Any other person entering the dining saloon from the main deck on a night like that would have presented an appearance that would have varied from the wind-blown to the dishevelled. Not one hair of Goin's black, smooth, centre-parted, brushed-back hair was out of place: had I been told that he eschewed the standard proprietary hairdressing creams in favour of cowhide glue, I would have seen no reason to doubt it. And the hair style was typical of the man-everything smooth, calm, unruffled , and totally under control. In one area only did the comparison fall down. The hair style was slick, but Goin wasn't: he was just plain clever. He was of medium height, plump without being fat, with a smooth, unlined face. He was the only man I'd ever seen wearing pince-nez, and that only for the finest of fine print which, in Goin's line of business, came his way quite often: the pince-nez looked so inevitable that it was unthinkable that he should ever wear any other type of reading aid. He was, above all, a civilised man and urbane in the best sense of the word.

He picked up a glass from a rack, timed the wild staggering of the Morning Rose to walk quickly and surely to the scat on my right, picked up the Black Label and said: "May l?"

"Easy come, easy go," I said. "I've just stolen it from Mr. Gerran's private supply."

"Confession noted." He helped himself. "This makes me an accessory. Cheers."

I assume you've just come from Mr. Gerran," I said.

"Yes. He's most upset. Sad, sad, about that poor young boy. An unfortunate business." That ,-,as something else about Goin, he always got his priorities right: the average company accountant, confronted with the news of the death of a member of a team, would immediately have wondered how the death would affect the project as a whole: Goin saw the human side of it first. Or, I thought, he spoke of it first: I knew I was being unfair to him. He went on: I understand you've so far been unable to establish the cause of death." Diplomacy, inevitably, was second nature to Goin: he could so easily and truthfully have said that I just hadn't a clue. So I said it for him. I haven't a clue."

"You'll never get to Harley Street talking that way."

"Poison, that's certain. But that's all that's certain. I carry the usual seagoing medical library around with me, but that isn't much help. To identify a poison you must be able either to carry out a chemical analysis or observe the poison at work on the victim-most of the major poisons have symptoms peculiar to themselves and follow their own highly idiosyncratic courses. But Antonio x-,,as dead before I got to him and I lack the facilities to do any pathological work, assuming I could do it in the first place."

"You're destroying all my faith in the medical profession. Cyanide?"

Impossible. Antonio took time to die. A couple of drops of hydrocyanic -prussic acid-or even a tiny quantity of pharmacopocial acid, and that's only two percent of anhydrous prussic acid-and you're dead before your glass hits the floor. And cyanide makes it murder, it always makes it murder . There's no way I know of it can be administered by accident. Antonio's death, I'm certain, was an accident."

Goin helped himself to some more Scotch. "What makes you so certain it was an accident?"

"What makes me so certain?" That was a difficult one to answer off the cuff owing to the fact that I was convinced it was no accident at all. "First, there was no opportunity for the administering of poison. We know that Antonio was alone in his cabin all afternoon right until dinnertime." I looked at the Count. "Did Antonio have any private food supplies with him in his cabin?"

"How did you guess?" The Count looked surprised.

"I'm not guessing. I'm eliminating. He had?"

"Two hampers. Full of glass jars-I think I mentioned that Antonio would never eat anything out of a tin-with all sorts of weird vegetable products inside, including dozens of baby food jars with all sorts of purees in them. A very finicky eater, was poor Antonio."

"So I'm beginning to gather. I think our answer will lie there. I'll have Captain Imrie impound his supplies and have them analysed on our return. To get back to the opportunity factor. Antonio came up to the dining saloon here, had the same as the rest of us?'

"No fruit juices, no soup, no lamb chops, no potatoes," the Count said.

"None of those. But what he did have we all had. Then straight back to his cabin. In the second place, who would want to kill a harmless person like that-especially as Antonio was a total stranger to all of us and only joined us at Wick for the first time? And who but a madman would administer a deadly poison in a closed community like this knowing that he couldn't escape and that Scotland Yard would be leaning over the quay walls in Wick, just waiting for our return?"

"Maybe that's the way a madman would figure a sane person would Figure," Goin said.

"What English king was it who died of a surfeit of lampreys?" the Count said. If you ask me, our unfortunate Antonio may well have perished from a surfeit of horse-radish."

"Like enough." I pushed back my chair and made to rise. But I didn't get up immediately. Way back in the dim and lost recesses of my mind the Count had triggered off a tiny bell, an infinitesimal tinkle so distant and remote that if I hadn't been listening with all my ears I'd have missed it completely: but I had been listening, the way people always listen when they know, without knowing why, that the old man with the scythe is standing there in the wings, winding up for the back stroke. I knew both men were watching me. I sighed. "Decisions, decisions. Antonio has to be attended to-"

"With canvas?" Goin said.

"With canvas. Count's cabin cleaned up. Death has to be logged. Death certificate. And Mr. Smith will have to make the funeral arrangements."

"Mr. Smith?" The Count was vaguely surprised. "Not our worthy commanding officer."

"Captain Imrie is in the arms of Morpheus," I said. "I've tried."

"You have your deities mixed up," Goin said. "Tacchus is the one you're after."

I suppose it is. Excuse me, gentlemen."

I went directly to my cabin but not to write out any death certificate.

As I'd told Goin, I did carry a medical library of sorts around with me and it was of a fair size. I selected several books, including Glaisters's Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology, 9th edition (Edinburgh, 1950), Dewar's Textbook of Forensic Pharmacy (London, 1946) and Gonzales's, Vance's and Helpern's Legal Medicine and Toxicology, which seemed to be a prewar book. I started consulting indices and within five minutes I had it.

The entry was listed under "Systemic Poisons" and was headed Aconite.

"Bot. A poisonous plant of the order Ranunculaccae. Particular reference Monk's-hood and Wolf's-bane. Phar. Aconitum napellus. This, and aconitine, an alkaloid extract of the former, is commonly regarded as the most lethal of all poisons yet identified: a dose of not more than 0.004 gm is deadly to man. Aconite and its alkaloid produce a burning and peculiar tingling and numbing effect where applied. Later, especially with larger doses, violent vomiting results, followed by paralysis of motion, paralysis of sensation and great depression of the heart, followed by death from syncope.

"Treatment. To be successful must be immediate as possible. Gastric lavage, iz gm. of tannic acid in two gallons of warm water, followed by 1.2 gm. tannic acid in 18o ml. tepid water: this should be followed by animal charcoal suspended in water. Cardiac and respiratory stimulants, artificial respiration and oxygen will be necessary as indicated.

"N.B. The root of aconite has frequently been eaten in mistake for that of horse-radish."