'Huh?' He was squinting. 'You've lost me. Say it again.'
Wolfe wiggled a finger. 'Mr Tedder. You have come to me with an extraordinary proposal, and naturally my first question is what about you? Did you kidnap your stepfather?'
'Balls. He might have recognized me.'
'Did you have a hand in the kidnaping? Yes or no.'
'No. N, O, no.' Tedder was still squinting. 'Got a Bible?'
'That wouldn't establish it. If I assume your good faith, where are we? It would be witless to try to compete with the intricate and expert routine of the army of official investigators. If we start at all it must be from a point chosen by us and overlooked by them. Before I accept or decline your proposal I must know if you will agree with me on that point; and first of all I must ask, what if we find the money and your mother repudiates her engagement to let you keep it?'
'She won't.'
'She might.'
Tedder shook his head. 'Four people besides me heard her say it-my sister Margot, her brother Ralph, Frost, the lawyer, and Jimmy. Of course Jimmy's dead.'
'She still might. I must tell you that, if she does, my share will be legally collectible and I'll collect it.'
'Sure, why not? You won't have to. My mother won't renege. What's the point I have to agree on?'
'It's a series of assumptions, and you may not like them. The first and basic one is that Mr Vail's death was not an accident. He was murdered.'
'Huh?' Tedder uncrossed his legs and sat up. 'He pulled that goddam statue over on him.'
'No.' Wolfe was emphatic. 'I concede that that's conceivable; it may even be sufficiently plausible for the police to accept it; but I reject it. There is no implication in the published accounts that he was drunk. Was he?'
'No.'
'Had he been drinking?'
'He had had a couple, not more. His usual, bourbon and water. He could handle half a dozen. He wasn't even started. He was just sleepy. He said he couldn't keep his eyes open and went to the couch.'
'And later, after you and the others had gone- Did you turn the lights off when you left?'
'All but one. Mother said to leave one on.'
'A good light?'
'Fairly good. A floor lamp by the wall.'
'And he awoke enough to realize where he was, leave the couch, stand, and walk; and, losing his balance, he caught at the statue, which was insecure, and brought it down on him. It's possible, but I don't believe it. I do not believe that a man awake enough to walk would be so befuddled that he couldn't dodge a falling statue. Was it on a direct line from the couch to the door?'
'Not direct, but not far out.' Tedder was squinting again. 'You said murder. How? Was he so sound asleep that he didn't wake up when someone dragged him off the couch and over to the statue and pushed it over on him? Do you believe that?'
'No. He was drugged.'
'The hell he was.'
'He must have been. In one of his drinks. The handiest assumption is chloral hydrate, which is easily procured. In solution in an alcoholic beverage it has almost no taste. A moderate dose induces a deep sleep approaching coma. It decomposes rapidly and will not be detected by an autopsy unless it is performed within three or four hours after death, and even then the only reliable test is identification of urochloralic acid in the urine. That test is made only when chloral hydrate is specifically suspected, and with Mr Vail I doubt if it was. I am not parading; I had this surmise yesterday and consulted a book.'
He hadn't mentioned it to me; it would have been admitting that Jimmy Vail's death might possibly be of interest to us. We had several books on toxicology on the shelves, but he hadn't been here yesterday, so he must have found one when he was going over Doc Vollmer's shelves. I had had personal experience of chloral hydrate, having once been served a Mickey Finn by a woman named Dora Chapin [see The League of Frightened Men]. Two hours after I had swallowed it you could have rowed me out to Bedloe's Island and pushed the Statue of Liberty onto me and I wouldn't have batted an eye.
Wolfe was going on. 'So that Mr Vail was murdered with deliberation may properly be called a deduction, not an assumption. Not a final deduction, but a basic one, for it is the ground for my assumptions. Whether you like it or not, do you concur?'
'I don't know.' Tedder's tongue showed between his lips. 'Go on with your assumptions.'
'They're purely tentative, to establish a starting point. But first another deduction, made three days ago, on Tuesday, by Mr Goodwin and me. Dinah Utley, your mother's secretary, was implicated in the kidnaping, and not indirectly or passively. She had an active hand in it. Her death-'
'How do you know that?'
'By observed evidence and interpretation of it. I'll reserve it. I'm exposing my position, Mr Tedder, because I have to if you're going to occupy it with me, but I need not reveal all the steps that have led to it. I'm taking your good faith as a working hypothesis, but there is still that conjecture-that you had a part in the kidnaping and you know where the money is. If so, it was an egregious blunder to come to me. I'll get my share of the money, and you'll get your share of doom. Do you want to withdraw before I commit myself to this mad gamble? Do you want to leave?'
