A pocketful of rye – Agatha Christie
Mr Fortescue was less impressive than he should have been to match the room, but he did his best. He was a large flabby man with a gleaming bald head. It was his affectation to wear loosely cut country tweeds in his city office. He was frowning down at some papers on his desk when Miss Grosvenor glided up to him in her swanlike manner. Placing the tray on the desk at his elbow, she murmured in a low impersonal voice, “Your tea, Mr Fortescue,” and withdrew.
Mr Fortescue’s contribution to the ritual was a grunt.
Seated at her own desk again Miss Grosvenor proceeded with the business in hand. She made two telephone calls, corrected some letters that were lying there typed ready for Mr Fortescue to sign and took one incoming call.
“Ay’m afraid it’s impossible just now,” she said in haughty accents. “Mr Fortescue is in conference.”
As she laid down the receiver she glanced at the clock. It was ten minutes past eleven.
It was just then that an unusual sound penetrated through the almost soundproof door of Mr Fortescue’s office. Muffled, it was yet fully recognisable, a strangled agonised cry. At the same moment the buzzer on Miss Grosvenor’s desk sounded in a longdrawn frenzied summons. Miss Grosvenor, startled for a moment into complete immobility, rose uncertainly to her feet. Confronted by the unexpected, her poise was shaken. However, she moved towards Mr Fortescue’s door in her usual statuesque fashion, tapped and entered.
What she saw upset her poise still further. Her employer behind his desk seemed contorted with agony. His convulsive movements were alarming to watch.
Miss Grosvenor said, “Oh dear, Mr Fortescue, are you ill?” and was immediately conscious of the idiocy of the question. There was no doubt but that Mr Fortescue was very seriously ill. Even as she came up to him, his body was convulsed in a painful spasmodic movement.
Words came out in jerky gasps.
“Tea – what the hell – you put in the tea – get help – quick get a doctor -“
Miss Grosvenor fled from the room. She was no longer the supercilious blonde secretary – she was a thoroughly frightened woman who had lost her head.
She came running into the typists’ office crying out:
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