Free Waiting for Orders by Eric Ambler Page A

when there is aceto-arsenite of copper in the paint. The firm which supplies Mrs Medley with her working materials will be able to tell you when she bought it. I suggest, too, that you take the picture – it is in the Summons Gallery – and remove a little of the sky for analysis. As to the administration, you will find that the spinach was prepared at her suggestion and taken to her husband’s bedroom by her. Spinach is green and slightly bitter in taste. So is copper arsenite.’ He sighed. ‘If there had not been anonymous letters –’
    ‘Ah!’ interrupted Mercer. ‘The anonymous letters! Perhaps you know –’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ said Dr Czissar simply. ‘The daughter, Janet, wrote them. Poor child! She disliked her smart stepmother, and wrote them out of spite. Imagine her feelings when she found that she had – how do you say? – put a noose about her brother’s throat. It would be natural for her to try to take the blame herself. Good afternoon, and thank you,’ he added.
    ‘Good afternoon,’ said Mercer wearily. The telephone rang.
    ‘The Commissioner to speak to you, Sir,’ said the operator.
    ‘All right. Hullo … Hullo, Sir Charles. Yes, I did want to speak to you urgently. It was’ – he hesitated – ‘it was about the Brock Park case. I think that we shall have to release young Medley. I’ve got hold of some new medical evidence that – All right, Sir Charles, I’ll come immediately.’

The Case of the Cycling Chauffeur
    I T was generally felt by his subordinates at Scotland Yard that the best time to see Assistant-Commissioner Mercer was while he was drinking his afternoon tea. It was at teatime, therefore, that Detective-Inspector Denton took care to present a verbal report on the Mortons Hind case.
    The village of Mortons Hind, Denton reported, was five miles from the market town of Penborough. Near the corner of the Penborough and Leicester roads, and about half a mile from the village, stood Mortons Grange, now the home of Mr Maurice Wretford, a retired City man, and his wife.
    At half past three in the afternoon of November 10, Mr Wretford’s chauffeur, Alfred Gregory, forty, had left the Grange to drive his employer’s car to a Penborough garage, which was to hammer out and repaint a buckled wing. The job could not have been finished that day, and Gregory had taken his bicycle with him in the back of the car so that he could ride home. He had never returned to the Grange. At half past five that evening a motorist driving along a deserted stretch of road about a mile from the Grange had seen the bicycle lying in a ditch, and stopped. A few yards away, also in the ditch and dead, had been Gregory. He had a bullet in his head.
    The lead bullet, which was of .22 calibre, had entered the left temple, leaving a small, circular wound halfway between the ear and the eye, torn through the brain tissue, and come to rest within half an inch of the upper surface of the left brain and immediately over the shattered sphenoid. There had been two small fractures of the skull extending from the puncture in the temporal bone, but no sign of scorching or powder-marks. This, and the fact that the diameter of the wound had beenless than the diameter of the bullet, had suggested that the shot had been fired at a distance of over six feet from the dead man’s head.
    The news of the shooting had spread quickly round the village, and late that night a gamekeeper, Harry Rudder, fifty-two, had reported to the police that that same afternoon he had seen a nineteen-year-old youth, Thomas Wilder, shooting at birds with a rook rifle not far from the spot where Gregory’s body had been found. Wilder had admitted that he had been firing the rifle the previous day, but denied that he had been near the Penborough road. His rifle had been examined and found to be of .22 calibre.
    It had not been until later that day that the post-mortem findings given above had been made known to the police. The fatal bullet had