QED (13 page)

Henry stumbled out.

Ellery was watching “The Late Show” on TV Thursday night when his doorbell rang. He opened the door and a woman with a worn cloth coat thrown over her house-dress fell into his arms. Her eyes were wild.

“Mr. Queen? I'm Claire Witter, Mrs. Henry Witter. I live in the neighborhood—left the children with a neighbor—ran all the way. They say you help people in trouble—”

“Get your breath, Mrs. Witter,” Ellery said, supporting her. “Just what kind of trouble are you in?”

“My husband's just been picked up by the police. I understand an Inspector Queen is in charge. He's your father, I'm told. But Henry didn't do it, Mr. Queen—”

“What didn't Henry do?”

“Kill that moneylender! They've taken Henry to the office where Tully's body was found. I don't know what to do.” And Claire Witter sobbed like a little girl.

“Now, now,” Ellery said. “I'll get my hat.”

The Inspector had invited Ellery to trail along when the homicide call came in about 10:30, and Ellery had pleaded fatigue; so the old man was surprised when his son showed up not two hours later.

“I'm representing Mrs. Witter,” Ellery told him. “What's the charge against her husband?”

“Suspicion of murder.”

“As pat as all that, dad?” Ellery glanced around the crowded office. He had left Claire Witter in the hall in the care of a patrolman. “Is that my client?”

A white-faced man with clerical shoulders was leaning against the wall, his eyes shut, and with Sergeant Velie's beef between him and the possibly tempting open window. Nearby huddled a frowsy old lady, a dumpy woman in a smart suit, and an Italian-looking man with a big gray mustache.

Inspector Queen nodded. “The one next to Velie. And don't tell me Witter doesn't look the type.”

“He doesn't.”

“Just goes to show. It's Witter, all right.”

The basket crew were crating the remains of Mr. Tully. Ellery glimpsed the back of a tan jacket splattered with blood.

“I don't see the weapon. Knife?”

“Tully's letter opener. We couldn't seem to raise a print, so we sent it down to the lab.”

Ellery looked around at the bare room, the bare floor. “Those empty desk and file drawers were found open, the way they are now?”

“Nothing's been changed or removed except the letter opener. By the way, the heat was on Tully for a usury charge and he must have got wind of it. He was getting set to skip. Anyway, here's the rundown. Prouty says Tully was knifed tonight between 8:30 and 9:30—”

The Inspector paused; Mr. Tully was leaving. Ellery hoped Claire Witter would be crying on the patrolman's shoulder when the basket passed her in the hall. There was blood on it.

“Three people entered this office during that hour,” the Inspector resumed. “That dumpy woman next to the man with the mustache—her name is Mrs. Lester. Mr. Mustache came next—he's a barber named Dominini. Finally, Witter.”

“Who's the old lady beside Mrs. Lester?”

“The cleaning woman of the building. She found the body.” The Inspector raised his voice. “Mrs. Bogan?”

The old woman shuffled forward on her shapeless shoes. She still had her work-apron on and a dust cloth bound around her lifeless white hair.

“Tell your story again, Mrs. Bogan.”

“Couple minutes after ten I comes in here to clean.” She had badly fitted false teeth, and her words came bubbling and hissing out like water from a rusty faucet. “What do I see but Mr. Tully laying with his face on the desk and a knife sticking outen his back. There was all blood …” Her bleary eyes rolled. But there was nothing on the desk now.

“Did you touch anything, Mrs. Bogan?” Ellery asked.

“Me? I run out yelling me head off. Found a cop in the street and that's all I know, Mister. I'll be seeing that knife sticking outen his back in me dreams.”

“You didn't hear anything—a fight, an argument—between half-past eight and half-past nine?”

“I wasn't on this floor then. I was cleaning two floors down.”

“Mrs. Lester,” Inspector Queen called out.

The dumpy woman in the smart suit blanched under her heavy makeup. She was well into her forties, her hair hennaed to a screaming red, her figure fighting a corset. She kept biting her lips, but Ellery saw under her nervousness the expression of chronic restlessness so often worn by women with too little to do.

“You were one of Tully's victims, too?” he asked her.

“Don't tell my husband,” Mrs. Lester said in a rapid-fire falsetto. “He'd kick me out, no kidding. I had to get a loan on the q.t., see, because of—well, a bunch of us girls have a little afternoon poker club. We started out sociable, but I don't know, the limit kept getting higher … The thing is, I went into the hole for a lot of money, mostly to that Mrs. Carson. If my husband Phil knew—he's a nut against gambling … Anyway, she says if I don't pay up she'll go to Phil. So I took a $600 loan from this shark Tully.”

“And Tully called the loan in, Mrs. Lester?”

The woman's gloved hands began to writhe. “He said I had to pay off the whole thing by half-past eight tonight. Meantime I'd lost more—I swear to God those harpies play with marked cards! So I came here at half-past eight and I hand Tully two hundred dollars—all I could scrape up between what I could sneak off my household money and a ring I hocked that I told Phil I lost. But Tully says nothing doing. So I start begging him to give me more time, and all he does, the rat, is sit here emptying desk drawers and throwing away papers and ignoring me like I was dirt!”

“Why was he doing that, Mrs. Lester?”

“How should I know? He takes my money and says either I have the other four hundred for him by tomorrow morning or he goes to my husband. I left him still tearing up papers.”

“Alive, of course,” Ellery smiled.

“Are you kidding? Say, you don't think—” Her bloated eyes began to look terrified.

“Mr. Dominini,” Inspector Queen cut in.

The barber bounded forward in bitter excitement. It took a great many haircuts and shaves to keep his ten children in
pasta
and shoe leather, he exclaimed. He had a small neighborhood shop that could accommodate only so many. The neighborhood had run down, lots of poor people had moved in, Mr. Dominini said, and even with the higher prices barbers had to charge these days things got worse and worse. Finally, he had faced the possible loss of his shop.

“I go to bank, bank say Dominini no good risk no more,” the barber shouted, brandishing his clean hairy hands. “What can I do? I go to Tully, the blood suck'!”

For a year he had managed to meet Tully's usurious interest charges. Then, on Tuesday, the loan shark had phoned him and demanded payment in full by Thursday night. He named a quarter to nine as the deadline.

“Where Dominini get fifteen hundred dollar?” the mustachioed barber cried. “I bring him five hundred sixty-five, it's a best I can do. He say, Dominini, that's a no good. I say okay, Mr. Tully, you run barber shop, I work for you. He call me bad name, take my money, say get out, I sue you. Couple hour later, the policeman he pick me up. For what? My wife she cry,
bambini
run under bed … I no kill Tully!”

“Then he was alive when you left this office tonight, Mr. Dominini?” Ellery said. “That's your story?”

“It's a true!”

“Clearing Mrs. Lester,” Inspector Queen murmured.

Ellery frowned. “What was Tully doing, if anything,” he asked the barber, “while you were here?”

“Like a that lady say. He take a things out of file cabinet. Tear up paper, folder.”

“Bringing us,” the Inspector said, “to Henry Witter.”

Sergeant Velie had to assist Henry forward. The bookkeeper sank into the chair, his tic working overtime. Suddenly his nostrils expanded. He looked up. Ellery was lighting a cigaret.

“Might I have one?” Henry asked. “I've run out.”

“Sure. No, that's all right. Keep the pack.”

“Oh, no—”

“I have another, Mr. Witter.”

“Thanks. Thanks a million.” Henry inhaled hungrily. “I should have cut them out long ago.” He puffed and puffed.

“Mr. Witter, you found Tully alive at nine?”

“Oh, yes,” Henry said.

“Alive and alone?”

Henry nodded.

“Clearing Dominini,” the Inspector murmured. “Neat?”

“Even gaudy,” Ellery murmured back. “Tell me just what happened, Mr. Witter, after you got here.”

Henry lit a fresh cigaret from the butt of the old one, looked around, hesitated, then tossed the smoldering butt into the wastebasket.

“I told Tully I hadn't been able to raise the money. I said, you can do what you want, Mr. Tully, sue me, have me arrested, beaten up, killed, it won't do you any good, you can't get blood from a stone. He kept sitting there behind the desk tearing up papers and records as if he didn't hear me. But he was paying attention, all right.” Henry gulped in a lungful of smoke. “Because as soon as I got through he started to chew me out. What he called me—”

Henry choked over the smoke. After a moment Ellery said, “Yes, Mr. Witter?”

“I never raised my hand in anger to anybody in my life. But Tully said some things to me no man could take. Real nasty things. And while he was saying them I kept getting sorer and sorer.” Henry's tic was hopping around now like a flea. “I thought of all the months we'd scrimped to pay him his blood money and at the same time pay for the medical care my little girl Jody needs so maybe some day she'll walk again. I thought of the stockings my wife couldn't buy, the baseball cards my Eddie couldn't collect, the complaints we didn't make to the Health Department about the cockroaches because the landlord might get mad and somehow chisel us out of the apartment and we'd have to rent another place at a bigger rent … I thought of a lot of things like that, and then I leaned over the desk and let Tully have it.”

“With the paper knife?” Ellery asked gently.

“Huh?” Henry Witter came back to the present. “No, with this.” Henry made a skinny fist and looked at it. “I pasted him one right on the button. Socko!” The memory of it gave him a momentary pleasure; a spark of life came into his eyes. “I didn't know I could hit that hard. He went out like a light.”

“How did he fall, Mr. Witter?”

“On his face on the desk. I certainly was surprised. But I felt better, too. So then I walked out.”

“Leaving Tully unconscious but alive?”

“Sure. He was breathing like a walrus.”

“Did you notice anyone in the hall, or downstairs?”

“Just the night man mopping in the lobby.”

“And that's how we know,” Inspector Queen said to his son, “that nobody else entered the building between Witter's leaving and Mrs. Bogan's finding the body. The porter saw Witter come and go, and he was in the lobby working the whole time afterward. Yes, Velie?”

The Sergeant, who had been summoned into the hall, came back to rumble into the Inspector's ear.

“That cinches it,” the Inspector snapped. “The lab's found three partially smeared prints on Tully's letter knife. One is Tully's. The other two have been identified, Witter, as yours.”

Henry Witter sat there with his mouth open. But then he yelped as the cigaret burned his fingers. He flung it into the wastebasket and covered his face with his hands. Ellery, fearing a fire, walked over to the basket, but he saw that it was empty except for the two butts.

“So, Witter,” Inspector Queen began.

“Hold it, dad.” Ellery stooped over Henry. “Mr. Witter, while you were seated here across the desk from Tully, did you happen to handle the letter knife?”

Henry looked up dully. “I must have, if my fingerprints are on it. I don't remember. But I didn't use it on Tully. I'd remember that. God, yes. Don't you believe me, Inspector?”

“No,” Inspector Queen said. “No, Witter, I don't. Take my advice and come clean. Maybe the D.A. would consent to a lesser plea—”

“Maybe the D.A. would, but I won't,” Ellery said. “My client will plead not guilty.”

Sergeant Velie remarked with some bitterness to no one in particular, “And the beauty of it is, he does it all with his little sleeves rolled up.”

The Inspector's glance at the Sergeant was a terrible thing. “How come, Ellery?”

“Because they aren't here,” Ellery said, waving vaguely.

“Because
what
aren't here?”

“The papers.”

“
What
papers?”

“Look,” Ellery said. “Mrs. Lester, Dominini, Witter—all three say Tully was cleaning out his desk and file, throwing away papers and records. You told me, dad, that nothing has been removed from this office except Tully's letter knife. Yet the file and desk drawers are cleaned out, the floor is bare, there's nothing on the desk—
and the wastebasket is empty
. I ask you: Where are all the papers and records Tully was throwing out?”

His father looked as if he had been struck by lightning. He turned toward the old cleaning woman cowering in her corner, but Ellery was there before him. “You'd been inside this office earlier tonight than you claimed, Mrs. Bogan,” Ellery was saying “—right after Witter left, in fact. And you found Tully just recovering from Witter's haymaker.”

The old woman blinked.

“You owed Tully money, too, didn't you, Mrs. Bogan? And he put the screws on you tonight as well, while you were cleaning his office—right? You'd already emptied the wastebasket and taken the contents outside when you killed him. By the way, how did you come to owe Tully money?”

The old woman blinked and blinked. Finally she touched her liverish old lips with her old tongue, and she said, “Me boy Jim. Jim's a three-times loser. Next time he gets sent up, it's for life. And then what's he do but hook a wad outen the till in the garage where he's working. The boss says he won't send Jimmy up if I pays back the money, so I borries it offen Tully … I paid him his interest faithful.