Mystery at the Rectory (Musaicum Vintage Mysteries). Dorothy Fielding

and I will come down to the hall now and see the housemaid, and cook, and so on, and ask questions about that tray. Remember, Fraser, that indigestion often leads to heart attacks.

      "Care to come with us?" Weir-Opie asked Pointer. The latter said that he would prefer to stay where he was, and look about him. "Much obliged if you will," said the Major, "for I don't like to leave the body—though as things are, I'm sorry I bothered you to come. Distressing sight, and nothing to be done. By the way, before we have our talk to the servants, I'll show you where that toadstool-stuff was brewed."

      The Major and Shilling opened a door opposite to the one by which they had entered the study. It led into what had evidently once been a small fernery. But it now held a fitted basin, and a small kitchen table on which stood a gas-ring, the gas turned down to the merest sparks. On it was a covered red-enamelled saucepan, half full of what looked like brown rags which gave out an acrid smell even though the ventilators in the roof were wide open. A funnel stood beside the saucepan, and four bottles which had once held some sort of sauce, but on each of which a label had been pasted showing a skull and cross-bones and the word POISON in capitals. Around the neck of each a small bell, such as is used for kittens, was fastened with a wire. Even in the dark the bottles could not be mistaken for anything else. There was further a small trowel, and garden fork, and a basket half filled with repulsive toadstools beside which lay a thick pair of gardening gloves. A door—locked—led down into the garden by a couple of steps.

      "And the rector always locked the one into his study when he was out of the house, I know, for he told me so," Shilling added. "Very careful always he was."

      "And Ireton and he were the only persons to have a key to this garden door." Major Weir-Opie looked with a shudder at the toadstool basket. "That was so that Ireton could come in for fresh material any time."

      The Major wheeled as the door of the study opened. It was the doctor. He came across to them.

      "Those toadstools weren't worth the rector. Not by a million miles. Nothing was worth losing him. You'll let the Coroner know, of course. I've given the girl a sedative," and with that the doctor hurried away—before Grace and Mrs. Richard Avery would have to be told of the tragedy.

      The Chief Constable and Shilling left the room for the servants' quarters.

      Pointer went back to the study. Standing in front of the closed door into the lounge, he studied the room. Going round the walls, clockwise, there was first a table with books on it, then the couch on which the dead man lay. At his foot was the fireplace with a wide marble mantelshelf on which stood a clock in the middle, and a bunch of honesty in a white alabaster jar at the end nearest to the couch. Then the wall continued with the door into the library. Then, facing Pointer, was the east wall with a big window in it and, where another window to match would be expected, was the door into the little glass-roofed fernery where now stood the apparatus for the toadstool broth. Then came the south wall with two big windows in it, one of which was beside the front doorsteps, and then the wall with the door where Pointer was standing. Besides many easy-chairs, there was a table by the east window, on which stood the tray brought in by the butler. Apparently it was a table used for books and oddments. Between the two south windows stood a kneehole writing-table, like one in the library itself. It was tidy and seemed to be used for occasional writing, Pointer fancied. There were several bookshelves and a few more occasional tables. It was a cheery room, with its light cream walls, parquet floor and green covers and hangings. The library beyond was very like it, except that Mr. Avery had completely covered its door into the lounge with fitted bookshelves. So that there was only the one door into, or out of, the two rooms. On its writing-table lay the small Bible which the rector had taken into the pulpit yesterday morning. But neither in it, nor beside it, was the folded half-sheet of paper which had so disturbed him.