The Thirteen Problems - Agatha Christie [32]
‘ “What did he say when he was rambling?” I asked curiously.
‘ “Something about some fish, wasn’t it?” turning to the other.
‘Dorothy agreed.
‘ “A heap of fish,” she said; “some nonsense like that. I could see at once he wasn’t in his right mind, poor gentleman.”
‘There didn’t seem to be any sense to be made out of that. As a last resource I went up to see Brewster, who was a gaunt, middle-aged woman of about fifty.
‘ “It is a pity that I wasn’t here that night,” she said. “Nobody seems to have tried to do anything for him until the doctor came.”
‘ “I suppose he was delirious,” I said doubtfully; “but that is not a symptom of ptomaine poisoning, is it?”
‘ “It depends,” said Brewster.
‘I asked her how her patient was getting on.
‘She shook her head.
‘ “He is pretty bad,” she said.
‘ “Weak?”
‘ “Oh no, he is strong enough physically—all but his eyesight. That is failing badly. He may outlive all of us, but his mind is failing very fast now. I have already told both Mr and Mrs Denman that he ought to be in an institution, but Mrs Denman wouldn’t hear of it at any price.”
‘I will say for Mabel that she always had a kindly heart.
‘Well, there the thing was. I thought it over in every aspect, and at last I decided that there was only one thing to be done. In view of the rumours that were going about, permission must be applied for to exhume the body, and a proper post-mortem must be made and lying tongues quietened once and for all. Mabel, of course, made a fuss, mostly on sentimental grounds—disturbing the dead man in his peaceful grave, etc., etc.—but I was firm.
‘I won’t make a long story of this part of it. We got the order and they did the autopsy, or whatever they call it, but the result was not so satisfactory as it might have been. There was no trace of arsenic—that was all to the good—but the actual words of the report were that there was nothing to show by what means deceased had come to his death.
‘So, you see, that didn’t lead us out of trouble altogether. People went on talking—about rare poisons impossible to detect, and rubbish of that sort. I had seen the pathologist who had done the post-mortem, and I had asked him several questions, though he tried his best to get out of answering most of them; but I got out of him that he considered it highly unlikely that the poisoned mushrooms were the cause of death. An idea was simmering in my mind, and I asked him what poison, if any, could have been employed to obtain that result. He made a long explanation to me, most of which, I must admit, I did not follow, but it amounted to this: That death might have been due to some strong vegetable alkaloid.
‘The idea I had was this: Supposing the taint of insanity was in Geoffrey Denman’s blood also, might he not have made away with himself? He had, at one period of his life, studied medicine, and he would have a good knowledge of poisons and their effects.
‘I didn’t think it sounded very likely, but it was the only thing I could think of. And I was nearly at my wits’ end, I can tell you. Now, I dare say you modern young people will laugh, but when I am in really bad trouble I always say a little prayer to myself—anywhere, when I am walking along the street, or at a bazaar. And I always get an answer. It may be some trifling thing, apparently quite unconnected with the subject, but there it is. I had that text pinned over my bed when I was a little girl: Ask and you shall receive. On the morning that I am telling you about, I was walking along the High Street, and I was praying hard. I shut my eyes, and when I opened them, what do you think was the first thing that I saw?’
Five faces with varying degrees of interest were turned to