She went over to the doctor, put her two little hands on his arm, laid her forehead for a moment against his shoulder in a gesture devoid of coquetry. ‘Oh, thank God! He frightened me.’
‘He didn’t frighten me,’ said Dr. Ross stoutly; but he looked all the same exceedingly pale. To Cockrill he said: ‘He got these choking fits, yes: but—once or twice in a year. You couldn’t risk all that on the chance of his having one.’
‘So that brings us back to you, Theo,’ said Inspector Cockrill blandly. ‘Who gave him peaches in Kirsch and made him have one.’
Theo looked as likely as his father had ever done, to have a choking fit. ‘I made him have one?’
‘My dear Theo! A man is a rabid teetotaller. You provide him with a peach in a thick syrup of Kirsch—observing that he has a heavy cold and won’t smell the liqueur in advance. He takes a great gulp of it and realises that he’s been tricked into taking alcohol. You knew your father: he would go off into one of his spluttering rages and if he didn’t choke on the peach, he’d choke on his own spluttering. And it isn’t true, is it? that you didn’t know about choking fits, and how the air-passages may be freed with a finger, covered with a finger-stall. You must have seen your father in these attacks at least once or twice; he’d been having them for years.’
He began to splutter himself. ‘I couldn’t have done it. Gone out into the hall, you mean, to get the bag, and put the stuff on the finger-stall then? Elizabeth showed that earlier; I wouldn’t have had time.’
‘We were all preoccupied, getting your father out of his chair and lowered on to the floor. The seconds pass quickly.’
But she couldn’t bear it for Theo, either. ‘Don’t listen to him, Theo, don’t be frightened! This is no more true than the other theory. He’s—he’s sort of teasing us; needling us, trying to make us say something. If Theo did it, Inspector, what about Dr. Ross? Why should he have sniffed at Cyrus’s breath, when he was lying back in the chair? There would have been nothing to smell, yet. You say he was pretending; but if it was Theo who put the poison on the fingerstall—why should the doctor have pretended? Unless…’ She broke off, clapped her hand to her mouth; took it away immediately, began to fiddle unconcernedly with the handkerchief. Inspector Cockrill said: ‘Yes, Elizabeth? Unless—?’
‘Nothing,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I just mean that the doctor wouldn’t have put on an act if it had been Theo who’d done it.’
Unless He thought about it and his eyes were brilliant as stars.
‘Unless, Elizabeth, you were going to say—unless they were in it together.’ And he looked round at the three of them and smiled with the smile of a tiger. ‘Unless they were all three in it together.’
Three men—united: united in loving the same woman, united in not wishing actually to possess her; united in determination, however, that a fourth man should not.
The first casual exchange of thought, of feeling, of their common disgust and dread; the first casual discussion of some sort of action, some sort of rescue, the vague threats, hardening into determination, into hard fact, into realistic plotting. But—murder! Even backed up by the rest—which one of them would positively commit murder? And, none accepting—divide the deed, then, amongst them: as in an execution, where a dozen men fire the bullets, no one man kills.
Bill’s task to acquire the poison, see that it remains available in the hall. Theo’s task to ensure, as far as possible, that a chance arises to use the poisoned finger-stall. The doctor, of course, actually to employ it. But lest that seem too heavy a share of the guilt for any one partner to carry, let Theo be the one to go out into the hall and poison the finger-stall; let Bill take the bag from him, hand the poisoned thing to the doctor. Executioners: does he who administers the poison, kill more than he who procures it?—does he who presents the victim to the murderer, kill the less because he does not do the actual slaying? All for one and one for all! And all for the purity of Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen.
Elizabeth stood with him, weeping, in the hall, while a sergeant herded the three men into the huge, hideous drawing-room and kept them there till the police car should come. ‘I don’t believe it: I utterly don’t believe it, Inspector. Those three? A plot—’
He had said it long ago: from the very beginning. ‘A very deep-laid, elaborate, absolutely sure-fire plan.’
‘Between the doctor and Theo then, if you must. But Bill—why drag Bill into it?’