Mrs. Maniple as a Contributory Circumstance was very nearly too much for Sergeant Abbott. He escaped choking by a very narrow margin. He straightened his face with difficulty and contrived to utter the single word,
“Perpend.”
Miss Silver was not unwilling to do so.
“I found it quite impossible to believe that the person responsible for those preliminary attacks had any design on Mrs. Latter’s life. The effects were much too slight and too transitory. But as soon as I began to suspect Mrs. Latter herself I saw how these attacks would bring the idea of poison quite vividly before her mind. They would suggest the method of administering it, and the fact that she was genuinely uneasy on her own account may have had its share in urging her to put an end to the situation. This is, of course, mere speculation. I myself am inclined to wonder whether-” She broke off, leaving the sentence unfinished, a thing so unusual as to arouse Frank Abbott’s liveliest curiosity.
“Come-you can’t leave it at that! What did you wonder?”
Miss Silver set down her knitting on her knee, looked at him gravely, and said,
“There have been moments when I have wondered whether her first husband died a natural death.”
Frank shook his head at her.
“You know, the Chief really does suspect you of keeping a private broomstick. He was brought up on tales of witches, and you revive them quite uncomfortably.”
Miss Silver smiled.
“A most respectable man. We are on excellent terms. But I think you have something to tell me.”
“Well, not very much, but here it is for whatever it’s worth. The Chief sent me down to make a few enquiries. I saw the doctor who attended Doubleday. I could see that he had had some uncomfortable moments. Doubleday was ill, but he wasn’t all that ill. He might have died the way he did, but- it was a bit unexpected. The doctor himself was away, and a young partner was called in. It was just the sort of case that would be all right ninety-nine times out of a hundred, but the hundredth time there could be something fishy about it. Well, of course no doctor on earth wants to upset his private practice for a hundred-to-one chance like that. I don’t think he thought very much about it until it began to leak out that Doubleday had just signed a new will very much in Mrs. Doubleday’s interest, and that the relations were going to contest it. I think that’s when he had his uncomfortable moments, but he hadn’t really anything to go on and he held his tongue. Presently he heard with considerable relief that the case had been settled out of court. He’d have been called as a witness of course, and I imagine he wasn’t looking forward to it. Of course you’ll understand he didn’t tell me any of this, except that Doubleday had died when he was away, and that it was all according to Cocker. I had to read between the lines with a pretty strong microscope, but I came away with quite an idea that Mrs. Latter had played the game before. They say the poisoner always perseveres.”
Miss Silver coughed.
“Once you become convinced that your wishes and desires are of more importance than a human life, there will not fail to be further opportunities of carrying that conviction into practice.”
Frank gazed at her with delight.
“ ‘Reason in her most exalted mood!’ ” he declaimed, adding rather quickly, “The poet Wordsworth.”
CHAPTER 41
Julia dropped three pairs of stockings into a drawer and shut them in. She was back in London again, and she felt hot and tired, and quite desperately flat. Unpacking is a slightly less sordid occupation than packing, but there isn’t much in it, and whether you are going or coming, you always leave something behind. Julia had left her toothpaste, and that meant she would have to go out and buy some. When you have recently been living through a tragedy in a state of extremely high tension there is something paltry about being depressed about toothpaste.
She had opened all the windows but the room felt hot and airless. There seemed to be an extraordinary amount of dust. She got out a mop and a duster and began to clean up. By the time she had finished she wondered whether it wouldn’t have been better to leave the dust where it was-such a lot of it seemed to have collected on her hands and face.
She had made a start with the hands, because it’s no use washing your face if your hands are going to come off on it in damp black patches, when the door-bell rang. She took a hasty look in the glass. The face was dirty, but not so very dirty-more, as it were, submerged in a general murk. Or perhaps it wasn’t dirty at all, perhaps that was just the way she looked. Anyhow she decided that it would have to do. She dried the partly washed hands, observed that they left a black mark on the towel, and went to the door.
Antony, beautifully tidy, stepped inside, gazed at her with mild surprise, and enquired why she was spring-cleaning. Of course it would be Antony! If she sat waiting for him in her most becoming dress, for ninety-nine days out of a hundred she wouldn’t see hair, hide or hoof of him, but on the hundredth day, when she was inked to the elbows and more or less negroid with dust, the flat would draw him like a magnet. She said,
“You always come when I’m filthy-but I was just getting it off.”
“There must have been a great deal to start with.”
“Well, there was. You’ll have to wait-unless-I suppose you wouldn’t like to go out and get me a tube of toothpaste? I’ve left mine.”
“I’d hate to, but I will.”
It would give her time to change. She really was perfectly clean and tidy by the time he came back.
He produced the toothpaste with a flourish.
“Bridegroom to bride!”
If he expected Julia to laugh he was disappointed. She took the tube away into the cubby-hole which concealed the bath, and came back with one-and-tenpence-halfpenny in a hand still damp and pink from scrubbing.
He said, “What’s this for?”
“The toothpaste. Take it, please.”
“Darling, it was a handsome present-bridegroom to bride-part of the worldly goods with which I’m going to thee endow.”
There was rather a thundery pause. Julia had the sort of temper which can take the bit between its teeth. It was touch-and-go whether it got away with her now.
The moment passed. She put the coins down on the edge of the writing-table and said,
“Just as you like. You can call it a Christmas present in advance, then you won’t have to wander round wondering what you can give me in three months’ time.”
Antony hit back rather hard.
“Do I give you a Christmas present?”
She said, “Not since our Christmas tree days.”
Why had she said that? The words were no sooner out than it came over her with a rush how immeasurably good those days had been, and how immeasurably far removed. It was like looking back at a small bright picture a long way off. She turned very pale, and heard Antony say with an odd note in his voice,
“Are we obliged to talk standing up? You look just about all in.”
She was glad enough to feel the sofa under her and a cushion at her back. For one idiotic moment she hadn’t quite known what she was going to do. She might have burst into tears-she might have buckled at the knees. Either alternative simply too humiliating to bear thinking about. She found herself saying,
“It’s too hot for housework.”
Antony was frowning. They had not met since that early morning funeral a week ago. Frightful! Why couldn’t she think about something else? Nobody who was there would ever want to think about it again. But of course that was just the sort of thing you couldn’t get out of your head. She wished Antony hadn’t come to see her. She wished that he had come and gone. She wished she could feel quite sure that she wasn’t going to cry. There wasn’t anything she could do about it.
Antony broke in on a note of sharp exasperation.