Free Latter End by Patricia Wentworth Page A

coffee at all—that the Turkish coffee was prepared by the cook in the kitchen, a drop of vanilla added, and the cup placed together with a sugar-basin and a miniature decanter of cognac upon a salver in the pantry where every member of the household could have had access to it, she shook her head slowly and said,
    “A very confusing incident. When was the next attack?”
    “On the following day, after lunch.”
    “Was it more severe, or less?”
    “About the same.”
    “Did you witness the attack?”
    “Yes, I did. She was very sick, poor girl.”
    Miss Silver was knitting rapidly.
    “But she was all right a little while afterwards? There were no ill effects?”
    “No, thank God.”
    “Now, Mr. Latter—what did your wife eat at lunch that the rest of the party did not?”
    Jimmy rumpled his hair again.
    “That’s what’s so puzzling—she didn’t have anything.”
    “No coffee?”
    “No.”
    “Nothing to drink?”
    “She doesn’t drink at meals. Slimming, you know—but she’s got a lovely figure—she doesn’t need to.”
    The ribbing on Derek’s stocking was more than an inch deep. The needles twinkled briskly.
    “Mr. Latter, will you tell me just what you had to eat?”
    Jimmy rubbed his nose.
    “Well now, let me see if I can remember. I ought to be able to, because I went over it with Minnie to see if there was anything which would account for Lois being upset, but there wasn’t. There was cold lamb and salad—lettuce, beetroot and tomato, and potatoes in their jackets. Then there was a cheese savoury, but Lois didn’t have any of that—and custard-glasses of fruit salad in syrup. She had one of those and so did I, and so did Ellie, and Antony, and Julia.”
    “They were separate custard-glasses?”
    “Yes.”
    “Who served them?”
    “Lois had them in front of her. She took one, and helped the others.”
    “She helped herself?”
    “Oh, yes, definitely.”
    “Was there any reason why she should have taken one glass rather than another?”
    He dropped the keys again. This time he let them lie.
    “Yes, there was,” he said. “There was only one without cream. I never thought about that—she doesn’t take cream.”
    Miss Silver stopped knitting for a moment. She looked at him gravely.
    “Who would have access to these glasses of fruit after the cook had prepared them?”
    He plunged into explanations.
    “Antony—my cousin Antony Latter—he collected the meat-plates and took them out. We haven’t a proper staff at present, so we wait on ourselves… Julia and Ellie, my stepsisters—Mrs. Street—and Miss Vane—they were in and out… And so was Minnie. I didn’t want her to do anything, because there were plenty without her, but she would go. I think Julia brought in the savoury, and Minnie the custard-glasses. She will always be doing something—she’s so unselfish.”
    Miss Silver laid her knitting down on the arm of her chair and rose to her feet.
    “I think, Mr. Latter, that you had better give me the particulars of your household before we go any farther. I find there is a tendency to confusion.”
    As he picked up his keys and followed her to the writing-table he had a guilty conviction that the confusion could be nobody’s fault but his own. If he had not had a stepmother who had remarried, it would all be so much easier to explain, but still there would have been Minnie who was no relation at all—
    At this point he became hopelessly fogged, because it occurred to him that if it hadn’t been for Marcia and her twins, Minnie never would have been imported into his household. He found himself quite unable to think of the last twenty-five years without her, and quite bewildered at the prospect of having to face a future in which she had no part. He watched gloomily whilst Miss Silver took out a bright red copybook, wrote a heading, and waited, pencil poised, for the particulars she desired.
    It cannot be said that the manner in which he produced them was calculated