Inspector Queen’s Own Case (7 page)

“Well, now, I don't know, Mr. Humffrey,” Dr. Wicks said cautiously. “I have a sworn duty, you know.”

“I understand.” Jessie had the feeling that he was holding himself in the scabbard by sheer will. “Still, there are sometimes considerations above a sworn duty, Dr. Wicks. In exceptional cases, let us say. Haven't you found it so in your practice?”

“I can't say I have,” the physician replied in a stiffening tone. “Whatever it is you have in mind, Mr. Humffrey, I'm afraid the answer must be no.”

The millionaire's mouth tightened. “All I'm asking is that Mrs. Humffrey and I be spared the ordeal of a coroner's inquiry. It will mean newspaper reporters, an inquest, public testimony. It's intolerable to have to face that, Doctor. Certainly my wife can't in her condition. As her physician, surely you know that.”

“I'm as unhappy about this misfortune as you are, Mr. Humffrey. But what can I do?”

“It was an accident! Are people to be crucified in public because of an accident?”

Jessie Sherwood thought if they did not stop she would scream.

“I know it was an accident, Mr. Humffrey. But you're placing me——”

She heard herself saying in a very loud voice, “No, it wasn't.”

Dr. Wicks turned sharply. “What did you say, Nurse?”

Mrs. Humffrey's body swiveled on the bed as she tried to focus her swollen eyes on Jessie.

“I said, Dr. Wicks, it was not an accident.”

For a faraway moment Jessie thought Alton Humffrey was going to spring at her throat. But he merely said, “What do you mean, Miss Sherwood?”

“I mean that somebody else entered the nursery after Mrs. Humffrey went to bed.”

The tall man looked at her with burning eyes.

Jessie steeled herself and returned his look.

“That baby was murdered, Mr. Humffrey, and if you don't call the police—this minute—I'm going to.”

2.

CREEPING LIKE SNAIL

Faces kept floating about the steamy room. All the weight had bobbed out of Jessie's head. It felt taut and airy, like a balloon. In the nightmare she knew with curious certainty that her alarm would go off any minute. She would wake up in a solid world, jump out of bed, listen for the baby's gurgling, shuffle into the nursery with a bright good morning …

“Sit down, Jessie.”

“What?”

It was miraculously Richard Queen. He was urging her back into the rocker, putting a glass to her dehydrated lips. He had called her Jessie, so it was still the nightmare. Or perhaps the nightmare was turning into a harmless dream.

“Drink it.”

The flow of cold water down her throat awakened her. She saw the room now as it was. The nursery was full of men peering, measuring, talking, weighing, as impersonal as salesmen—state troopers and Taugus policemen and an unshaven man without a tie whom she distantly recalled as having arrived carrying a briefcase.

“Are you feeling better now, Miss Sherwood?” That was Chief Pearl's rumble.

“It's just that I haven't had any sleep,” Jessie explained. What had they been talking about when the room began to swim? She couldn't remember. All she could remember was Chief Pearl's bass voice, the enormous mass of him, his drilling eyes.

“All right. You went into the nursery with Mrs. Humffrey, you bent over the crib, you saw the pillow lying on the baby's face, you grabbed it away, you saw that he had suffocated, and you automatically began to give him first aid, artificial respiration, even though you had every reason to believe he was dead.

“Now think back, Miss Sherwood. How long would you say it took you—starting from your first sight of the pillow over the baby's face—to get past the shock and snatch that pillow off him?”

“I don't know,” Jessie said. “It seemed like an eternity. But I suppose it wasn't more than a second or two.”

“One or two seconds. Then you grabbed the pillow and did what with it?”

Jessie knuckled her eyes. What was the matter with him?

“I tossed it aside.”

“Tossed it where?” the Taugus police chief persisted.

“Toward the foot of the crib.”

The tieless, unshaven man said, “Would you remember exactly where at the foot of the crib the pillow landed, Miss Sherwood?”

They were all touched by the heat, that was it, Jessie decided. As if where it landed made any difference!

“Of course not,” she said acidly. “I don't think I gave it a glance after I threw it aside. My only thought at that time was to try and revive the baby. I didn't really think back to what I'd seen on the pillow until a long time afterward. Then it came back to me with a rush, and I realized what it meant.”

“Suppose you tell us once more just what you think you saw on that pillow, Miss Sherwood.” The tieless man said again. Had she imagined someone's saying he was from the State's Attorney's office in Bridgeport?

“What I think I saw?” Jessie flared. “Are you doubting my word?”

She glanced at Richard Queen in her anger, to see if he was on their side after all. But he merely stood over her rubbing his gray stub of mustache.

“Answer the question, please.”

“I
know
I saw a handprint on the pillow.”

“An actual, recognizable human handprint?”

“Yes! Someone with a dirty hand had placed it on that pillow.”

“What kind of dirt, Miss Sherwood?”

“Kind? How should I know?”

“What color was it? Black? Brown? Gray?”

“I really couldn't say. Maybe grayish. Like dust.”

“Well, was it grayish, like dust, or wasn't it?”

“I think it was.”

“You
think
it was?”

“I'm not sure about the color,” Jessie said tiredly. “How can I be? My impression is that it looked like a dust print. I could be wrong about that, but I don't think I am. That it was dirt of some kind I'm positive.”

“You say it was as if someone had placed a dirty hand on the pillow,” the tieless man said. “Placed it how, Miss Sherwood? Flat? Doubled up? Partially?”

“Perfectly flat.”

“Where on the pillow?”

“Just about in the middle.”

“Was it a clear impression? That is, could you tell unmistakably that it was a human handprint?”

“Well, it wasn't really sharp, as I recall it. Sort of blurry—a little smudged. But it couldn't be mistaken for anything but what it was. The print of a hand.” Jessie shut her eyes. She could see it with awful clarity. “The print was indented. I mean … there had been pressure exerted. Considerable downward pressure.” She opened her eyes, and something happened to her voice. “I mean someone with a filthy hand had pressed that pillow hard over the baby's face, and kept pressing till he stopped breathing. That's why I told Mr. and Mrs. Humffrey that Michael had been murdered. At first, as I say, it didn't register. I saw it, and my brain must have tucked it away, but I wasn't conscious of it till later. Then I told them to call the police. Why are you asking me these questions? Why don't you just examine the pillow and see for yourselves?”

“Stand up, Miss Sherwood,” Chief Pearl growled. “Can you stand?”

“Oh, I'm all right.” Jessie got to her feet impatiently.

“Go over to the crib. Don't touch it. Just take a look at the pillow.”

Jessie was convinced now that it was the treacherous kind of dream where you thought you'd waked up but even that thought was part of the dream. Look at the pillow! Couldn't they look at it themselves?

Suddenly she felt a reluctance to go to the crib. That was queer, because she had seen death regularly for many years, in a thousand forms. Jessie had feared death only three times in her life, when her parents died and when she received the telegram from the War Department about Clem. So it was love, perhaps, that made the difference … because it was she who had tended his unhealed navel … because it was on her face that he had kept his bright new eyes fixed with such absolute trust while she fed him.

Let him not be there, she prayed.

“It's all right, Jessie,” Richard Queen's voice murmured close to her. “The little boy's been taken away.”

He knew, God bless him.

She walked over to the crib blindly. But then she shook her head clear and looked.

The expensive pillow was at the foot of the crib, one corner doubled over where it lay against the footboard.

The lace-edged pillowcase was spotless.

Jessie frowned. “It must have flipped over when I tossed it aside.”

“Borcher, turn it over for Miss Sherwood,” Chief Pearl said.

The Taugus detective took the lace between thumb and forefinger at one corner and turned the pillow carefully over.

The other side was spotless, too.

“But I don't understand,” Jessie said. “I saw it with my own eyes. I couldn't possibly have been mistaken.”

“Miss Sherwood.” The voice of the man from the State's Attorney's office was unpleasantly polite. “You would have us believe that you had your attention fixed on this pillow for no more than a second or two, in a room illuminated only by a dim baseboard nightlight, and not only saw a handprint on the pillow, but saw it clearly enough to be able to say that it seemed made by a human hand filthy with dust?”

“I can't help what you believe,” Jessie said. “That's what I saw.”

“It would be a feat of observation even if we found the handprint to back it up,” the tieless man said. “But as you see, Miss Sherwood, there's not a mark on either side of the pillow. Isn't it possible, in your shock and excitement—and the feeble light in the room—that it was an optical illusion? Something you imagined you saw that never was here?”

“I've never had an optical illusion in my life. I saw it just as I've described it.”

“You stick to that? You don't want to reconsider your recollection?”

“I most certainly do not.”

The tieless man seemed displeased. He and Chief Pearl conferred. The old man caught Jessie's eye and smiled.

Then they went to the window overlooking the driveway, where a man was doing something with some bottles and a brush, and the tieless man looked out and down while the chief said something about an aluminum extension ladder.

“Ladder?” Jessie blinked over at Richard Queen.

He came quickly to her. “Just like that night last month, Jessie. The same ladder, in fact. Didn't you notice it standing against the wall when you drove into the driveway?”

“I didn't drive into the driveway. I left my car on the road.”

“Oh, that was your car.” His face said nothing at all.

“Then that's how that—that monster's hand got all dirty! The dust on the ladder while he was climbing up.” Jessie was staring at the pillow. “Why didn't I notice that before?”

“Notice what, Jessie?” He was instantly alert.

“This isn't the same pillow slip!”

“Isn't the same as what?”

“As the one I saw that had the handprint on it.
Inspector Queen, this is a different slip.”

The old man looked at her. Then he called his friend and the State's Attorney's man over.

“Miss Sherwood says she now notices that this isn't the same pillowcase that had the handprint on it.”

“It isn't?” Chief Pearl glanced at the tieless man. “That's an interesting addition to the story, Merrick.”

The tieless man said to Jessie, “How can you tell?”

“The edging—Mr. Merrick, is it? The other slip was edged with a different kind of lace. Both slipcases are made of very fine batiste, but the edging of the other one was Honiton lace, while this, I think, is an Irish crochet. Anyway, it's not the same.”

“You're sure of this, Miss Sherwood?” Merrick demanded.

“Positive.”

“Changed,” Richard Queen remarked. “If you accept Miss Sherwood's story, somebody removed the soiled case from the pillow afterward and substituted this clean one. It's a break, Abe.”

The big policeman grunted, looking around the nursery. He pointed to what looked like a drawer in the wall near the door. “Is that a laundry chute, Miss Sherwood?”

“Yes.”

He went over to the wall and opened the chute door, trying to peer down. “Where does this lead to?”

“To the laundry in the basement.”

“Who does the laundry here?”

“Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Sadie Smith.”

“Sadie Smith.” Abe Pearl's heavy brows bunched. “Who's she? There's nobody of that name in the house.”

“She's an outside laundress from Norwalk. She comes in twice a week to do the hand laundry and ironing for the better things. The … baby's diapers I've been doing myself.” Jessie closed her eyes. Friday was one of Mrs. Smith's days. Tomorrow—today—she would show up, and she would wash and iron those exquisite little garments of Michael's …

“Tinny, Borcher.” Chief Pearl's two detectives came over. “Take a couple of men and split up. Look for a pillowcase with a lace edging, a case with a dirty handprint on it. Cover the laundry basement, hampers, linen closets, fireplaces, garbage—the likely ones first. If you don't find it, tear the place apart.”

People with watery outlines and sounds that mixed and jangled endlessly kept floating in and out of Jessie's awareness. She knew she had to sit there and hold on to herself in this strange world outside time, or horrible things would happen. Through it all she strained to hear little Michael's voice, more than ever convinced by the unsubstantial quality of things that it had all happened in a dream, or a film. Sooner or later there would be a snap, the film would break, and the world would be restored to sanity and rightness.

Occasionally she felt Richard Queen's touch on her shoulder. Once he put his palm to her forehead. His hand felt dry and cool, and Jessie looked up at him. “Please keep it there: It feels good.” But he took it away after a moment, embarrassed.