“Of course.”
“Was there anyone in the apartment other than you four — you, your husband, your nephew, and Mrs. Kremp?”
“No. No one. The maid was away. My husband and I were going to the country for the weekend.”
“After Mrs. Kremp put the capsules in the box, and before your nephew came from the shower to dress — did you enter your nephew’s room during that period?”
“No. I didn’t enter it at all.”
“Did you, Mr. Rackell?”
“I did not.” He sounded as mournful as he looked.
Wolfe’s eyes went left to right, from Carol Berk at one end to Leddegard at the other. “Then we have Arthur Rackell bathed and dressed, the pillbox in his pocket. The police are not confiding in me, but I read newspapers. Leaving the apartment, he went down in the elevator and out to the sidewalk, and the doorman got a taxi for him. He was alone in the taxi, and it took him straight to the restaurant. The capsules left in the bottle have been examined and had not been tampered with. There we are. Are you prepared to impeach Mrs. Kremp, or Mr. or Mrs. Rackell? Can you support the assumption that one of them murdered Arthur Rackell?”
“It’s not inconceivable,” Delia Devlin murmured.
“No,” Wolfe conceded. “Nor is it inconceivable that he chose that moment and method to kill himself, nor even that a capsule of poison got into the bottle by accident. But I exclude them as too improbable for consideration, and so will everyone else, including the police. The inquiring mind is rarely blessed with a certainty; it must make shift with assumptions; and I am assuming, on the evidence, that when Arthur arrived at the restaurant the capsules in the box in his pocket were innocent. I invite you to challenge it. If you can’t the substitution was made at the restaurant, and you see how you stand. The police are after you, and so am I. One of you? Or all of you? I intend to find out.”