“I’ve given you my opinion. The can of tuna was spoiled. Didn’t you ever hear of spoiled canned goods, Mr. Queen?” He opened his medical bag, grabbed a surgical glove, and stretched it over the top of the dish.
“I’ve examined the empty tin, Dr. Voluta.” Ellery had fished it out of the tin can container, thankful that in Los Angeles you had to keep cans separate from garbage. “I see no sign of a bulge, do you?”
“You’re just assuming that’s the tin it came from,” the doctor said disagreeably. “How do you know?”
“The cook told me. It’s the only tuna she opened today. She opened it just before she went to bed. And I found the tin at the top of the waste can.”
Dr. Voluta threw up his hands. “Excuse me. I want to wash up.”
Ellery followed him to the door of the downstairs lavatory. “Have to keep my eye on that vial and dish, Doctor,” he said apologetically. “Since you won’t turn them over to me.”
“You don’t mean a thing to me, Mr. Queen. I still think it’s all a lot of nonsense. But if this stuff has to be analyzed, I’m turning it over to the police personally. Would you mind stepping back? I’d like to close this door.”
“The vial,” said Ellery.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Dr. Voluta turned his back and opened the tap with a swoosh.
They were waiting for Lieutenant Keats. It was almost six o’clock and through the windows a pale farina-like world was taking shape. The house was cold. Priam was purged and asleep, his black beard jutting from the blankets on his reclining chair with a moribund majesty, so that all Ellery had been able to think of ― before Alfred Wallace shut the door politely in his face ― was Sennacherib the Assyrian in his tomb; and that was no help. Wallace had locked Priam’s door from the inside. He was spending what was left of the night on the daybed in Priam’s room reserved for his use during emergencies.
Crowe Macgowan had been snappish. “If I hadn’t made that promise, Queen, I’d never have had Delia call you. All this stench about a little upchucking. Leave him to Voluta and go home.” And he had gone back to his oak, yawning.
Old Mr. Collier, Delia Priam’s father, had quietly made himself a cup of tea in the kitchen and trotted back upstairs with it, pausing only long enough to chuckle to Ellery: “A fool and his gluttony are soon parted.”
Delia Priam... He hadn’t seen her at all. Ellery had rather built himself up to their middle-of-the-night meeting, although he was prepared to be perfectly correct. Of course, she couldn’t know that. By the time he arrived she had returned to her room upstairs. He was glad, in a way, that her sense of propriety was so delicately tuned to his state of mind. It was, in fact, astoundingly perceptive of her. At the same time, he felt a little empty.
Ellery stared gritty-eyed at Dr. Voluta’s blue back. It was an immense back, with great fat wrinkles running across it.
He could, of course, get rid of the doctor and go upstairs and knock on her door. There was always a question or two to be asked in a case like this.
He wondered what she would do.
And how she looked at six in the morning.
He played with this thought for some time.
“Ordinarily,” said the doctor, turning and reaching for a towel, “I’d have told you to go to hell. But a doctor with a respectable practice has to be cagey in this town, Mr. Queen, and Laurel started something when she began to talk about murder at Leander Hill’s death. I know your type. Publicity-happy.” He flung the towel at the bowl, picked up the vial and the plastic dish, holding them firmly. “You don’t have to watch me, Mr. Queen. I’m not going to switch containers on you. Where the devil is that detective? I haven’t had any sleep at all tonight.”
“Did anyone ever tell you, Doctor,” said Ellery through his teeth, “that you look like Charles Laughton in The Beachcomber?”
They glared at each other until a car drew up outside and Keats hurried in.
At four o’clock that afternoon Ellery pulled his rented Kaiser up before the Priam house to find Keats’s car already there. The maid with the tic, which was in an active state, showed him into the living room. Keats was standing before the fieldstone fireplace, tapping his teeth with the edge of a sheet of paper. Laurel Hill, Crowe Macgowan, and Delia Priam were seated before him in a student attitude. Their heads swiveled as Ellery came in, and it seemed to him that Laurel was coldly expectant, young Macgowan uneasy, and Delia frightened.
“Sorry, Lieutenant. I had to stop for gas. Is that the lab report?” Keats handed him the paper. Their eyes followed. When Ellery handed the paper back, their eyes went with it.
“Maybe you’d better line it up for these folks, Mr. Queen,” said the detective. “I’ll take it from there.”
“When I got here about five this morning,” nodded Ellery, “Dr. Voluta was sure it was food poisoning. The facts were these: Against Voluta’s medical advice, Mr. Priam invariably has something to eat before going to sleep. This habit of his seems to be a matter of common knowledge. Since he doesn’t sleep too well, he tends to go to bed at a late hour. The cook, Mrs. Guittierez, is on the other hand accustomed to retiring early. Consequently, Mr. Priam usually tells Mr. Wallace what he expects to feel like having around midnight, and Mr. Wallace usually transmits this information to the cook before she goes to bed. Mrs. Guittierez then prepares the snack as ordered, puts it into the refrigerator, and retires.
“Last night the order came through for tuna fish, to which Mr. Priam is partial. Mrs. Guittierez got a can of tuna from the pantry ― one of the leading brands, by the way ― opened it, prepared the contents as Mr. Priam likes it ― with minced onion, sweet green pepper, celery, lots of mayonnaise, the juice of half a freshly squeezed lemon, freshly ground pepper and a little salt, a dash of Worcestershire sauce, a half-teaspoon of dried mustard, and a pinch of oregano and powdered thyme ― and placed the bowl, covered, in the refrigerator. She then cleaned up and went to bed. Mrs. Guittierez left the kitchen at about twenty minutes of ten, leaving a night light burning.
“At about ten minutes after midnight,” continued Ellery, speaking to the oil painting of the Spanish grandee above the fireplace so that he would not be disturbed by a certain pair of eyes, “Alfred Wallace was sent by Roger Priam for the snack. Wallace removed the bowl of tuna salad from the refrigerator, placed it on a tray with some caraway-seed rye bread, sweet butter, and a sealed bottle of milk, and carried the tray to Mr. Priam’s study. Priam ate heartily, although he did not finish the contents of the tray. Wallace then prepared him for bed, turned out the lights, and took what remained on the tray back to the kitchen. He left the tray there as it was, and himself went upstairs to his room.
“At about three o’clock this morning Wallace was awakened by the buzzer of the intercom from Mr. Priam’s room. It was Priam, in agony. Wallace ran downstairs and found him violently sick. Wallace immediately phoned Dr. Voluta, ran upstairs and awakened Mrs. Priam, and the two of them did what they could until Dr. Voluta’s arrival, which was a very few minutes later.”
Macgowan said irritably, “Damned if I can see why you tell us―”
Delia Priam put her hand on her son’s arm and he stopped.
“Go on, Mr. Queen,” she said in a low voice. When she talked, everything in a man tightened up. He wondered if she quite realized the quality and range of her power.
“On my arrival I found the tray in the kitchen, where Wallace said he had left it. When I had the facts I phoned Lieutenant Keats. While waiting for him I got together everything that had been used in the preparation of the midnight meal ― the spices, the empty tuna tin, even the shell of the lemon, as well as the things on the tray. There was a quantity of the salad, some rye bread, some of the butter, some of the milk. Meanwhile Dr. Voluta preserved what he could of the regurgitated matter. When Lieutenant Keats arrived, we turned everything over to him.”