"What sort of a young woman?"
"A young woman out of a tea shop.
A perfectly respectable young woman - good looking in an anaemic, apathetic sort of way."
"And she's the strong probability?"
"I ask you, sir," said Taverner. "She's only thirty-four now - and that's a dangerous age.
She likes living soft.
And there's a young man in the house.
Tutor to the grandchildren.
Not been in the war - got a bad heart or something.
They're as thick as thieves."
I looked at him thoughtfully.
It was, certainly, an old and familiar pattern.
The mixture as before.
And the second Mrs Leonides was, my father had emphasized, very respectable.
In the name of respectability many murders have been committed.
"What was it?" I asked. "Arsenic?"
"No.
We haven't got the analyst's report yet - but the doctor thinks it's eserine."
"That's a little unusual, isn't it?
Surely easy to trace purchaser."
"Not this thing.
It was his own stuff, you see.
Eyedrops."
"Leonides suffered from diabetes," said my father. "He had regular injections of insulin.
Insulin is given out in small bottles with a rubber cap.
A hypodermic needle is pressed down through the rubber cap and the injection drawn up."
I guessed the next bit.
"And it wasn't insulin in the bottle, but eserine?"
"Exactly."
"And who gave him the injection?" I asked.
"His wife."
I understood now what Sophia had meant by the "right person."
I asked:
"Does the family get on well with the second Mrs Leonides?"
"No.
I gather they are hardly on speaking terms."
It all seemed clearer and clearer.
Nevertheless Inspector Taverner was clearly not happy about it.
"What don't you like about it?" I asked him.
"If she did it, Mr Charles, it would have been so easy for her to substitute a bona fide bottle of insulin afterwards.
In fact, if she is guilty, I can't imagine why on earth she didn't do just that."
"Yes, it does seem indicated.
Plenty of insulin about?"
"Oh yes, full bottles and empty ones. And if she'd done that, ten to one the doctor wouldn't have spotted it.
Very little is known of the post mortem appearances in human poisoning by eserine.
But as it was he checked up on the insulin (in case it was the wrong strength or something like that) and so, of course, he soon spotted that it wasn't insulin."
"So it seems," I said thoughtfully, "that Mrs Leonides was either very stupid - or possibly very clever."
"You mean -"
"That she may be gambling on your coming to the conclusion that nobody could have been as stupid as she appears to have been.
What are the alternatives?