The Inspector began to work on her gently. But that didn’t last long. He sailed smoothly through a few questions that put her whereabouts the previous day on record and contradicted nothing we had heard before. Then he took a header into the subject of the séances, and sparks began to fly.
“You’ve been holding séances here at Miss Skelton’s invitation?”
“We conducted a few experiments in psychical communication.” She didn’t appear to like the word séance.
“And you do that by going into a trance?”
“Yes.”
“Linda Skelton was especially interested in these trances?”
“Yes.” Her eyes touched Gail briefly. “She said that Dr. Gail recommended them as treatment for her phobia.”
“He did. And that made her a push-over for the ones you stage. You take capsules that you say help you to go off into one. I want them.”
Gavigan held out his hand.
“You want them? Why?” I’ve seen people more pleased than she was at that request.
“Never mind why. Hand them over.”
“I’m sorry, Inspector. I don’t have any more.”
The effect of that on the Inspector was about the same as if he’d taken two fingers of Monckhoven’s Intensifier neat.
“Linda Skelton,” he said with a visible effort at control, “was poisoned. Your capsules, according to the analysis you let Colonel Watrous make, contain poisons.”
“Oh, I see. And would I take them if the dose was fatal?”
“No. But the one you gave Miss Skelton could have contained plenty.”
Rappourt’s deep-pitched voice was a little higher, and a shade wobbly. “But Linda took cyanide.” Her eyes moved rapidly, suspiciously at us all. “Do you mean she was poisoned with — not with, cyanide after all? Last night—”
“You don’t deny you gave her a capsule?” Gavigan’s words had sharp edges.
“No. I suppose Lamb told you I did. But I don’t see—”
“What was in it?”
Rappourt’s surprised bewilderment looked genuine enough; but she snapped out of it abruptly, suddenly becoming very quiet, only her shrewd black eyes moving, alertly intent. “Linda said that she and Dr. Gail had had so little success with hypnosis or any sort of trance that it was a great disadvantage in her treatment. She was sure my trance capsules would help. She begged me to let her try one. I refused at first. But she kept insisting. Finally, after lunch yesterday, I gave her one.” Rappourt fumbled at her neck and drew a thin silver chain from beneath the collar of her dress. A small vial hung from it. “That capsule contained what all these others do.”
She gave it to Gavigan.
The vial was large enough to hold four capsules, one above the other. It contained three.
“Hesse,” Gavigan said, looking around. “Where is he?”
“He went upstairs to get his coat and hat,” Malloy said. “He’s leaving.”
“Catch him. Give him these. He knows what to test for.”
“Does he?” Rappourt asked.
“He does. Scopolamine, morphine, and cyanide.”
“No, Inspector. None of those. Sugar.”
“What?”
“Sugar,” she repeated. “And nothing more. I know just how much scopolamine and morphine I can take safely. I don’t know how much Linda could. I filled those capsules with sugar. In Linda’s case that would have probably worked just as well — by suggestion — and it was much safer.”
The Inspector retrieved the capsules from Malloy, split one open with his thumbnail and let the white crystals pour out on his hand. He touched them lightly with his right forefinger, started to put it to his tongue and then changed his mind. He looked at Rappourt uncertainly, scowled, and tipped the crystals, broken capsule and all, into an envelope. He returned it with the vial to Malloy.
“Tell Hesse to rush it,” he said. And then, facing Rappourt again, “So. The scopolamine and morphine was just a gag to give Watrous something to write about?”
Rappourt let that pass.
“Well, was it?” Gavigan insisted.
“The theory’s an interesting one, Inspector. It will at least prevent you from insinuating that I gave Linda poison.”
“Yeah? Sugar in these capsules don’t prove there was sugar in that one. We’ll discuss that again. You can go.”
As she got up and moved toward the door, I watched her, trying to classify the expression on her face. I failed. Poker faces in this crowd were apparently four for a nickel. Merlini, Gail, Lamb, and now Rappourt, all boasted lovely examples right out of the top drawer.
“Rock salt in the silver-nitrate bottle,” Merlini said when she had gone. “Silver nitrate in the tooth powder. Sugar in the scopolamine capsules. I wonder what Mrs. Henderson keeps in the can labeled, ‘Baking Soda.’ Hemlock probably. And curare in the tea canister. Which reminds me it’s a good hour after my lunch time and unless something is done soon we’ll have missed two meals entirely.”
“What do you think about that sugar?” asked Gavigan.
“I’d like some,” I said, seconding Merlini’s motion. “With coffee around it. Perhaps if we crossed Mrs. Henderson’s palm with some silver—”
“See what you can do, Muller,” Gavigan ordered. And then, thinking out loud, “Arnold says Linda didn’t change her will because her lawyer never came out. I’ll check that. She could have written a new one, long hand, without witnesses. If I can find anything like that and Rappourt’s Psychic Society gets a slice, she’s sunk. I’ll bet ten to one the cyanide was in that capsule.”
As he said that, Grimm and Hesse came down the stairs. The Doctor wore his hat and coat and had started on a new cigar. He picked up his bag. “My office just phoned? Inspector. Two policy racketeers, or what’s left of them, just came in peppered with machine-gun bullets, and somebody found half a body floating past the Battery. I suspect Merlini sawed a lady in two and his sleight-of-hand slipped. The District Attorney’s been burning up my phone line all morning. I’m leaving. The autopsy report on Miss Skelton is far enough along so that we know she swallowed enough cyanide to have killed about eight people and a couple of guinea pigs. The nail-polish bottle contained sodium cyanide in an aqueous solution. That satisfy you for a while? I’ll rush through a test on Rappourt’s capsules. I wish you luck.” He started off.
“Cyanide in the capsule,” Merlini said to no one in particular. “And yet, as accomplished an actress as Rappourt is, if she wasn’t bowled over when it was suggested, I’ll — I’ll take six rabbits out of one hat with both hands tied behind me!”
Gavigan looked at him, thinking that over. Then just as Hesse reached the door, he called, “Oh, by the way, Doc, the P. M. report on the stiff we found in the McKinley Hotel yesterday. See that Inspector Barnes gets that, will you? He’s taking over.”
“Right.” Hesse stopped with his hand on the door. “Did you ever find out what happened to his clothes and how he got into that room?”
“No. It makes about as much sense as — as footprints on the ceiling. I do get the damndest cases lately. Tell Barnes I’ll see him as soon as I get back.”
“His clothes, Doctor?” Merlini asked quickly. “What was wrong with his clothes?”
“He didn’t have any.”
“You mean he wore none?”
“He wore none and he had none. Not a sign of any luggage.” Hesse grinned faintly. “A practicing nudist, by the looks.”