The Door Between (25 page)

Ellery’s face brightened. “Talk about luck! Hang on to her, Doctor. Now let me talk to Kinumé.” He waited, saying to them in a swift aside: “Keep praying, you two. Something tells me –”

Kinumé piped thinly. “’Lo? ’Lo? You got Eva?”

“Yes. Listen, Kinumé. You would like to help your Eva, would you not?”

“I help,” said Kinumé simply.

“Good! Then you must answer some questions.”

“I answer.”

“Listen carefully, think deeply.” Ellery spoke in a deliberate tone, spacing his words. “When you brought up the writing-paper to Miss Karen Monday afternoon, just before you saw Eva behind you, was the Loo-choo bird in its cage in the bedroom? You know – Loo-choo
kashi
-
dori
? In cage?”

“
Kashi
-
dori
in cage. Yes.”

It was as if Kinumé had promised him his reward in heaven. Ellery beamed with sheer joy. “Kinumé, one thing more. You know how Miss Karen was attired when she was found dead, do you not?”

“In kimono. She wearing kimono some time.”

“Yes. But what I want to know is this: How was she attired when you entered the bedroom with the writing-paper?”

“Same. In kimono.”

He looked disappointed. “How was she dressed when the door was stuck,
before
she sent you for the writing-paper?”

“
Oi!
That time she wearing dress, “Merican dress.”

“Ah! Thought so,” muttered Ellery. “Short time, too. Just a few minutes before …” He said swiftly into the telephone: “You have done well, Kinumé, and Eva thanks you. Let me speak to Dr. MacClure … Doctor?”

“Yes, yes, what is it, Queen? What have you found?”

“A good deal! Bless Kinumé. Now listen to me carefully. I can’t do this over the telephone. I want you to take Kinumé and this girl Geneva O”Mara and come down to my apartment. Do you understand?”

“Anything you say. Now?”

“This instant. Doctor, be careful. Make sure no one sees you. Do you think you can get out of the house unobserved?”

“There’s the tradesmen’s entrance in the rear,” muttered the doctor. “And the emergency stairway. It can be managed, I imagine. Do you think they’re watching me?”

“It’s conceivable. They’ll naturally figure Eva would try to get in touch with you. So be careful.”

“I will,” said the doctor grimly. And he hung up.

Ellery turned to the waiting pair. “I think,” he said lightly, “that we are about to enter that critical phase of the plot which is technically known as the
dénouement
. Buck up, Eva.” He patted her cheek. “And now why don’t you two relax in here while I meditate a little in the living-room?”

He went out and shut the door behind him.

Twenty minutes later Eva opened the bedroom door, Ellery opened his eyes, and Djuna opened the front door simultaneously. Eva was a little flushed, and her eyes looked saner and clearer than they had looked for days. And Terry followed her like an awkward boy, looking foolish.

“Daddy!” She ran to Dr. MacClure. Ellery pulled the two waiting women into the living-room.

“Close that door, Djuna,” he said swiftly. “Don’t be frightened, now, Kinumé. Nor you, Miss O”Mara. I want to talk to both of you.”

“What do you want, anyway?” demanded the Irish girl sullenly. “The doctor pulls me here like I’m –”

“You’ll be all right. Doctor, you weren’t followed?”

“I don’t think so. Queen, what is it? You’ve given me more hope in the last half-hour than –”

“Before this bird gets started, Doc,” interrupted Terry Ring, shuffling forward, “I want to tell you that –”

“If anybody says anything,” remarked Inspector Queen from the doorway, “it will be yours truly.”

Ice settled down, and became silence. They all shrank a little, like guilty conspirators caught in the act.

Then Ellery hurled his cigaret away. “You
would
show up at the wrong time!” he said angrily.

“I’ll talk to
you
,” said Inspector Queen without taking his eyes from Terry and Eva, who had instinctively drawn together, ‘later. Thomas, make sure this time they don’t take a walk.”

“They won’t,” said Sergeant Velie from the foyer. He shut the apartment door and set his back against it.

Dr. MacClure, looking curiously shrunken, sank into the arm-chair. “So you followed me after all.”

“It’s all right, daddy. It’s better this way,” said Eva steadily.

“We always watch the back exits, Doctor. Thomas!”

“Yep.”

“Where’s that warrant?”

“Right here.” The Sergeant shoved his bulk forward, dropped a paper into the Inspector’s hand, and retreated.

“Eva MacClure,” began the old man coldly, unfolding the paper, “I arrest you –”

“Dad.”

“I arrest you –“

“Dad. Before you go on. I want a word with Dr. MacClure.”

The Inspector’s face was livid. “And
you
,” he said bitterly. “To think you’d do a thing like this to your own father. Harboring a criminal in my own house. I’ll never forgive you for that, Ellery.”

“Do I get a word with Dr. MacClure,” said Ellery gently, “or don’t I?”

The Inspector glared at his son. Then he half-turned away, biting viciously on the ends of his mustache.

“Doctor,” whispered Ellery in the big man’s ear, “there’s one chance left – a desperate chance, I warn you. If I’m wrong, we’re through.”

“Are you wrong?”

Whether I am or not is in the lap of the gods. Will you gamble Eva’s immediate chances on me?”

Dr. MacClure pressed the hand lying small and still in his own. Terry Ring was watching Inspector Queen and the mountain of human flesh behind him with a lidded, cobra daring; but it was the alertness of desperation. Wherever he looked, except in Ellery’s direction, the doctor saw surrender, defeating defiance.

“If you can save Eva, go to it. I’ll back you to the limit.”

Ellery nodded, went over to his father, and said: “You’re determined to arrest this girl for the murder of Karen Leith?”

“And neither you nor all the devils in hell,” snapped the Inspector, “are going to stop me!”

“I think,” murmured Ellery, “we’ll manage without help from his satanic majesty. Well, you can spare Miss MacClure and yourself a lot of grief by tearing up that warrant.”

“She’ll defend herself in court!”

“You were saved once before from making a mistake. Don’t make another, dad.”

Inspector Queen rasped his jaw, irritated beyond measure. “She didn’t kill Karen Leith, eh? Despite all the evidence?”

“She didn’t kill Karen Leith.”

“I suppose,” said the Inspector derisively, “you know who did!”

And Ellery said: “Yes.”

“It’s premature,” said Ellery, “but your insistence on immediate action forces my hand. Logically this case has only one proper solution. In view of your haste, we’ll have to resort to intellectual proof and defer the legal proof for a while.”

“If you know the right answer to this jigsaw,” said Terry Ring grimly, “I’ll hang up my license and go back to baseball. Eva, sit down here with me. This bird has me groggy.”

The Inspector eyed Sergeant Velie and made a little futile signal. Then he, too, sat down; and Sergeant Velie came in to lean against the foyer jamb and listen.

“I won’t deny it,” began Ellery, lighting another cigaret, “that I’ve harbored my full quota of fantastic theories. This has been the damnedest case. A number of grainy little facts, interesting, puzzling, and apparently incompatible. Studding a central situation that, on the face of it, is frankly impossible.”

They sat very still.

“Here’s a case in which a room has two exits – the door to the attic and the door to the sitting-room. There is no possible exit through the iron-barred windows, and the room is structurally without hidden passages. Yet the attic door after the crime was found bolted from inside the room itself, making it impossible for anyone to have left by that route; and the other door led to the sitting-room, where during the entire period of the crime Miss MacClure sat. And Miss MacClure has maintained stubbornly that no one passed through that sitting-room. Impossible situation, as I say. Yet Karen Leith was alive when Miss MacClure seated herself there, and was dead by violence when Miss MacClure burst into the bedroom.”

Ellery made a face. “There were so many oblique theories possible. One was that the attic door wasn’t bolted at all, and that Terry Ring only pretended it was. I ragged him about that yesterday. But it really didn’t make sense; and besides Kinumé did testify that the wood was warped and the bolt stuck. Another was, despite all your insistence, Eva, that someone
did
pass through that sitting-room while you occupied it.”

“But that can’t be,” cried Eva. “I tell you no one did. I
know
I didn’t fall asleep!”

“But suppose,” murmured Ellery, “you were hypnotized?”

He paused a moment, enjoying their stupefaction. Then he laughed and said: “Don’t blame me for thinking of hypnosis. There had to be
some
rational explanation if you were innocent, Eva. Hypnosis explains the phenomenon. The only trouble with the theory is that it’s far-fetched, absolutely incapable of proof, and – quite untrue.”

Dr. MacClure sank back, sighing with relief. I’m glad
that’s
not your explanation.”

Ellery squinted at his cigaret. “For it struck me, if I proceeded on the assumption that Eva didn’t kill her aunt, that there was one sane, reasonable, and provocative theory that explained everything, that made it unnecessary to resort to fantasy, that was really so simple it’s surprising no one thought of it before.

“Look at the facts. Eva MacClure is the only one who could have murdered Karen Leith – the only physical possibility. That’s what the facts seem to say. But suppose – let’s just suppose – that Eva MacClure didn’t murder Karen Leith. Is it still true that she’s the only physical possibility – is it still true if she’s innocent the crime couldn’t have happened? No. There is one other person who could have stabbed Karen Leith and caused her death.”

They stared at him. Then Terry Ring said gruffly, and with a disappointment hardly concealed: “You’re crazy.”

“Oh, come,” said Ellery. “
Couldn’t Karen Leith have stabbed herself?
”

An automobile horn honked impatiently in West Eighty-seventh Street. But in the Queens” living-room time stopped, arrested by pure astonishment.

Then the Inspector was on his feet, red-faced and protesting. “But that’s not murder – that’s suicide!”

“Perfectly true,” admitted Ellery.

“But the weapon,” cried the old man. “What happened to that missing half-scissors with the broken point? With the suicide weapon gone from that room, it
can’t
have been suicide!”

“Why must we always resent the truths we haven’t thought of ourselves? You say that the missing weapon wasn’t in that room, that therefore the crime was not suicide but murder. I say the facts point indisputably to suicide – facts all of you have overlooked. And I suggest we worry about the phenomenon of the missing weapon when we come to it.”

The Inspector sank back into his chair; and for a space he tugged at his mustache. Then he demanded in a calm voice: “What facts?”

“That’s better,” smiled Ellery. “What facts? Now we’re launched. What facts point to suicide as the answer? I say there are five – three minor, two major, with little participles of fact hanging from the last like fruit from a tree.”

Terry Ring was gaping at Ellery; he put his arm about Eva and shook his head as if he could not believe his ears. Dr. MacClure sat forward a little, listening intently.

“The minor ones are relatively weak – but only relatively. They gather strength from the major ones. Let me begin with the weak sisters.”

“First. What was the last thing, as far as we know, that Karen Leith did of her own volition before the actual events of her death? She began a letter to Morel. Who is Morel? Her lawyer and literary representative. What was the letter about? It was a demand that Morel check over her royalty moneys due to her from abroad – ‘at once, thoroughly and completely … to effect immediate payments.’ There was a definite note there, finality of demand, as if she had said: ‘Morel, the time has come to clean up my affairs.’ Foreign royalties are notoriously slow; they come in, but at their sweet time. Why this sudden insistence on immediacy? Did she need money? No, we learn she had more than enough. Why this sudden insistence,” demanded Ellery, “unless she
was
thinking of cleaning up her affairs – then, Monday afternoon, in her room, a few minutes before she died! Isn’t that what many suicides do just before taking their lives? It isn’t conclusive by any means, and logically it might have a simple, unaccented meaning. But – it’s a point. It’s a point that gathers strength, as I said, from the other things.”

He sighed. “The next paragraph in her letter to Morel – the paragraph she didn’t finish – we’ll never be able to evaluate beyond question, now that she’s dead. But it can’t have referred to anything but her sister Esther. Probably she intended to place the whole matter of Esther’s secret disposition, when she should be found – remember Karen died still thinking Esther was alive – in Morel’s hands. But then she crumpled the letter unfinished … as if she had changed her mind, as if she didn’t care what happened … about her money, about her sister, about secrecy, about anything. It fits. It fits with the suicide theory.”

He crushed out his cigaret. “Point three is just as inconclusive by itself and just as significant when you add it to its big brothers.” He went over to little Kinumé, crouched in a corner confused by all this talk. “Kinumé, you remember the scissors – in the shape of a bird? The thing that cuts?”

“
Oi
! Missie Esther bring from Japan. It always broke. In case.”

“And it was kept always in the attic-room, was it not?”

Kinumé nodded. “Last time I seeing is when I clean attic.”

“So you did clean it,” muttered the Inspector.

“And when was that?”

“Sunday.”

“The day before Karen’s death,” said Ellery with satisfaction. “It fits! The Japanese scissors were kept in the attic, they belonged to Esther, they were never in Karen’s bedroom downstairs. Yet we find them in Karen’s bedroom after the crime. Who could have brought them down from the attic? Not Esther – Kinumé saw them there Sunday, and Esther was dead in Philadelphia Saturday night. Then the probabilities point to Karen as having fetched those scissors from the attic herself. Even if she didn’t – even if she asked Kinumé to fetch them for her (which is a distinction of no importance) – why? Certainly not to provide a convenient weapon for some murderer. Certainly not as scissors – they were broken and had no utility as scissors. I say that Karen’s deliberate fetching of that unusual implement to the scene of her death before the bolt got stuck, which was shortly before her death, indicates psychologically that she intended to use it for the purpose of taking her own life.”