Carella reached once more for his notepad.

"Mr. Ames, how many of those who stopped at your table last night did you know personally?"
"One:  and even so, I only recognised Ann Robinson because she had her quiz show series on NBC last year .... a local reporter - Jenny Watson, Liverpool Echo - passed  me her card." 
Meyer grinned. "Helen McReady and Ann Robinson at the same table? And nobody rang 911?"
"It's 999 over here" corrected Carella "but yes, I agree: it's only a question of who gets sliced first, for my money."
An ominous shadow fell. Martha Bailey's bulk blotted out the low late-afternoon Bold Street sunshine.
" No blood spilt in this restaurant!" she declared. Carella could almost see the dragon flames sizzling in her nostrils.
"Yes, Martha, we know that" he said,diplomatically.
"And poison's a woman's preferred weapon" added Meyer.
Martha appeared to grow several life-threatening inches in both height and girth. Her self-control wavered; her voice defaulted briefly to its native Scouse:
"Poisin! My kitchen? My wine cellar? Is it my staff you're accusin'?"
"No, calm down, Martha! Nobody's accusing anyone of anything! We know poison was the cause of death, but we don't even know what sort of poison it was, yet: nor how it was administered - or even when!"
"Hmmmph!" Meyer had read of the sound before in cheap novels; this was the first time in his career he'd ever heard anyone make a noise even close to the way it was spelt. Martha remained unconvinced.
"If it's some  ........ tart! ....... y'r lookin' for, try that scarecrow wi' legs all the way up to 'er armpits: Cyndie something she calls herself ..."
"Any ... bad blood between them, Mrs Bailey?" asked Meyer, quietly. From the corner of his eye he could just see Carella making notes.
Martha hesitated for a moment.
"No - oo" she said, slowly "But they were in on their own one lunchtime - day before yesterday, it must have been - and Helen seemed upset about something. They sat by the window, I couldn't hear what they were talking about."
"Do you know Jenny Watson, from the Echo? Did you see her speaking to either of them?"
"Not that day. In fact, the only time I saw Jenny Watson speak to Helen McReady was yesterday, just before her lunch guests arrived. Helen was insufferably rude to her - which I suppose you'd expect, given her record with anyone from the media in general and journalists in particular."

 

**************************

 

"Meyer and Carella escaped to the neutral ground of a smaller pub away from the fashionable "glitterati" bars of Bold Street  It was that ‘slack water' time of day, when commuters will cheerfully commit murder to return from B to A a few seconds faster than the next man, and English pubs are almost deserted.
"Where d'you get that bull about women and poison?" growled Carella, reading back from his notes.
"Must have read it in a book somewhere - not much chance of you making that mistake, I don't suppose!" responded Meyer, without malice. Over the years, swapping insults had become second nature to both of them.
"My hunch: we should be looking at the Ladies Who Lunch. I don't see any of the male hangers-on as having the cojones to try this one: let's take a look at the note from the Path. Lab ......... "

**************************

 

The lab report contained a new piece to the jigsaw puzzle.
"None? No alcohol whatsoever in the blood sample?"
" 'S right. Our vic was as sober as ... well, as sober as a writer is never supposed to be!" confirmed Meyer, flapping the flimsy Path. Lab report.
"But the wine: the waiter who served it .......... "
" . didn't stay around to watch them drink it: and nobody we've spoken to so far actually watched  her drinking."
"You trying to tell me something?"
Meyer frowned, and shook his head slowly.
"I'm not sure: but I can't help thinking we're looking the wrong way, somehow. Let's see." He ticked off on his fingers.
"Harold Ames. Sleazeball, but no imagination. Couldn't hope to do it, and keep a covering lie in his head for more than a couple of seconds at a time. Too stupid to even try: much as he might like the idea of her demise."
"Ann Robinson. Intelligent enough to get away with it, but at the same time too smart to try. Poison would be too unreliable for her: I can imagine her wanting to go straight in and rip out the jugular with her bare hands."
"Cyndie Carr. Assuming they were having some sort of lesbian liaison, and Cyndie was provoked into a crime of passion by female jealousy, that one hasn't got enough brainpower to carry it out. I doubt if she could tell the difference between arsenic and aspirin."
"Jenny Watson. Pro reporter, only met Helen McReady once that we know of. Got roasted, but a good reporter isn't going to get too upset by something like that: I'm willing to bet she's had plenty of that sort of treatment during her career to date!"
"So, any ID on the poison itself in that report?"
Meyer nodded.
"Whatever else he might be, George McReady seems to be right about that: it was arsenic, but the concentration doesn't seem to be dangerously high."
"Isn't any level of arsenic too high?"
"Apparently not. The tolerance level is a lot higher than I ever thought, and I guess the same applies for most people. Arsenic isn't as toxic as most people think, according to this report."
"So where did it come from? Who's examining the dinner table evidence: her plate, glass, cutlery .... ?"
"There's also a water bottle on the list, an imported label which she must have brought with her: a firm in Nebraska .... "
Meyer stopped, frowned.
"How long has she been here? Three-four days? A week?"
Carella nodded.
"So even if she brought a bottle of Nebraska water with her, she isn't likely to be still drinking from it a week later."
"Okay: so what?"
"Check her diary, her files: we're looking for a note ..... "

"Poor George: last year's model. And Cyndie - what a pretentious way of misspelling what was once a perfectly good name - she'll never be any more fashionable (or less confused) than she is right now.
Harold, I've known baboons with better business sense and beetles with more brain.
Every self-styled writer I meet recently seems to have less talent than the one before. It really is so utterly, utterly boring.
Victorian writers were supposed to have experimented with poisons as writing stimuli. Is it possible they were right?"
"None of the people I must suffer from one boring day to the next mean anything to me any more. If anyone has the intelligence to look for this note it will be too late to alter my decision, as I shall make sure it will not be found while I live. You will by now have determined the when, where and how: but I alone will know why .................... "