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The Poisoned Chocolates Case 毒巧克力命案（英文版）_【英】安东尼·伯克莱_AZW3_MOBI_EPUB_PDF_电子书（无页码）_【英】安东尼·伯克莱

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CHAPTER VIII SIR CHARLES took the usual advantage of the first interval to rise from his seat. Like so many of us in these days by the time of the first interval (when it is not a play of Mrs. Fielder-Flemming's that is in question) he felt almost physically unable to contain himself longer. "Mr. President," he boomed, "let us get this clear. Is Mrs. Fielder-Flemming making the preposterous accusation that some friend of my daughter's is responsible for this crime, or is she not?" The President looked somewhat helplessly up at the bulk towering wrathfully above him and wished he were anything but the President. "I really don't know, Sir Charles," he professed, which was not only feeble but untrue. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming however was by now quite able to speak up for herself. "I have not yet specifically accused any one of the crime, Sir Charles," she said, with a cold dignity that was only marred by the fact that her hat, which had apparently been sharing its mistress's emotions, was now perched rakishly over her left ear. "So far I have been simply developing a thesis." To Mr. Bradley Sir Charles would have replied, with Johnsonian scorn of evasion: "Sir, damn your thesis." Hampered now by the puerilities of civilised convention regarding polite intercourse between the sexes, he could only summon up once more the blue glare. With the unfairness of her sex Mrs. Fielder-Flemming promptly took advantage of his handicap. "And," she added pointedly, "I have not yet finished doing so." Sir Charles sat down, the perfect allegory. But he grunted very naughtily to himself as he did so. Mr. Bradley restrained an impulse to clap Mr. Chitterwick on the back and then chuck him under the chin. Her serenity so natural as to be patently artificial, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming proceeded to call the interval closed and ring up the curtain on her second act. "Having given you my processes towards arriving at the identity of the third member of the triangle I postulated, in other words toward......