Free Sparkling Cyanide by Agatha Christie Page B

in life. Surely once the infatuation began to wane he would realise that fact?
    Never for one minute did Sandra consider leaving him. The idea never even came to her. She was his, body and soul, to take or discard. He was her life, her existence. Love burned in her with a medieval force.
    There was a moment when she had hope.
    They went down to Fairhaven. Stephen seemed more his normal self. She felt suddenly a renewal of the old sympathy between them. Hope rose in her heart. He wanted her still, he enjoyed her company, he relied on her judgment. For the moment, he had escaped from the clutches of that woman.
    He looked happier, more like his own self. Nothing was irretrievably ruined. He was getting over it. If only he could make up his mind to break with her...
    Then they went back to London and Stephen relapsed. He looked haggard, worried, ill. He began to be unable to fix his mind on his work.
    She thought she knew the cause. Rosemary wanted him to go away with her... He was making up his mind to take the step - to break with everything he cared about most. Folly! Madness! He was the type of man with whom his work would always come first - a very English type. He must know that himself, deep down - Yes, but Rosemary was very lovely - and very stupid. Stephen would not be the first man who had thrown away his career for a woman and been sorry afterwards!
    Sandra caught a few words - a phrase one day at a cocktail party.
    “... telling George - got to make up our minds.”
    It was soon after that that Rosemary went down with 'flu.
    A little hope rose in Sandra's heart. Suppose she were to get pneumonia - people did after 'flu - a young friend of hers had died that way only last winter. If Rosemary died -
    She did not try to repress the thought - she was not horrified at herself. She was medieval enough to hate with a steady and untroubled mind.
    She hated Rosemary Barton. If thoughts could kill, she would have killed her. But thoughts do not kill -
    Thoughts are not enough...
    How beautiful Rosemary had looked that night at the Luxembourg with her pale fox furs slipping off her shoulders in the ladies' cloak-room. Thinner, paler since her illness - an air of delicacy made her beauty more ethereal. She had stood in front of the glass touching up her face...
    Sandra, behind her, looked at their joint reflection in the mirror. Her own face like something sculptured, cold lifeless. No feeling there, you would have said - a cold hard woman.
    And then Rosemary said: “Oh, Sandra, am I taking all the glass? I've finished now. This horrid 'flu has pulled me down a lot. I look a sight. And I feel weak and headachy.”
    Sandra had asked with quiet polite concern: “Have you got a headache tonight?”
    “Just a bit of one. You haven't got an aspirin, have you?”
    “I've got a Cachet Faivre.”
    She had opened her handbag, taken out the cachet. Rosemary had accepted it. “I'll take it in my bag in case.”
    That competent dark-haired girl, Barton's secretary, had watched the little transaction. She came in turn to the mirror, and just put on a slight dusting of powder. A nice-looking girl, almost handsome. Sandra had the impression that she didn't like Rosemary.
    Then they had gone out of the cloakroom, Sandra first, then Rosemary, then Miss Lessing - oh, and of course, the girl Iris, Rosemary's sister, she had been there. Very excited, with big grey eyes, and a schoolgirlish white dress.
    They had gone out and joined the men in the hall.
    And the head waiter had come bustling forward and showed them to their table. They had passed in under the great domed arch and there had been nothing, absolutely nothing, to warn one of them that she would never come out through that door again alive...

Sparkling Cyanide

Chapter 6
    GEORGE BARTON
    “Rosemary...”
    George Barton lowered his glass and stared rather owlishly into the fire. He had drunk just enough to feel maudlin with self-pity.
    What a lovely girl she had been. He'd always