James, who brought it in on the tray with the decanter and the glass. Taken out with the bottle and washed again at once, unfortunately--otherwise, of course, it might have told us something about when the nicotine got into the port wine.'
'Well,' said Mr Egg obstinately, 'it didn't get in at our place, that's a certainty. What's more, I don't believe it ever was in the bottle at all. How could it be? Where is the bottle, by the way?'
'It's just been packed up to go to the analyst, I think,' said the inspector, 'but as you're here, you'd better have a look at it. Podgers, let's have that bottle again. There are no fingerprints on it except Craven's, by the way, so it doesn't look as if it had been tampered with.'
The policeman produced a brown paper parcel, from which he extracted a port-bottle, its mouth plugged with a clean cork. Some of the original dust of the cellar still clung to it, mingled with fingerprint powder. Mr Egg removed the cork and took a long, strong sniff at the contents. Then his face changed.
'Where did you get this bottle from?' he demanded sharply.
'From Craven. Naturally, it was one of the first things we asked to see. He took us along to the cellar and pointed it out.'
'Was it standing by itself or with a lot of other bottles?'
'It was standing on the cellar floor at the end of a row of empties, all belonging to the same bin; he explained that he put them on the floor in the order in which they were used, till the time came for them to be collected and taken away.'
Mr Egg thoughtfully tilted the bottle; a few drops of thick red liquid, turbid with disturbed crust, escaped into his wineglass. He smelt them again and tasted them. His snub nose looked pugnacious.
'Well?' asked the inspector.
'No nicotine there, at all events,' said Mr Egg, 'unless my nose deceives me, which, you will understand, inspector, isn't likely, my nose being my livelihood, so to speak. No. You'll have to send it to be analysed, of course; I quite understand that, but I'd be ready to bet quite a little bit of money you'll find that bottle innocent. And that, I needn't tell you, will be a great relief to our minds. And I'm sure, speaking for myself, I very much appreciate the kind way you've put the matter before me.'
'That's all right; your expert knowledge is of value. We can probably now exclude the bottle straight away and concentrate on the decanter.'
'Just so,' replied Mr Egg. 'Ye-es. Do you happen to know how many of the six dozen bottles had been used?'
'No, but Craven can tell us, if you really want to know.'
'Just for my own satisfaction,' said Mr Egg. 'Just to be sure that this is the right bottle, you know. I shouldn't like to feel I might have misled you in any way.'
The inspector rang the bell, and the butler promptly appeared--an elderly man of intensely respectable appearance.
'Craven,' said the inspector, 'this is Mr Egg of Plummet & Rose's.'
'I am already acquainted with Mr Egg.'
'Quite. He is naturally interested in the history of the port wine. He would like to know--what is it, exactly, Mr Egg?'
'This bottle,' said Monty, rapping it lightly with his fingernail, 'it's the one you opened last night?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Sure of that?'
'Yes, sir.'
'How many dozen have you got left?'
'I couldn't say off-hand, sir, without the cellar-book.'
'And that's in the cellar, eh? I'd like to have a look at your cellars--I'm told they're very fine. All in apple-pie order, I'm sure. Right temperature and all that?'
'Undoubtedly, sir.'
'We'll all go and look at the cellar,' suggested the inspector, who in spite of his expressed confidence seemed to have doubts about leaving Mr Egg alone with the butler.
Craven bowed and led the way, pausing only to fetch the keys from his pantry.
'This nicotine, now,' prattled Mr Egg, as they proceeded down a long corridor, 'is it very deadly? I mean, would you require a great quantity of it to poison a person?'
'I understand from the doctor,' replied the inspector, 'that a few drops of the pure extract, or whatever they call it, would produce death in anything from twenty minutes to seven or eight hours.'
'Dear, dear!' said Mr Egg. 'And how much of the port had the poor old gentleman taken? The full two glasses?'
'Yes, sir; to judge by the decanter, he had. Lord Borrodale had the habit of drinking his port straight off. He did not sip it, sir.'
Mr Egg was distressed.
'Not the right thing at all,' he said mournfully. 'No, no. Smell, sip and savour to bring out the flavour--that's the rule for wine, you know. Is there such a thing as a pond or stream in the garden, Mr Craven?'
'No, sir,' said the butler, a little surprised.
'Ah! I was just wondering. Somebody must have brought the nicotine along in something or other, you know. What would they do afterwards with the little bottle or whatever it was?'
'Easy enough to throw it in among the bushes or bury it, surely,' said Craven. 'There's six acres of garden, not counting the meadow or the courtyard. Or there are the water butts, of course, and the well.'
'How stupid of me,' confessed Mr Egg. 'I never thought of that. Ah! this is the cellar, is it? Splendid--a real slap-up outfit, I call this. Nice, even temperature, too. Same summer and winter, eh? Well away from the house- furnace?'
'Oh, yes, indeed, sir. That's the other side of the house. Be careful of the last step, gentlemen; it's a little broken away. Here is where the Dow '08 stood sir. No. 17 bin--one, two, three and a half dozen remaining, sir.'
Mr Egg nodded and, holding his electric torch close to the protruding necks of the bottles, made a careful examination of the seals.
'Yes,' he said, 'here they are. Three and a half dozen, as you say. Sad to think that the throat they should have gone down lies, as you might say, closed up by Death. I often think, as I make my rounds, what a pity it is we don't all grow mellower and softer in our old age, same as this wine. A fine old gentleman, Lord Borrodale, or so I'm told, but something of a tough nut, if that's not disrespectful.'
'He was hard, sir,' agreed the butler, 'but just. A very just master.'
'Quite,' said Mr Egg. 'And these, I take it, are the empties. Twelve, twenty-four, twenty-nine--and one is thirty--and three and a half dozen is forty-two--seventy-two--six dozen--that's O.K. by me.' He lifted the empty bottles one by one. 'They say dead men tell no tales, but they talk to little Monty Egg all right. This one, for instance. If this ever held Plummet & Rose's Dow '08 you can take Monty Egg and scramble him. Wrong smell, wrong crust, and that splash of whitewash was never put on by our cellar-man. Very easy to mix up one empty bottle with another. Twelve, twenty-four, twenty-eight and one is twenty-nine. I wonder what's become of the thirtieth bottle.'
'I'm sure I never took one away,' said the butler.
'The pantry keys--on a nail inside the door--very accessible,' said Monty.
'Just a moment,' interrupted the inspector. 'Do you say that that bottle doesn't belong to the same bunch of port wine?'
'No, it doesn't--but no doubt Lord Borrodale sometimes went in for a change of vintage.' Mr Egg inverted the bottle and shook it sharply. 'Quite dry. Curious. Had a dead spider at the bottom of it. You'd be surprised how long a spider can exist without food. Curious that this empty bottle, which comes in the middle of the row, should be drier than the one at the beginning of the row and should contain a dead spider. We see a deal of curious things in our calling, inspector--we're encouraged to notice things, as you might say. 'The salesman with the open eye sees commissions mount up high'. You might call this bottle, a curious thing. And here's another. That other bottle, the one you said was opened last night, Craven--how did you come to make a mistake like that? If my nose is to be trusted, not to mention my palate, that bottle's been open a week at least.'
