Complete Short Stories of Miss Marple by Agatha Christie

But I remember thinking, when I saw the gardener shaking up the cyanide of potassium in a bottle with water, how like smelling-salts it looked. And if it were put in a smelling-salts bottle and substituted for the real one – well, the poor lady was in the habit of using her smelling-salts. Indeed you said they were found by her hand. Then, of course, while Mr Pritchard went to telephone to the doctor, the nurse would change it for the real bottle, and she'd just turn on the gas a little bit to mask any smell of almonds and in case anyone felt queer, and I always have heard that cyanide leaves no trace if you wait long enough. But, of course I may be wrong, and it may have been something entirely different in the bottle; but that doesn't really matter, does it?'
    Miss Marple paused, a little out of breath.
    Jane Helier leant forward and said, 'But the blue geranium, and the other flowers?'
    'Nurses always have litmus paper, don't they?' said Miss Marple, 'for – well, for testing. Not a very pleasant subject We won't dwell on it. I have done a little nursing myself.' She grew delicately pink. 'Blue turns red with acids, and red turns blue with alkalis. So easy to paste some red litmus over a red flower – near the bed, of course. And then, when the poor lady used her smelling-salts, the strong ammonia fumes would turn it blue. Really most ingenious. Of course, the geranium wasn't blue when they first broke into the room – nobody noticed it till afterwards. When nurse changed the bottles, she held the sal ammoniac against the wallpaper for a minute, I expect'
    'You might have been there. Miss Marple,' said Sir Henry.
    'What worries me,' said Miss Marple, 'is poor Mr Pritchard and that nice girl, Miss Instow. Probably both suspecting each other and keeping apart – and life so very short.'
    She shook her head.
    'You needn't worry,' said Sir Henry. 'As a matter of fact I have something up my sleeve. A nurse has been arrested on a charge of murdering an elderly patient who had left her a legacy. It was done with cyanide of potassium substituted for smelling-salts. Nurse Copling trying the same trick again. Miss Instow and Mr Pritchard need have no doubts as to the truth.'
    'Now isn't that nice?' cried Miss Marple. 'I don't mean about the new murder, of course. That's very sad, and shows how much wickedness there is in the world, and that if once you give way – which reminds me I must finish my little conversation with Dr Lloyd about the village nurse.'
    The Companion

    'Now, Dr Lloyd,' said Miss Helier. 'Don't you know any creepy stories?'
    She smiled at him – the smile that nightly bewitched the theatre-going public. Jane Helier was sometimes called the most beautiful woman in England, and jealous members of her own profession were in the habit of saying to each other: 'Of course Jane's not an artist. She can't act – if you know what I mean. It's those eyes!'
    And 'those eyes' were at this minute fixed appealingly on the grizzled elderly bachelor doctor, who, for the last five years, had ministered to the ailments of the village of St Mary Mead.
    With an unconscious gesture, the doctor pulled down his waistcoat (inclined of late to be uncomfortably tight) and racked his brains hastily, so as not to disappoint the lovely creature who addressed him so confidently.
    'I feel,' said Jane dreamily, 'that I would like to wallow in crime this evening.'
    'Splendid,' said Colonel Bantry, her host 'Splendid, splendid.' And he laughed a loud hearty military laugh. 'Eh, Dolly?'
    His wife, hastily recalled to the exigencies of social life (she had been planning her spring border) agreed enthusiastically.
    'Of course it's splendid,' she said heartily but vaguely. 'I always thought so.'
    'Did you, my dear?' said old Miss Marple, and her eyes twinkled a little.
    'We don't get much in the creepy line – and still less in the criminal line – in St Mary Mead, you know. Miss Helier,' said Dr Lloyd.
    'You surprise me,' said Sir Henry