Appointment with Death

get into deep waters

"I'm sorry, but I do hate this differentiation between the sexes. 'The modern girl has a thoroughly businesslike attitude to life!' That sort of thing. It's not a bit true! Some girls are businesslike and some aren't. Some men are sentimental and muddle-headed, others are clear-headed and logical. There are just different types of brains. Sex only matters where sex is directly concerned."

The illusion that freedom is the prerogative of one's own particular race is fairly widespread.
Dr. Gerard was wiser. He knew that no race, no country and no individual could be described as free. But he also knew that there were different degrees of bondage.

Lady Westholme, who was fond of travelling in out-of-the-way countries, always took a small revolver with her. She was cleaning this when it went off accidentally and killed her. Death was instantaneous

I obtained Lady Westholme’s fingerprints today without her being aware of the fact. If these are sent to the prison where Mrs Boynton was once a wardress, we shall soon know the truth when they are compared with the files.’

She only made two slips. One was to say a little too much—the description of the torn breeches—which first drew my attention to her, and the other was when she mistook Dr Gerard’s tent and looked first into the one where Ginevra was lying half asleep. Hence the girl’s story—half make-believe, half true—of a sheikh in disguise. She put it the wrong way round, obeying her instinct to distort the truth by making it more dramatic, but the indication was quite significant enough for me.’

‘Did you not tell me that Lady Westholme had been quite near you in Jerusalem when you spoke to Mrs Boynton? It was to Lady Westholme that Mrs Boynton’s words were addressed. “I’ve never forgotten anything—not an action, not a name, not a face.” Put that with the fact that Mrs Boynton had been a wardress in a prison and you can get a very shrewd idea of the truth. Lord Westholme met his wife on a voyage back from America. Lady Westholme before her marriage had been a criminal and had served a prison sentence.

‘You see the terrible dilemma she was in? Her career, her ambitions, her social position—all at stake! What the crime was for which she served a sentence in prison we do not yet know (though we soon shall), but it must have been one that would effectually blast her political career if it was made public. And remember this, Mrs Boynton was not an ordinary blackmailer. She did not want money. She wanted the pleasure of torturing her victim for a while and then she would have enjoyed revealing the truth in the most spectacular fashion! No, while Mrs Boynton lived, Lady Westholme was not safe. She obeyed Mrs Boynton’s instructions to meet her at Petra (I thought it strange all along that a woman with such a sense of her own importance as Lady Westholme should have preferred to travel as a mere tourist), but in her own mind she was doubtless revolving ways and means of murder.

The only point where her plan went astray was the replacing of the syringe. Dr Gerard returning so soon upset her scheme. She hoped he might not have noticed its absence, or might think he had overlooked it, and she put it back during the night.’

Lady Westholme was quick. She caught her by the wrist and injected the stuff. Mrs Boynton half cried out—tried to rise—then sank back. The “Arab” hurried away with every evidence of being ashamed and abashed. Mrs Boynton shook her stick, tried to rise, then fell back into her chair.

‘Five minutes later Lady Westholme rejoins Miss Pierce and comments on the scene she has just witnessed, impressing her own version of it on the other. Then they go for a walk, pausing below the ledge where Lady Westholme shouts up to the old lady. She receives no answer. Mrs Boynton is dead—but she remarks to Miss Pierce, “Very rude just to snort at us like that!” Miss Pierce accepts the suggestion—she has often heard Mrs Boynton receive a remark with a snort—she will swear quite sincerely if necessary that she actually heard it.

having ascertained just what Miss Pierce (the only witness likely to be awake) was doing, Lady Westholme returned to her tent, put on her riding breeches, boots and khaki-coloured coat, made herself an Arab head-dress with her checked duster and a skein of knitting-wool and that, thus attired, she went boldly up to Dr Gerard’s tent, looked in his medicine chest, selected a suitable drug, took the hypodermic, filled it and went boldly up to her victim.