"Jane M. Lindskold - A Touch of Poison" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lindskold Jane)

corner where a lesser servant usually was stationed lest the master desire more tea or juice or perhaps
someone summoned into his presence.

That Adalia Baker, dressed in servant's livery, stood there was as surprising as the word she had spoken.
That now she opened a closet to one side of her and led from it a very old, blind hound dog was hardly
more astonishing.

That Reid had not noticed the exchange of one servant for another was not unusual. He had hardly
glanced at the alcove except to note that it was occu-pied as it should be. After that his meal and his
account books had held his complete attention.

For long enough that the cheese filling began to drip from the chunk of pastry he held in his hand, Reid
stared at this intruder. Absently, he started to mop up the filling and again Adalia Baker interrupted him
with a monosyllabic command.

"Don't."

Her voice had lost its quavering note, and she took a step forward as if to stop him bodily if she must.
"Why," he asked, skipping non-essentials for the moment, "should I not?"

"It is poisoned," she replied bluntly. "I know, for I put the poison into the filling myself."

Too amazed now to do anything but shake his head and set down the offending piece of pastry, Supreme
Affluent Reid listened as Adalia Baker went on.

"I don't ask you to believe me," she said. "That's why I brought this old dog. Yesterday, the kennel
keeper asked the still-room attendant for something with which to put the beast out of its misery. I got the
dog out this morning before the kennel keeper was awake."

"And the dogs did not bark?"

"They know me," she explained. "I've been experimenting with making biscuits for them seasoned heavily
with blood and substituting bone meal for some of the flour. The kennel keeper thinks that such will give
the bitches extra milk when their puppies come."

Reid, who never really thought about his dogs except when arranging to sell the excellent pups each
summer,, nodded.

"So the dogs didn't bark," he said. "And this one will eat poisoned pastry from your hand?"

"Or yours," Widow Baker replied. "He's so blind now he snaps at whatever comes near his nose but so
toothless he couldn't harm a flea."

"Then I shall administer the pastry," Reid said, glad to have action to cover his astonishment.

He took the pastry carefully in his fingers and held it out to the dog. The offering was swallowed eagerly
and in a few moments the dog shuddered, began to have difficulty breathing, and collapsed.

The dog died swiftly enough that Greene Reid realized that in a similar circumstance assistanceтАФeven
from the servant within the roomтАФwould have arrived too late.