A glass cock allowed the gravity feed to be turned off. I gave it a twist and pulled the full dish carefully out of its spring clips.
Grace moaned horribly on the floor, apparently no longer aware of my presence.
Treading carefully, I moved to the spot from which the pigeon had flown. Feeling gingerly in the straw with my fingertips, I was quickly rewarded. An egg. No, two little eggs!
Putting them down gently beside the dish, I picked up the sailboat. At the bottom of its tin keel was a lead weight. Damn!
I wedged the thing into the crack between two bricks in the windowsill and pulled for all I was worth — then pulled again. The third time, the weight snapped off.
Using the sharp bottom edge of the keel as a makeshift putty knife, I leaned out the opening to the wide shelf that had served for centuries as a perch.
Below me, the farmyard was empty. No sense wasting time by yelling for help.
I ground the thin keel along the ledge until I had gathered what I needed, then scraped it off, with a reluctant finger, into the water dish.
One step left.
Although their small size made it a tricky bit of work, I cracked the eggs, one at a time, the way Mrs. Mullet had taught me: a sharp rap in the middle, then using the two halves of the shell like twin egg cups, tipping the yolk back and forth from one to the other until the last of the whites had oozed away into the waiting water dish.
Taking up the glass pill bottle, I used it as a pestle: twisting, grinding, and stirring until I had perhaps half a teacup of grayish curded mud, with the slightest tinge of yellow.
So that neither of us would knock it over — Grace was now kicking feebly and pink in the face from lack of oxygen — I sat down beside her, cross-legged on the floor, and pulled her head into my lap, face upwards. She was too weak to resist.
Then seizing her nose between my thumb and forefinger, I pulled open her mouth, hoping that, in her spasms, she wouldn't bite me.
She snapped it shut at once. This was not going to be as easy as I had thought.
I pinched her nose a little tighter. Now, if she wanted to breathe at all, it was going to have to be through her mouth. I hated myself for what I was doing to her.
She struggled, her eyes bulging — and then her mouth flew open and she sucked in a breath of air — then snapped it shut again.
As slowly and as gently as I could, I leaned over and picked up the brimming dish, awaiting the proper moment.
It came sooner than I expected. With a gasp, Grace's mouth flew open, and as she sucked in air again, I dumped the contents of the dish into her mouth and slammed it shut with the heel of my hand under her chin. The empty dish fell to the floor with a crash.
But Grace was fighting me; I could see that. Some part of her was so dead set on dying that she was keeping the stuff in her mouth, refusing to swallow.
With the little finger of my right hand, I began prodding at her gullet, like a seabird digging in the sand.
We must have looked like Greek wrestlers: she with her head locked tightly in the crook of my arm, me bending over her, trembling with the sheer physical effort of trying to keep her from spitting out the nauseating mixture.
And then, just before she went limp, I heard her swallow. She was no longer resisting. I carefully pried open her mouth. Aside from a faint and distasteful glistening of foreign matter, it was empty.
I raced to the window, leaning out as far as I could into the sunshine.
My heart sank. The farmyard was still empty.
Then suddenly there was a noise of machinery in the lane, and a moment later, the gray Fergie came clattering into view, Sally bouncing at the wheel and Dieter dangling his long legs over the gate of the trailer.
"Sally! Dieter!" I shouted.
At first they didn't know where my voice was coming from. They were looking everywhere round the yard, perplexed.
"Up here — in the dovecote!"
I dug in my pocket, fished out Alf's willow whistle, and blew into it like a demented bobby.
At last they spotted me. Sally gave a wave.
"It's Grace!" I hollered. "She's taken poison! Telephone Dr. Darby and tell him to come at once."
Dieter was already dashing for the farmhouse, running full tilt, the way he must once have done when scrambling for his Messerschmitt.
"And tell him to make sure he's got amyl nitrite and sodium thiosulfate in his bag!" I shouted, in spite of a couple of wayward tears. "He's going to need them!"
* TWENTY-EIGHT *
"PIGEON DROPPINGS?" INSPECTOR HEWITT said, for perhaps the third time. "You're telling me that you concocted an antidote from pigeon droppings?"
We were sitting in the vicar's study, sizing one another up.
"Yes," I said. "I had no other choice. Pigeon guano, when it's left outdoors in the sunlight, is remarkably high in NaNO3 — sodium nitrate — which is why I had to scrape it from the outside perch, rather than using the older stuff that was in the chamber. Sodium nitrate is an antidote to cyanide poisoning. I used the whites of pigeons' eggs to produce the suspension. I hope she's all right."
"She's fine," the Inspector said, "although we're seeking an opinion about whether to charge you with practicing medicine without a license."
I studied his face to see if he was teasing, but he didn't seem to be.
"But," I protested, "Dr. Darby said he couldn't have done better himself."
"Which isn't saying much," the Inspector said, looking away from me and out the window.
I saw that I had him beaten.
Inspector Hewitt had flagged me down on my way back to Buckshaw, and asked me to account for my presence at Culverhouse Farm.
A hastily fabricated story about fetching eggs for Mrs. Mullet, who wanted to make an angel food cake, seemed to have got me off the hook. At least for now.
The Inspector had assured me that Grace Ingleby was still alive; that she had been taken to the hospital at Hinley.
He did not say that my antidote had saved her life. I supposed only time would tell.
The vicar, having given up his desk and chair to Inspector Hewitt, stood like a black stork in the corner, rubbing at his eyeglasses with a linen handkerchief.
As Detective Sergeant Woolmer stood at one of the windows, pretending to polish an anastigmat lens from his precious camera, Detective Sergeant Graves glanced up from his notes just long enough to give me a beaming smile. I'd like to think that the almost imperceptible shake of his head that came with it was a sign of admiration.
And even though they're not yet aware of one another, I also like to think that Sergeant Graves will one day marry my rotten sister Ophelia and carry her off to a vine-covered cottage just far enough from Buckshaw that I can drop in whenever I feel like it for a good old gab about murder.
But now there was Dieter to take into account. Life was becoming so complicated.
"Just begin at the beginning," Inspector Hewitt said, suddenly back from his reverie. "I want to make sure we haven't missed anything."
Was I detecting a note of sarcasm? I hoped not, since I really liked the man, although he could be somewhat slow.
"Mrs. Ingleby — Grace — was having an affair with Rupert Porson. Rupert had been coming to Culverhouse Farm for years because ... Gordon supplied him with marijuana. It eased the pain of his polio, you see."
He must have sensed my hesitation.
"No need to worry about betraying him," he said, "Mr. Ingleby has been most frank with us. It's your version I want to hear."
"Rupert and Grace arranged to meet at the seaside, years ago," I said. "Robin saw them there together. He stumbled upon them again, later, in the dovecote. Rupert made a grab for him, or something like that, and Robin tumbled down the central shaft and broke his neck. It was an accident, but still, Robin was dead. Rupert cooked up the idea of having Grace take his body, after dark, to Gibbet Wood, and hang it from a tree. Robin had been seen by several people playing with a rope.