Nothing Like Blood by Leo Bruce

scarcely connect Mallister with what you call the ambiguity about his wife’s death. He had been in hospital for some weeks when it happened. Fortunately for him, in the light of subsequent gossip, he wasn’t even in the house.”
    â€œNo, but Esmée Welton was,” said Phiz.
    This left a very nasty silence.
    â€œAre you really suggesting …” I began, but this time it was I who was interrupted by the bishop. “We are suggesting nothing,” he said. “Far be it from me to add to the suspicions and suggestions already rife. No one wishes more that all his doubts could be dissolved, but the memory of our old friend puts us under certain obligations. It has been rumoured that since the obstacle of Mallister’s married state has been removed by Lydia’s death, the two of them, Mallister and Esmée Welton, are contemplating matrimony. We feel that, before that happens, further investigations should be made. I would have been failing in my duty if I had not pointed out to the authorities that there were those of us here who were far from satisfied with the facts that have so far emerged.”
    â€œThe authorities?” I asked.
    â€œI have communicated with the Chief Constable,” said the bishop. “Colonel Lyle de Lisle De lisle L’Isle.”
    â€œAn acquaintance of yours?”
    â€œRather more than that. Lie Low, as he was called in the service, has been a friend of mine since our days in Bulawayo”—or was it Basutoland or Bloemfontein?-—“and what days they were! I remember on one occasion …”
    â€œHow very fortunate that he is now the Chief Constable here! “I said crisply. “And what does he think of this matter?”
    â€œAh, that I cannot tell you. The police here as in other parts of the world must preserve a discreet silence about their inner thoughts. But at least he is in possession of what few facts are known to us. What steps he will order we cannot say, but remembering my friend Lie Low and his love of thoroughness, I should not be surprised if they were exhumation and a post-mortem.”
    â€œIn other words, you think Lydia Mallister was poisoned?”
    â€œIt is not for us …” began the bishop, but his sister cut in: “Of course she was!”
    I was beginning to understand how people had been convicted of crimes through local gossip and suspicion.
    â€œI wonder,” I said, “why you tell me all this?”
    â€œI feel that, as an arrival here after the main events, you should be put in the picture,” said the bishop. “I wish to make no secret of the fact that I have written to Colonel Lisle.”
    â€œThen let me make my position clear,” I said. “I do not deny that since I came here my curiosity has been aroused. I should not be human if it hadn’t. But not by the death of Lydia Mallister. I see no reason to think that anything but natural. What has intrigued me is the spectacle of all the guests and staff working themselves up to a state of suspicion and even fear. Into this I will not be drawn.”
    I thought that put the matter pretty strongly and would settle both the bishop and his formidable sister, but I had underestimated them. They rose together as if by pre-arrangement and stood over me.
    â€œI don’t think you will be able to avoid it,” said the bishop. “If you remain here, that is. I don’t think anyone in the house will be able to avoid it.” They moved away and I was left to think over
that.
    But that conversation, curious as its implications were, was nothing to what happened later today. I am still bewildered by the unexpectedness of it.
    Since I came here I have had very little to do with Sonia Reid. Except for the occasion on which I accidentally overheard her conversation with Steve Lawson we have scarcely exchanged a word beyond the daily civilities. What, indeed, should we have in common? She is one of