Curtain. Agatha Christie

      ‘You can’t, old boy. Anyway, quite literally, you can’t. I’ve got a pull in that line.’

      I suppose it was foolish of me, but I get these impulses. I said: ‘You knew Etherington, I think?’

      At once I knew that it had struck a note of some kind. His eyes grew hard and wary. He said – and his voice had changed – it was light and artificial: ‘Oh yes – I knew Etherington. Poor chap.’ Then, as I did not speak, he went on: ‘Etherington took drugs – of course – but he overdid it. One’s got to know when to stop. He didn’t. Bad business. That wife of his was lucky. If the sympathy of the jury hadn’t been with her, she’d have hanged.’

      He passed me over a couple of the tablets. Then he said casually: ‘Did you know Etherington as well?’

      I answered with the truth. ‘No.’

      He seemed for a moment at a loss how to proceed. Then he turned it off with a light laugh.

      ‘Funny chap. Not exactly a Sunday school character but he was good company sometimes.’

      I thanked him for the tablets and went back to my room.

      As I lay down again and turned off the lights I wondered if I had been foolish.

      For it came to me very strongly that Allerton was almost certainly X. And I had let him see that I suspected the fact.