In the Teeth of the Evidence by Dorothy L. Sayers Page A

repeater? Yes? About three inches square – squarish? Yes? Stood on your bed-table last night? Does it strike on a coiled spring? It does? Thank heaven for that! Deep, quick, soft note like a church bell? Yes, yes, yes! Now, old boy, think hard. Did you wake up last night and strike that repeater? You did? You’re sure? Good man! At what time? It struck twelve? What time does that mean? Any time between twelve and one o’clock? Then, for God’s sake, Waters, take the next train back to Cuttlesbury, because your dashed clock has nearly made you and me accomplices in a murder. Yes, MURDER . . . Hold on a moment, Inspector Monk wants to speak to you.’
        ‘Well,’ said the Inspector, as he replaced the receiver, ‘your evidence might have landed us in a nice pickle, mightn’t it? It’s a good job you had that brain-wave. Now we’ll go through Mr Dirty Cobb’s luggage and see if he’s got any more juicy photos. I suppose he took ’em along to show Pringle.’
        ‘That’s it. I couldn’t understand how the murderer got into the room. Naturally Pringle would lock his door. But of course he’d left it open for Cobb, who’d promised to slip along later and show him something to make his hair curl – “on the strict q.t.” and all that. It must have given Cobb a shock when Pringle yelled and I knocked at the door. But he was all there, I will say that for him. He’s probably a first-class salesman in his own rotten line. “Don’t let a sudden question rout you, but always keep your wits about you”, as it says in the Handbook .’
        ‘But look here,’ said the Inspector, ‘what did he do with Pringle’s bag?’
        ‘Dropped it out of the bathroom window to the accomplice he had summoned by phone from Tadworthy. Why, dash it all!’ cried Monty, wiping his forehead, ‘I heard the car go by, just after that confounded clock struck twelve.’

BITTER ALMONDS
    A Montague Egg Story
    ‘Dash it!’ exclaimed Mr Montague Egg, ‘there’s another perfectly good customer gone west.’
        He frowned at his morning paper, which informed him that an inquest would be held that day on the body of Mr Bernard Whipley, a wealthy and rather eccentric old gentleman, to whom the firm of Plummett & Rose had from time to time sold a considerable quantity of their choice vintage wines, fine old matured spirits and liqueurs.
        Monty had more than once been invited by Mr Whipley to sample his own goods, sitting in the pleasant study at Cedar Lawn – a bottle of ancient port, carried up carefully from the cellar by Mr Whipley himself, or a liqueur brandy, brought out from the tall mahogany cabinet that stood in the alcove.
        Mr Whipley never allowed anybody but himself to handle anything alcoholic. You never, he said, could trust servants, and he had no fancy for being robbed, or finding the cook with her head under the kitchen dresser.
        So Mr Egg frowned and sighed, and then frowned still more, on seeing that Mr Whipley had been discovered dead, apparently from prussic acid poisoning, after drinking an after-dinner glass of crème de menthe.
        It is not agreeable when customers suddenly die poisoned after partaking of the drinks one has supplied to them, and it is not good for business.
        Mr Egg glanced at his watch. The town where he was at that moment reading the paper was only fifteen miles distant from the late Mr Whipley’s place of residence. Monty decided that it might be just as well to run over and attend the inquest. He was, at any rate, in a position to offer testimony as to the harmless nature of crème de menthe as supplied by Messrs Plummett & Rose.
        Accordingly he drove over there as soon as he had finished his breakfast, and by sending in his card to the coroner, secured for himself a convenient seat in the crowded little schoolroom where the inquest was being held.
        The first witness was the housekeeper, Mrs Minchin, a stout, elderly person of