The Fourth Side of the Triangle (23 page)

Winterson jumped to his feet. “If there's anything else I can tell you, here's my card. By all means call on me. Goodbye, Miss Walsh, Mr. McKell.” To Dane he said, “I wish you all the luck.”

Ashton said, “My car—”

“Thank you, but I believe I'll walk for a bit.” And, nodding all around, his smile perfunctory, he darted from the hospital room, leaving the memory of his twisted face and the sluggish overhang of his Turkish tobacco.

“And that was something Mr. Winterson had to get out of his system,” Ellery remarked. “I wonder how many years he's unconsciously hunted for the opportunity.”

“He was
disgusting.
” Judy made a face.

“It was also a rich vein, and we mustn't let it go untapped. I'll have to depend on one or all of you to be my eyes, ears, and legs.”

“Tell us what you want done, Mr. Queen,” said the elder McKell.

“I want all four of the men Elisha Winterson named to be checked for alibis for the night of September 14th. No, not four—five. Winterson, too. Yes, begin with Winterson. Then Foster, then”—he glanced at his notes—“Hurt, then Van Vester, then Odonnell.”

Dane was already helping Judy into her coat.

“I'll get on it right away, Mr. Queen,” Ashton McKell said. “Hire some Pinkerton people—a squad of them, if necessary.”

“Good. And let me have their reports as they come in.”

At last he was alone, and in the way he had of letting himself go mentally—like an athlete deliberately relaxing his muscles, muscle by muscle, on a training table—Ellery sank himself deeper and deeper into thought. There was something here … something … He fanned the air to dissipate Winterson's smog trail, and as he did so his eye fell on the fanning card, and he saw that it was the personal card Winterson had handed him on departing. Idly, he read it.

And Ellery's face went white as the card itself.

Was it possible that …?

As his color returned, he kept mumbling to himself something about a fool and his folly.

After that, he could hardly wait for the reports.

As the reports came in from the detective agency, Ashton McKell sent them to Ellery, who arranged them in piles on his writing desk: Winterson, Foster, Hurt, Van Vester, Odonnell.

He analyzed.

On the night of September 14th:

—Winterson had been in an Air France plane en route to Rome. The French press at Orly had interviewed him on his opinions of current fashion, recorded his polite platitudes, photographed him getting on the plane. The Italian press had performed a similar task when he got off in Rome.

—Foster had been in Chicago. He had changed jobs shortly after his breakup with Sheila Grey and moved, with his wife and two children, to the Windy City, where he had been living ever since. At the time of the murder he had been attending a meeting of a bra and foundation garment high command, representing his advertising agency, in the company of a roomful of vice-presidents.

—John F. “Jack” Hurt III was no longer among the automobile-fancying population. In 1961, in a stock-car race in Florida, his machine had hurtled out of control on a turn; when he was removed from the flaming wreckage he was dead.

—Van Vester was also dead. He had been drowned the previous year in a boating accident off the Florida Keys.

—Eddwin “Hamlet” Odonnell had been in England, playing the role he was most noted for in repertory. At the moment of the murder in New York he was giving an imitation of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra at an all-night party in London, in the presence of several dozen more or less sober stars of British stage and screen. Dame Vesta Morisey herself vouched for him.

Then whoever had shot Sheila Grey to death, it had not been one of these five former lovers.

But by this time Ellery knew it could not have been one of them, anyway.

When Dane visited the hospital on the morning of December 31st, he found Ellery's room in confusion. Clothes and books were everywhere, suitcases lay open, flower vases were being emptied, and Ellery was hopping around on his aluminum crutches in a sort of joyous grouch.

“Are you checking out after all?” Dane asked. “I thought you said the doctor had changed his mind.”

“I changed his mind back,” Ellery snarled. “I'm damned if I'm going to stay in this lazaret for another year. I think they're secretly burning punk in thanksgiving for getting rid of me. If I could only maneuver gracefully on these cursed hobblesticks! Oops!—sorry, Kirsten.”

He almost knocked the resplendent Swedish nurse over, and in trying to catch her he all but fell himself. Dane sprang in to avert further broken bones.

“Mr.
Queen
,” the lovely nurse said. “You must not the crutches use so!
This
way …”

“I'm tired,” Ellery said. And sat down. “By the way, Dane, tonight being what the Scotch call hogmanay, I'm throwing a little party at the apartment—”

“Whose?”

“Mine. Kirsten, do you remember what I said about the time when they cut the concrete pants off me?”

“Oh, so bad, I cannot come,” the nurse said, blushing. “Sture, his ship comes in. We go together tonight, you see.”

“Who's Sture?” demanded Ellery.

She murmured a word in Swedish. “Oh, my boy friend—no, yes, my fiancé. He is second mate. Now we go back to Sweden and he gets yob in ship company office. We will marry.” And, scarlet, she fled.

“And a good thing, too,” Ellery said gloomily. “Having to occupy the same living space with that goddess day after day without being able to touch her has been almost too much for me to bear. Sture! The Swedes have all the luck. Anyway, I wasn't going to invite Kirsten to my New Year's Eve party. That's strictly for our little in-group. I can count on you-all? Good. Now how about helping me pack?”

The Christmas tree which Ellery had not been able to see on its day of glory was still there when the three McKells and Judy Walsh got to the Queen apartment at 9:30 that night. Partly because of Ellery's delayed Yuletide, partly in the old Knickerbocker tradition of New Year's Day, the McKells had brought gifts. Ramon's arms were full of them.

Inspector Queen was there, too, not altogether gracefully. (“What do you think you're doing?” he had demanded of Ellery. “It isn't bad enough having the parents here, after my part in getting up a case against them, but this son of theirs
I
arrested! It isn't exactly the setup for good social relations.” “Dad, trust me.” “Trust
you?
” the Inspector had said scathingly. So Ellery had explained; and after that the Inspector helped Ellery ready the apartment; and he was johnny-on-the-spot, dentures grinning, when the McKell party arrived, playing the role of mine host's aging parent like the hardened trouper he was.)

“All these gifts,” Ellery said, glowing. “Well, I'll be having a New Year's gift for the McKell family myself later tonight. Do you suppose I could borrow Ramon?”

“Of course,” said Ashton McKell.

Lutetia said, “How thoughtful of you, Mr. Queen,” her anxiety tempered by her supreme confidence that everything would come out right in the end. Sooner or later the law would release her son, as it had released her and her husband. Ashton would see to that. Or Ellery Queen, or both.

“The gift isn't ready, but if Ramon can get back a little after eleven o'clock and run an errand for me …”

“Certainly,” Ashton said. “Ramon, be back here at, say, 11.15.”

The chauffeur said, “Yes, sir,” and left.

The presence of the Inspector was something of a damper. Ellery worked hard at playing host. He had put some Elizabethan music on the hi-fi, and he presided like a pitchman over the punch bowl, in which he had prepared a Swedish punch after a convivial recipe given him by one of the hospital doctors. Judy helped him serve the food, which boxed the compass from Peking duck to tiny buckwheat cakes. “There's something of a rite involved in handling the duck,” he said. “Mr. McKell, would you be kind enough to carve?” (at which the Inspector growled a very low growl that only his son heard) … “Thank you … First we take one of these thin little pancakes, or knishes—almost like tortillas, aren't they?… spread them with slices of duck … green onions … the soy sauce, the other sauces … roll 'em up … tuck in the ends so that the sauce doesn't drip, and fall to. Dane, some more of that hot punch, and skoal to the lot o' yez!”

He told them the story of the very young student nurse who had rushed from a patient's room screaming that his pulse had dropped to 22. The staff had come running, the resident took the pulse over again, laughed, and said, “What did you do, take a fifteen-second count? His pulse is 88.” The poor girl had forgotten to multiply by four.

Ellery labored to keep the party going, but the Inspector noticed that he kept glancing at the foyer. Only when the buzzer sounded, and Inspector Queen went to answer the door, did Ellery's anxiety turn to confidence.

“It's Ramon back,” the Inspector said.

“Come in, Ramon. A glass of punch?”

The chauffeur glanced at his employer, who nodded. Ramon accepted the steaming red liquid, murmured a health in Spanish, and drank quickly.

“Thank you, sir,” he said to Ellery. “Where did you want me to go?”

“I have the address right here.” Ellery handed him a card. “Hand them this and they'll give you a package. Try to get back as quickly as possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

When Ramon left, Ellery commandeered the services of Dane, and Dane came back with a cooler of champagne. Judy turned on the TV set. Times Square was jammed with its New Year's Eve quota of ninnyhammers, as Dane called them—“They're the same folksy folks who clutter up the beaches in summer and jump up and down when the camera turns their way.” But no one smiled. The approach of midnight was turning the screw on nerves, as at some impending grim event. And when the door buzzer sounded again, everyone started. But it was only Ramon, back from his errand.

“Not quite midnight,” said Ellery. “Thank you, Ramon. Have a glass of champagne with us.”

“If it is all right with Mr. McKell—”

“Certainly, Ramon.”

The package was tubular, about two feet long. It seemed an odd shape for a gift. Ellery placed it carefully on the mantelpiece.

“There goes the ball on the Times Building,” he said. “Fill up!” And as the announcer's countdown reached the tick of midnight, and Times Square roared and fluttered, Ellery lifted his glass. “To the New Year!”

And when they had all drunk, he hobbled over to the television set and turned it off; and he faced them and said, “I promised you a gift. Here it is. I'm ready to name the murderer of Sheila Grey.”

Inspector Queen backed off until he was leaning against the jamb of Ellery's study door. Ashton McKell placed both hands on the chair before him, gripping it. Lutetia, in the chair, set her glass down on the table, and it slopped a little. Judy leaned against Dane, who was watching Ellery like a dog.

“Here, once more, and for the last time,” said Ellery, “is the timetable of the night of September 14th:

“A few minutes to ten: Dane left Sheila Grey's apartment.

“A few moments later: You, Mr. McKell, arrived. You were sent away about 10:03, almost at once.

“10:19: You, Dane, returned to the building.

“10:23: Sheila Grey was shot to death in her apartment.

“It took the first police officers only a few minutes to reach the scene, since the precinct man was able to put out a call practically at the moment of the shooting, from hearing it over the phone. The radio car men found Sheila Grey dead and began an immediate search of the apartment. They found the revolver. They found the cartridges. They did not find Sheila Grey's note, describing Dane's earlier visit and attack.”

The quiet in Ellery's voice did not relax anyone. He seemed unaware of their tension and went on.

“Why didn't the investigating officers, first on the scene, find the note? Obviously, because it had already been removed from the premises. Who removed it? Well, who do we know had it in his possession later, in order to be able to send it to the police? The blackmailer. There was only one way in which the blackmailer could have got hold of the note, and that was by taking it from the Grey apartment.

“Let's tackle the same question temporally,” Ellery continued. “When did Sheila write the note? Between Dane's first departure and Ashton's arrival? Not likely: the time that elapsed could not have been more than five or six minutes, and some of that time Sheila must have spent recovering from the near-throttling she had suffered. Also, you told me, Mr. McKell, that when you walked into the apartment she was still terribly upset, too upset to have dashed off that longish letter to the police. I think, then, we can rule out the period between Dane's departure and Ashton's arrival as the time when she wrote the letter. She wrote it later.

“When? You left about 10:03, Mr. McKell. Then clearly the note must have been written between 10:03 and 10:23, when she was shot. And it had to have been taken from her workroom between the time she wrote it and the time the police got there. And just as clearly she had not
given
it to the blackmailer, for she addressed it to the police. So again we reach the conclusion: The blackmailer stole it from the apartment. And he could only have stolen it after it was written, which would place him in the apartment around the time of the murder. Let's see if we can narrow this down further.”

Someone let out a breath stealthily. The Inspector glanced sharply around, but whoever had done it was again as rigid as the others.

“Who do we
know
now was in the apartment between the writing of the letter and the arrival of the police? The blackmailer. Who else? The murderer. Considering the short time involved, it's a reasonable assumption that blackmailer and murderer were one and the same. But we know something else about this blackmailer-murderer. His attempted blackmailing of Dane was not his first such try. He had had a previous victim—you, Mr. McKell.” (And at this Inspector Queen cast such reproach at his son as should have withered him in his tracks had he been looking his father's way; but he was not looking his father's way, he was concentrating on his hypnotized audience.) “I've gone all through the reasoning that identifies each blackmail as the work of the same person, so I won't repeat it.