The Fourth Side of the Triangle (24 page)

“The keystone question is: What was the basis for his first blackmail, the blackmailing of Ashton McKell?”

Ellery addressed Lutetia directly, who sat twisted in the chair. “Forgive me if I have to call spades by their right name, Mrs. McKell. But we're dealing with hard facts, and only hard words can describe them.

“The basis of the Ashton McKell blackmailing was
the blackmailer's knowledge of the relationship between Ashton McKell and Sheila Grey
. Who knew or could have known of this relationship? How many persons? Who are they?”

He paused, and into the silence crept the sounds of New Year revelry from other apartments, the streets.

“I count five. Sheila herself, number one. And would Sheila attempt to blackmail Ashton McKell? Hardly. She admired and respected him.” Ashton gripped the back of his wife's chair still harder. “She was willing to foster a communion of spirit, a Platonic friendship, under difficult and sometimes ludicrous circumstances, because of that admiration and respect, quite aside from the misinterpretation society would have placed on the relationship had it become generally known. Sheila certainly did not need money; and had she needed money she would not have had to resort to blackmail—all she had to do was ask for it, and it would have been given to her in full measure, to overflowing—am I right, Mr. McKell?”

“Of course,” Ashton said stiffly.

“No, Sheila did not blackmail Ashton McKell. Who else knew of their liaison? Naturally, Ashton. Surely he didn't blackmail himself. Why should he conceivably have done so? It makes no sense. So we eliminate Mr. McKell.

“Who else? You, Mrs. McKell. And subsequently you, Dane. But you are both rich in your own right; even in theory, you would not have to resort to blackmail if you needed money. True, each of you was hurt and resentful of Ashton's conduct, but blackmail is hardly the answer to hurt and resentment. If you wished to punish husband and father for what you conceived to be misconduct, each of you would have chosen a far different course—as in fact each of you did. Blackmail figured in neither.

“So there we are,” Ellery said. “Five people knew or could have known about Sheila Grey and Ashton McKell, of whom we have thrown out four as possible blackmailers. The conclusion is inescapable that the fifth person was the blackmailer and, therefore, Sheila Grey's murderer.”

“I don't understand,” Dane mumbled. “Five? I can't think of a fifth.”

“We'll get to that later, Dane. Meanwhile, what else do we know about the identity of this Janus—this individual with two faces, one of blackmail, the other of murder? Curiously, we know a great deal, but to get to it we must dig a rather deep hole.

“Follow me.

“We begin with the gold mine of information deeded to us by Winterson, Sheila's original partner in The House of Grey.

“What did Winterson tell us?

“That Sheila had a succession of lovers, beginning with himself. (If there were earlier ones, as I suppose there were, they are irrelevant to the issue.)

“What else did Winterson say? That Sheila was not her original name. She was born ‘Lillian.' When did she change Lillian to Sheila? After the great success of her first important showing, the collection she named Lady Sheila. Why Lady Sheila? Why Sheila at all—
which wasn't her name at the time
, yet which so captivated her that she subsequently took it as her legal name?

“I kept puzzling over this. But the answer came to me in one flash. What's Winterson's given name?”

“Elisha,” said Judy, wonderingly.

“Elisha.” Ellery waited. No one said anything. “Doesn't any of you see the relationship between ‘Elisha' and ‘Sheila'?”

Judy cried, “
They're anagrams!
”

“Yes. ‘Sheila' is a rearrangement of the letters of ‘Elisha.'

“When I saw that, of course,” Ellery said, “I also saw that it could have been coincidence. So I went on to her next year's collection, the 1958 one. That one she named Lady Nella. What else was significant in Sheila Grey's life during the year 1958? Well, she had dropped Elisha Winterson both as partner and lover by that time. Did she take a new partner? No. A new lover? Winterson said yes, and named him. Remember his name?”

“Foster, wasn't it?” Dane said.

“His full name.”

There was another silence. Then Judy said, “I remember. Something about Edgar Allan Poe … Yes! You asked Mr. Winterson how to spell Foster's first name, which was Allen.”

“Allen—with an
e—
Bainbridge Foster,” Ellery nodded. “
Allen—an anagram of Nella
, the name of her 1958 collection!

“Another coincidence? Let's see.”

Winterson had mentioned three other men's names, Ellery pointed out, in identifying Sheila's lovers during the following four years. In 1959 it had been John F. “Jack” Hurt III, speed demon of the raceways. In 1960 it had been the high-society polo player, Ronald Van Vester. Winterson had been abroad during 1961 and was able to suggest no lover's name for that year, but for 1962 he had put the finger on Eddwin Odonnell, the Shakespearean actor.

“John F. Hurt III, 1959,” Ellery said. “And the name of Sheila's collection in 1959? Lady Ruth. Hurt—Rath—
anagrams
.

“Ronald Van Vester, 1960. And the name of the 1960 collection—Lady Lorna D. ‘D' for ‘Doone'? Not a bit of it.
‘Ronald' and ‘Lorna D.' are anagrams
.

“The pattern is fixed,” said Ellery. “Four years, four anagrams of contemporaneous lovers … I must admit that the absence of 1961, the Lady Dulcea year, piqued me, and still does. Because Dulcea—a very strange name indeed, so strange it sounds forced—when you unscramble it trying to make a man's name out of it, peculiarly enough yields the name ‘Claude.' Of course, we don't know if there was such a man, or if Sheila was simply taking a sabbatical that year—”

“Wait,” Ashton McKell said. “Claude … Yes, Sheila spoke a great deal about some Frenchman, a playwright, who came to New York in—when was it?—1961, I think—yes, 1961—to have a play of his produced on Broadway. The way she spoke of him—now that I realize—”

“Claude Claudel,” Dane said slowly. “Damn it all, don't tell me he too—”

“1961. Claude. Dulcea.” Ellery nodded. “It's too perfectly fitted into the pattern to be coincidental. I think we have a right to assume that Monsieur Claudel was Number One on Miss Grey's 1961 hit parade, for part of the year, anyway.”

“But what about 1962?” Inspector Queen could not help asking. He was as fascinated as the others by the anagrammatical pattern.

“Well, according to Winterson, in 1962 the favored man was the actor, Odonnell, whose given name, by which no one ever calls him except on theater programs, is ‘Edd'—two
ds
—‘win.' Odonnell is always called ‘Hamlet' Odonnell, from his tiresome playing of the Shakespearean role. And what was Sheila's 1962 collection named? Lady Thelma. ‘Hamlet'—‘Thelma.' Anagrams.

“
Every lover of Sheila's anagrammatically inspired the name of The House of Grey's collection current during his interregnum
. Apparently she preferred to use his Christian name as the basis of the anagram, but she would use the surname if she had to.”

And the room was a pocket of silence again in the celebrating world, with the wind outside adding to the noisy merriment. A clock, which had been ticking all along, sounded as if it had just begun. Someone's chair creaked, and someone else breathed a snorty breath. In this emphasized silence a strained voice, Lutetia's, said, “Mr. Queen, do go on. Please.”

“In a way,” Ellery said, “this completes the record. The last complete showing of The House of Grey was the ‘Hamlet' Odonnell—Lady Thelma year. But at the time of her death Sheila was working on her new collection. She had drawn roughs and made sketches, and had actually completed at least one design.

“Since collections and lovers go together in Sheila's case, who was her last—her most recent—lover? What man was intimate with her during the past year? Forgive me for becoming personal again, Mr. McKell, but that wasn't you. You fell into a special category in Sheila's life; besides, your name doesn't anagrammatize.” Ashton McKell's face was still set in plaster of Paris. “Was it you, Dane? Yes, but only in the most limited of senses, as far as I can gather. You and Sheila had really not had time to establish a meaningful relationship. You may have been on your way to it; but, in any case, whom were you following? Whose place would you have filled? Because there is someone—someone you don't suspect.”

Ellery sounded as weary as his audience looked startled.

He reminded them, from Winterson's account and from what Sheila herself had told Dane, that she dropped her lovers as suddenly as she took them. If at the time of Dane's appearance in her life she had already dropped her most recent lover—assuming such an unknown existed—or if he had somehow learned that he was about to be dropped by this unpredictable one-man-at-a-time woman, as she had called herself, then a perfect motive for murder could be expected. Hell might have no fury like a woman scorned, Ellery pointed out, but as a matter of statistical fact more murders of frustrated passion and love-revenge were committed in the United States by men than by women.

“We have one feasible way,” he said, “to check the theory that another lover existed in Sheila's life—the lover Dane was in the process of displacing.
Had she named the new collection she was working on at the time of her death?
” Ellery started to rise, but he sank back in the chair with a grimace. “These damned legs of mine,” he said. “Ramon, would you mind? The tubular package on the mantelpiece.”

The chauffeur brought it to him, and Ellery unwrapped it, disclosing a roll of heavy paper. He unrolled it, glanced over it, nodded, and held it up for all to see.

It was the beautifully finished fashion drawing of a model in a sports outfit. The clothes were sketched in exquisite detail.

“This is the only design Sheila Grey had time to finish,” Ellery said. “And it tells us the name Sheila had selected for the collection. Here it is at the bottom: Lady Norma, in block lettering.

“Lady Norma,” Ellery went on swiftly, with no sign of weariness now, “and I point out to you that ‘Norma' is an anagram of the name of the fifth person who was in a position to know of the Sheila-Ashton rendezvous—the fifth person who, the other four having been eliminated,
must
have been the blackmailer—and Sheila's killer. For who else could have known that Ashton McKell visited Sheila Grey? His chauffeur, who dropped him off at the club Wednesday after Wednesday and picked him up again late every Wednesday night, and who was uniquely situated to suspect the nature of those Wednesday excursions—and to verify them. His chauffeur, who somehow became Dane's predecessor in Sheila's affections and then murdered her for throwing him over—
Dad, watch Ramon!
”

Ramon had backed toward the foyer. His skin had turned a putty color; his nostrils were pinched white with surprise, anger, and fear; the line-up of his teeth glittered in his swarthy face. And as Inspector Queen, Dane, and Ashton McKell closed in on him, Ramon seized a heavy chair, flung it at them, and was gone through the apartment door.

The Inspector half caught the chair; part of it banged against Ashton McKell's legs and tripped him; and Dane tripped over his father. For a moment the three men were an impossible tangle of arms and legs. Then, shouting, the McKells regained their feet and plunged toward the foyer. But Inspector Queen roared, “No! He may be armed! Let him go!” And as they stopped, panting, he said, “He can't get away. I have detectives posted at every exit of the building. He'll run straight into their arms.”

Later, over restorative brandy—although Ashton McKell was still too shocked by the revelation to regain his natural florid color—Ellery said, “Yes, Ramon, whose name inspired Sheila Grey to label her new collection Norma, was her last lover.” Out of pity he did not glance at the elder McKell. “It was Ramon whom she dropped when she became interested in you, Dane, and his Spanish pride brought on a homicidal rage.” He forbore to go into the question of Sheila's taste in men, knowing that part of Ashton's shock resulted from the fact that his own chauffeur had been sleeping with the woman of his dreams; her lovers had been a heterogeneous lot, and he supposed that the Spaniard—Ramon
was
handsome in a Mediterranean way—had struck her fancy.

“It was Ramon who came to Sheila's apartment that night, sneaked into the bedroom to get the revolver he knew was in the night-table drawer—forgive me again, but he had had plenty of opportunity to become acquainted with that bedroom—and, entering Sheila's workroom, shot her dead as she sat telephoning the police. It was Ramon, of course, who replaced the phone on the cradle, found Sheila's letter to the police, pocketed it, and escaped.

“He took the letter to use for blackmailing Dane; or, if that failed, as it did, to draw suspicion away from himself by pointing it toward Dane … as it also did.

“He almost got away with it.”

There was very little conversation until someone rapped at the door and Inspector Queen opened it to find Sergeant Velie there, grinning massively.

“You got him, I take it,” the Inspector said.

“We got him, Inspector. He's quiet now, being a real good boy. You coming downstairs with us?”

“As soon as I get my coat and hat.”

When the door closed on them, as if on signal a babble of exclamations broke out.

“It's over, it's over.”

“How can we ever thank you, Mr. Queen?”

“By God, he did it. Mr. Queen—Ellery—”

“This calls for another toast!”

“What a New Year's gift,” cried Ashton McKell. “Are there the fixings for another toast?”