Key to the Pantry (A Jules Poiret Mystery Book 2) by Frank Howell Evans

Author:Frank Howell Evans
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2015-06-29T22:00:00+00:00

The police sergeant was a wise, older gentleman. He was a friend of Dr. Inverdale’s and knew, like most locals, how Miss Crawford had come into the possession of the goods she now reported stolen by her niece. He sat on the case and did not move.

Miss Crawford, however, remembered a story in one of the magazines she had leafed through about a French detective, lately of London, who had brought many criminals to account for their crimes.

“Non! Pas du tout!” cried my friend Jules Poiret. “Are they trying to mock Poiret? He is the world famous detective! The stolen tablecloths? The forks and the knives? C’est incroyable!”

We were in his flat in Fitzrovia. He was sitting behind his desk, counting bird seeds one by one. As he did every day at this hour the little man was about to feed his canaries George and Catherine.

I had just returned from an unfruitful journey to Maracaibo in Venezuela and found myself rather short of ready money. I asked him to allow me to travel to Yorkshire and look into the case.

Poiret glanced at me for a moment. “Ah! Always the same old Haven,” he said, smiling. “You know what your fault it is, Haven? You do not know what it is important and what it is not, so you go hunting in circles after the rabbits. But if you must, go!”

I arrived in Driffield the next day, a rather somber day. It was raining.

“I say, my man, where do I find Miss Crawford’s house?” I asked.

The stationmaster, a stocky old fellow, replied rather brusquely, “Miss Crawford is not at her house. She’s at the morgue! She died last night.”

“But what happened?” I asked, stunned.

“Why ask me?” he replied. “Ask the police!” And he stomped away, pleased, I imagine, at his imitation of the proverbial salty Yorkshireman.

I did as he suggested and talked to the old police sergeant. He told me that Dr. Inverdale was examining the corpse at his surgery.

“I’m afraid not enough villagers die,” he said, “to justify a morgue. But the doctor knew her well. She had a bad heart, you see? Like her mother she was destined to die young. She was taking a strychnine preparation for her illness.”

I found the doctor in his office writing his autopsy report. Either because of his cheerful nature or because of the fact that he was to marry in two weeks, he allowed me to read the report without any hesitation.

Among many other facts I was able to inform Poiret, when I rang him up, that:

1- There were no signs of violence done to her body. Therefore she did not die as a result of a knife, a pistol or a blunt instrument, like a poker.

2- Her body showed no signs of strangulation.

3- Only three persons were at the house at the time of her death; the cook, the maid, the driver. Her niece was in Southampton, where she had been for the past two weeks.

4- The doctor had seen Miss

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