If you haven’t read the earlier installments of this series, go to The Mad Love of Mrs. Mort, Part 1

Part 3: “I don’t know why God made these neurotic women.”

Mr. Mort came home around the same time the police arrived, which was 9:30 p.m. He found the house was in an uproar and immediately went to see his wife. Meanwhile, Constable Alfred Marsden and Sergeant Fowler forced their way into the locked drawing room around 9:30 p.m. There, they found the dead body of Dr. Claude Tozer. He was sitting on the Chesterfield sofa, exactly where he had been sitting when Dorothy Mort murdered him.

The handsome young doctor and cricket player had been shot three times: in the back of the head, in the temple, and in the chest. The police noted that the doctor’s vest, though bloody, was intact, meaning his vest was unbuttoned when he was shot and rebuttoned over the wound.

A Colt automatic pistol was on the doctor’s right thigh and three ejected cartridge shells were in the room. Marsden found two bullet holes in the back of the couch and a third hole was visible in the wall at the end of the couch. An unused cartridge was in the barrel of the gun. Several other items in the drawing room seemed to be unusual or out of place: an empty bottle of laudanum, a bloodstained kimono, a torn-up photograph of Mrs. Mort, and a crumpled visiting card with a handwritten note:

“From the woman you swore you loved, and whom you said was the greatest incentive for good in your life.”

The body was not moved. The police waited until the following morning to photograph the body of Dr. Claude Tozer and the crime scene. He was then removed to the morgue.

Across the hall, the doctors were trying to save Dorothy’s life. She was gravely wounded and said little.

At some point, Dorothy found the strength to write a short note and someone agreed to post it for her. The letter, it turned out, was written to Mrs. Beatrice Tozer, the grieving mother of Dr. Claude Tozer.

Mrs. Tozer appeared at the Mort home the following day, and told Miss Fizzele she came in response to a summons from Mrs. Mort. She was shown into Dorothy’s bedroom and found the wounded woman lying on her bed. Her eyes were closed, her skin unnaturally pale.

Mrs. Tozer knew more about Dorothy than anyone guessed. After his first consultation with Mrs. Mort, her son Claude told her in exasperation, “I don’t know why God made these neurotic women.”

Now Beatrice found herself gazing down at the same neurotic woman who had murdered her son. “I have come here, as you desired me,” Mrs. Tozer said.

Dorothy’s eyes opened. “Sit down,” she said. “I feel that I’m dying.”

Mrs. Tozer did as Dorothy asked. “For two years before I met Dr. Tozer I had been desperately unhappy, the reasons for which I need not go into now,” she told Claude’s mother. “I loved Dr. Tozer immediately when I saw him. He was so handsome, big, and splendid. I thought how wonderful a son would be of his.”

Mrs. Tozer showed little interest in Mrs. Mort’s apparent infatuation with her son. “Tell me why you killed him,” she demanded.

“Last year I bought a revolver for a man going to Morocco, but I didn’t give him all the cartridges,” Dorothy told her. She purchased another revolver and used the cartridges she already had to kill the doctor. “I went close up to him and he died immediately,” she said, adding hastily, “He did not suffer.”

“If you loved him, why did you kill him?” Claude’s mother insisted.

Mrs. Mort looked at her furtively. “We talked it over together and decided that it was the only way out.”

Whether Beatrice believed there was anything between her son, who was a bachelor, and his married patient, she was certain that Dorothy Mort was lying about why she killed him. Her face reddened. “Tell me the truth, if you are dying!” she said fiercely. “You know that the doctor had no intention of taking your life or his own.”

At this, Mrs. Mort’s face crumpled and she cried out as if she had been struck. Then she said, “I’ll tell you the truth.”

The doctor had called several days earlier to put an end to their love affair, she said. “He told me he had come to the conclusion that it was better for a medical man to be married and that he intended to ask some girl to be his wife. It was too cruel! I could not bear it. I determined if I could not have him no other woman should. Kiss me and forgive me.”

This account of their conversation came directly from Mrs. Tozer. Curiously, she didn’t mention how she responded to Dorothy and gave no other details of what was said.

Later that evening, Police Inspector Arthur Leary came to Inglebrae and asked Mrs. Mort if she wished to make a statement. He was unsurprised to find that she did not. However, she did make a request. She said the police had two letters she had written—one to Beatrice Tozer and another to her own mother. She asked that the letters not be sent.

That night Mrs. Mort was taken to Royal North Shore Hospital by ambulance where she was placed under police guard.

Go to Part 4: “Tout mon amour, Claude”

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