QED (7 page)

“The medium of the pills.”

A cup of scummy cold chocolate sat there, almost full.

“That's it, all right,” said Dr. Farnham, after touching the tip of his tongue to it. “It's loaded. If she'd swallowed the whole cupful, Ellery, she'd have been done for.”

“When will she be able to talk?”

“As soon as she's all the way out.”

Ellery snapped his fingers. “Excuse me, Conk!” he said, and dashed past Mrs. Caswell and tore down the stairs. In the breakfast room, silent and glum, sat Jo and Chris and Wolcott Thorp.

“How's Ellen?” Chris asked, half rising.

“Sit down. She's all right. This time. Now we can start worrying about next time.”

“Next time?”

“Somebody slipped a lethal overdose of sleeping pills in her hot chocolate before she went to bed last night—unless you're prepared to argue that Ellen is the type who would attempt suicide, which in my book she definitely is not. Anyway, she took only a few sips, thereby surviving. But whoever tried to kill her may try another time, and my guess is the time will be sooner rather than later. So let's not dawdle. Who knows who prepared the hot chocolate last night?”

“I do,” said Joanne. “She prepared it herself. I was in the kitchen with her.”

“All the time she was fixing it?”

“No, I left before she did.”

“Anyone else in the kitchen at the time, or near it?”

“Not I,” said Christopher promptly, wiping his brow, which for some reason was damp. “If I ever give way to one of my homicidal impulses toward Ellen, I'll use something sure, like cyanide.”

But no one smiled.

“You, Mr. Thorp?” asked Ellery, fixing the curator with a glittering eye.

“Not I,” said the little man, stuttering.

“Had anyone gone up to bed?”

“I don't think so,” said Jo, her eyes worried. “No, I'm sure no one had. It was just after we finished that crazy farce of yours in the drawing room—when Ellen pranced out, I mean. A few minutes later she came downstairs again to prepare her chocolate. All the rest of us were still here. Don't you remember?”

“No, because I was seeing Chief Newby out, and we talked outside for a few minutes before he drove off. Unfortunately I share the general weakness of being unable to be in two places at the same time. Did Ellen go directly upstairs with her chocolate?”

“I can answer that,” said Christopher. “I'd gone to the library to lick my wounds, and Ellen came in for a book to read in bed, she said. She wasn't there more than two or three minutes. She took one of yours, if I'm not mistaken.”

“Maybe that's why she fell asleep so soon,” said Jo with a little snap-crackle-pop in her voice.

“Even that,” said Ellery with a bow, “is not impossible. In any event, she must have left her cup standing in the kitchen for those two or three minutes.”

“I guess so,” said Christopher. “It would also seem that we were all milling around, with opportunity to dodge into the kitchen and tamper with it, allowing for a healthy lie or two. Take your pick, Mr. Queen. In my own defense I can only say I didn't do it.”

“Nor,” stuttered little Wolcott Thorp, “did I.”

“It looks,” said Jo, “as if you'll have to make the most of what you have.”

“Which,” snapped Ellery, “is precious little.”

And he left them to go back upstairs, where he found Dr. Farnham preparing to depart. Ellen was awake, propped up against the headboard, looking not hung over at all. What she did look was hostile and furtive.

Ellery went to work.

But his most tried techniques, running from the sympathetic plea to the horrendous warning, failed to budge her. Her brush with death seemed to have left her only the more doggedly crouched over whatever secret she was concealing.

The most Ellery could pry out of her was the admission that she had bought sleeping pills herself from a local “chemist,” on the prescription of another doctor in town whom she did not name. Finally, slipping down in the bed, she turned her face to the wall and refused to answer any more of his questions whatsoever.

Checkmated, Ellery withdrew, leaving Mrs. Caswell on guard.

Someone else, he thought, was at the moment sharing his frustration. The agent of the sleeping pills.

The dinner conversation had gaps. Ellery pushed the food around on his plate. Ellen attempted a show of Empire fortitude, but the attempt was sorry, and he suspected that she had come down to the dinner table only because of the creepy isolation of her bedroom.

Margaret Caswell sat in a tense posture that suggested listening, as for the baying of bloodhounds. Christopher and Joanne sought reassurance in eloquent eye examination of each other. Wolcott Thorp tried to stimulate a discussion of some recent Fulah acquisitions by the museum, but no one listened even politely, and he too fell under the spell of the pervasive gloom.

They were about to leave the dinner table when the doorbell rang with an angry chime. Ellery leaped to life.

“Chief Newby,” he said. “I'll let him in, if no one minds. Please go to the drawing room—all of you. We're going to get on with this lethal nonsense and make something of it if it takes all night.”

He hurried to the front door. Newby hurled his hat and overcoat on a tapestried chair but pointedly failed to remove his overshoes, as if announcing that at the first sound of jabberwocky he intended to exit.

They joined the others in the drawing room, and Newby said, “All right, Ellery, get on with it.”

“Let's begin,” Ellery said, “with a fact. The fact that you, Ellen, are in imminent danger. What we don't know, and must know, is why. It's something only you can tell us, and I suggest you do so before it's too late. I remind you that the murderer of your father is here in this room, listening and watching.”

Four pairs of eyes shifted from Ellen immediately, but they came right back again.

Ellen's lips remained drawn down at the corners, like a scar. “I told you—I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You're afraid, of course. But do you think you're going to buy immunity with silence? A murderer needs to sleep at night, too, and his best assurance of peace of mind is your permanent removal. So talk while you still can.”

“It's my job to warn you, Mrs. Nash,” Chief Newby put in sourly, “that if you're holding back evidence, you're committing a crime. How much trouble do you want to be in?”

But Ellen fixed her eyes on the fists in her lap.

“All right,” said Ellery, and his tone was so odd that even Ellen stirred. “If you won't talk, I will.

“Let's start all over again. What did Godfrey mean by writing M-U-M? Ignore what I've said before about it. I've now come to a final conclusion.

“A man clear-headed enough to leave a dying message is clear-headed enough to avoid ambiguity. Since MUM involved most of you—and in more ways than one, farfetched as most of them are—then I have to conclude that Godfrey did not intend MUM to indicate the identity of his murderer.

“Consequently, once more I have to go back to what Godfrey did promise to leave you—the combination of his safe.”

“But you went through all that,” exploded Newby. “And it washed out—the safe was empty.”

“Not a complete washout, Newby. I translated MUM into numbers because of the twenty-six numbers on the dial, and that proved correct as far as it went. But what if it didn't go far enough? Remember the doubles? One was that the safe cost Godfrey about double what it should have.
What if there was a good, solid, practical reason for that double cost?
Suppose there's more to that safe than meets the eye—
some feature that cost the extra money
. Double cost …
how about double safe?
”

That brought their mouths open, and he continued swiftly. “If it was a double safe, there would be
two
combinations. One would work by the numbers 13-21-13, as it does, and would open the orthodox safe. The other combination would open another safe!—which obviously must be contained
within
the safe, making an inner, smaller safe. And suppose—since that's the word Godfrey wrote down just before he died—suppose that not only is MUM the combination for the outer safe, but MUM is also the combination for the inner safe. One MUM translating into numbers, the second remaining exactly what it is—
a word of three letters
.”

“But there aren't any letters on the dial,” protested Newby.

“Right. But remember what's etched on the rim of the knob? The name and address of the manufacturer:
VULCAN SAFE & LOCK COMPANY
,
INC
.
NEW HAVEN
,
CONN
. And you'll note that, contained in those words, are an M and a U!

“Shall we try it?”

Ellery went over to the oil painting and slid it to one side. He revolved the dial a few times, then turned it until the
M
of
COMPANY
lay directly under the alignment notch; then he turned right to the
U
of
VULCAN
, aligning that, then left, back to the
M
of
COMPANY.

He pulled on the knob.

The safe door did not swing open. Instead, the knob came out in his hand! And behind the knob, within the thickness of the safe door, where the tumblers and mechanism lay, appeared a small compartment—a safe within a safe. And in the compartment, flashing like a minor sun surrounded by sixteen glowing planets, was the Imperial Pendant.

“Alagazam,” Ellery said softly, holding it aloft so that the light from the old-fashioned crystal chandelier blazed from the pendant in a thousand coruscations. “When Mr. Mumford put the necklace away, his back must have been to you, and it was a broad back. It was into the knob-safe that he put this, not into the regular one. That's why he probably never bothered to put the pendant in a bank vault, Christopher. Even if someone tried to burgle this safe, could he dream that the real safe was behind the knob? It was, if you'll excuse the pun, very safe indeed. Here, Newby, I imagine you'd better take charge of this until the will is probated and certain other matters are cleared up.”

And Ellery tossed the pendant to Newby, while the others' heads moved in unison, like the heads of spectators at a tennis match.

“Q.E.D.,” said Ellery. “One half of our mystery is solved. It remains only to solve the other half.

“Who killed Godfrey Mumford?”

He faced them with such fierceness that they all shrank back.

“I've known since yesterday morning who the murderer is,” Ellery said. “There wasn't a chance, by the way, that he'd take off—not so long as the pendant was missing. It was the finding of the pendant that was holding me up, too.

“I want you all to look at this letter from the murderer to Ellen. Examine it carefully.”

He took it from his pocket and handed it to Chief Newby, who looked it over, scowled, and passed it on.

12/1/65

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

When it came back to him from Thorp, the last to read it, Ellery could detect nothing but blankness on any face.

“You don't see it?”

“Come on, Ellery,” Newby rasped. “So I'm as blind as the rest and you've got the eyes of a chicken hawk. What's the point?”

“The point is the date.”

“The date?”

“The date at the top.
12/1/65
.”

“Why, that's wrong,” said Jo suddenly. “It's January, not December.”

“Correct. The letter was left on the salver the morning of January twelfth—
1/12/65
. The writer reversed the numerals for the month and day. Why? In the United States we write the month numeral first, always,
then
the day numeral.
It's in England that they do it the opposite way
.

“Who in this household has been living in England for years? Who uses the Anglicism ‘trunk call' for ‘long distance'? Who says ‘lift' for ‘elevator,' ‘Chief Constable' for ‘Chief of Police,' ‘chemist' instead of ‘druggist' or ‘pharmacist'?

“Ellen, of course. Ellen, who wrote this ‘threatening' letter to herself.”

Ellen was glaring at Ellery as if he had turned into a monster from outer space. “No! I didn't!”

But Ellery ignored her. “And why should Ellen have written a threatening letter to herself? Well, what was the effect the letter produced? It made her look as though she were next in line to be murdered—by implication, therefore, innocent of killing of Godfrey.

“This was doubly indicated by the clumsy poisoning attempt on herself—an evident phony. She never meant to drink more than a few sips. The whole hot chocolate episode was designed to make that ‘threat' look good.”

Now his eyes found Ellen's and locked.

“Why should you want to make yourself look innocent, Ellen? The innocent don't have to
make
themselves look innocent. Only the guilty—”

“Are you accusing
me
?” Ellen shrieked. “Of stabbing my own father to death?” She looked about wildly. “Chris, Jo—you can't believe—
Mum
!”

But Ellery drove ahead without mercy. “The clue points directly to you, Ellen, and only to you. Of course, if you've anything to say that puts a different complexion on all this, I advise you to say it now.”

Ellery kept her gaze pinned down like a butterfly specimen. She began to tremble. And as she did so, he suddenly said in the kindest of voices, “Don't be afraid any more, Ellen. You see, I know what you know. All I want you to do is to speak out, to tell us what you know.”

And she did, her story rushing out. “I was up the night father was murdered—couldn't sleep for some reason. It was long past midnight. While I was in the upstairs hall, on my way down to the kitchen for a snack … I happened to see somebody sneak out of father's room. I was sure he saw me. I was afraid to tell …”