The Finishing Stroke (8 page)

‘Unless we find Santa,' Ellery said to his cigarette, ‘this whole case could hinge on identifying the corpse. The killer is probably afraid that if we knew who the dead man was, there'd be a clear trail to
him
.'

‘I understand you got a good squint at the corpse,' Luria said. ‘That Brickell! What do you make of the little guy?'

‘Not much. Unless the worn clothing was camouflage, he was down on his luck in a genteel sort of way. He hadn't given up – his clothes were neatly mended, fairly clean – but he'd reached a pretty desperate stage. A man who'd once been able to afford clothes of that quality doesn't wear a Homburg hat with a tweed overcoat unless he can't help himself. He wasn't a manual labourer, by the way. I mean unskilled work.'

Luria grinned. ‘You spotted his hands, too.'

‘Certainly. No calluses, no broken or grimy fingernails, palms soft and well-scrubbed. Rather sensitive hands, in fact. The hands of a professional man, or an artist, perhaps a musician –'

Ellery stopped.

They looked at each other.

Lieutenant Luria grinned again. ‘Two minds with but a single thought. How much do you know about this Marius Carlo?'

But nothing came of anything. Luria queried Carlo, and Val Warren, and Payn and the rest – not excluding Mr. Gardiner and Mrs. Brown, who was in a half-trance most of the afternoon – and in the end he had a notebook full of meaningless notes and a time schedule of people's movements during the morning that told him nothing at all.

‘The Brown woman had the door to the library under observation practically all morning,' the lieutenant said to Ellery, ‘and if I understand her right – which I'm not sure I do – the reason she didn't see the killer go in or come out is that she wasn't in tune with the spirits. What spirits? Bootleg?'

‘I could bring up camel bones in this connexion,' Ellery said, ‘but I'll spare you. The fact is, Lieutenant, not only the killer but the corpse got by her – I mean while he still had motive-power – which means that she was either snoozing or out of the room at the strategic moments.'

‘What's this act she's been putting on, staring into space google-eyed, like she'd just lost her step-ins during a flagpole-sit?'

Ellery said gravely, ‘That's a demonstration of detection Olivette Brown-style.'

‘Detection?'

‘By divination, Lieutenant. Mrs. Brown has a direct line to the Underworld.'

Lieutenant Luria was astounded. ‘You mean this old jazzed-up tomato has a tie-in with the mobs?'

‘Her Underworld has mobs, all right, but not the kind run by the Dutch Schultzes and Bugsy Morans of this world. Don't worry about it, Lieutenant. It's just that, mentally, she's a little crocked.'

Search of the premises by Luria and several troopers was equally unproductive. They found no unknown person, nor any trace of one.

‘You know, it just occurred to me,' Ellery said suddenly. ‘Whoever's holing up here has to eat, doesn't he?'

‘Say, that isn't a bad hunch.'

The lieutenant questioned Craig's cook-housekeeper about her larder, but even this was inconclusive.

‘With so many folks to feed three meals a day, and so many vittles having to be on hand at all hours,' Mrs. Janssen told him, ‘I'd have to have eyes in the back of me head to keep track of it all. Sure food's missing, Lieutenant. Mostly it goes down the gullet of Mr. John, who's an icebox-raider from away back and never has been able to put an ounce on his bones, bless his heart.'

Before Luria left, he assembled the entire company in the living room, including the three domestics.

‘We'd better have an understanding,' the lieutenant said calmly. ‘This is an unusual case, and I'm going to handle it – for a while, anyway – in an unusual way.

‘A man was murdered on these premises this morning who, according to your statements, is a stranger to all of you. I'm not saying he wasn't. I've seen screwier things. For all I know, Chief Brickell may have hit the nail on the nub when he said the dead man might have been one of two tramps who broke in to steal something, had an argument with his buddy, got knifed, and the buddy lammed. There's no evidence to back that theory up – nothing stolen, according to Mr. Craig, who's checked the rare books in his library – no one seen running away, and so on. But it still may be true.

‘And then again,' Luria went on quite pleasantly, ‘the dead man may be directly connected with one or more of you. The removal of all identifying papers, labels, contents of pockets and so forth seems to back that likelihood up. So the first order of business is to identify the victim. That's going to take time.'

He looked around at the tense faces. ‘Until we know better where we're at, I've got to have you all where and when I want you. I understand this house party's supposed to last at least through New Year's Day, maybe longer. That makes it easier for everybody. But a week may not be enough for us. In that case …'

Roland Payn's lush baritone enriched the air. ‘You realize, Lieutenant, that you have no evidence warranting the detention of anyone here. I personally have no intention of leaving until after New Year's, but if some unexpected matter should call me back to New York … I believe I speak for all of us when I say we'll cooperate to a reasonable extent, as we did with the fingerprints. But not beyond that.'

‘I understand, Mr. Payn,' Lieutenant Luria said with a slight smile. ‘You'd like to make a deal.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘I'm prepared to make one. I take it no one here, not even Miss Warren, particularly cottons to the idea of being splattered all over the newspapers in connexion with a murder case?'

‘Good God, no,' Dan Z. Freeman said pallidly.

‘I can see the Bishop's face now,' old Mr. Gardiner said, not without a note of regret. ‘However, speaking as a good Christian, it would be my duty to spare him.'

‘Go on, Lieutenant!' Payn said.

‘Well, if you all promise not to go legal on me about staying here, I'll do what I can to keep the newspaper boys off your backs. All I have to do is be vague about just where in Alderwood the man's body was found. I'll vouch for my men. I can't, of course, promise that Chief Brickell or Dr. Tennant will keep their mouths shut.'

‘I happen to know – if you'll forgive the unfortunate Figure of speech – where a body or two is buried,' Dr. Sam Dark said in a grim tone. ‘I'll shut Tennant up, all right. And Arthur, you ought to pack enough weight as a heavy taxpayer to do the same with Brickell.'

The bearded man nodded. ‘This is decent of you, Lieutenant. You agree, Roland, don't you?'

‘I always look a horse trade in the tushes.' The New York lawyer shrugged. ‘However, I'll ride along.'

Luria was amused. ‘Then that's settled. Oh, by the way. I'm leaving a trooper here, Sergeant Devoe. Sergeant?'

‘Yes, sir.'

A gigantic young man stepped into the room. He made a handsome picture in his trooper's uniform.

‘Routine, Sergeant. Don't get into anybody's hair.'

‘No, sir.'

‘Golly!' Valentina breathed. ‘Sergeant, you can get into my hair any time you want.'

To her disappointment, Sergeant Devoe followed Lieutenant Luria out, and for the rest of the day they caught only an occasional glimpse of him.

Dinner that night was a morose affair. The dead image of the old man hung heavily over the table; little was eaten, and the conversation flared and flickered dismally. After dinner they settled down in the living room. There was no box under the Christmas tree and no one seemed to have expected any.

‘If this gift-and-carol business was a joke,' Rusty said, ‘that poor little old dead man's put an end to it.'

‘I wonder who it was,' Ellen said, frowning.

‘Is,' Marius corrected her.

‘Is?'

‘Well, my little chicken, he's probably still here, no?'

No one said anything after that about ‘Number Thirteen', as Ellen had christened him. The outrageous absurdity of someone's roaming about over their heads – of his very existence in the house – made any rationale about him impossible.

Marius wandered into the music room and played a tormented and percussive little thing on the piano, a composition of his own, that he called ‘Lullaby'. Mrs. Brown drifted from group to group trying to interest people in astrological readings, with no success whatever. John and Rusty, curled up on the velvet-padded window seat in one of the bays, talked earnestly in undertones. Ellen and Valentina got Marius to play some orthodox carols and sang them in sweet, spiritless harmony. The older men sat around discussing books and plays and the ravages of Prohibition and, after a while, sports. Surprisingly, Mr. Gardiner disclosed that he was an ardent baseball fan, a discovery that enlivened Dr. Dark wonderfully. For a time the minister and the physician engaged in a spirited argument over the future of Babe Ruth, who had finished the 1929 season with a mere forty-six home runs.

‘He's on his way out, I tell you, Reverend,' the fat doctor squeaked. ‘Sixty homers in 'Twenty-seven, fifty-four in 'Twenty-eight, and now forty-six. You watch next year. 'Way down!'

‘O ye of little faith,' the clergyman muttered. ‘Sell not the Babe short, Doctor. I suppose you consider Lefty O'Doul the greater hitter?'

Ellery remained by himself, restlessly.

At ten o'clock Marius announced that anyone who did not care to listen to grand opera had his permission to go to bed. And he tuned in WEAF and shushed them with fierce little cries of pleasure as the powerful voice of Lauri-Volpi singing ‘Celeste Aïda' invaded the room. And for the better part of an hour Marius Carlo held them there, listening to Lauri-Volpi and Elisabeth Rethberg.

Poor Carlo was destined to have his Verdian pleasures foreshortened. He never heard the end of the programme. For at 10.43 p.m. the great Figure of Sergeant Devoe loomed in the archway from the hall, and his bass young voice drowned out the radio.

‘Did you know about this, Mr. Sebastian?'

His big hand was holding up a Christmas package.

Ellery sprang to the radio, silenced it.

‘Of course he couldn't leave it in this room tonight – no opportunity,' Ellery said feverishly. ‘Where did you find that, Sergeant?'

‘In the hall on that little table. I didn't notice it there before I went into the kitchen for my supper. Then I left by the back way and I've been patrolling outside.' Sergeant Devoe looked at the silent company quite frankly. ‘Nobody's come near this house … from outside.'

Ellen said a little shrilly, ‘Friend Santa again.'

‘May I have that, Sergeant?' Ellery said.

‘I better get instructions first, Mr. Queen.'

‘All right, call Luria. But hurry, will you?'

Sergeant Devoe retreated, still clutching the package. No one said a word. When he reappeared, he handed the package to Ellery. ‘Lieutenant says it's okay, Mr. Queen. But he wants you to call him on it after you see what's inside.'

There was the same kind of Santa Claus tag with the name ‘John Sebastian' typewritten on it, the same red and green metallic wrapping paper, the same gilt ribbon.

The box inside again was white and unmarked. Ellery raised the lid. Two small objects lay there, each wrapped in red tissue paper; and on them lay a plain white card displaying a typewritten verse.

Ellery read the verse aloud:

‘For the love of Mike!' Dr. Dark said.

Ellery unwrapped the objects. One was a miniature pine-panelled door, the other a tiny stained-glass window.

‘John.'

‘Yes, Ellery.'

‘After I showed last night's box to Lieutenant Luria today, what did you do with it?'

‘Took it back to my room.'

‘Get the doll's house, will you?'

No one moved while they waited. But Val Warren laughed hollowly. ‘Joke's over, Rusty? It looks to me as if it's just starting its run.'

Rusty did not reply.

John came hurrying downstairs carrying the toy gingerly. In silence he set it down on the refectory table, and in silence Ellery took the little pine-panelled door from the new box and fitted it into the doorless doorway in the upper storey of the house. It fitted perfectly. And when he tucked the miniature stained-glass window into the frame on the ground floor where a window was missing, the window fitted perfectly also.

‘Ellery.' Ellen sounded frightened. ‘Are there any pencil marks on the back of this one?'

‘No.' It was the first thing Ellery had checked.

‘It's insane!' John cried. ‘Who the devil's doing this? And why? Even a dirty joke has a point of some sort. What's the
point
of all this?'

Ellery said to the tall trooper, ‘What's Luria's number?'

When he came back he said abruptly, ‘All right, somebody's playing games. Like John, Luria's inclined to think it's the work of a psychopath. I don't agree. There's sanity behind this, and deadly purpose.'