Murder in the Mews (Hercule Poirot 18)

“I wish I had too. We’ll go another night, shall we?” They smiled at each other.

Valentine Chantry picked up the pink gin and drained it.

“Oo! I needed that,” she sighed.

Douglas Gold took Marjorie’s coat and laid it on a settee.

As he strolled back to the others he said sharply:

“Hallo, what’s the matter?”

Valentine Chantry was leaning back in her chair. Her lips were blue and her hand had gone to her heart.

“I feel—rather queer. . . .”

She gasped, fighting for breath.

Chantry came back into the room. He quickened his step.

“Hallo, Val, what’s the matter?”

“I—I don’t know . . . That drink—it tasted queer. . . .”

“The pink gin?”

Chantry swung round his face worked. He caught Douglas Gold by the shoulder.

“That was my drink . . . Gold, what the hell did you put in it?”

Douglas Gold was staring at the convulsed face of the woman in the chair. He had gone dead white.

“I—I—never—”

Valentine Chantry slipped down in her chair.

General Barnes cried out:

“Get a doctor—quick. . . .”

Five minutes later Valentine Chantry died. . . .

Six

There was no bathing the next morning.

Pamela Lyall, white-faced, clad in a simple dark dress, clutched at Hercule Poirot in the hall and drew him into the little writing room.

“It’s horrible!” she said. “Horrible! You said so! You foresaw it! Murder!”

He bent his head gravely.

“Oh!” she cried out. She stamped her foot on the floor. “You should have stopped it! Somehow! It could have been stopped!”

“How?” asked Hercule Poirot.

That brought her up short for the moment.

“Couldn’t you go to someone—to the police—?”