“Fifteen coffee tables,” she muttered. “Dear heaven.”
Dennis did not pursue his point. He was too busy listening to the voices in the hall outside. A pleasant, mild voice was saying, “I’m Detective-Inspector Sands. This is Sergeant Bannister.”
“I’m Jackson, sir.”
“Please close that door, Dennis,” Mrs. Shane said briskly. “I have to think.”
Dennis went over and slammed the door.
In the hall Jackson made a gesture to take the inspector’s coat and hat.
“No, thanks,” Sands said. “I’ll keep them. Is there a room I can use while I’m here?”
“The library, sir. In here.” Jackson opened the door and Sands went inside.
“You’ll come in too, Jackson?”
“Me?” Jackson stared at him. “Yes sir.”
“Of course you will,” Sands said.
Sergeant Bannister’s teeth gleamed in a smile but he said nothing. Sands nodded at him almost imperceptibly, and Bannister ushered Jackson into the library and went out, making a funny little deferential bow before he closed the door.
Jackson stood near the door, his hands clasped behind his back. His breathing was loud and quick, and to cover the sound of it he said, “You want to know who was in the house at the time Miss Stevens was poisoned?”
“I don’t know when she was poisoned,” Sands said. “Perhaps you do?”
Jackson flushed, but the inspector was not looking at him. His pale eyes were studying the wall above Jackson’s head. He turned suddenly, removed his coat and hat and laid them on a chair. Then he sat down behind the big mahogany desk.
Jackson watched him, hypnotized. There was a deadness about his face and his movements. As if he has been dead a long time and is only going through the motions, Jackson thought. He is corpse-gray, even his hair and his suit and his eyes, and his voice doesn’t come from him but from somewhere, something, near him.
“I am very embarrassed,” Sands said.
His small sigh slithered down from the ceiling and tickled Jackson’s stomach. Jackson giggled.
“You mustn’t stare,” Sands said. “Are there many guests in the house?”
“N-no sir.” His voice shook when he smothered the giggle.
“Tell me.”
“Dr. Prye, who phoned you. Miss Stevens and her brother, Duncan. Mrs. Dinah Revel and her... her fiancé, Mr. Williams.”
“Mrs. Revel widowed or divorced?”
“Divorced.”
“And?”
“J-just divorced,” Jackson stammered.
“I meant, and what others?”
“Mrs. Shane and her daughter, Nora, and Mrs. Shane’s sister, Aspasia. And the servants.”
“How many?”
“Three. Myself, Mrs. Hogan, the cook, and Hilda Perrin, the general maid.”
Sands was quiet, writing the names in his notebook. Jackson stood and watched him. The silence was thin, eerie. He heard his own voice floating around the room. “Hilda Perrin, the general maid,” from the ceiling and the walls. “Hilda Perrin, the general maid.” He lost track of time. Had he said it an hour ago, five minutes ago?
“You are nervous, Jackson?” Sands said without looking up.
“No sir.”
“Miss Stevens is an American, I understand?”
“Yes sir. She lives in Boston.”
“And Mrs. Revel?”
“Mrs. Revel and Mr. Williams both come from Montreal.”
“Her fiancé, you said?”
“That’s what I said.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He looked up. “I’d like to see this Dr. Prye who telephoned me.”
“Right, sir.” Jackson backed toward the door as if he were glad to escape.
“Jackson.”
“Y-yes sir.”
“I am not a sinister figure, surely?”
Jackson shook his head violently and moved out of the door.
Or am I? Sands thought. Perhaps I am. He looked down at himself, laughing softly. When he looked up again Prye was standing in the doorway, watching him.
Sands’ laugh fell away into an echo. “Dr. Prye? Come in and close the door.” He met Prye’s puzzled gaze with a smile. “Will you sit down?”
Prye closed the door and sat down on the red leather window seat. He was still speechless from his first sight of Sands chuckling softly to himself in an empty room.
“I know a little about you, Dr. Prye,” Sands said.
Prye found his voice and a smile. “Propaganda,” he said.
“You are a consulting psychiatrist, permanent home Detroit, came to Toronto to attend a wedding. My name is Sands, by the way. Inspector White of the Provincial Police is a friend of mine. You remember him, of course?”
“Of course,” Prye said hollowly.
“I understand he almost shot you.”
“Yes.”
“Because you interfered with one of his cases.”
“Again yes.”
“That covers everything, I think. I don’t carry a revolver. Is this your first visit to Toronto?”
“I’ve passed through it before. I’ve never stayed here.”
“But you have acquaintances in the city?”
“The people in this house, and yourself.”
“No one else?”
“No one.”
“Yet the note your friend found in his pocket was addressed to you. That lessens my work, doesn’t it?” Sands paused. “And where is your friend, by the way?”
“I told him to return home.”
“Unwisely, perhaps?”
“It’s a quality of invulnerability,” Prye said.
Sands’ eyebrows moved in surprise. “What is?”
“Your quality. Why you could frighten Jackson. Why you make me tongued-tied. You are an observer, an outsider. We insiders have no weapons against you.”
Sands leaned across the desk. “You won’t need any. Let me see your letter, will you?”
Prye pulled out the letter and gave it to him. Sands read it through quickly, folded it, and put it in an envelope that he took from his coat pocket.
“Long-winded fellow,” he commented. “Mildly endowed with humor of a sort. Everything well planned too. You read the note just before Mrs. Revel screamed at the church?”
“Yes.”
“The method would have to be poison, of course, preferably one which could be administered well ahead of time. Is that why you suggested atropine to the intern in charge?”
“Partly. The physical symptoms suggested atropine strongly: dilated pupils, extreme glassiness of her eyes, her inability to speak, the pinkness of her skin. I had still another reason, not so much a reason as a hunch.”
He took out a cigarette and lit it.
“The immediate result of Jane’s poisoning was that the wedding was stopped. Let’s assume that that was the result intended. Bear in mind that the letter was sure to be received before the ceremony and that the ring was taken. So it occurred to me that if I wanted to break up a wedding I’d give someone in the wedding party a nicely calculated dose of atropine. Or muscarin.”
“Why specify the poisons?”
“Because they are the only two poisons in the whole range of toxicology which are perfect antidotes for each other. Although both are effective poisons used separately, used together they nullify each other and are relatively harmless. So that if I gave you, for instance, a half grain of atropine and a doctor followed it up with a similar quantity of muscarin, you’d live to have me arrested for attempted homicide.”
“Is this fact widely known?”
Prye said, “It’s not the sort of thing that would come out in drawing-room conversation, but it’s easy enough to find out.”
“What is muscarin?”
“It’s the poison obtained from the fly mushroom and is chemically allied to nicotine. It’s not easy to obtain like atropine, which is used widely in prescriptions. That’s why I’d choose atropine. All right. I break up the wedding by poisoning a bridesmaid. But suppose I have no grudge against the girl. I don’t want her to die, so I make sure that the poison is identified. Then the wedding would be stopped, Miss Stevens would recover, and all would be well.”