‘What, this time of year?’ said Ed. ‘I could show ee, come May or maybe June, where ee can get some wild lilies of the valley, like.’

‘I didn’t know they grew wild.’

‘Well, no more p’raps they do, in a manner of speaking, but we get ’em in the Squire’s Wood, back ’ome. Myself, I reckon, they excaped like, from somebody’s garden, like all nature will if ’er can, but they be thick as the winter berries along Squire’s Ride for them as knows where to look. But Arcady … no, I never heard tell of that place in these ’ere parts, as I knows on.’

‘“Yet there, where never muse or god did haunt,

Still may some nameless power of Nature stray,

Pleased with the reedy stream’s continual chant

And purple pomp of these broad fields in May,”’

said Mrs Bradley with great approval of this theory. Ed looked at her oddly.

‘You didn’t ought to call up sperrits from the vasty deep,’ he protested.

‘But I don’t,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Only the deadly nightshade from its flowering bed. Titania herself was a little like the deadly nightshade, don’t you think, Ed?’

‘You was talking of lilies,’ said Ed, uncertainly.

‘Lilies or daffodillies,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘It is all the same thing.’

‘That, by a power, it is not, mam. Why, as I was telling Mr Tiny Fullalove … would a-ben last summer, that would a-ben … the deadly nightshade, that’s one of the plants as children should learn for to know. But lilies, well, some of them be poison, too, I have eerd tell … and the deadly nightshade – well, we ’ad a young thing, not more nor six year old … I never ’eard the right name, mam, till then. Her died of it, her did.’

‘So that’s where they got the information,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘I’ve got the report from the London hospital here. Tiny Fullalove will leave tomorrow morning. Now, if only we could find the carcases of those dogs that Mrs Anstey fed with the curry, he could be charged formally with the murder of Mrs Dalby Whittier and this woman up at the cottage would have to go to court to be a witness. We’ve got enough for that, now that you’ve seen her marriage lines and noticed the date. But how to get at Emming, except over the anonymous letters, I don’t yet see, unless Tiny Fullalove squeals. And we haven’t got our full evidence yet about the typewriter. Scotland Yard are on the trail of it, but they may have to make hundreds of calls before they find the shop where he bought it. Trouble is, it’s an American make, and a pre-war model. But the letters were typed on it. There isn’t any doubt about that, and it wasn’t bought around here.’

‘I suppose you are looking for the belladonna at the bungalow again?’