“Now, Pauline,” Rackell protested. “I argued with him some.” He looked at Wolfe. “I didn’t entreat him because I didn’t think I had a right to. I don’t believe in entreating people about their convictions. I was paying him a salary and I didn’t want him to think he had to—” The importer fluttered a hand. “I liked Arthur, and he was my brother’s son.”
“In any case,” Wolfe went on brusquely, still at the wife, “he did not change. He stubbornly adhered to the Communist position. He applauded the Communist attack in Korea and denounced the action of the United Nations. You finally found it insufferable and gave him an ultimatum: either he would abandon his outrageous—”
“Not an ultimatum,” Mrs. Rackell corrected. “My husband refused to permit it. I merely—”
Wolfe outspoke her. “At least you made it plain that you had had enough and he was no longer welcome in your home. You must have made it fairly strong, since he was moved to disclose an extremely tight secret: that he had been persuaded by the FBI, back in nineteen forty-eight, to join the Communist party for the purpose of espionage. No easy admonition would have dragged that out of him, surely.”
“I didn’t say it was easy. I told him—” She stopped, and the thin lips really did tighten. She relaxed them enough to let words out. “I think he thought he would lose his job, and he was well paid. Much more than he earned, the amount of work he did.”
Wolfe nodded. “Anyhow, he told you his secret, and you promised to keep it, becoming a confederate. Privately admiring him, with others you had to pretend to maintain your condemnation. You told your husband and no one else. That was about a week ago, you say?”
“Yes.”
“And Saturday evening, three days ago, your nephew was murdered. Now to that. You have added little to what the papers have carried, but let’s see. He left the apartment, your home, and took a taxi to Chezar’s restaurant, where he had a dinner engagement He had invited three women and two men to dine with him, and they were all there when he arrived, in the bar. When your nephew came they went with him to the table he had reserved and had cocktails. He took a small metal box from—”
“Gold.”
“Gold is a metal, madam. He took it from a pocket, his side coat pocket, put it on the table, and left it there while he conferred with the waiter. There was conversation. When plates and rolls and butter were brought, the pillbox got pushed around. It was on the table altogether some ten or twelve minutes. When hors d’oeuvres were served, your nephew started to eat, remembered the pillbox, found it behind the basket of rolls, got from it a vitamin capsule, swallowed the capsule with a sip of water, and began on his hors d’oeuvres. Six or seven minutes later he suddenly cried out, sprang to his feet, overturning his chair, made convulsive gestures, became rigid, collapsed and crumpled to the floor, and died. A doctor arrived shortly, but he was already dead. It has been found that two other capsules in the metal box, similar in appearance to the one he took, contained what they were supposed to and were harmless; but your nephew had swallowed potassium cyanide. He was murdered by replacing a vitamin capsule with a capsule filled with poison.”