The Door Between (15 page)

“You’re cockeyed,” said Terry. “But I’ll tell you one thing, seeing as there’s no witness. I did make that call. So what? Anything wrong with that?”

“Ah,” said Ellery – a little luxury of triumph he was immediately sorry for, since his companion turned sullen again. “Well, as long as I’m theorizing … Terry, I don’t believe our friend the blonde woman was in that house at all last weekend. What do you say to that?”

The brown man jumped up. “You’ve got inside information!” he cried. “What the hell d’ye think you’re doing – pumping me when you know!”

“Then it’s true.”

Terry’s excitement dissipated. He stared down at Ellery, made a mock motion – hitting himself lightly in the jaw with his own fist – and shrugged. “A sucker again. You’re slicker than I thought you were.”

“That
is
praise,” grinned Ellery. “I see it all now. The blonde woman escaped from the attic. Her escape terrified Karen Leith – why, I confess I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that.”

“You’re good at that, all right,” said Terry gloomily.

“She hired you as a private investigator to trace the woman. You took the case. She became impatient. Apparently she felt it imperative to have the woman located. When you called her to make a negative report, she fired you and told you she was turning to the regular police, gave you the details. That riled you. You decided to horn in.”

“Warm,” conceded Terry, kicking the gravel.

“Did she tell you the name of the blonde, or that she had lived in the attic?”

“No, I found that out by myself. She just said it was someone she was interested in and gave me a description.”

“No name?”

“No. Said she’d probably use a phony.”

“How did you find out about the attic?”

“What do you want – all my trade secrets?”

“So you couldn’t find the woman?’

Terry Ring rose and deliberately sauntered up the path. Ellery watched him intently. He stooped and picked up a rock from the border of the path, weighing it in his hand. Then he wheeled and came back.

“I’ll give it to you straight, Queen. I don’t trust you.”

“Why did you help Eva MacClure? What difference would it have made to you if that door had remained bolted and the police arrested Eva as the only possible killer of Karen Leith? Eh?” Terry Ring looked at the rock in his hand. “Is it possible that you have made a deal with someone else in the meantime? That you were double-crossing Karen Leith about the blonde woman?”

For an instant Ellery felt the breath of danger whistle by his ears. The brown fist about the rock tightened, and it occurred to him uncomfortably how easy it would be to brain a man with that innocent-appearing excrement of Nature. Then Terry whirled and raised his arm and let fly. The rock went like a baseball to the top of the garden wall at the side, struck a branch hanging over from a tree in the next garden, and disappeared with a faint series of thuds.

“You can talk your damned head off,” he panted. “I’m not answering any of your lousy questions.”

Ellery was staring, however, wide-eyed at the branch which hung dolefully now, broken, from the tree. “Good lord,” he said. “Did you do that on purpose?”

“Do what on purpose?”

“Aim at that branch?”

“Oh, that.” Terry shrugged. “Sure.”

“Heavens, man, it’s a good forty feet!”

“I’ve done better,” said Terry indifferently. “I aimed at the tip leaf, but I only hit the third one.”

“And with an oval stone,” murmured Ellery. “Do you know, Terry, that gives me an idea?”

“I once pitched for the Reds … What idea?” His head came up abruptly.

Ellery looked up. He looked up at a barred window on the second storey of the house, a window whose panes, one behind the other, had been shattered Monday afternoon by a stone.

Terry growled: “You know I was up there with the girl when that rock broke the window Monday. So what the hell are you –”

“I’m not accusing you of anything,” said Ellery impatiently. “Terry, find a rock about the same size and shape as the one that broke that window. Even smaller, if you can.”

Terry shook his head and began scouting about the garden. “Say! Here’s a bunch of ’em!”

Ellery came on the run. And there they were – a number of smooth ovals almost perfectly matched, as far as he could judge the same size as the stone now lying on the floor of Karen Leith’s bedroom. They hem-stitched the border of the path. In one place there was a gap among the evenly spaced rocks, and an oval depression in the soft earth.

“So it came from here.”

“Looks like it.”

Ellery picked two of them up. “Take a few.” And as Terry stooped he walked back to the bench and looked up again at the barred, broken window. “Well,” he said after a pause, “here goes,” and he twirled his arm and threw the stone.

It struck two feet to the left of the barred window, crashing against the wall and falling back into the garden.

“It’s not so easy at that,” he muttered, while Terry watched frowning. “Off-centre, hard to get a grip. Umph!”

He threw the second one. This time it landed a foot below the barred window. A startled head peered through the bars protecting the sitting-room window.

“Hey!” yelled Detective Ritter. “What the hell you guys doin’ down there?” Then he recognized Ellery. “Oh, I didn’t know it was you, Mr. Queen. What’s the matter?”

“A rather unsuccessful experiment in the interests of pure science,” said Ellery disgustedly. “Don’t mind the noise, Ritter. And watch your noodle. We
may
pull a miracle.”

The detective hastily withdrew his head from view. From the lower windows Kinumé and the O’Mara girl were watching again, fascinated and frightened.

“You try,” urged Ellery. “You’ve been a professional pitcher, haven’t you? You can hit specified leaves on trees from a distance of forty feet, can’t you? Try to break that window up there – the one next to the broken one.”

“How do you expect me to get the stone past those bars?” demanded Terry, glancing up at the oriel windows.

“The very point. That’s your problem. You’re an expert. Proceed.”

Terry stripped off his coat, loosened his lemon-yellow necktie, flipped his hat on the bench, and hefted one of the oval rocks. He squinted up at the right-hand oriel window, shifted position, settled his feet securely in the gravel, wound up his arm, and let fly. The rock clanged against two iron bars and thudded back into the garden.

“Again,” said Ellery judicially.

Terry tried again. This time he gripped the stone differently. But the window remained intact; only an iron bar protested.

“Not bad,” said Ellery. “Once more, my gifted friend.”

For the third time the stone dropped back, leaving the window unbroken; a fourth time, a fifth …

“Hell!” said Terry disgustedly. “It just can’t be done.”

“And yet,” said Ellery in a thoughtful tone, “it was.”

Terry retrieved his coat. “No one can tell me that someone aimed to throw one of those rocks through those bars. I wouldn’t even have tried it if you hadn’t told me to. There can’t be more than a half-inch or so clearance on each side of the rock when it gets smack between two bars.”

“No,” said Ellery, “that’s quite true.”

“Big Train couldn’t have done it!”

“No,” said Ellery, “I don’t believe Mr. Johnson could.”

“The Diz couldn’t do it!”

“Nor Mr. Dean. You know,” said Ellery, frowning, “this demonstration proves something.”

“Yeah,” said Terry sarcastically, clamping on his hat. “It proves the rock had nothing to do with the murder. I knew that Monday afternoon.”

Venetia was waiting for the MacClures with a set table and drawn tubs; and the doctor fled the black woman’s affectionate advances to wallow in a steaming bath. There were pages of notes in Venetia’s laborious hand in the message book on the telephone table in the foyer, a stack of telegrams and letters, and boxes and sheaves of flowers.

“Oh, dear,” sighed Eva. “I suppose we’ll have to answer all these people. I didn’t know Karen had so many friends.”

“It ain’t
her,”
sniffed Venetia. “It’s Dr. John. They’s been mo’ doctors!”

“Hasn’t Dr. Scott called?”

“No, honey, he ain’t. Now look-a here. You go take off your clo’es an’ soak in that tub, you hear me?”

“Yes, Venetia,” said Eva submissively, and went to her room. Venetia glared at the telephone and returned, muttering, to her kitchen.

The telephone rang four times while Eva was bathing, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything any more. As she used the big puff on her body in the black-tiled bathroom, looking at herself in the full-length mirror, she wondered what it must feel like to die. If you died like Karen there was a bite, a pain, and then … what? What had Karen been thinking of as she lay on the dais before the oriel windows, unable to move, unable to open her eyes, dying, knowing she was dying – perhaps even hearing everything Terry Ring and Eva had said? Oh, if only she’d had the courage, thought Eva, to feel Karen’s heart! Karen might have talked. Karen might have said something in that last gasping moment which would have solved everything … That glare in Karen’s eyes when she gurgled in her torn throat and they saw she was still alive. The brown man thought – Eva knew he had – that Karen was accusing Eva with her eyes. But Eva knew how impossible that was. Eva knew that the glare was only the last glare before death, when Karen saw the light fail and felt her heart stop beating …

Eva dashed the puff over her eyes angrily. Then she sat down before the vanity to cold-cream her face.

All those telephone messages, letters, flowers. People must have been puzzled and uneasy. They didn’t quite know what to do. When a person died decently you telephoned and wrote notes of condolence and sent flowers, all very sad and gracious and beautiful, and everyone felt that it was good to be alive, even the mourners who saw the dead one in every dark nook and cranny. But when a person was murdered! The book of etiquette didn’t say anything about
that
. Especially when the victim had been murdered under mysterious circumstances and no one knew
who
might have done it. You might send flowers to the murderer!

It was so absurd and tragic that Eva put her head on the vanity and wept through the cold-cream. If people only knew! If people only knew that she was the only one who could have murdered Karen Leith – she, Eva MacClure, herself, the girl, the woman. If
Dick
only knew …

“Eva,” called Dr. Scott from the other side of the bathroom door.

He’d come!

Eva scrubbed off the cold-cream, dashed cold water over her face, dried and powdered it, used her newest shade of lipstick in three dabs – peach-coral to match her nails and the glints in her hair – wriggled into her Turkish-towel robe, flung open the door, and fell into Dr. Scott’s arms.

Venetia, hovering in the bedroom doorway, was shocked.

“Eva! You – that ain’t
decent
!”

“Go away,” said Dr. Scott.

“Now you listen to me, suh! I’m goin’ right in an’ tell Dr. John –”

“Venetia,” said Eva through her teeth, “go away.”

“But yo’ hair – it’s all mussed, and you’s in bare feet!”

“I don’t care,” said Eva, and kissed Dr. Scott for the third time. He felt her body tremble under the woolly toweling.

“You’ll catch yo’ death of cold on that floor!”

Dr. Scott detached himself from Eva’s arms, went to the bedroom door, and firmly closed it in Venetia’s outraged face. Then he came back and picked Eva up and sat down with her in the Cape Cod rocker.

“Oh, Dick,” moaned Eva.

“Don’t talk, darling.”

He held her very tightly, and Eva through the warmth of his arms and her own distress began dimly to wonder. There was something bothering him. That was it. He was comforting her, but it was really himself he was trying to comfort. And his unwillingness to talk showed that he didn’t want to think, he didn’t want to think about anything. He just wanted to sit there holding her in his arms and feeling her closeness.

She pushed away from him and flung her hair back from her eyes. “What’s the matter, Dick?”

“Matter? Why do you ask that? Nothing at all.” He tried to pull her down again. “Let’s not talk, Eva. Let’s just sit.”

“But there
is
something wrong. I know it.”

He tried to smile. “What makes you so intuitive all of a sudden? It’s been a bad day, that’s all.”

“The hospital? You poor lamb!”

“I lost a confinement case. Caesarian. She’d have been all right if she’d taken care of herself.”

“Oh,” said Eva, and she snuggled down again.

But now, perversely, he seemed to want to talk, as if defending himself was important. “She lied to me. I’d put her on a rigid diet. I couldn’t watch her like a dog, could I? Now I find out she’d been stuffing herself with ice-cream and whipped cream and fatty meats and God knows what else.” He said bitterly: “If a woman can’t tell the truth to her doctor, what chance does a mere husband stand?”

So that was it. Eva lay still in his arms. Now she understood. It was his way of asking questions. She could feel the slightly unsteady beating of his heart. Those puzzled looks he had been giving her since Monday evening!

“And then I’ve been hounded by those damned reporters all day.” It was coming out now, Eva thought, in a gush. “What the devil do they want of
me
? I haven’t done anything! One filthy sheet had my picture this afternoon. Young Society Doctor Denies. Denies what? My God! I don’t know anything!”

“Dick,” said Eva quietly, sitting up.

“I felt like slamming into the lot of ‘em! What’s the low-down, Doc? Who bumped Karen Leith? What’s your angle? Where do you fit in? Is it true she was a cardiac? Did you tell your
fiancée
not to talk? Why? Where? When? How?” He snapped his jaws shut, glowering. “They’ve been infesting my office, pestering my patients, hounding me at the hospital, cross-questioning my nurses – and they want to know when we’re going to be married!”

“Dick. Listen to me, dear.” She took his flushed face in her hands. “I want to tell you something.”

The tip of his handsome nose, that Eva had so often kissed, grew faintly pale. He said: “Yes?” in a hoarse voice. Scared. He was scared. Eva could see it written all over him. She almost asked him what he was scared of. But she knew.