"
"Yes; that is quite possible, too. At any rate, you agree with me
that both men were killed in some such way as I have described?"
"Absolutely. I think there can be no doubt of it."
"There are objections--and rather weighty ones. The theory explains
the two deaths, it explains the similarity of the wounds, it explains
how both should be on the right hand just above the knuckles, it
explains why both bodies were found in the same place since both men
started to summon help. But, in the first place, if the Frenchman got
the drawer open, who closed it?"
"Perhaps it closed itself when he let go of it."
"And closed again after Vantine opened it?"
"Yes."
"It would take a very clever mechanism to do that."
"But at least it's possible."
"Oh, yes; it's possible. And we must remember that the poisoners of
those days were very ingenious. That was the heydey of La Voisin and
the Marquise de Brinvilliers, of Elixi, and heaven knows how many
other experts who had followed Catherine de Medici to France. So
that's all quite possible. But there is one thing that isn't
possible, and that is that a poison which, if it is administered as
we think it is, must be a liquid, could remain in that cabinet fresh
and ready for use for more than three hundred years.
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