Free Buffet for Unwelcome Guests by Christianna Brand Page A

handed it to him; he shuffled it on and thrust the middle finger of his right hand down the gagging throat. ‘Nothing there,’ he said, straightening up, standing looking down, absently wiping his fingers on the table-napkin, rolling off the finger-stall—all again with that odd effect of sniffing the air; galvanising into action once more, however, to fall on his knees beside the body. With the heel of his left hand he began a quick, sharp pumping at the sternum, with his right he gestured towards the medical bag. ‘The hypodermic. Adrenalin ampoules in the left pocket.’ Bill fumbled, unaccustomed, and he lifted his head for a moment and said, sharply: ‘For heaven’s sake—Elizabeth?’ She jumped, startled. ‘Yes? Yes?’ she said, staccato; and seemed to come suddenly to her senses. ‘Yes, of course I’ll do it.’ She dropped to her knees beside the bag, found the ampoules, filled the syringe. ‘Keep it ready,’ he said. ‘Somebody cut away the sleeve.’ He took both hands to the massage of the heart. ‘While I do this—can someone give him the kiss of life?’
    It was a long time since anyone, his affianced not excluded, had willingly given Mr. Caxton a kiss of any kind and it could not now be said that volunteers came eagerly forward. The doctor said again, ‘Elizabeth?’ but this time on a note of doubt. She looked down, faltering at the gaping mouth, dreadfully dribbling. ‘Must I?’
    ‘You’re a nurse,’ said Dr. Ross. ‘And he’s dying.’
    ‘Yes. Yes, of course I must.’ She brought out a small handkerchief, scrubbed at her own mouth as though somehow irrationally to cleanse it before a task so horrible; moved to crouch where she would not interfere with the massage of the heart. ‘Now?’
    Mercifully, Cyrus Caxton himself provided the answer—suddenly and unmistakably giving up the ghost. He heaved up into a last great, lunging spasm, screamed briefly and rolled up his eyes. She sat back on her heels, the handkerchief balled against her mouth, gaping. Dr. Ross abandoned the heart massage, thrust her aside, himself began a mouth-to-mouth breathing. But even he soon admitted defeat. ‘It’s no use,’ he said, straightening up, his hands to his aching back. ‘He’s gone.’
    Gone: and not one, perhaps, in all that big ugly ornate room but felt a sort of lightening of relief, a sort of little lifting of the heart because with the going of Cyrus Caxton so much of ugliness, crudity, cruelty also had gone. Not one, at any rate, even to pretend to grief. Only the widowed bride, still kneeling by the heavy body, lifted her head and looked across with a terrible question into the doctor’s eyes; and leapt to her feet and darted out into the hall. She came back and stood in the doorway. ‘The tin of cyanide,’ she said. ‘It’s gone.’
    Dr. Ross picked up the dropped table-napkin and quietly, unobtrusively yet very deliberately, laid it over the half eaten peach.
    Inspector Cockrill’s underlings dealt with the friends and relations, despatching them to their deep chagrin about their respective businesses, relieved of any further glorious chance of notoriety. The tin had been discovered without much difficulty, hidden in a vase of pampas grass which stood in the centre of the hall table: its lid off and a small quantity of the paste missing, scooped out, apparently, with something so smooth as to show no peculiarities of marking, at any rate to the naked eye. It had been on the table since some time on the day before the wedding. Cockie himself had seen it there, just before the lunch.
    He thought it all over, deeply and quietly—for it had been a plot deeply and quietly laid. ‘I’ll see those four for myself,’ he said to his sergeant. ‘Mrs. Caxton, of course, the son and the step-son and the doctor.’ These were the principals and one might as well tease them a little and see what emerged; but for the rest of course—he knew 1 : the how and the when and the why, and