Patricia Wentworth - Latter End

She gave him a fleeting glance and shook her head.

“It’s not like that. I’ll tell you how it was.”

Frank Abbott took up his pad and began to write.

She spoke quite calmly, almost with an air of relief, her voice exhausted but quite audible now.

“When I made my statement I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. I didn’t say everything, because I didn’t want Jimmy to know. When I came to the door on Wednesday night Mrs. Latter was standing by the tray just as I said in my statement. I thought she was putting sugar into one of the cups-I really did think so. She was tipping it in out of a little ornamental snuffbox she has. I never thought about its not being sugar, or glucose-one of those things. I just thought it was some new kind of fancy sweetening stuff. She was like that, you know-always trying new things. And sometimes she would go in for slimming-I thought perhaps it was something to do with that. She put all the stuff into the cup and stirred it up. Then she put two lumps of sugar in and stirred them up too. And she took up the little bottle of cognac and put in quite a lot. I thought it was her own cup, but she took it over and put it down by Jimmy’s chair. I thought how he would hate it.” She paused, closed her eyes for a moment, and then went on again. “He doesn’t like things very sweet-he doesn’t take more than one lump in tea or coffee. I thought Mrs. Latter ought to have known that-I thought she must have known it. Everyone knew how much he disliked her Turkish coffee, and that he only drank it because she said she thought someone was trying to poison her. Everybody knew that. I am afraid I thought that she was putting all that sugar in out of spite-to make it as nasty as possible for him. I couldn’t bear it, and I changed the cups.”

Lamb said in his solid voice,

“Did you see her put anything into the second cup?”

“No.”

He leaned forward, a hand on either knee.

“You say she tipped this powder into the cup from a little ornamental snuffbox. Can you describe it?”

“Oh, yes. It was French-eighteenth century, I believe- about two inches long and not quite so wide-silver-gilt, with a picture of Venus and Cupid on the lid, painted on porcelain.”

He said, “H’m! What did she do with it?”

“With the box?”

“Yes. Did you see what she did with it?”

There was a feeling of expectancy. Frank Abbott held his pencil poised. Miss Silver ceased to knit. Minnie Mercer said,

“Yes, I saw where she put it. She had the coffee-cup in her right hand and the box in her left. When she had put the cup down she took up some of the dried rose-leaves from the bowl on the table and filled the box. Then she opened the table drawer and slipped the box inside.”

“What did you think of her doing that?”

She said without hesitation, “I didn’t think about it at all- not at the time-of course afterwards-”

He said, “I’m coming to that. Miss Mercer-just when did you realize what you had done?”

“As soon as I knew that Mrs. Latter was dead.”

“Not before that?”

“Oh, no-how could I?”

“You might have noticed that she was ill-drowsy- sleepy.”

She shook her head.

“No-there was no opportunity. I was-very tired. As soon as they had finished their coffee I took out the tray and washed the cups. I didn’t go back to the drawing-room again. I went up to bed.”

“Yes, of course-it was you who washed the cups. Nothing strike you when you were doing it-sediment at the bottom of a cup?”

She said, “No. You see, it was Turkish coffee-there are always the grounds-you wouldn’t see any sediment.”

“You didn’t notice anything unusual?”

“No.”

“And you went up to bed. Did you go to sleep?”

“Yes-I was very tired.”

“What waked you?”

“The disturbance in the house after Julia had come in and found Mrs. Latter.”

“You were downstairs when the doctor came?”

“Yes.”

“And later on when Inspector Smerdon arrived?”

“Yes.”

“And by this time you had realized that Mrs. Latter had drunk the coffee which she intended for her husband?”

She looked for a moment as if she were going to faint. Then she said in an extinguished voice,

“I was-beginning-to realize it-”

He fixed a reproving look upon her.

“Then why didn’t you speak up and say what you had done? You say your statement wasn’t an untruthful one, but when you suppress a lot of critical evidence, it comes as near being untruthful as makes no difference. Why didn’t you speak up and save us all a lot of trouble?”

A wavering colour came into Minnie Mercer’s face. She sat up straight.

“You can’t take things back when you’ve said them. I had to think-but the more I thought, the less I knew what I ought to do. I had to think what was going to be the best thing for Jimmy.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“The truth is always best. Falsehood really helps no one.”

Minnie took no notice.

“I had to think about Jimmy. I thought it would kill him if he knew that his wife had tried to poison him-I was afraid of what he might do. And then I was afraid of what he might do if he thought she had committed suicide-he would have believed that it was his fault. And then I began to be afraid that you were suspecting him. There didn’t seem to be any way out, and I didn’t know what to do.”

Frank Abbott wrote that down. Lamb turned round to him.

“Get along to the drawing-room and see if that box is where she says it ought to be!”

Jimmy Latter took it hard. But in the very completeness of the destruction which it brought to all that he had ever believed or thought about Lois there was some hope for the future. No man can cling sentimentally to the memory of a woman who has tried to poison him. The shock of learning what she had done was tremendous. It smashed his married life and its memories so entirely that there was nothing left. Presently, when the dust and fragments had been cleared away, there would be a space on which to build again. Even now, in these first hours, there was an undercurrent of relief. With so much else, the fear that had ridden him was gone. It wasn’t he who had driven Lois to her death.

The inquest opened at four o’clock in the afternoon. The Coroner, old Dr. Summers, handled it very firmly. He had had a session with Chief Inspector Lamb, with whom he had found himself very much in accord. The evidence would be limited to what was strictly necessary, and sensational elements would not be encouraged. A sober jury sat with him- mostly local farmers, with the landlord of the Bull, a middle-aged spinster who bred dogs, and one or two tradesmen thrown in. The village hall was packed-reporters squeezed into a solid mass by sheer pressure of village interest; both moral and physical temperatures high and rising; the latter strongly tinged with varnish and the smell of hot humanity.

Police and medical evidence first. No doubt about the cause of death-morphia. The number of grains stated.

Then Dr. Summers called Jimmy Latter.

“You had been married two years?”

“Yes.”

“You were on good terms with your wife?”

From the other side of the gulf which had opened in his life, Jimmy Latter said,

“Yes.”

“But this week there had been a serious breach?” Dr. Summers settled his pince-nez and said firmly, “I do not propose to enquire any further into this breach, but I feel obliged to ask you whether it was indeed a very serious one.”

Since the whole village already knew from Gladys Marsh that Mrs. Latter had been found by her husband in Mr. Antony’s room in the middle of the night, with Mr. Antony saying no-such a nice gentleman and engaged to Miss Julia-it had quite enough inside knowledge very heartily to endorse Jimmy Latter’s “Yes.” There was a murmur of whispered talk. Dr. Summers quelled it.