Dr McLean was a small, slight, grey-haired man, curiously like his wife in appearance and manner. His skin was less sun burnt than hers, since he had less time to spend in the garden than she, but his face, like hers, was long and thin and deeply lined, with the same kind smile and clear blue gentle gaze.
However, he had not quite her capacity for concentrating his thoughts on only one thing, which meant that he had never quite achieved such serenity as hers. His narrow forehead sometimes wrinkled in a worried frown and the blue eyes became deeply troubled. Yet even at such times they seldom lost their look of sympathy. There was sympathy in them, as well as the shadow of a great tiredness and anxiety, as he told Fanny and Basil, on the morning after the death of Sir Peter Poulter, that he was not wholly satisfied as to the cause of that death.
Dr McLean had come straight from Sir Peter’s house to theirs and asked to see them alone. They had not yet had breakfast. Fanny, in an old quilted dressing gown and with her hair more unkempt than usual, had been in the kitchen, yawning as she filled the electric kettle to make tea. Basil, fully dressed and as neat as ever, had been laying the fire in the sitting room.
Because of Dr McLean’s insistence that he wanted to speak to them privately, they took him into the small room behind the antique shop, which was used by Fanny as an office. But no one else in the house was stirring yet. Only Spike took an interest in Dr McLean’s arrival. Pattering along the passage with his claws clicking on the stone flags, he sat down outside the closed door of the little office, scratching at it and whining to be let in. Dr McLean wished that Fanny and Basil would either let the dog in or send him away. The soft little whines worked on the doctor’s tired nerves so that they seemed to be almost the last straw after the terrible night.
Controlling himself, he watched the looks of shock and horror on the two faces before him. Fanny’s face expressed the more, tears gathering quickly in her eyes and trickling unregarded down her cheeks. Basil’s face became drawn and remote, with a look in the eyes which surprised the doctor. It was almost, he thought afterwards, a look of calculation.
It was Fanny who said in a shaking voice, ‘The lobster – it was that frightful lobster.’
Dr McLean closed his eyes for a moment, partly from exhaustion and partly to shut out the sight of what he saw dawning in her face.
‘That’s what I wanted to ask you about, my dear,’ he said. ‘I want you to tell me all about what Sir Peter had to eat and drink while he was here. Because, you see, he had nothing to eat after he got home. He was already feeling ill by the time he got in – in fact he had his first attack of vomiting by the garden gate.’
‘The lobster,’ Fanny repeated. It was plain that she was hardly listening to what he was saying. ‘I tried to stop him eating it. I knew there was something horribly wrong with it. But he said it was delicious and he would go on … I couldn’t understand it. None of us could, because it tasted awful.’
‘You mean you could actually taste that there was something wrong with it?’ Dr McLean asked.
‘Taste it!’ Fanny said. ‘No one else even tried to eat it.’
‘Yet Sir Peter liked it?’
‘Yes, and he insisted on going on with it, even when I tried to take it away from him. I did try, Dr McLean, I really did. They’ll all tell you so. It must be my fault that poor man’s dead – I must have got more absent-minded than usual and put some frightful thing into the sauce – but when I tasted how awful it was I did try to take it away from him. I didn’t mean to do him any harm. I liked him. I thought he was so – ’
Basil interrupted her by pressing a hand on her shoulder.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he said. ‘Don’t start saying that. The lobster itself must have been bad.’
‘But then it would have tasted quite different,’ she said. ‘In fact, with all those spices, it might have tasted perfectly all right. But that horrible bitter thing must have been something that I put in, in mistake for the paprika or the brandy or I don’t know what.’
‘Bitter?’ Dr McLean said.
‘Yes,’ Basil said, ‘it was very unpleasantly bitter.’
‘Yet Sir Peter liked it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Isn’t that very strange?’
‘It is.’
‘And no one else besides Sir Peter liked it?’
‘No one at all. In fact, I don’t think anyone else swallowed more than one mouthful.’
‘Then it looks as if the lobster probably was the cause of the trouble,’ the doctor said. He spoke hesitantly, glancing unhappily from one face to the other, then down at his own hands. ‘It’s terribly sad, but – well, these things happen. I know how you must be feeling, but don’t blame yourselves. No one could possibly think of blaming either of you. But I think it would be a good thing, don’t you, if I took some of the remnants away with me for analysis? We may all feel certain it was the lobster, but we’ll have to make sure.’
He waited for an answer. When none came, he looked up again at the two faces before him. Fanny, he thought, might not even have heard what he had said. She was staring before her while the tears ran down her cheeks and splashed from her chin on to the old quilted dressing-gown, making wet blotches on the shabby material. But Basil, sitting on the arm of her chair and with his hand still upon her shoulder, was watching Dr McLean with an unfamiliar look of wariness in the bright, dark eyes that usually looked so candid and innocent.
Outside in the passage Spike whined again and scratched impatiently at the door.
‘Well?’ Dr McLean said, a little more abruptly.
‘The trouble is,’ Basil said quietly, ‘there aren’t any remnants.’
‘But you said – ’
‘I know, that most people left theirs. They did, and the sight was so unpleasant that I collected them all as soon as the party broke up and dumped the lot in the furnace. And later in the evening we washed up, so there aren’t even any scraps left on plates or in the saucepan that Fanny used when she cooked the stuff.’
‘I see.’
‘It’s unfortunate,’ Basil said.
‘It is.’
‘But what difference does it make?’ Fanny wailed suddenly. ‘We know it was the lobster and we know it was my fault. It’s no good trying to tell me it wasn’t. I invited that poor old man here and I gave him poison and killed him. I didn’t mean to, but it feels just as bad as if I’d done it on purpose. I killed him by being careless and muddled and absent-minded, and that’s as bad as doing it on purpose, and I don’t know how I’m going to live with that thought in my mind now. I’m not going to be able to bear it. I never wanted to harm anyone and I shall go mad!’
‘Quiet,’ Basil said. ‘We don’t actually know that it was the lobster. But even if it was, we’re quite sure it wasn’t your fault.’ He turned back to Dr McLean. ‘Aren’t we?’
‘Yes, yes,’ the doctor said uneasily. ‘In any case, it’s very puzzling, if, as you say, the taste was so markedly unpleasant. It’s possible, of course, that Sir Peter’s sense of taste was defective. That can happen. In fact, it sounds the most probable explanation of the circumstances. I wish, all the same, that you had some of the scraps left over. And the glass that he drank out of, I’d have liked to have that. But that got washed up too, I suppose.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Basil said.
‘It’s a pity. It might have simplified things later.’
‘Yes.’ Basil’s hand had shifted from Fanny’s shoulder to her head, and was gently smoothing her ruffled grey hair, which seemed to have a soothing effect upon her, but his eyes had not left the doctor’s. ‘McLean, just what are you so scared of?’
Dr McLean started slightly. ‘Scared?’ he said. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s the word for it. Yes, I’m very scared. But I don’t think I ought to say any more about it until I know more. That’s why I wanted to talk to you quite privately. I’d hoped you might be able to tell me something … But you can’t, so that doesn’t help.’
‘In other words,’ Basil said, ‘what’s on your mind is something quite different from ordinary food poisoning. You don’t believe there was anything wrong with the lobster itself.’
‘Of course there wasn’t,’ Fanny cried, suddenly jerking her head away from Basil’s hand. ‘I’ve told you, it was something I put into it, or spilled over it. It was my doing, it was my fault.’
Dr McLean shook his head. It was a gesture of weariness and helplessness rather than of negation.
‘At any rate, would you do something for me, my dear?’ he said. ‘Don’t go around saying that – not yet. And don’t – don’t tell anyone that I’ve been asking you these questions. I only came to ask them because I thought that – well, if we run into difficulties, it might have been helpful to know certain things.’
‘I think you’re trying to tell us that you hoped you might be able to keep us out of trouble,’ Basil said. ‘We’re very grateful.’
The doctor shrugged. ‘I may be all wrong, remember. It’s been a pretty bad night and I may be worrying unduly. But just tell me one thing – that bad taste, you’re sure it was bitter?’
‘Yes,’ Basil said.
‘I don’t understand it,’ Dr McLean said with a sigh as he got up to go. ‘I can’t think why it should have been bitter.’
As he went out, Spike jumped up at him exuberantly, in ill-timed delight at seeing an old friend. The doctor tugged absently at the dog’s ears, then, out in the garden, turned once more to Basil, who was following him to the gate.
‘Really,’ he said, ‘don’t let her go around saying it was her fault. You know how rumours can start.’
Basil nodded. ‘I just wanted to thank you,’ he said. ‘Fanny’s too upset to think of it. And I wanted to ask you, how long it will be before you know?’
‘A few days.’
‘And if you’re right?’
Dr McLean gave the same headshake, the same tired, defeated gesture as he had given a few minutes before.
‘Then it’s out of my hands, you know. At the very least, it’ll mean a good deal of unpleasantness.’ He made an attempt to summon his usual cheerfulness. ‘There’s no point in your worrying before it happens, anyway. It isn’t as if I can make any sense of the situation. Bitter. It really shouldn’t have been bitter. That doesn’t make sense.’
Looking a little brighter, he walked off quickly to his car.
Basil waited a moment, looking after him, then went slowly back into the house.
He found Fanny still sitting in the little office, her elbows on the desk in front of her and her head in her hands. Her eyes were still swimming and her breathing sounded as if she had a bad cold.
‘Come along,’ Basil said, ‘let’s have some breakfast.’
She nodded but did not stand up.
‘Basil, what is he specially afraid of?’ she asked.
He hesitated, then answered in a low voice, ‘Arsenic, I think.’
‘Arsenic?’ she nearly screamed. ‘He thinks I gave that poor old man arsenic?’
‘No,’ Basil said. ‘But he’s horribly afraid somebody did. Now let’s go and get the breakfast.’
She was frowning. ‘But arsenic isn’t bitter. I thought it was tasteless.’
‘That’s what’s worrying him.’
‘The awfully bitter thing is strychnine, isn’t it?’
‘Yes – strychnine’s bitter.’
‘But the symptoms would be quite different.’
‘Very different.’
‘And we’ve no arsenic in the house – or strychnine.’
‘I sincerely hope not.’
Still frowning, she got slowly to her feet. She took a step towards the door, then suddenly reached out a hand to Basil and clasped one of his.
‘I think I’m rather frightened,’ she said.
With a sigh he said, ‘These things shouldn’t happen to one before one’s had breakfast, should they?’
‘I know, I know – I’m coming,’ she said. ‘Though I couldn’t eat anything myself.’
‘And remember,’ he said, ‘when the others come down, don’t tell them all you killed Sir Peter with arsenic. Don’t tell them anything except that he’s dead.’
‘I’ll try …’ She gave a shiver. ‘But I’m not very good at hiding things, am I? And I am frightened. I’m getting more and more frightened every moment.’
She went out to the kitchen, and with an occasional tear still running down her cheeks, put the kettle to boil and switched on the hot plates.
She had just made the tea, a few pieces of toast and boiled an egg for Basil, when Laura came down. It was almost shocking to Fanny to see Laura’s cheerful face. It was a reminder that Laura, Clare and Kit would all have to be told of Sir Peter’s death, a fact which Fanny, immersed in her own distress and mounting terror, had been forgetting.
Laura showed no signs this morning of having suffered from a bad headache. She looked fresh and lovely. She was wearing a simple dress of pale green jersey and flat-heeled country shoes, and with only a very little make-up on her face, looked younger and brighter than she had the day before. Seeing Fanny’s blotched and tear-streaked face, she at once showed startled concern.
‘Why, what’s the matter?’ she said, her voice warm and kind. ‘Whatever’s happened?’
Fanny told her that Sir Peter was dead.
Laura gave a little gasp and said that she was terribly sorry to hear it.
Fanny genuinely had intended to tell her no more than that simple fact, but at that point a new thought struck her and she exclaimed, ‘And how lucky you were to have that headache yesterday, because if you hadn’t … But of course you wouldn’t have eaten the stuff like he did, so you’d have been all right. No one else ate it, and why he should have when it tasted so horrible … But I suppose we’ll never understand that now. How is the headache, by the way?’
‘Quite gone, thank you,’ Laura answered. ‘I wanted to tell you how sorry I was about it yesterday. It isn’t often I get such bad ones as that, but when I do I’m quite helpless. But I am awfully sorry. To have it happen the very first time we met … What did you mean, though, about its being lucky? I don’t think I understood.’
‘Lucky you didn’t try to eat the lobster that killed the Poulter man,’ Fanny said, beginning to cry again. ‘But it’s all right, it wouldn’t have harmed you, because you wouldn’t have gone on eating it like he did. Everyone else left theirs, thank God! I’m not a mass murderer. But if only I knew what I’d done!’
Laura looked at her thoughtfully. She decided apparently that Fanny, in her present condition, was not likely to be able to tell a coherent story about Sir Peter’s death, so giving a little murmur of sympathy, Laura merely waited.
After a moment, Fanny went on, ‘And I made the lobster things on purpose for you, and now I don’t suppose I’ll ever make them again.’
‘Then there was something wrong with the lobster, was there?’ Laura asked. ‘He died of food poisoning?’
‘Yes,’ Fanny said quickly. ‘Food poisoning.’
‘How really terrible for you,’ Laura said. ‘Or rather, for whoever sold you the lobster, because that’s the person who’s really to blame. It’s often terribly difficult to guess that shellfish isn’t fresh, and some people ought never to eat it anyway, however much they like it. I expect Sir Peter was really one of those. I’m sure you shouldn’t blame yourself at all.’
Fanny gave her a grateful glance. ‘It’s nice of you to say that. But I feel awful – awful! I never knew one could feel as awful as I feel.’
‘Of course you feel awful. Anyone would. But still I’m certain you aren’t to blame,’ Laura said firmly.
Fanny started to say something but a fresh gush of tears stopped her. These tears were caused, not by the thought of Sir Peter’s death, but by a sudden sense of intense gratitude to fate for having found Kit such a really nice, good, kind wife. It felt wonderfully soothing to let these tears pour for a moment. Then Fanny came round the kitchen table and embraced Laura.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That’s made me feel better. Lots better. Now tell me what you’d like for breakfast.’
‘I’m ravenous,’ Laura said simply.
Fanny, again all gratitude, felt that in the circumstances this was the kindest and most tactful answer possible.
A little while later she told the whole story again to Kit and then to Clare. With Kit Fanny spoke only briefly, for as soon as he had grasped the central fact that Sir Peter Poulter had died in the night, probably as a result of having eaten the lobster that Fanny had cooked, he went to Basil for the details of the story. But Clare questioned Fanny closely and lengthily. She discarded at once Fanny’s faltering statement that presumably the lobster had not been fresh and asked her what it was that she really feared.
This Clare did partly because of the rather curious thing that she had found Fanny doing when she came into the kitchen.
Fanny, standing with her back to the door and unaware that she was being watched, had been taking down tins and bottles from a shelf, opening each in turn, jabbing a finger into its contents, then licking the finger. Clare stood and watched her for a moment, seeing Fanny shake her head several times and once hearing her mutter, ‘No, that isn’t bitter.’
‘So you’re conducting a post-mortem on the lobster, are you?’ Clare said when she heard that.
Fanny turned with an exclamation.
‘Post-mortem!’ she cried. ‘Post-mortem! Lord, why did you have to say just that, of all things? That’s what they’ve got to do.’
After that Clare got the rest of the story easily.
Its effect on her appeared to be slight, except that her face became a little paler and more rigid than usual. Her quick, probing questions hastened the telling of the story. But when Fanny in her turn asked a question, Clare merely gave her a severe glance, turned on her heel and walked out of the kitchen.
Fanny’s question had been: ‘Why were you so keen on getting to know him, Clare?’
Her refusal to answer did not much disturb Fanny. She knew Clare far too well to imagine that she could make her say anything that she did not want to say, and since Clare had already refused to answer this question, Fanny had hardly expected to obtain any information now. Turning back to the cupboard, she went on taking out tins of spices, packets of cake mixture and blancmanges and dried herbs, opening them, thrusting a fingertip inside, tasting. Anything which had been within her reach the day before and which, in a truly exaggerated fit of absentmindedness, she might have put into the sauce in which she had cooked the lobster, she tasted. But nothing in the cupboard tasted other than how it should have tasted. Nothing tasted unduly bitter.