Queens Full (5 page)

Newby said politely, “Suit yourself,” and turned away.

The knife had been removed from Benedict's back and it was lying on the dressing table. It was a long, hefty hunting knife, its bloodstained blade honed to a wicked edge.

The coroner grunted, “I'm through for now,” and opened the door. Two ambulance men came in at his nod and took the body out. “I'll do the post first thing in the morning.”

“Could a woman have sunk the knife to the hilt?” Newby asked.

“Far's I can tell without an autopsy, it went into the heart without striking bone. If that's so, a kid could have done it.” The coroner left.

Newby walked over to the table. The technician was packing his gear. “Find any prints on the knife?”

“No, sir. It was either handled with a handkerchief or gloves or wiped off afterward. This plastic tape is pretty slick, Chief, anyway.”

“What about prints elsewhere?”

“Some of Benedict's on the dressing table and on the make-up stuff, and a lot of someone else's, a man's.”

“Those would be Manson's. He used this room all week. No woman's prints?”

“No, sir. But about this knife. There are some queer marks on the handle.”

“Marks?” Newby picked up the knife by the tip of the blade and scrutinized the haft. He seemed puzzled.

“There's some on the other side, too.”

The chief turned the knife over. “Any notion what made these, Bill?”

“Well, no, sir.”

Newby studied the marks again. Without looking around he said, “Mr. Queen, did you happen to notice these marks?”

“Yes,” Ellery said.

The chief waited, as if for Ellery to go on. But Ellery did not go on. Newby's ears slowly reddened.

“We could send the knife up to the big lab in Conn-haven,” the young technician suggested.

“I know that, Bill! But suppose first we try to identify them on our own. Right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Newby stalked out to the stage. Meekly, Ellery followed.

The little police chief's interrogation of the company was surgical. In short order he established that between the lowering of the curtain and the discovery of the dying man, every member of the cast except Joan Truslow had either been in view of someone else or could otherwise prove an alibi. With equal economy he disposed of the stagehands.

He had long since released the audience. Now he sent the cast and the crew home.

On the emptying of the theater the curtain had been raised and the house lights turned off. Scutney Bluefield and Archer Dullman sat in gloom and silence, too. Each man an island, Ellery thought; and he wondered how good an explorer Anselm Newby really was. For the first time he sensed an impatience, almost an eagerness, in Newby.

“Well, gentlemen, it's getting late—”

“Chief.” Scutney was lying back on the set couch, thighs and lips parted, gazing up into the flies and managing to resemble an old lady after an exhausting day. “Are you intending to close me down?”

“No call for that, Mr. Bluefield. We'll just seal off that dressing room.”

“Then I can go ahead with, say, rehearsals?”

“Better figure on day after tomorrow. The Prosecutor's office will be all over the place till then.”

Scutney struggled off the couch.

“Oh, one thing before you go, Mr. Bluefield. Did you see or hear anything tonight that might help us out?”

Scutney said, “I wasn't here,” and trudged off the stage.

“You, Mr. Dullman?”

“I told you all I know, Chief.” Dullman shifted the remains of his cigar to the other side of his mouth. “Is it all right with you if I go see what's with my client before somebody does a carving job on him?”

“Just don't leave town. And, Mr. Dullman.”

“What?”

“Don't talk about what Benedict said.” When Dullman was gone, Newby said, “Well.” He got up and made for the stage steps.

“Chief,” Ellery said.

Newby paused.

“You don't have much of a case, you know.”

The little policeman trotted down into the orchestra. He selected the aisle seat in the third row center and settled himself. Like a critic, Ellery thought. A critic who's already made up his mind.

“Gotch,” Chief Newby called.

“Yes, sir.”

“Get Miss Truslow.”

ACT II. Scene 4.

Joan sailed out of the wings chin up, braced. But all she saw was Ellery straddling a chair far upstage, and she began to look around uncertainly.

Roger yelled, “You down there—Newby!” and ran over to the footlights. “What's the idea keeping Miss Truslow a prisoner in her dressing room all this time?”

“Roger,” Joan said.

“If you think you've got something on her, spit it out and I'll have a lawyer down here before it hits the floor!”

“Sit down, Miss Truslow,” Newby's soft voice said from below. “You, too, Fowler.”

Joan sat down immediately.

Whatever it was that Roger glimpsed in her violet eyes, it silenced him. He joined her on the couch, reached for her hand. She withdrew it.

Newby said, “Miss Truslow, when did you make your last stage exit?”

“At the end of my scene with Foster Benedict on the—on this couch.”

“How long before the act ended was that?”

“About ten minutes.”

“Did you go right to your dressing room?”

“Yes.”

“In doing that, you had to pass by the tool chest. Was it open?”

“The chest? I can't say. I didn't notice much of anything.” Joan caught her hands in the act of twisting in her lap, and she stilled them. “I was badly upset. They must have told you what he—the way he carried on during our big scene.”

“Yes. I hear he gave you a rough time.” The little chief sounded sympathetic. “But you did notice the tool chest later, Miss Truslow, didn't you?”

She looked up. “Later?”

“In the intermission. After Benedict got to his dressing room.”

Joan blinked into the lights. “But you don't understand, Chief Newby. I went straight to my dressing room and I stayed there. I was … frozen, I suppose is the word. I just sat asking myself how I was going to get through the rest of the play. It was all I could think of.”

“While you were up there, did you hear anything going on in the room below? Benedict's dressing room?”

“I don't remember hearing anything.”

“When
did
you leave your dressing room, Miss Truslow?”

“When I heard all the commotion downstairs. After he was found.”

“That was the first time, you say?”

“Yes.”

Newby said suddenly, “Fowler, Queen found you with this girl. How come?”

“How come?” Roger snapped. “Why, somebody ran into the prop room to tell me something had happened to Benedict. I ran back with him and spotted Joan in the crowd around Benedict's doorway. I hauled her out of there and up to her dressing room so I could put my arms around her in privacy when she broke down, which she promptly did. Wasn't that sneaky of me?”

“Then that was the first time you saw her after she left the stage?”

“I couldn't get to her before, though God knows I wanted to. I was too tied up backstage—” Roger halted. “That was sneaky of
you
, Newby. And damn nasty, too! What are you trying to prove, anyway?”

“Miss Truslow, how well did you know Foster Benedict?”

Ellery saw Joan go stiff. “Know him?”

“Were you two acquainted? Ever see him before tonight?”

She said something.

“What? I couldn't hear that.”

Joan cleared her throat. “No.”

“Logan.” A police officer jumped off the apron and darted to his chief. Newby said something behind his hand. The man hurried up the aisle and out of the theater. “Miss Truslow, a witness says that when Benedict went into his dressing room the tool chest was open and a big knife with a taped handle was lying in the tray. I'll ask you again. Did you or didn't you leave your dressing room, climb down, go to the chest—”

“I didn't,” Joan cried.

“—go to the chest, pick up the knife—”

“Hold it.” Roger was on his feet. “You really want to know about that knife, Newby?”

“You have some information about it?”

“Definitely.”

“What?”

“It's mine.”

“Oh?” Newby sat waiting.

“I can prove it,” Roger said quickly. “If you'll strip the tape off you'll find my initials machine-stamped into the haft. I've used it on hunting trips for years. I brought it to the theater just today. We'd bought some new guy-rope yesterday and I needed a sharp knife—”

“I know all about your ownership of the knife,” Newby smiled. “The question isn't who owned the knife, or even who put it in the tool chest. It's who took it out of the chest and used it on Benedict. Miss Truslow—”

“Excuse me,” Ellery said. The chief was startled into silence. “Roger, when did you tape the handle?”

“Tonight, after the play started. I'd used it in replacing a frayed guy-rope and I hadn't been able to keep a good grip on it because my hands were sweaty from the heat backstage. So I wound electrician's tape around the haft in case I had to use it again in an emergency during the performance.”

“When did you drop it into the chest?”

“Near the end of the act.”

“I thought I'd made it clear, Mr. Queen!” The whiplash in the policeman's voice was no longer lazy. “Interrupt once more and out you go.”

“Yes, Chief,” Ellery murmured. “Sorry, Chief.”

Newby was quiet Then he said, “Now I want to be sure I have this right, Miss Truslow. You claim you went from the stage straight to your dressing room, you stayed there all the time Benedict was being knifed in the room right under yours, you didn't hear a sound, you didn't come down till after Benedict was found dying, and at no time did you touch the knife. Is that it?”

“That's it.” Joan jumped up. “No, Roger!” She walked steadily over to the footlights. “Now let me ask you a question, Chief Newby. Why are you treating me as if you've decided I killed Foster Benedict?”

“Didn't you?” Newby asked.

“I did not kill him!”

“Somebody said you did.”

Joan peered and blinked through the glare in her eyes. “But that's not possible. It isn't true. I can't imagine anyone making up a story like that about me. Who said it?”

“Benedict, in the presence of witnesses, a few seconds before he died.”

Joan said something unintelligible. Newby and Ellery sprang to their feet. But Roger was closest, and he caught her just as her legs gave way.

ACT III. Scene 1.

Ellery awoke at noon. He leaped for the door and took in the
Record
, with its familiar yellow label conveying the compliments of the Hollis. For the first time in years the
Record's
front page ran a two-line banner:

MURDER HITS WRIGHTSVILLE FAMOUS STAGE STAR SLAIN!

The account of the crime was wordy and inaccurate. There were publicity photos of Benedict and the cast. The front page was salted with statements by Dr. Farnham, members of the audience, cast, stage crew, even police. Chief Anselm Newby's contribution was boxed but uninformative. The
Record
quoted Scutney Bluefield (“The Playhouse must go on”), Archer Dullman (“No comment”), and Ellery Queen (“Any statement I might make about Benedict's death would encroach on the authority of your excellent police chief”). There was a story on Mark Manson under a one-column cut showing him at a bar, uninjured arm holding aloft a cocktail glass (“Mr. Manson was found at the Hollis bar at a late hour last night on his discharge from Wrightsville General Hospital, in company of his manager, Archer Dullman. Asked to comment on the tragedy, Mr. Manson said, ‘Words truly fail me, sir, which is why you discover me saying it with martinis.' With the help of this reporter, Mr. Dullman was finally able to persuade Mr. Manson to retire to his hotel room”).

A choppy review of the first act of
The Death of Don Juan
showed evidence of hasty editing. What the original copy had said Ellery could only imagine.

The sole reference in print to Joan was a cryptic “Miss Joan Truslow and Mr. Roger Fowler of the Playhouse staff could not be located for a statement as we went to press.”

Of Foster Benedict's dying words no mention was made.

Ellery ordered breakfast and hurried for his shower.

He was finishing his second cup of coffee when the telephone rang. It was Roger.

“Where the devil did you hide Joan last night?”

“In my Aunt Carrie's house.” Roger sounded harassed. “She's in Europe, left me a key. Joan was in no condition to face reporters or yak with the likes of Emmeline DuPré. Her father knows where we are, but that's all.”

“Didn't you tell Newby?”

“Tell Newby? It's Newby who smuggled us over to Aunt Carrie's. Considerate guy, Newby. He has a cop staked out in the back yard and another in plain clothes parked across the street in an unmarked car.”

Ellery said nothing.

“Me, too,” Roger said grimly. “I gave Joanie a sleeping pill and stayed up most of the night biting my nails. Far as I know, Newby has no direct evidence against Joan, just those last words of a dying man whose mind was already in outer space. Just the same, I'll feel better with a lawyer around. Before I call one in, though …” Roger hesitated. “What I mean is, I'm sorry I blew my stack last night. Would you come over here right away?”

“Where is it?” Ellery chuckled.

Roger gave him an address on State Street, in the oldest residential quarter of town.

It was an immaculately preserved eighteenth-century mansion under the protection of the great elms that were the pride of State Street. The black shades were drawn, and from the street the clapboard house looked shut down. Ellery strolled around to the rear and knocked on the back door, pretending not to notice the policeman lurking inside a latticed summerhouse. Roger admitted him and led the way through a huge kitchen and pantry and along a cool hall to a stately parlor whose furniture was under dust covers.