With a quick deft movement he gathered her into his arms and before she could resist, his lips fastened on hers in a long ardent kiss. She struggled a moment and then relaxed…

‘Gina!’

They sprang apart. Mildred Strete, her face red, her lips quivering, glared at them balefully. For a moment the eagerness of her words choked their utterance.

‘Disgusting…disgusting…you abandoned beastly girl…you’re just like your mother…You’re a bad lot…I always knew you were a bad lot…utterly depraved…and you’re not only an adulteress — you’re a murderess too. Oh yes, you are. I know what I know!’

‘And what do you know? Don’t be ridiculous, Aunt Mildred.’

‘I’m no aunt of yours, thank goodness. No blood relation to you. Why, you don’t even know who your mother was or where she came from! But you know well enough what my father was like and my mother. What sort of a child do you think they would adopt? A criminal’s child or prostitute’s probably! That’s the sort of people they were. They ought to have remembered that bad blood will tell. Though I daresay that it’s the Italian in you that makes you turn to poison.’

‘How dare you say that?’

‘I shall say what I like. You can’t deny now, can you, that somebody tried to poison mother? And who’s the most likely person to do that? Who comes into an enormous fortune if mother dies? You do, Gina, and you may be sure that the police have not overlooked that fact.’

Still trembling, Mildred moved rapidly away.

‘Pathological,’ said Alex. ‘Definitely pathological. Really most interesting. It makes one wonder about the late Canon Strete…religious scruples, perhaps?…Or would you say impotent?’

‘Don’t be disgusting, Alex. Oh I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.’

Gina clenched her hands and shook with fury.

‘Lucky you hadn’t got a knife in your stocking,’ said Alex. ‘If you had, dear Mrs Strete might have known something about murder from the point of view of the victim. Calm down, Gina. Don’t look so melodramatic and like Italian Opera.’

‘How dare she say I tried to poison Grandam?’

‘Well, darling, somebody tried to poison her. And from the point of view of motive you’re well in the picture, aren’t you?’

‘Alex!’ Gina stared at him, dismayed. ‘Do the police think so?’

‘It’s extremely difficult to know what the police think…. They keep their own counsel remarkably well. They’re by no means fools, you know. That reminds me — ’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To work out an idea of mine.’

Chapter 17

I

‘You say somebody has been trying to poison me?’

Carrie Louise’s voice held bewilderment and dis-belief.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘I can’t really believe it…’

She waited a few moments, her eyes half closed.

Lewis said gently, ‘I wish I could have spared you this, dearest.’

Almost absently she stretched out a hand to him and he took it.

Miss Marple, sitting close by, shook her head sympathetically.

Carrie Louise opened her eyes.