CHAPTER XV
Shuffle The Cards And Deal Again
A hasty consultation with the powers that be at Scotland Yard put Detective-Inspector Parker in charge of the Fentiman case, and he promptly went into consultation with Wimsey.
"What put you on to this poison business?" he asked.
"Aristotle, chiefly," replied Wimsey. "He says, you know, that one should always prefer the probable impossible to the improbable possible. It was possible, of course, that the General should have died off in that neat way at the most confusing moment. But how much nicer and more probable that the whole thing had been stage-managed. Even if it had seemed much more impossible I should have been dead nuts on murder. And there really was nothing impossible about it. Then there was Pritchard and the Dorland woman. Why should they have been so dead against compromise and so suspicious about things unless they had inside information from somewhere. After all, they hadn't seen the body as Penberthy and I did."
"That leads on to the question of who did it. Miss Dorland is the obvious suspect, naturally."
"She's got the biggest motive."
"Yes. Well, let's be methodical. Old Fentiman was apparently as right as rain up till about half-past three when he started off for Portman Square, so that the drug must have been given him between then and eightish, when Robert Fentiman found him dead. Now who saw him between those two times?"
"Wait a sec. That's not absolutely accurate. He must have taken the stuff between those two times, but might have been given him earlier. Suppose, for instance, somebody had dropped a poisoned pill into his usual bottle of soda-mints or whatever he used to take. That could have been worked at any time."
"Well—not too early on, Peter. Suppose he had died a lot too soon and Lady Dormer had heard about it."