“Fine. Now. What happened then. In those ten minutes just before dinner. Did any of you speak to Charlie Shay?”
“Julie and I saw him in the passage on our way to dinner,” Mark Anderwahl said. “He was right ahead of us when he started, but then he stopped to talk to somebody—”
“To Tony,” Bennis said. “I was there. He wanted to know what there was for dinner.”
“A dinner we haven’t gotten to eat yet,” Sheila said.
Gregor turned to Bennis. “Did you or Tony give him anything to eat or drink? Anything at all? A can of soda? Even a glass of water?”
“No.” Bennis was emphatic.
“What about the rest of you?” Gregor asked. “Did you see him take anything to eat or drink?”
They all stared solemnly back at him, negative.
“Fine,” Gregor said again, even though he knew they wouldn’t believe he meant it. “Let’s get on to dinner, now. I was sitting on the outside bench on this end between Jon Baird and Mr. Mark Anderwahl. Charlie was sitting directly across the table on the end, opposite Jon Baird. Who was sitting at Charlie’s side?”
“Julie was,” Mark Anderwahl said. “She didn’t sit down next to him, though. She sat down first. She wanted to be close against the wall like that because she thought it might help her not to feel so motion sick. You know, steadier.”
“So she sat down and then Charlie Shay sat down next to her.”
“Right,” Mark said.
“She didn’t ask him to sit down next to her.”
“Of course not.” Mark flushed. “What do you think you’re doing? Julie wouldn’t kill anyone. She certainly wouldn’t kill Charlie Shay.”
“I didn’t say she would. I’m just trying to put this in order here.” Gregor rubbed his hands over his face and thought. “Everybody sat down,” he said slowly, “and Charlie sat down on the end on that side next to Julie Anderwahl and across from Jon Baird. Then the salad came in, and Jon served out from the bowl, except that if I remember right, he forgot Charlie until the last minute.”
“That’s right,” Fritzie said. “It was very rude of him. I remember. He served everybody else and then he just sat down and started eating, and there was poor Charlie with an empty plate.”
“But he got up again and served Charlie himself,” Gregor said.
“Yes, he did,” Mark Anderwahl said. “I saw him.”
Gregor moved on. “Then there was the salad dressing. The first I remember about the salad dressing was Mark Anderwahl handing it to me. Where was it? Who had it first?”
“We did,” Bennis said. “Tony and me. It was sitting down at our end of the table.”
“And you used it and passed it on?” Gregor asked.
“That’s right,” Bennis said. “First I used it, then Tony used it, then he passed it up to Mrs.—Sheila Baird.”
“I passed it across the table to Calvin,” Sheila said. “Julie doesn’t eat salad dressing.”
“Calvin passed it to me,” Mark said, “and I passed it to you, Mr. Demarkian.”
“I used it and put it in the middle of the table. Did any of you see what happened to it then? Did any of you notice if it was picked up again? Did Charlie Shay use it?”
“I saw Charlie’s plate with the salad dressing on it,” Mark Anderwahl said. “We talked about it at the time. I didn’t see Charlie pick up the cruet.”
“He could have picked it up himself,” Bennis said.
“I don’t see where all this talk about salad dressing is supposed to get us,” Calvin Baird erupted. He had turned a mottled red. “After all, Charlie couldn’t have been poisoned by something in the salad dressing. If there was something in the salad dressing, we all would have been poisoned too. If there was something in the salad, we all would have been poisoned too. Charlie couldn’t have been poisoned without poisoning the rest of us, so Jon and Tony are right. Charlie wasn’t poisoned at all.”
“Oh, God,” Sheila Baird said. “How do I stand hanging around these people who’ve never seen a single episode of Matlock on TV?”
“I,” Calvin Baird said, “don’t have to watch Matlock on TV. I have a mind and I’m willing to use it. I’m certainly not going to allow it to go to rot around here any longer. Good night to you all.”
With that, Calvin Baird stood up, knocked his chair to the floor, and tried to stride toward Gregor and the door. He tripped twice and got his belt loop caught on the back of a chair in the process. Still, his progress had a certain air of magnificence about it, and that air was intensified when Calvin finally got through the door and slammed it shut behind him. The slam made a sharp cracking noise that sounded like splintering wood.