it!—poking the clues under my nose, snatching each of them back when you saw it wasn’t going to work—and all with such a touching air of protecting your poor dear admirers, fallen into this terrible trap, for love of you. But I matched you,’ he said with quiet satisfaction, ‘trick for trick.’
‘You can’t know,’ she repeated again.
‘I knew from the first moment,’ he said. ‘From the first moment I remembered his asking why he couldn’t have had smoked salmon. You ordered the meal: accuse who you will—whatever you had said about the meal, that would have been decided. So why give him oysters; which would only make him angry? If one thought about it—taking all the other factors into consideration—the answer had to be there.’
‘But the tin! You saw it yourself when we came into the dining-room. I never left the dining-room—how could I have hidden it in the vase?’
‘You hid it when you went out to “look”; it wouldn’t take half a second and you had your little hankie in your hand, didn’t you?—all ready to muffle your finger-prints.’ And with his free hand he smote his knee. ‘By gum!—you’d thought this thing out, hadn’t you?—right down to the last little shred of a handkerchief.’
She struggled, sitting there between them, ceaselessly wrenching to ease their grip on her wrists. ‘Let me go, you brutes! You’re hurting me.’
‘Cyrus Caxton didn’t have too comfortable a time, a-dying.’
‘That old hog!’ she said, viciously. ‘Who cares how such an animal dies?’
‘As long as he dies.’
‘You’ll never prove that I killed him, Inspector. How, for example,’ she said, triumphantly, subsiding a little in her restless jerking to give her whole mind to it, ‘how could I have taken the poison from the tin?’
‘You could have taken it while you were in the house with Theo, on the way to the church. Theo went off to the downstairs cloakroom—’
‘For half a minute. How long does a man take, nipping into the loo? To get the stuff out of the tin, do all the rest of it—’
‘Ah, but I don’t say you did “do all the rest of it”—not then. “All the rest of it” had been prepared in advance. We’ll find—if we look long enough; and we will—some chemist in London where you bought a second tin of cyanide. The tin here was a blind; there was time enough even during Theo’s half-minute, to take a quick scoop out of it (no doubt you’d arranged to have it left on the hall table)—just as a blind. That lot, I suppose, you disposed of in the cloak-room when you went there, after Theo.’
‘You know it all, don’t you?’ she said, sarcastically; but she was growing weary, helpless, she had ceased to struggle, sitting limply between them now, slumped against the seatback.
A very deep-laid, elaborate, absolutely sure-fire plot: and all to be conceived in the mind of one little woman—a woman consumed, destroyed, by the dangerous knowledge of her own invincibility in the hearts of men. But the cleverness, thought Cockie; the patience! The long preparation, the building-up, piece by piece, of the ‘book’ itself, the stage-props, the make-up, the scenery: as a producer will work long months ahead on a projected production. Then—the stage set at last, the puppet actors chosen: curtain up! The ‘exposition’—‘Bill, for goodness sake collect the things from the chemist for me, the old man will slay me if I don’t get his wretched wasp stuff. Just leave it on the hall table, let him think I got it…’ And, ‘Theo, I’ve ordered the stuff from Harrod’s, but I never thought about a dessert. You couldn’t hop across to Fortnum’s and get some of those peaches-in-Kirsch?—I’ve seen them there and they look so delicious. Teetotal?—oh, lord, so he is! But still, why should everyone else suffer?—perhaps this will make up to them for having no champagne. And he’s got his usual fearful cold, may be he won’t even notice.’ In
‘You can’t know,’ she repeated again.
‘I knew from the first moment,’ he said. ‘From the first moment I remembered his asking why he couldn’t have had smoked salmon. You ordered the meal: accuse who you will—whatever you had said about the meal, that would have been decided. So why give him oysters; which would only make him angry? If one thought about it—taking all the other factors into consideration—the answer had to be there.’
‘But the tin! You saw it yourself when we came into the dining-room. I never left the dining-room—how could I have hidden it in the vase?’
‘You hid it when you went out to “look”; it wouldn’t take half a second and you had your little hankie in your hand, didn’t you?—all ready to muffle your finger-prints.’ And with his free hand he smote his knee. ‘By gum!—you’d thought this thing out, hadn’t you?—right down to the last little shred of a handkerchief.’
She struggled, sitting there between them, ceaselessly wrenching to ease their grip on her wrists. ‘Let me go, you brutes! You’re hurting me.’
‘Cyrus Caxton didn’t have too comfortable a time, a-dying.’
‘That old hog!’ she said, viciously. ‘Who cares how such an animal dies?’
‘As long as he dies.’
‘You’ll never prove that I killed him, Inspector. How, for example,’ she said, triumphantly, subsiding a little in her restless jerking to give her whole mind to it, ‘how could I have taken the poison from the tin?’
‘You could have taken it while you were in the house with Theo, on the way to the church. Theo went off to the downstairs cloakroom—’
‘For half a minute. How long does a man take, nipping into the loo? To get the stuff out of the tin, do all the rest of it—’
‘Ah, but I don’t say you did “do all the rest of it”—not then. “All the rest of it” had been prepared in advance. We’ll find—if we look long enough; and we will—some chemist in London where you bought a second tin of cyanide. The tin here was a blind; there was time enough even during Theo’s half-minute, to take a quick scoop out of it (no doubt you’d arranged to have it left on the hall table)—just as a blind. That lot, I suppose, you disposed of in the cloak-room when you went there, after Theo.’
‘You know it all, don’t you?’ she said, sarcastically; but she was growing weary, helpless, she had ceased to struggle, sitting limply between them now, slumped against the seatback.
A very deep-laid, elaborate, absolutely sure-fire plot: and all to be conceived in the mind of one little woman—a woman consumed, destroyed, by the dangerous knowledge of her own invincibility in the hearts of men. But the cleverness, thought Cockie; the patience! The long preparation, the building-up, piece by piece, of the ‘book’ itself, the stage-props, the make-up, the scenery: as a producer will work long months ahead on a projected production. Then—the stage set at last, the puppet actors chosen: curtain up! The ‘exposition’—‘Bill, for goodness sake collect the things from the chemist for me, the old man will slay me if I don’t get his wretched wasp stuff. Just leave it on the hall table, let him think I got it…’ And, ‘Theo, I’ve ordered the stuff from Harrod’s, but I never thought about a dessert. You couldn’t hop across to Fortnum’s and get some of those peaches-in-Kirsch?—I’ve seen them there and they look so delicious. Teetotal?—oh, lord, so he is! But still, why should everyone else suffer?—perhaps this will make up to them for having no champagne. And he’s got his usual fearful cold, may be he won’t even notice.’ In
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