The Topless Tulip Caper

Seventeen

FOR A LONG moment he just sat there looking at them. His eyes scanned the room carefully. I thought I saw the hint of a smile for a second, but then it was gone and his round face maintained a properly stern and serious look. He put his hands on top of the desk, selected a pipe, put it back in the rack, and drew a breath.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “I want to thank you all for coming. All but one of you are welcome in this house. That one is not welcome, but his presence is essential. One of you is a murderer. One of you is responsible for one hundred twenty-five deaths.”

There was a collective gasp at that figure but he went on without appearing to notice. “All but two of those deaths were the deaths of fish. The penalty which society attaches to ichthyicide is minimal. Malicious mischief, perhaps. Certainly a misdemeanor. The other two victims were human, however. One would be difficult to substantiate as homicide. While I am mortally certain that Andrew Mallard was murdered—”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Gregorio cut in. “If you’ve got any information on that you’ve been holding it out, and—”

“Mr. Gregorio.” Gregorio stopped in midsentence. “I have withheld nothing, sir. I remind you again that you are here by invitation.” He scanned the room again, then went on. “To continue. While I may be certain that Mr. Mallard was murdered, and while I could explain how the murder was committed, no jury would convict anyone for that murder. Indeed, no district attorney in his right mind would presume to bring charges. But the other murder, that of Miss Abramowicz, was unquestionably a case of premeditated homicide. The killer is in this room, and I intend to see him hang for it.”

He’d have a long wait. While Haig longs for a return of capital punishment, and thinks public hanging was a hell of a fine way to run a society, the bulk of contemporary opinion seems to be flowing in the other direction.

“The day before yesterday,” he said, “Miss Thelma Wolinski sought my assistance. An entire tank of young Scatophagies tetracanthus plus her breeder fish had died suddenly and of no apparent cause. Miss Wolinski is possessed of a scientific temperament. She had a chemical analysis of the aquarium water performed, and the laboratory certified that the water had been poisoned with strychnine. Miss Wolinski could not imagine why anyone would want to kill her generally inoffensive fish. She concluded that the crime was the work of a madman, that an attack upon her fish represented hostility toward her own person, and that she herself might consequently be in danger.”

“She should have called the police,” Seidenwall said.

Haig glared at him. “Indeed,” he said. “No doubt you would have rushed to investigate the poisoning of a tankful of fish. Miss Wolinski is no witling.” Seidenwall winced at the word. “She came to me. She could scarcely have made a wiser decision.”

That sounded a little pompous to me, but nobody’s hackles rose as far as I could tell. I looked at Tulip. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She looked beautiful, and quite spectacular, but then she always did.

“Of course I agreed to investigate. That was quite proper on my part, but it also precipitated a murder. That very evening Miss Mabel Abramowicz was murdered. Some of you may know her as Cherry Bounce. She was killed while performing at a nightclub. Your nightclub, Mr. Leemy.”

“Not my fault I run a decent place.”

“That is moot, and a non sequitur in the bargain. Miss Abramowicz was also poisoned, but not with strychnine. She was killed with curare, a lethal paralytic poison with which certain South American savages tip their arrows.”

Haig picked up his pipe again and took it apart. He looked at the two pieces, and for a moment I thought that was all he had and he was waiting for a miracle. We’d be out four grand and I wouldn’t get to write a book.

“It was instantly evident that the deaths of the fish and the death of Miss Abramowicz were related. It was furthermore a working hypothesis that the same person was responsible for both outrages. Finally, it seemed more than coincidence that Miss Abramowicz’s death followed so speedily upon Miss Wolinski’s engaging me to represent her interests. Once I was working on the case, Miss Abramowicz had to be disposed of as rapidly as possible. Had the time element not been of paramount importance, the murderer would not have had to take the great risk of committing his crime in full view of perhaps a hundred people.

“And it was an enormous risk, to be sure. But our murderer was very fortunate. While I have never met her, my associate Mr. Harrison assures me that Miss Abramowicz’s endowments were such as to make her the center of attention during her performance. Everyone watched her as her act neared its climax. No one saw—or, more accurately, no one paid attention to— her murderer.

“With one exception, I would submit. Andrew Mallard saw something. He may not have known what he saw. He was clearly not certain enough or self-assured enough to make any mention of his observations to the police. Whether this testifies to Mr. Mallard’s lethargy and reticence or to the inefficiency of police interrogation is beside the point In any event—”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Gregorio said.

“An excellent policy,” Haig murmured. “In any event, the murderer struck, the murder weapon was not recovered, and the murderer seemed to be in the clear.”

The projectile, I thought. Not the weapon.

“A surface examination would suggest that the murderer was irrational. Item: He poisons Miss Wolinski’s fish with strychnine. Item: He poisons Miss Abramowicz with curare. The two incidents cannot fail to be related, yet how are they linked in the mind of the murderer? I must admit that, after I learned of Mr. Mallard’s death, there was a moment when I entertained the hypothesis that the murderer was attempting to strike at Miss Wolinski by destroying everything associated with her—first her pets, then her roommate, finally a former lover. I dismissed this possibility almost at once. I returned to the fish. I decided to assume the killer was rational, and I asked myself why a rational killer would poison fish with strychnine.

“The answer was that he would not. If he wished to kill the fish and make it obvious that he had done so, he might have tipped over their aquarium and let them perish gasping upon the floor. If he wished to make the death look accidental he could have caused their demise in any of a dozen ways which would not have aroused any suspicion. Instead he chose a readily detectable poison without having any grounds for assuming that Miss Wolinski would bother to detect it via chemical analysis.

“The conclusion was obvious. The fish had been killed by mistake. The murderer did not put the strychnine into the aquarium.”

Tulip frowned. “Then who did?”

“Ah,” Haig said. He turned to her; a gentle smile on his round face. “I’m afraid you did, Miss Wolinski. Unwittingly, you poisoned your own fish.”

Tulip gaped at him. I looked around the room to check out the reactions of the audience. They ran the gamut from puzzlement to disinterest. Seidenwall looked as though he might drop off to sleep any minute now. Gregorio seemed to be enduring all of this, waiting for Haig either to make his point or wind up with egg on his face. I tried to find a suspect who indicated that he or she already knew how the strychnine got in the tank. I didn’t have a clue.

Haig opened a desk drawer and took out a paper bag that looked familiar. Gingerly he extracted the jar of wheat germ from it and peeled away the protective layers of paper toweling. He wrapped a towel around his hand and pushed the jar toward my side of the desk.

“This is a jar of wheat germ,” he said. “I have found it to be an excellent dietary supplement for fishes. I am told it is similarly useful for human beings. I have no grounds for confirming or disputing the latter. Mr. Henderson. Do you recognize this jar? You may examine it closely, but I urge you not to touch it.”

Henderson shrugged. “I don’t need a close look,” he said. “It’s Kretchmer, one of the standard brands. They sell it all over the place, supermarkets, everywhere. What about it?”

“Do they also sell it in health food emporia?”

“Sometimes.”

“I understand you run a chain of such establishments. Do your stores carry Kretchmer wheat germ?”

“I think so.”

“You don’t know for certain, Mr. Henderson?”

“As a matter of fact we do carry it. Why not? It’s a good brand, we move a lot of cases of it.”

“Do you recognize this particular jar, Mr. Henderson?”

“They’re all the same. If you’re asking did it come from my place, I couldn’t tell you one way or the other.”

“I could,” Haig said. “On the reverse of this jar there is a label. It says ‘Doctor Ecology’ and there is an address beneath the store name. That label would tend to suggest that this jar of wheat germ came from one of your stores.”

“Well, then it must have. What’s the point?”

Haig ignored the question. He picked up the bell and rang it, and Wong Fat came in carrying a two-quart goldfish bowl. There were a pair of inch-and-a-half common goldfish in the bow. Haig buys them from Aquarium Stock Company for $4.75 a hundred and feeds them to larger fish that have to have live fish as food. Wong put the bowl on the desk. I wondered if it was going to leave a ring.

His hand covered with a paper towel, Haig screwed the top off the jar. He reached into the jar with a little spoon he used to use to clean the crud out of his pipes back in the days when he was trying to smoke them. He spooned up a few grains of wheat germ and sprinkled them into the goldfish bow.

The fish swam around for a few seconds, not knowing they’d been fed. They weren’t enormously bright. Then they surfaced and began scoffing down the wheat germ.

“Now watch,” Haig said.

We all watched, and we didn’t have to watch for very long before both fish were floating belly-up on the surface. They did not look to be in perfect health.

“They are dead,” Haig said. “As dead as the Scatophagies tetracanthus. As dead as Miss Mabel Abramowicz. I have not had a chemical analysis run on the contents of this jar of wheat germ. It does seem reasonable to assume that the wheat germ is laced with strychnine. Miss Wolinski.”

“Yes?”

“How did this jar of wheat germ come into your possession?”

“Haskell gave it to me.”

Henderson’s eyes were halfway out of his head. Alfalfa sprouts or no, he looked as though a coronary occlusion was just around the comer. “Now wait a minute,” he said. “You just wait a goddamned minute now.”

“You deny having given this jar to Miss Wolinski?”

“I sure as hell deny putting strychnine in it. Maybe that’s the jar I gave her and maybe it isn’t. How the hell do I know?”

“You did give her a jar, however?”

“I gave her lots of things.”

“Indeed. You gave her a jar of wheat germ?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Have you any reason to assume this is other than the jar you gave her?”

“How the hell do I know?” Haig glared at him. “Okay,” he said. “It’s probably the same jar.”

Haig nodded, satisfied. “Miss Wolinski. Was Mr. Henderson in the habit of gifting you with health foods?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you do with them?”

Tulip lowered her eyes. “I didn’t do anything with them,” she said.

“You didn’t eat them?”

“No.” She shrugged, and when you’re built like Tulip a shrug is a hell of a gesture. “I know that kind of food is supposed to be good for you,” she said, “but I just don’t like it I like things like hamburgers and french fries and beer, things like that.”

“If you would just try them—” Henderson began.

“Mr. Henderson. Had Miss Wolinski tried the wheat germ she would be dead.” Henderson shut up. “Miss Wolinski,” Haig went on pleasantly. “You did nothing with the health foods? You merely put them aside?”

“Well, I used to feed the wheat germ to the fish some of the time. It’s a good conditioner for breeding.”

“It is indeed. I employ it myself. What else became of the health foods Mr. Henderson was considerate enough to give to you?”

“Sometimes Cherry ate them.”

“Indeed,” Haig said. He got to his feet. “At this point things begin to clarify themselves. The strychnine was introduced into the aquarium not by the murderer but by Miss Wolinski herself. And it was added to the wheat germ not in an attempt to kill fish but in an attempt to kill Miss Abramowicz. Oh, sit down, Mr. Henderson. Do sit down. I am not accusing you of presenting Miss Wolinski with poisoned wheat germ. You are neither that stupid nor that clever. The strychnine was added to the wheat germ after it had come into Miss Wolinski’s possession, added by someone who knew that Miss Abramowicz rather than Miss Wolinski was likely to ingest it. Sit down!”

Haskell Henderson sat down. I decided Haig was wrong on one point. Old Haskell was stupid enough to do almost anything. Anybody who would discontinue making love to Althea simply because she had less than the usual number of breasts didn’t have all that much going for him in the brains department.

Haig turned to Tulip once more. “Miss Wolinski” he said. “I first made your acquaintance approximately forty-eight hours ago. They have been eventful hours, to be sure. When did you decide to consult me?”

“Tuesday. The day after I got the lab report. That was when I decided, and then I thought it over for a while, and then I came here.”

“Who knew of your decision?”

“Nobody.”

“No one at all?”

“I didn’t tell anyone after I saw you. You told me not to. Oh, wait a minute. I said something to Cherry that morning, that I was going to see you and you would find out how it happened.”

“So you told Miss Abramowicz. And she might have told anyone.”

“Cherry wasn’t very good at keeping things to herself.”

“She may have told anyone at all,” Haig went on. “What we do know for certain is that she told her murderer. He realized that I would rapidly determine that the poisoning of the scats constituted a misdirected attempt at Miss Abramowicz’s life. He had to act quickly.”

Haig cleared his throat and let his eyes take a tour of the audience. I don’t know what he was looking for so I don’t know whether or not he found it. What I saw was Rita Cubbage picking at a cuticle, Buddy Lippa scratching his head, Gus Leemy frowning, Vincent Gregorio picking lint off his lapel, Simon Barckover glancing at his watch, Maeve O’Connor licking her lower lip, Glenn Flatt cracking his knuckles, Jan Remo rubbing her temples with her fingertips, Wallace Seidenwall yawning, and Leonard Danzig sitting in perfect repose, giving Leo Haig every bit of his attention.

Whatever Haig was looking for and whether he found it or not, he evidently decided that the Rasboras were more interesting to look at than the eleven of them. He swung his chair around and stared into the fish tank, presenting his audience with a great view of the back of his head.

That’s it, I thought. That’s all he’s got. I decided it was still pretty good, better than the police had managed to come up with, but why blow it by putting the show together prematurely? Unless he expected one of them to crack, but could you count on that happening? I decided you couldn’t.

Haig swiveled his chair around again. “Mr. Flatt,” he said. “Mr. Glenn Flatt.”

There was a lot of head-turning as our customers tried to figure out which of them was Glenn Flatt. They finally took a cue from Haig and looked where he was looking, and the boyish Ivy Leaguer frowned back at Haig.

“Yes, I was hoping you’d get around to me,” Flatt said. “I came here to help Tulip. I used to be married to her and we’re still good friends and you said you were working for her. I didn’t know I was going to be part of a carnival.” He stood up. “I told you I had work to do. I came here as a favor to Tulip but this is ridiculous. I’m leaving.”

“You are not. You will stay where you are. If you attempt to leave Mr. Harrison will knock you down and return you to your chair. Sit down, Mr. Flatt.”

Flatt sat down, which took a load off my mind, believe me. If you think I was all that confident of my ability to knock him down you don’t know me very well.

“Mr. Flatt. You came here because last evening I told you that I knew you were at Treasure Chest on the evening when Miss Abramowicz was murdered. That is why you are present this afternoon. When I told you I had a witness placing you at the scene you elected to cooperate.”

“Where’d you get a witness?” Gregorio wanted to know. “And why did you hold that out?”

Haig made a face. “I had no witness,” he said. “I merely said I had one.”

“You were lying,” Flatt said. It was a pretty dumb thing to say, and he sounded pretty dumb saying it.

“You might put it that way,” Haig allowed. “Or you might say that I was bluffing. I trust you’re conversant with the term, Mr. Flatt. You gamble quite a great deal, do you not?”

“Sometimes I’ll make a bet on a horse.”

“Indeed. Or on an athletic event, or on an election, or on the turn of a card. Would you say you are a compulsive gambler, Mr. Flatt?”

“Not in a million years,” Flatt said. He looked somewhat less boyish now. “I like a little action, that’s all. So I gamble. There’s no law against it.”

“Tommyrot. There are innumerable laws against various forms of gambling. The fact that such statutes are absurd does not wipe them from the criminal code. But we are not assembled here to convict you of gambling, Mr. Flatt. Rest assured of that.”

“Look, I don’t—”

Haig put his pipe back together again and tapped the bowl on the top of the desk. “I would be inclined to label you a compulsive gambler,” he said. “The evidence seems clear enough. Your marriage to my client dissolved largely because you kept going into debt as a result of your gambling. Your debts have increased considerably over the years. A friend of mine was in a position to make inquiries among various bookmakers on Long Island. You are well known to several of them. You gamble heavily. You almost invariably lose.”

“I don’t do so badly.”

“You do pay your debts,” Haig said. “According to my information, in the past four months you paid an amount to bookmakers slightly in excess of your salary during the same period.”

“That’s ridiculous. And you couldn’t possibly prove it.”

“I don’t have to. I told you I don’t intend to convict you of gambling. And your gambling doesn’t interfere with your ability to earn a livelihood, does it? You continue to be gainfully employed in a responsible position.”

Ratt eyed him warily. “So?”

“As a pharmaceutical chemist, I understand.”

“That’s right.”

“A position which would give you ready access to any number of interesting compounds. Such as strychnine and curare, to cite two examples.”

“Now wait a goddamned minute—”

“Mr. Flatt, you’re much better off if you keep your mouth shut. Take my word for it. You have access to such compounds and it would be puerile of you to deny it. That crossed my mind when first I learned of your occupation. Various poisons are readily obtainable. Strychnine is not. Neither is curare. You and I have not met before, Mr. Flatt, and we did not speak to one another until last evening, but you have been an important suspect since I first learned how the fish had died.” He said all this in a calm conversational tone. Then abruptly he raised his voice to as close as he could come to a bellow. “Why were you at Treasure Chest the night before last?”

“You can’t prove I was there.”

“Phooey. You’ve already admitted you were there. Have the courage of your errors, Mr. Flatt. Why were you there?”

Flatt bought himself a couple of seconds by glancing to either side of himself. If he was looking for support he picked the wrong place to look for it. Everybody seemed to want to hear the answer to the question

“I wasn’t there when Cherry was killed,” he said. “I left before her act started, I was miles away when she was killed. And I can prove it.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Haig said. “You did not kill Miss Abramowicz.”

“But—”

“Nor have you answered the question. Why did you go to that night club that evening?”

He shrugged. “No particular reason. I’m sorry if I was out of line but I thought you were accusing me of murder.” He managed a boyish grin. “It certainly sounded that way for a while. For a little guy, you certainly know how to boss people around.”

“You still haven’t answered my question, Mr. Flatt.”

“Oh, hell. Look, I wanted a couple of drinks. Why did I pick a topless club? Jesus, you know the answer to that one. Or maybe you don’t, who knows with you? I like to look at girls. That’s all there is to it I used to be married to Tulip and we’re still friends so I picked that club rather than one of the others. My luck I had to be there on that particular night. But, you know, I go there a lot. Maybe not a lot but I’ll drop in now and then.”

“Interesting,” Haig said. “Mr. Lippa? Can you confirm that?”

Buddy Lippa nodded. “I seen him before,” he said. “I dint make him at first but I seen him. Comes in once, twice a week, sits at the bar. Never stays any length of time. And he’s right about leaving before Cherry got the needle. I can’t swear to the time but I’d guess he came in like nine-thirty and left by ten o’clock. That’s not on the dot but it’s close.”

“Absolutely right,” Flatt said. “I was out of there by ten. And I was in a bar on Long Island by midnight, and I can prove that with no trouble whatsoever.”

“You needn’t,” Haig said. “So you’ve been in the habit of patronizing Treasure Chest once or twice a week. That’s interesting.”

Flatt didn’t say anything.

“There are topless clubs on Long Island, are there not? And are they not more conveniently located, since you both live and work there?”

“Sometimes I’m in New York on business.”

“Precisely my point. I submit that your visits to Treasure Chest are a business matter.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Nonsense,” Haig said. “You know precisely what I am talking about. Five months ago Miss Wolinski went to work at Treasure Chest. You have kept in contact with her and visited the dub, perhaps out of curiosity. You needed money, you have always needed money, your gambling habit is such that you shall always need money. And you met someone at Treasure Chest who showed you a way to make all the money that you needed.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“That’s not inconceivable. It is, however, irrelevant to the present discussion. You met someone at Treasure Chest, someone who was regularly present there during the ensuing months. You got into conversation. You mentioned your occupation, and your new acquaintance saw possibilities for profit. You had access, I have mentioned earlier, to poisonous compounds. There is, thanks be to God, no enormous profit at present in such compounds. But you also had access to quantities of a subtler, slower form of poison. As a pharmaceutical chemist, Mr. Flatt, you had access to drugs.”

I looked at Flatt. He was keeping a stiff upper lip but the effort was showing. I glanced at Gregorio and saw him nodding thoughtfully. Leonard Danzig had a wary look in his eyes. Gus Leemy was frowning.

“You stole drugs from your employers,” Haig was saying. “Perhaps you produced others. I understand lysergic acid can be readily synthesized by anyone with a middling knowledge of chemistry. With your background and your laboratory facilities it would be child’s play. You brought consignments of drugs to New York, once or twice a week, and you delivered them to your associate at Treasure Chest—”

“That’s horseshit.” Gus Leemy was leaning forward, the light glinting off the top of his head. “I run that place clean. It’s not a front for nothing at all. It’s a decent operation.”

Gregorio said, “There’s drugs coming out of there, Gus. Been going on for months, the rumbles we get.”

“You’re crazy.” He glanced at Danzig, then averted his eyes quickly as if remembering that he and Danzig were supposed to be pretending they didn’t know each other. Since the two of them gave each other an alibi for Cherry’s murder I didn’t quite grasp the logic of this, but they could play it whatever way they wanted. “I run that place clean,” Leemy said. “I don’t fuck with drugs, I never did and I never will.”

“I never accused you, sir.” Haig tapped his pipe on the desk again, then frowned suddenly at the bowl with the two dead goldfish in it. He rang the bell. I thought that would probably throw Wong, who wouldn’t know what to come in with, but instead Wong came in empty-handed. Haig nodded at the bowl and Wong removed it. “I never accused you, Mr. Leemy,” Haig went on. “If you stand accused of anything it is incompetence. Your nightclub served as a focal point for the dissemination of drugs, but this occurred without your knowledge. While that does not make you a particularly efficient manager, neither does it make you a criminal. It certainly does not make you a murderer.” Haig stroked his beard. “Or you, Mr. Danzig. You or Mr. Leemy might well have killed the person selling drugs out of the Treasure Chest, or issued an order that the person be killed, but neither of you would have had any reason to do away with Miss Abramowicz.”

Danzig didn’t exactly glower but his face hardened a little. “Your reasoning is interesting,” he said. “But I’m not sure how my name got in that last sentence. I was going out with Cherry, that’s all. That’s the only reason I’m here.”

“Oh, come off it, Danzig,” Gregorio said. He leaned forward and put a hand on Danzig’s shoulder. “Everybody knows Leemy just fronts for you. And nobody much gives a shit. The boys from the State Liquor Authority might be unhappy but they can’t prove anything, and as far as we’re concerned we don’t care.”

Danzig smiled. “I have no connection with Treasure Chest. Mr. Leemy is a friend.”

“Sure, if that’s the way you want it.”

“That’s what the record should show,” Danzig said.

All of this was fascinating, but none of it had much to do with who killed Cherry and I was getting impatient. The suspense was fairly thick in the room. I looked at all of them, and the most agitated one was Glenn Flatt, although he wasn’t approaching hysteria yet. He should have been the coolest; I mean, he presumably knew who his contact was, and thus he knew who committed the murder.

“I could sue you,” Flatt said.

“Oh, come now,” Haig said. “You’re going to go to jail at the very least for selling illegal drugs and as accessory to the fact of murder in the first degree. Do you really think you could find a lawyer to represent you in a libel action? I somehow doubt it.”

“You can’t prove any of this.”

Haig grunted. “I will tell you something,” he said. “There is nothing much simpler than proving something one already knows to be true. The proof generally makes itself available in relatively short order. No, Mr. Flatt, your position is hopeless. You have been selling drugs through a confederate. And what do we know about this accomplice of yours?” He ticked off the points on his fingers. “Your accomplice is regularly to be found at Treasure Chest, either as an employee or an habitual hanger-on. There are several here in this room who fit that description. Miss Wolinski, for one. Mr. Danzig. Mr. Leemy. Mr. Barckover. Miss Remo. Miss Cubbage. Mr. Henderson frequents Treasure Chest often, but if he were selling drugs he would no doubt do so through the medium of one or another of his stores, and—”

“Drugs!” Haskell was outraged. “Me sell drugs? You have to be out of your mind. Drugs are a death trip.”

“Indeed. We have already excluded you, Mr. Henderson, so you’ve no need to offer comments. To continue. Miss O’Connor has not been regularly employed at Treasure Chest, so she too may be ruled out. Mr. Leemy and Mr. Danzig may also be excused; they quite clearly did not know what was going on in the establishment. I would further exclude Mr. Lippa because I find the whole nature of this operation incompatible with my impressions of the man.”

“Does that mean I’m in or out?” Buddy wanted to know, and Haig nodded and said that was exactly his point, and that Buddy was in the clear.

“Now let us reconstruct the day of the crime. Mr. Flatt’s accomplice in the drug operation—let us call him X, as a sop to tradition—has learned directly or indirectly from Miss Abramowicz that I have been hired to investigate the death of the fish. X realizes that my participation will quickly establish that an attempt has been made on Miss Abramowicz’s life and that the fish were unintentional victims. When this became known, Miss Abramowicz would realize that she possesses some information which makes her dangerous to X, and this information would at once be brought to my attention. That, to be sure, was the original motive for disposing of Miss Abramowicz. She somehow learned enough about the drug operation to make her dangerous, especially in view of the fact that she seems to have been rather scatterbrained and loose-tongued. One hesitates to speak thus of the dead, but the fact appears to be beyond dispute.

“Thus X must act, and act quickly. So X contacts Mr. Flatt—yes, sir, it happened just that way, and you needn’t attempt to deny it by shaking your head. X contacted you, Mr. Flatt, and demanded a contact poison. Whether curare was specified or not I have no idea. It hardly matters. You had already supplied strychnine to X, although I cannot state with certainty that you knew how it was to be employed. It is often used as an adulterant in drugs to boost their potency and you might well have furnished it without knowing you were to be the instrument in a homicide. But if there is any other use for curare I am unaware of it. You knew Miss Abramowicz was to be killed, sir. You brought the curare that night with that specific purpose in mind. That was why you took pains to leave the club early, why you established an alibi in Long Island. You are a knowing accessory to murder, sir.”

Flatt stared at him, and Haig stared back, and Flatt couldn’t take it. He looked down at his hands.

“You brought the curare,” Haig went on. “You delivered it to X. You left. And X waited, because the last thing X wanted was to murder Miss Abramowicz on the premises of the nightclub. Ideally X would have waited until the evening had come to a close. X and Miss Abramowicz would have left together, and X would have managed to perform the deed in private.

“This plan was spiked when Mr. Harrison made an appearance at the club. X learned his identity, realized he was my associate, and recognized that there would be no opportunity to go off with Miss Abramowicz and deal with her as planned. Mr. Harrison would instead be interrogating Miss Abramowicz immediately after she finished her performance, at which time her knowledge might well be passed on to him. And this was something X was wholly unprepared to leave to chance.

“And so X waited, waited until the last minute. Waited until Miss Abramowicz was at the very conclusion of her act, and then injected curare into her bloodstream and killed her.”

I saw it all again in slow motion. The finale of the act, Cherry shaking her breasts over the edge of the stage, straightening up, doing her spread, going coyly prim, then trying so desperately to reach her breast—

“When we think of curare,” Haig said, “we think of savages in the jungle. We think of blow darts, we think of arrows tipped with the deadly elixir. And when we consider this crime, we assume that X must have employed such a device, that some projectile served to carry curare from X’s hand to Miss Abramowicz’s breast. No projectile remained stuck in the breast in question; hence we assume that the dart or arrow or whatever struck the breast, pierced the skin, and then fell away. Mr. Harrison was the first person to leap onto the stage after Miss Abramowicz fell. He had the presence of mind, after determining there was no office he could perform for the victim, to make a quick search for the projectile. And he—”

“And he put it in his pocket.” This from my old friend Wallace Seidenwall. “I knew Harrison had it. I been saying so all along, and I been saying—”

“You have been saying far too much, sir. Mr. Harrison did not find the projectile. Neither did the police, who may be presumed to have subjected the premises to an exhaustive search. Dismissing such preposterous theories as an arrow with an elastic band tied to it—and I trust we can dismiss such rot out of hand—it is quite inconceivable that X could have retrieved the projectile. Sherlock Holmes established the principle beyond doubt, and I reiterate it here and now: When all impossibilities have been eliminated, that which remains is all that is possible. There was no projectile.”

I suppose everybody was supposed to gasp when he said this. That’s not what happened. Instead everybody just sat there staring. Maybe they had trouble following what he’d just said. Maybe they were confused about the difference between a weapon and a projectile. I’d already had a lesson in that department so I managed to stay on top of things, and at that moment I finally figured out who X was. Instead of feeling brilliant I sat there wondering how it had taken me so long.

“There was no projectile,” Haig said again. “Miss Abramowicz was stabbed with some sort of pin. A hair pin, a hat pin, it scarcely matters. The pin was pressed into her breast and withdrawn. Then—”

“Wait.” It was Gregorio. “Unless I’m off-base, she was all alone on that stage. How did someone stick a pin in her breast without anyone seeing it?”

“Because she was bending over the edge of the stage. She did this at the conclusion of every performance, leaning forward almost parallel to the floor with her breasts suspended over the stage apron. This was X’s genius—it would have been simpler by far to inflict a wound in her foot, for example, but by waiting for the one perfect moment X could guarantee that everyone would assume that a nonexistent projectile had been employed.”

I said, “How come she didn’t feel anything? She went right ahead and got up and danced around for a minute, and then there was suddenly blood on her breast and she started to crumble.”

“Curare is not instantaneous. Poisons borne by the bloodstream need time to reach the heart. And small puncture wounds rarely begin bleeding immediately. Indeed they often fail to bleed at all. As for her failure to react, she was caught up in an intense dance routine. She might have been too involved to feel a pinprick. She might have assumed it was an insect bite and ignored it. For that matter, she might not have felt it at all. She had had silicone implants. The skin of her breasts was thus stretched to accommodate their enlargement, the nerve endings consequently far apart. Some nerves may even have been severed when the silicone was implanted.”

Haig shrugged. “But it hardly matters. Once one knows how the murder was committed, the identity of X is instantly obvious. Indeed it has been obvious to me for some time that only one person was ideally situated to commit the murder. That same person was also ideally situated to receive consignments of drugs from Mr. Flatt and dispense them in the normal course of occupational routine.

“Miss Remo. I suggest you keep your hands in plain sight and avoid sudden movements. Mr. Wong Fat has you within line of sight. He could plant his cleaver in your head before you could get your purse open. Yes, keep your hands right where they are, Miss Remo. Mr. Seidenwall, I trust you thought to bring a pair of handcuffs? I suggest you put them on Miss Remo. She is rather more dangerous than she looks.”