Chapter 21 #2
“No, sorry, of course you weren’t. But Wanda reacted exactly the same way when Welford drowned. Again she was convinced it must be Mr. Gotobed who had fallen in. Yes, I’m sure she was in on the planning.”
“You betcha!” Arbuckle agreed with fervour. “Heck, I always knew she was bad news; I just didn’t know how bad.”
“The rest is pure conjecture. Presumably she realized Pertwee and Welford’s bungling was responsible for their deaths, yet she may have held Mr. Gotobed partly to blame because his luck had thwarted them.
So again, revenge may have entered into the matter.
In any case, there was still a fortune at stake. ”
“If she wasn’t really frightfully keen on her brother and her husband,” Brenda proposed, “maybe she was glad she wouldn’t have to share the filthy lucre.”
“Possibly. Whatever her reasons, she appears to have decided to proceed with the plan. The means she had to hand. The drops she used to make her eyes look larger and more lustrous are deadly when ingested.”
“In-whatted?” Phillip asked in puzzlement. Daisy wondered just what he thought one could do with eye-drops besides put them in one’s eyes. She also silently wondered why Wanda had asked to see Miss Oliphant again. Had she hoped the witch might be blamed for Gotobed’s death?
“Swallowed,” Alec explained to Phillip. “A very small amount can be fatal if treatment is delayed, which is quite likely as symptoms don’t appear for several hours. However, Wanda used most of the remaining contents of her vial, which, according to her maid, was nearly full.”
“She wanted to make absolutely sure,” said Daisy, “but how did she come to take it, darling, instead of Mr. Gotobed?”
“I’m getting to that,” Alec said patiently. “Let’s consider why she chose yesterday’s lunch as the time to act.”
“Something to do with the Garibaldi sinking?” hazarded Brenda.
“Sure, baby,” said Riddman. “I guess Mr. Gotobed would’ve told her he was gonna take in some Eyeties.”
“I did.”
“Them being there’d put the kibosh on the whole deal.”
“And with the chaos attendant upon the rescue,” Miss Oliphant added, “the chances of help being delayed until it was too late were vastly increased.”
“Besides which,” said Daisy, who had worked out another factor yesterday, when Alec told her he had to see the steward again, “lots more passengers than usual were lunching in their cabins, so the steward serving lunch would be run off his feet and less likely to notice anything amiss.” She was beginning to think Alec was very clever to let everyone have their say.
This way, they all had a stake in his theories and were more likely to ingest them wholesale.
“All good reasons,” Alec resumed, “whether Wanda came up with one or all of them. Mr. Gotobed, would you mind telling us exactly what you ordered for lunch?”
“We both had the same, except for afters. First French onion soup, then sole with lemon-butter sauce, then tournedos Chasseur with new potatoes and peas.”
“Exactly the same, sir?”
“The only difference up to that point was that I asked for plenty of sauce with the fish and beef, whereas Wanda wanted only a little.
I expect you all know she watched her figure.
The steward kindly brought a sauce-boat with extra for each course, and I took some of the lemon-butter, but as it happened
the kitchens had poured as much as I cared for over the tournedos on my plate. Then I had a very nice Gruyère with water biscuits and Wanda had fruit compote, with cream, slimming notwithstanding.”
“And you drank?”
“I had a pint of bitter. She had seltzer water.”
“Hang on,” said Phillip. “There’s lots of things she could have put the stuff in, but wouldn’t it taste beastly?”
“Belladonna berries,” Miss Oliphant informed the company, “from which the eye-drops are prepared, taste sweet. Is it certain that she died of belladonna poisoning?”
“As certain as we can be without an autopsy. Dr. Amboyne agrees with you that the observed symptoms are entirely consistent, and there is a good deal of the substance unaccounted for.”
“But I do not comprehend, Mr. Fletcher, how Mrs … Welford could have introduced the poison into Mr. Gotobed’s food or drink without his noticing.”
“I would have liked to have the steward here to speak for himself. However, with all our extra passengers, the crew are still—as Daisy put it—run off their feet, so I’ll give you the salient points.
Everything was perfectly normal until at one point when Bailey went in, both the lady and the gentleman were in the bedroom.
Mr. Gotobed told me that Wanda had asked him to fetch her a handkerchief.
He was unable to find it, so she went to look, too. ”
“The steward would go in to take away dirty plates or to serve the next course,” said Daisy.
“He wouldn’t have time to keep popping in to ask if everything was satisfactory.
So there was no food on the table when Wanda was alone there.
She must have put the poison in the beer. But why did she then drink it?”
“Your logic is impeccable, love. Mr. Gotobed and Wanda were both at table when the steward took in two covered
plates of tournedos, a gravy-boat with extra sauce, a dish of potatoes and one of carrots.”
“Peas,” Gloria corrected him. “Mr. Gotobed said he ordered peas.”
“He did. He would have accepted the carrots, but Wanda insisted on peas. The steward went off to fetch them.”
“Which was when Wanda asked me to fetch her handkerchief.”
“And then poured the eye-drops into the gravy-boat, I bet,” guessed Daisy. “Liquid, highly flavoured, and intended for Mr. Gotobed. But that still leaves the question of why did she take some?”
“We’re nearly there. The dastardly deed done, she joined Mr. Gotobed in the bedroom.
The steward returned with the peas. He couldn’t wait for them to come in, so he took the covers off the plates and served portions of vegetables and potatoes.
He noticed that, as requested, the kitchens had poured plenty of sauce over one serving of beef, which he set at Mr. Gotobed’s place.
The other plate, however, which should have had a small amount of sauce, as requested by Wanda, had none at all.
Deciding it looked dry and unappetizing, he ladled some sauce from the boat over the meat.
” His lips quirking at the collective gasp.
Alec finished the story: “Then, as Wanda and Mr. Gotobed had not returned, he replaced the covers and left.”
“You know how deep the plates are,” said Gotobed, “to stop the food sliding off in high seas. There was plenty of gravy on mine. I didn’t take any extra, though Wanda reminded me twice that I’d ordered it. She ate everything on her plate.”
Daisy sighed. “If she hadn’t kicked up a dust and insisted on peas, the steward wouldn’t have come back. In effect, she died because she wouldn’t eat her carrots. My old nanny wouldn’t have been a bit surprised.”