“Ah,” Jon Baird said, “I didn’t know that.”
This was a piece of information Gregor had gotten from the FBI report on Donald McAdam’s death. He nodded at Jon Baird and said, “It’s not something very many people know. I want to back up a minute now. On top of the strange timing of the McAdam signing, there was something else that was strange. That was the way the signing was set up to take place. On the night before McAdam was to come to Danbury to pick up the contracts, Charlie Shay brought Jon Baird—at Jon Baird’s request—three things. One of those things was that spare bridge. Jon Baird had broken the one he’d been using. The next thing was the McAdam contracts, all three copies. That was understandable enough. Jon Baird wanted to read the contracts—and to check them against some research which had also been provided—and it might be considered safer to have all the contracts together in one place. The third thing, though, made no sense at all. The third thing Jon Baird wanted was the stamped, preaddressed envelope Donald McAdam was supposed to use to send back those contracts after he’d signed them.”
Gregor shifted on his feet, wishing he could sit down. “If you look at it carefully,” he told the assembled company, “everything in any way connected to that envelope comes out nonsense. Why have Donald McAdam take those contracts home and mail them in to Baird Financial? Why not have him sign them right there in the conference room at the prison or later in the day in the Baird Financial offices? When I asked Jon Baird about that, he said he was protecting himself from later being sued by McAdam on grounds of undue influence or coersion, but that’s nonsense on the face of it. This wasn’t a back-room meeting where fifteen men from one side and a single representative from the other are holding secret negotiations. This is a very public, highly structured process where McAdam would have been allowed to bring his own lawyers and assistants in at any time, and probably did, if we check. Why send him home with those three copies of the contract and that envelope?
“It took me a while, but it finally came to me, and then I checked the reports I had heard and the things people had said to me. Jon Baird went over a year at Danbury without breaking his bridge. He broke it the day before he was to meet with McAdam. Charlie Shay brought him the spare he had had made up before he went to prison, and the next day that one was broken as well. It’s true that that particular bridge breaks easily. It broke on this boat. It’s not usual, however, for a spare to break the day after an original has. In fact, if we check that out, I’ll bet we’ll find it’s damn near unheard of.”
Jon Baird chuckled. “So now what?” he said. “I was supposed to have strychnine concealed in my teeth.”
“Yes,” Gregor said, “that’s exactly what you had. The teeth are hollow. I saw that this morning when you showed me a broken set. What you did was to tap a small hole into one of those teeth very near the gum line, fill the cavity with strychnine, and repair the hole the way you’d build a ship model, but working with wires from the inside out. It wouldn’t be noticeable. It wouldn’t be dangerous, either. You could wear the bridge at least for a short period of time, and a short period of time was all you needed, without having to worry about being poisoned. That inside-out method is the same one they use to repair water mains. Its the best possible way of sealing a cavity against leaks. You broke the new bridge Charlie Shay had brought for you, which was, of course, already full of strychnine. You then applied ship modeling glue to the flap of the envelope, right over the glue provided, and into this new glue you sprinkled the strychnine. You were perfectly safe. Nobody looks at the flaps of envelopes, not even when they’re licking them. All you had to do was sit back and wait for Donald McAdam to lick this one. Which he did.”
“How can you know he did?” Tony Baird demanded. “You’re making all kinds of crazy assumptions.”
“I know Donald McAdam sent that envelope and two of the three contracts back to Baird Financial on the night he died because it’s the only possible explanation for the series of events immediately preceding his death,” Gregor said. “He went down to mail something. He was seen by two people. And when the police searched his apartment the next day, they found one copy of the executed contract, but not the other two, and not the envelope.” Gregor swung to Jon Baird, looking him full in the face now. “That’s how I can prove it, you see. Like a lot of other companies, Baird Financial keeps the envelopes with letters that deal with matters that might have a bearing on a future IRS audit. Any high-level financial payout would qualify under that definition. I think if we go into the files at Baird, we’ll find Donald McAdam’s contracts and that envelope, and if we analyze the glue on the envelope, we’ll find traces of strychnine.”