The Door Between (26 page)

“But why such a queer thing?” demanded the Inspector.

“There’s a reason for that, too,” said Ellery, “which I’ll get to in a moment.

“But let me go on to point number four, the first really powerful indication of suicide. Kinumé told me over the telephone a few minutes ago that when she left the bedroom just before Karen’s death,
the Loo-choo jay
– that bird that dislikes me so vociferously –
was hanging in its cage beside Karen’s bed
.”

“It was?” said the old man slowly.

“It was. We never thought of asking her that specific question before, and Kinumé isn’t the sort that volunteers information when she has been trained for years to keep her mouth shut. But the bird was hanging in its cage in the bedroom just before the crime, and when Eva entered the room a half-hour later, the cage was empty. This is confirmed by Terry. Let me ask you: Who released that bird during the half-hour interval?”

“Karen was the only one who could have,” muttered the doctor.

“Exactly. Only Karen. Karen released her beloved pet from its bondage.”

“But how did it get out of the room?” demanded Terry.

“Very simply. Since it couldn’t have opened the cage itself then Karen – alone in the room – must have opened the cage for it. This suggests that she took out the bird, carried it to the window, and passed it out through two of the iron bars. A human being couldn’t get out through those bars,” said Ellery casually, “but a bird could.”

He frowned. “Karen loved that cursed jay – all sorts of testimony to that effect. The bird was never allowed out of its cage. The only times it had got loose within the memory of man was when Miss O”Mara” – the Irish girl looked even more sullen – “in feeding it during an illness of Kinumé’s some weeks ago let it get away from her and it escaped into the garden. Will you tell us again, as you told us Wednesday, what happened on that occasion, Miss O”Mara?”

“I don’t know what for,” snapped the girl. “She all but tore my head off. Miss Leith, I mean; wanted to fire me. Let me go, will you? I want to get out of here.”

But Ellery said: “You see? Now we have logical reason to believe that a few minutes before she died, Karen Leith, who had always jealously kept her bird caged, herself took it from its cage and sent it off through the barred window.
She gave it its freedom
. Why? Why do people free well-beloved pets? Because their thralldom to an individual is over. Because their thralldom ends with the individual’s end. Because Karen Leith meant to commit suicide.”

The Inspector bit his fingernails.

“And so we come to the fifth, really the most conclusive point of all. It is compounded of an Occidental mind turned Oriental, of a kimono, of a little raised step, of a jeweled dagger, of a wound in the throat. It is compounded of everything Karen Leith’s warped soul was, and of everything Karen Leith’s tired body did. And if this point had stood alone, it would have told me Karen Leith committed suicide.”

“
Will
you explain?” said the Inspector fretfully.

“It’s a nice point – really beautiful; perfect symmetry. What was Karen Leith? Well, her skin was white, but its underside had turned yellow. She had lived so long in Japan, loved so deeply things Japanese, that she had become more than half Japanese. Consider how she lived in Washington Square – in quarters nostalgic for Japan, Japanese furniture, art, decorations; even her garden was Japanese. At every opportunity she wore Japanese dress. She loved Japanese customs – do you remember that ceremonious tea? She had been brought up in a semi-Japanese home, had associated with Japanese friends, with Japanese servants, had taught Japanese students at the Imperial University after her father’s death. In a sense, she was a convert to the spirit of Japan – it isn’t difficult to think of her as mentally and psychologically more Japanese than Occidental. As a matter of fact, there have been numerous instances of Westerners becoming converted to Japan – do you remember Lafcadio Hearn, for instance?

“Now if you consider Karen Leith in this light, what is suggested by the specific conditions of her death: dressed in a Japanese kimono, her throat cut, the weapon a thing of steel and crusted with gems? Eh? Why, a half-hour or so before her death, did she change from ordinary Western dress – as Kinumé will tell you – to the kimono? How explain the rather delicately grim choice of death – a cutting of the throat? Why that specific weapon – half of a begemmed Japanese scissors, which in the absence of a ‘jeweled dagger’ can easily be visualized as such? I’ll tell you why.” Ellery waved his
pince-nez
. “Because these three elements – jeweled dagger, cut throat, and kimono – are mandatory in the age-old Japanese ceremony of
hara-kiri
. And
hara-kiri
is the age-old Japanese ceremony of suicide.”

“No,” said the Inspector stubbornly after a moment. “No! That’s not so. I don’t know a lot about it, but I do know that this
hara-kiri
business isn’t throat-cutting. I heard of a case of a Jap a few years ago who did it by disembowelment. I looked it up then. They always slash their abdomens.”

“This Japanese was a man?” demanded Ellery.

“Yes.”

“You didn’t look into it deeply enough. I did. Male Japanese suicides cut their abdomens open. Females their throats.”

“Oh,” said the Inspector.

“But that isn’t all.
Hara-kiri
isn’t promiscuous; it must have narrow and specific motivation. It’s all neatly tied up with honor. You do not take your life by
hara-kiri
lightly in Japan. It’s only when you’ve committed a dishonorable act. This ritual form of suicide wipes out the dishonor – at least, that’s the aesthetics of it. But how about Karen Leith? Didn’t she have a dishonor to wipe out – the theft of her sister’s genius? And didn’t she die on a little step – the edge of the dais before the oriel windows – which makes it easy to visualize her as
kneeling
? But that’s another requirement in
hara-kiri
, you see.

“No, no. One, or even two, of these five indications – except the last – would have meant little. But with this last and the other four to bolster it, a theory of suicide is erected which simply cannot be disregarded.”

They were silent.

At last the Inspector exclaimed: “But there’s no
confirmation
, there’s no
evidence
, there’s no
proof
. It’s only a theory. I can’t let Miss MacClure out on an unsupported theory. Be reasonable!”

“I’m being the soul of reason,” sighed Ellery.

“And then where’s the missing half of the scissors with which you say she killed herself?” The old man rose, shaking his head. “It’s no go, Ellery. You’ve got a pretty theory with a hole in it, and I’ve got a theory with evidence to back it up.”

“Look,” said Ellery. “Had you found that missing half-scissors with its identifying broken point near Karen’s body,
with all the other conditions remaining the same
, wouldn’t you have accepted a theory of suicide? Would the mere presence of Eva MacClure in the next room have convinced you it was murder?”

“But we didn’t find the weapon by the body, you see. I mean the real weapon – not the other half with Miss MacClure’s fingerprints on it.”

“You want proof.”

“That’s what the jury will want,” said the Inspector apologetically. “Even before that, that’s what the District Attorney will want. You’ll have to satisfy Henry Sampson, not me.”

It sounded final. Eva relaxed against Terry hopelessly.

“In other words,” continued Ellery in a murmur, “I’ve got to do two things: explain why the weapon wasn’t found on the scene of the crime; and then locate it. If I can do both, you’ll be satisfied?”

“You do ’em.”

“Just where did you search? Tell me again.”

“The whole place.”

“No, no, be specific”

“The whole interior of the house. We didn’t miss a thing. We even searched the cellar. That goes for the attic, too. And the grounds around the house, thinking maybe it had been thrown out of a window. But it wasn’t.” His sharp eyes rested on Eva. “Despite what you say, it would have been a cinch for either Miss MacClure or this Terry spalpeen to have sneaked it off Monday, when I let ’em go.”

“Or passed it to an accomplice outside the house?”

“Yes!”

Ellery chuckled suddenly. “Have you given any real thought to that rock?” he asked.

“The rock?” repeated Inspector Queen slowly.

“Yes, yes, that very common garden-variety of rock from the border of the path behind the house. The rock that shattered Karen Leith’s window shortly after the crime.”

“Some kid threw that.”

“I said that long ago,” said Terry. Then they both glared at Ellery.

“Well, did you ever find a trace of such a child?”

“What’s the difference?” grumbled the Inspector. “And if you’ve got anything up your sleeve,” he added testily, “I wish you’d come out with it!”

“The other day,” said Ellery, “Terry and I tried an experiment. Ask Ritter. He saw us and probably thought we were insane. We stood in the garden and threw rocks of the approximate size and shape of the one that broke the window. We threw “em
at
those very oriel windows.”

“What for?”

“Well, Terry’s an ex-baseball player, you know. Professional pitcher. He can throw. I saw him throw. Wonderful control – almost perfect marksmanship.”

“Stop it,” growled Terry. “You’ll have me making a speech in a minute. Come on!”

“Terry,” continued Ellery equably, “at my direction tried a half-dozen times to send a rock past those iron bars into Karen Leith’s bedroom. He failed each time – the rocks struck the bars and fell into the garden. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even
want
to try – anyone, he said, with any sense, would know you couldn’t throw a rock five inches long by three inches wide between two iron bars only six inches apart – moreover, throwing
upward
, from an awkward position, from the ground to a second-story window.”

“It was done, wasn’t it?” demanded the Inspector; “That proves it can be done, Terry or no Terry.”

“But not that it was
intended
to be done! Terry was right. No one with sense would even have tried, seeing those iron bars so close together. And even if they had, why? Why should anyone have tried to throw a rock into that room from the garden? Not to attract attention, because that would imply a distraction in order to draw attention away from something; but nothing happened. Not to hit anyone, because that would be even more futile than to try to get the rock past the bars in the first place. Not to send a message, because no message was tied to the rock.”

“No, dad, you can’t escape it. The rock that broke Karen Leith’s window wasn’t
meant
to break Karen Leith’s window. It got past the bars and into the room
only by accident. That rock wasn’t thrown at Karen Leith’s window at all!
”

They all looked so puzzled Ellery smiled. “If the rock wasn’t thrown at the window, what
was
it thrown at? Surely at something
near
the window, in that approximate area? What could that something have been? Well, we know that just before she died Karen Leith released her Loo-choo jay through that window. Then the Loo-choo jay was on the outside, probably somewhere in the vicinity; it had lived too long in that house to leave it. Suppose the bird had flown to a gable just above the oriel windows – that is, to the edge of the roof – and perched there? Just suppose? Can’t you conceive of someone hurling a stone at the bird from the garden and of the cast falling short and of the stone entering the room by merest accident?”

“But what could that have to do –” began Dr. MacClure in frank amazement.

“We’re supposing,” said Ellery whimsically. “Now we know that a few weeks ago the jay escaped through the carelessness of Miss O”Mara. We also know that Miss Leith bawled the hell out of Miss O”Mara for that carelessness. Now let’s suppose again. Let’s suppose Miss O”Mara was in the garden late Monday afternoon and suddenly saw that very bird perched on the gable or on the top of the oriel window outside. Mightn’t Miss O”Mara instantly think that Karen Leith would hold her responsible for what she pardonably thought was a second escape of the bird? Wouldn’t it be natural for Miss O”Mara to try to catch the bird and return it to its cage in the sunroom before the ogrish Miss Leith found out? But the pesky creature was high up, quite beyond her reach; and so isn’t it easy to suppose that Miss O”Mara picked up a rock from the border of the path and threw it up at the bird to scare it into flying down?”

The Irish girl looked so frightened as their eyes turned on her that they knew Ellery had supposed with remarkable point.

She retorted with a defiant toss of her head: “All right. What about it? There’s nothing wrong in that, is there? What are you all looking at me that way for?”

“And then when the window crashed you grew frightened and ducked out of sight around the house, eh?” asked Ellery softly.

“Yeah!”

“And when you thought the coast was clear you came out again and found the bird peaceably pecking about the garden and caught and restored it to its cage in the sunroom?”

“Yeah,” she said sullenly.

“You see,” sighed Ellery, ‘that was the only reconstruction which accounted for two things: the disappearance of the Loo-choo jay from its bedroom cage upstairs just before the crime and its appearance in the sunroom cage downstairs just after the crime. And it was all ably assisted into crystallization by the curious incident of the rock.”

The inspector frowned. “But what has all this to do with the missing half-scissors?”

“Well,” said Ellery dryly, “it establishes the bird at the top of the house, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t get you!”

“I mean that this bird of Karen Leith’s is a jay. I mean that all jays are notoriously thievish. I mean that like all jays the Loo-choo must be instinctively attracted by brightly colored objects. And I say that after Karen Leith gave the jay its unwanted freedom it felt unaccustomed to its new estate and tried to return to its mistress. I say that it alighted on the window ledge, folded its wings, strutted through two of the iron bars – the window was open from the bottom, remember – and flew down to the floor of the dais where Karen Leith lay dying in her own blood. And I say that half-scissors with its broken point was lying there by her hand, steeped in her blood. And I say that, attracted by the glitter of the semiprecious jewels which stud the shank and bow, the jay picked up the weapon with its beak, a strong one (and a light weapon), flew up to the window sill, and walked out between the bars. Let me point out that the half-scissors is only five inches long and the space between the bars is six inches. Outside what did the Loo-choo bird do? With the instincts of its jayish, magpie-ish blood, it looked for a place to hide its attractive find. But where did we leave the jay? Perched on or near the roof of the house.”