The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie [72]
‘What I meant when I told you that you could safely confess to Papa Poirot, eh? But you would not trust me.’
‘I see everything now,’ said Lawrence. ‘The drugged cocoa, taken on top of the poisoned coffee, amply accounts for the delay.’
‘Exactly. But was the coffee poisoned, or was it not? We come to a little difficulty here, since Mrs Inglethorp never drank it.’
‘What?’ The cry of surprise was universal.
‘No. You will remember my speaking of a stain on the carpet in Mrs Inglethorp’s room? There were some peculiar points about that stain. It was still damp, it exhaled a strong odour of coffee, and imbedded in the nap of the carpet I found some little splinters of china. What had happened was plain to me, for not two minutes before I had placed my little case on the table near the window, and the table, tilting up, had deposited it upon the floor on precisely the identical spot. In exactly the same way, Mrs Inglethorp had laid down her cup of coffee on reaching her room the night before, and the treacherous table had played her the same trick.
‘What happened next is mere guesswork on my part, but I should say that Mrs Inglethorp picked up the broken cup and placed it on the table by the bed. Feeling in need of a stimulant of some kind, she heated up her cocoa, and drank it off then and there. Now we are faced with a new problem. We know the cocoa contained no strychnine. The coffee was never drunk. Yet the strychnine must have been administered between seven and nine o’clock that evening. What third medium was there—a medium so suitable for disguising the taste of strychnine that it is extraordinary no one has thought of it?’ Poirot looked around the room, and then answered himself impressively. ‘Her medicine!’
‘Do you mean that the murderer introduced the strychnine into her tonic?’ I cried.
‘There was no need to introduce it. It was already there—in the mixture. The strychnine that killed Mrs Inglethorp was the identical strychnine prescribed by Dr Wilkins. To make that clear to you, I will read you an extract from a book on dispensing which I found in the Dispensary of the Red Cross Hospital at Tadminster:
‘The following prescription has become famous in textbooks:
Strychninae Sulph gr. 1
Potass Bromide 3vi
Aqua ad 3viii
Fiat Mistura
This solution deposits in a few hours the greater part of the strychnine salt as an insoluble bromide in transparent crystals. A lady in England lost her life by taking a similar mixture: the precipitated strychnine collected at the bottom, and in taking the last dose she swallowed nearly all of it!
Now there was, of course, no bromide in Dr Wilkins’ prescription, but you will remember that I mentioned an empty box of bromide powders. One or two of those powders introudced into the full bottle of medicine would effectually precipitate the strychnine, as the book describes, and cause it to be taken in the last dose. You will learn later that the person who usually poured out Mrs Inglethorp’s medicine was always extremely careful not to shake the bottle, but to leave the sediment at the bottom of it undisturbed.
‘Throughout the case, there have been evidences that the tragedy was intended to take place on Monday evening. On that day, Mrs Inglethorp’s bell wire was neatly cut, and on Monday evening Mademoiselle Cynthia was spending the night with friends, so that Mrs Inglethorp would have been quite alone in the right wing, completely shut off from help of any kind, and would have died, in all probability, before medical aid could have been summoned. But in her hurry to be in time for the village entertainment Mrs Inglethorp forgot to take her medicine, and the next day she lunched away from home, so that the last—and fatal—dose was actually taken twenty-four hours later than had been anticipated by the murderer; and it is owing to that delay that the final proof—the last link of the chain—is now in my hands.’
Amid breathless excitement, he held out three thin strips of paper.
‘A letter in the murderer’s own handwriting, mes amis! Had it been a little clearer in its terms,