He had headed for the office. My calling him 'Cramer' instead of 'Inspector' was so unexpected that he stopped and about-faced. 'Why,' I demanded, 'don’t you ever learn? You know damn well he hates to have anyone march in on him, even you, or especially you, and you only make it harder. Isn’t it me you want?'
'Yes, but I want him to hear it.'
'That’s obvious, or you would have sent for me instead of coming. If you will kindly-'
Wolfe’s bellow came out to us. 'Confound it, come in here!'
Cramer wheeled and went, and I followed. Wolfe’s only greeting was a scowl. 'I cannot,' he said coldly, 'read my mail in an uproar.'
Cramer took his usual seat, the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe’s desk. 'I came,' he said, 'to see Goodwin, but I-'
'I heard you in the hall. You would enlighten me? That’s why you want me present?'
Cramer took a breath. 'The day I try to enlighten you they can send me to the loony house. It’s just that I know Goodwin is your man and I want you to understand the situation. I thought the best way would be to discuss it with him with you present. Is that sensible?'
'It may be. I’ll know when I hear the discussion.'
Cramer aimed his sharp grey eyes at me. 'I don’t intend to go all over it again, Goodwin. I’ve questioned you twice myself, and I’ve read your statement. I’m only after one point, the big point. To begin with, I’ll tell you something that is not to be repeated. There is not a thing, not a word, in what any of the others have said that rules out suicide. Not a single damn thing. And there’s a lot that makes suicide plausible, even probable. I’m saying that if it wasn’t for you suicide would be a reasonable assumption, and it seems likely, I only say likely, that that would be the final verdict. You see what that means.'
I nodded. 'Yeah. I’m the fly in the soup. I don’t like it any better than you do. Flies don’t like being swamped in soup, especially when it’s hot.'
He got a cigar from a pocket, rolled it in his palms, put it between his teeth, which were white and even, and removed it. 'I'll start at the beginning,' he said. 'Your being there when it happened. I know what you say, and it’s in your statement-the phone call from Austin Byne and the one from Mrs Robilotti. Of course that happened. When you say anything that can be checked it will always check. But did you or Wolfe help it to happen? Knowing Wolfe, and knowing you, I have got to consider the possibility that you wanted to be there, or Wolfe wanted you to, and you made arrangements. Did you?'
I was yawning and had to finish it. 'I beg your pardon. I could just say no, but let’s cover it. How and why I was there is fully explained in my statement. Nothing related to it was omitted. Mr Wolfe thought I shouldn’t go because I would demean myself.'
'None of the people who were there was or is Wolfe’s client?'
'Mrs Robilotti was a couple of years ago. The job was finished in nine days. Except for that, no.'
His eyes went to Wolfe. 'You confirm that?'
'Yes. This is gratuitous, Mr Cramer.'
'With you and Goodwin it’s hard to tell what is and what isn’t.' He came back to me. 'I’m going to tell you how it stands up to now. First, it was cyanide. That’s settled. Second, it was in the champagne. It was in what spilled on the floor when she dropped the glass, and anyway it acts so fast it must have been. Third, a two-ounce plastic bottle in her bag was half full of lumps of sodium cyanide. The laboratory calls them amorphous fragments; I call them lumps. Fourth, she had shown that bottle to various people and told them she wanted to kill herself; she had been doing that for more than a year.'
He shifted in the chair. He always sat so as to have Wolfe head on, but now he was at me. 'Since the bag was on a chair fifteen feet away from her, and the bottle was in it, she couldn’t have taken a lump from it when Grantham brought her the champagne, or just before, but she could have taken it any time during the preceding hour or so and had it concealed in her handkerchief. Testing the handkerchief for traces is out because she dropped it and it fell in the spilled champagne-or rather, it’s not out but it’s no help. So that’s the set-up for suicide. Do you see holes in it?'
I killed a yawn. 'Certainly not. It’s perfect. I don’t say she mightn’t have committed suicide, I only say she didn’t. As you know, I have good eyes, and she was only twenty feet from me. When she took the champagne from Grantham with her right hand her left hand was on her lap, and she didn’t lift it. She took the glass by the stem, and when Grantham raised his glass and said something she raised hers a little higher than her mouth and then lowered it and drank. Are you by any chance hiding an ace? Does Grantham say that when he handed her the glass she dropped something in it before she took hold of it?'
'No. He only says she might have put something in it before she drank; he doesn’t know.'
'Well, I do. She didn’t.'
'Yeah. You signed your statement.' He pointed the cigar at me.
'Look, Goodwin. You admit there are no holes in the set-up for suicide; how about the set-up for murder? The bag was there on the chair in full view. Did someone walk over and pick it up and open it and take out the bottle and unscrew the cap and shake out a lump and screw the cap back on and put the bottle back in the bag and drop it on the chair and walk away? That must have taken nerve.'
'Nuts. You’re stacking the deck. All someone had to do was get the bag-of course I started watching it-and take it to a room that could be locked on the inside-there was one handy-and get a lump and conceal it in his or her handkerchief-thank you for suggesting the handkerchief-and return the bag to the chair. That would take care, but no great nerve, since if he had any reason to think he had been seen taking the bag or returning it he wouldn’t use the lump. He might or might not have a chance to use it, anyway.' A yawn got me.
He pointed the cigar again. 'And that’s the next point, the chance to use it. The two glasses of champagne that Grantham took were poured by the butler, Hackett; he did all the pouring. One of them had been sitting on the bar for four or five minutes, and Hackett poured the other one just before Grantham came. Who was there, at the bar, during those four or five minutes? We haven’t got that completely straight yet, but apparently
