The Fourth Side of the Triangle (13 page)

She rapped him on the forehead with her knuckles as he turned his head. “You look the other way a minute now,” directed Mrs. Donnelly, “for all you're a boy and I'm an old widow woman.” Petticoats rustled. “Here.” She thrust a trunk key, fastened to a safety pin, over his shoulder. He got the trunk open, flung back the lid. “Leave me do it,” the widow said, taking out a Douay Bible that must have weighed twenty pounds. Under the Bible lay a tightly packed wad of clothing. And under the clothing there was a black leather bag.

He got to his feet, stammering his thanks.

“And you can save your thanks, young man. We know whose bread and salt we've et these thirty years, Maggie and me and me dead Tom. And now go on about your business, and let me hear over the radio that your blessed father's okay.”

Dane kissed her. She boxed his ear, grinning. It rang halfway back to the hospital.

He had been gone less than forty minutes. The detectives in the corridor glanced at the bag he was carrying, but neither of them said anything, and he went into Ellery's room with a sigh of relief.

Ellery's silvery eyes lighted up at sight of the bag. “Good for you, Dane! All right, Mr. McKell.”

Dane's father opened the bag and quickly set its contents on Ellery's dresser. He began to apply grease paint and spirit gum to his face.

“What the devil?”

Ellery chuckled at Dane's cry. He glanced at Judy, but that young lady was busy with a small camera, adjusting a flash bulb.

“Let me sum it up for you, Dane,” said Ellery. “You, Judy and the police have been searching for the wrong man. Of course no one in any of those bars recognized Ashton McKell. He wasn't Ashton McKell that night. He was Dr. Stone.”

Ashton began to pluck at a bundle of gray fibers. He arranged them on his chin in Vandyke fashion, working with the sureness of long practice.

“What a chump I've been,” Dane groaned. “That's what comes of trying to play detective. Dad, where did you make the change that night?”

“In one of the men's rooms at the airport when I got off the plane,” replied his father. “Then after I left Sheila's and wandered off, eventually winding up at Grand Central, I removed the make-up in the Grand Central men's room, although I didn't bother to change out of the tan suit. Then I checked the black bag and went home. It's all come back. Mr. Queen's acted as a sort of oxygen tent. The fresh air's cleared the cobwebs out of my head.”

When he turned from the mirror Ashton McKell was no longer Ashton McKell but gray-haired, gray-bearded Dr. Stone. It was remarkable how the false hair and the really skillful touches he had applied to his eyes and face transformed his appearance.

Judy sat him down and circled him with her camera, searching for the best angle. The bulb flashed, Judy said, “One or two more, just to be sure,” she took a second shot, then a profile, and then said, “Come back, Mr. McKell—I feel
funny
looking at you,” and Ashton McKell even laughed as he removed the false hair and make-up and became himself again. But then they heard him mutter, “How did I ever get mixed up in this foolishness?”

“The classic question, Mr. McKell,” Ellery remarked dryly. “‘
Oh, what a tangled web we weave,'
and so on. Are we ready? Call them in, Dane.”

When the detectives had departed with their prisoner, Ellery waved cheerfully. “Now, you two. The pubs await you. Start crawling. Meanwhile, I'll phone Bob O'Brien and see if I can get him to talk Judge Suarez and the D.A. into agreeing to a forty-eight-hour recess—even a twenty-four-hour stay may do it. I think we can get it. O'Brien can do more things with his tongue than the head chef at the Waldorf.”

When they were gone, Ellery leaned over and rang for the nurse. He seemed pleased with himself.

“I'm worn down,” he said to the ravishing blonde when she came in, “and I badly need tuning up. Put on a record, Kirsten, skin me a grape, and tell me you're not going to be busy the night of the day they finally peel off these plaster pants.”

“Pardon?” said the girl, frowning.

“This armchair Hawkshaw role is debilitating. What price Mycroft Holmes?”

“Mr. Queen, I do not understand—”

“Never mind, Kirsten. Teach me your native tongue. All I know is
akavit
and
snoose
. Meanwhile, I'll try not to let your Nordic beauty overexcite me. May I hold your hand?”

The nurse gave him her sizzling smile. “I think you are very yoking, Mr. Queen. But it is nice yoke, no?”

“It is nice yoke, yes. Would you hand me the phone?”

On the morning the trial resumed there was a marked alteration of the atmosphere. No cluster of bankers, non-career ambassadors, bishops, and captains of industry waited to take the stand. Robert O'Brien arose, in a radiation of confidence. Something not quite a whisper or ripple passed through the courtroom and reached His Honor, who looked up from the bench sharply. The judge, grown so old in the juridical service that he had developed a sixth sense, felt his sleepiness slip away and that telltale tingle in his brain that made him sit up in his swivel chair.

Bob O'Brien was in his early forties, a burly Irishman with the face of a boy. He specialized in lost legal causes and brought them off with amazing consistency. A family man, a Harvard man, learned in history and the classics, he was a Sunday painter, a summer archeologist, and a courtroom terror. He had just fought a penniless defendant's murder case through three mistrials to an acquittal. His successful defense of an alien from deportation earned him the sobriquet of “the new Darrow” in liberal circles; then when he sued for the right of a handicapped child to obtain special transportation to a parochial school on public funds, he lost the most vocal part of his support.

Bob O'Brien, then, on that November morning, rose.

“Call Ashton McKell,” he said, to the tune of another murmur. McKell, chin high, took the stand as if it were the chair at an international shippers' convention, and the oath as if it admitted him to clerical orders.

“State your full name.”

“Philip Cornelius Ashton McKell.”

“Have you ever used another name?”

“Yes.”

District Attorney De Angelus leaned forward as if impelled by a wire.

“What name was that?”

“Dr. Stone.”

The D.A. shook his head as if to dislodge something from his ear.

“This other name—Dr. Stone—was it an alias?”

“No.”

“Please explain just what use you put it to, Mr. McKell.”

“It involved an entirely different identity. In order to become Dr. Stone, I would put on make-up and clothing of a type I do not ordinarily wear. I also used false eyeglasses, which I do not need to see by, and carried a walking stick and a physician's black bag.”

“All this in your Dr. Stone identity?”

“Yes.”

Bob O'Brien was back at his table and reaching under it. He pulled out the little satchel. “Is this the bag you refer to, Mr. McKell?”

“It is.”

“Would you open it and display its contents?”

Ashton McKell did so. “This is spirit gum, this is false gray hair, this is …”

“In other words, Mr. McKell, this bag contains make-up materials for a disguise?”

“Yes, except for the clothing and cane.”

“Thank you. I place this bag and its contents in evidence as defendant's Exhibit—”

The judge opened his mouth, but too slowly. District Attorney De Angelus was finally on his feet, waving wildly.

“Your Honor, may I ask Counsel what is the relevance of this evidence?”

“It is necessary for my client,” said O'Brien, “to use the contents of this bag in order to make himself up.”

“In this courtroom?” cried the district attorney.

“In this courtroom,” said the Irishman courteously.

“Here? Now?”

“Here and now.”

“Counsel,” said His Honor, “we all appreciate the more colorful practices you occasionally indulge in in the courtroom—when you're permitted to get away with them—but tell me: What is the purpose of introducing amateur theatricals into this trial?”

O'Brien permitted himself to look disconcerted. “I hadn't intended to reveal defense's reasons so early. However, if Your Honor insists—”

“His Honor insists,” said His Honor.

“Very well. Mr. McKell, will you tell the Court, please, for what purpose you were accustomed to assuming this false identity?”

“In order to conceal my true identity.” Ash McKell hesitated for the briefest moment. “I mean while visiting the apartment of Miss Sheila Grey.”

“Order! Counsel will approach the bench. You, too, Mr. District Attorney.”

There was a three-cornered whispered conversation of considerable liveliness before the bench. Finally De Angelus waved his hand wearily, Judge Suarez said, “The exhibit will be admitted,” and everybody sat down but a bailiff, who moved a small table to a position before the witness chair, set the black bag on it, and retired. McKell removed the contents of the bag, which included a small swivel-mirror on a stand, and spread them on the table.

“Mr. McKell,” said Bob O'Brien, as if he were ordering a ham sandwich on rye, “make yourself up as Dr. Stone.”

And Ashton McKell, eighty to a hundred times a millionaire, adviser of Presidents, refuser of ambassadorships, proceeded to make himself up in full fascinated view of judge, jury, prosecutor, defense counsel, bailiffs, the press, and spectators.

When the tycoon was Dr. Stone, he straightened up from the mirror and glanced at his lawyer. The silence hung, broke. The gavel rapped, and the silence hung again.

O'Brien: “And this is how you always looked when you posed as Dr. Stone?”

“Yes, except for the tan suit and walking stick.”

“I think we can imagine those. All right, Mr. McKell. Your Honor, in the interest of more orderly development, I should like Mr. McKell's testimony to be interrupted while we introduce the testimony of two other witnesses. If the Court and the district attorney don't object?”

Another colloquy. McKell was told to stand down, and O'Brien said, “Call John Leslie.”

Leslie, shaven to a violent pink, stiff in the same suit he had worn to stand on the sidewalk and cheer the visiting Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, was called into the courtroom and sworn, and he testified that he was the doorman of 610½ Park Avenue, and had been since it opened its doors as a multiple dwelling. He had therefore known Mr. Ashton McKell, yes, sir, for over twenty-five years.

“Do you see Mr. McKell in this courtroom?”

Leslie scanned the room. He looked puzzled. “No, sir, I do not.”

“Well, would you recognize a Dr. Stone?” asked O'Brien.

“Dr. Stone? You mean the doctor who used to visit Miss Grey? I think so, sir.”

“Do you see Dr. Stone in this courtroom?”

Leslie looked around. “Yes, sir.”

“Point him out, please … Thank you, Mr. Leslie. That's all.”

District Attorney De Angelus: “Mr. Leslie, do you recall the night Miss Grey's body was found?”

“Yes, sir.”

“On that night, did this man you have identified as Dr. Stone visit the apartment building at 610½ Park?”

“Yes, sir.”

“At what time?”

“It was quite late in the evening. Somewhere around ten o'clock.”

“Can you be more exact as to the time?”

“No, sir. I had no reason to.”

“Do you recall his leaving the building?”

“Yes, sir, not long after. A few minutes. I wasn't paying much attention.”

“A half hour?”

“Might be.”

“You just said a few minutes.”

“I just don't know, sir.”

“That's all.”

Surprisingly, O'Brien did not recross. “I call Ramon Alvarez.”

Old John departed, still frowning over the incomprehensibility of the proceedings, to be succeeded on the stand by Ramon. Who testified that he had been employed as Ashton McKell's chauffeur for the past five years; that since early spring—about April, he thought it was—he had at his employer's direction been driving him, Ashton McKell, in the Bentley, at about four o'clock each Wednesday afternoon, to the front door of the Metropolitan Cricket Club. It was his, Ramon's, practice then to park the Bentley at a garage behind the club.

“What did you do then?”

“I would have orders to meet Mr. McKell back at the club late that night, with the Bentley.”

“Did Mr. McKell ever tell you where he was going on those Wednesday evenings?”

“No, sir.”

“This happened
every
Wednesday since about April, Mr. Alvarez?”

“Once or twice not, when Mr. McKell was in South America or Europe, on business.”

O'Brien turned. “Mr. McKell, would you stand up? Thank you. Mr. Alvarez, did you ever see Mr. McKell dressed and made up as he appears right now?”

“Sir, no.”

“You're sure of that.”

“Sir, yes.”

“You were never curious as to where Mr. McKell was going on Wednesday nights?” O'Brien persisted. “Without you to drive him?”

Ramon shrugged. “I am the chauffeur, sir. I do what I am told.”

“And not once did you see him in make-up …?”

“Your Honor,” said the district attorney, “Mr. O'Brien is cross-examining his own witness.”

O'Brien waved, De Angelus waved, and Ramon was dismissed.

“I recall Ashton McKell to the stand.” When Ashton resumed the witness box, being admonished that he was still under oath, O'Brien said, “Mr. McKell, I am going to ask you a painful question. What was your underlying reason for disguising yourself each Wednesday as a nonexistent Dr. Stone—even going so far as to conceal the disguise from your own chauffeur?”

“I didn't want my family or anyone else to know about my visits to Miss Grey.” The courtroom rustled. “In this,” added the elder McKell bitterly, “I seem to have failed with a bang.”