Inspector Queen’s Own Case (27 page)

Jessie almost said,
None
. But she knew that if she opened her mouth, nothing would come out but a chatter of teeth.

Richard, Richard. You don't even know where I am. Not you, not Chief Pearl, not anybody but Charlie Peterson, and what good is he? Alton Humffrey has seen to that, or he wouldn't be here pointing a gun. You're going to die alone, Jessie
,
like an idiot, sitting on a basement floor in an empty house on an empty island
.

Die
.

The voice was saying, without bite or pinch, “You must see that I have no choice. You've found the slip, you've examined it. You're probably incorruptible. In any case, you're too close to that busybody Queen. So I must kill you, Miss Sherwood. I must.”

This isn't happening, Jessie thought. It's just—not—happening.

“Not that the prospect pleases. I'm not a compulsive murderer. It's easier to commit murder than one would think, I've found, but it isn't pleasant. Your death is even dangerous to me. Peterson knows you're here. I could shoot you as as intruder, saying that I fired before I realized who you were, but Peterson's told me you were here. By the same token, he also knows I'm here. So I'm forced to take a great risk.”

I'm going to wake up any second
…

“When you disappear, suspicion will naturally fall on me. After I row your body out and sink it in deep water, I shall have to concoct a story. They won't believe the story, of course, no matter how plausible it is. But without a body, with no evidence of a crime, what can they do, after all? I think I'll come out of it all right. This is a soundproof room, Miss Sherwood, and—forgive me—I shall be very careful about removing all traces afterward.”

It's silly. He's just trying to scare me. Nobody could talk as calmly as this and mean to take a human life. Nobody
.

Richard, Richard
.

“I still don't understand what brought you here tonight.” The millionaire's voice this time was slightly flavored with petulance. “I certainly had no idea I was going to run into anyone. I came for the very purpose you accomplished, to check the nursery chute. That farce in Chief Pearl's office—before Queen produced the forgery—set me to wondering how they could possibly have found the pillowslip. And that reminded me of the obstruction in the chute when it was installed. How did you learn about that, Miss Sherwood?” Jessie stirred, and he said sharply, “Don't move, please.”

“I have to,” Jessie heard herself say. “My legs have fallen asleep. My neck.”

“I'm sorry,” he said, as if he really were. “You may stand up.”

Jessie got to her feet. Her knees gave, and she leaned against the wall of the chute.

“In a way it was unfortunate for you that I employ a caretaker,” the millionaire droned on. “If not for Stallings's being on the premises, I would have examined the chute last night. As it was, I had to go back to New York and find an excuse to send Stallings away. What did make you come here tonight to look the chute over?”

“Does it matter?” How lightheaded she felt.

Jessie shut her eyes.

“I suppose not.”

She heard a click.

Her eyes flew open and she stared wildly. He was stepping back, his arm was coming up, it was extending, the gun was glowing softly blue at the end of it, she could see the stump of his little finger at the base of the grip, the index finger was beginning to whiten …

“Don't kill me, Mr. Humffrey, I don't want to die, please don't kill me.”

“I must,” Alton Humffrey muttered.

“
Don't!”
Jessie screamed, and she shut her eyes tight.

The basement rocked with the explosion.

Why, there's no pain, Jessie thought. Isn't that odd? There's no pain at all. Just the roar of the gun and the smash of glass——

Glass?

She opened her eyes. Alton Humffrey's right hand was a bloody pulp. His gun was on the floor and he was gripping his right wrist with his left hand convulsively. His mouth and nose were curled back in agony. A man's hand, holding a smoking revolver, was just withdrawing from a broken window high in the basement wall and two other men were vaulting down the basement stairs to fling themselves on the wounded millionaire and bring him crashing to the floor.

Then an incredibly dear figure appeared at the head of the stairs and Jessie saw that it was he who had fired the shot through the basement window and he was running down the stairs like a boy with the smoking gun still in his hand and she was in his arms.

“Richard,” Jessie said.

Then she fainted.

Jessie found herself staring at a white ceiling. There was something familiar about the light fixture and the molding, and she turned her head and looked around. Of course. Her room. The nursery next door. The baby would be gleeping in a moment and the alarm would go off and she would jump out of bed …

Then she remembered.

Jessie sat up.

Mrs. Pearl was sitting in the rocker beside the bed, smiling at her.

“How do you feel, Jessie?”

“All right, I guess.” Jessie looked down. Someone—she hoped it had been Beck Pearl—had removed her dress and girdle. “Did you …?”

The little woman nodded. She got up to switch off the nightlight and turn on the overhead lights.

“What time is it?” Her wristwatch was gone, too.

“About 3
A
.
M
. You've had quite a sleep. Dr. Wicks gave you a needle. Don't you remember?”

“I'm trying to, Becky. But how is it you're here?”

“They located Abe and me at a friend's home in Westport. When I heard about your terrible experience, I made Abe bring me along. Richard wanted to take you to a hospital, but Dr. Wicks said it wasn't necessary. You're sure you feel well enough to get out of bed?”

“Yes.” Jessie swung her legs to the floor stiffly. “Where's Richard?”

“He's still here. They all are. They don't want to move Humffrey yet. He lost a lot of blood and they've got him in bed, under guard.” Beck Pearl's soft mouth set hard. “It's funny what good care they take of murderers. I'd have let him bleed to death.”

“Becky, you mustn't say a thing like that.”

“You're a nurse, Jessie,” the little woman said quietly. “I'm just a woman who's had babies. And I have grandchildren. He murdered a baby.”

Jessie shivered.

“I'd better get dressed,” she said.

“Let me help you, dear.”

“No, please. You might tell Richard I'm up.”

Beck Pearl smiled again and went out.

It's all over, Jessie kept telling herself as she wriggled into the girdle. It's really all over.

He was waiting for her in the hall.

“Richard.”

He took her by the arms. “You're sure you ought to be up?”

“You saved my life.”

“You're so pale.”

“You saved my life, Richard,” Jessie said again.

He flushed. “You'd better sit down.”

He drew her over to the big settee opposite Alton Humffrey's upstairs study.

How tired he looked. Tired and … something else. Disturbed?

“What were you doing here, Jessie? When I looked through that basement window and saw you standing down there facing Humffrey's gun, I couldn't believe my eyes.”

“I tried to phone you before I came, but I couldn't get an answer. I couldn't even locate Chief or Mrs. Pearl.” Jessie told him what she had found out from Sadie Smith, and how on impulse she had decided to investigate the chute when she was unable to reach him or the Taugus chief of police. “What I don't understand, Richard, is what
you
were doing here. I thought you were in town chasing Henry Cullum.”

“I started to, but I ran into Johnny Kripps and Wes Polonsky.” He grinned. “They were watching Humffrey's Park Avenue apartment on their own. That was luck, because Wes had his car. We sat around waiting for Cullum to show, so we could pump him about Mrs. Humffrey's whereabouts, when we saw Humffrey trying to take a sneak. He was alone, and he was acting so queer we decided to tail him. He dodged around to his garage, got his car out, and headed for the West Side Highway. We tailed him all the way to Nair Island, and that was that.”

Jessie laid her head on his shoulder. “It's all over, Richard.”

“No, it isn't.”

His shoulder was rigid. Jessie sat up quickly.

“It isn't?” she said. “It isn't what, Richard?”

“Isn't over.” He pressed his fingers to his eyes. “I don't know how much more you can take tonight, Jessie. Can you stand a big shock?”

“Shock.” Dear God, what is it now? Jessie thought. “What's happened!”

“We sure picked a lulu when we stuck our noses into this one. I don't know that I've ever run across a case like it.”

“Like
what?”

He got up and took her by the hand.

“I'll show you, Jessie.”

Chief Pearl's two detectives, Borcher and Tinny, were in the study. Borcher was reading a copy of Plato's
Republic
with a deep frown. Tinny was napping in a leather armchair.

Both jumped up when Richard Queen opened the door. When he waved, Borcher returned to his puzzled reading and Tinny sank down and closed his eyes again.

“Over here, Jessie.”

The dirty pillowslip was spread out on Humffrey's desk. Everything else had been removed.

“I was the one who found it,” Jessie said. “I fished it out of the nursery chute. Then he—he came in and took it away from me.”

“Then you've seen it.”

“Just a glance.”

“Examine it, Jessie.”

Jessie bent over the pillowslip. Now that she saw it in strong light, at leisure, it was remarkable how well she had remembered the position of the handprint in supervising the forgery.

She shook her head. “I can't see anything special about this, Richard. Is there something on the back? I never did see the back.”

“As a matter of fact, there is.” He took hold of the tip of the lace edging at the upper right corner of the slip and turned it back a little. Just below the reverse of the lace Jessie saw a small stain, rusty brown in color. “That's a bloodstain, probably from a scratched finger. However, remember that Humffrey didn't get a look at the back of our forgery. We had it face up on Abe's desk under glass.” He flipped the corner back. “You still don't see where we went wrong?”

Jessie stared and stared. “No.”

“Take another look at that handprint, Jessie. A real look this time.”

And then she saw it, and her mind leaped back to that August night in the nursery and her brief glimpse of the pillow over the baby's face. And for the first time since that moment Jessie Sherwood saw the pillow as she had seen it then.

What she had forgotten until now was that the little finger of the handprint was a whole finger.

There was no missing fingertip.

“That's how Humffrey knew the slip we showed him was a fake,” Inspector Queen shrugged. “We showed him a handprint with the tip of the pinkie gone. He knew that the original pillowcase had a handprint showing five full fingers.”

“But I don't understand,” Jessie cried. “Alton Humffrey's pinkie does have the tip missing. How could his right hand possibly have made this print?”

“It couldn't.”

“But——”

“It couldn't. Therefore it didn't.”

Jessie gaped at him. The silence became so intense that Borcher looked up from his Plato uneasily and Tinny opened one eye.

“But Richard …”

“Humffrey didn't murder the baby, Jessie. I guess they knew what they were doing when they retired me.” The old man sighed. “I was so sure Humffrey knocked off Finner and the Coy girl that I had to wrap it up in one neat package. One killer. But it wasn't one killer, Jessie. Humffrey murdered Finner and Connie Coy, all right, but someone else murdered the baby.”

Jessie squeezed her forehead with both hands, trying to force some order into her thoughts.

“Humffrey never doubted for a minute that the baby was his—I was wrong about that, too. He knew it was his. That was the whole point. And when he spotted the pillowcase that night he knew his baby had been murdered, and he knew who'd murdered it. That's when he got rid of the pillowcase. He was determined to make the death look like an accident. That's what made him say
he
had put the ladder there, when he hadn't touched the ladder. It was the baby's killer who'd put the ladder there, thinking to make the murder look like the nephew's work.

“And when Finner got in touch with Humffrey and told him to meet us in Finner's office, Humffrey realized that unless he shut Finner's mouth the story of Michael's real parentage might come out and lead right back to Michael's death. So he killed Finner and removed all the evidence from the file. And when we got to Connie Coy in spite of everything and she was about to name Humffrey as the real father of Michael, he killed Connie Coy.

“It was all coverup, Jessie. Coverup to keep us from learning the true reason for the baby's murder. To keep the whole nasty story out of the papers. To protect the sacred name of Humffrey.”

“Someone else,” Jessie said, clinging to the thought. “What someone else, Richard? Who?”

“Jessie,” Richard Queen said. “Who had the best reason to hate Alton Humffrey's illegitimate child? Who's the only one in the world Humffrey would have a guilt feeling about, a compulsion to cover up? Whose exposure as an infant-killer would smear as much muck on the Humffrey name as if he himself were tagged for it? Who's the one who kept hysterically insisting—until Humffrey got her out of the way and kept her out of the way—that she'd been ‘responsible' for little Mike's death? … only we all misunderstood her?”