They didn’t.
“Then, without evidence, it is idiotic to assume that he drugged the drinks. The alternative, supposing that the two events were connected, is the reverse — that someone drugged the drinks and Ferrone knew or suspected it and was going to expose him, and was killed. That is how I see it. Call him X. X could have—”
“To hell with X,” Kinney blurted. “Name him!”
“Presently. X could have put the drugged drinks in the cooler any time during the late morning, as opportunity offered. What led Ferrone to suspect him of skulduggery may not be known, but conjecture offers a wide choice. Ferrone’s suspicion may have been only superficial, but to X any suspicion whatever was a mortal menace, knowing as he did what was going to happen on the ball field. When Ferrone questioned him he had to act. The two were of course in this room together, at the time the rest of you were leaving the clubroom for the field or shortly after. X was, as so many have been, the victim of progressive exigency. At first he needed only money, and to get it he stooped to scoundrelism; but it betrayed him into needing the life of a fellow man.”
“Cut the rhetoric,” Chisholm snapped. “Name him.”
Wolfe nodded. “Naming him is easy. But it is pointless to name him, and may even expose me to an action for slander, unless I so expound it as to enlist your help. As I said, I have no evidence. All I have is a fact about one of you, a fact known to all of you and to the police, which seems to me to point to guilt, but I admit that other interpretations are conceivable. You are better judges of that than I am, and I’m going to present it for your consideration. How can I best do that?”
He aimed his gaze at Baker and Prentiss, who were perched on a desk, raised a hand slowly, and scratched the tip of his nose. His eyes moved to pin Doc Soffer. His head jerked to the left to focus on Chisholm, and then to the right, to Beaky Durkin.
He spoke. “I’ll illustrate my meaning. Take you, Mr. Durkin. You have accounted for yourself, but you have been neither contradicted nor corroborated. You say you left the clubhouse shortly before the team did and went to your seat in the grandstand.”
“That’s right.” Durkin was still hoarse. “And I didn’t kill Nick.”
“I didn’t say you did. I am merely expounding. You say you remained in your seat, watching the game, until the third inning, when you were sent for by Mr. Chisholm to come to the clubhouse. That too is neither contradicted nor corroborated. Certainly you were there when you were sent for, but there is no proof that you had been there continuously since the game started and even before.”