“A woman of many talents,” Tony said.
“No, I think Davina works here as well,” said Abe.
“Where do you want me, Abe? Writing down the titles of her books?” Tony asked.
“Good idea. Title, author, and language,” said Abe. “I might do the sewing table, I think. That leaves the art to you, Donny. We’re looking for one of those home-made injection devices, syringes, hypodermics, and glass ampoules. All in disguise of some sort, okay?”
They had worked together for over a year now, and knew Uda had no secret compartments: Abe’s alarm bells weren’t ringing, so Carmine had gone down a floor to search.
Neat and orderly to the point of obsession, Abe was thinking as he lifted each item on a stack, shook it out, examined it, then folded it again. Sloppy searching wasn’t tolerated; if the subject of the search could see at a glance what had been messed with, police advantages were lost. If things looked undisturbed, the subject had to guess.
She had a compartment in her tool box for the more esoteric of sewing’s paraphernalia: devices for unpicking stitches, threading elastic through a fabric tube, other devices. But no home-made injection gizmo or anything else of interest.
“For once it looks as if we’ll have egg on our faces,” Abe said as he stared at the art table. “She’s a tidy worker, which makes our job easier. Tubes of paint all lined up in rows and graduated according to color — she must get through a lot, each color has at least six tubes. Yeah, obsessive.”
“What’s phthalocyanine green?” Donny asked.
“A peacocky green,” Abe said. “Rich.”
“Weird name. Could be a poison.”
Abe picked up the first tube in the row of six tubes of phthalocyanine green; it had been squeezed from its bottom and the end folded over. “How many artists ever bother to do that?” he asked in wonder. “Usually they just grab the tube and squeeze, so what’s at the bottom never comes out — too squashed.” He picked up the next tube and went down the row, a frown gathering, then he went back to the first full tube and weighed it in his hand experimentally. Each full tube was weighed like so, after which Abe put the fourth, fifth and sixth tubes aside. “I don’t think these contain paint,” he said.
Tony went to the sewing table and came back with two pairs of scissors, one stout if small, the other very small and fine, with pointed tips.
“The tubes are lead,” Abe said, opening and closing the blades of the stouter pair. “These will cut the crimped bottom off, whereas I think Uda uncrimped the bottom so as not to shorten the tube — painstaking!” Working carefully, Abe cut off the crimped end of the tube over a drawing block to catch any leftover paint that might emerge along with whatever else was inside. But none came out. “Uda will just have pushed whatever’s up there in through the open bottom, but for us to get it out the same way would take ages.” He picked up the fine scissors. “I’ll just slice up the side of the tube all the way to its top and then lay its interior bare like a butcher a carcass.” He inserted the thin, sharp under blade of his tiny scissors into the severed base and cut the lead up one side all the way to its threaded neck, snipping through the enveloping paper label as well. That done, he took one leaf of the cut in his left hand, the other leaf in his right hand, and peeled the cladding back to reveal a glass ampoule; a clear, colorless fluid slopped inside it.
“Bingo!” from Donny. He had recorded every step of the process with his camera.
“Do we open the other two?”
Tony asked picking up scissors.
“Go to it, Tony, said Abe, smiling in quiet vindication.”
“Why is it liquid?” Donny asked, continuing to photograph. “I thought the stuff was a powder.”
“So did I,” said Abe. “If this is tetrodotoxin, then someone put it into solution before it went into this ampoule. The answer might be in the other paint tubes, which is why we open them. Each weighs differently.”
The fifth tube contained another glass ampoule, but broken into two halves, and empty; the sixth contained a tube of thick cardboard, inside which was a rolled-up piece of paper.
The piece of paper was a letter on cheap stationery typed on an old manual machine with a faded fabric ribbon.
It said:
“A little gift from a well-wisher. Break the neck of the glass and pour the liquid into a drink. No taste, water will do. Certain death for two people.”
“No date,” said Donny, rolling the letter up again, his hands gloved. “I wonder when Uda got it?”
“Before John Hall’s death, I’m guessing,” said Abe. “It’s been hidden at leisure, not in a panicked hurry.”