The Inspector did not accept Dr Bondesio's certificate. The laboratory in Cape Town sent its results through on Friday night.
Eduard Middelmaart's heart did stop. Dr Bondesio was right about that much. What stopped it was oleandrin, the poison in oleander, the selonsroos that grows along half the driveways and dam walls in the Western Cape, including those at Laaste Hoofstuk. To a tired doctor at midnight, a heart full of it looks very like a heart that simply gave up.
Now here's the interesting part. The police tested the port glass first, because of course they did. Every one of us would have. There was no oleander in the port.
There was something else. A sedative, a common prescription sleeping medicine, enough to make a 71-year-old man very drowsy within half an hour. Not enough to kill him.
So two different people may have wanted two different things from Eduard that night. One wanted him asleep. One wanted him dead. They may, of course, be the same person. The Inspector's note in the margin says only: Why bother with both?
Meanwhile at Laaste Hoofstuk:
Inspector Khumalo has set up in the dining room with a pot of bush tea that Bettie refills without being asked. The Professor has asked to see the Drood four times. Four times he has been told it is evidence. He now limps slowly round and round the house, tap-thump on the gravel, like a man circling something in the water that he can't quite reach.
PS. The selonsroos is one of the most beautiful plants in our gardens and one of the most poisonous, every part of it, and it's planted everywhere from school grounds to the side of the N2. Agatha Christie, who knew her poisons, used its chemical cousin, digitalis from the foxglove, in Appointment with Death.