"Nobody would expect you to," Simon encouraged him liberally. "After all, you're only detectives, and that isn't your job. If this had been a night club where the deceased was serving drinks after hours it would have been quite a different matter. But making allowances for that—"
"What would you see?"
Simon pointed.
"There's whisky and a siphon on that small table. And one glass with what looks like whisky in it. Just one. On the floor there's another glass, surrounded by a certain amount of dampness. What happens when a bloke's dishing up a round of drinks? Normally he pours out the whisky into however many glasses he's using. Then he squirts the soda into the glass of the first victim, tells him to say when, hands him his dose of medicine and goes on to the next. And so on."
"So you think there was only one other man here, and the murderer hit him while he was filling the first glass?"
"I didn't say so," responded the Saint airily. "I didn't say 'man', in the first place. It might have been some of these hairy Olympic female champions — some of 'em sling a pretty hefty hammer, I believe. And all the rest of them may have been teetotallers, so they wouldn't be getting a drink."
Teal wedged his gum into a hollow tooth and held it there heroically.
"All the same," he persisted, "you do think it looks as if he, or she, or they, were on fairly friendly terms with…" He hesitated.
"With Comrade Ingleston?" Simon prompted him kindly.
"How did you know that?"