The Finishing Stroke (7 page)

Ellery became conscious of a presence.

‘Mind if I intrude on your thoughts?' Ellen said.

‘You can hardly intrude on something that isn't there,' Ellery grunted. ‘I'm afraid I'm not being very cavalier. Where is everybody?'

‘Here and there. Some of the men are playing bridge, some are listening to the radio. Haven't you heard it?'

‘I hear it now. Sit down by me, Ellen.' He made room for her on the settle, facing the fire. ‘What do you make of all this?'

‘Nothing. But it scares me.'

‘Who do you know has it in for John?'

‘Has it in for him?' Ellen was genuinely surprised. ‘I can't imagine such a thing. John is charming and talented and lots of fun. I don't believe he's ever stepped on anyone's toes in his life.'

Ellery nodded, although he did not entirely share Ellen's estimate of her uncle's ward. Ellery had seen John at Greenwich Village gatherings when the charm had worn thin, had sensed a hard layer under the poet's exterior, a streak of wilfulness that Ellen either did not or would not recognize. John might well have stepped on someone's toes, Ellery thought; and if he had, he would have stepped ruthlessly.

‘How about Marius?'

Ellen looked startled. ‘Marius is John's best friend.'

‘He has a curious way of showing it. Is Marius in love with Rusty?'

Ellen examined the fire. ‘Why don't you ask Marius?'

‘Maybe I will.'

‘Well, while you're making up your mind, might a mere Fine Arts Major suggest something you, Mr. Queen, seem to have overlooked?'

It was Ellery's turn to be startled. ‘Overlooked?'

‘The typing on the card. Typing means a typewriter. You said yourself whoever's behind all this is probably operating from a hideout in the house. Maybe he typed the card in the house, too. If you identified the machine –'

Ellery exclaimed, ‘I've been so bogged down in fantasy that the thought never occurred to me. How many typewriters are there in the house?'

‘Two. One is in Uncle Arthur's library and the other is in John's old room.'

‘Let's mosey.'

They got up and strolled toward Arthur Craig's library. The men at the card table did not look up. The Reverend Mr. Gardiner and Mrs. Brown were listening spellbound to the machine-gun delivery of the patch-eyed ‘Headline Hunter', Floyd Gibbons, crackling out of the big walnut, half-octagonal, six-legged Stromberg-Carlson.

Ellery glanced at his wristwatch. ‘Ten-forty. Gibbons will keep Mr. Gardiner and Mrs. Brown occupied, and those four at the bridge table wouldn't notice it if Voliva's end-of-the-world prediction came true under their feet. After you, Ellen.'

They slipped into the library and Ellery gently shut the door. He had appropriated the card from John's mysterious gift-box, and he directed Ellen to type a copy of its message on the battered machine belonging to Arthur Craig. She did so with a light, swift touch. Ellery compared her copy with the original under the direct light of the desk lamp, and shook his head.

‘No. This machine has a great many partly chipped or out-of-line letters that aren't duplicated on the card. The card was typed on a newer machine – and a machine of a different make. Let's examine John's.'

They made their way casually to the hall, then ran upstairs.

‘Oh, dear,' Ellen said outside John's door. ‘Is all detective work so sneaky?'

‘No attacks of conscience, Miss Craig. This was your idea, remember.'

They were in and out in three minutes.

The card had not been typed on John's machine, either.

‘You're certain, Ellen, there's no other typewriter on the premises?'

‘They're the only ones I know of.'

‘We'd better make sure. Or suppose I make sure, and you go back downstairs and kibitz the bridge game.'

Ellen tossed her fair hair. ‘Don't try to scare me any worse than I'm scared already. Anyway, we're in this together, aren't we?'

So she knew he had decided to make another search for the vanished Santa. Ellery squeezed Ellen's hand, grinning, and led the way.

They found neither a third typewriter nor the elusive uninvited guest.

Before he got into bed Ellery dug from his suitcase one of his father's Christmas gifts to him – the only one of the Inspector's gifts he had brought along to Alderwood. It was a 1930 diary that began with some blank pages for the last week of December 1929. Diary-writing was an old vice of his; and it had occurred to him that it might prove useful now in keeping track of what promised to be a complex of events.

Ellery began at the first blank page, dating it: ‘Wed. Dec. 25, '29,' and in a miniature hand wrote for half an hour.

Then he went to sleep to dream of oxen and camels and turtle doves and Ellen Craig's pert, wholesome face.

4 Second Night:
Thursday, December 26, 1929

In Which the Mysterious Prankster Plays the Deadliest Game of All, and Mine Host's Ward Is Tendered Another Surprising Gift

Thursday dawned grey and warmish. By a curious inversion, everyone came down to breakfast in good spirits.

‘Has anyone looked under the tree yet?' Valentina Warren asked dramatically. She was wearing a Bergdorf Goodman tweed, a bright plaid of blue, green and beige that deliberately accented her pallor and focused the fascinated eye on her heavily rouged lips.

‘May I investigate with you, Miss Warren?' Roland Payn asked gallantly. The white-haired lawyer had been looking Valentina over with an auction-bidder's caution.

The blonde girl's long lashes drifted to her cheeks. ‘Why, Mr. Payn, I'd love it … '

‘Val brings out the butter and eggs in every Republican,' Marius said from a mouthful of ham. ‘Five will get anyone ten she's pumping him right now to see if he has a producer-client in Hollywood.'

‘Swine,' Rusty said pleasantly. ‘John, do you suppose there
is
?'

‘Something under the tree? I don't know, honey child, and I don't care,' John said. ‘It's funny-paper stuff, and I'm not amused.'

‘Val and Payn won't find anything under the tree this early in the day,' Ellery said. ‘The card last night said, “On the first
night
of Christmas”. Consistency of time and place is one of the blessings of this kind of Barney Googleism.'

‘Then he's going to have to deposit his largess under my nose,' Marius Carlo said. ‘WEAF is broadcasting excerpts from
Aïda
tonight with Rethberg in the title role and Lauri-Volpi singing Rhadames. I wouldn't miss that for a dozen Barney Googles.'

Ellen cried, ‘Well?'

Valentina came in pouting. ‘Nothing.'

‘Except a few pine needles.' The lawyer steered the blonde girl around and back toward privacy. ‘Why not tell me a little about yourself, Miss Warren? I do have a few influential connexions on the Coast …'

‘May I point out that to my alleged swinery,' Marius asked of no one in particular, ‘has been added the odour of goatishness?'

‘At least Mr. Payn is a gentleman,' Olivette Brown snapped.

‘A gentleman-goat,' Marius nodded, ‘even a poetic gentleman-goat, since he's exercising his goatishness under the Sign of Capricornus – isn't that right, Mrs. Brown?' She glared at him. ‘Well, Payn's itinerary for the day now being taken care of, what shall we folks do to improve each shining hour?'

Mrs. Brown's annoyance turned to hope. ‘I have my Ouija board with me …'

The exodus was hasty.

So it came about that until lunch was served people were everywhere but in the living quarters downstairs, where Mrs. Brown lurked like a lady-spider for a twitch on her web. And even she sallied forth occasionally in the hope of ensnaring a victim.

After lunch they all drifted into the living room to sit about torpidly. Somnolence enveloped them, induced by Mrs. Janssen's fare and the nodding flames in the fireplace. So when the discovery was made, it came like a lightning bolt at a picnic.

It was John Sebastian who made it. Craig had dispatched him to the library to fetch a certain Poe first edition for Dan Freeman's inspection. John was in the library not more than ten seconds. He reappeared, making futile little gestures behind him.

‘Arthur.' He paused to wet his lips. ‘There's a dead man in there.'

In the vacuum created by this extraordinary announcement Craig said blankly, ‘What, John? What did you say?'

‘A dead man. Somebody I never saw before in my life.'

The skinny old man on the library floor lay on his potbelly with his head twisted to one side and his mouth partly open. He looked tired, as if he had died more in resignation than protest. The haft of a bronze knife protruded from the centre of a dark and hardening stain between his shoulder blades, like the anther of a withered flower.

‘My knife,' Craig said with some difficulty. ‘It's from the desk there. An Etruscan artifact I use as a letter-opener.'

‘An Etruscan dagger,' Dan Z. Freeman mumbled. ‘I'll bet it's tasted blood before.'

‘Please,' Ellery said. ‘No one beyond the door. Except Dr. Dark. Would you come in, Doctor?'

The fat doctor pushed his way into the library. The others huddled in the doorway, too stunned to be horrified.

‘Without moving him,' Ellery said. ‘Can you give me a rough idea how long he's been dead?'

Dr. Dark knelt beside the body. Before he touched it he felt for a handkerchief and blotted his forehead. Finally he got to his feet. ‘I'd say not more than a couple of hours.'

Ellery nodded and stooped over the corpse. Dr. Dark rejoined the others.

The murdered old man had a shapeless, gone-to-seed look that was not entirely the work of death. His grey wool suit had seen many years of use. So had the shabby tweed overcoat, the tarnished Homburg, the cheap woollen muffler and mittens that lay tumbled on the floor nearby. The old-fashioned bluchers, unprotected by rubbers or galoshes, needed resoling.

The lividity of the naked scalp was underscored by a few tufts of colourless hair. There was a small pathetic cut in the skin below the exposed ear, as if his hand had trembled in shaving.

‘Anyone know who he was?' When no one answered, Ellery looked up sharply. ‘Come now, someone here must recognize him. Mr. Craig?'

The bearded man shook his head. ‘He's an absolute stranger to me, Mr. Queen.'

‘Mr. Payn? Mr. Freeman? Marius?' Deliberately, Ellery named them one after the other, forcing each to speak. But he could make nothing of their denials. They all sounded honestly puzzled.

‘Well, identifying him shouldn't be too hard. Then we'll see. Who admitted him to the house?' There was another silence. ‘Now that's obviously ridiculous,' Ellery said. ‘He didn't materialize on Mr. Craig's library rug like a jinni, or one of Mrs. Brown's ecto-plasmic friends. He's been in the house long enough for his shoes to have dried out. Felton, are you back there? Did you let him in?'

‘Not me, sir!'

‘Mrs. Janssen? Mabel?' After a moment Ellery said in a depersonalized tone, ‘Mr. Craig, you'd better phone the police.'

Alderwood's police force consisted of five men, four patrolmen under the command of a chief named Brickell who had held his job for over twenty years. Brickell's prime function over that span was to haul out-of-town motorists before the local justice to pay the fines that relieved Alderwood's taxpayers of most of their police department's budget. His office was a shadowy cubicle in one corner of the town hall; his lockup consisted of two rusty cells in the basement, whose only visitors were occasional Saturday night drunks.

Chief Brickell's first words on entering the Craig house were, ‘My God, Mr. Craig, how did you happen to get a killed man dumped in your house?'

Craig growled back, ‘My God, Brick, how would I know?'

The man evidently had not the cloudiest notion of where to begin. He could only stare down at the corpse and mutter, ‘Stuck in the back, huh? Hell of a note,' while his weathered face registered a deeper shade of green. When he was told that all present disclaimed knowledge of the dead man's identity, he actually looked relieved.

‘Then I don't think we got much to worry about. He's likely some tramp. Maybe him and another 'bo sneaked in to steal something, got in a Fight, and the other one stabbed this one and beat it. That would explain this.'

‘It certainly would,' Ellery murmured. ‘But we don't know that evidentially, Chief, do we? Don't you think you'd better go into it a little more thoroughly? I'd be glad to help.'

‘You a police officer?'

‘No, but I've had some experience in police work.'

‘This is Ellery Queen, Brick,' John said. ‘His father is Inspector Queen of the New York police department. Ellery's the fellow who solved that big New York murder case last year, the killing of Monte Field in the Roman Theatre.'

‘Oh!' Chief Brickell shook Ellery's hand heartily. ‘Glad to meet you, Mr. Queen! Got any suggestions?'

‘I'd notify the county police, Chief.'

‘Give them the headache, hey? Mind if I use your phone, Mr. Craig?'

‘Go right ahead,' Craig said, not without humour.

‘Oh, Brickell. While you're phoning. Is it all right with you if I look the dead man over?'

‘Hell, yes.'

‘Wait till I tell my father,' Ellery said
sotto voce
as the police chief tramped off. ‘Letting a suspect in a murder investigation be the first to examine the body!'

By the time Brickell returned, Ellery had the dead man's pockets turned inside out.

‘I'm afraid the county police are being handed a pig in a poke, Chief.'

‘They'll be over right away … What say, Mr. Queen?'

‘His pockets have been cleaned out. No wallet, papers, keys, jewellery, money, handkerchief – nothing. Just to make it more interesting, all the labels have been removed from his clothing, even the sweatband in his hat.' Ellery studied the little corpse thoughtfully. ‘So his killer didn't want him recognized. Thus making the question of his identity crucial. Is there a coroner's physician in Alderwood, Chief?'

Dr. Dark answered. ‘Dr. Tennant.'

‘Might be a nice idea to notify
him
, too, Chief.'

‘Oh! Yeah, sure.' Brickell hurried out, leaving a wake of silence.

‘That Santa Claus yesterday morning,' Rusty said suddenly. ‘Could this man be –?'

‘No,' Ellery said. ‘Our little visitor from outer space couldn't have stood more than five-four or five in life. Whereas friend Claus was taller than I, and I'm six feet. He was as tall as John, I'd say. You're about six-two, John, aren't you?'

‘Six-one and a half.'

And there was the silence again.

Valentina Warren said hysterically, ‘Two unknown men, one vanished and one murdered.
Two
ghosts! What's this all about, anyway?'

No one answered, not even Olivette Brown.

Lieutenant Luria of the county police brought an alarming note of sanity to the proceedings. A black-browed, quiet-mannered young man with heavily muscled calves, he slipped into the case without dramatics, disposing his detail of troopers and technicians from the county crime laboratory efficiently, and then sitting down to ask unaccented questions of unavoidable point.

It was evident from the first that he held everyone on the premises suspect, including Ellery – until that worthy produced certain credentials. Even then Luria was not satisfied. He telephoned Inspector Queen at police headquarters in New York for confirmation.

‘The Inspector wants to talk to you.' Luria handed Ellery the telephone.

‘What have you got into now, son?' Inspector Queen's voice was ready for anything.

‘I don't know, dad.'

‘Can't talk, hm? Just tell me this: Your nose clean?'

‘Spotless.'

‘Want me to run out there?'

‘What for?' Ellery hung up. ‘How can I help, Lieutenant?'

‘Tell me everything you know about this.'

Ellery told him – about the ephemeral Santa Claus, the queer gifts, his unsuccessful searches of the unused wings, and the discovery of the stranger's body.

Lieutenant Luria seemed unimpressed. ‘That Santa Claus business and the package – sounds to me like somebody's idea of a rib, Queen. Doesn't seem to go with the murder at all. The two may not be connected.'

‘I think they are.'

‘In what way?'

‘I don't know.'

Luria shrugged. ‘We'll give the place a roof-to-cellar run-through and see if we can't come up with something on your Santa. Right now I'm more concerned with the dead man.' He turned to the coroner's physician, a bald and fish-eyed country doctor wearing pince-nez glasses attached to his lapel by a black silk ribbon. The physician was just rising from his examination of the corpse. ‘What's the bad word, Dr. Tennant?'

‘I can't tell you much, Lieutenant. Dead about three hours. Doesn't seem to be any question that the knife in his back caused death. No other wounds, no contusions except a slight bruise on the forehead, probably made when he struck the floor. Age – oh, late sixties, say.'

‘Any scars or other identifying marks?'

‘None on superficial examination.'

Ellery said, ‘What about his teeth, Doctor?'

‘As far as I can tell, they're his own. No bridgework. Some back teeth are missing, but I doubt if that's going to help. They look like pretty old extractions to me.'

‘Okay,' Lieutenant Luria said. ‘Release him to us, Doctor, and we'll haul him over to the county morgue for a more thorough going over. You boys all finished with the photos?'

When Dr. Tennant and the corpse were gone, Luria turned suddenly to Ellery. ‘Here's an old party, shows up in the middle of a Christmas celebration, nobody knows who he is, what he wants, how he lands in the library, or who stuck a knife in his back after he gets here. And to give it more of a kick, all identifying papers and clothing labels have been removed. Any ideas, Queen?'

Ellery looked at his cigarette. ‘I'm in something of a spot, Lieutenant. As Mr. Craig's house guest …'

‘You're not talking, either?'

‘I was about to say: However, I was brought up to believe that murder most foul cancels Emily Post … It seems likely someone here is lying – knows this man, admitted him to the house, perhaps during the night. He could have been hidden out in that labyrinth upstairs for weeks. I can't help connecting the murdered man and Santa Claus, who I
know
has been hiding out here. They may even have come together.'

Lieutenant Luria grunted.