Death of a Delft Blue

‘Unless it came in the first place from Mabel Sims and she passed on a bit to Effie,’ the Superintendent suggested. ‘You see,’ he added, observing Gavin’s look of surprise. ‘I don’t suppose your good lady eats many sweets, Mr Gavin?’

‘No, she likes whisky and fruit — not both together, of course. Why?’

‘Well, in my experience, a woman will put aside a box of chocolates, we’ll say, and not touch it for, perhaps, quite a few days. Then she’ll eat the whole lot at one go.’

‘Where’s this getting us?’

‘Well, we’ve all taken it for granted that because Effie died first it was her bit of sweet-stuff that killed them both, but the chocolate-cream could just as easily have come from Mabel, who didn’t eat hers quite so soon. See what I mean?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Moreover,’ pursued the Superintendent, ‘it does seem as if Mabel had the bigger portion, if there was enough to poison her and the dog. Well, now, Mr Gavin, you know what people are like. We’re all like it, I dare say. Take cigarettes, for example. You might offer a cigarette, but you don’t offer half the packet.’

‘I take your point,’ said Gavin. ‘I’d better go and have another talk with Mrs Sims.’

Mrs Sims, however, banged the new theory very effectively on the head.

‘Mabel did show me a biggish bit of chocolate-cream, but it wasn’t the whole bar. You could see where it had been broke off. She offered me a bit, but I find it sickly, so I wouldn’t have any. I ask her where she got it — I see it was some foreign make — and she said as how her friend Effie, the other one as died — had give it to her. “She’s give you the biggest half, then,” I said. “Don’t she like it?” So Mabel says as how Effie broke off a bit and took a smell of it and says, “It smells of almonds, and I don’t like almond flavouring all that much, I only likes peppermint in chocolate-cream. ’Ere you are,” she says, “you ’ave the big bit what I was going to keep for meself. This bit’ll do me fine.” That’s what she said, so Mabel told me, sir.’

‘Not that it seems to me that it makes much difference which of them died first,’ said Gavin, upon returning to the Superintendent, ‘but it’s interesting they noticed the smell of almonds. I’ll just have another word with the landlady who keeps the pub where Effie worked.’

The landlady, it seemed, was on the local grapevine.

‘So it was that young fellow’s chocolate-cream,’ she said. ‘I never did care much about foreign sweets. Unwholesome, if you ask me. Give me good old English mint humbugs, or something of that! It was terrible, going into Effie’s room and finding her dead in bed. The light was on and her magazine had dropped on the floor, as she must have let go of it as she died.’

‘You say it was a young man’s gift to Effie, this chocolate-cream?’

‘Of course it was! Where else could it have come from? Of course he give it to her — oh, not meaning no harm, of course! I’m perfectly certain of that! Such a handsome young chap as he was!’

So Gavin went off to North Norfolk. He did not announce his coming, feeling that an element of surprise might well attend upon his arrival at Leyden Hall, and so it proved. He went by way of Buxton, Bakewell and Nottingham and then across to Grantham, Holbeach and King’s Lynn, and arrived at Leyden Hall at six in the evening, a time at which he judged most, if not all, of the household would be at home.

His judgment was justified. He was shown up to the enormous drawing-room where Binnie was reading aloud to Bernard van Zestien and Florian was playing a complicated game of Patience at a small table on the opposite side of the hearth. He must have heard Gavin announced, but went on with his occupation without so much as raising his eyes. His granduncle called him to order.

‘Florian! Here is Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin!’

Florian pushed the Patience cards aside and stood up.

‘Hullo, Mr Gavin,’ he said ungraciously. ‘How do you do?’

‘How do you do?’ said Gavin. ‘I’m here in my official capacity, I’m afraid.’ He addressed the remark more to Bernard van Zestien than to Florian. The old man nodded.

‘Are you any nearer to solving the mystery of the deaths of those unfortunate young women?’ he asked.

‘Well, we are and we’re not,’ Gavin replied. ‘I wondered whether perhaps Mr Colwyn-Welch could give us a little more help.’

‘I’ve told you all I know,’ said Florian sullenly. ‘I don’t see what else you can ask me. I did know Effie, but, to the best of my knowledge, I’ve never spoken to, or set eyes on, the other girl.’

‘Maybe not,’ said Gavin, ‘but that makes no difference to my present errand.’ He turned to van Zestien. ‘I wonder whether you’d permit me to have a word in private, sir?’

‘With Florian? By all means.’

‘Later, if you will, sir. I really meant, at the moment, with yourself.’

‘With me? I shall be at a loss. I do not see what I can tell you. I was never in Derbyshire in my life.’

‘If you will allow me, that is beside the point, Mr van Zestien.’

Binnie got up and put down the book from which she had been reading aloud.

‘Come on, Florian,’ she said. ‘We’re in the way. We’ll be in the library, Granduncle, if you want to send for us.’ She led the way out by the doorway which opened on to the staircase. With a very bad grace and a subdued muttering, her brother followed her, slamming the door behind him.

‘Please be seated, Mr Gavin,’ said the old Netherlander. ‘Now, what can I tell you?’

‘I’d like to tell you something first,’ said Gavin. ‘It may make my questions seem less impertinent. We have discovered the vehicle by which the poison was conveyed to the two young women.’ He gave an account of the exhumation of Toby, and added, at the end of the recital, ‘Of course, the chocolate-cream may