5
Everybody was too exhausted to say anything. It wasn’t fatigue they were suffering from, it was something closer to paralysis.
It was different from what had happened to Orczy: this time someone had suffered, collapsed and died a horrible death in front of their eyes. The visceral, vicious breakdown of everyday life had numbed their senses.
Agatha and Leroux stared into space with half-opened mouths, their minds elsewhere. Van kept sighing, his head resting on his hands. Poe, his eyes fixed on the window, didn’t once reach for his cigarette case. The look on Ellery’s face never changed, like a Nō mask with its eyes closed.
No moonlight came in from the skylight.
Occasionally light from the lighthouse cut through the darkness. The light of the oil lamp flickered as if it were alive. The monotonous rhythm of the waves could be heard, coming and going, coming and going.
‘Let’s get this over with. I want to sleep.’
Ellery spoke, barely able to open his sleepy eyes.
‘Agreed.’
Poe replied sluggishly, after which the other three seemed to recover.
‘The only thing I can tell you is that some kind of poison was used. I don’t know the type of poison.’
‘Can’t you make a rough guess?’
‘Well, maybe.’ Poe frowned deeply. ‘Based on how fast it acted, I think it’s a very strong poison. It caused shortness of breath and convulsions, so there is a good chance it was a neurotoxin. Common poisons that fall under that category are potassium cyanide, strychnine, and atropine. It might also have been nicotine, arsenic or arsenous acid. But atropine and nicotine would cause dilation of the pupils, and I didn’t see that. Cyanide would have caused a unique smell—you know, the so-called smell of almonds. But I didn’t detect that either. So it was probably strychnine, or some sort of arsenic or arsenous acid.’
The six half-drunk cups were still on the table. Agatha had been staring at them while listening to Poe’s explanation, but now she suddenly burst out laughing.
‘That means that I’m the only candidate for the murderer.’
‘Yes, Agatha,’ Ellery replied dryly. ‘Was it really you?’
‘Would you believe me if I told you it wasn’t me?’
‘That’d be unreasonable.’
‘I guessed as much.’
The two laughed silently. Everyone, especially they themselves, noticed the bizarre, abnormal tone of their conversation.
‘Would you two stop it?’ reprimanded Poe in a low, grim voice, after which he put a cigarette in his mouth and offered his birch wood cigarette case to Ellery.
‘We need to think about this seriously.’
‘I know. We’re not joking around just because we want to.’
Ellery pushed Poe’s cigarette case back and took his own Salem pack from the breast pocket of his shirt. He took out a cigarette and tapped the filter on the table to pack the tobacco down.
‘Let’s start by going over the facts,’ he said. ‘It was Carr himself who asked for coffee. While Agatha was in the kitchen, the rest of us remained here. It took about fifteen minutes for Agatha to boil some water, make the coffee and return with the cups on the tray. Agatha placed the tray on the table. To be precise, the tray contained six coffee cups, the sugar jar, the jar of powdered milk and seven spoons placed on a saucer, one of them to be used for the milk. Is that correct, Agatha?’
She nodded meekly.
‘Regarding the order in which the cups were taken,’ continued Ellery. ‘I took the first cup. Next was?’
‘I was,’ said Leroux. ‘Almost at the same time as Carr.’
‘I was next I think,’ said Poe.
‘And then I took one and placed the tray in front of Van. Right, Van?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘OK. Just to check: Myself, Leroux and Carr, Poe, Agatha and Van.’
Ellery put his cigarette in his mouth and lit it.
‘Let’s think about who had a chance to put the poison in Carr’s cup. First of all, Agatha.’
‘But I could have picked the poisoned cup myself. And there was no way I could have arranged for Carr to have chosen that particular one,’ Agatha countered with a cool voice. ‘If I were the murderer, I would have put the poison in the coffee and then handed out the cups to you myself.’
‘Now that you mention it, you’ve always handed out the cups to us. Why didn’t you do so this one time?’
‘I just didn’t feel like it this time.’
‘Ah. But I will tell you this, Agatha: the murderer might not have been targeting Carr in particular. The murderer’s end goal is to kill all of us, but it doesn’t really matter who “The Second Victim” is.’
‘So you say that Carr just happened to draw the short straw.’
‘I think that’s the most logical approach to take. Nobody was sitting on either side of Carr, correct? Nobody could have put poison in his coffee after it had been brought here. So it could only have been you.’
‘But the poison could also have been in the sugar or the milk.’
‘But you yourself also took milk, remember? And the sugar is also out. Like me, Carr took his coffee black. So he didn’t use a spoon either.’
‘Ellery, wait.’ Leroux chimed in. ‘I saw Agatha while she was making coffee. The kitchen door was open and my chair was right opposite to that, so I had a clear view of Agatha’s hands. The counter table was also well-lit because of the candle on top of it. She didn’t do anything suspicious.’
‘Glad you told us that, but I’m afraid that doesn’t constitute conclusive evidence. Considering the distance between this table and the kitchen counter, it’s possible you might have overlooked something. It isn’t like you were keeping a watch on her from start to finish.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Nothing to be sorry about.’
‘No, I mean, I was keeping a watch on Agatha all the time.’
‘Leroux.’
Agatha’s eyes widened in surprise. Leroux looked away and repeated ‘I’m sorry’ with a timid voice.
‘But it was the natural thing to do. The person who killed Orczy this morning is one of us here and it might have been Agatha. Even our dinner of crackers, some canned food and juice was a horror to me. In fact, I think that you of all, Ellery, acted the strangest, being the first of us who tried the food, eating as if nothing had happened.’
‘Really?’ A faint smile appeared on Ellery’s lips. ‘So Leroux, you are absolutely positive that Agatha isn’t the murderer.’
‘Well, that’s.…’
‘Carr is dead. So it’s a fact someone administered poison to him. Surely you don’t think his death was a suicide?’
‘No.…’
‘But as I just said to you, Ellery, if I were the murderer, how could I have avoided winding up with the poisoned cup myself? I drank my coffee.’
Ellery blinked slowly as he put out his Salem in the decagon-shaped ashtray.
‘There were only six cups. You could easily have remembered the position of the poisoned cup. You picked your own cup and gave the last to Van. If the poisoned cup had been among the last two cups, you could have simply passed that cup on to Van. Even if you had ended up with the poisoned cup, you could simply not have drunk from it.’
‘It wasn’t me.’