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visibly wrong with Delia Devlin, except her ears were too big.
Next to her was a celebrity--though of course they were all celebrities for the time being, you might say ex officio. Henry Jameson Heath, now crowding fifty, had inherited money in his youth, quite a pile, but very few people in his financial bracket were speaking to him. There was no telling whether he had contributed dough to the Communist party or cause, or if so how much, but there was no secret about his being one of the chief providers and collectors of bail for the Commies who had been indicted. He had recently been indicted too, for contempt of Congress, and was probably headed for a modest stretch. He wore an old seersucker suit that was too small for him, had a round pudgy face, and couldn't look at you without staring.
Beyond Heath, at the end of the arc, was Carol Berk, the only one toward whom I had a personal attitude worth mentioning. Whenever we have a flock of guests I handle the seating, and if there is one who seems worthy of study I put her in the chair nearest mine. I had done so with this Carol Berk, but while I was in the hall admitting Leddegard, who had come last, she had switched on me, and I resented it. I felt that she deserved attention. Checking on her, along with the others, that afternoon with Lon Cohen of die Gazette, I had learned that she was supposed to be free-lancing as a TV contact specialist but no one actually claimed her, that she had a reputation as an extremely fast mover, and that there were six different versions of why she had left Hollywood three years ago. Added to diat was the question whether it was a pleasure to look at her or not. In cases where it's a quick no, the big majority, or a quick yes, the small minority, that settles it and what the hell; but the borderline numbers take application and sound judgment. I had listed Carol Berk as one when, crossing the doorsill, she had darted a sidewise glance at me with brown eyes that were dead dull from the front. Now, in the chair she had changed to, she was a good five paces away.
Mrs. Benjamin Rackell, her lips tighter than ever, was in the red leather chair at the end of Wolfe's desk.
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Wolfe's gaze swept the arc. 'I won't thank you for coming,' he rumbled at them, 'because it would be impertinent. You are here at the request of Mr. and Mrs. Rackell. Whether you came to oblige them or because you thought it unwise not to is immaterial.'
Also, it seemed to me, it was close to immaterial whether they were there or not. Apparently, since he had sent me to Foley Square and Homicide to clear, Wolfe was proceeding on the Rackell theory that Arthur had got it because a Commie or Commies had discovered that he was an FBI plant. But that theory had not been published, and Wolfe couldn't blurt it out. You don't disclose the identity of FBI undercover men, even dead ones, if you make your living as a private detective and want to keep your license. And if by any chance Arthur had fed his aunt one with a worm in it, if he had actually had no more connection with the FBI than me with the DAR--no, that was one to steer clear of.
So not only could Wolfe not come to the point, he couldn't even let out a hint of what the point was. How could he talk at all?
He talked. 'I don't know,' he said, 'whether the police have made it clear to you how you stand. They don't like it that I'm taking a hand in this. The entrance to my house has been under surveillance since this morning, when they learned that Mr. and Mrs. Rackell had consulted me. One or more of you were probably followed here this evening. But Mr. Rackell may properly hire me, I may properly work for him, and you may properly give me information if you feel like it.'
'We don't know whether we do or not.' Leddegard shifted in his chair, stretching his lanky legs. 'At least I don't. I came as a courtesy to people in bereavement.'
'It is appreciated,' Wolfe assured him. 'Now for how you stand. I talked with Mr. and Mrs. Rackell yesterday, and with Mrs. Rackell again this afternoon. It is characteristic of the newspapers to focus attention on you five people; it's obvious and dramatic, and, after all, you were there when Arthur
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Rackell swallowed poison and died. But beyond the obvious, why you? Have the police been candid?'
'That's a damn silly question,' Heath declared. He had a flat but aggressive baritone. 'The police are never candid.'
'I knew a candid cop once,' Fifi Goheen said helpfully.
'It seems to me,' Carol Berk told Wolfe, 'that you're being dramatic too, getting us down here. It would have taken a sleight-of-hand artist to get the pillbox from his pocket and switch a capsule and put it back, without being seen. And while the box was on the table it was right under our eyes.'
Wolfe grunted. 'You were all staring at it? For twelve minutes straight?'
'She didn't say we were staring at it,' Leddegard blurted offensively.
'Pfui.' Wolfe was disgusted. 'A lummox could have managed it. Reaching for something?a roll, a cocktail glassdropping the hand onto the box, checking glances while withdrawing the hand, changing capsules beneath the table, returning the box with another casual unnoticeable gesture. I would undertake it myself with thin inducement, and I'm not Houdini.'
'Tell me something,' Leddegard demanded. 'I may be thick, but why did it have to be done at the restaurant? Why not before?'
Wolfe nodded. 'That's not excluded, certainly. You five people were not the only ones intimate enough with Arthur Rackell to know about his pink vitamin capsules and that he took three a day, one before each meal. Nor did you have a monopoly of opportunity. However?' His glance went left. 'Mrs. Rackell, will you repeat what you told me this afternoon? About Saturday evening?'
She had been keeping her eyes at Wolfe but now moved her head to take the others in. Judging from her expression as she went down the line, apparently she was convinced not that one of them was a Commie and a murderer, but that they all were?excluding her husband, of course.
She returned to Wolfe. 'My husband and Arthur had spent the afternoon getting an important shipment released, 16
1 got home a little before six. They went to their rooms to a shower and change. While Arthur was in the shower cook and housekeeper, Mrs. Kremp, went to his room to 'things out for him, shirt and socks and underwear--she's that; she's been doing it for years. The articles he had from his pockets were on the bureau, and she looked in pillbox and saw it was empty, and she got three capsules the bottle in a drawer--it held a
