Ellery stopped and lit a cigaret.
Keats said: “I took it all down to the Crime Laboratory and the report just came through.” He glanced at the paper. “I won’t bother you with the detailed report. Just give you the highlights.
“Chemical analysis of the regurgitated matter from Mr. Priam’s stomach brought out the presence of arsenic.
“Everything is given a clean bill ― spices, tuna tin, lemon, bread, butter, milk ― everything, that is, but the tuna salad itself.
“Arsenic of the same type was found in the remains of the tuna salad.
“Dr. Voluta was wrong,” said Keats. “This is not a case of ptomaine poisoning caused by spoiled fish. It’s a case of arsenical poisoning caused by the introduction of arsenic into the salad. The cook put the salad in the refrigerator about 9:40 last night. Mr. Wallace came and took it to Mr. Priam around ten minutes after midnight. During that period the kitchen was empty, with only a dim light burning. During those two and a half hours someone sneaked into the kitchen and poisoned the salad.”
“There can’t have been any mistake,” added Ellery. “There is a bowl of something for Mr. Priam in the refrigerator every night. It’s a special bowl, used only for his snacks. It’s even more easily identified than that ― it has the name Roger in gilt lettering on it, a gift to Roger Priam from Alfred Wallace last Christmas.”
“The question is,” concluded Keats, “who tried to poison Mr. Priam.”
He looked at the three in a friendly way.
Delia Priam, rising suddenly, murmured, “It’s so incredible,” and put a handkerchief to her nose.
Laurel smiled at the older woman’s back. “That’s the way it’s seemed to me, darling,” she said, “ever since Daddy’s death.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Laur,” snapped Delia’s son, “don’t keep smiling like Lady Macbeth, or Cassandra, or whoever it was. The last thing in the world Mother and I want is a mess.”
“Nobody’s accusing you, Mac,” said Laurel. “My only point is that now maybe you’ll believe I wasn’t talking through clouds of opium.”
“All right!” Delia turned to Keats. Ellery saw Keats look her over uncomfortably, but with that avidity for detail which cannot be disciplined in the case of certain women. She was superb today, all in white, with a large wooden crucifix on a silver chain girdling her waist. No slit in this skirt; long sleeves; and the dress came up high to the neck. But her back was bare to the waist. Some Hollywood designer’s idea of personalized fashion; didn’t she realize how shocking it was? But then women, even the most respectable, have the wickedest innocence in this sort of thing, mused Ellery; it really wasn’t fair to a hardworking police officer who wore a gold band on the fourth finger of his left hand. “Lieutenant, do the police have to come into this?” she asked.
“Ordinarily, Mrs. Priam, I could answer a question like that right off the bat.” Keats’s eyes shifted; he put an unlit cigaret between his lips and rolled it nervously to the corner of his mouth. A note of stubbornness crept into his voice. “But this is something I’ve never run into before. Your husband refuses to co-operate. He won’t even discuss it with me. All he said was that he won’t be caught that way again, that he could take care of himself, and that I was to pick up my hat on the way out.”
Delia went to a window. Studying her back, Ellery thought that she was relieved and pleased. Keats should have kept her on a hook; he’d have to have a little skull session with Keats on the best way to handle Mrs. Priam. But that back was disturbing.
“Tell me, Mrs. Priam, is he nuts?”
“Sometimes, Lieutenant,” murmured Delia without turning, “I wonder.”
“I’d like to add,” said Keats abruptly, “that Joe Dokes and his Ethiopian brother could have dosed that tuna. The kitchen back door wasn’t locked. There’s gravel back there, and woods beyond. It would have been a cinch for anyone who’d cased the household and found out about the midnight snack routine. There seems to be a tie-up with somebody from Mr. Priam’s and Mr. Hill’s past ― somebody who’s had it in for both of them for a long time. I’m not overlooking that. But I’m not overlooking the possibility that that’s a lot of soda pop, too. It could be a cover-up. In fact, I think it is. I don’t go for this revenge-and-slow-death business. I just wanted everybody to know that. Okay, Mr. Queen, I’m through.”
He kept looking at her back.
Brother, thought Ellery with compassion.
And he said, “You may be right, Keats, but I’d like to point out a curious fact that appears in this lab report. The quantity of arsenic apparently used, says the report, was ‘not sufficient to cause death.’ ”
“A mistake,” said the detective. “It happens all the time. Either they use way too much or way too little.”
“Not all the time, Lieutenant. And from what’s happened so far, I don’t see this character ― whoever he is ― as the impulsive, emotional type of killer. If this is all tied up, it has a pretty careful and coldblooded brain behind it. The kind of criminal brain that doesn’t make simple mistakes like underdosing. ‘Not sufficient to cause death’... that was deliberate.”
“But why?” howled young Macgowan.
“ ‘Slow dying,’ Mac!” said Laurel triumphantly. “Remember?”
“Yes, it connects with the note to Hill,” said Ellery in a glum tone. “Nonlethal dose. Enough to make Priam very sick, but not fatally. ‘Slow and sure... For each pace forward a warning.’ The poisoning attack is a warning to Roger Priam to follow up whatever was in the box he received the morning Hill got the dead dog. Priam’s warning number one ― unknown. Warning number two ― poisoned tuna. Lovely problem.”
“I don’t admire your taste in problems,” said Crowe Macgowan. “What’s it mean? All this ― this stuff?”
“It means, Mac, that I’m forced to accept your assignment,” replied Ellery. “And yours, Laurel, and yours, Delia. I shouldn’t take the time, but what else can I do?”
Delia Priam came to him and took his hands and looked into his eyes and said, with simplicity, “Thank you, Ellery. It’s such a... relief knowing it’s going to be handled... by you.”
She squeezed, ever so little. It was all impersonally friendly on her part; he felt that. It had to be, with her own son present. But he wished he could control his sweat glands.
Keats lipped his unlit cigaret.
Macgowan looked down at them, interested.
Laurel said, “Then we’re all nicely set,” in a perfectly flat voice, and she walked out.
Chapter Six
The night was chilly, and Laurel walked briskly along the path, the beam of her flashlight bobbing before her. Her legs were bare under the long suede coat and they felt goose-pimply.
When she came to the great oak she stabbed at the green ceiling with her light.
“Mac. You awake?”
Macgowan’s big face appeared in her beam.
“Laurel?” he said incredulously.
“It’s not Esther Williams.”
“Are you crazy, walking alone in these woods at night?” The rope ladder hurtled to her feet. “What do you want to be, a sex murder in tomorrow’s paper?”
“You’d be the natural suspect.” Laurel began to climb, her light streaking about the clearing.
“Wait, will you! I’ll put on the flood.” Macgowan disappeared. A moment later the glade was bright as a studio set. “That’s why I’m nervous,” he grinned, reappearing. His long arm yanked her to the platform. “Boy, is this cosy. Come on in.”