Their record was an impressive one. Working solely from verbal descriptions supplied by witnesses who were sometimes agitated and distraught, they had in the past year been responsible for twenty-eight positive identifications and arrests. So far this year, they had made sixty-eight drawings of described suspects, from which fourteen arrests had resulted. In each case, the apprehended suspect bore a remarkable resemblance to the sketch made from his description. Detective Haldeman had talked to all of the people who had been present when Vollner’s office was invaded Wednesday afternoon, listening to descriptions of face, hair, eyes, nose, mouth from Miles Vollner, Cindy Forrest, Grace Di Santo, and Ronnie Fairchild, the patrolman who was still hospitalized. The composite drawing he made took three and a half hours to complete. It was delivered to Kling in a manila envelope that Monday morning. The drawing itself was protected by a celluloid sleeve into which it had been inserted. There was no note with the drawing, and the drawing was unsigned. Kling took it out of the envelope and studied it.
Andy Parker, who was strolling past Kling’s desk on his way to the toilet, stopped and looked at the drawing.
“Who’s that?”
“Suspect,” Kling said.
“No kidding? I thought maybe it was Cary Grant.”
“You know what you ought to do, Andy?” Kling asked, not looking up at him as he put the drawing back into the manila envelope.
“What?” Parker asked.
“You should join the police force. I understand they’re looking for comical cops.”
“Ha!” Parker said, and went out to the toilet where he hoped to occupy himself for the next half hour with a copy of Life Magazine.
Forty miles away from the precinct that Monday morning, twenty-five miles outside the city limits, Detectives Meyer and Carella drove through the autumn countryside on their way to Larksview and the home of Mrs. Stan Gifford.
They had spent all day Saturday and part of Sunday questioning a goodly percentage of the 212 people who were present in the studio loft that night. They did not consider any of them possible suspects in a murder case. As a matter of fact, they were trying hard to find something substantial upon which to hang a verdict of suicide. Their line of questioning followed a single simple direction: They wanted to know whether anyone connected with the show had, at any time before or during the show, seen Stan Gifford put anything into his mouth. The answers did nothing to substantiate a theory of suicide. Most of the people connected with the show were too busy to notice who was putting what into his mouth; some of the staff hadn’t come across Gifford at all during the day; and those who had spent any time with him had definitely not seen anything go into his mouth. A chat with David Krantz revealed that Gifford was in the habit of forestalling dinner until after the show each Wednesday, eating a heavy lunch to carry him through the day. This completely destroyed the theory that perhaps Gifford had eaten again after meeting his wife. But it provided a new possibility for speculation, and it was this possibility that took Meyer and Carella to Larksview once more.
Meyer was miserable. His nose was stuffed, his throat was sore, his eyes were puffed and swollen. He had been taking a commercial cold preparation over the weekend, but it hadn’t helped him at all. He kept blowing his nose, and then talking through it, and then blowing it again. He made a thoroughly delightful partner and companion.
Happily, the reporters and photographers had forsaken the Gifford house now that the story had been pushed off the front page and onto the pages reserved for armchair detection. Meyer and Carella drove to the small parking area, walked to the front door, and once again pulled the brass knob set into the jamb. The housekeeper opened the door, peeked out cautiously, and then said, “Oh, it’s you again.”
“Is Mrs. Gifford home?” Carella asked.
“I’ll see,” she said, and closed the door in their faces. They waited on the front stoop. The woods surrounding the house rattled their autumn colors with each fresh gust of wind. In a few moments, the housekeeper returned.
“Mrs. Gifford is having coffee in the dining room,” she said. “You may join her, if you wish.”
“Thank you,” Carella said, and they followed her into the house. A huge, winding staircase started just inside the entrance hall, thickly carpeted, swinging to the upper story of the house. French doors opened onto the living room, and through that and beyond it was a small dining room with a bay window overlooking the backyard. Melanie Gifford sat alone at the table, wearing a quilted robe over a long pink nylon nightgown, the laced edges of the gown showing where the robe ended. Her blonde hair was uncombed, and hung loosely about her face. As before, she wore no makeup, but she seemed more rested now, and infinitely more at ease.
“I was just having breakfast,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m a late sleeper. Won’t you have something?”
Meyer took the chair opposite her, and Carella sat beside her at the table. She poured coffee for both men and then offered them the English muffins and marmalade, which they declined.
“Mrs. Gifford,” Carella said, “when we were here last time, you said something about your husband’s physician, Carl Nelson.”
“Yes,” Melanie said. “Do you take sugar?”
“Thank you.” Carella spooned a teaspoonful into his coffee, and then passed the sugar bowl to Meyer. “You said you thought he’d murdered—”
“Cream?”
“Thank you—your husband. Now what made you say that, Mrs. Gifford?”
“I believed it.”
“Do you still believe it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I see now that it would have been impossible. I didn’t know the nature of the poison at the time.”
“Its speed, do you mean?”
“Yes. Its speed.”
“And you mean it would have been impossible because Dr. Nelson was at home during the show, and not at the studio, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“But what made you suspect him in the first place?”
“I tried to think of who could have had access to poison, and I thought of Carl.”
“So did we,” Carella said.
“I imagine you would have,” Melanie answered. “These muffins are very good. Won’t you have some?”
“No, thank you. But even if he did have access, Mrs. Gifford, why would he have wanted to kill your husband?”
“I have no idea.”
“Didn’t the two men get along?”
“You know doctors,” Melanie said. “They all have God complexes.” She paused, and then added, “In any universe, there can only be one God.”
“And in Stan Gifford’s universe, he was God.”
Melanie sipped at her coffee and said, “If an actor hasn’t got his ego, then he hasn’t got anything.”
“Are you saying the two egos came into conflict occasionally, Mrs. Gifford?”
“Yes.”
“But not in any serious way, surely.”
“I don’t know what men consider serious. I know that Stan and Carl occasionally argued. So when Stan was killed, as I told you, I tried to figure out who could have got his hands on any poison, and I thought of Carl.”
“That was before you knew the poison was strophanthin.”
“Yes. Once I found out what the poison was, and knowing Carl was home that night, I realized—”
“But if you didn’t know the poison was strophanthin, then it could have been anything, any poison, isn’t that right?”
“Yes. But—”
“And you also must have known that a great many poisons can be purchased in drugstores, usually in compounds of one sort or another. Like arsenic or cyanide…”