Inspector Queen’s Own Case (21 page)

All Jessie could think of was that her back was to him; she could almost hear the blast of doom exploding behind her as she went to the door. But nothing happened. Alton Humffrey simply sat in the baronial chair at his desk, thinking.

“One moment.” The millionaire came slowly around the desk toward them.

Richard Queen moved over to block the doorway. Humffrey stopped a few feet away, so close Jessie could smell the after-shave lotion on his gaunt cheeks.

“After reflection, Mr. Queen,” he said good-humoredly, “I must conclude that you and your aging cronies have exactly nothing.”

“Then you've got exactly nothing to worry about, Mr. Humffrey.”

“We're in a sort of stalemate, aren't we? I won't go to the police to make you stop annoying me, because I prefer being annoyed in private rather than in public. You won't go to the police with your fantastic story, because your activities could land you in jail. It looks as if you and I are going to have to grin and bear each other. By the way, that is a gun you're carrying under your left armpit, isn't it?”

“Yes,” the old man said, showing his denture for a moment. “And I imagine you have a permit for the gun you decided not to take out of that drawer a few minutes ago.”

“Now your imagination is back within bounds, Mr. Queen,” the millionaire smiled.

“He pointed a gun at me once, Richard,” Jessie said in a piping voice. “The night I came back from New York to find the baby dead. Even after I identified myself he kept pointing it at me. For a minute I thought he was going to shoot me.”

“Perhaps I should have.” With those eyes turned on her, Jessie felt absurdly like running. Something womanish insinuated itself into Humffrey's voice, taunting and cruel. “I've given you considerable thought, Miss Sherwood. But now I've solved you. You're that most dismal of people, her brother's keeper. Good night.”

Late that night Richard Queen snapped to the five silent old men, “It's going to be rough. He's an ice-cold customer, and smart. He's not going to be stampeded into anything stupid. As I said the other night, our best bet is to go backwards. We've got to tie him in with the Coy girl. They must have had a love nest somewhere before he dropped her and she moved to 88th Street. Maybe there's a record of his having paid her rent or hospital bills. We've got to find witnesses who saw them together—in restaurants, nightclubs, hideaways, rooming houses, motels …”

He talked until two in the morning to the attentive men. Jessie fell asleep on his shoulder. He did not disturb her.

New York came back from its holiday weekend. Autumn set in suddenly. Children prepared to return to school. Department stores were jammed. Another hurricane threat petered out. A sensational bank robbery in Queens seized the headlines, elbowing out the dwindling followup stories on the Finner and Coy cases.

Alton Humffrey was followed wherever he went. But his comings and goings were exemplary. The homes of friends, the ballet, his attorneys' offices, Wall Street, the Harvard Club. He did no entertaining.

They discussed a wire tap. Johnny Kripps was for it.

“We're in so far, Inspector, we may as well go the whole way.”

But Inspector Queen vetoed it.

“He's too smart to say anything incriminating over a phone, Johnny. Besides, whom would he say it to? He's cleaned his slate. There's no business pending on his agenda except keeping an eye on us … I wonder why he hasn't gone up to New Haven.”

“He's probably keeping in touch with Dr. Duane by phone,” Jessie said.

The old man looked troubled.

The reports from Angelo, Murphy, and Giffin were discouraging. If Humffrey had set up a love nest for Connie Coy, they could find no trace of it. Before moving to the West Side apartment the Coy girl had lived in a theatrical hotel in the 40s. The ex-detectives, armed with photographs of Humffrey snapped by Kripps with a concealed candid camera, could turn up no one at the hotel who recognized the millionaire. The trace-back of the girl's New York club dates around August and September of the previous year, when conception must have taken place, was without result.

“She played a lot of dates out of town around that time,” Pete Angelo reported. “One of them was a week's engagement in Boston. The Humffreys closed up the Nair Island place right after Labor Day last year and went back to Massachusetts. I better run up to Boston, Inspector.”

“All right, Pete. But watch your step. He's a lot better known there than he is here.”

“In the hot spots?” Angelo's wrinkles writhed. “If you ask me, this is a case of a guy slipping on his one and only banana peel. They won't know who he is unless they've seen him in their joint. Don't worry, Inspector.”

Angelo came back three days later.

“Nothing definite,” he reported. “The maitredee
thought
he looked familiar, but couldn't place him. He remembered Coy singing there, but he says she kept pretty much to herself. I had to shy off, because he began to get nosy. Said ‘another New York detective' had been around asking questions about Coy.”

“Routine,” the Inspector muttered. “Out of desperation, sounds like. Did the New York cop show this fellow a man's photo, Pete?”

“Nothing but Coy's, and no mention of any particular man. They're still chasing their tails. While I was there,” Angelo added, “I checked on the hotel she'd stayed at, and some likely hideaway eateries and motels. But no dice. I get the feeling Boston or around Boston was where they met, but it was a year ago, and it looks pretty hopeless to me.”

“He must have seen her in New York early last winter, when she got back to town,” ex-Sergeant Murphy said. “But he sure was cagey.”

“Cagey,” Richard Queen said glumly, “is his middle name.”

Kripps and Polonsky shared the shadowing assignment. They kept reporting nothing but tired feet.

On the 14th of the month Jessie announced that she had to go up to Rowayton. Her summer tenants' lease was expiring the next day and she was a little anxious about the condition of her house.

“It isn't much,” Jessie said, “but I do have a few nice things and I don't cherish the thought of finding them smashed or made love to.”

“I think I'll go with you,” the Inspector said suddenly.

“That isn't necessary, Richard. Nothing can happen to me while he's being followed day and night.”

“It isn't that, Jessie. I can't understand Humffrey's staying away from the sanitarium so long. You'd think with his wife so ill he'd go up to see her at least once a week. I'm going to tackle Dr. Duane.”

“I'll drive you to New Haven.”

“I'd rather not risk your being seen there. Not just yet, anyway. Are your tenants vacating tomorrow?”

“In the morning. I've called them.”

“Well, we'll drive up to Connecticut around noon, and if you don't mind my borrowing the Dodge, I'll drop you off at your place and go on to New Haven. I shouldn't be gone more than a few hours.”

He gave Johnny Kripps, who had the day trick, special instructions. The next morning Kripps called to say that Humffrey had a luncheon appointment in town with an investment banker, and another with some friends for late afternoon at one of his clubs.

Richard Queen found the Duane Sanitarium without difficulty. It was a colossal white Colonial building, with sky-reaching pillars, on a rise of hill overlooking acres of barbered gardens and lawns. But it was entirely surrounded by a high iron-spiked brick wall, and there was a guardhouse at the iron entrance.

The guard was grim-faced. “Sorry, sir, no one gets in without an appointment or pass. You'll have to write or phone.”

He flashed his gold shield. “You tell your Dr. Duane that a police inspector from New York wants to see him—and not next week, but right now.”

Ten minutes later an attendant was ushering him through a vast flower-spotted reception room and up a flight of marble stairs to the director's private office.

Dr. Duane was waiting for him beside his secretary's desk. He was a tall impressive man with a carnation in his lapel.

“Come in, come in,” he said testily, indicating the open door of his office. “Miss Roberts, I'm not to be disturbed.” He followed the old man in and shut the door. “And you are Inspector——?”

“Queen.” He looked around. The office was like an M-G-M set, with massive blond furniture, potted plants, and tropical fish tanks inset in the walls. “I know you're a busy man, so I'll get right to the point. I want to see Mrs. Sarah Humffrey.”

Dr. Duane frowned. He seated himself at his immaculate desk and straightened a pile of medical charts.

“Impossible, I'm afraid.”

The old man's brows went up. “How come, Doctor?”

“She's in no condition to see anyone. Besides, Mr. Humffrey's instructions were specific.”

“Not to allow his wife to speak to a police officer?” Inspector Queen asked dryly.

“I didn't say that, Inspector. The circumstances under which Mrs. Humffrey came to us, as I take it you know, make Mr. Humffrey's wishes quite understandable. She has seen no one since being admitted here except our staff and her husband.”

“How is she?”

“Better. The prognosis now is considerably more optimistic. However, any emotional upset …”

The man was nervous. He kept fidgeting with his bow tie, the papers, the telephone cord.

“Incidentally, just what's wrong with her?”

“Now, Inspector Queen, you can't expect me to tell you that. If Mr. Humffrey wishes to discuss his wife's illness, that's his affair. As her physician, I can't.”

Queen took out a small black notebook and leafed through it. Duane watched him alertly.

“Now, Doctor, there's that business of your phone call on the afternoon of Saturday, August 20th, to the New York office of a lawyer named Finner——”

Dr. Duane stiffened as if his chair were wired. “
My
call?” he cried. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you made it.”

“You people are hounding me! I told those detectives long ago I knew nothing about a phone call to such a person.”

“Oh, some of the boys were up here on that?” the Inspector murmured. “When was this, Dr. Duane?”

“The last week in August. It seems that in investigating the murder of this man—Finner, was it?—the New York police claimed to have found a telephone company record of a toll call from this New Haven number to the man's office … Didn't you know they'd been here?” he asked, breaking off suspiciously.

“Of course. I also know, Doctor, that you did make that call.”

“Prove it,” Dr. Duane snapped. “You people prove it! I told your men at the time that it was a mistake. We have never had a patient named Finner here, or a patient directly connected with a person of that name. I showed them our records to prove that. It's always possible some member of my staff put in such a call, but they have all denied it, and the only explanation I can offer is the one I gave—that someone here did call a New York number but got this fellow Finner's number by mistake …”

“In a way it's a break,” Richard Queen said thoughtfully to Jessie when he got back to her cottage in Rowayton. “His lie about the phone call to Finner's office the afternoon of the murder stopped New York cold. Their one lead to Humffrey in this case was choked off at the source.”

“You haven't said one word about whether you like my house,” Jessie said. She was surrounded by mops and pails, and she was furious.

“It's pretty as a picture, Jessie. But about Duane's lying. Privacy means money to Duane. His whole high-toned establishment is based on it. He can't afford to have his name kicked around in a murder case. He's not protecting Humffrey, he's protecting himself.” He scowled into his coffee cup.

“Those
people!”

“What people?”

“My tenants! The condition they left my beautiful little matchbox in! Pigs, that's what they must be. Look at this filth, Richard!”

“I think I'll run over and see Abe Pearl while I'm in the neighborhood,” he said philosophically.

“Would you? That will give me a chance to clean at least
some
of this mess.”

He grinned. “Never knew a woman who could look at a dirty house and think of anything else. All right, Jessie, I'll get out of here.”

Abe Pearl almost tore his arm out of the socket.

“What's happening, for God's sake?” When the old man brought him up to date, he shook his head. “That Humffrey dame might just as well be rotting in solitary somewhere. Do you suppose she's gone clean off her rocker, Dick, and that's why they won't let anyone see her?”

“No,” Richard Queen said slowly. “No, Abe, I don't think so. What happened up there today only confirms a suspicion I've had.”

“What's that?”

“I think Humffrey's main reason for putting his wife out of circulation in a place where he can be sure she can't be got at—and himself staying away, now that he's being tailed day and night—is to keep us from her.”

“I don't get it,” Chief Pearl said.

“He's put her where nobody can talk to her. He'd like us to forget she ever existed. Abe,
Humffrey is scared to death of something his wife might tell us.”

“About him?” The big man was puzzled.

“About him and the baby's death. It's got to be about little Mike's murder—she probably hasn't even been told about the other two. And if it's something Alton Humffrey doesn't want us to know, then it's something we've got to find out. The problem is, how to get to Sarah Humffrey …”

Jessie wanted to stay over, claiming that it would take a week to clean her house properly. But he hurried her back to the city.

They found Hugh Giffin picking disconsolately at his scar, and Al Murphy staring at the backs of his red-furred hands.