The Door Between (12 page)

“Didn’t believe in them. Trusted me absolutely. I’ve been her attorney and agent and heaven knows what else.”

Ellery went on to the second paragraph:

Morel, I want you to do something for me. It is a matter of the utmost importance, and extremely confidential. I know I can trust you never to expo –”

“Hmm,” said Ellery. “Stopped before she explained. I think Terry’s right. She simply changed her mind.”

“It’s important to know what she was referring to,” squeaked Morel. “I want most definitely to know.”

“Who doesn’t?” growled Terry; and Dr. MacClure and Eva went to the writing-desk to read the letter together.

The big man shook his head. “The only thing I can think of that’s important and confidential is a will.”

“No, sir. No,
sir
. Miss Leith told me only last week that she was eminently satisfied with her will as it stood.”

“She died testate, then?” demanded Ellery.

“Yes. She willed her estate on liquidation to be split into literary endowments for the benefit of several institutions of learning –”

“Colleges,” said Terry, interpreting. He seemed to dislike Morel.

“One endowment,” proceeded the lawyer stiffly, “goes to the Imperial University of Tokyo. She taught there, you know, after her father died.”

“So Dr. MacClure has told me. How about personal bequests?”

“None.”

“But didn’t she intend to change her will in view of her coming marriage with Dr. MacClure?”

“She did not, sir.”

“Wasn’t necessary,” said the doctor tonelessly. “My own income is considerably larger than hers, and she knew it.”

“Just screwy, the whole thing,” decided Terry.

“But didn’t anyone – I mean, any individual – stand to gain by her death?”

“Not a living soul,” squeaked Morel promptly. “Miss Leith had a large annual income from the estate of a long-deceased paternal relative – a great-aunt, I think. Under the terms of the aunt’s will Miss Leith was to receive the income until she attained the age of forty, after which the principal also became hers.”

“Then she died a wealthy woman?”

“Depends,” said the lawyer, “what you mean. Wealth – ha, ha! – is a comparative term. Well-cushioned, I should say.’

“But I thought you said she had inherited a fortune?”

“Oh, not yet! Fact is, she died before the stipulated age for the turning over of the fortune. That is, she died
before
forty – her fortieth birthday was to have been in October. Missed it by a month, b’George!”

“That’s – interesting, to say the least.”

“Or rather unfortunate. You see, the aunt’s will provided against that contingency, too. If Miss Leith died before she reached the age of forty, the entire aunt’s estate was to go to Miss Leith’s nearest blood-relative.”

“Who is?”

“No one at all. She hadn’t any. Absolutely alone in the world. Told me so herself. And so now the aunt’s estate goes to certain charities specifically provided for in the aunt’s will.”

Inspector Queen scratched his jaw. “Dr. MacClure, was there any disappointed suitor in Miss Leith’s life?”

“No. I was her first – and last.”

“Mr. Morel,” said Ellery, “do you know anything about Miss Leith’s private affairs which might give us a clue to her murder?”

Morel swabbed his bald spot again. “Does this answer you? She told me not long ago that she hadn’t an enemy in the world.”

Terry Ring said: “That’s what
she
thought.”

Morel looked at him with two bright little eyes, murmured something Delphic, bobbed, and took himself and his briefcase off without ever having opened it. Eva wondered rather hysterically why he had brought it at all.

And Ellery said: “You know, that’s strange. Here’s a woman with everything to live for, to whom death could only have been the cruelest misfortune. She was famous – she had just achieved one of the highest honors possible to an American author. She was potentially – almost immediately – very rich: in a month she was to have inherited a fortune. She was happy, and had every prospect of becoming happier – in a short time she was to have been married to the man of her choice … And suddenly, in the midst of all this beatitude, she’s struck down by an assassin.”

“It’s beyond me,” muttered Dr. MacClure.

“Why do people commit murder? For gain? But no one stood to gain a single penny by her death, except a few public institutions which can scarcely be suspected of homicide. For jealousy? But there was obviously no love-entanglement in her life – this was not a
crime
passionel
. For hate? But you heard what Morel said – she hadn’t an enemy. It’s certainly strange.”

“I wish I knew what to suggest,” said the doctor. There was a stiffness about him that made Eva avert her face.

“That lawyer mightn’t have been so far wrong at that,” said Terry Ring suddenly. “A lunatic.”

And they were silent

Finally Ellery said: “Sit down, Miss MacClure. This is brutal for you people, I know. But I may need you. Sit down.”

“Thank you,” said Eva faintly. “I – I believe I will.” She sat down on the edge of the low bed.

Ellery circled the writing-desk and began to pick at the debris in the waste-paper basket.

“And there’s that rock that broke the window,” complained the Inspector. He pointed his shoe at the rock, lying on the floor exactly where Eva had seen it last.

“Oh, the rock,” said Ellery, glancing at it. “You know, Terry has a theory about that rock, dad. He thinks some child threw it. Mischief.” He continued to delve in the basket.

“He does, does he? Might be, at that.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Ellery, scooping something out of the bottom. He handled it as if it were a bomb.

“Don’t worry about prints,” said the Inspector casually. “It’s been mugged.”

Dr. MacClure came forward with staring, bloodshot eyes. “That’s something new,” he said sharply, with a resurgence of his old force. “I’ve never seen that before, Mr. Queen.”

“It’s not new,” corrected the Inspector. “At least, that’s what the old woman says. She says Miss Leith brought it over with her from Japan.”

It was the half-scissors Eva had discovered on the desk Monday afternoon. The whole implement, when the missing half was in place, Ellery saw at a glance, must have presented the appearance of a bird with brilliant plumage and a beak two and a half inches long. The workmanship was unmistakably Oriental. The metal was inlaid with porcelain in a cunning fashion. The blades must in the whole scissors have represented the beak, the shanks the body, and the bow the legs – a most unorthodox-appearing scissors, but from the sharpness of the blade a serviceable one. Chips of semi-precious stones of all colors encrusted the body in an illusion of feathers; and in the light coming through the oriel windows they glittered with a multi-colored fire. Despite the five-inch length of the half-scissors it lay so lightly in Ellery’s hand that he could hardly feel it – as feathery as the creature it was meant to represent.

“Ingenious idea. I wonder what kind of bird it’s supposed to be.”

“Kinumé says it’s a crane – she gave it some Japanese name like
tsuru
or something,” explained Inspector Queen. “Sacred bird, she says. It seems Miss Leith was fond of all birds.”

“I remember now! The Japanese crane – symbol of longevity. It doesn’t seem to have been very prophetic, does it?”

“You can see something subtle in it if you want,” said the old man dryly. “To me it’s just the knife that killed her.”

Eva felt as if she must scream if the little man preserved his mild inscrutability one second longer. Oh, if only she’d remembered in time and they had wiped off her fingerprints!

“You’re sure that’s the weapon?” murmured Ellery.

“Sam Prouty says the wound is exactly the same width and thickness as that blade there. It could hardly be a coincidence.”

“No. But it could be something else.”

“Not the sheath!”

“What sheath?”

“We found a case upstairs in the attic-room that the Jap woman says always used to hold the scissors. But it’s not sharp.”

“The attic?” Ellery’s eyes were on the writing-desk, fixed on a stick of gold sealing-wax and a metal seal whose insignia was a Japanese ideogram; but he did not seem to see them.

The attic! Eva had completely forgotten about the attic. The attic she had never seen and that no one had ever been permitted to see. What was up there? But she didn’t really care. It made no difference …

“So the scissors came from up there,” said the Inspector. “That’s why nobody remembers it but this Kinumé. It’s been broken for years, she says. Seems to fit, all right. Killer got in through the attic window, picked up this half-scissors, came down, stabbed Miss Leith, wiped the blood off the blade, dropped it in the basket, and escaped the way he’d come. Yes, it does seem to fit.”

Was there the merest trace of mockery in his voice? Eva wondered wildly. What he said was impossible – the murderer
couldn’t
have come from the attic. Not with the door bolted from inside the bedroom. Did he really believe what he was saying?

“I think,” said Ellery thoughtfully, “I’ll have a look at that attic.”

The stairs were narrow, steep, and creaked; and after Ellery went Eva and her father together, feeling the need for proximity. For an instant Terry Ring contested with Inspector Queen for the curious right to trail the procession; and it was the brown man who, to the Inspector’s irritation, finally won. The old man disliked people behind him; he especially disliked people who mounted creaky stairs without the least noise.

They emerged into a cool, slope-ceilinged room, not at all the chamber of mysteries Eva’s aroused imagination had pictured it: after the climb in shadows it glowed with sun, an innocent, dainty, almost virginal room not even remotely sinister. Its two windows were dressed in blowy marquisette curtains and its bed, a four-poster of maple, was covered with the same cherry chintz that framed the curtains in flowers. But there were old Japanese water-colors on the walls and mats on the polished floor that could only have come from beyond the Pacific.

“What a pleasant room!” exclaimed Eva involuntarily. “No wonder Karen could write here.”

“I find it,” said Dr. MacClure in a choking voice, “stuffy.” He went to the open window and turned his back to them.

“And what a queer mixture of East and West,” remarked Ellery, glancing at the tiny teakwood desk with its ancient typewriter. “It’s an anomaly that doesn’t exist downstairs.”

In one angle of the room there was an electric refrigerator with a kitchen cabinet above it and a gas-range to its side. A tiny bathroom, quite modern in its fixtures, led off the bedroom; it had a small window and a skylight, but no other door. The little apartment looked as if it had been lived in by a woman of refined and lacy habits – a guarded haven, the door at the head of the attic stairs its sole exit to the world.

“That’s solitude with a vengeance,” said Ellery. “What did she do – divide her time between the rooms downstairs and this attic?”

“She wrote
Eight
-
Cloud
Rising
here,” said Eva with tears in her eyes. “I never dreamed it was so – nice.”

“From what I’ve been able to find out,” said Inspector Queen, “she’d lock herself up here for a week or two at a time when she wanted to write something special.”

Ellery glanced at the tier of bamboo bookshelves crowding the walls – works of reference in half a dozen languages, books in Japanese, books by Lafcadio Hearn, Chamberlain, Aston, Okuma; translations of the Japanese poets into English and French and German – all in the midst of a library of classic Occidental literature catholic in range and aged with use. And on the desk and in its drawers, which Ellery proceeded calmly to go through, were more books, scraps of manuscript, whole sections of rather enigmatic notes neatly typed – the complete paraphernalia of the writer, fixed in time by the extinction of the writer’s life, arrested in the very process of creation. To Eva, repelled and fascinated, Ellery’s brusque inspection of the littered papers seemed a sacrilege.

He picked up, then, a slender scissors-sheath of walrus-tusk ivory, covered with relief carvings, with a silk cord attached at the end of which dangled a good-luck coin inscribed with a Japanese motto.

“The scissors-case,” nodded the Inspector.

“Have you found the other half of the scissors?”

“Not yet. It’s probably been lost for years.”

Ellery laid the case down, looked around, and went to an open closet door. The closet was hung with women’s things – a variety of rather faded-looking garments; on its floor were two shoes. There were no hats or coats. He looked in, looked down, shook his head, and went to the tiny maple dressing-table on which lay a comb and brush, a toilet set, and a lacquered box full of quite beautiful trinkets, hair-pins, manicuring implements. His eyes narrowed.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Inspector Queen.

Ellery took off his
pince-nez
, polished them, and put them back on the bridge of his nose. Then he went back to the closet. He lifted a print dress by its hanger, looked at it. He put it back and took out another, a black silk trimmed with écru lace. He put that one back, too, pulled his lower lip, stooped, regarded the two shoes on the floor. Then something caught his eye and he fished it out of the back of the closet, where it had been half-hidden by the hanging garments. It was an old violin-case.

A peculiar suspicion began to form in Eva’s mind. She wondered if he had noticed. The others didn’t seem –

Ellery opened the case. Inside lay a chocolate-colored violin, its four strings dangling from the peg-box, having snapped apparently from the heat of some past summer. He regarded it, a broken Muse, for a long time.

Then, carrying the case, he crossed to the bed and deposited it on the chintz. They were all staring at him now – even Dr. MacClure, who had been impelled to turn from the window by the palpable silence.

“Well,” sighed Ellery. “Well!”

“Well what? What’s the matter with you?” demanded the Inspector crossly.

Terry Ring said in a deep voice: “The eminent Mr. Queen is going into his dance. Made a find, Mr. Queen?”