QED (5 page)

In the center of the dial was a bulky knob, about half the diameter of the dial itself, and on the knob was etched the manufacturer's trademark—an outline of the god of metal-working, Vulcan; around the rim of the knob appeared the manufacturer's name and address:
VULCAN SAFE
&
LOCK COMPANY
,
INC
.,
NEW HAVEN
,
CONN
.

The safe door was locked. Ellery duly fiddled with the dial, ear cocked à la Jimmy Valentine. Nothing happened—at least, to the safe door. What did happen was the entrance into the drawing room of Ellen, in a sort of half excitement, trailed by a disdainful Joanne.

“Ah, the ladies,” said Ellery, trying to cover up his chagrin. “And have you found the combination to this stubborn little brute?”

“No,” Ellen said, “but we've found this. Maybe it'll tell you something.”

Ellery took the sheet of paper. It was a bill of sale for the wall safe.

“Dated nine years ago.” He pinched his nose, which was itching. “Must have been ordered just after he got back from that trip to the Orient you told me about, when he acquired the Imperial Pendant. Especially ordered, then, to be the repository of the pendant. Invoice tallies—same name and address of manufacturer; terse description, ‘Wall safe per order.'”

“That's it,” said Christopher. “No doubt about it.”

“Is it important, Mr. Queen?” asked Jo, in spite of herself.

“It could be mighty important, Miss Caswell. While I have fiddled and burned, you may have discovered a treasure.”

“Then you have better eyes than I,” said Ellen. “Anyway, where do we go from here?”

“Patience, Mrs. Nash. Chris, I want you to take a trip to New Haven. Check out the safe company and learn everything you can about this particular model—details of the original order, any special instructions accompanying the order—and, yes, check the price, which seems very high to me. Also, the Vulcan Company may have the combination on file, which would simplify matters. If they don't, hire one of their experts to come back with you, in case we have to force the safe.

“Meanwhile, you two girls keep searching for a record of the combination. Cover every room in the house. Not excluding the greenhouse.”

January 11:
Christopher's return taxi from the Wrightsville airport produced a clamor. Jo flew into the foyer from the direction of the kitchen, followed by Mum; Ellen descended from upstairs in jumps. Ellery, a lonely stag, was meandering among the red spruce and birch outside; and Joanne, booted and mackinawed, was dispatched to fetch him.

Assembled in the drawing room, they saw from Christopher's expression that he was no courier of good news.

“Briefly,” Christopher told them, “the Vulcan Safe and Lock Company, Inc., no longer exists. The plant and all its files were destroyed by a fire in 1958. The firm never went back into business. Fellow sufferers, I return to your bosoms with nothing—not a clue, not a record of anything connected with the purchase of the safe.”

“The high price,” Ellery asked, frowning. “Did you remember to check the price?”

“Right. I did. And you were. Right, I mean. The price father paid was just about twice what safes of similar size and type were bringing the year he ordered it. It's funny that father would let himself be skinned that way. He may have been careless about his lawyer, but he was a good enough businessman, after all, to have made millions in packaged seeds before he went chrysanthemum-happy.”

“There was nothing wrong with your father's business sense, Chris,” said Ellery. “Nothing at all.” And his eyes promptly went into hiding.

Ellen, who held a more cynical view of her late sire, was clearly of the opinion that the father's simplicity had been passed on to his son. “Didn't you at least bring back a safe expert to open the bloody thing?”

“No, but I got in touch with another New Haven safe outfit, and they'll send a man up as soon as I phone them.”

“Then do it. Put through a trunk call right now. What kind of fool are you?”

Christopher's ears had turned a lovely magenta. “And you, sister mine, you're a greedy little devil. You're so hot to lay your hands on that pendant that you've lost the few decent instincts you used to have. You've waited this long, can't you wait another couple of days? Father's hardly settled in his grave.”

“Please,” murmured Mum.

“Please!” cried Jo.

His reflections disturbed by the sibling colloquy, Ellery roused himself. “It may not be necessary to call in anybody. Your father left a dying message—MUM. Chief Newby is positive that Godfrey was leaving a clue to his killer's identity—Mum Caswell here. But if Godfrey meant to identify his murderer, why did he choose to write MUM? MUM can mean a great many different things, which I shan't go into now; but, as an identification, it's an ambiguity. Had he wanted to accuse Mrs. Caswell, he could simply have written down her initials, MC. If he'd meant to accuse Joanne or Mr. Thorp—JC or WT. One of his children? ‘Son' or ‘daughter'—or
their
initials. Any one of which would have been specific and unmistakable.

“I choose to proceed, then,” Ellery went on, “on the assumption that Godfrey, in writing MUM, did not mean his killer.

“Now. What had he promised to leave for you? The combination of the safe containing the only considerable asset in his estate. So his dying message may have been meant to be the safe combination. If so, the theory can be tested.”

Going to the painting, he pushed it aside. Entranced, they trooped after him.

“Study this dial for a moment,” Ellery said. “What do you see? Twenty-six numbered notches. And what does twenty-six suggest?
The number of letters in the alphabet!

“So let's translate M-U-M into numbers. M is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, U the twenty-first. Safe combination: 13-21-13. Now first we twirl the dial a few revolutions—to clear the action, so to speak. Then we turn to 13 and set it directly under the alignment notch—there. Next we turn the dial to the right—we'll try that direction first—and align the 21. And now to the left—usually the directions alternate—back to 13.”

Ellery paused. The crucial instant was at hand. There was no movement behind him, not even a breath.

He took hold of the knob and pulled, gently.

The thick, heavy door of the safe swung open.

A shout of triumph went up—and died as if guillotined.

The safe was empty. Utterly. No pendant, no jewel box, not even a scrap of paper.

Later that day, true to his commitment, Ellery visited Anse Newby at police headquarters and reported the opening of the safe, including its emptiness.

“So what have you accomplished?” the Chief growled. “Somebody killed the old man, opened the safe, swiped the pendant. That doesn't knock my theory over. It just gives us the motive.”

“You think so?” Ellery squeezed his lower lip. “I don't. According to everyone's testimony, Godfrey told them he was the only one who knew the combination. Did one of them figure out the M-U-M combination before I did and beat me to the safe? Possible, but I consider it unlikely, if you'll pardon the self-puff. It takes experienced follow-through thinking to make the jump from M-U-M to 13-21-13.”

“All right, try this,” argued Newby. “Somebody sneaked downstairs in the middle of that night and got lucky.”

“I don't believe in that sort of luck. Anyway, it would call on one of them to be a mighty good actor.”

“One of them is an actor.”

“But, I gather, not a good one.”

“Or maybe she—”

“Let's keep it a neutral ‘he.'”

“—maybe he forced old Godfrey to tell him the combination before sinking the knife into him.”

“Even less likely. Everyone knew that Godfrey's paralysis included his speaking apparatus, which even in a good recovery is usually the last to come back, if it comes back at all. Certainly no one could bank on the old man's being able to talk suddenly. Did the killer order Godfrey to write the combination down, under threat of the knife? Even so, Godfrey would have been a fool to do it; his daughter not withstanding, he seems to have been very far from a fool. He'd have known he was a goner the moment he wrote it.

“I'll admit,” scowled Ellery, “that all these unlikelihoods don't make for exclusive conclusions. But they do accumulate a certain mass, and the weight of them convinces me that the killer put Mumford out of his misery simply to hurry up the inheritance of the pendant, not to steal it; that the killer then left, and Mumford wrote M-U-M on his own.”

“You talk all-fired pretty,” said Chief Newby with a grin. “There's only one thing.”

“And that is?”

“If the killer didn't swipe the pendant, where is it?”

“That,” Ellery nodded morosely, “is Bingo.”

“I don't mean to high-hat my betters,” twanged Newby, “but you have to admit you've got a tendency to bypass the obvious. All right, you hit on M-U-M as Godfrey's 13-21-13 safe combination. But why does that have to have anything to do with his reason for writing MUM on the pad? He was a bug on mums, so it was natural for him to use M-U-M as the combination. But he could have meant something entirely different when he wrote M-U-M on the pad. I still say he was fingering his murderer. And when you have a suspect around who's actually known as M-U-M, and called Mum, what more do you want?”

“Mum Caswell isn't the only obvious referent.”

“Come again?”

Ellery's reasoning organ, needled by a phrase Newby had used, was busy with its embroidery.

“A bug on mums, you say. My point is, it's absolutely bizarre and incredible that MUM should have been his dying message. MUM is the symbol of the man who wrote it. He was a famous horticulturist specializing in mums. Everything about the man said MUM, from the flowers in his greenhouse to the oil paintings and prints and sculptures and intaglios and jewelry and Lord knows what else of them throughout the place. MUM was Mumford's trademark: a mum is on his stationery, as I've taken the trouble to check; also on his wallet, and on his car, and in wrought iron over the front entrance. The moldings and doorknobs are all decorated with carved mums. And did you notice that his shirts sport an embroidered mum instead of his monogram? Also, if you'll pardon me, there's the irony of the knife that took his life, Godfrey's boyhood knife. How many times, allow me to wonder, did little Goddie Mumford play
mum
blety-peg with it?”

At this terminal extravagance—this spacecraft leap into whimsy—the Chief could not avoid a groan. Ellery rose, undismayed.

“It's that kind of case, Newby. And by the way, there's one line of investigation I haven't followed through yet. The search for that safe combination sidetracked me. I'll look into it tomorrow morning.”

January 12:
Having strained his prerogatives as a houseguest by arranging to borrow one of the Mumford cars, Ellery came downstairs the next morning before anyone else was up; and as he was passing the table in the foyer something caught his eye. There was a letter on the silver salver.

Being the world's nosiest noonan, Mr. Q paused to look it over. The dime-store envelope was unstamped, unpostmarked, and addressed in a childishly disguised scrawl.

The envelope read:
To Ellery
.

He was surprised and delighted—surprised because the letter was so totally unexpected, delighted because he was in great need of a new point of inquiry. He tore open the envelope and removed from it a sheet of cheap notepaper.

The handwriting of the message was similarly disguised:

12/1/65

Mum's the word. If you tell what you know I'll kill you, too
.

There was no signature.

Was this a new development? Hardly. All it did was obfuscate the mystification. The letter was from a not too uncommon type—the garrulous murderer; but what was he, Ellery, supposed to “know”? Whatever it was, he ardently wished he knew it.

He began to chew on the problem. After a while he began to look more cheerful. Obviously, his supposed knowledge was dangerous to the murderer. A yeast was therefore at work in the brew. Fear—the killer's fear—might produce a viscid potion on which the killer would choke.

Ellery slipped the letter into his pocket and left the house.

He drove the station wagon to Connhaven, where he made for the Merrimac campus. Here he sought out the university museum. In the main office of the tomblike building he found waiting for him—he had telephoned ahead for the appointment—Wolcott Thorp.

“You have me all atwitter, Mr. Queen.” The curator touched Ellery's hand with his papery paw. “And not entirely at ease. I assume you're working on poor Godfrey's murder. Why me?”

“You're a suspect,” Ellery pointed out.

“Of course!” And Thorp hastened to add, “Aren't we all? If I'm acting guilty, it's human nature.”

“That's the trouble, or one of them.” Ellery smiled. “I'm familiar with the psychology of guilt by confrontation, even of the innocent. But that's not what I'm here for, so stop worrying. A museum to me is what the circus is to small boys. Do you have time to show me around yours?”

“Oh, yes!” Thorp began to beam.

“I'm curious about your particular field. It's West Africa, isn't it?”

The beam became sheer sunshine. “My friend,” said Wolcott Thorp, “come with me! No, this way …”

For the next hour Ellery was the beneficiary of the man's genuine erudition. Ellery's interest was by no means simulated. He had a deep-rooted feeling for antiquity and anthropology (what was it but detection of a different kind?), and he was fascinated by the artifacts Thorp showed him from what had been western Sudan and the district of Kayes on the Senegal—idols and tutelary gods, fetishes, masks, charms, headdresses of pompons used by the Mandingos to ward off the powers of evil.