And So To Murder by John Dickson Carr Read Free Book Online Page A

her. ‘I hope you won’t find our English ways too slow for you.’
    ‘No,’ said Cartwright, slowly and distinctly. ‘This is another person. Miss Stanton wrote Desire . She has never had any film experience.’
    Mr Fisk patted her hand.
    ‘Is that so? Then you’re still more welcome. Were you watching the takes? What did you think of them?’
    ‘She thought you took a devil of a long time over them,’ answered Cartwright, with (deliberate?) tactlessness. Monica, hot and tongue-tied, could have flown at his beard and pulled it. Her anguish was the worse in that both Frances Fleur and Howard Fisk were smiling at her. And her mind seethed with the injustice of it. She was suddenly conscious of a great shrewdness behind Mr Fisk’s pince-nez.
    ‘You mustn’t confuse patience with incompetence,’ the director told her. ‘Unfortunately, the first requisite here is patience. And the second.’ He meditated. ‘And the third. Besides, we had an unpleasant bit of business at the rehearsal.’
    ‘So?’ said Cartwright. ‘Is that why Tom Hackett told us there’d been a mix-up in which someone nearly got killed?’
    Mr Fisk was amused. He continued to pat Monica’s hand: it was beginning to make her uncomfortable.
    ‘Tut, tut! Nothing like that. Only a foolish piece of carelessness on somebody’s part. I’m going to be firm with those property men this time.’
    ‘But what happened?’
    A shade of discomfort passed over the director’s face. Still without relinquishing Monica’s hand, he turned round and nodded towards the set.
    ‘You see that water-bottle? On the table beside the bed? There – just by the door?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Though less well lighted now, the rich colours of the cabin still showed like a distant picture post-card. Again they noted the glass water-bottle on the table beside the bed, spick and span and glistening.
    ‘There was no harm done, I’m glad to say. Though Annie MacPherson got a shock, because she was nearest. We were all on the set at rehearsal, and I was explaining the business to Frances and Annie. I can’t think how it came to happen.’
    ‘Go on!’
    ‘Well, I was moving about; and making gestures, I suppose. Gagern and I were talking, and I was walking backwards, and he said: “Look out!” I bumped into that little table by the bed, and over it went. There was a sizzling kind of noise, rather unpleasant. The water-bottle had fallen off on the bed, fortunately. A whole section of the counterpane, and the sheets underneath, and even the mattress, started to shrivel and blister and rot away like wasp-holes in an apple. The water-bottle hadn’t been full of water. It was full of oil of vitriol – sulphuric acid.’

IV
The Deadly Significance of a Speaking-Tube
    1
    ‘S ULPHURIC acid?’ repeated Cartwright.
    He took the empty pipe out of his mouth. There was an expression on his face which Monica could not read.
    ‘Let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘Are you under the impression that it was a mistake on the part of the prop department?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Yes. One property-man says to another: “Oi, Bert: this bottle. There’s no water-tap handy, so just fill her up with sulphuric acid; it’s the same colour.” God Almighty!’
    ‘You don’t know the facts.’
    ‘What are they, then?’
    ‘Sh!’ urged the director, trying to make his voice louder and whirring in the effort. He released Monica’s hand, and addressed her with a confidential air. ‘That’s the trouble with these writers, Miss Stanton. Particularly Cartwright, here. All’ – he made gestures as of a balloon rising – ‘up in the air. Cartwright can see an ingenious poisoning-plot in green-apple colic. Still, we must be charitable. After all, that’s his business.’
    He looked tolerantly at the offender.
    ‘What are you suggesting, my boy? That it was deliberate?’
    ‘What do you think?’
    Fisk’s eye was quizzical. ‘I know. I know. You’re hot on the scent of mystery. It was