Io MISS MARPLE- Agatha Christie - short stories

trifle and bread and cheese. Unfortunately none of the lobster remained--it had all been eaten and the tin thrown away. He had interrogated the young maid, Gladys Linch. She was terribly upset, very tearful and agitated, and he found it hard to get her to keep to the point, but she declared again and again that the tin had not been distended in any way and that the lobster had appeared to her in a perfectly good condition. "Such were the facts we had to go upon. If Jones had feloniously administered arsenic to his wife, it seemed clear that it could not have been done in any of the things eaten at supper, as all three persons had partaken of the meal. Also--another point--Jones himself had returned from Birmingham just as supper was being brought in to table, so that he would have had no opportunity of doctoring any of the food beforehand." "What about the companion," asked Joyce--"the stout woman with the good-humoured face?" Sir Henry nodded. "We did not neglect Miss Clark, I can assure you. But it seemed doubtful what motive she could have had for the crime. Mrs. Jones left her no legacy of any kind and the net result of her employer's death was that she had to seek for another situation." "That seems to leave her out of it," said Joyce thoughtfully. "Now one of my inspectors soon discovered a significant fact," went on Sir Henry. "After supper on that evening Mr. Jones had gone down to the kitchen and had demanded a bowl of corn-flour for his wife, who had complained of not feeling well. He had waited in the kitchen until Gladys Linch prepared it, and then carried it up to his wife's room himself. That, I admit, seemed to clinch the case."