Dear Old Dead(99)

“I suppose at the same time it directed suspicion off someone else,” Michael said. “It wasn’t so impossible that I could have committed that murder. I figured it out on my own, after it happened. I could have done it when I first came up to the third floor and only said that I found Charlie already poisoned when I got there.”

“It’s just possible,” Gregor agreed, “but we’re back to master criminals again. The timing would have been brutal. Of course, you are the only person around here with the brains to be a master criminal. There is that.”

“Thanks a lot.” Michael’s tone was dry.

“Really, though,” Gregor went on, “it makes much more sense to go on working out how the murder of Charles von Straadt could have been committed simply. Most murders are committed simply. Even murders in this little subcategory of murders. It isn’t only street criminals who are lazy. The simple fact is that there was no reason for the murderer to involve himself in a lot of complicated nonsense if he wanted to kill Charles van Straadt, even if the murderer wanted to kill Charles van Straadt at the center and do it on that particular night. Of course, that particular night was crucial. It was going to be done then or not at all—”

“Because of the will change,” Hector put in.

“That’s right,” Gregor told him, “but look here. All the murderer had to do was to get hold of a cup of coffee—possible in half a dozen places on this floor and down in the cafeteria and I don’t know where else; this place runs on coffee—go down to the basement, pick up some of the rat poison—”

“With his bare hands?” Hector demanded.

“No,” Gregor said. “Not with his bare hands. With coffee grounds.”

“Coffee grounds,” Michael Pride repeated. “I don’t understand.”

“I didn’t either, for a while,” Gregor said. “That was why I thought Robbie Yagger wasn’t telling me anything important when he said he’d seen someone leaving this examining room on the night Charles van Straadt died carrying one of those paper funnels full of coffee grounds. That’s something else there’s more than enough of around here. Coffee grounds. The murderer took the coffee grounds into the basement, pressed them into the rat poison, and dumped the whole mess, coffee grounds and all, into a cup of coffee.”

“Stuff.” Michael Pride sat bolt upright. “That’s what Robbie was talking about when he said his coffee was full of stuff.”

“Absolutely. Oh, by the way. Coffee grounds have another virtue. I’ve been assuming that the murderer acquired the cup of coffee first, before the strychnine, but that wasn’t necessary. It doesn’t take a lot of strychnine to kill a person, not even a large man like Charles van Straadt. If you want to commit a murder in this way and you don’t want to carry a cup of coffee to the basement and back, all you have to do is palm some coffee grounds, use them to pick up the strychnine you need, and carry the grounds to wherever the coffee is. That would be messy, but it would certainly be feasible.”

Hector Sheed was nodding. “That’s why the coffee cups always disappeared. They were full of coffee grounds. You never find grounds in coffee when it’s been made in the kind of automatic machines they use around here. If we had found them, it would have made us suspicious.”

“It might have made you think about rat poison,” Gregor said, “and that was insupportable.”

“Why didn’t the victims get suspicious that their coffee was full of grounds?” Michael asked. “Why didn’t they just get grossed out and demand a different cup?”

“I think Robbie Yagger had a lot more grounds in his coffee than the other two had,” Gregor said. “By the time it was Robbie Yagger’s turn to die, our murderer was getting very impatient. And exasperated. It was never supposed to get this involved.”

Hector Sheed stirred uneasily. “Gregor,” he said, “if Robbie Yagger was a candidate for murder before he was poisoned this afternoon, isn’t he an even more likely candidate now? He must have seen the person who handed him that coffee.”

“Not must,” Gregor said. “I worked it out. But I agree it’s most likely that he saw the murderer.”

“Well, nobody is going to be able to poison him with coffee tonight,” Michael said. “He isn’t going to be able to swallow anything for days.”

“There are other ways to kill somebody,” Hector pointed out. “Especially in a place like this. Somebody could just go into that room and rip his tubes out.”