Face to Face (18 page)

“So you extended your original plan: you framed Lorette for Glory's murder. You knew that a powerful motive could be ascribed to her—the new will naming her the principal heir; that Lorette's denying Glory had told her about the new will had no evidence to back it up. You also knew that Lorette could be charged with opportunity—the then known facts indicated only her unsupported word that she had left her aunt alive in the apartment on the murder night. With motive and opportunity there for the grasping, all you had to do, Armando, was provide Lorette with the third factor of the classical rule: means. You merely had to arrange for the gun that had shot your wife to be found in her niece's possession.

“And who could most easily have planted the gun in Lorette's bedroom closet? You were no longer living in the Guild apartment; but Lorette was,
and Roberta was
, too. So it must have been Roberta who hid the gun in Lorette's hatbox in Lorette's clothes closet. And we know it was Roberta who, when the gun fell out of the hatbox, suggested that Harry Burke and I, in the apartment at the time, be immediately informed of it.

“Third confirmation,” Ellery said; and he moistened the dryness in his throat and hurried on, as if anxious to rid himself of an unwelcome burden. “A complication arose. A Bowery derelict called Spotty suddenly appeared, claiming to have information that might clear Lorette of the murder charge. You had already engineered your wife's death, Armando; you had already committed yourself to the frame-up of Lorette; you wanted Glory's estate more than ever; the only thing to do, you reasoned, was to get rid of Spotty before he could testify and clear Lorette, destroying your last chance to get your hands on all that loot.

“So, Armando, you did just that. You got rid of Spotty. Since he was killed in that Bowery flophouse, you must have got in there dressed as a bum, registered under a false name, gone up to the ‘dorm,' stabbed Spotty as he lay on the cot, and either walked out calmly into the winter night under Burke's nose or escaped through the rear exit.

“But the question is, how did you even know of Spotty's existence, Armando? How did you become aware of the danger he posed to your frame-up of Lorette? Most important of all, how did you learn where to find Spotty? You were not in Uri Frankell's office when Spotty showed up offering to sell his information.
Ah, but Roberta was.
And, what's more, she accompanied Harry Burke when he immediately set about trailing Spotty from Frankell's office to the Bowery. So it's evident that when Roberta left Burke on watch outside the flophouse for a few minutes and went off to that cafeteria to buy some sandwiches, she took the opportunity to phone you, Armando. It's the only way you could have found out so quickly about Spotty's unexpected appearance as a vital factor in the case, and why, when, and where to kill him.

“So there it is,” Ellery said wearily, “the whole dreary
shtik
, act and scene and line. It was a magnificently clever plot, if you go into ecstasies over this sort of thing—brilliantly worked out, brilliantly executed, brilliantly improvised when improvisation was called for, and as sickening an exercise in misdirected ingenuity as I've run across in some years.

“Roberta, you were the one who got into the Guild apartment that night of December thirtieth with a duplicate key Armando provided; you were the one who insinuated yourself into the case so as to be on the inside, a reliable source of information to Armando as it arose in the course of the official investigation. By the way, you must originally have intended to shine up to me, as close to the police officer in charge; but when Harry Burke fell for you, you decided it would be safer and subtler to switch your attentions to him, knowing he would have as much access to the inquiry as I had. And you were the one, Roberta, who put us on the trail of a woman who didn't exist—the ‘other' woman you led us to believe Armando must have used as his tool in the killing, when it was you all along. And you were the mysterious woman in the violet veil who once the murder was done, was significantly never seen again. You were not only the murderer in this case, Roberta, you also acted as its prime red herring—a combination rare in the hanky-pank of murder.”

There was an inexorability in the progress of Ellery's tired voice, an end-of-the-road quality, that was more frightening than a riot squad. Roberta stood immobilized by it. As for Armando, his black eyes were fixed on her with extraordinary violence, straining to communicate warnings, threats, reminders. But it was as if she did not see him, or anyone.

“I'm almost finished,” Ellery said, “and if I leave anything out, or get anything wrong, Roberta, you can supply the omission or correct the error.”
(No
! screamed Armando's black eyes.) “I imagine that the crisis in your relationship with Armando occurred with the failure of the frame-up against Lorette—with her acquittal at the trial. From that moment your interests diverged. Glory Guild's fortune, or the share you were working toward, Roberta, was irretrievably out of your reach.

“But was it out of Armando's reach? Hardly. Armando has the instincts of a vampire bat. He got busy charming Lorette, as he had charmed so many women before her, including her aunt; and you realized, Roberta, that now he meant to marry her and so get his hands on the fortune he had failed to grasp through murder. If and when that happened, there was no place in the game for you. You were of no further use to Armando except for your mutual alibis, and that was a Mexican standoff. Being a woman, you overreacted. You began to warn Lorette against Armando, trying to thwart his new plan … trying, I suppose, to salvage the only thing left to you out of the whole sorry business, Armando himself. You must have been wildly in love with him in the first place to let him talk you into committing murder for him; and now that you saw yourself losing him to Lorette …”

“And what about me?” Harry Burke demanded in a cawing croak, like a jungle bird.

“What about you, Harry?” Ellery said deliberately, but he did not sound as if he were enjoying himself. “Do you still dream the fairy-tale dream that Roberta is in love with you? You were a pawn in this game, Harry, a very minor piece to be sacrificed on the board.”

“Then why is she marrying me? Why,” the Scot wheeled on Roberta for the first time, “are you marrying me?”

Roberta moistened her lips. “Harry …”

“What devil's use can I have for you as a husband?”

“Harry, I did fall in love with you. I do love you.”

“With your hands stained with blood!”

Her lips quivered, and when she spoke it was in so low a voice that they all had to strain to hear her. “Yes …” But then it gathered strength. “Yes, Ellery's right about everything—the murder, every thing—I did shoot her—” (
No, no, no
! shrieked Armando's eyes.) “—but not about that. I've been trying to forget the whole nightmare. I wanted to start a new life …”

“Idiot!” shouted Carlos Armando. “Stupid, stupid idiot! And now you have fallen into Queen's trap. All he wanted out of you was an admission of guilt, and you have given it to him. Don't you realize even in your stupidity that if you had kept your mouth shut they could have done nothing against us? In all Queen's fancy talk, they have not a particle of evidence they could take into a courtroom!
Fool. FOOL!”

Inspector Queen said, “Miss West, are you willing to make a sworn statement?”

Roberta looked at Harry Burke. What she saw in his face made her turn away. “Yes,” she said to the Inspector. “Yes.”

46

The jets were coming and going; the planned chaos of the airport swirled and swooped and buzzed around them unseen and unheard. They might have been in a cave on an island in a typhoon as they waited for Burke's flight to be announced.

The Scot's eyes were no longer transparent; they were the color of blood. He looked as if he had not slept or changed his clothes for a week. His mouth was zippered. He had not asked Ellery to see him off; he had made it plain, in fact, that he wanted never to see Ellery again. But Ellery had tagged along undiscouragedly.

“I know how you feel, Harry,” Ellery was saying. “I used you, yes. I almost didn't. I fought with myself not to. When Lorette sang Jimmy Walker's song and that December-May business hit me between the eyes and I saw the whole thing clear, I fought the toughest fight of my life. I didn't know what to do, how to handle it. And when you and Roberta came over and announced you meant to be married right away—last night—the fight was even tougher. Because it gave me an opening, a way to get her to confess. And then my father proposed inviting the others to the wedding. He knows me through and through; he knew something final was in the wind, and without knowing my destination he knew what to do to get me off the ground.

“In the end I gave in, Harry. I had to; I suppose there was never any real doubt about what I had to do. I had no choice. Armando was right: nothing in my argument about Roberta's guilt could have constituted a court case. So I had to make Roberta confess. And not only that. I also had to find a way to stop you from marrying her. I couldn't let you marry a murderess, and I knew that only an admission from her lips would convince you that she was just that. And, of course, I couldn't let a murderess go scot-free … no, that's a foul pun; I didn't intend it.”

“British Overseas Airways flight number nineteen now loading at Gate Ten,” said the annunciator.

Burke grabbed his flight bag and began to stride toward Gate Ten, almost running.

Ellery hurried after him.

“Harry.”

The Scot turned on him then. He said in a murderous voice, “You go to hell,” and muscled his way through the crowded gate, shouldering an old ladys aside, so that she staggered and almost fell.

Ellery caught her. “He's not feeling well,” he explained to the old lady.

He stood there until long after Gate Ten was empty. While the BOAC jet taxied to its runway. Until it was part of the sky, and lost.

Of course Burke was being unfair. But you couldn't expect a man to be fair when he had just had his whole life kicked out from under him.

Or the man who had done the kicking to soothe himself with the perfect music of reason.

And so Ellery stood there.

He was still standing alone on his island when a hand touched his.

He turned around and it was, of all people, Inspector Queen.

“El,” his father said, squeezing his arm. “Come on, I'll buy you a cup of coffee.”

A face that had a story to tell.

How different faces are in this particular!

Some of them speak not.

(Some) faces are books in which not
a line is written, save perhaps a date.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW