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Chapter One

It was Miss Somers’s turn to make the tea Miss Somers was the newest and theand had a mild worried face like a sheep The kettle was not quite boiling when Miss Somers poured the water onto the tea, but poor Miss So It was one of the many worries that afflicted her in life

She poured out the tea and took the cups round with a couple of limp, sweet biscuits in each saucer

Miss Griffith, the efficient head typist, a grey-haired martinet who had been with Consolidated Investments Trust for sixteen years, said sharply: “Water not boiling again, Somers!” and Miss Somers’s worried meek face went pink and she said, “Oh dear, I did think it was boiling this time”

Miss Griffith thought to herself: “She’ll last for another month, perhaps, just while we’re so busyBut really! The mess the silly idiot htforward job, and always so stupid over the tea If it weren’t so difficult to get hold of any intelligent typists—and the biscuit tin lid wasn’t shut tightly last time, either Really—”

Like so s the sentence went unfinished

At that moment Miss Grosvenor sailed in to make Mr Fortescue’s sacred tea Mr Fortescue had different tea, and different china and special biscuits Only the kettle and the water fro Mr Fortescue’s tea, the water boiled Miss Grosvenor saw to that

Miss Grosvenor was an incredibly glamorous blonde She wore an expensively cut little black suit and her shapely legs were encased in the very best and most expensive black-market nylons

She sailed back through the typists’ roolance The typists ht have been so many blackbeetles Miss Grosvenor was Mr Fortescue’s own special personal secretary; unkind ru more, but actually this was not true Mr Fortescue had recently la all his attention Miss Grosvenor was to Mr Fortescue just a necessary part of the office décor—which was all very luxurious and very expensive

Miss Grosvenor sailed back with the tray held out in front of her like a ritual offering Through the inner office and through the waiting room, where the h her own anterooht tap on the door she entered the holy of holies, Mr Fortescue’s office

It was a large roo expanse of parquet floor on which were dotted expensive oriental rugs It was delicately panelled in pale wood and there were some enormous stuffed chairs upholstered in pale buff leather Behind a colossal sycamore desk, the centre and focus of the room, sat Mr Fortescue himself

Mr Fortescue was less impressive than he should have been to e flabbybald head It was his affectation to wear loosely cut country tweeds in his city office He was frowning down at solided up to hi the tray on the desk at his elbow, she murmured in a low impersonal voice, “Your tea, Mr Fortescue,” and withdrew

Mr Fortescue’s contribution to the ritual was a grunt

Seated at her own desk again Miss Grosvenor proceeded with the business in hand She made two telephone calls, corrected so there typed ready for Mr Fortescue to sign and took one inco call

“Ay’hty accents “Mr Fortescue is in conference”

As she laid down the receiver she glanced at the clock It was ten minutes past eleven

It was just then that an unusual sound penetrated through the almost soundproof door of Mr Fortescue’s office Muffled, it was yet fully recognizable, a strangled agonized cry At the same -drawn frenzied summons Miss Grosvenor, startled for a moment into complete immobility, rose uncertainly to her feet Confronted by the unexpected, her poise was shaken However, she moved towards Mr Fortescue’s door in her usual statuesque fashion, tapped and entered

What she saw upset her poise still further Her eony His convulsiveto watch

Miss Grosvenor said, “Oh dear, Mr Fortescue, are you ill?” and was immediately conscious of the idiocy of the question There was no doubt but that Mr Fortescue was very seriously ill Even as she came up to him, his body was convulsed in a painful spasmodic movement

Words caasps

“Tea—what the hell—you put in the tea—get help—quick get a doctor—”

Miss Grosvenor fled froer the supercilious blonde secretary—she was a thoroughly frightened woman who had lost her head

She ca out:

“Mr Fortescue’s having a fit—he’s dying—we ”

Reactions were iood deal

Miss Bell, the youngest typist, said, “If it’s epilepsy we ought to put a cork in his ot a cork?”

Nobody had a cork

Miss Soe it’s probably apoplexy”

Miss Griffith said, “We et a doctor—at once”

But she was hampered in her usual efficiency because in all her sixteen years of service it had never been necessary to call a doctor to the city office There was her own doctor but that was at Streatham Hill Where was there a doctor near here?

Nobody knew Miss Bell seized a telephone directory and began looking up Doctors under D But it was not a classified directory and doctors were not autoested a hospital—but which hospital? “It has to be the right hospital,” Miss Somers insisted, “or else they won’t coot to be in the area”

Soested 999 but Miss Griffith was shocked at that and said it would mean the police and that would never do For citizens of a country which enjoyed the benefits of Medical Service for all, a group of quite reasonably intelligent wonorance of correc

t procedure Miss Bell started looking up Ambulances under A Miss Griffith said, “There’s his own doctor—he must have a doctor” Someone rushed for the private address book Miss Griffith instructed the office boy to go out and find a doctor—somehow, anywhere In the private address book, Miss Griffith found Sir Edwin Sandeman with an address in Harley Street Miss Grosvenor, collapsed in a chair, wailed in a voice whose accent was noticeably less Mayfair than usual, “I made the tea just as usual—really I did—there couldn’t have been anything wrong in it”

“Wrong in it?” Miss Griffith paused, her hand on the dial of the telephone “Why do you say that?”

“He said it—Mr Fortescue—he said it was the tea—”

Miss Griffith’s hand hovered irresolutely between Welbeck and 999 Miss Bell, young and hopeful, said: “We ought to give him some mustard and water—now Isn’t there any mustard in the office?”

There was no mustard in the office

Some short while later Dr Isaacs of Bethnal Green, and Sir Edwin Sandeman met in the elevator just as two different a The telephone and the office boy had done their work

Chapter Two

Inspector Neele sat in Mr Fortescue’s sanctum behind Mr Fortescue’s vast sycas with a notebook sat unobstrusively against the wall near the door

Inspector Neele had a s back from a rather low forehead When he uttered the phrase “just a matter of routine” those addressed ont to think spitefully: “And routine is about all you’re capable of!” They would have been quite wrong Behind his uniinative thinker, and one of his ation was to propound to hiuilt which he applied to such persons as he was interrogating at the time

Miss Griffith, who the ive hi seated where he was, had just left the roo’s happenings Inspector Neele propounded to hihly coloured reasons why the faithful doyenne of the typists’ roo cup of tea, and rejected them as unlikely

He classified Miss Griffith as (a) Not the type of a poisoner, (b) Not in love with her employer, (c) No pronounced es That really seemed to dispose of Miss Griffith except as a source of accurate information

Inspector Neele glanced at the telephone He was expecting a call from St Jude’s Hospital at any moment now

It was possible, of course, that Mr Fortescue’s sudden illness was due to natural causes, but Dr Isaacs of Bethnal Green had not thought so and Sir Edwin Sandeht so

Inspector Neele pressed a buzzer conveniently situated at his left hand and demanded that Mr Fortescue’s personal secretary should be sent in to him

Miss Grosvenor had recovered a little of her poise, but notof the swanlike glide about her motions, and said at once defensively:

“I didn’t do it!”

Inspector Neele murmured conversationally: “No?”

He indicated the chair where Miss Grosvenor ont to place herself, pad in hand, when summoned to take down Mr Fortescue’s letters She sat doith reluctance and eyed Inspector Neele in alarinatively on the themes Seduction? Black and just a little stupid

“There wasn’t anything wrong with the tea,” said Miss Grosvenor “There couldn’t have been”

“I see,” said Inspector Neele “Your name and address, please?”

“Grosvenor Irene Grosvenor”

“How do you spell it?”