“You’d have expected him to die?”

“That would be an extremely unprofessional prognostication. I would have anticipated grave trouble,” said Dr. Withers stuffily.

“Was he in the habit of playing up with his diet?”

“He was. Not continuously, but in bouts.”

“Yet survived?”

“The not unusual tale of ‘once too often’.”

“Yes,” said Alleyn, looking down at the card. “Would you mind describing the room and the body?”

“Would you, in your turn, Chief Inspector, mind telling me if you have any reason for this interview beyond these utterly preposterous anonymous letters?”

“Some of the family suspect arsenical poisoning.”

“Oh, my God and the little starfish!” Dr. Withers shouted and shook his fists above his head. “That bloody family!”

He appeared to wrestle obscurely with his feelings. “I’m sorry about that,” he said at last, “inexcusable outburst. I’ve been busy lately and worried, and there you are. The Ancreds, collectively, have tried me rather high. Why, may one ask, do they suspect arsenical poisoning?”

“It’s a long story,” said Alleyn carefully, “and it involves a tin of rat poison. May I add also, very unprofessionally, that I shall be enormously glad if you can tell me that the condition of the room and the body precludes the smallest likelihood of arsenical poisoning?”

“I can’t tell you anything of the sort. Why? (a) Because the room had been cleaned up when I got there. And (b) because the evidence as described to me, and the appearance of the body, were entirely consistent with a severe gastric attack, and therefore not inconsistent with arsenical poisoning.”

“Damn!” Alleyn grunted. “I thought it’d be like that.”

“How the hell could the old fool have got at any rat poison? Will you tell me that?” He jabbed his finger at Alleyn.

“They don’t think,” Alleyn explained, “that he got at it. They think it was introduced to him.”

The well-kept hand closed so strongly that the knuckles whitened. For a moment he held it clenched, and then, as if to cancel this gesture, opened the palm and examined his fingernails.

“That,” he said, “is implicit in the letter, of course. Even that I can believe of the Ancreds. Who is supposed to have murdered Sir Henry? Am I, by any pleasant chance?”

“Not that I know,” said Alleyn comfortably. Fox cleared his throat and added primly: “What an idea!”

“Are they going to press for an exhumation? Or are you?”

“Not without more reason than we’ve got at the moment,” Alleyn said. “You didn’t hold a post-mortem?”

“One doesn’t hold a P.M. on a patient who was liable to go off in precisely this fashion at any moment.”

“True enough. Dr. Withers, may I make our position quite clear? We’ve had a queer set of circumstances placed before us and we’ve got to take stock of them. Contrary to popular belief, the police do not, in such cases, burn to get a pile of evidence that points unavoidably to exhumation. If the whole thing turns out to be so much nonsense they are, as a general rule, delighted to write it off. Give us a sound argument against arsenical poisoning and we’ll be extremely grateful to you.”

Dr. Withers waved his hands. “I can’t give you, at a moment’s notice, absolute proof that he didn’t get arsenic. You couldn’t do it for ninety-nine deaths out of a hundred, when there was gastric trouble with vomiting and purging and no analysis was taken of anything. As a matter of fact—”

“Yes?” Alleyn prompted as he paused.

“As a matter of fact, I dare say if there’d been anything left I might have done an analysis simply as a routine measure and to satisfy a somewhat pedantic medical conscience. But the whole place had been washed up.”

“By whose orders?”

“My dear man, by Barker’s orders or Mrs. Kentish’s, or Mrs. Henry Ancred’s, or whoever happened to think of it. They didn’t like to move him. Couldn’t very well. Rigor was pretty well established, which gave me, by the way, a lead about the time of his death. When I saw him later in the day they’d fixed him up, of course, and a nice time Mrs. Ancred must have had of it with all of them milling about the house in an advanced condition of hysteria and Mrs. Kentish ‘insisting on taking a hand in the laying-out’.”

“Good Lord!”

“Oh, they’re like that. Well, as I was saying, there he was when they found him, hunched up on the bed, and the room in a pretty nauseating state. When I got there, two of those old housemaids were waddling off with their buckets and the whole place stank of carbolic. They’d even managed to change the bedclothes. I didn’t get there, by the way, for an hour after they telephoned. Confinement.”

“About the children’s ringworm—” Alleyn began.

“You know about them, do you! Yes. Worrying business. Glad to say young Panty’s cleared up at last.”

“I understand,” Alleyn said pleasantly, “that you are bold in your use of drugs.”

There was a long silence. “And how, may I ask,” said Dr. Withers very quietly, “did you hear details of my treatment?”

“Why, from Thomas Ancred,” said Alleyn, and watched the colour return to Dr. Withers’s face. “Why not?”

“I dislike gossip about my patients. As a matter of fact I wondered if you’d been talking to our local pharmacist. I’m not at all pleased with him at the moment, however.”

“Do you remember the evening the children were dosed— Monday, the nineteenth, I think it was?”

Dr. Withers stared at him. “Now, why—?” he began, and seemed to change his mind. “I do,” he said. “Why?”

“Simply because that evening a practical joke was played on Sir Henry and the child Panty has been accused of it. It’s too elaborate a story to bother you about, but I’d like to know if she was capable of it. In the physical sense. Mentally, it seems, she certainly is.”

“What time?”

“During dinner. She would have visited the drawing-room.”

“Out of the question. I arrived at seven-thirty — Wait a moment.” He searched his filing cabinet and pulled out another card. “Here! I superintended the weighing and dosing of these kids and noted the time. Panty got her quota at eight and was put to bed. I stayed on in the ante-room to their dormitory during the rest of the business and talked to Miss Able. I left her my visiting list for the next twenty-four hours so that she could get me quickly if anything cropped up. It was after nine when I left and this wretched kid certainly hadn’t budged. I had a look at the lot of them. She was asleep with a normal pulse and so on.”

“That settles Panty, then,” Alleyn muttered.

“Look here, has this any bearing on the other business?”

“I’m not sure. It’s a preposterous story. If you’ve the time and inclination to listen I’ll tell it to you.”

“I’ve got,” said Dr. Withers, glancing at his watch, “twenty-three minutes. Case in half an hour, and I want to hear the racing results before I go out.”

“I shan’t be more than ten minutes.”

“Go ahead, then. I should be glad to hear any story, however fantastic, that can connect a practical joke on Monday the nineteenth with the death of Sir Henry Ancred from gastroenteritis after midnight on Saturday the twenty-fourth.”

Alleyn related all the stories of the practical jokes. Dr. Withers punctuated this recital with occasional sounds of incredulity or irritation. When Alleyn reached the incident of the flying cow he interrupted him.

“The child Panty,” he said, “is capable of every iniquity, but, as I have pointed out, she could not have perpetrated this offence with the blown-up bladder, nor could she have painted the flying cow on Mrs. — ” He stopped short. “Is this lady—?” he began.

“My wife, as it happens,” said Alleyn, “but let it pass.”

“Good Lord! Unusual that, isn’t it?”

“Both unusual and bothering in this context. You were saying?”

“That the child was too seedy that night for it to be conceivable. And you tell me Miss Able (sensible girl that) vouches for her anyway.”