Mrs. Benjamin Rackell, her lips tighter than ever, was in the red leather chair at the end of Wolfe’s desk.
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 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 slight-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.”