Queens Full (9 page)

General Carter fell back on orderly facts. “All I know is, only one person came up here tonight, and that was Dunwoody. I happen to know that Dunwoody's in love with Pola Agon. In fact, they had a blowup about it at the Agons' house last night—Agon himself told me about it, and that's why I was in Dunwoody's office this evening. I don't give a damn about these people's private lives, but Agon was important to the United States, and I couldn't have him upset. Dunwoody admits he lost his temper when Agon accused him of making a play for Mrs. Agon—called Agon a lot of nasty names. But he claims he cooled down overnight, and came up here tonight to apologize to Agon.

“For my money,” the General went on grimly, “Dunwoody came up here tonight to kill Agon. It's my hunch that this Pola Agon is a cleverly planted enemy agent, out after Agon's experimental notes. She's played Mata Hari to Dunwoody—she's sexy enough!—and got him to do her dirty work. It wouldn't be the first time an old fool's turned traitor because of his hormones! But we'll find those notes—they haven't had time to get them away. Ellery, you listening?”

“E,” Ellery said.

“What?”

“E,” Ellery repeated. “It doesn't fit with the name James G. Dunwoody—or with Pola Agon, for that matter. Could it refer to Einstein's E = mc
²
, where E stands for energy …?” He broke off suddenly. “Well, well! Maybe it isn't an E after all, General!”

He had moved the memorandum slip a quarter-turn clockwise. What General Carter now saw was:

“But turned that way it's an M!” the General exclaimed. “Who's M? There's no initial M in this, either.” He eyed the dead physicist's phone nervously. “Look, Ellery; thanks and all that, but I can't sit on this much longer. I've got to notify the President …”

“Wait,” Ellery murmured. He had given the memo slip another quarter-turn clockwise.

“Now it's a 3!”

“Does 3 mean anything to you or the project, General?”

“No more than the others.”

“Visitor number 3 …? Let me see that check-in book of his.” Ellery seized the duplicate visitors' book on the dead man's desk. “Agon's third visitor this week was …”

“Who?” General Carter rasped. “I'll have him picked up right away!”

“It was you, General,” Ellery said. “Of course, I assume—”

“Of course,” the General said, reddening. “Now what the deuce are you doing?”

Ellery was giving the memo sheet still another clockwise quarter-turn. And now, astonishingly, it read:

“W?”

“No,” Ellery said slowly. “I don't think it's a W … General, wasn't Agon of Greek extraction?”

“So what?”

“So Agon might well have intended this to stand for the Greek letter omega. The omega looks very like an English small script
w
.”

“Omega. The end.” The General snorted. “This was certainly Agon's end. Poetry yet!”

“I doubt if a scientist
in extremis
would be likely to think in poetic terms. Numbers would be more in character. And omega is the last letter of the twenty-four-letter Greek alphabet. Number twenty-four, General. Doesn't something strike you?”

General Carter threw up his hands. “No! What?”

“Twenty-four's proximity to the number of visitors Agon actually received up here this week—which was twenty-three, you'll recall, Dr. Dunwoody tonight being the twenty-third. Surely that suggests that Agon meant to indicate
a twenty-fourth visitor
—someone who came after Dunwoody? And if that's true, Agon's killer was his twenty-fourth visitor. That's what Agon was trying to tell us!”

“It doesn't tell me a thing.”

“It tells us why Agon didn't write his killer's name or initials. He denoted his visitor by number, not because he was afraid the killer might return and destroy the clue—a pretty far-fetched thought process for a man nine-tenths dead!—but because
he simply didn't know his murderer's name
.”

General Carter's eyes narrowed. “But that would mean it was someone Agon knew only by sight!”

“Exactly,” Ellery said. “And if you'll do a security recheck on the skunk, General, you'll find it's his loyalty to the United States, not Mrs. Agon's or Dunwoody's, that's been subverted.”

“
What
skunk?” the General bellowed.

“The only skunk who could have got up here without signing in. That worried-looking night guard on duty in the lobby.”

THE WRIGHTSVILLE HEIRS

I

When Samuel R. Livingston died, his three children buried him in Twin Hill Cemetery, patted their stepmother hastily, and took off for civilization. There was nothing to hold them in Wrightsville, not even their mother's grave. The first Mrs. Livingston, a Back Bay expatriate, had specified burial in Boston. “I was buried in Wrightsville,” her will explained, “long enough.”

The second Mrs. Livingston, nee Bella Bluefield, had grown up next door to Sam Livingston, and what she had felt when he went to Boston for a wife she never told anyone. But when the mother of Sam's children died, Bella was still next door waiting. He made her their stepmother as soon as he decently could.

“You should have been their mother, Bella,” Sam said.

“I will be, Sam.”

But she never was. Samuel Junior, Everett, and Olivia came home from their private schools and their jaunts about Europe to peck at her cheek, make polite inquiries about her health, commend her currant pie, and then they went away again and forgot her existence. They treated her from the first with affectionate amusement, as if she were a quaint old family retainer.

After their father's death, aside from a rare well-bred note from Samuel Junior, an occasional jocular postcard from Everett, or another wedding announcement from Olivia, they dropped out of Bella Livingston's life.

So she grew old alone, trying to fill the gaps with the committee meetings and organizational luncheons so dear to the hearts of old ladies everywhere. Then when she suffered that purely frightful attack and Dr. Conklin Farnham began warning her that her heart was no longer reliable, Bella took Amy Upham to live with her.

Amy hailed from the lower end of Hill Drive, where the shade trees were tallest and the houses predated the Revolution. An orphan, she had been brought up by her widower-uncle, Dr. Horace Upham, whose practice among the poor of Low Village was the largest and least “paying” in Wrightsville. Then Dr. Upham himself sickened, and during his long last illness Amy abandoned her pre-med course at Merrimac U. to nurse him. Her uncle died leaving nothing but uncollectible bills; the old house was sold for debts, and Amy found herself without home or means of any but menial support. That was when Bella Livingston offered her a paid companion's job. Amy leaped at it.

Amy was naturally cheerful, and she bustled about the Livingston mansion leaving order and sunshine in her wake. Dorcas Bondy and Morris Hunker, the “staff,” soon came to adore her. As old Dorcas sniffed to her mistress, “What did we ever do around here without that lamb?”—a question Bella Livingston had been asking herself with increasing frequency.

Sometimes the old lady was troubled. “I feel so guilty, Amy. This is no life for a young girl, especially one as pretty as you. Being buried in this draughty old museum.”

“Buried!” Amy would laugh. “I love it—and you.”

And old Bella would kiss her, knowing it was true. She had watched Amy Upham grow up—much like herself—needing someone who needed her. They never talked about the boy Amy had been engaged to, the one who was killed in Viet Nam; or about Amy's parents, whom she could not remember.

But the old lady talked often about her stepchildren, whose careers she kept following in the Wrightsville
Record
with firm interest. As the Livingston file in the
Record
's morgue grew, Bella's grimness grew with it.

So Amy was surprised one day when the old lady suddenly said, “Amy, get in touch with Samuel Junior, Everett, and Olivia and tell them—wherever they are—to come see me.”

“But will they?” Amy exclaimed.

“They will if you say I want them to. They're too well-bred to refuse. Breeding,” said Bella dryly, “is my stepchildren's long suit.”

They arrived on a weekend in early summer.

At first Amy thought them charming. Olivia was like an expensive jewel, exquisitely cut and set, and unbreakable; but there were humanizing puffs of fatigue under her quite lovely eyes, her clothes were wonderful, and she greeted Amy with no trace of the condescension Amy had half expected. Everett proved a jovial sort, broad and stocky, with a skin like an overbaked potato; he engulfed her hand and said tenderly how touched they all were for the way she was taking care of “Mother.” And Samuel Junior, the eldest, seemed a darling—a tall thin stooped man with a courtly manner who might have stepped out of a John P. Marquand novel.

The old lady was waiting serenely for them on the front lawn when Morris Hunker chauffeured them up from Wrightsville Airport in the old Livingston Lincoln, and she personally directed Morris's disposition of their luggage.

“You've given us our old bedrooms, Bella,” Olivia said, when they rejoined her on the lawn. “How sweet.”

“It was sweet of you all to come,” said the old lady sweetly. “Amy dear, have Dorcas fetch the tea.”

When Amy returned with Dorcas and the tea wagon, she found them conversing amiably.

“I never could see that fellow, Sis,” Samuel Junior was drawling. “He wore hand-painted neckties.”

“Which husband was that, Olivia?” the old lady asked with interest. “The Prussian baron or the Hungarian count?”

“The Spanish prince,” said Olivia, wrinkling her nose.

“The one who cost you two hundred thousand dollars?”

“Oh, dear,” said Olivia. “No sugar, thank you, Amy.
Lots
of lemon.”

“With your figure?” Amy smiled. “Look what Dorcas's cooking is doing to mine.”

“I haven't stopped looking since I got here,” said Everett Livingston. “Warm day, isn't it? How about a swim, Amy?”

“Don't,” Olivia said to Amy.

“Traitor.” Her brother scowled. “Why, Bella, GaGa's on the market again. She's between husbands, you know.”

“GaGa?” said the old lady. “Oh, yes, your newspaper name.”

“So it finally got to Wrightsville,” said Olivia calmly.

“Death to journalism,” said Everett, raising his teacup. “When is the cocktail hour, Bella?”

“Later,” Bella Livingston said, and smiled. “And by the way, the newspapers haven't treated you very nicely, either, Everett, have they? I've often wondered why you thought you could make money out of sports.”

“An all-American nomination and that million from Father. Oh, well. Cheers.”

“Let's see,” the old lady ruminated. “Your professional football team, that midget auto-racing venture … both of those failed, didn't they? And now I read you're trying to buy into a professional basketball team.”