to choose arsenic. There are sleeping pills in this house. She could have taken an overdose of them.'
'Could the arsenic have got into something by accident?'
'That's what I'm wondering. It seems very unlikely, but such things have been known. But if you and she ate the same things -'
Susan nodded. She said, 'It all seems impossible -' then she gave a sudden gasp. 'Why, of course, the wedding cake!'
'What's that? Wedding cake?'
Susan explained. The doctor listened with close attention.
'Odd. And you say she wasn't sure who sent it? Any of it left? Or is the box it came in lying around?'
'I don't know. I'll look.'
They searched together and finally found the white cardboard box with a few crumbs of cake still in it lying on the kitchen dresser. The doctor packed it away with some care.
'I'll take charge of this. Any idea where the wrapping paper it came in might be?'
Here they were not successful and Susan said that it had probably gone into the Ideal boiler.
'You won't be leaving here just yet, Mrs Banks?'
His tone was genial, but it made Susan feel a little uncomfortable.
'No, I have to go through my aunt's things. I shall be here for a few days.'
'Good. You understand the police will probably want to ask some questions. You don't know of anyone who – well, might have had it in for Miss Gilchrist?'
Susan shook her head.
'I don't really know much about her. She was with my aunt for some years – that's all I know.'
'Quite, quite. Always seemed a pleasant unassuming woman – quite ordinary. Not the kind, you'd say, to have enemies or anything melodramatic of that kind. Wedding cake through the post. Sounds like some jealous woman – but who'd be jealous of Miss Gilchrist? Doesn't seem to fit.'
'No.'
'Well, I must be on my way. I don't know what's happening to us in quiet little Lytchett St Mary. First a brutal murder and now attempted poisoning through the post. Odd, the one following the other.'
He went down the path to his car. The cottage felt stuffy and Susan left the door standing open as she went slowly upstairs to resume her task.
Cora Lansquenet had not been a tidy or methodical woman. Her drawers held a miscellaneous assortment of things. There were toilet accessories and letters and old handkerchiefs and paint brushes mixed up together in one drawer. There were a few old letters and bills thrust in amongst a bulging drawer of underclothes. In another drawer under some woollen jumpers was a cardboard box holding two false fringes. There was another drawer full of old photographs and sketching books. Susan lingered over a group taken evidently at some French place many years ago and which showed a younger, thinner Cora clinging to the arm of a tall lanky man with a straggling beard dressed in what seemed to be a velveteen coat and whom Susan took to be the late Pierre Lansquenet.
The photographs interested Susan, but she laid them aside, sorted all the papers she had found into a heap and began to go through them methodically. About a quarter way through she came on a letter. She read it through twice and was still staring at it when a voice speaking behind her caused her to give a cry of alarm.
'And what may you have got hold of there, Susan? Hallo, what's the matter?'
Susan reddened with annoyance. Her cry of alarm had been quite involuntary and she felt ashamed and anxious to explain.
'George? How you startled me!'
Her cousin smiled lazily.
'So it seems.'
'How did you get here?'
'Well, the door downstairs was open, so I walked in. There seemed to be nobody about on the ground floor, so I came up here. If you mean how did I get to this part of the world, I started down this morning to come to the funeral.'
'I didn't see you there?'
'The old bus played me up. The petrol feed seemed choked. I tinkered with it for some time and finally it seemed to clear itself. I was too late for the funeral by then, but I thought I might as well come on down. I knew you were here.'
He paused and then went on:
'I rang you up, as a matter of fact – and Greg told me you'd come down to take possession, as it were. I thought I might give you a hand.'
Susan said, 'Aren't you needed in the office? Or can you take days off whenever you like?'
'A funeral has always been a recognised excuse for absenteeism. And this funeral is indubitably genuine. Besides, a murder always fascinates people. Anyway, I shan't be going much to the office in future – not now that I'm a man of means. I shall have better things to do.'
He paused and grinned, 'Same as Greg,' he said.
Susan looked at George thoughtfully. She had never seen much of this cousin of hers and when they did meet she had always found him rather difficult to make out.
She asked, 'Why did you really come down here, George?'
'I'm not sure it wasn't to do a little detective work. I've been thinking a good deal about the last funeral we attended. Aunt Cora certainly threw a spanner into the works that day. I've wondered whether it was sheer irresponsibility and auntly joie de vivre that prompted her words, or whether she really had something to go upon. What actually is in that letter that you were reading so attentively when I came in?'
Susan said slowly, 'It's a letter that Uncle Richard wrote to Cora after he'd been down here to see her.'
How very black George's eyes were. She'd thought of them as brown but they were black, and there was something curiously impenetrable about black eyes. They concealed the thoughts that lay behind them.
George drawled slowly, 'Anything interesting in it?'
'No, not exactly…'
'Can I see?'
She hesitated for a moment, then put the letter into his outstretched hand.
He read it, skimming over the contents in a low monotone.
'Glad to have seen you again after all these years… looking very well… had a good journey home and arrived back not too tired…'
His voice changed suddenly, sharpened:
'Please don't say anything to anyone about what I told you. It may be a mistake. Your loving brother, Richard.'
He looked up at Susan. 'What does that mean?'
'It might mean anything… It might be just about his health. Or it might be some gossip about a mutual friend.'
'Oh yes, it might be a lot of things. It isn't conclusive – but it's suggestive… What did he tell Cora? Does anyone know what he told her?'
'Miss Gilchrist might know,' said Susan thoughtfully. 'I think she listened.'
'Oh, yes, the Companion help. Where is she, by the way?'
'In hospital, suffering from arsenic poisoning.'
George stared.
'You don't mean it?'
'I do. Someone sent her some poisoned wedding cake.'
George sat down on one of the bedroom chairs and whistled.
'It looks,' he said, 'as though Uncle Richard was not mistaken.'
III
