The Fourth Side of the Triangle (22 page)

“The beginning, the source of everything, is Sheila herself. ‘In my end is my beginning,' as Mary Queen of Scots said.” (Tactfully, Ellery did not mention the circumstances under which she had said it.) “Where did Sheila begin? Her business, for example. Didn't one of you, when we were first looking at her fashion designs, mention that she'd started her designing career in partnership?”

“With a man named Winterson.” Ashton McKell nodded. “Elisha Winterson. I recall Sheila's saying he was still in New York.”

“Good. Then we start with him. See if you can't get him to visit me here this afternoon.”

“I'll have him here at the point of a gun, if necessary.”

Such measures were not required. Elisha Winterson was highly flattered to have Ashton McKell himself come calling for him at Countess Roni's, the Fifth Avenue fashion salon with which he was associated.

The countess seemed flattered, too. “Such a dreadful business!” she exclaimed in her strongly Italian accent; she had been in the United States for over twenty years, and it had been a struggle to retain the sound of Rome, but she had been victorious. “Poor Sheila. And this persecution of your family, Mr. McKell. Lish, you must help. Don't waste a moment!”

As Ramon drove them to the hospital, Elisha Winterson talked and talked. He was a small dapper man with a bald head, the top of which was caved in, so that from above, as Countess Roni (who was six feet tall) had once remarked, his head looked like one of the craters of the moon.

“Roni is very sweet and
simpatico,
” Winterson chattered. “You know, she's not Italian at all, although she lived in Italy for a long time. That's where she met poor old Sigi. I saw his patent of nobility myself, yards and yards of moldy old parchment dripping with seals, Holy Roman Empire, defunct, 1806, but as I say, who cares? I most certainly don't. As for Sheila—”

Ashton McKell said, “Mr. Winterson, would you mind not going into that until Queen can question you?”

Winterson's sunken-domed head shot around. “Queen? What queen is that?”

“Ellery Queen.”

“The author? He's helping you? Well, of course, Mr. McKell, just as you say.” He seemed torn between awe and a private joke. “I'll stay bottled up till he uncorks me.”

In the hospital room Elisha Winterson babbled away, lit Turkish cigarets, bombarded Ellery with praise, and then presented himself for uncorking. “I understand you want to ask me about Sheila Grey, Mr. Queen. Fire when ready.”

“Tell me all about your association with her. How, when, where you met her, how you came to go into partnership, and so on.”

“I met her in 1956,” Winterson said. “It was at one of those little parties that Roni—that's Countess Roni, the designer I'm working with now—is famous for. I was, if I may say so, rather widely known. But Sheila was already well on her way to being an international figure in high fashion. So I was flattered when she suggested we go into business together. I mean—”

“This was in 1956?”

“Early in 1957. I mean, Sheila could have had almost anyone in the profession as her partner. That girl had flair, impeccable taste. And a sense of timing, which is
very
important. She did all her own sketching, too. It was a great break for me. Not only career-wise, by the way. She was the most fascinating woman I'd ever met. I was in love with her even before we established The House of Grey.”

He would be utterly candid with them, Winterson said (glancing at Judy): he was very much the ladies' man, he said with a laugh. “You wouldn't think it, looking at me.” But discriminating; he was no old lecher. He wanted Sheila and he pursued her “in my own fashion” (contriving to leave the impression that his “fashion” was immensely subtle, a sort of secret process which he had no intention of giving away). At first their relationship was all work and no play. He had almost given up hope that it would ever be anything else when, one night, without preliminary, she took him as her lover.

“That's the way it was with Sheila,” Winterson said with a wistful half-smile. “Nothing but camaraderie for months, then—bango! if you'll forgive the expression, Miss Walsh. No one ever sold Sheila Grey a bill of goods unless she was absolutely ready to buy. She was one of the world's shrewdest shoppers where men were concerned. And then she kept it a one-man-at-a-time affair.” Dane found his fists curling with hatred of this smug little dressed-up troglodyte.

The House of Grey had its first official showing that year, 1957. It created a sensation abroad as well as in the United States. “Lady Sheila—that was her name for our first collection—put us right up there on top.”

“I mean to ask you about that—” Ellery began.

“Lady Sheila? It was Sheila's idea to call each year's collection by some sort of name, and she chose the Lady Sheila label for 1957. Sheila, by the way, wasn't her own name.”

“It wasn't?” the McKells cried out together.

“Her original first name was Lillian, and her last name was spelled G-r-
a
-y. When we organized The House of Grey, it was her decision to change the
a
to an
e
in
Grey;
and when the Lady Sheila collection was such a smash hit, she had her name legally changed from Lillian G-r-a-y to Sheila G-r-e-y.”

“That was also in 1957?”

“Yes, Mr. Queen.”

“How long did your association last?”

“Which association?”

“Both.”

“Well.” Winterson looked coy. “We were lovers for just a few months. I was very happy and assumed she was, too. We were compatible, you know?” Dane closed his eyes. The picture of this scrubbed little creature in Sheila's arms was almost too much to bear. “We went about together everywhere, enjoyed our love and labors with the gusto of teenagers—oh, it was marvelous. Then …

“I shan't forget that day.” Winterson was no longer smiling. “It was just before she began designing the 1958 collection, the Lady Nella. I'd worked up some roughs and brought them into her office—laid them on her desk and stooped over to kiss her.” He had turned quite pink. “She drew back and kept on with her work. I was upset, and asked her what was the matter. She looked up and said as calmly as if she were talking about the weather, ‘It's over between us, Lish. From now on we're partners, nothing more.' Just like that. No transition. The way she'd begun.”

He had asked her why, what he had done. “‘You haven't done anything,'” she had told him. “‘It's just that I don't want you any more.'”

Winterson shrugged, but the pink remained. “That's the way it was with Sheila. All or nothing. When she gave herself, it was fully. When she got tired of it—slam. Shut, locked and bolted the door … Well, that's the way she was. But I wasn't. I was in love with her; I wasn't able to turn it off like a faucet. I'm afraid it became a strain for both of us. Of course, we couldn't go on. We split up in a matter of months—three months, I think it was.”

She had bought Winterson out and become sole proprietor of The House of Grey. “Of course, my disappearance from the business made absolutely no difference to its continuing success,” he said, with a remarkable absence of bitterness. “I've never had any illusions about myself, especially by contrast with a great designer like Sheila. She went on to become one of the world's top
couturières
. Rolling in money. Not that money ever meant much to her.”

“Let's go back a bit, Mr. Winterson,” Ellery suggested. “You remarked that she was a one-man-at-a-time woman. Are you sure of that?”

Elisha Winterson was taking a long drag on his Spahi. He let the thick white smoke dribble out of his mouth before he replied. “I'm sure,” he said, “and I'll tell you why I'm sure.” His little face suddenly turned foxy. “After she kicked me out of her bed, I kept wondering who was taking my place. I'm not especially proud of myself now—it was a caddish trick—but you know, a lover scorned …” He laughed. “I hired a private detective. I even remember his name. Weirhauser. Face all angles, like Dick Tracy. Had an office on 42nd Street, off Times Square. He watched her for me, and I kept getting full reports—what she did, where she went, with whom. There wasn't anyone. She hadn't ditched me for another man. She'd simply ditched me, period.

“Later that year,” said Elisha Winterson, “there
was
another man. I'm certain that shortly after they met he was parking his shoes where I'd been parking mine, if you'll pardon the crudity.”

“Who was he?” Ellery asked.

“Well.” Winterson ran the tip of his tongue along his lips. “A gentleman never tells, they say. But these are unusual circumstances, I take it? If it will help you, Mr. Queen—”

“It might.”

Winterson looked around at his silent audience. What he saw made him go on quickly. Sheila had begun to advertise widely, he said. She had selected to do her advertising the Gowdy-Gunder Agency, because of its familiarity with the world of fashion.

“At the same time The House of Grey hired a business manager, a production manager, began to do its own manufacturing, moved out of the rather poky little place we'd had in the East 50s and into the Fifth Avenue salon. Naturally, Sheila Grey was a plum to the agency people, and they turned their Brightest Young Man over to her account.

“Like catnip to a cat,” Winterson said grimly, “though I'm sure the experience did him a world of good. His name was Allen Bainbridge Foster, and she ate him up hide, hair, and whiskers. By the end of the year—”

“Allan as in Edgar Allan Poe?” Ellery had reached for a pad and was taking notes.

“No, Allen with an
e
.”

“Bainbridge Foster?”

“That's right. As I started to say, by the end of the year she'd had enough of Mr. Foster, and she gave him his walking papers, too.”

“Were you still having her watched, Mr. Winterson?” Ellery asked, not without a touch of malice.

“Oh, no, I'd called Weirhauser off long before that. But Sheila and I had a lot of friends and acquaintances in common, like Countess Roni and so on, so I heard all the gossip. You know how it is.”

“I do now. And after Foster?”

“I can virtually vouch for her lovers—three of them—in the next four years. Sheila was without shame where
l'amour
was concerned. She didn't care a button about her reputation, I mean personally, and while she certainly didn't go around flaunting her affairs, neither did she take any pains to be discreet. None of this hurt The House of Grey in the least, by the way. After all, she wasn't designing altar pieces for churches. On the contrary, it seemed to add to her glamour. It attracted men to her salon in herds.”

“You say you know of three others in the next four years. Who were they, have you any idea?”

“Of course. Jack Hurt was one.”

“John Francis Hurt III, the auto racer?”

“That's the one. Jack made no secret of it. He carried Sheila's photo in his wallet for good luck. He'd show it to you at the drop of a flag. ‘I'm crazy about this little girl,' he'd say. I'm sure Sheila didn't go for him because of his wit. But Jack was muscled like a puma—all male animal. She used to go down into the grease pits at the speedway after him; absolutely gone on him. Then one day, as Jack came roaring in from Lap Eighty-nine to get his lube job or his water changed or whatever they do to the racing cars in the pits—lo! no Sheila. Just changed her mind in mid-lap and went on home. He didn't pine very long, I must say. Latched onto some little blonde who embroidered his name on her jacket, poor slobby-gob, and I believe married her shortly afterward.”

“That's Jack Hurt the Three,” said Ellery. “Who was his successor?”

“After Hurt? Ronald Van Vester of the veddy high society Van Vesters, who live on the interest of their interest. Don't know where Sheila spotted him, but she did start ponying up on polo”—Winterson tittered at his little jest—“and before you knew it he was making eyes at her. Well, one hoof in the doorway was all Miss Sheila needed, and there was Master Ronny on the line. But I suppose the smell of horse manure soon palled on her. Exit Ronny.

“Next there was … let me see.” The ineffable Elisha tapped his teeth with a glittering fingernail. “Oh, yes! Some character named Odonnell. The stage actor. Edgar? Edmond? I don't recall, because nobody ever called him by his first name except in the programs. You must remember him, Mr. Queen, all smoldering black eyes and hatchet profile. First man to play Hamlet according to the Method, after which no one called him anything but Hamlet Odonnell.”

“You said three in
four
years.”

Winterson explained that he had spent all of 1961 abroad, and so had been out of touch. “What happened while I was catching up on what Paris and Rome were doing I have no idea. She could have been having her fling with the Assistant Commissioner of Sanitation for all I know. Hamlet was the lucky man in 1962, when I got back. And since then …” Winterson paused.

The silence spread like ink. Dane was looking as if he were about to throw up. Ashton McKell looked deathly ill. All this, then, was new to both of them, Ellery thought. As for Judy, she was grasping the arms of her chair as if they were the rails of a chute-the-chutes car at the top of the trestle.

“I suppose I ought to have realized that, sooner or later, Sheila Grey would come to a nasty end,” Winterson said finally. “And yet … she was so utterly
charming
when she was in love. She needed love. It was the fuel, I think, that made her go, that and her career … God, what a waste. She had the world at her feet.”

Suddenly he was no longer a ridiculous little frou-frou of a man with a caved-in head. His face was the mask of tragedy. Ellery thought: He's still in love with her.