Sparkling Cyanide - Agatha Christie [80]
Race said: ‘Your suspicions still the same, Browne?’
‘Ruth Lessing? Yes, I stick to her as my candidate. You told me that she admitted to you she was in love with George. Rosemary by all accounts was pretty poisonous to her. Say she saw suddenly a good chance of getting rid of Rosemary, and was fairly convinced that with Rosemary out of the way, she could marry George out of hand.’
‘I grant you all that,’ said Race. ‘I’ll admit that Ruth Lessing has the calm practical efficiency that can contemplate and carry out murder, and that she perhaps lacks that quality of pity which is essentially a product of imagination. Yes, I give you the first murder. But I simply can’t see her committing the second one. I simply cannot see her panicking and poisoning the man she loved and wanted to marry! Another point that rules her out—why did she hold her tongue when she saw Iris throw the cyanide packet under the table?’
‘Perhaps she didn’t see her do it,’ suggested Anthony, rather doubtfully.
‘I’m fairly sure she did,’ said Race. ‘When I was questioning her, I had the impression that she was keeping something back. And Iris Marle herself thought Ruth Lessing saw her.’
‘Come now, colonel,’ said Kemp. ‘Let’s have your “spot”. You’ve got one, I suppose?’
Race nodded.
‘Out with it. Fair’s fair. You’ve listened to ours—and raised objections.’
Race’s eyes went thoughtfully from Kemp’s face to Anthony and rested there.
Anthony’s eyebrows rose.
‘Don’t say you still think I am the villain of the piece?’
Slowly Race shook his head.
‘I can imagine no possible reason why you should kill George Barton. I think I know who did kill him—and Rosemary Barton too.’
‘Who is it?’
Race said musingly:
‘Curious how we have all selected women as suspects. I suspect a woman, too.’ He paused and said quietly: ‘I think the guilty person is Iris Marle.’
With a crash Anthony pushed his chair back. For a moment his face went dark crimson—then with an effort, he regained command of himself. His voice, when he spoke, had a slight tremor but was deliberately as light and mocking as ever.
‘By all means let us discuss the possibility,’ he said. ‘Why Iris Marle? And if so, why should she, of her own accord, tell me about dropping the cyanide paper under the table?’
‘Because,’ said Race, ‘she knew that Ruth Lessing had seen her do it.’
Anthony considered the reply, his head on one side. Finally he nodded.
‘Passed,’ he said. ‘Go on. Why did you suspect her in the first place?’
‘Motive,’ said Race. ‘An enormous fortune had been left to Rosemary in which Iris was not to participate. For all we know she may have struggled for years with a sense of unfairness. She was aware that if Rosemary died childless, all that money came to her. And Rosemary was depressed, unhappy, run down after ’flu, just the mood when a verdict of suicide would be accepted without question.’
‘That’s right, make the girl out a monster!’ said Anthony.
‘Not a monster,’ said Race. ‘There is another reason why I suspected her—a far-fetched one, it may seem to you—Victor Drake.’
‘Victor Drake?’ Anthony stared.
‘Bad blood. You see, I didn’t listen to Lucilla Drake for nothing. I know all about the Marle family. Victor Drake—not so much weak as positively evil. His mother, feeble in intellect and incapable of concentration. Hector Marle, weak, vicious and a drunkard. Rosemary, emotionally unstable. A family history of weakness, vice and instability. Predisposing causes.’
Anthony lit a cigarette. His hands trembled.
‘Don’t you believe that there may be a sound blossom on a weak or even a bad stock?’
‘Of course there may. But I am not sure that Iris Marle is a sound blossom.’
‘And my word doesn’t count,’ said Anthony slowly, ‘because I’m in love with her. George showed her those letters, and she got in a funk and killed him? That’s how it goes on, is it?’
‘Yes. Panic would obtain in her case.’
‘And