The bottle was a small one and as Sebastian Parish had remarked it was conspicuously labelled. The word ‘POISON’ in scarlet on a white ground ran diagonally across on an attached label. It struck a note of interjection and alarm and focused the attention of the five men. Few who read that warning escape a sudden jolt of the imagination.

Parish said, ‘Mr Watchman thinks you are a public danger, Abel. He’s afraid we’ll all be poisoned.’

‘I’m afraid he’ll poison himself,’ said Watchman.

‘Who, sir? Me?’ asked Abel. ‘Not a bit of it. I be mortal cautious sort of chap when it comes to this manner of murderous tipple, Mr Watchman.’

‘I hope you are,’ said Cubitt from the dart board.

‘You’re not going to leave it on the mantelshelf, father?’ asked Will.

‘No fear of that, sonny. I’ll stow it away careful.’

‘You’d much better get rid of it altogether,’ said Watchman. ‘Don’t put it away somewhere. You’ll forget all about it and some day someone will take a sniff at it to find out what it is. Let me take it back to the chemist at Illington. I’d very much like to have a word with that gentleman.’

‘Lord love you,’ said Abel, opening his eyes very wide, ‘us’ve not finished with they bowldacious varmints yet, my sonnies. If so be they’ve got a squeak left in ‘em us’ll give ‘em another powerful whiff and finish ‘em off.’

‘At least,’ said Cubitt, throwing a dart into double-twenty, ‘at least you might put it out of reach.’

‘Mr Cubitt has a poison-phobia,’ said Watchman.

‘A what, sir?’

‘Never mind about that,’ said Cubitt. ‘I should have thought anybody might boggle at prussic acid.’

‘Don’t fret yourselves, gentlemen,’ said Abel. ‘Thurr’ll be none of this brew served out at the Feathers Tap.’

He mounted the settle and taking the bottle from the mantelpiece pushed it into the top shelf of a double cupboard in the corner of the ingle-nook. He then pulled off the old gloves he wore, threw them on the fire, and turned the key.

‘Nobody can call me a careless man,’ he said. ‘I’m all for looking after myself. Thurr’s my first-aid box in thurr, ready to hand, and if any of the chaps cuts themselves with a mucky fish-knife or any other infectious trifle of that sort, they gets a swill of iodine in scratch. Makes ‘em squirm a bit and none the worse for that. I learnt that in the war, my sonnies. I was a surgeon’s orderly and I know the mighty powers thurr be in drugs.’

He stared at the glass door. The label ‘POISON’ still showed, slightly distorted, in the darkness of the little cupboard.

‘Safe enough thurr,’ said Abel and went over to the bar.