“So far no arsenic has been traced to Henry Garlett’s possession, and of course that is a point in his favour,” he said musingly.
“I suppose that it is quite impossible that sugar and arsenic can be substituted by accident the one for the other?” asked Jean. “I mean at a grocer’s, for instance?”
“Quite impossible,” he said firmly. “But tell me why you ask the question?”
“Because Mrs. Garlett seems to have had some strawberries smothered in white sugar just before her supper.”
“Did she say the strawberries had made her ill?”
Jean knitted her white forehead.
“Not that I know of. But Miss Cheale, the lady who was her companion-nurse, at first put down her illness to her having eaten them.”
“Your uncle, I take it, lives close to the Thatched House. Does he make up his own medicines?”
Jean Bower shook her head.
“He did so, I believe, when he first bought the practice, but he gave up doing it years ago.”