Smith waved his hand over the papers he had just thrown down and said, “You see what we’re up against. Nicotine and wine in the body. No nicotine in the pitcher. No nicotine in the wine bottles. There has to be nicotine in the wine in that chalice, and that means we have to test the wine in that chalice.”
“I know.”
“Even if we figure out who did it without testing the wine, even if your idea is correct, even if we have other evidence to hang it up with—”
“I know,” Gregor said. “The jury would go crazy wanting to know why you didn’t test the wine.”
“It wouldn’t be so bad if we could be sure of having a jury full of Catholics,” Smith said, “but we can’t. The court system around here is organized by counties. We’d have half a panel of rural Fundamentalists, and if we tried to explain the Cardinal’s attitude to them, they’d be outraged. They’d think the Cardinal committed the murder himself and was trying to set the defendant up.”
“I don’t think you’d have much better luck with Catholics. A lot of them don’t know what their religion is all about. Some of them know and don’t believe in it anyway.”
“That’s why I could never get behind the Catholic Church,” Smith said. “It’s not that they get people who don’t know what they’re doing or don’t agree with it, it’s that they don’t just chuck those people out. Can you imagine the Fraternal Order of the Hibernians keeping on someone who thought the British belonged in Northern Ireland? And said so? Can you imagine the Jewish Defense League keeping on someone who thought Hitler was right?”
“I think you’re getting a little melodramatic here,” Gregor said mildly.
Smith shrugged. “Maybe. But let me tell you something. I spend a lot of time listening to John Bloody Cardinal O’Bannion. I have to. He damn near owns this city. What I think is, if he meant all those things he says—and he doesn’t keep his trap shut for twenty minutes running—that Andy Walsh wouldn’t have been a priest in the Catholic Church. I don’t blame the Fundamentalists around here. That organization is so screwy, you can’t help thinking there’s something really wrong with it.”
Gregor never ceased to be amazed at how obsessed the people of Colchester were with the Catholic Church and the Cardinal. It reminded him of the way the British were obsessed with the queen. He decided it was time to change the subject.
“Let’s get into a more profitable area of discussion,” he said, and then smiled, because it was such a perfect parody of Bureau-talk, and both he and Smith knew it. “Let’s talk about Cheryl Cass.”
Smith made a face. “I don’t know why you think that’s more profitable. Cass died over six weeks ago. Andy Walsh died yesterday.”
“I know. But we agreed, didn’t we, that there are only two real questions left about Andy Walsh’s death: why it happened and how the nicotine got into the chalice.”
“Maybe the nicotine was in the bottom of the chalice,” Smith said. “That would have been easy.”
“It would have been impossible. You saw those lab reports. When Andy Walsh drank that nicotine, it was close to undiluted.”
“If he poured just a little wine into—”
“I saw him pour the wine, John. He poured a lot of it. And the chalice is large.”
Smith sighed. “All right. But I hate things like this. They make me feel like I’m watching Columbo. And what about the goat?”
“I’m working on the goat,” Gregor said, “but at best it’s corroborating evidence. Let’s get back to Cheryl Cass. As far as I can tell, before she showed up here, there hadn’t been any trouble connected to our people at all, not even connected to the Catholic Church.”
“There usually isn’t much trouble connected to the Catholic Church, not criminal trouble, not here. Except for that mess in Black Rock Park.”
“Yes, well. We’ll get back to Black Rock Park. Is one of those papers you brought up the autopsy report on Cass?”
“Yeah.” Smith rifled through them, squinted at a couple, discarded a couple, and came up with the one Gregor wanted. He handed it over. “You can see what my problem was, at the time. That lobster.”
One of the coroner’s findings had been that Cheryl Cass’s last meal had consisted of lobster, shrimp, mushrooms, butter, and wine. Gregor could understand why that had bothered John Smith. He couldn’t understand why it hadn’t bothered anyone else.
“I’m surprised the lobster didn’t blow the suicide theory from the beginning,” he said. “It’s impossible.”