‘It was all of that. It was also completely in character—tortuous and elaborate. Sonia had come between Cedric and the money. Very well, Sonia must go and the second Will be set aside. She remembered that she had found Sonia reading it. She remembered the rat-bane with its printed antidote to arsenical poisoning. So, the anonymous letters printed on the kids’ paper she herself fetched from the village, appeared on the breakfast table. A little later, as nobody seemed to have caught on the right idea, the book on embalming appeared on the cheese-dish, and finally the tin of rat-bane appeared in Sonia’s suitcase. At about this time she got a horrible jolt.’

‘The cat,’ said Fox.

‘Carabbas!’ Troy ejaculated.

‘Carabbas had been in Sir Henry’s room. Sir Henry had poured out milk for him. But the bottle of medicine had overturned into the saucer and presently Carabbas began to lose his fur. No wonder. He’d lapped up thallium acetate, poor chap. Millamant couldn’t stand the sight of him about the house. He was one too much for her iron nerve. Accusing him of ringworm, and with the hearty consent of every one but Panty, she had him destroyed.

‘She sat back awaiting events and unobtrusively jogging them along. She put the tin of arsenical rat-bane in Sonia Orrincourt’s suitcase and joined in the search for it. She declared that it had been a full tin, but the servants disagreed. She forgot, however, to ease the lid, which was cemented in with the accretion of years.’

‘But to risk everything and plan everything on the chance that arsenic was used by the embalmers!’ Troy exclaimed.

‘It didn’t seem like a chance. Sir Henry had ordered Mortimer and Loame to use it, and Mr Mortimer had let him suppose they would do so. Her nerve went a bit, though, after the exhumation. She rang up the embalmers, using, no doubt, the deepest notes of her masculine voice, and said she was my secretary. Loame, the unspeakable ass, gave her their formula. That must have been a bitter moment for Millamant. Cedric’s only means of avoiding financial ruin was by marrying the woman she loathed and against whom she had plotted; and now she knew that the frame-up against Sonia Orrincourt was no go. She didn’t know, however, that we considered thallium acetate a possible agent and would look for it. She’d kept the surplus over from the amount she could not get into Sir Henry’s bottle and she waited her chance. Sonia could still be disposed of; Cedric could still get the money.’

‘She must be mad.’

‘They’re like that, Mrs Alleyn,’ Fox said. ‘Female poisoners behave like that. Always come at it a second time, and a third and fourth, too, if they get the chance.’