“That’s impossible,” Delia said flatly.
“Tell me about it, Delia. The doctors all said it takes days for the shot to have any effect, but that didn’t impress Tom. He was convinced it worked immediately.”
“So it was really an attention-seeking mechanism,” Delia said. “However, he was fairly furtive at the banquet, yes?”
“That fit too,” said Edith. “He was too pedantic to be any kind of speaker except a boring one, but he thought he spoke well because his sentences were properly parsed and analyzed — Tom had a passion for correct English. It had been years since he had had a wider audience than Divinity students, and he was very nervous. M.M. disliked him, and he knew it. And, of course, he knew M.M. had fought against his appointment as Head Scholar strenuously. Roger and Henry Parson got him the post, and they were in his audience too. So he was petrified, Delia.”
“I understand, Edie. Go on, dear.”
“M.M. reminded him that he was only minutes away from his big moment, and he panicked. The only thing that could calm him down was a shot. Even from where I sat three over from him, I could see it coming — sure enough, he signaled me. So I left the table at once, did my thing with the ampoule and the TB syringe, then left the Ladies. He was waiting in the corner, in a real stew. His agitation made me nervous, and I started to cry.” She shivered, remembering. “Anyway, I gave him the shot in his neck and he rushed back to the table. I don’t think anyone even noticed I was missing.”
“Where did you get that particular ampoule, Edie?”
“That was weird!” she exclaimed. “It was sitting with the syringe right next to my handbag, but I don’t remember putting it there. I must have, I guess — Tom was in a bad mood before we started out, and I get — got — flustered when he was in a bad mood. I put the things in my bag.”
“Where do you keep the B-12?”
She got up and went to a full-length door that opened into a pantry — a closet shelved at intervals on three sides that contained groceries and stores of non-toxic kind from toilet paper to washing powder. A wooden box about half the size of a shoe box sat on a shelf; Edith Tinkerman carried it to the table and Delia.
“There, that’s where I keep it.”
Delia opened it to discover order and method: ten tuberculin syringes in sterile paper packets, a 10cc bottle of ruby-red cyanotobalamin with a rubber diaphragm in its top, six 1cc glass ampoules of the vitamin for single doses, and a box of swabs.
“Who knows it’s there?”
“At least half the Divinity School.”
“How come?”
“Sometimes Tom would send a student home for the box — he never kept any supplies at school.”
“So he gave himself a shot if necessary?” Delia asked.
The brown eyes widened incredulously. “Oh, no! Never! He hated even looking at the needle. There were several people at the school who were willing to give him a shot.”
“Was he a bit of a joke at the school?”
“A lot of a joke, I’d say. Tom was so pompous, and I’ve always thought pompous people make the best joke material. One year it even crept into the student concert — a sketch about Tom and his B-12. I laughed myself sick.”
“What did Tom do?”
“Pretended it never happened.”
Delia scooped up the box. “I have to confiscate this, dear. For all we know, it might contain more poison.”
“Am I going to be arrested?” The widow gave a harsh laugh. “It would be just like the rest of my life to be thrown in jail for Tom’s murder.”
“No, Edith, you’re definitely not going to be arrested,” said Delia in her most soothing voice. “You were simply what we call a vector — a method of transmitting the poison to its target. As far as you were concerned, the syringe contained vitamin B-12. Everybody understands that, I do assure you. Let me help wash the dishes.”
“You’ve set my mind at rest, Delia,” said Edith over the dish mop. “I was worried.”
But, thought Delia, you haven’t set my mind at rest, Edith! Somewhere in your bomb bay there’s another bomb, and I haven’t located it. So she said, “May I come again?”
“Oh, I’d love that!”
“Are you going to stay in Holloman?”
“No. The girls and I talked it over yesterday, and we’ve decided to go to Arizona. We’re going to buy three apartments next door to each other. The girls will work as secretaries and I’ll take in dressmaking. Our inheritance money we’ll save to go on cruises and long vacations,” said the widow, painting a picture that perhaps would not have been everybody’s idea of bliss, but clearly twenty-four years of Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman had lowered the expectations of all three Tinkerman women.