they arrived at Thurnly Grange.
“Look here,” said Tommy quickly before she could speak. “I’m not a reporter or anything like that. Miss Hargreaves came to see me yesterday, and asked me to come down here. Is there anyone I can see?”
“ Dr. Burton is here now if you’d like to speak to him,” said the woman doubtfully. “Or Miss Chilcott. She’s making all the arrangements.”
But Tommy had caught at the first suggestion.
“ Dr. Burton,” he said authoritatively. “I should like to see him at once if he is here.”
The woman showed them into a small morning room.
Five minutes later the door opened, and a tall elderly man with bent shoulders and a kind but worried face, came in.
“ Dr. Burton?” said Tommy. He produced his professional card. “Miss Hargreaves called on me yesterday with reference to those poisoned chocolates. I came down to investigate the matter at her request—alas! too late.”
The doctor looked at him keenly.
“You are Mr. Blunt himself?”
“Yes. This is my assistant, Miss Robinson.”
The doctor bowed to Tuppence.
“Under the circumstances, there is no need for reticence. But for the episode of the chocolates, I might have believed these deaths to be the result of severe ptomaine poisoning—but ptomaine poisoning of an unusually virulent kind. There is gastrointestinal inflammation and haemorrhage. As it is, I am taking the fig