Rules of Murder by Julianna Deering

about.” The chief inspector turned to Mason. “I understand, sir, that there was a death at Farlinford Processing last week, as well. A Mr. McCutcheon, one of the research scientists, and acute benzene poisoning, was it?”
    “Yes,” Mason said. “Evidently he was doing an experiment with it and had a spill. He should have known not to work with the stuff in a closed room like that. The vapors overwhelmed him almost at once. Ghastly thing, I’m sure. We had to clear everyone out of the building as a precaution.”
    “And what day was that, Mr. Parker?”
    “Last Thursday, the twenty-sixth.”
    “And you were where at the time, sir?”
    “At my office, as usual,” Mason told him. “Mr. Rushford and I were there discussing business when we heard the commotion, but he was dead by the time we got to him.”
    “And you, Mr. Farthering?” Birdsong asked.
    “I was at the seaside,” Drew said. “Just came home this Friday night.”
    “Did you know this McCutcheon, sir?”
    “No,” Drew said. “Never met the man to my knowledge.”
    “He’d been at Farlinford almost three years,” Mason said. “I’d met him, but not too much more than that. Not much more than to say good morning and to ask how the work was coming. Research and development was always Lincoln’s father’s specialty, when he was still with us. But he and Rushford and I didn’t usually work with the men directly.”
    “This Mr. Rushford, sir, he is your partner as well, I take it?”
    Mason nodded. “He’s the head of our financial department. He sees to our investments and mortgages and that.”
    The chief inspector jotted something in his notebook. “And what is your job, may I ask?”
    “I suppose you’d say I’m rather over everything at Farlinford. I make sure we have money to operate our plants and refineries and ship our products to our distributors with enough to spare for research and some outside investments that, in turn, bring more money into the company so we’re able to start the process all over again.”
    “What about young Mr. Lincoln?” Birdsong asked. “What was his position at Farlinford?”
    Drew opened his mouth and then shut it again at the chastening look on his stepfather’s face.
    “He didn’t really have a formal position in the company,” Mason told the inspector. “I mean, he had an office, the one his father always had, and he was, of course, a director, taking his father’s place, but he seemed fairly content to collect his share of the profits in the company and leave it at that. He really wasn’t in the office all that much, not on a regular basis.”
    “Was he acquainted with Mr. McCutcheon?”
    “I suppose it was quite possible that they had met,” Mason said. “Not that I know of, though.”
    “Lincoln never did much at Farlinford besides eye the secretarial pool,” Drew put in.
    Birdsong consulted his notes once more. “There was another death at your company, wasn’t there, Mr. Parker?”
    “We’ve had some accidents now and again, as does any industrial concern, but the last one was well over five years ago. A pump exploded and—”
    “I mean a murder, sir. At your offices in Canada.”
    “Oh.” Mason nodded, his face grave. “That was a sordid business. A young Chinese girl was found dead in a storage closet.”
    Birdsong’s businesslike expression remained unchanged. “Beaten and then strangled to death, I understand.”
    Mason looked a bit white around the mouth. “Turned out her uncle worked for the company, sweeping up and such, and was displeased to find a white man had been keeping her as his mistress. Killed her to save face, they suspected.”
    “I never heard about that,” Drew said.
    “It was well before I came to Farthering to live, fifteen years ago or more now.”
    “What happened to the murderer?”
    “Sentenced to hang,” Mason said. “And then, because of some uncertainty in the evidence, the sentence was commuted to life in prison.”
    Birdsong