Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 108, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 661 & 662, September/October 1996

By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Michael Gilbert

© 1996 by Michael Gilbert

A London solicitor whose crime fiction was inspired by the work of the British barrister-crime writer Cyril Hare, Michael Gilbert has been entertaining American readers since the 1950s when his short stories first began appearing in EQMM. Unlike most other successful novelists, Mr. Gilbert has developed several sets of series characters for use only in his short fiction.

Stan Meldrum, night duty sergeant at Compton Green Police Station, was not an inspired performer, but he knew the ropes. After replacing the receiver he sat for a full ten seconds. Eleven o’clock. He was balancing the possibilities that Detective Inspector Rayburn was at home in bed, or playing bridge at his club. He thought that bridge was more likely; a correct guess.

“I assume,” said Rayburn, “that you told him to touch nothing.” But for the disparity in their ranks, Meldrum would have said, “Of course I did,” but reduced it to “Yes.”

“And told him to lock the front door. Not to go into the front hall, but wait for us in the garden.”

“I don’t think he was at all keen to go into the hall,” said Meldrum. “He telephoned us from a box in the road. I gave the address to the hospital so they could get Dr. Mornington round there.”

“Right. And get hold of Hart.”

“I done that, sir. She wasn’t too pleased. She’d only just got home. Been out all evening looking for bicycles.” As Rayburn understood, it was not bicycles that Detective Sergeant Alice Hart had been looking for, but the gang of youths who’d been stealing them. A long, tiring, house-to-house enquiry. Well, that was how detective sergeants earned their keep.

He said, “Who does our photography now?”

“Boone, sir.”

“Is he any good?”

“He passed the course at Hendon.”

“Pity,” said Rayburn. He didn’t mean that it was a pity that Detective Constable Boone had passed the Hendon course, which was a very good one. He meant that it was a pity that Sergeant Owtram, who had been taking their photographs for six years, should have been promoted to a desk job at Central. He disliked changes.

When Rayburn reached the police station the runabout was ready in the forecourt. Sergeant Hart was standing beside it talking to Detective Constable Boone, who had his photographic equipment ready, stacked in the back.

“Come with me, Sergeant, and you can tell me all you know about this Lavender Box — and Mr. Goldsworthy.”

“It’s a high-class retirement home, sir. Never more than three or four residents, all good class and with money, I guess, or they wouldn’t be able to afford the prices. There’s a housekeeper — doesn’t live in — and a girl. They do the cooking and cleaning. And, of course, the matron, Nurse Minter. She was there if the residents needed help — they’re all well up in their eighties — but her main job was looking after Mrs. Goldsworthy.”

“Who is, I gather, a cripple.”

“Yes, sir. It’s that osteo-something or other. It destroys the bone tissues. She can’t get out of bed without help. It’s tragic, really, because she’s still mentally alert. I see the doctor’s just beaten us to it.”

Five men and one woman stood for a moment on the stone-flagged front path, a compact group summoned by death to this very ordinary-looking house. Leonard Goldsworthy’s face, in contrast to his black beard, was the colour of parchment. Partly the effect of shock, thought Rayburn, but the overhead street lighting didn’t help. Dr. Mornington, the county pathologist, was tubby and self-possessed. The inspector placed himself smoothly in charge.

He said, “Is there a back way in? A door at the other end of the hall? Splendid.” They trooped round to the rear of the house. Goldsworthy unlocked the back door, stepped inside, and switched on the light. The hall ran through from back door to front door. They could now see what lay on the matting-covered floor of the front hall.

Boone, less hardened than the others, found his eyes drawn unwillingly to the shattered head of Nurse Minter and the blood and brains spilled round it. Sergeant Hart, being a woman, had time to spare for the clothing on the crumpled body. The neat blouse and skirt of a middle-aged, middle-class housekeeper and the blue overall, with its white collar and cuffs, which announced that she was also a nurse.

The inspector was thinking neither of the body nor the clothing. He was thinking of the many things he had to do and the order in which they had to be done.

He said to Boone, “Photography first. Then a measured plan. It’s particularly important to note exactly — to the nearest inch — how far the body is from the front door and the foot of the stairs. And Doctor, when you’ve done what you have to here—”

“Very little.”

“So I should suppose. Then you’ll want to remove the body to the mortuary for a proper inspection. Perhaps we could use Mr. Goldsworthy’s telephone—”

“No need,” said the doctor. “I arranged for an ambulance before I came. And might I make a suggestion. As soon as we’ve lifted the body — we’ll work as far as possible from this end — cover the whole floor.”

“Right,” said Rayburn. He was prepared to accept suggestions from the doctor, who had seen many more corpses than he had. “Sergeant, blankets and mats over the whole area. Then — I’ll need a statement from you, sir—” Mr. Goldsworthy nodded. He had not opened his mouth since the police arrived. “We’ll go into Nurse Minter’s room while you are getting on with things out here.” To Alice, “Go up and have a word with Mrs. Goldsworthy. You can tell her that Nurse Minter has had an accident. She won’t be able to tell us much, but she may have heard things.” And to Boone, “When you’ve finished the photography, you can tackle the residents.”

Since they arrived they had been conscious of the sounds of a television programme coming from the room on the other side of the hall. “The window of that room overlooks the front garden. They may easily have seen something. Now Mr. Goldsworthy, if you’ll step this way—”

He had a great many questions to ask him. Not only a full account of what he had been doing that evening, up to the moment he had opened his front door and seen the body of Nurse Minter, but questions about the home, its residents, and its routine. But one thing he had to bear in mind: It was now nearly midnight and the Court of Criminal Appeal had recently criticised policemen who subjected witnesses to interrogations lasting into the small hours.

He decided to compromise. He elicited the important points. That Mr. Goldsworthy had departed after supper for the local cinema, getting there at half-past eight. The film (“Italian — interesting if you like that sort of thing.”) had finished at about a quarter to eleven. The walk home had taken a little over ten minutes. So it must have been around eleven o’clock when he opened the front door and saw what was lying there.

“A great shock,” suggested the inspector.

It had been a shock, and he was only beginning to recover from it. And it was he who raised the point that had been in the inspector’s mind. He said, “I do realise that there are other things you will have to ask me. Might I suggest that we continue tomorrow afternoon? Tomorrow morning there will be a score of urgent matters I shall have to attend to. I shall have to ask the hospital to lend me a nurse. A temporary replacement for Minter. My wife needs regular attention, to say nothing of the residents — all well over eighty. And no doubt I shall have to placate Ms. Burches and stop her from deserting us.”

The inspector said, “Very well. Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

He was not displeased. By that time he would have a number of reports from the doctor and his subordinates which would sharpen his interrogation.

Alice had learned nothing useful from Mrs. Goldsworthy, drowsing among her pillows. Boone had been more fortunate. As he approached the door he heard the rat-tat-tat of a six-shooter.

Evidently the sheriff had got his man. When he got into the room he realized that little information about the happenings of the evening was to be expected. The three ladies were seated in a circle in front of the television set. For them the real world was not in the house or the garden. It was in the little box. Credits were now following each other down the small screen. The play was over. Time for a return to reality.

Boone switched on the light and applied himself, without much hope, to his task.

When they understood that he was a policeman, and what had brought him there, they seemed more excited than alarmed. Young policemen often featured in their screen existence. They were nearly always good. As this man seemed to be. There was nothing alarming in his questions.

He started by writing down their names and was given a thumbnail sketch of their families and their histories. Gertrude Tabard, daughter of an Anglo-Indian colonel. Beatrice Mountfield, relict of Dr. Mountfield, the celebrated neurosurgeon. Florence Marant. Her father had been an inventor. She was beginning to draw a picture of the Marant patent rabbit hutch when Gertrude decided that she had occupied the limelight long enough.

She said, “He doesn’t want to know about rabbit hutches, Florence. He wants to find out who attacked Nurse Minter. That’s right, isn’t it, young man?”

“Indeed it is, ma’am. And if any of you happened to hear anything during the past two hours—”

Three heads were shaken, decisively.

Decisively, thought Boone, but not regretfully. They were none of them showing any signs of sorrow at the departure of Nurse Minter. Interest, yes. Even a sort of pleasure. He supposed that to people in their eighties the death of a much younger woman was a symbol of their own survival. A sort of triumph.

After he left them, the three old ladies sat in silence for a time. Then Beatrice said, “Do you think he knows, Gertie?”

“If he doesn’t know,” said Florence, “do you think we ought to say something?”

“Wouldn’t that be sneaking?” said Gertrude.

The word took them back to their school days. Sneaking was something only lower-class and despicable girls did.

“They’ve no real proof,” said Florence. “But we’ve all heard him, lots of times, creeping along to her room. And if she wasn’t doing what we think she was doing, what was she doing?”

“She wasn’t cutting his toenails,” said Gertrude.

This made them all cackle. Nurse Minter had cut their toenails for them once a month.

“I think,” said Gertrude, “that if he doesn’t know, it would be in the interests of justice to drop him a hint.”

The interests of justice. That was what their favourite television character, young Mack, stood for. Mack would have found a way out of their difficulty. He was a great hand at solving difficulties.

Boone, who was not as simple as he looked, had quickly circled the house and come in through the kitchen door. The wall between kitchen and television room was not soundproof. He listened with great interest to what the old ladies had to say.

On the following morning all four members of the investigating team had been busy.

Dr. Mornington had submitted a preliminary report. He said that Nurse Minter’s skull had been crushed by one powerful blow delivered from behind and above. This suggested that the killer was taller than his victim, or that she might have been stooping forward when she was hit. He added that the fact that the body had been lying in the same place since death, and that he had been called in so promptly, allowed him to be more certain about the time of death than was usual in such cases. He put it at a few minutes one side or another of nine o’clock.

The second report, which had been typed out the night before, was on the inspector’s desk when he came in. In it Boone had recorded — as nearly verbatim as he could manage — the conversation that he had overheard. Interesting, thought Rayburn. Too spotty to come to a firm conclusion, but the needle of suspicion was already swinging in one direction.

He himself had a date with the local bank manager. He was only too well aware of the tiresome restrictions which gagged such men, but this particular manager was an old friend and prepared, within limits, to be indiscreet. Rayburn eased himself towards what he wanted to know by pointing out that a search would have to be made for Minter’s Will. “By the way,” he went on, “I’m not of course asking for any figures, but perhaps you could at least tell me this. Was she a woman of any substance?”

The bank manager had nodded. “An active account,” he said, “and recently very well in credit.”

That was satisfactory, as far as it went. If details were required later, an Order of the Court would produce them.

But by far the most promising results of that morning’s work had been produced by Sergeant Hart. She had found the manager of the Palace Cinema in an expansive mood.

“Most local cinemas,” he said, “have been killed by television. We’re lucky to be alive and kicking. We’ve got a very faithful audience and one thing we do to keep their interest alive is to insert a surprise item every now and then. A short general-interest film, or a cartoon. Not Disney, he’s much too expensive, but there are quite good cartoons being made in England and Germany.”

“Do you show it at the beginning or the end?”

“We start with advertisements and a trailer, or trailers, of forthcoming attractions. Then we slip in a slide which says, ‘And now, for your additional entertainment: Pom-de-pom. Pompetty pom.’ ”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t you recognise it? Their signature tune. We’ve managed to get ahold of two or three of their earliest ones.”

Pom-de-pom. Pompetty pom. Of course. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. It took her back to her own youth.

“And you put that in after the trailers and before the main item. I wonder if you could give me some timings—”

“For last night?” The manager cocked a shrewd eye at her. “Yes. Well. We were a little late in starting. It was just past twenty to nine before the lights went down. There were some advertisements and we showed two trailers that night. Twenty-five minutes for the comedy. I’d say it was almost exactly nine-thirty when the main feature started. My box-office girl, Stella, could confirm the times. She keeps a sharp eye on the clock. She has to stay to the end. And she’s keen to get home. Would you care to have a word with her?”

“Very much,” said Alice. And, gently prodded, Stella had produced a promising budget of information. She recognised Mr. Goldsworthy. A tall man with a beard. He had arrived in good time. And had his favourite seat. Not that it was anyone else’s favourite. On the left-hand end of the back row.

She led the way into the auditorium and indicated the seat. Certainly not a good one. Partly blocked by that pillar. Why would anyone want that one?

Stella looked embarrassed. She said, “Well, I did think—” She indicated the curtained opening alongside the seat. “Elderly men do get — you know—”

Looking through the curtain Hart saw the sign Toilets, and spared Stella further embarrassment by saying, “Yes, I’m sure you’re right. That explains it.”

There was a door at the far end with a shaded light over it. “Emergency exit,” said Stella. “Has to be kept open during the performance.”

What a setup, said Alice to herself and, later, to the inspector, who said, “It’s beginning to add up, isn’t it?”

He was aware that anything culled by Boone from Mrs. Burches had to be treated with caution since the housekeeper disliked the nurse, but it filled out the picture that was emerging.

“Set your teeth on edge, it would, the way she treated those three old dears,” Mrs. Burches had said. “All good family. Twice as good as hers. Maybe that was why she tried to take it out on them — in small ways. However, give her credit — she looked after Mrs. G all right. Maybe she was hoping for a handout of all the money Mrs. G kept under her bed.”

“Do you mean she really—”

“Not really. No. Just a story. The way people talk. However, as I said, she did that part of her job very regular. Brought her all her meals. Tidied her room. Gave her her sleeping draught each night. She must have been on her way to do that when she was attacked.”

“How do you make that out?” said Boone, trying not to sound too eager. This might be important.

“How do I know?” said Mrs. Burches, scornful of the ignorance of young men. “I know because she’d put on her overall. Only do that when she was going on duty, wouldn’t she?”

Later that evening Rayburn summed up for his team. Hart and Boone had both been in attendance when Mr. Goldsworthy was interrogated. They had written down his answers. When he was questioned about his visit to the cinema, he seemed to know nothing about the “surprise item.” The inspector’s questions relating to timing were specific, as were Mr. Goldsworthy’s answers.

The start, he thought, had been somewhat later than 8:40. There had been the trailers and the tiresome advertising items. He reckoned that it must have been well after nine before the main item got going. The inspector took him through it twice. Boone, who added shorthand to his other accomplishments, made a verbatim note of what Mr. Goldsworthy said.

“If he was in the cinema at nine o’clock,” the inspector said, “he couldn’t possibly have overlooked the Laurel and Hardy film. So where was he? Easy enough, in the particular seat he was occupying, to slip out and make his way back to the house; knowing Nurse Minter’s routine, he plans to get there just before nine o’clock. Listens until he hears her come out of her room, unlocks the front door, and steps in. Nurse is surprised to see him. He says, “Who’s been spilling things on the carpet?’ Nurse stoops down to see what his left hand is pointing at. Round comes his right hand with a weapon in it. An iron bar, perhaps—”

Boone wrote down, “Weapon??”

“Back to the cinema. Home by eleven. Sees what’s in the hall. Telephones the police station.”

His assistants nodded. It seemed to fit.

“And the motive. That’s clear too. He’d had sex with Minter, more than once. The old ladies heard what was going on. The only other person in the house at night was Mrs. G, who’d been given a sleeping draught. A pretty powerful one, we may guess, because if she had heard anything, even suspected it, there’d have been the devil to pay. Her body may have been weak, but there was nothing wrong with her mind. Divorce the least of it. Her Will remade. The money that helped to keep the household going cut off. Minter knows this. Starts to put on pressure. Successfully. Her account starts to look very healthy. When we get an order opening bank records, the position will be clear. Regular withdrawals of cash from his account, regular payments into hers.”

Alice said, “Do you think we’ve got enough to charge him?”

“I do. And in the old days I would have done so. Now I need the backing of the Crown Prosecution Service.”

“Surely you’ll get it, sir,” said Boone.

That was on Wednesday.

Every Thursday the three residents went out for a jaunt. This was a popular move. It enabled Mr. Goldsworthy to spend a few undisturbed hours in the office of his almost-bankrupt insurance agency, and it gave the nurse an afternoon off. Each week they hired the same car, with a driver who knew their habits. Compton Green being on the outer edge of the metropolitan sprawl, it took only a short time to get out into the countryside. The village they were making for boasted an old-fashioned tea parlour. Their table, kept for them, was tucked away at the back of it. Gertrude presided over the teapot. When they were all served she said, in the manner of a chairman opening the business of the meeting, “I should have thought they’d have worked it out by now, wouldn’t you?”

Beatrice said, “Nowadays you can’t trust anyone to take any sort of independent action.”

“Red tape,” said Florence. “Always consult someone else before you do anything. Young Mack wouldn’t have stood for it.”

“Nor would my father,” said Gertrude. “The Colonel never asked anyone’s advice over anything important. If something had to be done he did it.”

Two heads nodded approval of this masculine firmness.

“I must say,” said Beatrice, “that I find our new nurse an improvement. Don’t you, Gertie?”

“A distinct improvement,” said Gertrude. “She calls me madam.” She waved to the waitress, who hurried across. She had a great respect for the old ladies. “Could you bring us another jug of hot water?” And to Florence, “I don’t think you should eat another of those cakes, Florrie. They’ll bring you out in spots.”

“I’d rather have cakes and spots than no cakes and no spots,” said Florence defiantly.

Mr. Arbuthnot of the Crown Prosecution Service said, “I’m sorry, but no.”

Too often recently he had suffered humiliation at the hands of defending counsel.

“Tour case is ingenious, but it’s got two gaping holes in it. Look at the map. There are eight built-up streets, all well lit, between the cinema and the home. By your account, Goldsworthy went through all of them before nine o’clock. How could he hope to do so without being seen? A tall man, with a beard. Produce me one reliable witness who saw him coming or going and you close that gap. Less serious perhaps, but the defense will latch onto it, what about the weapon? Did he make a detour out into the countryside and throw it into a ditch? Double the chance of being seen. Or drop it quietly into a drain on the way back to the cinema. More likely. Have you searched all the drains?”

The unhappy inspector had to admit that he had not searched all of them. Not yet.

Although it would have been out of his place to say so, Mr. Arbuthnot nearly added, “Get on with it. Do some work.”

It was Mrs. Burches’s daughter, who was walking out with Ernie, one of the police constables, who gave them all the latest news.

“Been at it a week,” she said. “And they aren’t half making themselves unpopular. First it was questions about bicycles. Now it’s murderers. Life’s not worth living, people say.”

Many of the uniformed branch thought the same. Ten of them had been dragooned into doing work which, they thought, belonged to the detective branch. Rayburn encouraged them as much as he could, but before the end of the week he began to wonder whether his own small contingent was pulling its weight.

He said to Alice, “Boone seems to spend most of his time out in the country. What’s he up to?”

“He’s got an idea.”

“What idea?”

“I think he’d better tell you himself.”

Summoned into the presence, Detective Constable Boone launched out into waters which were full of shoals and rocks.

Taking a deep breath, he said, “It did occur to me to wonder, sir. I mean, the legal boys seem to think that the main drawback to your — to our — theory was that no one had seen Goldsworthy between the cinema and his house. Although they were all on edge about the bicycle thieves, and keeping their eyes open for strangers.”

“So?”

“What I thought was, suppose the killer was another man altogether — living out in the countryside somewhere. He hears the rumour about Mrs. Goldsworthy’s money. He could reach the back of the house without going through any main streets. He breaks in. Runs into the nurse, hits her harder than he means, sees he’s killed her, and bolts. The weapon could be miles away, in a ditch—”

“So what was Goldsworthy doing when he was meant to be in the cinema — but quite clearly wasn’t.”

“I think he was paying a visit to the massage parlour — so called — two streets away. A girl who worked there says he was a regular client.”

“And saw him there on the night of the killing?”

Boone looked unhappy.

“No, sir. She’d been sacked a fortnight before. That’s why she was willing to talk.”

“Then you’ve no evidence at all that he was there that night.”

“No, sir.”

“I see. Well, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t think out any wild and wonderful solutions you like, but when I give orders, I like to have them carried out. I’ve read the reports from the uniformed branch. They don’t seem to cover the ground. For instance, there are two long back streets — just the sort of quiet way he’d have preferred — they don’t seem to have been covered at all. So get on with it.”

Mrs. Rayburn, when she was told about it that evening, said, “That young man’s got a swollen head.”

When Boone went to Sergeant Hart for sympathy she said, “What we were taught as recruits was, consider the physical evidence. Right. And that’s what I’m going to do. For a start, where are the photographs you took?”

Boone had taken thirty beautiful photographs, showing not only the body but all the surrounding features from different angles. Three prints had been made of each, one for the inspector, one for the Crown prosecutors, one for the files. So far as he knew, no one had looked at them since.

Sergeant Hart took the file copies home, consumed her simple supper, and started to study them. Some of them had been taken after the body had been moved. One seemed to interest her particularly. A slight disturbance of the matting and the surrounding blood and plasma defined precisely the place where the body had fallen. And surely, there — faintly—?

There was an angle-poise lamp with a daylight bulb that she used when she was doing her tapestry. She turned it on and shone it down on the photograph. Yes. There it was. Someone had drawn a cross, in brown chalk, on the matting. Just visible to the naked eye, clearly visible to the eye of the camera.

She didn’t sleep much that night. The possible implications of what she had seen were building up. She visualised the front hall and the staircase that went straight up from it for two flights. On the first storey the bedroom of the Goldsworthys and the nurse. On the second the bed-sitting rooms of the residents. Before sleep finally overtook her she had made up her mind. The day now dawning was a Thursday. In the afternoon the house would be empty, with the possible exception of the Burches, mother and daughter. Boone should keep them out of the way. They would be happy talking to him over a cup of tea.

“Certainly I’ll do it, if it will help,” said Boone. “But couldn’t you explain what you’re up to?”

“One demonstration,” said Alice, “is worth half a dozen explanations. Or so we were told.”

For all her certainty, when the moment came she found her hand shaking. The idea was so strange, so shocking, so horrible, that it must be incorrect. A tower of surmise built on a single chalk mark.

Standing in the hall she could hear the murmur of voices from the kitchen, interrupted by occasional screams and giggles from young Miss Burches, which indicated that Boone was doing his stuff. Apart from that the house was totally silent.

She climbed the stairs, up to the top, and looked into the three bedrooms that faced her. In each of them, as she went in, she encountered the same faint and elusive smell. Potpourri, lavender, or just old age?

She searched each room in turn, cautious as any burglar, careful to put back everything exactly where she found it.

Beatrice was the artist. She had a handsome box of watercolour paints, a jar of brushes, a pile of canvases, an easel. And a cardboard box of chalks, all colours. Yes. Including brown.

The only item of interest in Florence’s room was a length of cord, neatly coiled and tucked away in one of her tidily arranged drawers.

In Gertrude’s room there was a collection of Benares brass, a relic, no doubt, of her father’s service in India. It was ranged on two shelves: candlesticks, boxes, vases, and pots. Lovingly cleaned and polished, it winked back at her as she selected one very small pot and one very large and heavy one.

Returning to the landing, she stood for a moment looking directly down. The matting that had originally covered the hall floor had been taken up in pieces and sent to the forensic laboratory for examination. The tiles, which it was now Mrs. Burches’s job to polish, gleamed in the afternoon sun.

Unrolling the cord, she fastened the small pot to it and lowered it until it tinkled against the tiles. Then she tied the end to the banister and walked down. She had the photograph with her. There was no doubt about it. The little pot was resting exactly where the cross had been chalked on the matting.

Upstairs once more, she pulled up the small pot, untied it, and put it and the cord back where they had come from. Then she went down again, poked her head into the kitchen, and said, “Sorry to interrupt, but I’ve got a little job for this young man. Won’t be a moment.”

When they had left the room, Mrs. Burches said that it didn’t seem right to her, a man being ordered about by a girl. Her daughter said she could see nothing wrong in it. Girls did all sorts of jobs nowadays.

Back in the hall, Alice pointed to a cross which she had just made with a piece of brown chalk from Beatrice’s box. She said, “Have another look at this photograph. Isn’t that exactly where the cross is on the matting?”

“Pretty well,” said Boone.

“Then get a pillow — better, a bolster — from Nurse’s room and put it over the mark.”

When he had done this Alice, who had returned upstairs, called down to him, “Stand back, well back.” As she spoke, the heavy brass pot fell, with a heart-stopping thud, into the middle of the bolster.

“And that,” said Alice, “is the answer to both the objections raised by the Crown Prosecutors. No one saw anyone approaching the house, at the front or the back, for the simple reason that no one did approach it. And here’s your weapon so carefully cleaned that I’m afraid our forensic experts won’t find a speck of blood left on it.”

Boone looked at her with mingled admiration and sympathy. He said, “Are you really going to try this on the inspector? He’ll throw something at you, or burst a blood vessel.”

The inspector did neither. He heard her out, made some noncommittal comment, and refrained from laughing until he got home that evening. Then he gave full vent to his feelings.

“Just imagine,” he said, “instituting proceedings against those three old dears. It wouldn’t be laughed out of court, because it wouldn’t even get into court.”

“I don’t think it’s a laughing matter at all,” said his wife. “Can’t you see that that girl is simply trying to queer your pitch? I remember you told me that there was some arrangement in the division for cross-posting. The sooner that young lady’s posted away the better.”

“Well,” said Gertrude, as she filled the three teacups, “it was half a success. We got rid of Nurse Minter, but not, as we had every reason to anticipate, of Mr. Goldsworthy as well.”

“If the inspector had had any gumption,” said Beatrice, “he’d have charged him. Particularly when we presented him with the motive.”

They had all heard Boone coming into the kitchen and had raised their voices slightly for his benefit.

“Young Mack would have done it,” said Florence. “However, one blessing. From what her young man told Annie Burches, it seems that Detective Sergeant Smarty-pants Hart has been sacked.”

“Sacked?”

“Well, not exactly sacked. Shoved to another division. To concentrate on cases of child abuse.”

The three old ladies cackled at the thought. They none of them had any use for children.

“All the same,” said Gertrude, “I don’t like leaving a job half done. We shall have to move carefully, but in a month or two, when the dust has settled, I wondered whether we might try something with — poison.”

“Arsenic? Belladonna?”

“Atropine? Nicotine?”

“Strychnine,” said Gertrude decisively. “Naturally we can’t buy it ourselves, but if we complained of infestation by rats in the kitchen, Mr. Goldsworthy would have to buy it himself.”

“And sign the poison book,” said Florence.

“We could get hold of a dead rat,” said Beatrice. “From my great-nephew. The one who’s a farmer.”

“Excellent,” said Beatrice.

The thought of a dead rat seemed to entrance the three witches.

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.