Hobby of Murder by E.X. Ferrars Page A

putting poison in his brother’s coffee. It isn’t as if he’d reached far across the table.’
    Roland nodded. ‘Yes, that agrees with what Mrs Davidge told us. There’s just a possibility, I suppose, that when he reached out, for the flower, he did it to hide the fact that he was throwing a capsule of the poison into the coffee cup opposite. But he’d have been taking a fearful risk of being observed. I myself might have looked at him at just the wrong moment. However, he’d a motive, or probably he had. Luke Singleton was a rich man, and his brother very likely inherits what he had to leave. We shan’t know that till tomorrow, when we’ve had a chance to talk to his solicitor, but it’s at least worth investigating. Then Miss Clancy told me she’d known Singleton slightly a number of years ago. She’d told me that at the dinner, before the murder happened. She seemed very proud of it, but when she talked to him across me, he seemed very vague about recognizing her. He didn’t quite say that he hadn’t the least idea who she was, but he gave the impression of simply being too polite to say that, though it was the fact.’
    ‘You’re sure it was murder, not suicide?’ Andrew asked.
    ‘Don’t you think so yourself?’
    ‘Well, yes, I do. It would have been a singularly exhibitionist way of committing suicide. But if you rule that out, you’re back to the problem of how the cyanide got into Singleton’s coffee, and nobody else’s.’
    ‘Of course, it might have been to some extent a mistake. I mean, that it was given to the wrong man. It just possibly might have been meant for me. There I was, right beside him, and there are plenty of people, I think, who wouldn’t mind seeing the last of me.’
    ‘But even then, you’d still be left with the problem of how the poison got into just that one cup of coffee.’
    ‘Yes, and I’ve a feeling that when we’ve found that out, we’ll know who did it. Good night, Professor. Thank you for your help.’
    That was the end of the questioning of Andrew, and hewas told that if he and the Davidges wanted to go home, they were free to do so.
    He joined them in the room where they were waiting for him and the three of them went out to the Davidges’ car. When they arrived home, Mollie said that she was going to make some cocoa, but Ian and Andrew both said that they would prefer the brandy that they had refused in the Waldrons’ house. They were all very tired, and though they remained in the sitting-room for some time, they spoke very little. All of them, Andrew thought, were almost afraid of going to bed, because they would only have to face the torment of sleeplessness.
    However, all of a sudden Ian exclaimed, ‘Of course it’s impossible! It couldn’t have happened.’
    ‘But it did,’ Mollie muttered. ‘It did.’
    ‘But the only people who could have done it are the Bartlett sisters, and that’s nonsense.’
    ‘I wonder if it
is
such nonsense,’ Mollie said.
    ‘What d’you mean?’ he asked sharply.
    ‘Well, what do we really know about them?’ she asked.
    ‘That they’re two very respectable women who’ve lived in Lower Milfrey all their lives, and have worked for the Waldrons ever since they came here, about six years ago.’
    ‘I wonder who they worked for before that. Why were they free to go to the Waldrons? Were there any mysterious deaths in the family who employed them?’
    ‘Mollie, I think it’s time we went to bed. You’re beginning to wander in your mind.’
    ‘Not really,’ she insisted. ‘Actually I’m only trying to eliminate the Bartletts. At the same time, I think we should face facts. They
could
have done the murder.’
    ‘Thank God it isn’t our job to face facts,’ Ian said. ‘We can leave that to the estimable Inspector Roland.’
    ‘He had a rather interesting idea,’ Andrew said. ‘It was that the poison was intended for him and not for LukeSingleton and that it was put in the coffee cup in front of