and down her cheeks.
Presently she spoke again, rather
breathlessly.
“The awful thing is that it makes
everything come right. I mean, Gerald and I
can get married now. I can do everything that
I want to do. But I hate it happening this
way. I don’t want Father to be dead. … Oh I
don’t. Oh Daddy-Daddy. . . .”
For the first time since he had come to
87
Yewtree Lodge, Inspector Neele was startled
by what seemed to be genuine grief for the
dead man.
88
9
<( f^ OUNDS like the wife to me," said the ^^ Assistant Commissioner. He had been ^J listening attentively to Inspector Neele's report. It had been an admirable precis of the case. Short, but with no relevant detail left out. "Yes," said the A.C. "It looks like the wife. What do you think yourself, Neele, eh?" Inspector Neele said that it looked like the wife to him too. He reflected cynically that it usually was the wife—or the husband as the case might be. "She had the opportunity all right. And motive?" The A.C. paused. "There is motive?" "Oh, I think so, sir. This Mr. Dubois, you know." "Think he was in it, too?" "No, I shouldn't say that, sir." Inspector Neele weighed the idea. "A bit too fond of his own skin for that. He may have guessed what was in her mind, but I shouldn't imagine that he instigated it." 89 "No, too careful." "Much too careful." "Well, we mustn't jump to conclusions, but it seems a good working hypothesis. What about the other two who had opportunity?" "That's the daughter and the daughter-inlaw. The daughter was mixed up with a young man whom her father didn't want her to marry. And he definitely wasn't marrying her unless she had the money. That gives her a motive. As to the daughter-in-law, I wouldn't like to say. Don't know enough about her yet. But any of the three of them could have poisoned him, and I don't see how anyone else could have done so. The parlourmaid, the butler, the cook, they all handled the breakfast or brought it in, but I don't see how any of them could have been sure of Fortescue himself getting the taxine and nobody else. That is, if it was taxine." The A.C. said, "It was taxine all right. I've just got the preliminary report." "That settles that, then," said Inspector Neele. "We can go ahead." "Servants seem all right?" "The butler and the parlourmaid both seem nervous. There's nothing uncommon 90 about that. Often happens. The cook's fighting mad and the housemaid was grimly pleased. In fact all quite natural and normal." "There's nobody else whom you consider suspicious in any way?" "No, I don't think so, sir." Involuntarily, Inspector Neele's mind went back to Mary Dove and her enigmatic smile. There had surely been a faint yet definite look of antagonism. Aloud he said, "Now that we know it's taxine, there ought to be some evidence to be got as to how it was obtained or prepared." "Just so. Well, go ahead, Neele. By the way, Mr. Percival Fortescue is here now. I've had a word or two with him and he's waiting to see you. We've located the other son, too. He's in Paris at the Bristol, leaving today. You'll have him met at the airport, I suppose?" "Yes, sir. That was my idea. ..." "Well, you'd better see Percival Fortescue now." The A.C. chuckled. "Percy Prim, that's what he is." Mr. Percival Fortescue was a neat fair man of thirty odd, with pale hair and eyelashes and a slightly pedantic way of speech. "This has been a terrible shock to me, 91 Inspector Neele, as you can well imagine." "It must have been, Mr. Fortescue," said Inspector Neele. "I can only say that my father was perfectly well when I left home the day before yesterday. This food poisoning, or whatever it was, must have been very sudden?" "It was very sudden, yes. But it wasn't food poisoning, Mr. Fortescue." Percival stared and frowned. "No? So that's why——" he broke off. "Your father," said Inspector Neele, "was poisoned by the administration oftaxine."