Answer: because you cannot conceal a capsule of poison as easily in a plate of smoked salmon, as you can in a dozen oysters.
A man who likes oysters will retain them in his mouth, will chumble them a little, gently, savouring their peculiar delight for him. A man who does not care for oysters—and Mr. Caxton was not one to make concessions—will swallow them down whole and be done with it.
Cyrus Caxton had had a heavy cold, he was always having colds and the house was full of specifics against the colds, though he would not touch any of them. Among the specifics would certainly be found bottles of small capsules of slow-dissolving gelatine, filled with various compounds of drugs. A capsule emptied out might be filled with just so much of the preparation of cyanide as would kill a man. An oyster, slit open with a sharp knife, might form just such a pocket as would accommodate the capsule and close over it again.
No time of course, as she had truly said, to have achieved it all in the brief moment available when she and Theo had visited the house. But an oyster bar would be found in London, if Cockie searched long enough—where a little, blue-eyed woman had yesterday treated herself to a dozen oysters: and left behind her, if anyone had troubled to count them, only eleven shells. A small plastic bag, damp with liquor from the oyster, would no doubt have also been got rid of in the downstairs cloakroom. For the rest—it wouldn’t have taken a moment to duck into the dining-room (Theo having been sent off like a small boy to the loo ‘in case he started hopping in church’) and replace one oyster with another, on Cyrus Caxton’s plate.
Ten minutes later Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, had given her hand to a man who within that hour and by that same hand, to her certain knowledge would no longer be alive; and had promised before God to love, cherish and keep him till death did them part.
Well, if there was an after-life, reflected Inspector Cockrill coming away from the Old Bailey a couple of months later, at least they would be soon re-united.
Meanwhile, he must remember to look up hornets; and see whether the queens, also, have a sting.
1And so should the reader
Poison in the Cup
THE GIRL MUST HAVE been leaning with her full weight against the door, for when Stella opened it, she almost fell into the hall. She said: ‘I’ve taken an overdose of morphia.’
Panic rose in Stella’s breast. What did one do? What were the proper steps to take? A doctor’s wife for fifteen years, and still she didn’t know. She had closed her mind to it, she loathed it all so much, the dreary people with their sicknesses and miseries, trailing up her garden path, taking up the two best rooms on the ground floor. She dragged the girl into the surgery, heaved her into the one armchair. ‘My husband’s out.’ But she could ring Frederick. ‘I’ll get hold of his partner,’ she said.
The girl lay with closed eyes in the big chair: a small, ginger-haired creature with leaden eyelids and a slack, pink mouth. Her legs, sprawled before her, were exquisitely shapely and yet unattractively large for her small body. The tiny, rather grubby little hands lay laxly in her lap. Was she already sliding into coma? Ought one to be wasting time on telephone calls, ought one not to be administering emetics, antidotes…?
Frederick was not in. She crashed back the receiver in despair. The hospital!—she ought first to have thought of ringing the hospital direct. Only for heaven’s sake, what was the damn number? And she thought again, groping blindly for the telephone directory, I don’t even know the number of my husband’s own hospital….
And so observed the small hand, surreptitiously moving, surreptitiously hoicking up a stocking, pulled askew by her stumbling passage through the hall, no doubt, and now cutting uncomfortably across her plump white thigh. And all of a sudden, Stella knew. She said: ‘You’re that girl, Nurse Kelly, from the hospital!’
The girl opened her eyes and gave her a small, sweet, sly smile. She said: ‘I suppose you’re his wife?’ Her voice was a little, dying-away murmur.
Stella left the telephone and came and stood over her. ‘And you haven’t taken morphia at all—have you? This is all just a laid-on drama. You’ve come merely to make a scene.’
The girl smiled again, that sly little, faintly mocking, secret smile. She said nothing.
Stella caught at her arm, jerking the lolling figure upright. ‘There’s no use giving me enigmatic glances, my dear. I’m not a man, I’m not impressed. You haven’t taken morphia or anything else and you can now get up and trot ignominiously back to the hospital.’ She gave the soft, slack arm another jerk. ‘Come on—get out!’