“Mrs. Pomfret,” Lieutenant Wade said.
She was approaching, and Damon moved to meet her. “I’m Inspector Damon,” he said gruffly, feeling awkward. He was no stranger to the ordinary extravagances of grief and could deal with them without much discomfort, but this woman’s eyes embarrassed him. They were dry, direct, piercing, without emotion.
She spoke calmly, with careful spacing as if breath had to be apportioned for each word. “These policemen have not done anything. They said they had to wait for you. My son is dead. My only son. My only child. What are you going to do?”
“Why—” Damon stammered, “I know how you feel, Mrs. Pomfret—”
“You do not know how I feel.” She closed her mouth, and her jaw twitched. She turned and gestured with her hand. “These people were in my house, invited here, and one of them killed my son.” She leveled her eyes at Adolph Koch. “You.” At Hebe Heath. “You.” At Garda Tusar. “You.” At Felix Beck...
Damon moved in front of her. “See here, Mrs. Pomfret,” he said bluntly, “you ask what I’m going to do. First I’m going to find out what happened and how it happened. I can’t just snap my fingers and truth jumps out of a box. All I know now is that your son drank something and died. This will be—”
“He cried out.” Mrs. Pomfret’s jaw twitched again, “He called to me. He started to come to me, with his face — he staggered and fell down and got up on his knees and fell again—”
She stopped.
“I can get this from someone else,” Damon offered “I don’t want—”
“No. I prefer to tell you myself. We were all in there except my husband and that man.” She pointed: “Tecumseh Fox.” She pointed again: “That is my husband.” Again: “That is Dora Mowbray.” She completed the roster, pronouncing the names clearly and precisely, excepting four men in uniform — two policemen and two servants. “We had all been in this room, and left my husband and Mr. Fox here and went to the yellow room. That is in front, the other side of the reception hall—”
“I just came from there.”
“Then you... you’ve seen him—”
“Yes, I saw him. You understand, Mrs. Pomfret, it will be necessary — the body must be taken for an examination—”
“Taken? Away from here?”
“Yes. I have given the order—”
“I don’t want that!”
“Naturally you don’t. But you asked me what I’m going to do, and that’s one of the things we do, and it’s going to be done. However painful— Now here! Mrs. Pomfret!”
She was marching for the door. One of the two detectives who had entered with Damon was there, backed against the knob; she gestured him away, but he stood fast. The inspector was speaking:
“You can’t go in there, Mrs. Pomfret!”
She turned, and he saw her eyes again. “I intend,” she said, “to be present when my son’s body is taken away.”
Damon gave up. “All right,” he said to the man at the door, “go along with her and tell Craig.” The man nodded and opened the door. When it had closed behind them Damon turned and surveyed the field. Even disregarding the two policemen, the detective, and the two servants, there were so many of them... He frowned at Tecumseh Fox and inquired:
“So you weren’t there when it happened?”
Fox, seated at a corner of the table, shook his head. “I was in here with Mr. Pomfret. When I got there Dunham was dead.”
The inspector’s eyes moved to a young man standing the other side of Fox’s chair with his hands thrust into his pockets. “Your name is Theodore Gill?”
Ted nodded. “That’s right.”
“Where were you?”
Ted wet his lips and swallowed. “I was in there. Drinking a highball and talking with Miss Mowbray and Mr. Beck.”
“Where was Dunham?”
“I don’t know. I mean I didn’t notice. He had been talking with his mother, but I suppose he had left to pour himself a drink. The first I knew, when he made a choking noise and cried out, he was in the alcove where the drinks were. He tottered a few steps and collapsed, and struggled to his knees and went down again — just as Mrs. Pomfret said. The first one to get to him was Mr. Zorilla.”
“I was already there.” Diego Zorilla’s bass came from the other side of the room, and Damon turned to look at him. “I was getting Scotch and sodas for Miss Heath and myself when Perry came and poured his drink. I was right there when he poured it and drank it.”
“Did he take it from the same bottle that you got yours from?”
“No, mine was Scotch. He always drank bourbon.”
“Did he use the same soda bottle that you used?”
“He didn’t use any. Drank it straight, right down. He often did that, with water for a chaser.”
“Was Miss Heath in the alcove with you?”
“Not at that moment. I had gone to get a drink for myself, and she was there starting to mix one, and I offered to do it, and she went to a chair and sat down.”
“What were you doing at the moment Dunham swallowed his drink?”
“I had picked up the two glasses and was putting them down again to close a window. Someone had opened a window in the alcove and the curtain was blowing, and Mrs. Pomfret called to me to close it. I never got it closed. While I was putting the glasses down I saw a peculiar look on Perry’s face just as he gulped his drink — or just after — and he made a sort of a strangled noise. It didn’t seem more than three seconds before he cried out and his face twisted up and he went into a stagger. If that drink did it, it was incredible how swift it was—”
“Why do you say ‘If that drink did it?’ Had he had one before that?”
Diego shook his head. “Not that I know of. I’m pretty sure he hadn’t. He had been talking with his mother, at the divan at the end of the room.”
“Then the glass he poured his drink into was clean? Not previously used?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so. There was an assortment of them there on the traveling bar.”
“And you were already there making Scotch and soda when he came up to pour his drink?”
“Yes.”
“Right there facing him, watching him?”
“Watching him? Why would I be watching him?”
“Well, you were right there. If he had put anything in his drink from a vial or a box or an envelope, you would have seen him. Wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, I would.” Diego’s eyes flickered and his lips twisted wryly. “And God knows I’d like to say I did. But I didn’t.”
“Why would you like to say you did?”
“I should think that’s obvious. Though I wasn’t especially fond of Perry Dunham, I wouldn’t have regarded his suicide as a pleasant thing to happen. But it would have been a lot pleasanter than what seems to have happened.” Diego slowly looked around. “One of us. Including me.” He met the inspector’s gaze. “I wasn’t ‘watching’ him, as you put it. But unless he used sleight of hand, he didn’t put anything in his glass except what he poured from the bottle.”
“And that was from the bottle of bourbon there on the bar?”
“Yes.”
Damon turned to the two menservants, standing side by side at the far wall. “Did either of you men take that bar in there?”
One of them spoke. “Yes, sir, I did.” He appeared startled at the loudness of his own voice, and repeated four tones down, “I did, sir.”