‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m ready for anything that comes.’
She was exhausted; her mind twisting through the terrible underground warren of her doubts and fears; but she forced herself to a sort of outward calmness, sitting down quietly, hiding her shaking hands in her lap; very pale, head bent, eyes cast down. ‘It’s—not a pretty story,’ she said.
He sat down beside her and a little to her astonishment, leaned over and put his fingers to her wrist. He said: ‘Now, do you know, Mrs. Harrison, I think that’s rather where you and I disagree. I do think it’s a pretty story; as pretty a story as ever I listened to—even prettier than the one you told me before.’
Terror rose in her, a wild, upward surge. ‘What do you mean? What story?’
‘The story about your husband,’ he said. He left his thin, hard hand across her wrist, like the hand of a mother, absently quietening her child while her mind is elsewhere. ‘You’ve been very clever, Mrs. Harrison. You’ve stuck so closely to the truth and that’s what most people fail to do. The conversation with Dr. Graham just now—I daresay my sergeant, outside in the hall, will confirm almost every word that passed between you; just a matter of the interpretation. Which of course it might be; everything may be, when one comes to look closely at it. Don’t you agree?’ And he dropped his note of sardonic banter and said sharply: ‘For instance—that coffee?’
‘The coffee?’ she faltered. But surely—surely she was safe enough there. Surely she had made no mistake; the lipstick on the rim, the finger-prints; hers as well as the girl’s, just as they would have been, no silly nonsense about wiping away all the prints—she’d been rather proud of that. ‘I gave her some coffee, yes. My husband told me to.’
‘That’s right. He told you to. You left the two men in the surgery with the girl, and went through to the kitchen. That gave you a little time to think, I suppose. Suddenly you came back and packed them all off to the drawing-room. That’s true, isn’t it? It’s in your own statement.’
‘Yes, it’s true. Why not? I thought it would be more comfortable for them in the drawing-room. There’s only one decent chair in the surgery.’
‘You said earlier that the reason was that you might be interrupted by an emergency patient.’
‘That too. All sorts of little considerations.’
‘One little consideration would be that it left the surgery free?’
‘I suppose you mean for me to go through and get the morphia tablets—?’
‘Thank you,’ he said, and again he had that glitter in his eye. ‘Morphia tablets—stirred into the coffee: hot, strong black coffee with lots of sugar in it so that she would not taste anything else. You came back into the drawing-room and handed the cup to her—’
—and screamed at her to drink it!—drink it! Would Frederick now come hurrying forward with little damaging, dangerous recollections like these? The cotton-wool was closing down upon her once more, stifling her brain with its clouds of unreason, inability to co-ordinate. She clawed her way through it feebly, up to the surface. ‘And may I ask—when did I alter the book?’
‘Any time,’ he said. ‘Then or later. I don’t think that matters. You’d given her the coffee: and in the words of the poet there was “poison i’ the cup”.’
She rallied her whole fighting spirit. ‘A literary policeman—how engaging!’
He gave her a small, sardonic bow. Let the poor mouse take what cheap comfort it may, the bow seemed to say, before the cat gobbles it up.
And yet, after all… What can he prove? she thought. He’s just trying to bluff me. He knows, yes: but if I admit nothing, his knowledge is of no use to him, none at all. All right, so I could have taken the morphia, I could have altered the book; but when could I have administered the dose? Not when I was alone with the girl, or she’d have said so—when she said, for example, that I’d probably put arsenic in the next hot drink I gave her. And for the rest of the time, I was never alone with her, or anyway not till after she’d begun showing symptoms. There’s only the cup of coffee: and he may guess about that but he can’t know—the cup is safe. All I have to do is stand firm and not let myself be drawn….And in the blessed relief of it, she asked, taunting him, the mouse growing suddenly large and mocking, insolently menacing, not a mouse any longer but a rat with bared white fangs, match for any stupid great cat: ‘And do let me ask you, Inspector—did you, “in the words of the poet”—find any poison in the cup?’