Thou Shell of Death by Nicholas Blake

Author:Nicholas Blake
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446476031
Publisher: Random House

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TOLD IN A —

NIGEL AND INSPECTOR Blount were sitting in the study. They had been going over some of the salient points of the case, but the conversation had somehow or other turned to cricket and they were now discussing the new lbw rule. Into this academic dispute the cries from overhead dropped like a bomb. They sprang to their feet and tore upstairs, Bolter, who had been on guard at the front door, hard on their heels. On the landing they met Lily Watkins. She was sobbing convulsively and could only point to the door of Knott-Sloman’s bedroom. Blount hurriedly ordered Bolter to keep everyone downstairs, and ran into the room. The first thing they noticed was a smell of bitter almonds on the air; the next was the disarray of the bed; the eiderdown and top blanket seemed to have been dragged right over to one side. Then they saw the body. It was lying on its back, one hand convulsively clutching the bedclothes. The jaws were set hard, and there was froth at the corners of the mouth. But it was chiefly the wide, unwinking, atrocious stare of those pale-blue eyes that had sent Lily Watkins screaming from the room. Cyril Knott-Sloman was dead, beyond question or remedy.

Blount gave him one swift glance, knelt to feel the heart, and snapped at Nigel: ‘Cyanide poisoning. We’re too late. Ring up a doctor.’ The local practitioner, as it happened, was out on a case, so Nigel got into touch with the police doctor at Taviston, who promised to come along at once. Nigel also had a few words with Bleakley, who had returned to Taviston that afternoon to clear up arrears of routine work. ‘So he’s gone and done it,’ Bleakley’s voice came over the wire. ‘Well, that looks like the end of this case, sir. Pity we let him slip through our fingers like that. Still, least said soonest mended. I’ll come along with Doctor Wills and bring the photographer.’

When Nigel returned to Knott-Sloman’s room, he found Blount looking about him in a puzzled way.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Nigel.

‘I’m looking for something he could have drunk the stuff out of.’

There were plenty of signs of eating in the room. Knott-Sloman did not apparently confine his vice of nut-eating to public performance. There was a plate of assorted nuts on the table beside his bed, and another plate on the dressing table containing broken shells. There were even a few fragments on the floor. But, except for the glass on the carafe, there seemed to be no possible receptacle for poison. Blount had already taken up this glass, using his handkerchief to grip it, but it had no smell and no visible mark of having been used recently.

‘This type of poison is generally taken in solution. One would expect to find a small phial, probably in splinters,’ he said, and began for the second time to scour the whole room. There was no trace of what he was looking for.

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