"It was so hideously easy, you see ... that was the devil of it. The old man came along and put himself into my hands. Told me with one breath that I hadn't a dog's chance of the money, and in the next, asked me for a dose. I just had to put the stuff into a couple of capsules and tell him to take them at 7 o'clock. He put them in his spectacle-case, to make sure he wouldn't forget them. Not even a bit of paper to give me away. And the next day I'd only to get a fresh supply of the stuff and fill up the bottle. I'll give you the address of the chemist who sold it. Easy?—it was laughable ... people put such power in our hands....
"I never meant to get led into all this rotten way of doing things—it was just self-defense. I still don't care a damn about having killed the old man. I could have made better use of the money than Robert Fentiman. He hasn't got two ideas in his head, and he's perfectly happy where he is. Though I suppose he'll be leaving the Army now.... As for Ann, she ought to be grateful to me in a way. I've secured her the money anyhow."
"Not unless you make it clear that she had no part in the crime," Wimsey reminded him.
"That's true. All right. I'll put it all on paper for you. Give me half an hour, will you?"
"Right you are," said Wimsey.
He left the library and wandered into the smoking-room. Colonel Marchbanks was there, and greeted him with a friendly smile.
"Glad you're here, Colonel. Mind if I come and chat to you for a moment?"
"By all means, my dear boy. I'm in no hurry to get home. My wife's away. What can I do for you?"
Wimsey told him, in a lowered voice. The Colonel was distressed.
"Ah, well," he said, "you've done the best thing, to my mind. I look at these matters from a soldier's point of view, of course. Much better to make a clean job of it all. Dear, dear! Sometimes, Lord Peter, I think that the War has had a bad effect on some of our young men. But then, of course, all are not soldiers by training, and that makes a great difference. I certainly notice a less fine sense of honor in these days than we had when I was a boy. There were not so many excuses made then for people; there were things that were done and things that were not done. Nowadays men—and, I am sorry to say, women too—let themselves go in a way that is to me quite incomprehensible. I can understand a man's committing murder in hot blood—but poisoning—and then putting a good, ladylike girl into such an equivocal position—no! I fail to understand it. Still, as you say, the right course is being taken at last."