Pocket Full of Rye - Agatha Christie [30]
Lance asked: “Do you think she may have seen someone tampering with the food?”
Aunt Effie threw him a sharp glance.
“It’s possible, isn’t it?” she said.
“Yes, I suppose so.” Then he added apologetically: “The whole thing still seems so wildly improbable. Like a detective story.”
“Percival’s wife is a hospital nurse,” said Miss Ramsbottom.
The remark seemed so unconnected with what had gone before that Lance looked at her in a puzzled fashion.
“Hospital nurses are used to handling drugs,” said Miss Ramsbottom.
Lance looked doubtful.
“This stuff—taxine—is it ever used in medicine?”
“They get it from yewberries, I gather. Children eat yewberries sometimes,” said Miss Ramsbottom. “Makes them very ill, too. I remember a case when I was a child. It made a great impression on me. I never forgot it. Things you remember come in useful sometimes.”
Lance raised his head sharply and stared at her.
“Natural affection is one thing,” said Miss Ramsbottom, “and I hope I’ve got as much of it as anyone. But I won’t stand for wickedness. Wickedness has to be destroyed.”
II
“Went off without a word to me,” said Mrs. Crump, raising her red, wrathful face from the pastry she was now rolling out on the board. “Slipped out without a word to anybody. Sly, that’s what it is. Sly! Afraid she’d be stopped, and I would have stopped her if I’d caught her! The idea! There’s the master dead, Mr. Lance coming home that hasn’t been home for years and I said to Crump, I said: ‘Day out or no day out, I know my duty. There’s not going to be cold supper tonight as is usual on a Thursday, but a proper dinner. A gentleman coming home from abroad with his wife, what was formerly married in the aristocracy, things must be properly done.’ You know me, miss, you know I take a pride in my work.”
Mary Dove, the recipient of these confidences, nodded her head gently.
“And what does Crump say?” Mrs. Crump’s voice rose angrily. “ ‘It’s my day off and I’m goin’ off,’ that’s what he says. ‘And a fig for the aristocracy,’ he says. No pride in his work, Crump hasn’t. So off he goes and I tell Gladys she’ll have to manage alone tonight. She just says: ‘All right, Mrs. Crump,’ then, when my back’s turned out she sneaks. It wasn’t her day out, anyway. Friday’s her day. How we’re going to manage now, I don’t know! Thank goodness Mr. Lance hasn’t brought his wife here with him today.”
“We shall manage, Mrs. Crump,” Mary’s voice was both soothing and authoritative, “if we just simplify the menu a little.” She outlined a few suggestions. Mrs. Crump nodded unwilling acquiescence. “I shall be able to serve that quite easily,” Mary concluded.
“You mean you’ll wait at table yourself, miss?” Mrs. Crump sounded doubtful.
“If Gladys doesn’t come back in time.”
“She won’t come back,” said Mrs. Crump. “Gallivanting off, wasting her money somewhere in the shops. She’s got a young man, you know, miss, though you wouldn’t think it to look at her. Albert his name is. Going to get married next spring, so she tells me. Don’t know what the married state’s like, these girls don’t. What I’ve been through with Crump.” She sighed, then said in an ordinary voice: “What about tea, miss. Who’s going to clear it away and wash it up?”
“I’ll do that,” said Mary. “I’ll go and do it now.”
The lights had not been turned on in the drawing room though Adele Fortescue was still sitting on the sofa behind the tea tray.
“Shall I switch the lights on, Mrs. Fortescue?” Mary asked. Adele did not answer.
Mary switched on the lights and went across to the window, where she pulled the curtains across. It was only then that she turned her head and saw the face of the woman who had sagged back against the cushions. A half-eaten scone spread with honey was beside her and her tea cup was still half full. Death had come to Adele Fortescue suddenly and swiftly.
III
“Well?” demanded Inspector Neele impatiently.
The doctor said promptly:
“Cyanide—potassium cyanide probably—in the tea.”
“Cyanide,” muttered Neele.