The Bizarre Murders, page 12
“What the devil for?” demanded the old gentleman.
“Go on, go on. This is a new form or relaxation for tired sleuths. Tear it and crumple one piece.”
Shrugging, the Inspector obeyed. Ellery’s eyes remained fixed upon his father’s hand. “Well?” growled the Inspector, surveying the fragment he was holding.
“Hmm. Interesting I thought it would work; but then I couldn’t be sure, being conscious of what I was striving for. That’s the hell of making tests when you know what you want to achieve. … Here, wait a moment. If that’s true, and it looks like a Euclidean axiom now, there’s only one other problem. …” He sank to the card-cluttered ground at the foot of the cedar, squatting on his heels, sucking his lower lip and gazing abstractedly on the ground.
The Inspector began to fume, thought better of it, and waited more patiently for the result of his son’s profound and no doubt esoteric meditations. Experience had taught him that Ellery rarely acted mysterious without purpose. There was evidently something important going on behind the wrinkles of that tanned forehead. Reflecting over the possibilities, the Inspector was even beginning to see a faint glimmer of light when he was startled by Ellery’s springing to his feet with a wild gleam in his eye.
“Solved!” shouted Ellery. “By George, I might have known. That was child’s play compared with the other. Yes, stands to reason on reconsideration. … Must be right. Shining vindication of the sadly abused observational and ratiocinative process. Skoal! Come along, sire. You are about to witness the materialization of a wraith. Somebody’s going to be grateful for the persistence of that little ghost that haunted my brain pan this morning!”
He hurried toward the clearing, sober faced, but quite plainly triumphant. The Inspector pattered along behind, with the merest suggestion of a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Ellery bounded up the steps of the porch and looked about, his breath coming a little quickly. “Would you people mind coming upstairs with us for a moment? We’ve something rather important to go over.”
Mrs. Carreau rose, startled. “All of us? Important, Mr. Queen?” The twins dropped their miniature chessboard and jumped up, mouths open.
“Of a surety. Ah—Mr. Smith, you too, please. And Mr. Xavier, we’ll need you. Francis and Julian, of course.”
Without waiting he dashed into the house. The woman, the two men, and the twins looked in some trepidation and bewilderment at the Inspector, but the old gentleman was grimly—and not for the first time—playing his role. He had set his features in very stern and omniscient lines. He followed them into the house, inwardly wondering what it was all about. The sickness in his stomach was distressing.
“Come in, come in,” said Ellery cheerfully, as they paused doubtfully in the doorway of Mrs. Xavier’s bedroom. The confessed murderess was propped on her elbows in bed, staring with a sort of fascinated fear at Ellery’s noncommittal back. Miss Forrest had risen, pale and obviously alarmed. Dr. Holmes was studying Ellery’s profile with enigmatic eyes.
They trooped in, all of them awkwardly avoiding the woman on the bed.
“Nothing formal about this,” continued Ellery in the same light tone. “Sit down, Mrs. Carreau. Ah, you prefer to stand, Miss Forrest? Well, I shan’t weary you. Where’s Mrs. Wheary? And Bones? We must have Bones.” He strode into the corridor and they heard him shouting for the housekeeper and the man-of-all-work. He returned and a moment later the stout woman and the emaciated old man appeared, apprehensively pale. “Ah, come in, come in. Now, I believe, we’re ready for a little demonstration of the niceties of criminal planning. To err is human; thank God we’re dealing with flesh and blood!”
This remarkable speech had an immediate effect. Mrs. Xavier slowly sat up in bed, black eyes staring and hands clutching the sheet.
“What—” she began, and licked her dry lips. “Aren’t you finished with—me?”
“And the divine quality of forgiveness … of course you remember that,” continued Ellery rapidly. “Mrs. Xavier, compose yourself. This may prove slightly shocking.”
“Come to the point, man,” growled Mark Xavier.
Ellery fixed him with a cold eye. “You will please permit me to conduct this demonstration without interference, Mr. Xavier. I should like to point out that guilt is a large and comprehensive term. We are all a tribe of stone-throwers—first-stone-throwers, I might add. You will kindly remember that.”
The man looked puzzled.
“And now,” said Ellery quietly, “for the lesson. I’m going,” he went on, digging his hand into his pocket, “to show you a card trick.” He produced a playing card.
“Card trick!” gasped Miss Forrest.
“A very unusual card trick, to be sure. This is one that immortal Houdini did not include in his repertoire. Please observe.” He held the card up before them, his fingers holding the back, his two thumbs pointing toward each other as they held the face of the card. “I am going to treat this card as if I wanted to tear it in half, and then I am going to crumple one of the halves and throw it away.”
They held their breaths, eyes fixed on the card in his hands. The Inspector nodded to himself and uttered a noiseless sigh.
His left hand holding steady, Ellery made a quick movement of his right hand, ripping off half the card. This, remaining in his right hand, he immediately crumpled and threw away. Then he held up his left hand; in it was the other half of the card.
“You will please observe,” he said, “what has happened. I wanted to tear this card in two. How did I accomplish this simple and yet marvelous digital feat? By exerting force with my right hand, by crumbling with my right hand, by throwing away the unwanted piece with my right hand. This left my right hand empty, and my left hand occupied. Occupied,” he said sharply, “with the piece I had gone through the whole process for. My left hand, which did no work whatever except to counterbalance the exertions of my right, becomes the repository of the uncrumpled half.”
He swept their dazed faces with a stern glance. There was no levity in his demeanor now.
“What is the significance of all this? Simply that I am a dextrous individual; that is, upon my right hand I throw the burden of all manual work. I use my right hand to do manual work instinctively. It is one of the integral characteristics of my physical makeup. I can never achieve left-handed gesture or motion without a distinct effort of will. … Well, the point is that Dr. Xavier was right-handed, too, you see.”
And then realization flooded into their faces.
“I see you grasp my meaning,” continued Ellery grimly. “We found the uncrumpled half of the six of spades in Dr. Xavier’s right hand. But I have just demonstrated that a right-handed individual in going through the process of tearing, crumpling, throwing away one half and retaining the other half will retain the other half in his left hand, Since both halves of a playing card are substantially identical it is not a question of mentally preferring one half to the other. Consequently the half retained will always be retained, as I say, in the hand that didn’t do the work. Consequently, we found the retained half of playing card in Dr. Xavier’s wrong hand. Consequently, Dr. Xavier did not tear that card. Consequently, someone else did tear that card and placed it in Dr. Xavier’s hand, making the pardonable mistake of concluding without complete consideration that since Dr. Xavier was right-handed the card should be found in his right hand. Consequently,” and he paused and a look of pity crossed his face, “we all owe Mrs. Xavier the profoundest apology for putting her in excruciating mental distress, for accusing her wrongly of having committed murder!”
Mrs. Xavier’s mouth was open; she blinked like a woman coming out of darkness into dazzling sunlight.
“For, you see,” went on Ellery quietly, “if someone else placed the uncrumpled half of the six of spades in the dead man’s hand, then someone else—not the dead man—was accusing Mrs. Xavier of having murdered her husband. But if the dead man was not the accuser, the whole case collapses. Instead of a guilty woman, we have a wronged woman, a framed woman! Instead of a murderess, we have an innocent victim of the well-known frame-up. And who could the framer be except the real murderer? Who would have motive to throw suspicion of murder upon an innocent person except the murderer himself?” He stooped and picked up the crumpled half of card. Then he put both pieces into his pocket. “The case,” he said slowly, “far from being solved, has just begun.”
There was a cutting silence for some time, and the most silent of all was Mrs. Xavier. She sank back upon the pillow, hiding her face in her hands. The others began quickly and surreptitiously to examine each other’s faces. Mrs. Wheary groaned and leaned weakly against the jamb. Bones glared from Mrs. Xavier to Ellery, utterly stupefied.
“But—but,” stammered Miss Forrest, staring at the woman in bed, “why did she—why—?”
“A very pertinent question, Miss Forrest,” murmured Ellery. “That was the second of the two problems I had to solve. Once I had solved the first and concluded that Mrs. Xavier was innocent, the question naturally arose: If she was innocent, why had she confessed to the crime? But that,” he paused, “becomes self-evident with a little thought. Mrs. Xavier,” he said softly, “why did you confess to a crime of which you are innocent?”
The woman began to sob with hacking heaves of her breast. The Inspector turned and went to the window to stare out. Life seemed very dismal at the moment.
“Mrs. Xavier!” murmured Ellery. He leaned over the bed and touched her hands. They fell away from her face and she stared up at him with streaming eyes. “You are a very great woman, you know; but we really can’t permit you to make the sacrifice. Whom are you shielding?”
PART III
“It is as if you batter away at a stubborn door with all your strength and after exhaustive effort break it down. For a moment the light blinds you and you think you are seeing reality. Then your eyes become inured and you see that the details had been wispiest illusion, that it is merely an empty compartment with another stubborn door on the opposite side. … I daresay that every investigator of crime has experienced this same feeling on a case which has more than the average subtlety.”
—From Rambles in the Past
by RICHARD QUEEN
Chapter Eleven
THE GRAVEYARD
THE CHANGE WHICH CAME over the face of Mrs. Xavier was remarkable. It was as if her features, one by one, were turning to stone. Her skin hardened first, and then her mouth and chin; the skin smoothed and flattened like poured concrete and the whole woman filled out like a mold. In a twinkling, with the alchemy of instant readjustment peculiar to her she regained the agelessness of her youth.
She even smiled, the old half-smile of the Gioconda. But she did not reply to Ellery’s head-cocked question.
The Inspector turned slowly to survey the faces of the customary puppets. They were always puppets, he reflected—damned wooden-faced ones, when they wanted to keep something back. And they all wanted to keep something back in a murder investigation. There was nothing to be learned from all those guilty countenances. But guilt, he knew from the bitter wisdom of experience, was only a comparative quality of the human animal. It was the heart, not the face, which told the guilty tale. He sighed and almost wished for the lie-detecting apparatus of his friend the Columbia University professor. In one case notably …
Ellery straightened and removed his pince-nez. “So we are to meet with silence on the single item of importance, eh?” he said thoughtfully. “I suppose you realize, Mrs. Xavier, that by refusing to speak you’re making yourself an accessory after the fact?”
“I do not know what you are talking about,” she said in a low impassioned voice.
“Indeed? At least you comprehend the obscure fact that you’re no longer held for murder?”
She was silent.
“You won’t talk, Mrs. Xavier?”
“I have nothing to say.”
“El.” The Inspector moved his head shortly and Ellery, with a shrug, retreated. The old gentleman stepped forward and eyed Mrs. Xavier with an odd antagonism. After all, she had been his catch. “Mrs. Xavier, the world is full of funny people, and they do all sorts of cussed things and generally it’s hard to tell why they do ’em. Human beings are inconsistent. But a copper can tell you why some people do certain things, and standing the gaff for somebody else’s capital crime is one of them. Shall I tell you why you were willing to accept the blame for a murder you didn’t commit?”
She pressed back against the pillows; her hands shoving hard on the bed. “Mr. Queen has already. …”
“Well, maybe I can take it a little further, you see.” The Inspector rubbed his jaw. “I’m going to be brutal, Mrs. Xavier. Women of your age—”
“What about women of my age?” she demanded her nostrils flaring.
“Tch, tch, there’s a female for you! I was going to say that women of your age will make the greatest personal sacrifices for one of two reasons—love or passion.”
She laughed hysterically. “You distinguish between them, I see.”
“I certainly do. I had a definite difference in mind. By love, I mean the highest kind of spiritual—ah—feeling. …”
“Oh, rubbish!” She half turned away.
“You say that as if you mean it,” muttered the Inspector. “No, I suppose you would be capable of sacrificing yourself for, say, your children—”
“My children!”
“But you haven’t any, and that’s why I’ve come to the conclusion, Mrs. Xavier,” his voice crisped, “that you’re protecting a—lover!”
She bit her lip and began to pluck at the sheet.
“I’m sorry if I have to make a speech about it,” continued the old gentleman calmly, “but as an old bull with plenty of experience I’d sort of bet on it. Who is he, Mrs. Xavier?”
She glared at him as if she would gladly strangle him with her own white hands. “You’re the most despicable old man I’ve ever met!” she cried. “For God’s sake, let me alone!”
“You refuse to talk?”
“Get out, all of you?”
“That’s your last word?”
She was working herself up to a pitch of empurpling passion. “Mon dieu,” she whispered, “if you don’t get out …”
“Duse,” said Ellery with a scowl and, turning on his heel, stalked out of the room.
They stifled in the evening heat. From the terrace, to which they had repaired by common consent after a dinner of tinned salmon and silence, the whole of the visible sky was peculiarly red, a rubescent backdrop framing the mountainous scene and made dull and illusory by the clouds of smoke which soared from the invisible burning world below. It was a little difficult to breathe. Mrs. Carreau’s mouth and nose were muffled by the flimsiest of gray veils, and the twins succumbed to a depressing tendency to cough. Specks of orange light whirled into the sky from below on the wings of the updraught of wind, and their clothes were grimy with cinders.
Mrs. Xavier, marvelously restored to health, sat by herself, a deposed empress, at the far western end of the terrace. Swathed in black satin, she merged with the evening and became a disturbing presence felt rather than seen.
“Good deal like old Pompeii, I should imagine,” remarked Dr. Holmes at last, after the steepest of silences.
“Except,” said Ellery savagely, swinging his leg against the terrace rail, “that it and we and the whole world are slightly cockeyed. The crater of Vesuvius is where the town ought to be, and the Pompeiians—meaning this brilliantly conversational company—are where the crater ought to be. Quite a spectacle! Lava flowing upward: I think I shall write to the National Geographic Society about it when I get back to New York.” He paused; he was in the bitterest of moods. “If,” he added with a dry smile, “I ever do. I’m beginning seriously to doubt it.”
“So,” said Miss Forrest with a quiver of her capable shoulders, “am I.”
“Oh, there’s really no danger, I’m sure,” said Dr. Holmes quickly, hurling an irritated glance at Ellery.
“No?” drawled Ellery. “And what shall we do if the fire gets worse? Take wing and fly away, like good little pigeons?”
“You’re making a mountain out of a molehill, Mr. Queen!”
“I’m making a fire—which is already burning satisfactorily—out of a mountain. … Come, come. This is stupid. No sense in arguing. I’m sorry, Doctor. We’ll be frightening the ladies half to death,”
“I’ve known it now,” said Mrs. Carreau quietly, “for hours.”
“Known what?” muttered the Inspector.
“That we’re really in the most frightful position, Inspector.”
“Oh, nonsense, Mrs. Carreau.”
“It’s chivalrous of you to say so,” she smiled, “but there’s no sense trying to disguise our predicament, now, is there? We’re trapped like—like flies in a bottle.” Her voice was a little tremulous.
“Now, now, it isn’t as bad as all that,” said the Inspector with a hearty attempt at raillery. “Just a matter of time, Mrs. Carreau. This is a pretty tough old mountain.”
“Covered by singularly inflammable trees,” said Mark Xavier in mocking tones. “After all, maybe there’s such a thing as divine justice. Maybe this entire affair has been arranged from on high for the express purpose of smoking out a murderer.”
The Inspector flung him a sharp glance. “There’s a thought,” he growled, and turned to stare out upon the gray-red sky.
Mr. Smith, who had not uttered a word all afternoon, kicked back his chair suddenly, startling them. His elephantine bulk loomed disgustingly in shadows against the white walls. He thundered to the edge of the steps, descended a step, hesitated, and turned his huge head toward the Inspector.
