Mercifully, Cyrus Caxton himself provided the answer—suddenly and unmistakably giving up the ghost. He heaved up into a last great, lunging spasm, screamed briefly and rolled up his eyes. She sat back on her heels, the handkerchief balled against her mouth, gaping. Dr. Ross abandoned the heart massage, thrust her aside, himself began a mouth-to-mouth breathing. But even he soon admitted defeat. ‘It’s no use,’ he said, straightening up, his hands to his aching back. ‘He’s gone.’
Gone: and not one, perhaps, in all that big ugly ornate room but felt a sort of lightening of relief, a sort of little lifting of the heart because with the going of Cyrus Caxton so much of ugliness, crudity, cruelty also had gone. Not one, at any rate, even to pretend to grief. Only the widowed bride, still kneeling by the heavy body, lifted her head and looked across with a terrible question into the doctor’s eyes; and leapt to her feet and darted out into the hall. She came back and stood in the doorway. ‘The tin of cyanide,’ she said. ‘It’s gone.’
Dr. Ross picked up the dropped table-napkin and quietly, unobtrusively yet very deliberately, laid it over the half eaten peach.
Inspector Cockrill’s underlings dealt with the friends and relations, despatching them to their deep chagrin about their respective businesses, relieved of any further glorious chance of notoriety. The tin had been discovered without much difficulty, hidden in a vase of pampas grass which stood in the centre of the hall table: its lid off and a small quantity of the paste missing, scooped out, apparently, with something so smooth as to show no peculiarities of marking, at any rate to the naked eye. It had been on the table since some time on the day before the wedding. Cockie himself had seen it there, just before the lunch.
He thought it all over, deeply and quietly—for it had been a plot deeply and quietly laid. ‘I’ll see those four for myself,’ he said to his sergeant. ‘Mrs. Caxton, of course, the son and the step-son and the doctor.’ These were the principals and one might as well tease them a little and see what emerged; but for the rest of course—he knew1: the how and the when and the why, and therefore the who. Some details to be sorted out, naturally; but for the rest—he knew; a few words recollected, a dozen, no more—and with a little reflection, how clear it all became! Curious, thought Cockie, how two brief sentences, hardly attended to, might so twist themselves about and about as to wind themselves at last into a rope. Into a noose.
He established himself in what had been Cyrus Caxton’s study and sent for Elizabeth. ‘Well, Mrs. Caxton?’
White teeth dug into a trembling lower lip to bite back hysteria. ‘Oh, Inspector, at least don’t call me by that horrible name!’
‘It is your name now; and we’re engaged upon a murder investigation. There’s no time for nonsense.’
‘You don’t really believe—’
‘You know it,’ said Cockie. ‘You were the first to know it.’
‘Dr. Ross was the first,’ she said. ‘You saw him yourself, Inspector, leaning over Cyrus as he was lying back in that chair; sort of—snuffing. Like a terrier on the scent. He could smell the cyanide on his breath, I’m sure he could; like bitter almonds they say it is.’
It had not needed an analyst to detect the white traces of poison on the peach and in the heavy syrup. ‘Who brought the food for the luncheon, Mrs. Caxton?’
‘Well, we all… We talked it over, Theo and Bill and I. It was so difficult, you see, with no servants; and me being in London. I ordered most of the stuff to be sent down from Harrod’s and Theo brought down—well, one or two things from Fortnum and Mason’s…’ Her voice trailed away rather unhappily.
‘Which one or two things? The peaches, you mean?’
‘Well, yes, the peaches. He brought them down himself, yesterday. He was up and down from London all the time, helping Bill. But,’ she cried, imploringly, ‘why should Theo possibly have done this terrible thing? His own father! For that matter, why should anyone?’
‘Ah, as to that!’ said Cockie. Had not Cyrus Caxton spoken his own epitaph? At certain times there are numerous males, the drones, which have very large eyes and whose only activity is to eat and to participate in the mass flight after the virgin queen. He had seen them himself, stuffing down Mr. Caxton’s oysters and cold chicken and ham, their eyes, dilated with devotion, fixed with an astonishing unanimity upon Mr. Caxton’s bride. ‘Only one of them mates, however,’ he repeated to himself, ‘and he dies in the process.’ That also had been seen to be true. ‘Elizabeth,’ he said, forgetting for a moment that this was a murder investigation and there was to be no nonsense, ‘from the hornet’s-eye angle, I’m afraid you are indeed a virgin queen.’