Читать книгу Killer Kay - Edgar Wallace - Страница 4

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"So far from Thorley being a millionaire," explained Dr. Kay through his cigar, "he is a very poor man. He had lived unhappily with his wife, who was immensely wealthy and who, unknown to him, had made a will leaving all her property to her brother. Thorley is a governor of the Wormwood Fever Hospital, and it is the practice of that hospital to dispatch to a special laundry any bedclothes that have been in contact with patients suffering from malignant infectious diseases. These articles are packed in antiseptic red paper and are immediately put, paper and all, into a disinfecting tank before they are washed. Three days before Lady Thorley became infected, he called at the hospital and, as was his practice, stopped his little car, which he drove himself, under the open window of the room in which the infected linen was kept. He made a tour of the hospital without attendance, and it is known that he went into the soiled-linen room. After he had gone a parcel containing pillow-slips was missing, though very little attention was given to the matter at the time. The parcel had been tossed into the car through the open window.

"Lady Thorley died of malignant scarlet fever. There is no doubt that Sir John, in the absence of the nurse, for she was suffering from a nervous breakdown at the time, placed an infected pillow under her head. When he found that Boyd had the money, he killed Boyd. He allowed the Colonel to get drunk, dragged him downstairs in the middle of the night and arranged a suicide. Unfortunately for him, Boyd was wearing loose slippers, which fell off in the bedroom when he was lifted. They were found afterwards neatly arranged under his bed. Suicides aren't so tidy as all that."

"Have you analysed the saccharine tablet?" asked Frank in a hushed voice.

Killer Kay nodded.

"If your young friend had swallowed the coffee containing that tablet, she would have died this morning, and the doctors would have diagnosed the case without hesitation as one of acute ptomaine poisoning."

"But why did he want to kill her—the money would have gone to her cousin in Canada?"

The Killer chuckled softly.

"She signed a will in Thorley's favour. She didn't know that it was a will. The draft he gave her made provision for a mythical woman to whom Boyd was indebted. The document she signed, and which was witnessed in her presence, was a will. I think I shall hang Thorley, if he doesn't die of fright."

But Sir John Thorley was not hanged, nor did he die of fright. In searching him, the jailer bad overlooked a small grey pellet in his waistcoat pocket. Sir John found it in the middle of the night.