There Was an Old Woman (16 page)

23 . . . The Fruit of the Tree

Now the house of Potts bore palls once more, shadows that shrank in stealth from them, like cats.

It became intolerable. They walked out onto the terrace overlooking the inner court to be rid of it. Here there was some graciousness in the flagged floor, the Moorish columns, the ivies and flowers and the view of grass and tall trees. The sun was friendly. They sat down in warm-bottomed steel chairs to wait for Inspector Queen and Sergeant Velie. Sheila sat close to Charley; their hands clasped, and after a moment her head dropped, defeated, to his shoulder.

It was interesting, Ellery thought, how from the terrace one could view all the good and all the evil in this manmade scene. Directly before him, at the end of a path bordered not unpleasantly with geraniums and cockleshells, stood Horatio's Ozzian house, a distortion of a dream, but with the piquancy of all sugar-coated fantasy. Surrounded as it was by civilized lawn and serene and healthy trees, it could not offend; in certain moods, Ellery agreed as he tried not to look at Sheila and Charley, it might even charm.

The tower of Louella was another thing. It cast its squat shadow over the gracious garden, its false turret crenelated as if against a besieging army, a flag (which Ellery noticed for the first time) whipping sullenly above the mock battlements. He watched the fluttering pennant curiously, unable to make out its design. Then the breeze straightened it for a moment, and he saw it whole. It bore a picture of a woman's oxford, and across it the words, simply:
THE POTTS SHOE
.

“It isn't even the grotesquerie,” Ellery thought to himself impatiently. “It's the downright bad taste. This flag, the bronze Shoe on the front lawn.”

He turned to glower at it, for its gigantic toe box was visible from where he sat, the rest cut off by the angle of the house.
THE PO
he read, backwards. In neon tubing!

Ellery wondered how Cornelia Potts had neglected in her will to leave instructions for her tombstone. Perhaps, he thought uncharitably, the Old Woman had foreseen the reluctance of St. Praxed's to permit erection of a Vermont marble lady's oxford, tombstone size, within its hoary yard.

Stephen Brent and Major Gotch were raptly playing checkers under a large green table umbrella to one side of the court lawn. They had not even noticed in their absorption the appearance of Sheila, Charley Paxton, and Ellery. Birds sang ancient melodies, and Ellery closed his eyes and dozed.

“Sleeping!”

Ellery awoke with a jerk. His father stood over him, in the scowling mood of frustration. Behind him bulked Sergeant Velie, belligerent. Sheila and Charley were on their feet. On the lawn, where old Steve and the Major had been bent over their checkerboard, stood merely an umbrella table and two iron chairs.

“Are we boring you, Mr. Queen?” asked the Inspector.

Ellery jumped up. “Sorry, Dad. It was so peaceful here—”

“Peaceful!” The Inspector was red of face, and Sergeant Velie perspired freely; it was evident the two men had rushed uptown from Center Street. “I can think of other words. Blasted case busted wide-open again!”

“Now I suppose I got to start lookin' for the missing rod all over again,” growled Sergeant Velie in his basso profundo. “I was only tellin' the wife last night how the whole thing seemed like a bad dream—”

“Yes, yes, the gun, Sergeant,” said Ellery absently.

Velie's anvil jaw swelled. “I searched this house, I dug up practically this whole square block—I tell you, Maestro, if you want to find that gun, go look for it yourself!”

“Stop it, Velie.” Inspector Queen sat down with a groan. “Who's got that confession and stock memo? Hand 'em over.”

The Inspector superimposed the signatures, as Ellery had done, and held them up to the sun for a squint. “No doubt about it. They're identical.” He jammed both papers into his pocket. “I'll keep these. They're evidence now.”

“Evidence against who?” grumbled Sergeant Velie, making up in scorn what he lacked in grammar.

At this moment Horatio Potts, in character, chose to enter the scene. That is to say, he appeared from the other side of his improbable dwelling, bearing the now familiar ladder. He waddled to a tall sycamore tree between his cottage and the umbrella table, set the ladder against the bole, and began to climb.

“Now what in the name of thunder is
he
doing?” asked Inspector Queen.

“It's his kite again,” said Sheila grimly.

“Kite?” Ellery blinked. “Still at it, eh?”

“While you were napping here, he came out of his shack and began to fly one of 'em,” explained Charley. “It got snarled in that big tree, so I suppose he's going after it.”

The ladder was shaking under Horatio's weight.

“That Horatio's going to take a mighty tumble one of these days,” said Charley critically. “If only he'd act his age—”

“Stop!” shouted Ellery Queen. They were thunderstruck. Ellery had cried out in a sort of terror, and now he was streaking across the lawn towards the sycamore with all the power of his long legs. “Stop, Horatio!” he shouted.

Horatio kept climbing.

The Inspector began to run after his son; Sergeant Velie began to run after the Inspector with a mine-not-to-reason-why expression; and so Sheila and Charley ran, too.

“Ellery, what the devil are you yelling ‘Stop!' for?” cried the Inspector. “He's only—climbing—a—tree!”

“Mother Goose!” Ellery roared back over his shoulder, not slackening his pace for an instant.

“What?” screamed the Inspector.

“Suppose the ladder's been tampered with? Horatio's big—and fat—he'd fall—'Humpty Dumpty—had a great—fall . . .' ”

The Inspector gurgled and dug his tiny heels into the turf for traction. Ellery continued to shout at Horatio, and Horatio continued to ignore him. By the time the great man had reached the base of the sycamore, Horatio was almost invisible among the branches overhead. Ellery could hear him puffing and wheezing as he struggled to free the half-torn kite that was impaled above him. “Be careful, Mr. Potts!” Ellery yelled up.

“Ellery, are you coocoo?” panted the Inspector, coming up. Velie, Sheila, Charley were a few steps behind him. They were all frightened; but when they saw Horatio in motion in the tree, the ladder intact, and nothing amiss save the excitement on the Queen countenance, their concern changed to bewilderment.

“Mr. Potts, be careful!” Ellery roared again, craning.

“What's that?” Horatio's jovial face peeped redly down from between two leafy branches. “Oh, hullo there, nice people,” beamed Horatio. “Darned kite got stuck. I'll be right down.”

“Watch your step on the way down,” implored Ellery. “Test each rung with one foot before you put your whole weight on it!”

“Oh, nonsense,” said Horatio a little crossly. “As if I'd never climbed a ladder.” And, the kite in one paw, he brought his right foot crashing down on one of the uppermost rungs.

“The fool will break his neck,” said Ellery angrily. “I don't know why I even bother.”

“What
are
you babbling about?” demanded his father.

“Hey, he stopped,” said Sergeant Velie. “What's the matter up there, Horatio?” the Sergeant called up. “Gettin' cold feet? A great big boy like you!”

Horatio had paused in his descent to reach far over and thrust his fat hand into the foliage of a lower branch. The ladder rocked precariously, and Ellery and Velie in panic grabbed to steady it.

“Bird's nest,” said Horatio, straightening. “Lots of fun, birds' nests.” The kite in one hand, a starling's nest in the other, he continued his descent, pressing against the ladder's sides with his enormous forearms. “Just noticed it on that branch,” he said, reaching the ground. “Nothing I like better than a good old bird's nest, gentlemen. Sets me up for the whole day.”

“Beast,” said Sheila; and she turned away from the nest clutched in his paw.

“Now, sir,” said Horatio, beaming at Ellery, “you were saying something about being careful? Careful about what?”

Ellery had taken the ladder down and, with the Inspector and Velie, was examining it rung by rung. As he looked over the last rung, his face grew very red indeed.

“I don't see anything wrong,” said the Sergeant.

“Well.” Ellery laughed and tossed the ladder aside.

“Mother Goose—Humpty Dumpty,” snarled his father. “This case has got you, son. Better go home and call a doctor.”

“What's the matter Horatio?” asked Charley.

Sheila turned quickly.

Horatio stood there, a large enigma, one hand plunged into the starling's nest.

“What is it, Mr. Potts?” demanded Ellery.

“Of all things!” guffawed Horatio, recovering. “Imagine finding
this
in a starling's nest.” And he withdrew his great paw. On his palm lay a small, snub-nosed automatic pistol a little patchy with bird slime. It was a Colt .25.

“But that's the gun Bob Potts was plugged with,” said Sergeant Velie, staring.

“Don't be a
schtunk
all your life, Velie!” cried Inspector Queen, grabbing for the automatic. “The murder gun's in the Bureau files—they all are!”

“Then this,” said Ellery in a low voice, “this is the duplicate Colt .25—the missing weapon.”

Later, when the lawn was empty, Ellery took his father by the arm and steered him to the umbrella table. “Sit down, Dad. I've got to think this out.”

“Think what out?” demanded the old gentleman, nevertheless seating himself. He glanced at the Colt; it was loaded with a single cartridge. “So we've found the missing gun. Whoever's been pulling these jobs hid the Colt in that nest—blast that Velie for not looking in the trees! — and I suppose had the duplicate S. & W. .38/32 hidden up there, too, in preparation for the Maclyn Potts kill. But so what? The way things stand now—”

“Please, Dad.”

The Inspector sat back. Ellery sat back, too, to stare with eyes that at first saw, and later did not see, the automatic in the Inspector's lap. And after a long time he smiled, and stretched, and said: “Oh, yes. That's it.”

“Oh, yes, what's it?” asked his father petulantly.

“Would you do something right away, Dad? Spread the word through the house that the finding of the last gun in that bird's nest this afternoon has solved the case.”

“Solved the case!” The Inspector rose and the automatic fell to the grass. Mechanically he stooped to retrieve it. “Solved the case?” he repeated faintly.

“Make sure they all understand clearly that
I know who murdered Cornelia's twin sons.”

“You mean . . . you really do know? On the level, son?” The Inspector licked his lips.

But Ellery shook his head cryptically. “I mean I want everyone to think I do.”

24 . . . Queen Was in the Parlor

The time: evening. The scene: the downstairs study. As Curtain rises, we see the study in artful dim light, creating full-bodied shadows on the walls of books. Most of the furniture lies within the aura of the gloom. Only in right foreground near the French doors is there illumination, and it is evident that this concentration of light has been deliberately effected. It emanates from a standing lamp which throws its rays chiefly upon a straight-backed, uncomfortable chair which stands before a leather-topped occasional table. The boundary of brightness just touches an object lying upon the table—a .25 Colt automatic spotted with bird slime and lying half out of a raped starling's nest.

Ellery Queen leans against the lintel of one of the open French doors immediately outside the illuminated area, a little behind and to one side of the table. All the doors are open, for it is a warm evening (but we may suspect, knowing the chicanery potential of the Queen mind, that the barometer is not the sole, or even the principal reason). Ellery faces the straight-backed chair beyond the table; he also faces the door from the foyer, off left.

The terrace, which lies behind him, is in darkness. Offstage, from beyond the terrace, we hear the vibrant songs of crickets.

In the shadows of the study, well out of the light's orbit, sit Sheila Brent and Charles Hunter Paxton, still, expectant, and baffled spectators.

Ellery looks around in a last survey of his set, nods with a self-satisfied air, and then speaks.

E
LLERY
(
sharply
): Flint! (
Detective Flint pokes his head into the study from the foyer doorway.
)

F
LINT
: Yes, sir, Mr. Queen?

E
LLERY
: Thurlow Potts, please. (
Detective Flint withdraws. Thurlow Potts enters. The foyer door swings shut behind him; he looks back over his shoulder nervously. Then he advances into the scene, pausing uncertainly just outside the circle of lamplight. In this position the chair and the table with the gun and the bird's nest on it are between him and Ellery. Ellery regards him coldly.
)

T
HURLOW
: Well? That detective said—(
He stops. Ellery has suddenly left his position at the French window and, without speaking, comes downstage and around the table to turn and pause so that he faces Thurlow, forcing him to follow him with his eyes.
)

E
LLERY
(
sternly
): Thurlow Potts!

T
HURLOW
: Yes, Mr. Queen? Yes, sir?

E
LLERY
: You know what's happened?

T
HURLOW
: You mean my mother?

E
LLERY
: I mean your mother's confession!

T
HURLOW
: No. I mean yes. I mean I can't understand it. Well, that's not quite true. I don't know quite how to say it, Mr. Queen—

E
LLERY
: Stop pirouetting, Mr. Potts! Do you or don't you?

T
HURLOW
(
sullenly
): I know that man—your father—told us Mother's confession was forged. That the case is opened again. It's very confusing. In the first place, I shot Robert to death in the duel—

E
LLERY
: Come, come, Mr. Potts, we've been all through your Dunasian career and you know perfectly well we substituted a blank cartridge for your lethal one to keep you from doing a very silly thing, and that someone managed to slip into your bedroom the night before the duel and put a live cartridge back into the automatic so that when you fired, Bob would die—as he did, Mr. Potts, as he did.

T
HURLOW
: (
touching his forehead
): It's all very confusing.

E
LLERY
(
grimly
): Is it, Mr. Potts?

T
HURLOW
: Your tone, sir!

E
LLERY
: Why do you avoid looking at this table, Mr. Potts?

T
HURLOW
: I beg your pardon?

ELLERY
: This table, Mr. Potts—t-a-b-l-e. This handsome little piece just beyond the end of your nose, Mr. Potts. Why haven't you looked at it?

T
HURLOW
: I don't know what you mean, and what's more, Mr. Queen, I won't stand here and be insulted—

E
LLERY
(
suddenly
): Sit down, Mr. Potts.

T
HURLOW
: Uh?

E
LLERY
(
in a soft tone
): Sit down. (
Thurlow hesitates, then slowly seats himself in the uncomfortable chair beside the table, knees together and pudgy hands in his lap. He blinks in the strong light of the lamp, wriggling. He still has not glanced at the weapon or the bird's nest.
) Mr. Potts!

T
HURLOW
(
sullenly
): Well? Well?

E
LLERY
: Look at the gun, please. (
Thurlow licks his lips. Slowly he turns to stare at the table. He starts perceptibly.
) You recognize it?

T
HURLOW
: No! I mean it looks just like the gun I used in my duel with Robert. . . .

E
LLERY
: It
is
just like the gun you used in your duel with Robert, Mr. Potts. But it isn't the same gun. It's a duplicate, the duplicate you bought from Cornwall & Ritchey, Remember?

THURLOW
(
nervously
): Yes. Yes, I seem to recall there were two Colt .25's among the fourteen I purchased—

E
LLERY
: Indeed. (
He steps forward suddenly, and Thurlow makes an instinctive backward movement. Ellery picks up the automatic from its nest, removes the magazine, bending over to let the light catch the cartridge inside. Thurlow follows his movements, fascinated. Suddenly Ellery rams the magazine back into place and tosses the automatic into the nest
.) Do you know where we found this missing loaded gun of yours today, Mr. Potts?

T
HURLOW
: In—in the sycamore tree? Yes, I've heard about that, Mr. Queen.

E
LLERY
: Why did you put it there?

T
HURLOW
(
gasping
): I never did! I haven't seen this weapon since the day I bought it with the other thirteen!

E
LLERY
(
with a cynical smile
): Really, Mr. Potts? (
Then sharply.
) That's all! You may go.

(
Thurlow blinks, hesitates, rises, openly surprised and upset by this peremptory dismissal. Then, without a backward glance, he hurries from the scene.
)

E
LLERY
: Flint! Louella Potts.

And now it became evident that Mr. Queen's scene with Thurlow Potts was a deliberate design for the scenes that followed. For when Louella Potts swept in, a violently self-assured Louella, quite altered from that sullen and sour spinster who had been under her mother's thumb, Ellery's script adapted itself to the unpredictable dialogue of this second character smoothly and with scarcely an emendation.

Again Ellery put the preliminary questions, again they led to the gun on the table, again he picked it up, fiddled with its magazine, displayed its cartridge, replaced the magazine, tossed the automatic back on the table, and asked the last question. “Why did you hide this loaded gun of Thurlow's in the starling's nest, Miss Potts?”

Louella sprang from the straight-backed chair, her saffron features convulsed. “Is it for this childish nonsense I've been dragged away from my important experiments? I never saw this weapon before, I didn't put it in the nest, I know nothing about it, and I'll ask you, Mr. Queen, to stop interfering with the progress of science!” And Louella strode out, all bones and indignation.

But Mr. Queen only smiled to Sheila and Charley Paxton and summoned Horatio Potts.

Horatio was immense in more ways than one. For purposes of this scene he had become a completely reasonable man. If the truth were known, the sudden sanity of his answers and a certain unexpected acuteness of insight into the trend of Mr. Queen's questions rather took the spotlight away from that great man and focused it brilliantly upon his victim.

“Very interesting, sir,” said Horatio indulgently at one point. “I never did believe my mother murdered the twins. Too gory, you know. Madame Tussaud stuff. No, indeed. That confession, though. Very clever. Don't you think so, Mr. Queen?”

Mr. Queen thought so.

“And now you know who did it all,” said Horatio at another point. “At least that's what I heard.”

Ellery pretended to be angry at the “leak.”

“I wish you'd enlighten me,” continued the fat man, chuckling. “Sounds like good material for a book.”

“You don't know, of course.”

“I?” Horatio was astonished.

“Come, Mr. Potts. You hid this loaded automatic in the starling's nest, didn't you?” And again Ellery went through the business of opening the gun, displaying its cartridge, and closing it again.

“I hid it in the nest?” repeated Horatio. “But why?”

Ellery said nothing.

“As a matter of fact,” continued Horatio reflectively, “the very idea's silly. If I hid Thurlow's gun in the tree and wanted it to stay hidden, would I have found it under your nose this afternoon, Mr. Queen? No, no, sir, you're on the wrong track.”

Ellery could only wave Horatio Potts feebly out and call for Stephen Brent.

With Sheila's father the script resumed its character. The old man was nervous, and while Ellery was gentle with him Brent's nervousness was not allayed.

He denied with bewilderment having known anything about the gun in the tree, and left in a trot.

His stuttering had been pronounced.

Sheila began to examine Ellery with an ominous grimness. Charley had to restrain her from jumping up and running after her father.

With Major Gotch Ellery was severe. The old pirate showed his teeth at once. “I've taken a lot of berserker nonsense in this house, Mister,” he roared, “but you've no call to speak to me this way. I don't know a cursed thing, and that's a fact you can't deny!”

“I thought you were well-known in the Dutch East Indies,” said Ellery, departing from the script.

Gotch snorted. “One of its notorious characters, Mister. Bloomin' myth. Left my mark, I did.”

“They never heard of you, Major.”

He looked aghast. “Why, the muckin' liars!”

“Ever use another name, Major?”

The man sat still. Then he said: “No.”

Ellery, lightly: “We can find out, you know.”

“Find and be damned to you!”

“Don't have to, as it turns out. This is the last roundup, Major. Our friend the killer hasn't much grace left. Why'd you put the gun in the bird's nest?”

“You're barmy,” said the Major, shaking his head; and he left as Ellery opened the automatic for the fifth time and played with the cartridge.

“Well, Mr. Queen?” asked Detective Flint from the foyer doorway. “Where do we go from here?”

“You
exit quietly, Flint.”

Flint shut the foyer door with a huffy bang.

Sheila jumped out of the shadows at once. “I don't see why you had to drag my father into this,” she said tartly. “Treating him like the others—!”

“Smoke screen, Sheila.”

“Yes?” she said suspiciously.

“I had to go through the motions of treating all the suspects equally.”

Sheila did not seem convinced. “But why?”

“I can't imagine what you're driving at, Ellery,” said Charley gloomily, “but whatever it is, you haven't learned a darned thing as far as
I
can see.”

“Grilling Daddy!” said Sheila.

“It's all part of a plan, part of a plan,” said Ellery cheerfully. “It hasn't quite worked out yet—”

“Shhh,” whispered Sheila. “Someone…”

“On the terrace…” Charley whispered.

Ellery waved them back into the gloom imperiously. He himself darted out of range of the light, flattening against a wall. There was no sound but the beating of the grandfather clock. Then they heard a quick cautious step from the terrace darkness. In his shadow, Ellery crouched on the balls of his feet.

Inspector Queen stepped into the study through one of the French doors.

Ellery shook his head, chuckling. “Dad, Dad.”

The Inspector peered about the dimly lit room, trying to locate the source of his son's voice, moving uncertainly.

“Ellery, you fox!” cried Charley, jumping forward. “Darned if I don't get the point!”

“But Ellery, if that's it,” cried Sheila, running forward too, “you
mustn't.
It's dangerous!”

“What is this?” demanded Inspector Queen, blinking at them. “Mustn't do what, Ellery?”

“Nothing, nothing, Dad.” Ellery came out of his shadow quickly. “Out of the light, Dad. We're waiting.”

“Waiting for what? All right, I spread the word and stayed out of sight, but I'm not going to wait all night—”

Ellery pulled his father into the shadows.

“I don't like it,” grumbled the Inspector. “What's going on here? Why were you so tense when I came in? So quiet?” And then he spied the Colt automatic in the nest on the table.

Ellery nodded.

“So that's it,” said the Inspector slowly. “That's why you wanted the kit and caboodle of 'em to think you knew who the killer was. It's a trap.”

“Of course,” said Sheila breathlessly. “He's just interviewed everybody, asking a lot of useless questions—”

“Just so he could show them this gun on the table,” said Charley, “right near the terrace!”

“Ellery, you can't do it,” said the Inspector with finality. “It's too dangerous.”

“Nonsense,” said the great man.

“Suppose one of them sneaked onto the terrace. You mightn't hear him. You certainly couldn't see him.” The Inspector went to the table. “All he'd have to do would be stick his hand in here from the terrace, grab the gun, and fire at you point-blank.”