‘ “Well,” I said, “I suppose a sudden death of that kind might start tongues wagging, but surely not without some additional facts. Did you have a quarrel with Geoffrey or anything of that kind?”

‘She admitted that she had had a quarrel with him on the preceding morning at breakfast time.

‘ “And the servants heard it, I suppose?” I asked.

‘ “They weren’t in the room.”

‘ “No, my dear,” I said, “but they probably were fairly near the door outside.”

‘I knew the carrying power of Mabel’s high-pitched hysterical voice only too well. Geoffrey Denman, too, was a man given to raising his voice loudly when angry.

‘ “What did you quarrel about?” I asked.

‘ “Oh, the usual things. It was always the same things over and over again. Some little thing would start us off, and then Geoffrey became impossible and said abominable things, and I told him what I thought of him.”

‘ “There had been a lot of quarrelling, then?” I asked.

‘ “It wasn’t my fault—”

‘ “My dear child,” I said, “it doesn’t matter whose fault it was. That is not what we are discussing. In a place like this everybody’s private affairs are more or less public property. You and your husband were always quarrelling. You had a particularly bad quarrel one morning, and that night your husband died suddenly and mysteriously. Is that all, or is there anything else?”

‘ “I don’t know what you mean by anything else,” said Mabel sullenly.

‘ “Just what I say, my dear. If you have done anything silly, don’t for Heaven’s sake keep it back now. I only want to do what I can to help you.”

‘ “Nothing and nobody can help me,” said Mabel wildly, “except death.”

‘ “Have a little more faith in Providence, dear,” I said. “Now then, Mabel, I know perfectly well there is something else that you are keeping back.”

‘I always did know, even when she was a child, when she was not telling me the whole truth. It took a long time, but I got it out at last. She had gone down to the chemist’s that morning and had bought some arsenic. She had had, of course, to sign the book for it. Naturally, the chemist had talked.

‘ “Who is your doctor?” I asked.

‘ “Dr Rawlinson.”

‘I knew him by sight. Mabel had pointed him out to me the other day. To put it in perfectly plain language he was what I would describe as an old dodderer. I have had too much experience of life to believe in the infallibility of doctors. Some of them are clever men and some of them are not, and half the time the best of them don’t know what is the matter with you. I have no truck with doctors and their medicines myself.

‘I thought things over, and then I put my bonnet on and went to call on Dr Rawlinson. He was just what I had thought him—a nice old man, kindly, vague, and so short-sighted as to be pitiful, slightly deaf, and, withal, touchy and sensitive to the last degree. He was on his high horse at once when I mentioned Geoffrey Denman’s death, talked for a long time about various kinds of fungi, edible and otherwise. He had questioned the cook, and she had admitted that one or two of the mushrooms cooked had been “a little queer”, but as the shop had sent them she thought they must be all right. The more she had thought about them since, the more she was convinced that their appearance was unusual.