He caught hold of Elsa unceremoniously by the shoulder. He said, "Come on; time for you to sit.
I want to get on with that picture." She said, "All right. I'll just go up and get a pullover.
There's a chilly wind."
She went into the house.
I wondered if Amyas would say anything to me, but he didn't say much. Just, "These women!" I said, "Cheer up, old boy!"
Then neither of us said anything till Elsa came out of the house again.
They went off together down to the Battery Garden.
I went into the house.
Caroline was standing in the hall.
I don't think she even noticed me.
It was a way of hers at times. She'd seem to go right away - to get inside herself as it were.
She just murmured something. Not to me - to herself. I caught, the words: "It's too cruel..." That's what she said. Then she walked past me and upstairs, still without seeming to see me - like a person intent on some inner vision.
I think myself (I've no authority for saying this, you understand) that she went up to get the stuff, and that it was then she decided to do what she did do.
And just at that moment the telephone rang.
In some houses one would wait for the servants to answer it, but I was so often at Alderbury that I acted more or less as one of the family.
I picked up the receiver. It was my brother Meredith s voice that answered.
He was very upset. He explained that he had been into his laboratory and that the coniine bottle was half empty.
I don't need to go again over all the things I know now I ought to have done.
The thing was so startling, and I was foolish enough to be taken aback.
Meredith was dithering a good bit at the other end. I heard someone on the stairs and I just told him sharply to come over at once.
I myself went down to meet him.
In case you don't know the lay of the land, the shortest way from one estate to the other was by rowing across a small creek.
I went down the path to where the boats were kept by a small jetty.
To do so I passed under the wall of the Battery Garden.
I could hear Elsa and Amyas talking together as he painted.
They sounded very cheerful and carefree.
Amyas said it was an amazingly hot day (so it was, very hot for September), and Elsa said that sitting where she was, poised on the battlements, there was a cold wind blowing in from the sea. And then she said, "I'm horribly stiff from posing.
Can't I have a rest, darling?" And I heard Amyas cry out, "Not on your life!
Stick it!
You're a tough girl.
And this is going good, I tell you." I just heard Elsa say, "Brute," and laugh, as I went out of earshot.
Meredith was just rowing himself across from the other side. I waited for him.
He tied up the boat and came up the steps.
He was looking very white and worried. He said to me, "Your head's better than mine, Philip. What ought I to do?
That stuff's dangerous." I said, "Are you absolutely sure about this?" Meredith, you see, was always rather a vague kind of chap. Perhaps that's why I didn't take it as seriously as I ought to have done.
And he said he was quite sure.
The bottle had been full yesterday afternoon.
I said, "And you've absolutely no idea who pinched it?" He said none whatever and asked me what I thought. Could it have been one of the servants?
I said I supposed it might have been, but it seemed unlikely to me.
He always kept the door locked, didn't he? Always, he said, and then began a rigmarole about having found the window a few inches open at the bottom.
Someone might have got in that way. "A chance burglar?" I asked. "It seems to me, Meredith, that there are some very nasty possibilities."
He asked what did I really think?
And I said, if he was sure he wasn't making a mistake, that probably Caroline had taken it to poison Elsa with - or that, alternatively, Elsa had taken it to get Caroline out of the way and straighten the path of true love.
Meredith twittered a bit.
He said it was absurd and melodramatic and couldn't be true. I said, "Well, the stuff's gone.
What's your explanation?" He hadn't any, of course.
Actually thought just as I did, but didn't want to face the fact.
He said again, "What are we to do?" I said, stupid fool that I was, "We must think it over carefully.
Either you'd better announce your loss, straight out when everybody's there, or else you'd better get Caroline alone and tax her with it.
If you're convinced she has nothing to do with it, adopt the same tactics for Elsa."