The Fourth Side of the Triangle (26 page)

“I didn't
see
an erasure,” muttered Ellery. “Ink eradicator! I ought to go back to kindergarten. Dad, what was the name underneath in Sheila's writing?”

The Inspector reached into a portfolio and drew forth a photographic enlargement of the bottom portion of Sheila Grey's last finished drawing. He handed it to Ellery, and the others crowded about, pushing a little.

“Here it is,” Ellery said, swallowing.

Two words in the now familiar Sheila Grey script stood out in the laboratory blowup through the printed ‘Lady Norma,' like a ghost.

Lady Edna
.

“Lady Edna,” Ellery said with difficulty as the others stared, speechless. “Edna—
anagram of Dane.
”

“So she did intend to name her collection after you,” Inspector Queen said to Dane, while Ellery fell into bitterest silence. “She must have done this before the argument that broke you up. And the drawing was lying there on her work desk that night. And with Ramon eliminated, who's the only other one we know was on or about the scene of the murder, and who also had motive to erase the Dane anagram and substitute ‘Norma' so as to throw suspicion on Ramon—can you tell us, Dane?”

Dane did not reply. His face was undergoing a dreadful transformation. Component features seemed to twist in incongruous directions at the same instant. His eyes burned with a feverish light. His hands clenched and unclenched and clenched again. A series of gibberish sounds began to growl in his throat.

Then Dane uttered a single maniacal cry and leaped at Inspector Queen's throat.

The attack was so sudden that the Inspector was taken by surprise. Before he could raise his hands, Dane's fingers were closing about the old man's throat and shaking the wiry body as if it were a puppy's.

Ellery staggered forward, but his legs betrayed him; he fell. In the end it was Dane's father who pitted brute strength against his son's and pulled him off the Inspector.

The old man lay back, gasping and clutching his throat.

As if an electrical contact had been broken, a current shut off, Dane went limp. He covered his face with his hands, and he wept.

“I can't stand it any more, I'm tired. I couldn't stay away from her. Judy? I'm sorry. Judy, Judy … Now you know what was wrong with me. It was driving me mad, what I had done to Sheila. It was bad enough that first time, when I almost strangled her. But when I lost my head again, later that awful night … I couldn't stay away, I came back. I told you I came back after walking and walking around outside. What I didn't tell you was that on my way back to the building I saw Ramon sneaking in—sneaking, unmistakably. Ramon—pussyfooting it up to Sheila's apartment through the service elevator … It came back to me then, those peculiar phone calls, her evasive remarks when I was around. Suppose those calls hadn't been from my father, as I'd thought? Suppose … suppose she was having an affair with Ramon? With my father's chauffeur, for God's sake! I went up after him, he didn't see me, because I used the front way. I was so quiet they didn't hear me. Ramon was talking in the workroom, with a mumble from Sheila now and then—I couldn't hear—I couldn't hear what they were saying—but it seemed to me he had an intimate note in his voice, and he laughed once or twice in a way … the way … I was sure they were lovers. Why else would he be there? It never occurred to me that he was blackmailing her. All I could think was, how vile, how cheap of her … He wasn't there long, but I heard him say he'd be back, and I took it to mean he was coming back to spend the night with her and I was so crazy blind furious with jealousy and humiliation I was shaking all over. And the fury got me. And I made my hands stop shaking—I didn't give a damn about Ramon, he didn't count, he was a bug, it was Sheila, Sheila … So I got the gun out of the drawer, my hands weren't shaking any more, and I went to the doorway of the workroom and she was sitting at her desk talking into the phone and I fired straight at her lying, cheating heart, and she fell over, and the phone fell out of her hand and I went over and picked it up and put it back on the cradle … And there was one other thing. I knew how she named her collections because she had told me, she had shown me the one she'd finished for this year with my name on it in the anagram form of ‘Edna.' The spell had passed and I was thinking cold sober and I knew that name mustn't be found because if it was, someone might figure out that ‘Edna' meant me and that I was her current lover or had been, and so I looked over the sketches on her work desk and found the finished one with ‘Edna' on it. I didn't dare destroy it, because there was probably a record of such a finished drawing at her salon that a lot of people knew about, so instead I went to work on it with ink eradicator and I applied it to the ‘Lady Edna' so the name disappeared. Then I got an idea. It might well happen that I'd be suspected. Suppose I put a name down on the sketch, an anagram, that would lead the police astray. If they didn't see it, I could always call it to their attention … I had seen in a flash that an anagram could be made from Ramon's name. I never doubted he was her lover, never, not once—and, well, Ramon
had
been in the apartment only a few minutes before, and I was furious with him … I framed him with the anagram ‘Lady Norma,' handprinting it over the erasure—I had no time to try to forge Sheila's handwriting. The whole thing didn't take me three minutes … Dad, Mother, Judy, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, there's something wrong inside me, there always has been, since I was a kid. Everything went wrong. First, Dad, you were accused. I'd never thought that would happen. Then you, Mother—that was terrible. Oh, you have to believe that I wouldn't ever have allowed either of you to be convicted. If everything else had failed, if Queen hadn't come up with something, if the bartender hadn't been found or the TV thing hadn't come out, I would have come forward and given myself up. I would have. You have to believe that. I would have confessed …

“Sheila, Sheila!”

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1965 by Ellery Queen

Copyright renewed by Ellery Queen

Cover design by Kat Lee

ISBN: 978-1-5040-1706-0

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