Miss Silver’s needles clicked. She said gravely,

‘If there were several incidents, I should like you to begin with the first one and then tell me about the others in the order in which they occurred. It was some time after the episode of the mushroom soup that you first began to suspect that there was anything wrong?’

‘Well, it was, and it wasn’t. It wasn’t the first thing that happened, if that is what you mean.’

‘Then will you please begin at the beginning and take things in their right order.’

Mrs Smith said, ‘Oh, the first thing was my accident – five – no, six months ago.’

‘What happened?’

‘It was one of those dark afternoons just before you put the lights on, and I was going down the stairs. And the bother is I can’t swear to anything, because you know how it is when you have a fall, you don’t really remember a lot about it. The first thing I knew I was down in the hall with a broken leg – and I can’t swear I was pushed, but I’ve got my own ideas about it.’

‘You think that someone pushed you?’

‘Pushed or tripped me – it doesn’t much matter which. And it’s no use you asking me who could have done it, because it might have been anyone in the house, or it mightn’t have been anyone at all. Only no one is going to get me to believe that I just went crashing down those stairs on my own.’

Miss Silver said, ‘I see-’And then, ‘And the next thing?’

‘The soup, like I told you.’

‘And after that?’

Mrs Smith frowned.

‘There were the sleeping-tablets. That was what made me feel I had better come and see you. The doctor gave me some when I broke my leg, but I don’t like those sort of things. They’ve got a way of getting hold of you, and I’ve seen too much of that. So I’ve never taken one except when the pain was pretty bad. There was about a half bottle of them, and I suppose I might have had six or seven in the six months.