Read Online No Cooperation from the Cat by Marian Babson - Free Book Online

and everyone was crowding round and telling her how delicious it was and what a good talk and asking their last-minute questions. Some just slipped away quietly. It was the same as usual, except…”
    “Except?” This time I didn’t try to stop Evangeline from pouring. Jocasta looked as though she could use it.
    “Well … Melisande began to get sort of huffy and irritable. She started giving short and sharp answers. Then she snapped at me to hurry up—although I was working as fast as I could. I didn’t want to hang around any more than she did. And it was starting to rain. We both wanted to get out of there—”
    “Sip…”
    “Breathe…”
    “Go on.” Martha was implacable.
    “She was breathing hard. And then she said she wanted to go to the loo and she’d meet me back at the car. I … I was relieved because I could get everything packed away much faster without her. And, as long as she stayed, some of the pupils would hang around trying to talk to her … So … so … I got all the equipment into the boxes and began carrying them out to the car. I was on the second trip when one of the students began screaming—”
    “Sip…”
    “Breathe…”
    “Go on.”
    “I … I followed the screams. So did the other students. Luckily there were only two or three still around. The screams … the loo … Melisande was lying on the floor. Her … her face … was blue … One of the students dialled nine-nine-nine on her mobile phone … I … I tried to lift Melisande up … to talk to her … I tried. But I really didn’t know what to do. I—I’ve got to take a first aid course. I … I felt so … useless—”
    The tears came again.
    We looked at each other. She wasn’t the only one to feel useless. There was nothing we could do to help or comfort her.
    “Presumably, the emergency services arrived quite quickly,” Evangeline said.
    “Oh, yes.” Jocasta gulped. “We were right in the centre of town. They took her to the nearest accident and emergency department, but … but … it was too late. Even though they’d put an oxygen mask over— It … it all happened so fast. They’d done everything they could, but…”
    “Breathe…” Oops! Perhaps that wasn’t the best thing to say under the circumstances.
    “Sip—gulp!” Evangeline was on surer ground.
    Martha said nothing.
    “It was awful … so awful.” Jocasta slumped forward, her arms on the table, her head lowering to rest on them. She was just about finished. I felt guilty because there were still questions I wanted to ask.
    “What did the autopsy reveal?” Evangeline had no such qualms. “There had to be one—in the event of the sudden death of a perfectly healthy young woman.”
    “Oh, there was.” Jocasta raised her head and spoke wearily.
    “The police thought mushrooms at first, but everyone there had had a taste of the quiche. Except me—and that made them pay extra attention to me—” She shuddered. “But no one else had had any ill effects, so they had to think again…” She was beginning to fade.
    “Although—” With an effort, she forced herself to go on. The memory was obviously very painful. “Although there was still the possibility that there had been just one bad mushroom in the lot—and she’d had the rotten luck to be the one to get it.”
    “Mushrooms are always suspect.” Martha gave a professional nod. “Where did she source them?”
    “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. They probably weren’t what did it. The … the autopsy … showed anaphylactic shock. It seems she was desperately allergic to nuts. I didn’t know! How was I to know? Edytha said I should have known—but no one ever told me!”
    “You gave her some nuts?” Evangeline asked.
    “In a mushroom quiche?” Martha frowned.
    “Of course not! No one knows how she could have got any. She wouldn’t have gone near them—she knew they were deadly to her. There was a theory that one of the students might