“Dead birds! Whatever are you talking about?”
“Yes, birds and a cat. Hasn’t John told you of our sad little find in the rose garden? Just before you came to call us in to breakfast this morning, we had found that the poison had been emptied into the bird bath. There were dozens of dead birds and one of the cats lying dead on the lawn. We rang up for Inspector Brown, and we had no sooner bundled him away than you appeared on the scene and began to make inquiries about the missing bath. Then, too, I did not quite like your taking away the whisky bottle and the glass from the kitchen table the night before.”
“I wanted to find out if they contained anything in addition to the whisky. And they did. The whisky had been heavily drugged.”
“Yes, we know it was. I took the table-cloth on which some of it had been spilled to the police station. Miss Hunter had drugged the whisky and then had turned on the gas, after cook had succumbed to its effects. She made a bad mistake when she forgot to turn on the light as well. But as I was saying, at the time it made me begin to wonder when I saw you go off with the bottle and the glass. You see, I didn’t appreciate that you suspected Miss Hunter too, and I thought that you were taking them to prevent any one else from knowing what they had contained. I was puzzled about it, and when she showed me a slip from one of your memo pads with the words pasted over it, as though you had been making a trial to see what it would look like, and a newspaper with odd words cut out of it, well, I followed her to the box-room eagerly enough, hoping that we might find something else. I was leaning over a box on the floor, when she came up behind me and held a pad soaked in chloroform over my nose and mouth. I hadn’t the ghost of a chance and couldn’t utter a sound.”
My darling finished her explanation, and I cried out, “Oh, what a fool I’ve been. What a blundering fool! You warned me. I see it now, and there I sat in the garden and left you without help.”
“No, no, indeed it wasn’t your fault at all. I ought never to have gone with her. You couldn’t have guessed. Any one might have missed it.”
“Look here, are you two talking some other language? What’s it all about?” Allport interrupted.
“You’re not to tell him, Mr. Jeffcock.”
“She warned me that she thought she might be in danger as clearly as she could, and idiot that I am, I’ve only just this minute understood.”
Then I went on to tell them how Margaret had shown me her alleged box-room find behind the garage, and of how we had found Miss Summerson hiding in the hedge and what she had said.