"Well," says the Constable, "Doctor Welldone here says there was poison in the tea-cup, and it was Polly who served the tea, so -"

"If I might interrupt, Constable," says Elspeth, "I may have knelt in some evidence. The hem of my cassock happened to trail in the drain outside Doctor Welldone's, and I happened to see him emptying the bottle of medicine into his sink. It's my suspicion that the strychnine was in the medicine bottle, not the teacup."

"How dare you!" splutters Welldone. "My analysis was conclusive - it was the maid -"

"Conveniently conclusive. But Polly had no motive to poison her employer. In fact -"

"It was Frumious, wasn't it?" hisses Majorie. "You put her up to it! I saw you shouting at her! You made her do it. You needed to inherit my husband's fortune to pay your gambling debts!"

"He did not," says Elspeth. Reluctantly, she unfolds the piece of paper. "Polly knew an embarrassing secret about this family. She tried to blackmail the late Galumph, threatening him with the scandal. Galumph dying wouldn't help Polly. It would help Frumious - but Frumious only arrived after his father was poisoned, so he couldn't have planted the poison. It was someone with access to Galumph's rooms - and we have eliminated Polly as a suspect, so it could only have been Majorie or the doctor, who was treating Galumph's relapse of puce fever."

"So Majorie was in league with the murderer!" crows Frumious, seizing on this opportunity to eliminate his mother-in-law from contention for the estate.

"No. Majorie was having an affair with Doctor Welldone, weren't you Majorie?"

Majorie nods weakly.

"But you weren't aware of Doctor Weldon's efforts, were you?"

Majorie shakes her head weakly.

"You can't believe her!" shouts Momerath. "Of course she knew!"

"If she knew that her lover intended to poison her husband," replies Elspeth, "then she could have waited for Galumph to perish, then removed the evidence. Instead, with so many people running around the crime scene, the Doctor was forced to hastily remove the medicine bottle, tipping his hand as it were."

"I did it for you, Margie!" shouts Welldone, undone. "That brute was making you miserable!"

Frumious leaps up and wrestles the doctor, rather ineffectually. Sighing, Hopscotch rises and separates the two. He shoves Frumious into an armchair, then grabs the doctor by the arm. "I think we'd better have a little chat down at the constable's station." The doctor slumps, suddenly defeated.

"And why do you trust the testimony of Gumfoot, eh? demands Momerath. "What would a vicar know about such things? And what was this book doing there?" He brandishes the copy of Death in the Dregs found in Galumph's room. If it was known that Elspeth was secretly the murder mystery writer, she'd never be trusted by the good people of Wobble again...

"That was, I think, divine providence," says Elspeth hastily. "A clue sent by Them.. I've read Death in the Dregs - that's what made me think of strychnine as the murder weapon, and that's what made me watch the medicine bottle and the teacup closely. Without Their invention, I might not have thought of that. 

"I wouldn't claim to have any special knowledge of criminal matters," continues Elspeth. "But I know my parishioners. If Majorie was really involved in the murder, she'd never have summoned me to give comfort to her husband."

*

Elspeth accompanies the constable and the accused to the constable's station. 

"What I don't understand," mutters Hopscotch, "is what that Momerath was doing here? He was a friend of Frumious, but he seemed to have a strange interest in the murder scene. What's all that about?"

"Constable," says Elspeth, "can't you think of any reason why someone might take a professional interest in a murder?"

The constable's eyes fall on his shelf full of Medlar mysteries, and he gasps. 

"Do you mean that Momerath -"

"I think, my dear constable, that if a writer wishes to remain incognito, we should respect their choice."