We'll swim in milk and honey till we drown.

was right. "Well, Miss Ross, what do you think of the latest development?" "Mr Mahler?" She'd slipped up her snow-maskin her case just a gauze and cotton-wool pad with a central breathing aperture -and I had to lean forward to catch her soft voice. "What can one say about anything so-so dreadful. What chance does the poor man have, Dr Mason?" "I've honestly no idea. There are far too many unpredictable factors involved.. . . Did you know that after I'd crossed you off I'd lined him up as number one on my list of suspects?" "But yes, I'm afraid. I fear I'm no sleuth, Miss Ross. I may be long on the empirical, trial and error methodand it at least has had the negative advantage of reducing the number of suspects by twobut I'm pretty short on the deductive." I told her what had happened between Mahler and myself during the brief stop we had made. "And now you're as badly off as ever," she said, when I had finished. "I suppose all we can do now is to sit and wait to see what happens?" "Wait for the axe to fall, you mean?" I said grimly. "Not quite. I haven't much hope from it, but I thought I might try the deductive reasoning act for a change. But before we can deduce, we have to have some facts we can deduce from. And we're very short on facts. That's why I asked you out hereto see if you could help me." "I'll do anything I can, you know that." She lifted her head as the aurora swelled and flamed to the incandescent climax of its performance, and shivered violently as its unearthly beautiful colourings struck a million sparks of coloured light, red and green and yellow and gold, off the ice spicules in the sky. "I don't know why, that makes me feel colder than ever. . . . But I think I've already told you everything I know, everything I can remember, Dr Mason." Tm sure you have. But you may have missed some things just because you couldn't see they mattered anyway. Now, as I see it, we have three big questions looking for an answer. How come the crash in the first place? How was the coffee spiked? How was the radio broken? If we can turn up anything that can throw a light on even one of these, we may be a long way towards finding out what we want to know." Ten freezing minutes later we were still a long way from finding out anything. I'd taken Margaret Ross step by step from the Customs Hall, where she'd met her passengers, to the plane where she had settled them down, flown with them to Gander, watched them go through the same process again, flown them out of Gander, watched her as quiker shutter lag for digital cameras she'd served their evening meal, and still I'd learnt nothing, turned up nothing suspicious, off-beat or abnormal that could even begin to account for the crash. Then, slowly, just as she was describing the serving of the meal, her voice trailed away into silence, and she turned and stared at me. "What's the matter, Miss Ross?" "Of course," she said softly. "Of course! What a fool I am! Now I see. "What do you see?" I demanded. "The coffee. How it was tampered with. I'd just served Colonel Harrisonhe was in the rear seat, so he was the last to be served -when he wrinkled his nose and asked if I could smell something burning. I couldn't, but I made some sort of joke about something burning on the galley hotplate and I'd just got back there when I heard the Colonel calling, and when I looked round he had the door of the starboard washroom open and smoke was coming out. Not much, just a little. I called the captain, and he hurried aft to see what it was, but it was nothing serious, just a few papers burningsomebody had been careless with a cigarette, I suppose." "And everybody rose out of their seats and crowded to have a look?" I asked grimly. "Yes. Captain Johnson ordered them all back to their seats -they were upsetting the trim of the plane." "And you didn't think this worth mentioning to me," I said heavily. "No importance at all?" "I'm sorry. Itit did seem unimportant, unrelated to anything. That was hours before the crash, so" "It doesn't matter. Who could have gone into the galley then -anybody in the front seats, I suppose?" "Yes. They all seemed to crowd down past the middle" "They? Who were 'They'?" "I don't know. Whatwhy do you ask?" "Because by knowing who was there, we might find out who wasn't." "I'm sorry," she repeated helplessly. "I was a little upset for a moment, then Captain Johnson was in front of me shooing everybody back to their seats and I couldn't see." "All right." I changed my approach. "This was the men's washroom, I take it?" "Yes. The powder room