More Work for the Undertaker by Margery Allingham

nettle tea. ‘Do you will the stout party to give you the sixpences?’ he ventured.
    â€˜No, but I never refuse them. She enjoys it so. Besides, they’re very useful. That’s rational too, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Utterly. To return to your more magical powers, can you see behind you?’
    He thought he had foxed her but she followed after a moment’s consideration.
    â€˜You’re talking of Clytie and her young man who smells of petrol,’ she announced. ‘Well, I knew they were there today. I heard them whisper. But I didn’t look round. They were both playing truant from their jobs or pretending to be on some errand. They’ll both get dismissed.’ She shot a purely human and naughty look at him. ‘I may have to lend them my book. But Boon doesn’t say how to feed babies. That might present a difficulty.’
    â€˜You’re a very odd woman,’ said Mr Campion. ‘What are you doing? Showing off?’
    â€˜I wonder,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s possible. On the other hand, I am very sympathetic towards Clytie. I was in love myself once, and only once. It was platonic for a very good reason, but it wasn’t, if you understand me, a Banquet. Really hardly a picnic. I was encouraged to make mylittle intellectual advances and then I discovered that the pleasant intelligent man was using them to torment his wife, with whom he must obviously have been physically in love since otherwise he would hardly have bothered. Being rational but not suicidally generous, I withdrew. However, I am still sufficiently feminine to be entertained by Clytie. Is all this helping you, do you think, to find out who poisoned my sister Ruth?’
    For a moment he did not look up but sat staring at the ground.
    â€˜Well,’ she said, ‘is it?’
    He raised his head and looked into her face, so full of wasted beauty and wasted cleverness.
    â€˜You must know,’ he said slowly.
    â€˜But I don’t.’ She seemed surprised herself by the admission. ‘I don’t. My magical powers are not very remarkable. Everyone who lives alone as much as I do becomes supersensitive towards the behaviour of the people they meet. Still, I assure you I have no idea who poisoned Ruth. I may as well admit I am not ungrateful to him. You will find that out, so I may as well tell you.’
    â€˜She was very trying, was she?’ he said.
    â€˜Not very. I hardly saw her. We had very little in common. She was more like my father’s brother. He was a mathematician of genius and went a little mad, I believe.’
    â€˜Yet you’re glad she’s dead?’ He was deliberately brutal because he was afraid of her. She was so nice and yet such a terrifyingly and indefinably wrong thing.
    â€˜I had cause to fear her,’ she said. ‘You see, the Palinode family is in the position of the crew of a small castaway boat. If one member drinks all his allotted share of water – she was not an alcoholic, by the way – the rest must either watch him die of thirst or share, and we haven’t very much to share, even with the assistance of Herbert Boon.’
    â€˜Is that all you’re going to tell me?’
    â€˜Yes. The rest you can find for yourself. It’s not very interesting.’
    The thin man in the dressing-gown rose to his feet and putdown his jam-pot. He towered over her. She was very small and the rags of attractiveness hung round her like dead petals. His own not insensitive face was passionately grave, the question in his mind appearing much more important than any murder mystery.
    â€˜Why?’ he burst out uncontrollably. ‘Why?’
    She understood him at once. A touch of colour came into her grey face.
    â€˜I have no gifts,’ she said gently. ‘I am dumb, as the Americans say so penetratingly. I cannot make, or write, or even tell.’ And then as he blinked at her,