Buffet for Unwelcome Guests(22)

‘He was a man who wouldn’t touch medicines. He got these colds, the place was stiff with pills and potions I’d prescribed for him, but he’d never even try them. Besides,’ he insisted, as Bill had before him, ‘the stuff was on the peach?’ And it was that fat slob Theo who had been responsible for the peach. Not that he wanted to suggest, he added rather hurriedly, that Theo would have murdered his own father. But…‘You needn’t think I haven’t seen him gooping at her.’

‘You needn’t think I haven’t seen you all gooping at her.’

‘I’ve made up my mind,’ said the doctor, quietly and humbly, ‘if I can get out of this business with my family still safe and sound, never, so long as I can help it, to see Elizabeth again.’

‘You are a worker,’ said Cockie. ‘Not a true drone. It will be easier for you. Bill is a drone; he admits it—only he calls it a bum.’

And so was fat Theo a drone. Bill, Theo, the doctor…

But the doctor had a family of his own, whom he had had no intention, ever, of deserting for Elizabeth the Virgin Queen. And for that matter, so had Bill a wife of his own, whom, even now, even knowing Elizabeth, he cared for. And Theo was sufficient unto himself and would go no further than a little yearning, a little mooning, an occasional sentimental somersaulting of the fatty heart. Only one of them mates… Of the four, mass flighting after the queen, only one in fact had been a potential mate; and sure enough had died.

Of the three remaining—which might be capable of murder, only to prevent that mating?

Investigation, interrogation—the messages to Harrod’s, to Fortnum’s, to the chemist’s shop in the village; the telephone calls to Mr. Caxton’s lawyers, to Step-son Bill’s few contacts in America, to the departed domestic staff… The afternoon passed and the light summer evening came; and he stood with the four of them, out on the terrace of the big, ugly, anything-but-desirable residence which must now be Elizabeth’s own. ‘Elizabeth—Mrs. Caxton—and you three gentlemen… In this business there is only one conceivable motive. Money doesn’t come into it. The new will had been signed, Mr. Caxton’s death now or later made no difference to its contents. None of you appears to have been in any urgent financial need. So there’s only one motive, and therefore only one question: who would commit murder to prevent Cyrus Caxton from ever holding Elizabeth in his arms?’

Stout Theo?—who might yet have keen enough feelings, whose sick revulsion might be the more poignant because his own father had been involved. Or Step-son Bill?—who for this same unendurable thought of the beloved in the arms of another, could half-kill a man and cast off for ever the woman he still loved. Or the doctor?—who, of them all, had most closely known Elizabeth; who, as Cyrus Caxton’s medical adviser, knew only too intimately the gross body and crude appetites of the conquering male…

Theo, Bill, Dr. Ross. Out of these three… Softly, softly catchee monkey, said Inspector Cockrill to himself. Aloud he said: ‘This murder was a planned murder; nothing would have been left to chance. So why, I go on asking myself, should his first mouthful of peach have been the fatal one? And I answer myself: “Think about that spoon!” ’

‘You mean the spoon Theo was using to dish out the peaches?’ said Elizabeth quickly. ‘But no, because Theo didn’t hand the plate to his father. He couldn’t know which peach he’d get.’

‘Unless he directed a special plate to his father?’ suggested Bill, casting a quizzical glance at Inspector Cockrill. He reassured a suddenly quacking Theo. ‘O.K. pal, take it easy. We’ve already worked through that one.’

‘In any event, it wouldn’t account for the first mouthful being the poisoned one. And Elizabeth,’ said Inspector Cockrill severely, ‘please don’t go trying to put me off! That was a red-herring—to draw my attention away from the other spoon: the spoon handed directly to your husband by Master Bill here.’

She began to cry, drearily, helplessly, biting on the little white screwed-up ball of her handkerchief. ‘Inspector, Cyrus is dead, all this won’t bring him back. Couldn’t you—? Couldn’t we—?’ And she burst out that if it was all because of her, it was so dreadful for people to be in all this trouble….

‘But your husband has been murdered: what do you expect me to do, let it go at that, just because his murderer had a sentimental crush on you?’ He came back to the spoon. ‘If that spoon had been smeared with poison—’