, it had taken such a hold upon his mind."

"Dr. Ince?"

"Such a charming man, so kind and sympathetic, and devoted to Leonard."

"Not too kind and sympathetic to you, I hope."

She blushed unbecomingly, too near her ears, and said:

"Oh, no: only to Leonard. He offered to pay his expenses if he went a sea voyage. Dr. Ince thought that would be the best thing for his nerves. You know doctors attend each other and their wives for nothing. Dr. Ince said as Leonard was a young man and just beginning practice he must accept a fee."

"The sea voyage was to be the fee?"

"Yes."

Keightley made his escape after dinner without going upstairs again, but explained his disappearance credibly.

"Now that we have talked together like this I should not care to see you with counters or cards, winning or losing money, engaged sordidly. …"

She said eagerly she would just as soon not play at all this evening. But he only sighed in response, as if he realised that to ask such a sacrifice from her would be unfair, as yet.

"To-morrow, at four-thirty, I will come and see your brother, your house, your surroundings, you, in your own setting."

He collected her fan, her gloves, her bag—she was the sort of woman who drops everything—looked sentimental until she had followed his mother out of the room, and then swore at her softly.

He told David that night that the clue was in his hands.

"Did you ever play hide-and-seek, Devenish? I'm getting hot, I'm as near it as possible. What's the betting that by this day week I shall be able to show you how right I've been all through?"

He was excited, triumphant, and David answered coolly:

"Anything is possible, even that you should be right"

"We'll dine together, not here, but at the club. Meet me at the Buckingham at 8.15 a week from to-day. See if I haven't a story for you."

"The food is better at the Orleans."

"The Orleans, then."

Keightley found the Lexham Gardens house very much what he expected. There were palms in blue pots and inferior water-colour drawings on white-papered walls, a parlourmaid over-capped and aproned, obviously inquisitive, and the fair and fluffy mistress of the house over-dressed and excited. But for the brother he would have found the visit difficult to get through. He was not offered a cigarette: there were too many cakes with the tea, cakes with sugared tops and filled with cream that came too obviously from a confectioner's.

Dr. Leonard Boyne was about seven- or eight-and-twenty, tall and awkwardly built. He had thick fair hair, badly cut; a loose mouth half open, big, awkward hands. He sprawled on a chair too small for him and talked as if he had adenoids.

Keightley was most elegantly incongruous with this brother and sister. Alma longed that callers should come in and see him here. When her wish materialised, and a golfing girl in a last season's hat was ushered in, Keightley found the opportunity for which he had been waiting.

"Ought you to be in doors all day?" he asked the doctor. "I know you'v'e been seedy, but surely the open air is a good thing. Come for a spin with me in the car. Don't you think that would be good for him, Mrs. Devereux?" Mrs. Devereux hurriedly thought it would, and hastily feared it would not. Keightley said softly:

"There is no use my staying now," and implied the golfing girl was in the way.

Finally, and with intense relief, he found himself outside, with his prize secured and lounging by his side in a big check overcoat and an impossible hat. Having given the chauffeur instructions, Keightley found his heart was actually beating a little faster than usual, and he was more excited than he had been since he corrected his first proof. He had given himself a week, but he thought now there was no reason his self-imposed task should not be more quickly accomplished. The sooner the better. Otherwise he saw himself condemned to other afternoon teas with Alma, sending her flowers, making love to her; an immense sacrifice in the cause of truth and justice.

"I told the man to take us to Burford Bridge; it's the best way out of London. What knocked you up like this? You look strong enough."

"Worry," was the answer. And he added hastily, "I'm not as strong as I look."

Dr. Leonard Boyne, unlike Mr. Keightley Wilbur, did not wish to talk about himself, although Keightley did his best to draw him out, not only on this, but on several subsequent occasions. The worst of it was that the young sawbones did not really know what a condescension it was that a Keightley Wilbur should be seeking his friendship. He was really simple-minded and should have been a parson. The first confession he made to Keightley was that he had been "shoved into medicine." It appeared he had an uncle with a large country practice and no son.

"I suppose that is where you were going when this Ince case intervened?" Keightley asked carelessly.

Five days he had been driving him out, sitting with him in Alma Devereux's uncongenial drawing-room, yet this was the first real opening. Leonard Boyne answered lightly:

"Oh, no. There was no idea of my going there for another two or three years."

To-day they were in the dining-room at Carlton House Terrace. Lunch, at which Mrs. Wilbur had declined to join them, was over. She had admitted to finding Keightley's new friend uncongenial.

"It is one of the few drawbacks of gambling, that nice people, like ourselves, don't do it. As I must play cards I have to consort with all sorts and conditions of men and women, but I am not going to encourage your associating with their impossible relatives."

Keightley had had to remind her that he had a reason for seeking the society of Dr. Leonard Boyne.

"I am sorry you don't like him, but I must bring him here all the same. I really can't take him to any of my clubs. Look at his clothes and his boots! Heavens! Mater, if ever I should be ill, you will be careful about my medical attendant, won't you?"

"Of course. I wouldn't think of sending for anybody who did not dress from Poole or Scholte."

"Quite a good idea. However, I feel very fit at the moment, and I think I shall get what I want from this lout. The Lexham Gardens furniture is coming between me and my rest, and a man can't be confidential in a motor."

This conversation had taken place that very morning. Dr. Boyne looked almost as incongruous in Carlton House Terrace as his host had done in Lexham Gardens. But Keightley was getting impatient. Five days out of the seven he had given himself were already gone.

When Dr. Boyne said he was not joining his uncle for two or three years, Keightley asked quickly:

"You are going to practise in London, then?" and whilst they were waiting for the next course pressed him as to his future plans.

"I don't know at all: I can't make up my mind. I had such bad luck with my first private case," the doctor began, hesitatingly.

He had eaten his plover, and the baba that followed it, was making play now with biscuit and cheese. Keightley felt glad he had given him Pommery, and now pushed the port towards him. "Such awful bad luck," Boyne said again, accepting the port, not testing and tasting it, as gentlemen should, but tossing it off gloomily.

"Losing your patient?" Keightley kept cool with difficulty.

"It wasn't only that …"

The tongue of Dr. Leonard Boyne was now really unloosened.

Two days later found Keightley Wilbur in the hall of the Orleans Club, waiting for David Devenish. He was in immaculate evening dress, his eyes brilliant, and his habitual air of being the only person in the world that mattered extraordinarily intensified.

David said, even before he was relieved of his coat:

"So you know all about it?"

"I told you I should. But how did you guess?"

"You look as if you were just going to flap your wings and say 'Cock-a-doodle-doo!’"

"What a difference there is between a journalist and a literary man! I could never have used a simile as stale as that."

"Couldn't you? That's a pity."

Now they were in the dining-room.

"Here, take the menu, Devenish: you'd better do the ordering. My tastes are simple. I always wonder why you don't put on flesh with all you eat."

"Talk about yourself, please, not about me." David's sense of personal dignity was acute. "Isn't there another play or poem due? I won't hear your story until after dinner."

"I'm collecting material. There is a drama and a half in this Ince story, to say nothing of a lever de rideau, a music-hall sketch, and a scene in a revue. …"

"I absolutely refuse to hear it until I've dined."

"I've a dashed good mind not to tell you at all."

David laughed scoffingly.

"As if you could keep that, or anything else, to yourself!"

They dined, and the Orleans justified itself. David selected with circumspection and deliberation the particular size of Upman cigars he affected, the liqueur, and gave minute directions for the preparation of his cup of Turkish coffee. Then, and not until then, he was ready for the story Keightley had come there to tell him. Keightley had mentioned meanwhile the amazing brilliancy of a new poem he was projecting for the Review.

"I will guarantee there is more bad language in it than in any recent poem: coarser words and finer thoughts, more perfect technique …"

"There is a time for everything. On to the hobby-horse! Ride; and I'll smoke meanwhile. Did Ince set his wife on fire?" David asked.

"No. But I never make a mistake. …"

"Say 'hardly 'ever.’"

"Never. He did not set his wife's bed on fire. But he was responsible for her death."

"You have definite evidence—incontrovertible?"

"Absolutely. But I knew it without any evidence; I have an instinct, a flair, it is growing in me, too. I knew when I read the case that there was something behind it. …"

"I had almost as soon believe that I would commit a murder myself," David commented reflectively, cutting the end of his cigar, tasting his coffee.

"Or I," said Keightley coolly.

David eyed him critically.

"You will end by giving yourself up," he said with conviction.

"Nothing I should ever do would surprise me. But I have the mater to think of. You know we've never talked that out. I was half-dazed with opium. I hadn't the least idea Pierre Lamotte couldn't swim. We were within half a dozen yards of the shore: there was a skiff and a dinghy outside. I don't want to excuse myself, but if you must bring it up"

"Well, go on about Ince."

"I will. But don't make any mistake: I have always been prepared to defend myself. I say, wouldn't it make a sensation! Wouldn't it sell the papers! 'Confession of Keightley Wilbur. How Pierre Lamotte Met with His Death!' But I can't do it," he added regretfully, with an impatient sigh. "I spend my whole life concealing myself candidly from the mater. I explained the whole affair to her so elaborately and disingenuously that I can't go back on it. And the worst of it is I can't quite remember what I did tell her. Anyway, she knows my interest in inquests dates from then. Isn't it strange, Devenish, what sacrifices we sons make for our mothers?"

"Astounding. But about Ince?"

"Devenish, I believe I am on the way to becoming a great criminologist. That affair of mine has given me a marvellous intuition—insight."

"Tell me a little more about yourself," David said satirically.

"You don't know anyone like me, do you?"

"I should be vaccinated against it."

Keightley smiled.

"Here goes, then. I will my tale unfold. …"

"A tale unsold."

"Don't be frivolous. Listen! When Ince was quite a young man, through with his examinations, and waiting for a hospital appointment, he went out as ship's surgeon on a cruise round the West Indian Islands. In Jamaica he met, loved, and most hastily married a beautiful octoroon."

"The said Eulalie."

"On his return to England Ince got a hospital appointment, and in some odd way, I don't know exactly how, it led him to take a special interest in pharmaceutics. Note this, because it is important.

"The marriage was not a success. Ince was clever and his wife stupid—more stupid, although it may seem to you impossible, than the average Englishwoman of middle class. She was the daughter of a planter, barely educated, a Eurasian. She knew nothing of housekeeping and lived on her emotions. Ince, presumably, is also emotional, but when his first amorousness was exhausted he found himself tied to something capable of jealousy, but not of sacrifice, greedy of his time and attention, exacting."

"I know the type; it comes also from Kensington."

"She was extravagant, like all idle women. And, of course, as long as Ince was doing really good work, he was not being well paid for it. To satisfy or silence her, he went into general practice: but succeeded in doing neither. She made him talk of his patients and grew promptly jealous of them. In fact, to put it shortly, she led him a devil of a life! That was before she took to drink. Afterwards, as you may imagine, things were no better. Altogether, she was not a very agreeable companion. A year or two ago he began to supplement her with Milly. Secret de Polichinelle, as you say. Milly sprained her ankle, and Ince signed the bulletins: her condition necessitated constant attention from her physician. Eulalie thought him over-attentive, and there were scenes. … What would have happened had there been no accident I do not know. Is there such a word as hindermate? There ought to be. There are so many more of them than helpmates."

"Keep to your theme. I'll discuss etymology with you another time."

"I've got you guessing, haven't I? Mrs. Ince probably went to bed fuddled the night she set the bedclothes on fire. But that's by the way. Ince, as you know, spent his evening with Milly. She is quite great in the new revue. At Murray's they supped and tangoed, and he saw her home. Then you get his return to the devastated house in Clarges Street and his visit to the hospital.

"When the idea came into his mind I don't know: nobody will ever know. I'll give you facts; you must draw your own conclusions. In the hospital Ince could do nothing. So he yanked her out of it and into a nursing home. Medical etiquette decreed he could not doctor her himself. He therefore selected for her attendant Dr. Leonard Boyne, also a St. Michael's man, who, he must have known, was an ass. Now mark what occurs. I have it straight from Boyne, who knows nothing of all I have just told you, who is convinced he was responsible for his patient's death, who has no idea he was merely a tool, an instrument.

"In the hospital Mrs. Ince's burns had been dressed with boracic lotion. In the nursing home an aqueous solution of picric acid was substituted—a newer and later treatment. At whose suggestion? Boyne does not remember: he cannot say. He thinks it was his own idea. But, of course, it wasn't; he is not the sort of man to have ideas, only to adopt them. Anyway, he has a very clear recollection of saying to somebody, possibly to one of the nurses, that it was a dry and disagreeable dressing. Why not combine it with lanoline; make it into an ointment? Now, who said that? Who could have said it? Not the patient herself; most improbably a nurse. 'I suppose it must have come suddenly into my head,' the poor fool told me. Within twelve hours of the wounds being dressed with this preparation the patient became deeply jaundiced: within forty-eight she was dead!"

"What had happened?" David asked. "I don't follow you."

"The lanoline had carried the picric acid poison through the system, as any experienced pharmaceutist must have known that it would! Mrs Ince neither died from burns nor from duodenal ulcer. She died of picric acid poisoning! "

He broke off.

"Wasn't it deuced clever and subtle, Devenish? Boyne wrote the prescription. Ince says he could not have made such a suggestion, such a mistake; he has explained the impossibility, and Boyne believes him. One could make Boyne believe almost anything. Wasn't it devilish … and brilliant?"

David answered slowly:

"What about the two specialists? Didn't they ask how the wounds had been treated? Didn't they know the effect of lanoline in combination with picric acid?"

"You have to remember that fetish of medical etiquette again, and the fact that work not paid for is generally work scamped. These men saw Ince's wife in consultation with Ince, and without a fee. Do you think they went very carefully into matters, or that Ince had any fear that they would, with him to guide them in the wrong direction? They went there to do Ince a cheap kindness, and they got away again as quickly as possible."

Keightley then went more into detail, and explained how Ince had worked upon Boyne's fears, talking to him of "culpable ignorance," "negligence," expressing himself doubtful as to what view a jury might take. He confused all the issues, finally agreeing to cover Boyne's error, but binding him to silence, entangling him in his silence, and presently in his gratitude.

"I'd have sworn to Ince," David said in the end, involuntarily, the exclamation breaking from him.

"Would you? I dare say you would. There is something of the altruist about you for all your affectation of cynicism."

"I could tell a story showing the other side of Ince's character," David Devenish said more slowly. "It isn't a nice job you've taken on, Wilbur; a spy is a useful person in war, but in private life. …"

Keightley reddened.

"Who said anything against Ince? That which is illegal is not invariably immoral. The woman would have ultimately drunk herself to death, destroying his and her own self-respect first. I'd like to open the whole question of justifiable homicide. I'll do a column for you if you like, and give you my own case, without names, as an illustration. Jove! wouldn't they talk! As for being a spy, I'm a psychologist, an investigator, a student of life."

David rose impatiently, and threw his cigar into the fire.

"It is a sickening world," he said. "I am going down to the theatre. Are you coming my way?"

"You are not going to print this story, then?"

You knew that, didn't you, when you told it me?"

"Well, yes, I suppose I did."

There is one thing," said the journalist cynically, when they got into the street, "retribution lies in wait for him."

"How?"

"You told me he was going to marry Milly. Don't you think that will be punishment enough? What sort of wives do these public women make; these egoists on the hearth, applause ringing in their ears, deafening them to household sounds?"

"So you know that now," Keightley answered as he hailed a taxicab.