The Finishing Stroke (25 page)

His voice had sunk to a whining whisper.

‘I'd no idea John had a triplet brother alive. I didn't know a thing about the multiple birth … I didn't know John had his brother hidden in my house … By the time I found out what I'd done – that John was still alive – it was too late. When John walked in that night at fifteen minutes to midnight, in the midst of everybody, with the police in the house, I had no chance to correct my mistake. Fifteen minutes later it was midnight, he was legally twenty-five years old, he had legally inherited his father's estate, I was no longer heir, no longer in a position to cover up the bankruptcy of the estate … I was ruined.'

‘So you liquidated everything you owned,' Ellery said, ‘your press, your house, all your property and holdings and you scraped together enough to hand over to John the equivalent of his father's estate, without him or anyone else suspecting that it was your own wealth you were turning over to him, not his. Isn't that it, Mr. Craig? Isn't that why you're living here in this shack – on Ellen's charity?'

‘Yes,' the old man said with dignity, ‘I broke myself and I've been a pauper ever since. For a few years out here I managed to make a living at my old trade. But then they said I was too old … Ellen thinks I'm a cracked miser, worth a fortune. God bless her, she sends me money anyway. If not for her, I'd have starved long ago.'

His head sank to his breast. Ellery said nothing. A long time later, when he saw that the old man had forgotten him, he said gently, ‘Mr. Craig.'

The head jerked. ‘Eh?'

‘Mr. Craig, you also killed Dr. Hall, didn't you?'

‘What? Oh. Hall? Yes. Yes, I did.'

‘I admit I haven't been able to Figure out why you killed Hall, when you didn't know anything about the triplets.'

‘That was a mixup, a bad mixup … It was the other John – the one you called John III – who smuggled him into the house, but I didn't know that. The first I knew of him, I found him in my library, waiting for me. He said he was the doctor who had delivered John in 1905. He didn't mention any other John. He must have known about the surprise the boys were planning and maybe promised not to let on.

‘Anyway, he kept talking about “John”, and I thought he meant my John, when all the time he meant his John. Dr. Hall had got suspicious of me; he'd nosed around and somehow learned that the estate was wiped out in the crash. He'd devoted years of his life to seeing that his John got half of the estate, and he was furious with me. He threatened me, said he'd expose me then and there, send me to jail unless I made up the losses. My plans were set, I'd already made up my mind to kill John the night of January fifth – and here this Hall was going to spoil everything before I even got started. So I saw I had to kill him, too. And I did.

‘If I'd been able to sneak his body out of the house,' Arthur Craig said, ‘and dump it somewhere, I'd have done it. But with so many people running around in the place, I knew I'd be seen by somebody. So I did what I could – I removed every clue I could find to his identity, or possible identification, burned them all in the fireplace, and hoped for the best.'

There was no glee in the old man now. His head sank to his breast again, but this time it came up quickly.

‘Now you know it all, Mr. Queen,' he said. ‘What are you going to do with me?'

‘I don't know.' Ellery fumbled for another cigarette, stared at it. But then he looked the aged man in the eye. ‘Or perhaps I do, Mr. Craig. These crimes were committed twenty-seven years ago. My solution of the case may be very clever, as you say, but it's also – from a legal standpoint – very futile, too. There's no evidence in the legal definition on which to base an arrest and trial. And even if there were … How old are you, sir?'

‘I'll be ninety-two my next birthday.'

‘Ninety-two.' Ellery rose. ‘I think, Mr. Craig, I'll bid you good day.'

The old man stared. Then his shaking fingers went to some cavern in his clothes, came out with an ancient tobacco pouch, and he began to refill his bulldog. Ellery hopped off the porch and began to negotiate the broken steps.

‘Wait,' Arthur B. Craig said. ‘Wait a minute, there.'

Ellery stopped. ‘Yes?'

‘I've got a peculiar type of mind,' the old man said. He was feeling around for his matches. ‘Active, you might say. And curious. Like yours, in fact.'

‘Yes?' Ellery said again, smiling faintly.

The old man found his matches, struck one and puffed deeply.

‘Now along about an hour or so ago, Mr. Queen, you were talking about how you first came to realize what those twenty things I'd been leaving for John must mean. You said you opened your copy of that limited edition of John's poetry I'd printed up, and that something you saw on the title page gave you the key to the fact that the twenty objects stood for letters of the alphabet. I'm trying to remember what could have been on that page that would tell you a thing like that.' Arthur Benjamin Craig asked, ‘What was it, Mr. Queen?'

‘Why, the name of your printing firm, which I assume you took from your own initials,' Ellery said. ‘The ABC Press.'