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  A Pocket Full of Rye

  ( Miss Marple - 7 )

  Agatha Christie

  A Pocket Full of Rye

  by Agatha Christie

  Chapter 1

  It was Miss Somers's turn to make the tea. Miss Somers was the newest and the most inefficient of the typists. She was no longer young and had a mild worried face like a sheep. The kettle was not quite boiling when Miss Somers poured the water on to the tea, but poor Miss Somers was never quite sure when a kettle was boiling. It was one of the many worries that afflicted her in life.

  She poured out the tea and took the cups round with a couple of limp, sweet biscuits in each saucer.

  Miss Griffith, the efficient head typist, a grey-haired martinet who had been with Consolidated Investments Trust for sixteen years, said sharply: "Water not boiling again, Somers!" and Miss Somers's worried meek face went pink and she said, "Oh dear, I did think it was boiling this time."

  Miss Griffith thought to herself. "She'll last for another month, perhaps, just while we're so busy… But really! The mess the silly idiot made of that letter to Eastern Developments – a perfectly straightforward job, and always so stupid over the tea. If it weren't so difficult to get hold of any intelligent typists – and the biscuit tin lid wasn't shut tightly last time, either. Really –"

  Like so many of Miss Griffith's indignant inner communings the sentence went unfinished.

  At that moment Miss Grosvenor sailed in to make Mr Fortescue's sacred tea. Mr Fortescue had different tea, and different china and special biscuits. Only the kettle and the water from the cloakroom tap were the same. But on this occasion, being Mr Fortescue's tea, the water boiled. Miss Grosvenor saw to that.

  Miss Grosvenor was an incredibly glamorous blonde. She wore an expensively cut little black suit and her shapely legs were encased in the very best and most expensive blackmarket nylons.

  She sailed back through the typists' room without deigning to give anyone a word or a glance. The typists might have been so many blackbeetles. Miss Grosvenor was Mr Fortescue's own special personal secretary; unkind rumour always hinted that she was something more, but actually this was not true. Mr Fortescue had recently married a second wife, both glamorous and expensive, and fully capable of absorbing all his attention. Miss Grosvenor was to Mr Fortescue just a necessary part of the office decor – which was all very luxurious and very expensive.

  Miss Grosvenor sailed back with the tray held out in front other like a ritual offering. Through the inner office and through the waiting-room, where the more important clients were allowed to sit, and through her own ante-room, and finally with a light tap on the door she entered the holy of holies, Mr Fortescue's office.

  It was a large room with a gleaming expanse of parquet floor on which were dotted expensive oriental rugs. It was delicately panelled in pale wood and there were some enormous stuffed chairs upholstered in pale buff leather. Behind a colossal sycamore desk, the centre and focus of the room, sat Mr Fortescue himself.

  Mr Fortescue was less impressive than he should have been to match the room, but he did his best. He was a large flabby man with a gleaming bald head. It was his affectation to wear loosely cut country tweeds in his city office. He was frowning down at some papers on his desk when Miss Grosvenor glided up to him in her swanlike manner. Placing the tray on the desk at his elbow, she murmured in a low impersonal voice, "Your tea, Mr Fortescue," and withdrew.

  Mr Fortescue's contribution to the ritual was a grunt.

  Seated at her own desk again Miss Grosvenor proceeded with the business in hand. She made two telephone calls, corrected some letters that were lying there typed ready for Mr Fortescue to sign and took one incoming call.

  "Ay'm afraid it's impossible just now," she said in haughty accents. "Mr Fortescue is in conference."

  As she laid down the receiver she glanced at the clock. It was ten minutes past eleven.

  It was just then that an unusual sound penetrated through the almost soundproof door of Mr Fortescue's office. Muffled, it was yet fully recognisable, a strangled agonised cry. At the same moment the buzzer on Miss Grosvenor's desk sounded in a longdrawn frenzied summons. Miss Grosvenor, startled for a moment into complete immobility, rose uncertainly to her feet. Confronted by the unexpected, her poise was shaken. However, she moved towards Mr Fortescue's door in her usual statuesque fashion, tapped and entered.

  What she saw upset her poise still further. Her employer behind his desk seemed contorted with agony. His convulsive movements were alarming to watch.

  Miss Grosvenor said, "Oh dear, Mr Fortescue, are you ill?" and was immediately conscious of the idiocy of the question. There was no doubt but that Mr Fortescue was very seriously ill. Even as she came up to him, his body was convulsed in a painful spasmodic movement.

  Words came out in jerky gasps.

  "Tea – what the hell – you put in the tea – get help – quick get a doctor –"

  Miss Grosvenor fled from the room. She was no longer the supercilious blonde secretary – she was a thoroughly frightened woman who had lost her head.

  She came running into the typists' office crying out:

  "Mr Fortescue's having a fit – he's dying – we must get a doctor – he looks awful – I'm sure he's dying."

  Reactions were immediate and varied a good deal.

  Miss Bell, the youngest typist, said, "If it's epilepsy we ought to put a cork in his mouth. Who's got a cork?"

  Nobody had a cork.

  Miss Somers said, "At his age it's probably apoplexy."

  Miss Griffith said, "We must get a doctor at once."

  But she was hampered in her usual efficiency because in all her sixteen years of service it had never been necessary to call a doctor to the city office. There was her own doctor but that was at Streatham Hill. Where was there a doctor near here?

  Nobody knew. Miss Bell seized a telephone directory and began looking up Doctors under D. But it was not a classified directory and doctors were not automatically listed like taxi ranks. Someone suggested a hospital– but which hospital? "It has to be the right hospital," Miss Somers insisted, "or else they won't come. Because of the National Health, I mean. It's got to be in the area."

  Someone suggested 999 but Miss Griffith was shocked at that and said it would mean the police and that would never do. For citizens of a country which enjoyed the benefits of Medical Service for all, a group of quite reasonably intelligent women showed incredible ignorance of correct procedure. Miss Bell started looking up Ambulances under A. Miss Griffith said, "There's his own doctor – he must have a doctor." Someone rushed for the private address book. Miss Griffith instructed the office boy to go out and find a doctor – somehow, anywhere. In the private address book. Miss Griffith found Sir Edwin Sandeman with an address in Harley Street . Miss Grosvenor, collapsed in a chair, wailed in a voice whose accent was noticeably less Mayfair than usual, "I made the tea just as usual – reely I did – there couldn't have been anything wrong in it."

  "Wrong in it?" Miss Griffith paused, her hand on the dial of the telephone. "Why do you say that?"

  "He said it – Mr Fortescue – he said it was the tea –"

  Miss Griffith's hand hovered irresolutely between Welbeck and 999. Miss Bell, young and hopeful, said: "We ought to give him some mustard and water – now. Isn't there any mustard in the office?"

  There was no mustard in the office.

  Some short while later Dr Isaacs of Bethnal Green, and Sir Edwin Sandeman met in the elevator just as two different ambulances drew up in front of the building. The telephone and the office boy had done their work.

  Chapter 2

  Inspector Neele sat in Mr Fortescue's sanctum behind Mr Fortescue's va
st sycamore desk. One of his underlings with a notebook sat unobtrusively against the wall near the door.

  Inspector Neele had a smart soldierly appearance with crisp brown hair growing back from a rather low forehead. When he uttered the phrase "just a matter of routine" those addressed were wont to think spitefully: "And routine is about all you're capable of!" They would have been quite wrong. Behind his unimaginative appearance. Inspector Neele was a highly imaginative thinker, and one of his methods of investigation was to propound to himself fantastic theories of guilt which he applied to such persons as he was interrogating at the time.

  Miss Griffith, whom he had at once picked out with an unerring eye as being the most suitable person to give him a succinct account of the events which had led to his being seated where he was, had just left the room having given him an admirable resume of the morning's happenings. Inspector Neele propounded to himself three separate highly coloured reasons why the faithful doyenne of the typists' room should have poisoned her employer's mid-morning cup of tea, and rejected them as unlikely.

  He classified Miss Griffith as (a) Not the type of a poisoner, (b) Not in love with her employer, (c) No pronounced mental instability, (d) Not a woman who cherished grudges. That really seemed to dispose of Miss Griffith except as a source of accurate information.

  Inspector Neele glanced at the telephone. He was expecting a call from St Jude's Hospital at any moment now.

  It was possible, of course, that Mr Fortescue's sudden illness was due to natural causes, but Dr Isaacs of Bethnal Green had not thought so and Sir Edwin Sandeman of Harley Street had not thought so.

  Inspector Neele pressed a buzzer conveniently situated at his left hand and demanded that Mr Fortescue's personal secretary should be sent in to him.

  Miss Grosvenor had recovered a little of her poise, but not much. She came in apprehensively, with nothing of the swanlike glide about her motions, and said at once defensively:

  "I didn't do it!"

  Inspector Neele murmured conversationally: "No?"

  He indicated the chair where Miss Grosvenor was wont to place herself, pad in hand, when summoned to take down Mr Fortescue's letters. She sat down now with reluctance and eyed Inspector Neele in alarm. Inspector Neele, his mind playing imaginatively on the themes Seduction? Blackmail? Platinum Blonde in Court? etc., looked reassuring and just a little stupid.

  "There wasn't anything wrong with the tea," said Miss Grosvenor. "There couldn't have been."

  "I see," said Inspector Neele. "Your name and address, please?"

  "Grosvenor. Irene Grosvenor."

  "How do you spell it?"

  "Oh. Like the Square."

  "And your address?"

  " 14 Rushmoor Road , Muswell Hill."

  Inspector Neele nodded in a satisfied fashion.

  "No seduction," he said to himself. "No Love Nest. Respectable home with parents. No blackmail."

  Another good set of speculative theories washed out.

  "And so it was you who made the tea?" he said pleasantly.

  "Well, I had to. I always do, I mean."

  Unhurried, Inspector Neele took her closely through the morning ritual of Mr Fortescue's tea. The cup and saucer and teapot had already been packed up and dispatched to the appropriate quarter for analysis. Now Inspector Neele learned that Irene Grosvenor and only Irene Grosvenor had handled that cup and saucer and teapot. The kettle had been used for making the office tea and had been refilled from the cloakroom tap by Miss Grosvenor.

  "And the tea itself?"

  "It was Mr Fortescue's own tea, special China tea. It's kept on the shelf in my room next door."

  Inspector Neele nodded. He inquired about sugar and heard that Mr Fortescue didn't take sugar.

  The telephone rang. Inspector Neele picked up the receiver. His face changed a little.

  "St Jude's?"

  He nodded to Miss Grosvenor in dismissal.

  "That's all for now, thank you, Miss Grosvenor."

  Miss Grosvenor sped out of the room hurriedly.

  Inspector Neele listened carefully to the thin unemotional tones speaking from St Jude's Hospital. As the voice spoke he made a few cryptic signs with a pencil on the corner of the blotter in front of him.

  "Died five minutes ago, you say?" he asked. His eye went to the watch on his wrist. Twelve forty-three, he wrote on the blotter.

  The unemotional voice said that Doctor Bernsdorff himself would like to speak to Inspector Neele.

  Inspector Neele said, "Right. Put him through," which rather scandalised the owner of the voice who had allowed a certain amount of reverence to seep into the official accents.

  There were then various clicks, buzzes, and far-off ghostly murmurs. Inspector Neele sat patiently waiting.

  Then without warning a deep bass roar caused him to shift the receiver an inch or two away from his ear.

  "Hallo, Neele, you old vulture. At it again with your corpses?"

  Inspector Neele and Professor Bernsdorff of St Jude's had been brought together over a case of poisoning just over a year ago and had remained on friendly terms.

  "Our man's dead, I hear, doc."

  "Yes. We couldn't do anything by the time he got here."

  "And the cause of death?"

  "There will have to be an autopsy, naturally. Very interesting case. Very interesting indeed. Glad I was able to be in on it."

  The professional gusto in Bernsdorff's rich tones told Inspector Neele one thing at least.

  "I gather you don't think it was natural death," he said dryly.

  "Not a dog's chance of it," said Dr Bernsdorff robustly. "I'm speaking unofficially, of course," he added with belated caution.

  "Of course. Of course. That's understood. He was poisoned?"

  "Definitely. And what's more – this is quite unofficial you understand – just between you and me – I'd be prepared to make a bet on what the poison was."

  "In-deed?"

  "Taxine, my boy. Taxine."

  "Taxine? Never heard of it."

  "I know. Most unusual. Really delightfully unusual! I don't say I'd have spotted it myself if I hadn't had a case only three or four weeks ago. Couple of kids playing dolls' teaparties – pulled berries off a yew tree and used them for tea."

  "Is that what it is? Yew berries?"

  "Berries or leaves. Highly poisonous. Taxine, of course, is the alkaloid. Don't think I've heard of a case where it was used deliberately. Really most interesting and unusual… You've no idea, Neele, how tired one gets of the inevitable weed-killer. Taxine is a real treat. Of course, I may be wrong – don't quote me, for Heaven's sake – but I don't think so. Interesting for you, too, I should think. Varies the routine!"

  "A good time is to be had by all, is that the idea? With the exception of the victim."

  "Yes, yes, poor fellow." Dr Bernsdorff's tone was perfunctory. "Very bad luck on him."

  "Did he say anything before he died?"

  "Well, one of your fellows was sitting by him with a notebook. He'll have the exact details. He muttered something once about tea – that he'd been given something in his tea at the office – but that's nonsense, of course."

  "Why is it nonsense?" Inspector Neele, who had been reviewing speculatively the picture of the glamorous Miss Grosvenor adding yew berries to a brew of tea, and finding it incongruous, spoke sharply.

  "Because the stuff couldn't possibly have worked so soon. I understand the symptoms came on immediately he had drunk the tea?"

  "That's what they say."

  "Well, there are very few poisons that act as quickly as that apart from the cyanides, of course – and possibly pure nicotine –"

  "And it definitely wasn't cyanide or nicotine?"

  "My dear fellow. He'd have been dead before the ambulance arrived. Oh no, there's no question of anything of that kind. I did suspect strychnine, but the convulsions were not at all typical. Still unofficial, of course, but I'll stake my reputation it's taxine."

  "How long w
ould that take to work?"

  "Depends. An hour. Two hours, three hours. Deceased looked like a hearty eater. If he had a big breakfast, that would slow things up."

  "Breakfast," said Inspector Neele thoughtfully. "Yes, it looks like breakfast."

  "Breakfast with the Borgias." Dr Bernsdorff laughed cheerfully. "Well, good hunting, my lad."

  "Thanks, doctor. I'd like to speak to my sergeant before you ring off."

  Again there were clicks and buzzes and far-off ghostly voices. And then the sound of heavy breathing came through, an inevitable prelude to Sergeant Hay's conversation.

  "Sir," he said urgently. "Sir."

  "Neele here. Did the deceased say anything I ought to know?"

  "Said it was in the tea. The tea he had at the office. But the M.O. says not…"

  "Yes, I know about that. Nothing else?"

  "No, sir. But there's one thing that's odd. The suit he was wearing – I checked the contents of the pockets. The usual stuff – handkerchief, keys, change wallet – but there was one thing that's downright peculiar. The right-hand pocket of his jacket. It had cereal in it."

  "Cereal?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "What do you mean by cereal? Do you mean a breakfast food? Farmer's Glory or Wheatifax? Or do you mean corn or barley –"

  "That's right, sir. Grain it was. Looked like rye to me. Quite a lot of it."

  "I see… Odd… But it might have been a sample – something to do with a business deal."

  "Quite so, sir – but I thought I'd better mention it."

  "Quite right, Hay."

  Inspector Neele sat staring ahead of him for a few moments after he had replaced the telephone receiver. His orderly mind was moving from Phase I to Phase II of the inquiry – from suspicion of poisoning to certainty of poisoning. Professor Bernsdorff's words may have been unofficial, but Professor Bernsdorff was not a man to be mistaken in his beliefs. Rex Fortescue had been poisoned and the poison had probably been administered one to three hours before the onset of the first symptoms. It seemed probable, therefore, that the office staff could be given a clean bill of health.