Inspector Queen’s Own Case (3 page)

He grinned. “Let's give Abe something to be jealous about.” And he got up and kissed his friend's wife tenderly.

“Richard! You devil.” Becky was blushing.

“Old, am I? Bring on those eggs—sunnyside, and don't burn the bacon!”

But the lift was feeble. When he left the house and headed for Abe Pearl's second-hand sixteen-foot cruiser, the old man's heart was bitter again. Every man tasted his own brand of misery. You needed more than a successful past and a secure future. Becky had left one thing out, the most important thing.

A man needed the present. Something to do.

The engine coughed its way into the basin and expired just as the sixteen-footer slid alongside the dock. Richard Queen tied up to a bollard, frowning, and looked around. The dock was deserted, and there was no one on the beach but a buxom woman in a nurse's nylon uniform reading a magazine on the sand beside a net-covered perambulator.

The old man waved. “Ahoy, there!”

The nurse looked up, startled.

“Could I possibly buy some gas here?” he bellowed.

The woman shook her head vigorously and pointed to the pram. He walked down to the beach end of the dock and made his way across the sand toward her. It was beautiful sand, clean as a laundered tablecloth, and he had the uneasy feeling that he should not be making tracks in it.

“I'm sorry,” he said, taking off his hat. “Did I wake the baby?”

The nurse was stooping over the carriage intently. She straightened up, smiling.

“No harm done. He sleeps like a little top.”

Richard Queen thought he had never seen a nicer smile. She was big and wholesome-looking; her pretty nose was peeling from sunburn. Close to fifty, he judged, but only because he had had long experience in such matters. To the amateur eye she would pass for forty.

She drew him off from the pram a little way. “Did you say you were out of gas?”

“Forgot to check the tank before I shoved off. It's not my boat,” he said apologetically, “and I'm afraid I'm not much of a sailor. I just about made it to your dock when I saw your pump.”

“You're a trespasser,” she said with her crinkly smile. “This is private property.”

“Nair Island,” he nodded. “But I'm desperate. Would you allow me to buy some juice for that contraption?”

“You'd have to ask Mr. Humffrey, the owner, but I'm sure it wouldn't do you any good. He'd like as not call the Taugus police.”

“Is he home?” The old man grinned at the picture of Abe Pearl running over to Nair Island to arrest him.

“No.” She laughed. “They've taken the cabin cruiser down to Larchmont to watch some yacht racing. Mrs. Humffrey hasn't stuck her nose out of the house since the baby came.”

“Then if I helped myself nobody would know?”

“I'd know,” she retorted.

“Let me take a few gallons. I'll send Mr. Humffrey a check.”

“You'll get me in trouble …”

“I won't even mention your name,” he said solemnly. “By the way, what is it?”

“Sherwood. Jessie Sherwood.”

“My name is Richard Queen, Mrs. Sherwood.”

“
Miss
Sherwood, Mr. Queen.”

“Oh,” he said. “Glad to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Nurse Sherwood murmured.

For some absurd reason they both smiled. The sun on the old man felt good. The blue sky, the sparks flying off the water, the salt breeze, everything felt good.

“I really don't have any place to go, Miss Sherwood,” he said. “Why don't we sit down and visit?”

The crinkles went out of her smile. “If it got back to Mr. and Mrs. Humffrey that I'd entertained a strange man on the beach while I was minding the baby they'd discharge me, and they'd be perfectly right. And I've got awfully attached to little Michael. I'm afraid I can't, Mr. Queen.”

Nice, he thought. Nice woman.

“Of course,” he said. “It's my fault. But I thought … You see, I'm an old friend of Chief of Police Pearl's of Taugus. In fact, I'm spending the summer with him and Mrs. Pearl in their shack on the beach.”

“Well!” she said. “I'm sure Mr. Humffrey wouldn't mind
that
. It's just that they're so nervous about the baby.”

“Their first?”

“Well, yes.”

“They're smart. Parents can't be too careful about their children, especially if they're rich.”

“The Humffreys are multimillionaires.”

“Chief Pearl tells me they're all loaded on Nair Island. I remember a snatch case I investigated a few years ago——”

“Case? Are you a police officer, too, Mr. Queen?”

“Was,” he said. “In New York. But they retired me.”

“Retired you! At your age?”

He looked at her. “How old do you think I am?”

“About fifty-five.”

“You're just saying that.”

“I never just say things. Why, are you older?”

“I quote Section 434-a dash two one point 0 of the Administrative Code of the City of New York,” he said grimly, “which states as follows: ‘No member of the police force in the department except surgeons of police,' etcetera, ‘who is or hereafter attains the age of 63 years shall continue to serve as a member of such force but shall be retired and placed on the pension rolls of the department.'” He added after a moment, “You see, I know it by heart.”

“Sixty-three.” She looked skeptical.

“My last birthday.”

“I wouldn't have believed it,” she murmured.

From the depths of the pram came a squawk. Nurse Sherwood hurried to its source, and he followed. He could not helping taking in the curve of her hips, the youthful shoulders, the pretty legs and ankles.

It was just a cry in the baby's sleep. “He'll be waking up for his feeding soon,” she said softly, fussing with the netting. “Is your wife visiting with Chief and Mrs. Pearl, too?”

Strong hands.

“I've been a widower almost as long as you're old, Miss Sherwood.”

“That's impossible!” She laughed. “How old do you think I am?”

“Thirty-nine, forty,” he lied.

“Aren't you sweet! I'll be fifty in January. Why, I've been an R.N. for almost twenty-five years.”

“Oh, you're a trained nurse. Is this a sick baby?”

“Heavens, no. He's a sturdy little monkey.”

He was, too. He had chubby arms and legs, a formidable little chest, and fat cheeks. He was sleeping with his arms defending his head in a curious attitude of defiance and helplessness; his silky brows were bunched in a troubled way. Richard Queen thought, They look so … so … He could not think of the word. Some feelings there were no words for. He was surprised to find that he still had them.

“It's just that Mrs. Humffrey is so nervous,” Jessie Sherwood was saying. “She won't trust an ordinary nursemaid. And I've been a pediatric and maternity nurse practically my entire career. Ordinarily I wouldn't take a case like this—a perfectly healthy baby—I could be taking care of someone who really needs me. But I've rather overdone it the past few years, and Mr. Humffrey's offer was so generous——”

She stopped abruptly. Why was she telling all this to a perfect stranger? She was appalled.

“Never married?” the old man asked casually.

“Beg pardon? Oh, you mean me.” Her face changed. “I was engaged once. During the war.”

It was her eyes that were crinkled now, but not with laughter.

“He was a doctor,” she explained. “He was killed in Normandy.”

The old man nodded. They stood over the carriage side by side, looking through the netting at the tiny sleeping face.

What am I thinking of? he thought. A vigorous, attractive woman … and what am I but a withering old fool?

He fumbled with the button of his jacket. “I can't tell you how nice it's been talking to you, Miss Sherwood.”

She looked up quickly. “You're going?”

“Well, I'd better lift some of Mr. Humffrey's gas and start back. Becky—Mrs. Pearl—will be having fits if I don't show up for lunch. She's been trying to put some meat on my bones.”

“I don't see why,” Jessie Sherwood said warmly. “I think you're built beautifully for——”

“For a man my age?” He smiled. “I hope we meet again some time.”

“Yes,” she said in a low voice. “I don't know a soul here. On Thursdays I go crazy. That's my day off——”

But he merely said, “I know what you mean. Well.” His smile was fixed. “Good-by, Miss Sherwood. And thanks. I'll mail Mr. Humffrey a check tonight.”

“Good-by,” Jessie Sherwood said.

He did not even wave to her as he pulled away from the dock.

Independence Day was a Monday, and it developed into the noisiest Fourth Nurse Sherwood could remember. In spite of the ban on their sale, fireworks crackled, hissed, swooshed, and screeched into the skies over Nair Island all day.

The continuous barrage had made little Michael fret and wail, and his displeasure infected the household. Mrs. Humffrey wrung her hands and hovered all day; Mrs. Charbedeau, the cook, overdid the roast and exchanged bickering sarcasms with Mrs. Lenihan, the housekeeper; Mrs. Lenihan snapped the head off Rose Healy, the upstairs maid, and reduced Marie Tompkins, the downstairs maid, to the sullen verge of Notice. Even old Stallings, the gardener, ordinarily the most unaffected of men, threatened wrathfully to bust Henry Cullum in the snoot if the chauffeur ever again backed a car five feet onto his lawn in the poorly planned apron behind the Humffrey garage.

Alton Humffrey was annoyed. The Island's one road was as crowded all day as Front Street in Taugus; the surrounding waters splashed and spluttered well into the evening with hundreds of holiday craft from the mainland; and Cullum had to be delegated to stand guard on the Humffrey beach to chase trespassing picnickers away.

Worst of all, Ronald Frost made a scene. Frost was Humffrey's nephew, the only child of the millionaire's dead sister. He lived on a small income from his mother's estate, spending most of his time as a house guest of his numerous socialite friends, making a partner for an odd girl or teaching someone's cousin to play tennis.

The young man had come up to spend the weekend, along with some relatives of Sarah Humffrey's from Andover, Maiden and Cambridge; and whereas the Stiles clan, all elderly people, had sensibly left on Sunday night to get the jump on the northbound traffic, Ronald Frost lingered well into Independence Day. What the attraction was Jessie Sherwood failed at first to see, unless it was his uncle's liquor cabinet; certainly he made no secret of his boredom, and his visits to the cabinet were frequent.

Ron was a younger edition of his mother's brother—tall, thin, shoulderless, with lifeless brown hair and slightly popping eyes. But he had an unpleasant smile, half unction, half contempt; and he treated servants vilely.

Jessie Sherwood heard the row from the nursery that afternoon while she was changing the baby; Alton Humffrey's upstairs study was across the hall. Apparently Ron Frost was mired in a financial slough and expected his uncle to pull him out.

“I'm afraid, Ronald, you'll have to look for relief elsewhere this time,” Jessie heard the older man say in his chill, nasal voice.

“What?” Young Frost was astounded.

“This avenue is closed to you.”

“You don't mean it!”

“Never more serious in my life.”

“But Uncle Alton, I'm in a rotten jam.”

“If you must get into jams, it's time you learned to get out of them by your own efforts.”

“I don't believe it.” Frost was dazed. “Why, you've never turned me down before. And I'm in the damnedest spot just now … What's the idea, Uncle? Don't tell me
you're
in a pecuniary pickle.”

“I don't get into pecuniary pickles, Ronald.” Jessie Sherwood could almost see Alton Humffrey's glacial smile. “I take it this request was the real purpose of your visit, so——”

“Wait a minute.” Ron Frost's tone was ugly now. “I want clarification. Is this a peeve of the moment because your precious castle has been fouled up all day by the common people, or is it a permanent freeze-out?”

“Translated into English,” his uncle said, “you're apparently inquiring whether this is a whim or a policy. It's a policy, Ronald. I find now that I have a better use for my money than to pay your gambling debts and enlarge the bank accounts of your heartbroken lady-friends.”

“The brat,” mumbled Frost.

“I beg your pardon?”

“This mongrel you picked up somewhere——”

“You're drunk,” Alton Humffrey said.

“Not so drunk I can't put two and two together! All your wormy talk about the Humffrey blood—the family name—the promises you made my mother——!”

“You have an obligation, too,” his uncle snapped. “Principally, to stop following the life cycle of a sponge. By the way, you'll apologize for the disgusting manner in which you've just referred to my son.”

“Your son!” shouted Frost. “What is he if he isn't a mongrel?”

“Get out.”

“Can't stand the truth, hey? You gave me every reason to expect I'd be your heir, not some puking little——”

“So help me God, Ronald,” Alton Humffrey's voice said clearly, “if you don't leave at once I'll throw you down the stairs.”

There was a silence.

Then Jessie Sherwood heard young Frost say with a nervous laugh, “I'm sorry, Uncle. I guess I am tight. I apologize, of course.”

There was another silence.

“Very well,” Humffrey said. “And now I take it you're about to leave?”

“Right, right,” Ron Frost said.

She heard him stagger up the hall. A few minutes later his footsteps returned and stopped in the study doorway.

“Please say good-by and thanks to Aunt Sarah for me, Uncle. Under the circumstances——”