the outline of the case which follows will , I hope , be sufficient to secure a withdrawal of the questions . if this fails , I shall of course be glad to offer the members concerned a full and free opportunity to question me , as well as the officers who have conducted the investigation , in whatever fashion they think fit . their suspicions are the more ironical in that Gillian was actually arrested yesterday morning , on my personal instructions . since the department of public prosecutions regards the evidence against him as insufficient , the arrest was made without a warrant ; and within a couple of hours Gillian was inevitably once again a free man . my action did , however , succeed in its intended purpose : Gillian and Mrs Wynter had planned to be married yesterday afternoon ; as a result of the scene that occurred in my office the marriage will not now take place . you will say , and rightly , that it is no business of the police to discourage people who wish to marry murderers . nonetheless , when one partner is completely unsuspicious , there is , I believe , a good deal to be said on humane grounds for at least dropping a hint . in fact , the simple ruse we employed succeeded handsomely , thereby confirming the theory we had formed as to the only possible method by which this perplexing murder can have been committed . Gillian &apos;s arrest was so contrived that Mrs Wynter would be with him at the time ; she was allowed to accompany him to Scotland Yard , and on arrival both of them were brought to my office . also present were Superintendent Colleano ( in charge of the case ) , Detective-Inspector Pugh ( who made the arrest ) , and a shorthand writer ( P C Clements ) . despite Mrs Wynter &apos;s urgings , Gillian declined to send for a solicitor ; his attitude was fatalistic throughout and he looked ill . I need hardly say that if Gillian &apos;s arrest had been anything other than a trick there would have been no question of my confronting him personally . as it was , I was able to use our previous acquaintance as a pretext for the meeting . I told him , quite untruthfully , that I had just returned from leave , and was anxious for old times &apos; sake to hear an account of the circumstances which had resulted in the deputy A.C. &apos;s ordering his arrest , and to look into the matter in person ; and it is the measure of the queer , apathetic state he was in that he apparently swallowed this preposterous tale without turning a hair . the proceedings opened with Colleano &apos;s giving me a summary of the case . from our point of view this was mere camouflage ; but it is necessary to repeat it here for the purpose of clarifying what happened subsequently . approximately two years ago , Dr Harold Wynter , a general practitioner working in the Somerset town of Midcastle , was tried for , and convicted of , the manslaughter of a patient through gross negligence . the evidence against him was by no means decisive , but both judge and jury seem to have been influenced by the fact that the doctor himself was a morphine addict . he was adjudged guilty and sentenced to imprisonment for three years . at Nottsville Prison - to which Gillian had a year previously been appointed governor - Wynter &apos;s first few weeks were spent in the infirmary , where he was weaned of his addiction before being transferred to the cells . very shortly afterwards , however , he began to suffer from attacks of angina pectoris . accordingly , he was excused from all serious exertion ; and in addition - since he proved a model prisoner - was allowed a cell to himself , so that he mingled with the other prisoners only on the occasions when he took light exercise in the yard . his wife , Ellen Wynter , wrote to him regularly and seems to have visited him as often as she could ; these visits were , however , restricted in number owing to the fact that for financial reasons she had been obliged to take a job some considerable distance away . in the ordinary course of things - taking into account remissions for good conduct - Wynter would have been released in October of this year . on April 23rd he died in his cell . this was discovered when luncheon was brought to him at noon on that day . in the absence of contra-indications , the death was ascribed to the angina - for although a man suffering from this complaint may , and often does , live on for a great many years , there is no guarantee that any single attack may not finish him . as with all prison deaths , however , an inquest was held . but there was no post mortem , since none seemed to be called for , and on April 27th Wynter was buried in the prison cemetery , his death being certified as due to his heart disease . there the matter might well have rested . three days later , however , we received here at Scotland Yard an anonymous letter which accused Gillian of having poisoned Wynter with a plant spray containing nicotine ; Gillian &apos;s motive , the writer added , was infatuation with Wynter &apos;s wife . I myself ordered that this accusation be investigated , and there proved to be sufficient plausibility in it to justify us in exhuming Wynter &apos;s body . the stomach was shown to contain a small but sufficiently lethal quantity of nicotine ; in consequence of this , a full-scale examination of the circumstances was at once put in hand . the writer of the anonymous letter was traced easily enough . he was a warder at Nottsville named Parker , who conceived himself to have a grudge against the Governor , and who purely by chance had come to hear of the irregular association which did in fact exist between Gillian and Mrs Wynter ; the nicotine , he said , was only a guess , based on the fact that he knew this type of plant spray was used occasionally on the Governor &apos;s shrubbery . it was a suspiciously good guess , and Superintendent Colleano devoted plenty of time and energy to investigating whether Parker himself had opportunity or motive for poisoning Wynter . in the end , however , it was established that he had neither . a second possibility was that Wynter &apos;s death had some connection with the death of the patient he was alleged to have neglected ; but this again proved unlikely , if not impossible . to cut a long story short , the closest checking and counter-checking failed to establish a motive for Wynter &apos;s death in any of the prison staff - except Gillian . Gillian &apos;s motive , however , was undeniably a strong one : he was in love with Mrs Wynter . there is no doubt , by the way , that Wynter was devoted to his wife , to the extent that - in her view - he would never have agreed to divorce her ; and in spite of his illness he might well have lived for many years after his release from Nottsville . as to the manner in which Gillian and Mrs Wynter became acquainted , that , I think , calls for no detailed description here . it is worth noting , however , that Gillian &apos;s obsession with the woman was by no means a happy one . the husband was a prisoner in his personal charge , undergoing a relatively savage sentence for a crime of which he may quite possibly have been innocent ; moreover , Wynter loved his wife ; and finally , he was an incurable invalid . to a man with Gillian &apos;s record for probity these considerations may well have been horribly distressing ; he himself has said that they worried him deeply - and his anxiety was naturally compounded by the fact that from the official point of view his surreptitious relationship with Mrs Wynter was an unforgivable offence for which his resignation would certainly be demanded as soon as the truth became known . as you are aware , that resignation was tendered , and accepted , a fortnight ago . since Gillian is a wealthy man in his own right , his financial position will not be affected ; at the same time , for a man with his long and devoted connection with the penal service , the wrench must have been considerable . was Gillian &apos;s passion for Mrs Wynter sufficiently strong to override all these considerations ? unquestionably it was ; and if so , we may not unreasonably assume that it was strong enough to impel him to the act of murder . he had motive , he had means . unfortunately , what he seems quite definitely not to have had was opportunity . the medical evidence as to the time of Wynter &apos;s death , and how long he took to die , is regrettably uncertain ; but there is a definite consensus of opinion to the effect that Wynter could not have ingested the poison earlier than breakfast time - that is to say , 7.30 a.m on the day of his death . it seems equally certain , however , that the nicotine was not in Wynter &apos;s breakfast ; two warders ( perfectly reputable men ) were concerned in the serving of this , and moreover they were , as it happened , accompanied on this occasion by one of H.M Inspectors of Prisons , who had been staying in Nottsville overnight ; without going into the matter in detail , I can assure you that short of a conspiracy among these three it is absolutely impossible for the poison to have been administered in Wynter &apos;s breakfast . but if not at this time , when ? on the morning of his death Wynter did not , as it chanced , require fresh materials for the work he performed in his cell ; and the result of this was that the next visit paid to him was at lunch-time - when his dead body was discovered . it is certain that between 7.30 and noon Wynter was alone in his cell in E block , and that during this period he came in contact with no one - neither with Gillian nor with anyone else . these circumstances would seem to point either to suicide or to murder by trickery - for example , Wynter might previously have been given a preparation of nicotine under the guise of medicine , and have consumed it of his own volition some time on the morning of his death . there exists , however , an insuperable objection to both assumptions : before breakfast on that particular morning a snap search of the cells in E block was carried out . these searches are routine , but they are nevertheless thorough ; and because of the recent suicide of Pickering at Tawton Prison , special attention is currently being paid to the possibility of concealed poison . the upshot , as it applies to Wynter , you will guess : no pills or powders or capsules or fluids were found in his cell other than the small supply of trinitrini tablets which he was allowed to keep by him in case of an angina attack . of these , at the time of the search , there were three , in a sealed container ; and there is irrefutable evidence to prove that this same container was still there , still sealed and intact , when Wynter &apos;s body was discovered ( it was , of course , noticed particularly for the reason that at the time Wynter &apos;s death was assumed to be the result of an angina attack sufficiently disabling to have prevented him from getting at the tablets ) . now , Gillian &apos;s last direct encounter with Wynter had taken place more than a week before the death ; and on that occasion , as always , another member of the prison staff was present - this precaution is so invariable in dealing with convicts that if Gillian had at any time departed from it in his dealings with Wynter , the fact must inevitably have become known to us . how , then , can Gillian possibly have committed this murder ? or if it was suicide , how can Gillian or anyone else possibly have supplied Wynter with the means ? the three warders who conducted the search on the morning of the death might conceivably have conspired together to make Wynter a present of poison ; but in view of their excellent record this was not a possibility which Colleano felt able to accept so long as another , and likelier , explanation of the circumstances remained open to him . and such an explanation did exist . despite the external appearances of what thriller-writers describe as an impossible murder or a locked-room mystery , the ingenious yet simple way in which Wynter had been murdered was easily deduced from the facts I have given above . 