Free Waiting for Orders by Eric Ambler

evidence, Doctor! Juries like it. If you can produce one scrap of evidence to show that we’ve got the wrong man, I’ll be glad to hear it.’
    Dr Czissar’s back straightened and his cow-like eyes flashed.‘I do not like your condescension, Assistant-Commissioner!’ he said sharply. ‘I, too, am busy. I am engaged on a work on medical jurisprudence. I desire only to see justice done. I do not believe that, on the evidence you have, you can convict this young man under English law; but the fact of his being brought to trial could damage his career as a doctor. Furthermore, there is the real murderer to be considered. Therefore, in a spirit of friendliness, I have come to you instead of going to Harold Medley’s legal advisers. I will now give you your evidence.’
    Mercer sat down again. He was very angry.
    ‘Attention, please,’ said Dr Czissar. He raised a finger. ‘Arsenic was found in the dead man’s kidneys. It is determined that Harold Medley could have poisoned his father with either salvarsan or neosalvarsan. There is a contradiction there. Most inorganic salts of arsenic – white arsenic, for instance – are practically insoluble in water, and if a quantity of such a salt had been administered, we might expect to find traces of it in the kidneys. Salvarsan and neosalvarsan, however, are trivalent organic compounds of arsenic, and are very soluble in water. If either of them had been administered through the mouth, we should not expect to find arsenic in the kidneys.’
    He paused; but Mercer was silent.
    ‘In what form, therefore, was the arsenic administered?’ he went on. ‘The tests do not tell us, for they detect only the presence of the element, arsenic. That arsenic will also by that time be present as a sulphide. Let us look among the inorganic salts. There is white arsenic; that is arsenious oxide. It is used for dipping sheep. We should not expect to find it in Brock Park. But Mr Medley was a gardener. What about sodium arsenite, the weed-killer? We heard at the inquest that the weed-killer in the garden was of the kind harmful only to weeds. We come to copper arsenite. Mr Medley was, in my opinion, poisoned by a large dose of copper arsenite.’
    ‘And on what evidence,’ demanded Mercer, ‘do you base that opinion?’
    There is, or there has been, copper arsenite in the Medleys’ house.’ Dr Czissar looked at the ceiling. ‘On the day of the inquest, Assistant-Commissioner, Mrs Medley wore a fur coat. I have since found another fur coat like it. The price of the coat was 400 guineas. Inquiries in Brock Park have told me that thislady’s husband, besides being a rich man, was also a very mean and unpleasant man. At the inquest his son told us that he had kept his marriage a secret because he was afraid that his father would stop his allowance or prevent his continuing his studies in medicine. Helena Murlin had expensive tastes. She had married this man so that she could indulge them. He had failed her. That coat she wore, Assistant-Commissioner, was unpaid for. You will find, I think, that she had other debts and that a threat had been made by one of the creditors to approach her husband. She was tired of this man, so much older than she was. Perhaps she had a young lover with no money to spend on her. But you will find these things out. She poisoned her husband. There is no doubt.’
    ‘Nonsense!’ snarled Mercer. ‘Of course, we know that she was in debt, but lots of women are. It doesn’t make them murderers.’
    Dr Czissar smiled gently. ‘It was the spinach which the dead man had for luncheon before the symptoms of poisoning began that interested me,’ he said. ‘Why give spinach when it is out of season? Tinned vegetables are not usually given to an invalid with gastric trouble. And then, when I saw Mrs Medley’s paintings, I understood. The emerald sky, Assistant-Commissioner. It was a fine, rich emerald green, that sky – the sort of emerald green that the artist gets