Murder Is At Hand.

Chapter 7.

After lunch, I was sitting alone on my favourite chair in the poker room, waiting for Nesbitt to deem himself fit to see me. It was frustrating. Very frustrating. Even more frustrating than the fact that I still had absolutely no idea what had gone on in the little room. Everything seemed so wrong.

I stood up and began to pace around the table, eyeing the contents. I had two possible solutions. One, my assumption had been correct, and the poison was in the glass, or two, I was wrong, and it wasn't.

And if it wasn't in the glass, then where was it?

I stood pensively over the table, running my fingers up the bridge of my nose and back again. I hoped the poison was in the glass. I guessed the poison was in the glass. But I didn't know.

And if it wasn't in the glass, then where was it?

I groaned aloud and walked to the cabinet leaning on the surface heavily, trying to re-gain my thoughts. I was going in circles here.

"You don't know everything yet."

I turned sharply. Hettie was standing in the doorway, looking sympathetic.

"How can you expect to understand what's going on when you haven't collected all the evidence?" Hettie reasoned. I frowned at her.

"What do you mean?"

Hettie came over, grabbing me by the shoulders and steering me firmly over to the armchair.

"I mean, you haven't got the results from the liquid tests back yet, and you haven't talked to Nesbitt" she pointed out. "How can you complete a jigsaw with only half the pieces?"

I flopped down on the chair with a sigh.

"Well, what can I do, then?" I whined. "I can't stand being bored."

"Read something" Hettie advised. "And get out of this room, too. If you burn yourself out too soon, you'll be no good when the time comes."

I pouted.

"You're worse than my sister."

Hettie smiled.

"I'll take that as a compliment."

We left, me locking the door again behind us. Hettie led me to the lounge, and we sat down. It wss quite empty, and I could see the other people looking at us intrestedly.

"Talk to me" Hettie ordered. "About one of your other cases. It'll take your mind off this one."

I pouted again.

"Fine. Which one do you want to hear about?"

Hettie sighed again.

"This isn't working, is it?" she asked. I shook my head defiantly.

"Nope."

Her next question surprised me a little.

"Talk about that Detective Inspector friend of yours, then."

"Which one?" I asked confusedly.

"Whichever one you want" Hettie replied easily. By then, I had worked out what she was up to, so deliberately picked the other option.

"He's big, bold, and really loud" I said bluntly. "A bit of a pig to his deputy..."

"Allie!" Hettie snapped. "Be serious for a second! You know which one I want to hear about, so why won't you tell me?"

I relented a little.

"I just don't see why you want to hear about him. He's just a random Detective Inspector, and I'm never going to really see him again."