“So. As for Berin and Vukcic, if I were you I would pigeonhole them for the present. Or at least-I offer a suggestion: get the slips, the tasting reports, from Mr. Servan-”
“I have them.”
“Good. Compare them with the correct list, which you also got from Mr. Servan no doubt-”
“He didn’t have it. It was in Laszio’s pocket.”
“Very well. Compare each list with it, and see how nearly each taster was correct.”
Sheriff Pettigrew snorted. Tolman asked dryly, “You call that being helpful, do you?”
“I do. I am already-by the way!” Wolfe straightened a little. “If you have the correct list there-the one you took from Laszio’s pocket-do you mind if I look at it a moment?”
Tolman, with his brows up, shuffled through the papers before him, extracted one, handed it to me, and I passed it to Wolfe. Wolfe looked at it with his forehead wrinkled, and exclaimed, “Good God!” He looked at it again, and turning to me, shaking the paper in his hand. “Archie. Coyne was right! Number 3 was shallots!”
Tolman asked sarcastically, “Comedy relief? Much obliged for
I grinned at him. “Comedy hell, he won’t sleep for a week, he guessed wrong.”
Wolfe reproved me: “It was not a guess. It was a deliberate conclusion, and it was wrong.” He handed me the paper. “Pardon me, Mr. Tolman, I’ve had a blow. Actually. I wouldn’t expect you to appreciate it. As I was saying, I am already more than skeptical regarding Berin and Vukcic. I have known Mr. Vukcic all my life. I can conceive of his stabbing a man, under hypothetical conditions, but I am sure that if he did you wouldn’t find the knife in the man’s back. I don’t know Mr. Berin well, but I saw him at close range and heard him speak less than a minute after he left the dining room last night, and I would stake something that he wasn’t fresh from the commission of a cowardly murder. He had but a moment before sunk a knife in Mr. Laszio’s back, and I detected no residue of that experience in his posture, his hands, his eyes, his voice? I don’t believe it.”
“And about comparing these lists-”
“I’m coming to that. I take it that Mr. Servan has described the nature of that test to you-each sauce lacking one or another of the seasonings. We were permitted but one taste from each dish-only one! Have you any conception of the delicacy and sensitivity required? It took the highest degree of concentration and receptivity of stimuli. To detect a single false note in one of the wood winds in a symphonic passage by full orchestra would be the same. So, compare those lists. If you find that Berin and Vukcic were substantially correct-say seven or eight out of nine-they are eliminated. Even six. No man about to kill another, or just having done so, could possibly control his nervous system sufficiently to perform such a feat. I assure you this is not comedy.”
Tolman nodded. “All right, I’ll compare them.”
“It would be instructive to do so now.”
“I’ll attend to it. Any other suggestions?”
“No.” Wolfe got his hands on the chair arms, pulled his feet back, braced, and arose. “The ten minutes are up.” He did his little bow. “I offer you again, gentlemen, my sympathy and best wishes.”
The sheriff said, “I understand you’re sleepin’ in Upshur. Of course you realize you’re free to go anywhere you want to around the grounds here.”
“Thank you, sir.” Wolfe sounded bitter. “Come, Archie.”
Not to crowd the path, I let him precede me among the greenery back to Upshur Pavilion. We didn’t go through darkness, but through the twilight of dawn, and there were so many birds singing you couldn’t help noticing it. In the main hall of the pavilion the lights were turned on, and a couple of state cops were sitting there. Wolfe passed them without a glance.
I went to his room with him to make sure that everything was jake. The bed had been turned down, and the colored rugs and things made it bright and pleasant, and the room was big and classy enough to make it worth at least half of the twenty bucks a day they charged for it, but Wolfe frowned around as if it had been a pigpen.
I inquired, “Can I help on the disrobing?”
“No.”
“Shall I bring a pitcher of water from the bathroom?”
“I can walk. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, boss.” I went.
His voice halted me at the door. “Archie. This Mr. Laszio seems to have had unpleasant characteristics. Do you suppose there is any chance he deliberately made that list incorrect, to disconcert his colleagues-and me?”
“Huh-uh. Not the faintest. Professional ethics, you know. Of course I’m sorry you got so many wrong-”
“Two! Shallots and chives! Leave me! Get out!”
He sure was one happy detective that night.
5
