Seeing is Believing

'I'm sure if there's anything I can do for you, sir,' said Mrs. Propper, 'I'd be only too glad to do it! Will you come into the kitchen?'

They went. Ann and Courtney followed. Though Masters seemed about to protest, H.M.'s glare silenced him.

Here H.M. leaned his elbow on the refrigerator.

'Ma'am,' he began meditatively, 'I'm goin' to deal very frankly with you. Can you keep a secret?'

Mrs. Propper's eyes gleamed.

Through the kitchen windows Courtney could see the dustbin beside the garden shed. Its metal lid was askew, and was now being investigated by a stray cat.

'I'm sure I'll do my best, sir!'

'Good. Now, ma'am, you think Mrs. Fane nearly died of lockjaw. Don't you?'

'Seeing it was you who brought her round, sir…'

'Well, she didn't. She was deliberately poisoned with some stuff called strychnine. That poison was put into a grapefruit, a piece of grapefruit, that you prepared for her about four o'clock on Thursday afternoon. Remember?'

Dead silence, except for the kitchen clock.

If this statement had been made by anybody else in Mrs. Propper's acquaintance, the result would probably have been fury or hysterics. As it was, she merely blinked back at him. It took some time before she even understood. But he ought to know. He was the Big Doctor.

Nor was the effect on Ann Browning less pronounced. Courtney glanced sideways at her tense arms and profile. Otherwise everyone in the kitchen stood rigid.

'God save us,' muttered Mrs. Propper, getting her breath, 'I-'

'Easy now! We're not suggestin' you had anything to do with it. We're sure you didn't. All we say is that somebody tampered with the grapefruit. The poison might 'a' been in the form of a liquid, or of a white powder. You do remember, don't you?'

Mrs. Propper swallowed.

'So help me, sir, I don't know nothing about it! I've been a good woman all my life, so help me, and I'd never—'

'Now, now, now! I said we know you didn't do it! Didn't I say that? All right. I'm just as kin': you do remember preparing the grapefruit?'

Mrs. Propper sat down rather abruptly in a white chair. She began in a dazed way to fan her face with her apron. What her manner might be when she had assimilated the shock was difficult to tell.

'Yes, I do indeed. But-'

'What happened?'

The cook searched her wits. 'I took the grapefruit out of the ice-box, and cut it in half, and put one half in a nice dish—'

'Uh-huh. But before that?'

'Before when? Oh! I see what you mean. Don't hurry me, sir! Please don't hurry me. Mrs. Fane's bell rang—' wordless, she pointed to the indicator-board on the wall—'and Daisy went up and answered it.'

'Yes?'

'Daisy came down, and said Mrs. Fane would like a nice grapefruit. Daisy'll tell you that herself. Though the times I've told Mrs. Fane, the times I've said, it's not enough to keep body and soul together—'

'Go on.'

'I took the grapefruit out of—' This time she pointed to the refrigerator.

'It was a whole grapefruit, was it? It wasn't cut already?'

'Oh, no, sir! I cut it myself. With a knife,' she added, evidently wanting to be precise.

'Who was here in the kitchen then?'

'Only Daisy and me.'

'You're sure of that, now?'

'Only Daisy and me, so help me!'

'All right. What happened to the other half of the grapefruit?'

'I ate it myself.'

It was very warm in the kitchen. H.M. peered round and exchanged a glance with Masters.

'Go on from there, ma'am. You cut the grapefruit—' 'Yes. And put it in the glass dish.' She made illustrative gestures. 'And put it on a nice tray, with a spoon and a little sugar-bowl. And sprinkled some sugar on it.'

'So,' murmured H.M. 'You sprinkled some sugar on it. I just want you to remember, ma'am. Strychnine is a white powder that looks for all the world like sugar. It could have been mixed in with the sugar, couldn't it?'

'Nasty stuff!' said Mrs. Propper, suddenly and violently. 'Nasty stuff! No, sir, I swear it couldn't!' 'Couldn't have been in the sugar? Why not?' She swallowed.

'Because, as soon as I'd sprinkled a little sugar on, I sprinkled a lot of — I mean, I sprinkled some sugar from that same bowl on me own grapefruit. And ate it. And I'm as right as rain.'

H.M. turned round and exchanged with Masters a glance which seemed to say, 'sunk.' Even H.M. was growing rattled. He put up a hand and adjusted his spectacles, cleared his throat, and eyed her again.

'You're sure, now, that nobody — not even Daisy — came near the grapefruit while you were doin' that?'

'Oh, sir, would I lie to you?'

'Don't carry on, now! What happened then?'

Mrs. Propper was transfixed by memory as though by an arrow.

'Then, just then, Captain Sharpless opened the door. He'd been up in Mrs. Fane's room (And there's things the Good Lord won't allow in this world, either, if you ask me!)

'And he said, he said, 'Don't bother, Daisy; I'll take it up to her.' And I handed him the tray.' Her eyes were fixed and horrified. She made an illustrative gesture of handing the tray. 'And out he walked with it. And so if anybody put that dreadful stuff in the grapefruit… God love us, it must have been that Captain Sharpless himself.'

Her voice had grown louder, ringing in the kitchen. Footsteps crossed the floor of the dining room beyond. Frank Sharpless, pushing open the swing-door so that it almost caught Ann a blow behind the shoulder, poked his head round the edge of the door.

'Hullo!' he said pleasantly. 'Did I hear somebody mention my name?'

Fifteen

'Daisy said you were out here,' he went on. 'What's the conference all about? Is anything up?'. Mrs. Propper's expression must have betrayed her to anyone who was looking at her. She moved her ample body as though about to utter a stifled shriek. Her wide-open eyes conveyed that she had thought he was wicked, but not this wicked.

Sharpless did not look at her. He was a very different person from the hag-ridden talker of the garden. A clearer picture of (as the Sunday School weeklies would say) youth, health, and innocence could not have been found.

Fresh from shave and hair-cut. at the barber's, his hair sleekly groomed, his good-humored smile widening and his eyes untroubled, Sharpless saluted them with his cap. His stick was tucked under his left arm.

Chief Inspector Masters did not step into the breach: he jumped there. Perhaps they were all afraid that Mrs. Propper might leap up and cry, 'Murderer!' or some such perfectly sincere melodramatic gesture, making the kitchen explode with emotionalism.

'Just clearing up a few matters, sir,' said Masters, in a voice loud with warning to the cook. 'You don't happen to remember carrying — what was it? — a grape fruit, yes! You don't happen to remember carrying half a grapefruit up to Mrs. Fane on Thursday afternoon, do you?'

Sharpless smiled.