Inspector Queen’s Own Case (8 page)

One of the fragments involved Sarah Humffrey and their attempts to question her. Jessie heard the commotion going on in the master bedroom without much interest. The frantic woman kept screaming that it was all her fault, that she had killed her baby, her blessed baby, she deserved to die, she was a monster, a criminal, let her die, oh her poor innocent baby. The men's voices came up and through and around her self-accusing aria in discordant counterpoint, her husband's by turns soothing, mortified, pleading, like a violin twanging the gamut; Dr. Wicks's snappish and brittle—he's the oboe, Jessie thought, pleased with her fancy; the insinuating trombone of Merrick, the Bridgeport man, sliding in and out of the conversation; Chief Pearl's bass horn underscoring the whole crazy fugue. Finally the men came out, the chief and the State's Attorney's man bleak with anger at Dr. Wicks, Alton Humffrey almost female in his distress and irritation.

“She's not a well woman,” the millionaire kept exclaiming in a high excited voice, oddly unlike the voice Jessie knew. “You've got to understand that, gentlemen … my wife has never been strong emotionally … hypersensitive … this shocking experience …”

Dr. Wicks snapped, “Mrs. Humffrey is in a dangerous state of emotional agitation. As a matter of fact, her distress is so severe that I doubt whether her judgment can be relied on. I'm speaking as her physician, gentlemen. If you insist on keeping this up, you'll have to assume the responsibility.”

“I can't allow it, Mr. Pearl,” Alton Humffrey said, waving his long arms. “I can't and I won't, do you hear?”

Abe Pearl glanced at Merrick, and Merrick shrugged.

“I know when I'm licked, I guess,” the chief growled. “All right, Doctor, put her under”; and Dr. Wicks disappeared.

Jessie heard his voice going in the other room, on and on like a go-to-sleep record for insomnia, and the clash of bedsprings as Sarah Humffrey threw herself about. Finally the sobs and shrieks stopped.

Later Jessie became aware of a shift in focus. They were back at her again. The house had been ransacked from basement to attic, it seemed, and the searchers had failed to turn up a pillowslip such as she had described, a lace-edged case with a dirty handprint on it.

Yes, the nightlight in the nursery had been quite dim. But no, she had not been mistaken. There was enough light to see the handprint by.

No, she didn't wear glasses. Yes, she had 20/20 vision.

No, it couldn't have been a trick of lighting, a conformation of shadows that just looked like a handprint. It
was
a handprint. Of a right hand.

“How do you know it was a
right
hand?”

“Because the thumb part of the print was on the left side.”

Someone laughed, a masculine sound halfway between a chuckle and a snort. Jessie found herself not caring at all.

“Either she was seeing things, or it's been burned or cut to pieces and flushed down a toilet.”

“What do they have on the Island, septic tanks?”

“No, regular city sewage installations. Emptying into the Sound, like in Taugus.”

“Then we'll never know.”

“Looks like it.”

They were just voices. But the next one had that precious quality of nearness. Strange how every time he made a sound, even an ordinary sound, she felt safer.

“It's the big point, Abe,” Richard Queen was saying mildly. “If you don't mind my horning in——”

“Don't be a jackass, Dick.”

“It's the difference between murder and accident. I wouldn't give up on that pillowcase if I were you.”

“We aren't even sure it exists!”

“Miss Sherwood is.”

“Hell, Dick, she could be——”

“I don't think so, Abe.”

The voices drifted off and became a mumble. Jessie was tickled. He's defending me, she thought gleefully. How kind of him. No one's ever done that before. Or not for a long, long time. Then she thought: How silly can you get. He knows I'm telling the truth and he's merely sticking to his point.

The joy went out of Jessie's thoughts and she sat blankly, dozing.

The voices swept up suddenly, startling her. Chief Pearl sounded harassed.

“Well, what about the ladder, Dick!”

“It confirms the murder theory.”

“It does not. Mr. Humffrey put it there himself. Mr. Humffrey, would you mind telling Inspector Queen how the ladder came to be there?”

The millionaire's exhausted voice said, “I heard a banging sound from the nursery about ten o'clock. A wind had come up from sea and pulled one of the shutters loose outside the driveway window. I was afraid the noise would wake the baby. I removed the screen, tried to secure the shutter from the nursery, and found I couldn't reach it. Stallings and Cullum were out—they have Thursday evenings off—so I had no choice but to get the ladder out of the shed, climb up, and fix it myself. Then the baby did wake up, my wife became very nervous, and by the time we got him back to sleep I'd completely forgotten about the ladder. I can't see that any of this has any relevance.”

“Mr. Humffrey's right, Dick. The ladder doesn't mean a thing.”

“It certainly doesn't disprove murder, Abe. If this was murder, the killer simply came along and used the ladder he found standing here. And Miss Sherwood is so positive about that pillowslip——”

“Dick, for God's sake, what do you want me to do?”

“Keep looking for the slip till you find it.”

“Mr. Humffrey, did you see a pillowslip with a handprint on it?”

“No.”

“Did you, Dr. Wicks?”

The doctor's voice said shortly, “I'd have reported it if I had.”

“And about the only thing Mrs. Humffrey said that made sense was that she didn't see it, either. And she was in the same room, Dick.”

“She was in the doorway,” the familiar voice said. “The footboard of the crib might have limited her range of vision. How about the servants, Abe?”

The big man made a disgusted sound. “The gardener and the chauffeur didn't pull in till almost 1
A
.
M
. The women know from nothing.”

“Jessie Sherwood against everybody.”

And that was her own voice. What a funny thing to have said. Jessie heard herself laugh, a shrill hoppy sort of laugh that wasn't like her laugh at all.

Immediately the noises swooped away, leaving silence.

The next thing she knew she was lying on something softly embracing, and Dr. Wicks was forcing her to swallow the bitter contents of a spoon.

After that everything stopped.

Inspector Queen was wandering along the water's edge when Chief Pearl came tramping down to the Humffrey beach. The sky over the sea was all pearl shell and salmon belly as the dawn turned to day.

“I've looked all over for you,” the Taugus policeman bellowed. “What the hell are you doing?”

The old man looked up. “Nothing much, Abe. Just checking to see if a boat mightn't have beached here last night.”

Abe Pearl stared. “Why a boat?”

“Because he'd have been a fool to try his luck twice at getting past that gatehouse in a car.”

“You mean Frost?” the chief said in an odd tone.

“Who else? But there's nothing. Tide's almost all the way in. I should have thought of it when we got here.” He glanced at his friend. “All through at the house?”

“Yeah.”

They went up through the belt of trees side by side in silence, the big man and the small one, an invisible something between them. As they crossed the perfect lawns Chief Pearl spoke to several of his men, who were still searching the grounds.

“Keep looking till I call you off,” he ordered. “Tell the boys in the house ditto.”

They got into the black-and-white police car, and the big man turned on his ignition.

“Talk to that gateman, Peterson?” the old man asked.

“The state troopers talked to him. He didn't see anything.” Abe Pearl grunted. “Dumb as they come, sure. But on the other hand, Dick, a man can't see what isn't there.”

The old man did not reply.

At the gatehouse Chief Pearl crooked his finger at Peterson. Inspector Queen listened quietly.

“All right, Peterson, let's have it all over again,” Abe Pearl said.

The guard pushed his fleshy lips forward. “I'll give it to you just once, Chief, then I'm getting the hell off this Island and so help me I'll never come back! The last car that went through this gate last night before the Humffrey kid was found dead, like I told the troopers, was that Dodge coop belongs to the nurse up there, that Miss Sherwood, who came in around 12:30
A
.
M
. Before Miss Sherwood, there was an incoming car about an hour earlier, some of old Mrs. Dandridge's servants coming back from the Taugus movies. Before that, around 11
P
.
M
., the Senator's chauffeur——”

“Did a car drive through at any time since you came on duty, going in or out,” the chief interrupted, “that you didn't recognize? Had to check?”

“No.”

Richard Queen's voice startled Peterson. “Did anyone walk through?”

“Huh?”

“Somebody on foot? Going either way?”

“Nope.”

“But somebody could have come through on foot without your seeing him. Isn't that so?”

“Listen, friend,” Peterson snarled, “this gatehouse is a joke. I got to sit down sometimes. I got to step into the bushes once in a while. I got to feed my face. There's a hundred ways a guy can get onto this Island without being seen. Go look for your patsy some place else. I'm taking no fall but for nobody.”

“You know, Abe, Peterson's right,” the old man murmured as they crossed the causeway. “Nair Island is accessible to anyone who wants to go to a little trouble. A rowboat to one of the private beaches at night … a sneak past the gate … a young fellow like Ron Frost could even have swum over from one of the Taugus beaches and got back the same way.”

His friend glanced at him. “You're dead set that this is murder, Dick, aren't you? And that the Frost kid pulled it?”

“I'm not dead set on anything. It's just that I believe Jessie Sherwood saw something on that pillowslip.
If
it was a handprint she saw, murder is indicated. And
if
it was murder, young Frost is your hottest suspect.”

“Not any more he isn't. The report came in while you were nosing around the beach for row-boat tracks. Frost can't possibly have been on Nair Island last night.”

“Why not?”

“The baby died on the Island between 10:30
P
.
M
. and around half-past midnight. In that two-hour period Ronald Frost was in Stamford, unconscious.”

“Unconscious?”

“He was rushed to Stamford Hospital in an ambulance from a friend's house on Long Ridge Road about 9
P
.
M
. He was operated on for an emergency appendectomy at 10:07
P
.
M
., and he didn't come out of the anesthetic till three o'clock this morning.” Abe Pearl grinned as he swung his car into the street of little beach houses. “What do you think of your Nurse Sherwood's pillowslip yarn now?”

Richard Queen blinked.

His friend pulled up, turned off the motor, and clapped him on the back. “Cheer up, Dick! Do you have to see a murder to make time with the Sherwood number? Take her out like a man!” He sniffed mightily. “I can smell Becky's bacon from here. Come on, Dick—hot breakfast—few hours' shuteye——”

“I'm not hungry, Abe,” the old man said. “You go on in. I'll sit here for a while.”

He sat there for a long time.

Jessie Sherwood braked up to the barrier and honked impatiently for Monty Burns, the day guard, to come out of the gatehouse and pass her through. It was a week after the tragedy, seven days that had dragged like years. The weekend had brought with it the first hurricane of the season; some Nair Island cellars were flooded, and fifteen-foot breakers had weakened the causeway—it was still under repair.

But it would have taken more than a hurricane to keep Nurse Sherwood on the Island that Thursday. The week had been hellish. A dozen times she had regretted giving in to Alton Humffrey's stiffish request that she stay on to nurse his wife. The big house was too full of the dead baby, and Sarah Humffrey's antics had Jessie's nerves at the shrieking point. But what else could I have done? she thought. That Mrs. Humffrey was on the verge of a nervous breakdown Jessie's professional eye told her quite without the necessity of Dr. Wicks's warnings.
Mea culpa …
The inquest and funeral by themselves would have unnerved a healthy woman, let alone a guilt-ridden hysteric.

Her chief recollection of the inquest was of sweaty bodies, goggling eyes, and her own humiliation and anger. They had treated her as if she were some malicious trouble-maker, or a psychopath. By contrast Sarah Humffrey had got off lightly. Alton Humffrey, Jessie thought grimly, had seen to that.

The verdict had been death by inadvertence, an accident. Accident!

And the funeral …

The coffin had been white and woefully tiny. They had tried to keep the time and place secret, but of course there had been a leak, and the pushing, craning crowds … the shouting reporters … that hideous scene in the Taugus cemetery when Sarah Humffrey screamed like an animal and tried to jump into the grave after the little flower-covered coffin …

Jessie shuddered and leaned on the horn. Monty Burns came out of the gatehouse, hastily buttoning his tunic.

She got over the workman-cluttered causeway at last, and she was about to kick the gas pedal when a familiar gray-mustached figure stepped out from under a maple tree into the road, holding up his hand and smiling.

“Morning!”

“What are you doing here?” Jessie asked confusedly.