The investigators look into the suspects' histories: the husband of one of Dr Roberts' patients died of anthrax shortly after accusing the doctor of improper conduct; and a botanist that Despard had been guiding through the Amazon was rumoured to have been shot. Anne's housemate Rhoda Dawes tells Mrs Oliver in confidence about an incident that Anne has been concealing, when an elderly woman for whom Anne was acting as companion died after mistaking poison for syrup of figs. Mrs Lorrimer's husband had died twenty years earlier, though little is known about that.