There Was an Old Woman (14 page)

PART FOUR

21 . . . The Uneasiness of Heads

Now was the winter of their discontent, and that was strange, for the Potts case was solved. Wasn't there a confession? Hadn't the newspapers leaped upon it with venal joy? Weren't old cuts of Landru lifted from morgues the length and breadth of the land? Didn't the tabloids begin to serialize still again that old standby of circulation joggers,
Famous Murders of Fact and Fiction?
Was not Herod evoked, and Lady Macbeth?

One tabloid printed a cartoon of the Old Woman, smoking gun in hand, sons writhing at her feet, with the witty inscription: “He that spareth his
rod
hateth his son. (P
ROVERBS
, XIII, 24.)” A more dignified journalist resume began with the quotation: “Innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear . . . P. B. S
HELLEY
,
Queen Mab,
VI
).”

But Ellery Queen thought the Order of the Bloodstained Footprint should have been awarded to the wag who resurrected the old laborcapital cartoon of the Old Woman in the Shoe, with her six children tumbling out, across two of whom however he now painted large black X's, and composed to explain it the following quatrain: —

There was an Old Woman who lived in a Shoe,

She had so many children she didn't know what to do,

She started to slaughter them, one child by one,

Only Death overtook her before she was done.

Work was begun in the studio of a Coney Island waxworks museum on a tableau, showing Maclyn Potts lying agonized in a bed weltering in thick red stuff, while the chubby figure of his mother, clad in voluminous black garments and wearing a black shawl and bonnet tied under the chin, gloated over the corpse like some demonized little Queen Victoria.

Several eggs, coming over the wall from Riverside Drive, splashed against the Shoe the afternoon the newspapers announced the discovery of the Old Woman's confession.

A stone broke Thurlow Potts's bedroom window, sending him into a white-lipped oration on the Preservation of Law and Order; a charge of criminal mischief went begging only because of Thurlow's failure to identify the miscreant.

Various detectives of Inspector Queen's staff went home for the first time in days to visit with their children. Sergeant Velie's wife prepared a mustard bath for his large feet and tucked him into bed full of aspirin and love.

Only in the apartment of the Queens were there signs that all was not well. Usually at the conclusion of a case Inspector Queen made jokes and ordered two-inch steaks which he devoured with the gusto of one who has labored well and merits appropriate reward. Now he scarcely ate at all, glowering when spoken to, was grumpy with Ellery, and fell back into the routine of his office without enjoyment.

As for Ellery Queen, it could not be said that his spirits soared above sea level. There was no taste in anything, matter or music. He went back to a detective novel he had been composing when the case of the Old Woman and her six children had thrown it into eclipse; but the shadow was still there, hanging heavily over the puppets of his imagination and making the words seem just words. He went over the Potts case in his mind endlessly; he fell asleep to the scudding of far-fetched theories.

But the days came and went, the house on Riverside Drive gradually became just a house, the newspapers turned to fresh sensations, and it began to appear that the Potts case had already passed into criminal history, to be no more than a footnote or a paragraph in some morbid reference book of the future.

One morning, three weeks after the disclosures in Cornelia Potts's confession had officially closed the dossier on the case, Inspector Queen was about to leave for Police Headquarters—he had already grunted “Toodle-oo” to his son, who was still at breakfast—when suddenly he turned back from the door and said: “By the way, Ellery, I got a cable yesterday afternoon from the Dutch East Indies.”

“Dutch East Indies?” Ellery absently looked up from his eggs.

“Batavia. The prefect or commissioner of police there, or whatever they call him. You know, in reply to my cable about Major Gotch.”

“Oh,” said Ellery. He set down his spoon.

“The cable says Gotch has no record down there. I thought you'd like to know … just to clear up a point.”

“No record? You mean they haven't anything on him?”

“Not a thing. Never even heard of the old windbag.”

The Inspector sucked his mustache. “Doesn't mean much. All I could give them was the name and description of a man forty years older than he'd been if he'd ever been there, and what's in a name? Or else Gotch is just a liar—a lot of these old-timers are—even though he swore he'd raised Cain in the Dutch East Indies in his time.”

Ellery lit a cigaret, frowning over the match. “Thanks.”

The Inspector hesitated. Then he came back and sat down, tipping his hat over his eyes as if in shame. “The Potts case is a closed book and all that, son, but I've been meaning to ask you—”

“What, Dad?”

“When we were talking over motives, you said you'd figured out that this old Major had a possible motive, too. Not that it's of any importance now—”

“I also said, I believe, that it was impossibly fantastic.”

“Never mind knocking yourself out,” snapped his father. “What did you have in mind?”

Ellery shrugged. “Remember the day we went over to the Potts house to ask the Old Woman to use her authority to stop the killings, and found her lying dead in bed?”

“Yes?” The Inspector licked his lips.

“Remember on the way upstairs I said to Dr. Innis that there was one question I'd been meaning to ask Mrs. Potts?”

“I sure do. What was the question?”

“I was going to ask her,” said Ellery deliberately, “whether she'd ever seen her first husband again.”

Inspector Queen gaped. “Her
first
husband? You mean this Bacchus Potts?”

“Who else?”

“But he's dead.”

“Dead in law, Dad. That's quite another thing from being dead in fact. It struck me at one point in the case that Bacchus Potts might be very much alive still.”

“Hunh.” The Inspector was silent. Then he said: “That hadn't occurred to me. But you haven't answered my question. What did you have in mind when you said Major Gotch had a possible motive, too?”

“But I have answered your question, Dad.”

“You … mean … Bacchus … Potts … Major Gotch—” The Inspector began to laugh, and soon he was wiping away the merry tears. “I'm glad the case
is
over,” he choked. “Another week and you'd have been measured for a restraining sheet yourself!”

“Amuse yourself,” murmured his son, unruffled. “I told you it was fantastic. But on the other hand, why not? Gotch
might
be Potts the First.”

“And I might be Richard the Second,” chuckled his father.

“Fascinating speculation at the time, as I recall it,” murmured Ellery. “Cornelia Potts has her husband declared dead after he's been absent seven years. She marries Steve Brent. He has a companion, ‘Major Gotch.' Many years have passed since she last saw hubby number one, and the tropics change physiognomies wonderfully. Suddenly Cornelia discovers that Major Gotch is none other than Bacchus Potts! Makes her a bigamist or does it? Anyway, it's embarrassing. Situation.”

“Rave on.”

“And the worst of it is, ‘Major Gotch' has found himself a comfortable nest. Sees no point in waving farewell. Pals with the new husband, and all that. New husband defends him. Cornelia's trapped … That theory appealed to me, Dad, wild as it was. Charley Paxton, in telling me the story of the Old Woman's life, had been vague—as well he might be! — about Cornelia's reason for permitting Gotch to live in her household. Mightn't that have been the reason? A hold Gotch had on her? That she wasn't legally married to Brent and therefore her children—her reputation—her business—?”

“Hold it,” said the Inspector testily. “I'm an idiot for listening to this fairy tale, but suppose Gotch
is
Potts the First. What motive for murdering the twins would that give him?”

“The two husbands, inseparable companions,” said Ellery dreamily, “living in the same house, playing endless checker tournaments with each other … What? Oh, his possible motive. Well, Dad, we agreed at the time that the Potts clan may have been going through a process of liquidation, one member at a time. And who were liquidated? Sheila Brent spotted it immediately. Only the sane ones were dying. The Brents.”

“So?”

“So suppose the first Potts
had
come back in the person of ‘Major Gotch'? Mightn't he come to hate his successor, the second Potts—no matter how fast their friendship had been in the atolls of the South Seas?”

“Aaaa,” said the Inspector.

“Mightn't he come to hate the three additional children Cornelia and Steve Brent brought into the world? Mightn't he resent the shares of Sheila, Bob, and Mac in what would seem to him
his
millions? Mightn't he reason, too, that their very existence jeopardized the security of his own children, the Three Goons—Thurlow, Louella, and Horatio? And because of all this, mightn't Bacchus Potts' ‘Gotch' brood and plan and finally go over the deep end and begin to eliminate those not of his blood?—one by one?—Robert, Maclyn, then Sheila, and finally Steve Brent himself? Don't forget, Dad, if Gotch is Potts, he's insane. Potts's three children are proof enough of
that.”

The Inspector shook his head. “I'm glad the Old Woman's confession spared you the embarrassment of having to spout
that
theory!”

“The Old Woman's confession…” echoed Ellery in a queer tone.

“What's the matter with the Old Woman's confession?” The Inspector sat up straight.

“Did I say anything was the matter with it?”

“Your tone—”

“It's my gout, Father,” smiled Mr. Queen. “My gout? I must remember to take the waters.”

The Inspector threw a cushion at him. “And I must remember to send that will and confession back to Paxton. We've got photostatic copies for the files, but the pay-off is that Thurlow—Thurlow!—wants the confession for ‘the family records'! . . . Oh, son.” The Inspector stuck his head back through the doorway, grinning. “I promise not to tell a soul about that Gotch-is-Potts theory of yours.”

Ellery threw the cushion back.

For Ellery Queen the path of literature this morning was paved merely with good intentions. He scowled at his typewriter for almost an hour without pecking a word. When he finally did begin to write, he found the usual digital difficulties insuperable. He had developed a mysterious habit of shifting the position of his hands one key to the left, so that when he thought he had written the sentence: “There were bloody stripes on Lecky's right elbow,” he found that it actually read—more interestingly but less comprehensibly— “Rgwew qwew vkiist areuowa ib Kwzjt&a eufgr wkviq.” This he felt would place an unfair burden upon his readers; so he ripped the sheet out and essayed a new start. But this time he decided that there was no special point to putting bloody stripes on Lecky's right elbow, so there he was, back at the beginning. Curse all typewriters and his clumsiness with them!

Really ought to have a stenographer, he brooded. Take all this distracting mechanical work off his hands. A stenographer with honey-colored hair . . . no, red hair. Small. Perky. But sensible. Not the kind that chewed gum; no. A small warm package of goodies. Of course, purely for stenographic purposes. No reason why a writer's stenographer shouldn't also be inoffensive to the eye, was there? In fact, downright pleasant to look at? Like Sheila Brent, for instance. Sheila Brent. . .

Ellery was seated before his reproachful machine a half hour later, hands clasped behind his head and a self-pitying smile on his face, when the doorbell rang. He started guiltily when he saw who his caller was. “Charley!”

“Hullo,” said Charley Paxton glumly. He scaled his hat across the room and dropped into the Inspector's sacred armchair. “Have you got a Scotch and soda? I'm pooped.”

“Of course,” said Ellery keenly. As he busied himself being host, he watched Charley out of the corner of his eyes. Mr. Paxton was looking poorly. “What's the matter? Strain of normal living proving too much for you, Charley?”

Charley grinned feebly. “It's a fact there hasn't been a murder in almost a month. Tedious!”

“Here's your drink. Why haven't I seen you since confessional?”

“Conf—Oh.
That
day.” Charley scowled into his glass. “Hands full. Keeping the mobs of salesmen away from the Potts Palladium, as you call it. Handling a thousand legal details of the estate.”

“Is it as large as you estimated?”

“Larger.”

“I suppose a niggardly million or so?”

“Some pittance like that.”

“How's Sheila?”

Charley did not answer for a moment. Then he raised his hollow eyes. “That's one of the reasons I came here today.”

“Nothing wrong with Sheila, I hope?” Ellery said quickly.

“Wrong? No.” Charley began to patrol the Queen living room.

“Oh. Things aren't going so well between you and Sheila—is that it?”

“That's putting it mildly.”

“And I thought,” murmured Mr. Queen, “that you'd come to invite me to the wedding.”

“Wedding!” said Charley bitterly. “I'm further from the altar now than I ever was. Every time I say: ‘When are we going to take the jump?' Sheila starts to cry and say she's the daughter of a two-times killer, and she won't saddle me with a murderess for a mother-in-law, even if she
is
dead, and a lot of similar hooey. I can't even get her to move out of that damned house. Won't leave old Steve, and Steve says he's too decrepit to start bumming again … It's hopeless, Ellery.”