Miss Silver gave her slight cough.
“You illustrate my quotation perfectly, Chief Inspector. You have found a meaning suited to your mind.”
His florid colour deepened.
“I use my mind to get a meaning-is that what you’re after? And if there’s any other way of getting a meaning, I’d like to know about it. To my mind that will of Mrs. Latter’s is very damaging-you can’t get away from it. And on the top of that comes this report from Smerdon. Miss Mercer’s medicine-chest has been examined by the police surgeon. Besides the ordinary household remedies which you’d expect, there’s a quarter-full glass bottle of morphia tablets. He says they’re of German manufacture and much stronger than what you could get in this country. Now all the things in the medicine-cupboard have got Miss Mercer’s fingerprints on them- some old, some fresh, which is just what you’d expect. This bottle of tablets has a very good set of her prints. But it’s got Mr. Jimmy Latter’s prints on it too. They’re a bit smudged, as if she’d taken hold of it after he had, but they’re his all right. He’d been to that chest, picking things over. There’s a very clear set of his prints on another very similar bottle with quinine pills in it. I’d say he was looking for the morphia and picked the other one up by mistake. There’s a bottle of ipecac there too, but no fingerprints on it. If you’re right, Miss Silver, about those preliminary attacks-well, I’d say he was being careful to start with. Wiped the bottle, or wore gloves-something like that. I don’t know why he should have risked the attacks at all, but I daresay we shall find out before we’re through. Well, I didn’t put any of this to Mr. Latter when we had him in here just now, because I thought I’d like to see what Miss Mercer had to say about it first. She handled that morphia bottle after he did, and I want to see what she’s got to say about it. She may have moved it to get at something else, in which case I’d like to know if it was out of its place. Or-” he looked hard at Miss Silver-“it may be that she was in on the job. She may have been-there’s no saying.”
There was a knock upon the door. Lamb said, “Come in!” and there entered Mrs. Maniple, very majestic in the almost visible panoply of more than fifty years’ service, her head high, her colour steady, her manner dignified and purposeful. She came round to the far end of the writing-table and stood there, the Chief Inspector on her right, Sergeant Abbott on her left, and Miss Silver in her direct line of sight. There was something about her entry which proclaimed an occasion of the first magnitude. No one spoke until she did. She put her hands down flat on the table edge and said,
“There’s something I’ve got to say.”
Lamb swung round to face her, moving his whole big body. He said,
“You’re the cook, aren’t you-Mrs. Maniple?”
She said, “Yes.”
Frank Abbott got up and brought her a chair.
“Won’t you sit down?”
She looked at him, sizing him up, and said,
“No, thank you, sir.”
For once in his life Sergeant Abbott was abashed. He went back to his seat with some colour in his face, and busied himself with writing-pad and pencil.
The Chief Inspector looked grimly at the old woman who had kept her “sir” for his subordinate. He knew what it meant quite as well as she did. Something in him respected her. Something else made a mental note that Master Frank mustn’t be allowed to get wind in his head. He said,
“I see you have something to say, Mrs. Maniple. Will you tell me what it is?”
She stood there very upright.
“That’s what I’ve come for. Before Mrs. Latter died she was taken sick two or three times. I’ve come to tell you, those turns she had-they were along of what I put in her coffee.”
There was a short electric silence. Miss Silver stopped knitting for a moment and gave her a long, steady look.
Lamb said, “If this is a confession, it is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you.”
There was no change in Mrs. Maniple’s expression, nor in her voice when she spoke.
“I’ve no objection to anything being taken down-I wouldn’t be here if I had. And I’m not confessing nothing about what Mrs. Latter died of, only about those sick turns she had, which was along of ipecac-in her coffee mostly, but there was once I put it in the fruit salad.”
Lamb leaned back in his chair, his face as expressionless as her own.
“What made you do a thing like that?”
The answer came grim and short.
“To punish her.”
“Why did you want to punish her?”
“For what she was doing to everyone she come in contact with.”
“As what?”
“It ’ud take a long time to tell the half of it.”
“Never mind about that. You tell us why you thought she ought to be punished.”
She drew her black brows together briefly.
“Very well, then-I’ll put it as short as I can. There was what she did to Mrs. Marsh.”
“Do you mean the young woman, Gladys Marsh, who was acting as Mrs. Latter’s maid?”
“No, I don’t. I mean her husband’s mother, Lizzie Marsh, that’s a cousin of my own and that that there Gladys got sent away to the workhouse. Institute they may call it now, but workhouse is what it is. And Mrs. Latter backed her up. She wouldn’t have darsn’t do it, nor Joe Marsh wouldn’t have let her, if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Latter backing her up and telling Mr. Jimmy all manner of lies.”
“And you put ipecacuanha in her coffee because of that?”
“Not for that by itself. It was for that and other things. There was Miss Ellie-Mrs. Street-that she worked to death like I wouldn’t have stood for any housemaid being worked, and when she’d taken all the strength out of her she was turning her out-wouldn’t let her have her husband, Mr. Ronnie, here to look after. And the same with Miss Minnie that’s been here ever since the old doctor died. Worked her pretty well to death, and then out she could go, and it wasn’t Mrs. Latter that ’ud care whether she lived or died. And more lies to Mr. Jimmy, making him think Miss Minnie wanted to go. That’s why I done it. Maybe I didn’t ought to, but that’s why I done it. And it wasn’t done for no more than to punish her-a drop of ipecac like you’d give a child that had swallowed something. And no harm done. That’s what I come to say.” She took her hands off the table and turned to go.
Lamb stopped her.
“We can’t leave it quite like that, you know. I think you’d better sit down.”
She came back to her former position.
“I can stand well enough.”
“Well, that’s just as you like. I want to ask you some questions. You needn’t answer if you don’t want to.”
“I’ll tell you when I hear them.”
“Well, we’ll start with an easy one. How long have you been here?”
There was pride in her voice as she said,
“It’ll be fifty-three years at Christmas.”
“You didn’t leave to be married?”
She stood up very straight.
“I’m single. The ‘Mrs.’ is what is only right and proper when you’ve turned fifty in a position like what mine is.”
“I see. Very fond of the family, aren’t you?”
“Wouldn’t anyone be after fifty years?”
“Very fond of Mr. Jimmy, as you call him?”
She said, “I saw him christened.” And then, “Anyone ’ud be fond of Mr. Jimmy-he’s one that’s got kindness for all. There isn’t anyone for miles round that don’t love Mr. Jimmy.”
Lamb shifted his position, leaning forward with an arm along the table.
“Well now, suppose you tell us about the times you put this ipecac into Mrs. Latter’s coffee. When did you start?”
He noticed that she did not have to stop and think. Her answer came pat.
“It was the evening Miss Julia come down, and Mr. Antony. They hadn’t neither of them been here for two years, and I thought, ‘Well, they shall have their evening the same as it was before Mrs. Latter come.’ She’d been up to her tricks with Miss Ellie that evening, wanting her to do the flowers all over again when anyone could see she was ready to drop- and she’d done them lovely. And I thought to myself, ‘No, you don’t, my lady!’ for I knew how it ’ud be, Miss Ellie and Miss Julia, they wouldn’t get a moment’s peace, neither with Mr. Jimmy nor Mr. Antony. I tell you she couldn’t abear to see anyone noticed if it wasn’t herself, so I took and put some ipecac in her coffee, she being the only one that took that nasty Turkish stuff-and it made her sick and kept her quiet like I thought it would.”