Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 104, No. 4, August 22, 1936

Dr. Ruxton stiffened. A car stopping. A key in the front door. He rose to his feet, and with that action, his brain cleared of its miasma of murder. Belle was home safe. In an instant she would be in the room with her careless “Hello, pa,” and her kiss. Belle, his Belle whom he adored. Oh, she had her faults, but who had not?

He heard the door closing and impulsively took a step toward the hall, ready to greet her. And then he heard her start to go upstairs. Such are the simple things which determine the fate of mortals. Had she come to greet him naturally, all would have been well, but she did not come.

So. She was afraid to face him. She had been up to something. He ran out into the hall. He followed her up the carpeted stairs.

“Belle!”

She turned and looked down at him, swinging her bag on her wrist.

“Oh, hello, pa. I thought you would be off to bed.”

“You thought nothing of the kind,” he flashed at her, “you know very well I wait up for you. Where were you?”

“At Blackpool. You know I was at Blackpool.”

“How do I know?”

She made a weary gesture. “Oh don’t start that all over again. I’m tired.”

“You were out with that young fellow again — I can see it — the way you act.”

“Oh go to bed,” she snapped.

They were her last words in life. One step up and his lithe hands closed about her throat and stayed there. He shook her in his passion. Then suddenly he let his hands go, and the lifeless body folded up in a heap, on the landing of the first floor.

He had just heard a strange stifled sound. He turned his head. Standing in the doorway of her bedroom was the nursemaid, twenty year old Mary Rogerson, her eyes distended with terror, her hand to her mouth. For a moment Dr. Ruxton looked at the witness of his crime, then with a cat-like bound, as she took her hand away and opened her mouth to scream, he was upon her. Again and again his hand struck her neck. The blood gushed from her mouth and stained nightdress and carpet.

Suddenly sobered Dr. Ruxton stepped back, the full hideous realization of what he had done, upon him. Oh, to plan death had been easy, but now it was accomplished, how different. He had two bodies, instead of one, calling for explanation, and that explanation he could never give. He must think, think quickly. Now that the deed was done, he must cover it up, he must set about the battle of wits which lay before him. He must safeguard his life — protect his children who lay sleeping a few feet away.

Turning up his sleeves he dragged the two bodies into the bathroom and laid them there. Then he came softly downstairs to his surgery. When he went upstairs again he carried a keen edged surgeon’s knife and its extra blades. He entered the bathroom and locked the door behind him. The light burned long in that room which he was using for his hideous task.

It was about six in the morning when he came out, haggard and unshaven, a cut on his right hand. He had suddenly recollected. Mrs. Oxley, one of three charwomen he employed throughout the week, was due to arrive this Sunday morning at seven. He cleaned himself, locked the bathroom door once more, came down, took the car and drove to Mrs. Oxley, whose husband he saw.

“Tell Mrs. Oxley not to come. Mrs. Ruxton and Mary have gone on a trip and I am taking the children to Morecambe.”

He returned home. He was busy about nine o’clock when the bell rang. He wrapped a rag about the right hand he had cut and went down. It was a Miss Partridge with a Sunday paper. He took it and said — “The maid is away with my wife in Scotland.”

At ten o’clock he had to open the door to the milkwoman. She looked at his hand. “Why, you’ve hurt t’hand, doctor.”

“Yes, I jammed it.”

A boy delivered a copy of the Sunday Graphic. After he left, the doctor went out to buy four gallon cans of gasoline. He was just carrying them in when a patient arrived.

“Oh, Mrs. Whiteside,” he told her. “I’ll have to put off your son’s operation till tomorrow. My wife has gone to Scotland. There’s just myself and the little maid in the house and we — we’re busy taking up the carpets ready for the decorators in the morning.”

It was only when she had gone that he realized what he had said on the spur of the moment. He stood for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. The woman would never think twice about what he said. She was thinking of nothing but her son’s operation.

There was a child’s laugh upstairs. The youngsters were awake. Their father stood at the bottom of the stairs rigid as a statue then, galvanized into action, ran up. He must get them out of the house. He went into the nursery to meet their questions.

“Mummy’s away. Yes, and Mary, too. Daddy will help you dress.”

He hurried them into their clothes, downstairs to the car. He drove them to the neighboring town of Morecambe with its beach and sea and left them with friends, the Andersons.