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

“See here,” he said indignantly. “All this damn nonsense is ruining my practice. Can anything be done to stop this talk. Why they’re linking it up with that Moffat business. You know about that?”

“Oh, yes,” said Vann quietly. “I read the papers. Don’t worry. Let me have a detailed description of Mrs. Ruxton.”

Thereafter there may have been two shadowy ghosts following Dr. Ruxton as he went about the town and on his journeys, but there was also a more substantial shadow in the person of a detective.

On October 12 Vann again sent for Dr. Ruxton and asked him for a statement of his movements between September 14 and 30. It would have to be taken down in writing, which might be used as evidence.

“Certainly, only too pleased to tell you all I can,” said Dr. Ruxton easily. His wits against this stolid Englishman’s. There was no question of the winner. Had he not prepared for this?

He stated that he was in bed when Mrs. Ruxton came home from Blackpool after midnight Saturday. She wakened him shortly after six on Sunday morning and suggested they should go for a drive after breakfast and would he go and get the car. So he got the car and brought it to the door, and waited around for his coffee and toast. He was in the bathroom when she came and called through the door that she had changed her mind and was going to Edinburgh on business about setting up a football pool agency and she was taking Mary with her.

So he called out, “Well you can’t have the car, and that is that.” She made no answer but “Toodle oo, I’m off, pa. There’s a cup of tea on the hall table.” He heard them go out. A moment later he came out of the bathroom and looked out of the front door. The car was still there. He concluded they took the bus or train.

He got the children up later in the morning and tried to open a can of peaches. He cut his hand severely and bled all over his shirt, clothes, the stairs. He managed to dress the fingers and threw the towel, gauze, etc. into the yard and later the shirt and, as he always did with such things, tried to burn them with petrol.

The suit? Oh yes, it got in such a mess he gave it to Mrs. Hampshire. She had had it cleaned.

Vann shook his head.

“No, Doctor, she did not. That suit is in our possession.”

For a moment the questioned man’s face grew more sallow, then he smiled.

“I don’t see what that has to do with my wife’s continued and wilful absence.”

He continued to counter Vann’s questions as midnight came and the early hours of the morning, all unaware that at his house the experts were at work.

Professor Glaister who had arrived from Glasgow was busy in the bathroom testing the stains there and on the stairs. The stains were those of human blood. Under his direction men were digging by lamplight in the yard, collecting debris and deposits from the earth, and each minute the professor’s face grew more grave. From the drain trap came a mess of animal matter of human origin, traces of internal organs.

Detective Hammond of the Glasgow criminal investigation department was collecting fingerprints in the kitchen.

It was towards five in the morning when Dr. Ruxton with a wan but triumphant smile affixed his signature to the statement of his absence of any knowledge concerning the missing women. Vann had gone from the room, and now as he returned Dr. Ruxton rose to his feet and greeted him.

“All nonsense this, Vann, but I suppose it had to be gone through with in the line of duty. Well, I’m ready for bed.”

He was amazed to see Vann’s grim stare.

“Why — anything wrong?”

“I have just gone over the report of the experts.” Said Vann slowly. “Dr. Ruxton, I am going to prefer a very serious charge against you. I charge that you feloniously and wilfully and with malice aforethought did kill and murder Mary Jane Rogerson.”

For a moment Ruxton was taken aback but only momentarily. “Most emphatically not,” he stormed. “Of course not. The furthest thing from my mind. What motive and why?”

“Mrs. Rogerson has identified the white silk waist found at Moffat as one she bought at a jumble sale for a penny and gave to Mary. Mrs. Holmes has identified the child’s rompers also found. She gave them to Mary. The sheeting is identical with sheets in your house. A Sunday Graphic was delivered to your house. A page from that paper was used as wrapping.”

“But good God, man,” Ruxton retorted, “that’s no proof either of these bodies was that of Mary Rogerson. How could anyone identify them?”

“By the fingerprints.”

“By... by the fingerprints — but — I understood the fingertips had been removed — all the papers said so—”

“The man who killed Mary Rogerson,” said Vann slowly, “made just one slip — he was just a little hurried in his work — and when he was destroying the marks of identification — he missed three fingers of Mary Rogerson’s hand—”.

“But—”