Poisoned Chocolates Case Read Online Free PDF

Or do ye just think you're funny? Ye know as well as I do that that letter was never sent out from 'ere.”
    It was then that the Chief Inspector became surprised. “Not - not sent out by your firm at all?” he hammered. It was a possibility that had not occurred to him. “It's - forged, then?”
    “Isn't that what I'm telling ye?” growled the old man, regarding him fiercely from under bushy brows. But the Chief Inspector's evident astonishment had mollified him somewhat.
    “Sir,” said that official, “I must ask you to be good enough to answer my questions as fully as possible. It's a case of murder I'm investigating, and” - he paused and thought cunningly - “and the murderer seems to have been making free use of your business to cloak his operations.”
    The cunning of the Chief Inspector prevailed. “The devil 'e 'as!” roared the old man. “Damn the blackguard. Ask any question thou wants, lad; I'll answer right enough.”
    Communication thus being established, the Chief Inspector proceeded to get to grips.
    During the next five minutes his heart sank lower and lower. In place of the simple case he had anticipated it became rapidly plain to him that the affair was going to be very difficult indeed. Hitherto he had thought (and his superiors had agreed with him) that the case was going to prove one of sudden temptation. Somebody in the Mason firm had a grudge against Sir Eustace. Into his (or more probably, as the Chief Inspector had considered, her) hands had fallen the box and letter addressed to him. The opportunity had been obvious, the means, in the shape of nitrobenzene in use in the factory, ready to hand; the result had followed. Such a culprit would be easy enough to trace.
    But now, it seemed, this pleasant theory must be abandoned, for in the first place no such letter as this had ever been sent out at all; the firm had produced no new brand of chocolates, if they had done so it was not their custom to dispense sample boxes among private individuals, the letter was a forgery. But the notepaper on the other hand (and this was the only remnant left to support the theory) was perfectly genuine, so far as the old man could tell. He could not say for certain, but was almost sure that this was a piece of old stock which had been finished up about six months ago. The heading might be forged, but he did not think so.
    “Six months ago?” queried the Inspector unhappily.
    “About that,” said the other, and plucked a piece of paper out of a stand in front of him. “This is what we use now.” The Inspector examined it. There was no doubt of the difference. The new paper was thinner and more glossy. But the heading looked exactly the same. The Inspector took a note of the firm who had printed both.
    Unfortunately no sample of the old paper was available. Mr. Mason had a search made on the spot, but not a sheet was left.
    “As a matter of fact,” Moresby now said, “it had been noticed that the piece of paper on which the letter was written was an old one. It is distinctly yellow round the edges. I'll pass it round and you can see for yourselves. Please be careful of it.” The bit of paper, once handled by a murderer, passed slowly from each would - be detective to his neighbour.
    “Well, to cut a long story shorter,” Moresby went on, “we had it examined by the firm of printers, Webster's, in Frith Street, and they're prepared to swear that it's their work. That means the paper was genuine, worse luck.”
    “You mean, of course,” put in Sir Charles Wildman impressively, “that had the heading been a copy, the task of discovering the printers who executed it should have been comparatively simple?”
    “That's correct, Sir Charles. Except if it had been done by somebody who owned a small press of their own; but that would have been traceable too. All we've actually got is that the murderer is someone who had access to Mason's notepaper up to six months ago; and that's pretty wide.”
    “Do