The Master Must Die by John Russell Fearn

Author:John Russell Fearn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, detective, science fiction sleuth, locked room
ISBN: 9781479403134
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2014-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

Element of death

Returning to his home and laboratory Quirke wasted no time in giving his instructions over the visiphone to those ‘thick-necked and not particularly erudite gentlemen’ who were to carry out the exhumation of Gyron de London deceased.

“Which means,” Quirke said, when he had a late tea sent into the laboratory for himself and the girl, “that you can now either quit for the day, m’dear, and go out with your boyfriend or give yourself a beauty treatment—or you can stay with a fat old man whilst he bounces ideas against you until the body comes.”

Molly shrugged. “I’ve no ties, so I may as well stay with the fat old man, providing he doesn’t ask me to examine that corpse.”

“Seriously, my dear, I won’t.” Quirke ate a sandwich with amazing daintiness considering his bulk. “Now let me bounce a few ideas and see how you react to them. Firstly we have the warnings which purported to come from Mars, and we also have two very likely suspects—even three—who had Martian connections at that time Namely, young de London and his part-Martian wife and Miss Turner. Right, let us examine them. First Miss Turner could have written, or rather contrived, the warnings and then have had them sent on by a friend at a given time. Correct?”

“Correct,” Molly agreed, pouring out tea.

“Why then,” Quirke asked, reclining in the big chair, “did she diffuse her activities to include Rogers? Why tell him at the same time?”

“One possibility,” Molly said. “Maybe—and I’m not trying lo be funny. A.Q.—the Turner creature is in love with Rogers and writhed to see how the old man kicked him around. Unable to control her glee at having discovered a watertight way of killing old man de London she had to tell Rogers too, assuring him he would soon be released from slavery.”

“Very ingenious, but the idea of Miss Turner being in love—” Quirke exploded and nearly choked over his sandwich. In about thirty seconds he came up for air, thumping his barrel of a chest.

“I gather,” Molly said, raising an eyebrow, “that the idea of Miss Turner being romantic does not convince you?”

“Hardly!” Quirke gulped for breath and mopped his face. “No, I think you’re dead off the beam there my dear. And yet your hypothesis is interesting insofar that it provides the one and only possible reason for Miss Turner being the culprit. Love of Rogers, hatred of her boss’s behaviour towards him. On the other hand cutting out the Rogers’ romantic angle, did she hate her boss so much that she wanted lo kill him?”

“Very probably. I imagine she was a girl with bright ideas, then she went into his employ but he smashed the life out of her, same as with everybody else. Possibly, having reached sour spinsterhood, she spent her off-time figuring out a way of wiping de London off the map.”

Quirke raised a thick finger. “Ah! Assuming all this m’dear, how do we reconcile the arid index-bound Miss Turner with

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