4_50 From Paddington - Agatha Christie [61]
“Which was when the house was full? With the family? Or guests?”
“Yes. That seemed reasonable enough. But frankly, Craddock, I wasn’t happy. I went so far as to write to old Dr. Morris. He was my senior partner and retired soon after I joined him. Crackenthorpe was his patient originally. I asked about these earlier attacks that the old man had had.”
“And what response did you get?”
Quimper grinned.
“I got a flea in the ear. I was more or less told not to be a damned fool. Well”—he shrugged his shoulders—“presumably I was a damned fool.”
“I wonder,” Craddock was thoughtful.
Then he decided to speak frankly.
“Throwing discretion aside, Doctor, there are people who stand to benefit pretty considerably from Luther Crackenthorpe’s death.” The doctor nodded. “He’s an old man—and a hale and hearty one. He may live to be ninety odd?”
“Easily. He spends his life taking care of himself, and his constitution is sound.”
“And his sons—and daughter—are all getting on, and they are all feeling the pinch?”
“You leave Emma out of it. She’s no poisoner. These attacks only happen when the others are there—not when she and he are alone.”
“An elementary precaution—if she’s the one,” the inspector thought, but was careful not to say aloud.
He paused, choosing his words carefully.
“Surely—I’m ignorant on these matters—but supposing just as a hypothesis that arsenic was administered—hasn’t Crackenthorpe been very lucky not to succumb?”
“Now there,” said the doctor, “you have got something odd. It is exactly that fact that leads me to believe that I have been, as old Morris puts it, a damned fool. You see, it’s obviously not a case of small doses of arsenic administered regularly—which is what you might call the classic method of arsenic poisoning. Crackenthorpe has never had any chronic gastric trouble. In a way, that’s what makes these sudden violent attacks seem unlikely. So, assuming they are not due to natural causes, it looks as though the poisoner is muffing it every time—which hardly makes sense.”
“Giving an inadequate dose, you mean?”
“Yes. On the other hand, Crackenthorpe’s got a strong constitution and what might do in another man, doesn’t do him in. There’s always personal idiosyncrasy to be reckoned with. But you’d think that by now the poisoner—unless he’s unusually timid—would have stepped up the dose. Why hasn’t he?
“That is,” he added, “if there is a poisoner which there probably isn’t! Probably all my ruddy imagination from start to finish.”
“It’s an odd problem,” the inspector agreed. “It doesn’t seem to make sense.”
II
“Inspector Craddock!”
The eager whisper made the inspector jump.
He had been just on the point of ringing the front doorbell. Alexander and his friend Stoddart-West emerged cautiously from the shadows.
“We heard your car, and we wanted to get hold of you.”
“Well, let’s come inside.” Craddock’s hand went out to the door bell again, but Alexander pulled at his coat with the eagerness of a pawing dog.
“We’ve found a clue,” he breathed.
“Yes, we’ve found a clue,” Stoddart-West echoed.
“Damn that girl,” thought Craddock unamiably.
“Splendid,” he said in a perfunctory manner. “Let’s go inside the house and look at it.”
“No,” Alexander was insistent. “Someone’s sure to interrupt. Come to the harness room. We’ll guide you.”
Somewhat unwillingly, Craddock allowed himself to be guided round the corner of the house and along to the stableyard. Stoddart-West pushed open a heavy door, stretched up, and turned on a rather feeble electric light. The harness room, once the acme of Victorian spit and polish, was now the sad repository of everything that no one wanted. Broken garden chairs, rusted old garden implements, a vast decrepit mowing-machine, rusted spring mattresses, hammocks, and disintegrated tennis nets.
“We come here a good deal,” said Alexander. “One can really be