The Player on the Other Side (8 page)

He drank, and the old man drank again, keeping his eyes anxiously on his son's face while he did so.

Ellery banged his glass down on the coffee table. ‘So! Now that I know why I dried up, I know what to do about it.'

‘You do?'

‘I do.'

‘And what's that?'

‘I'm taking no more cases — mine, yours, anybody's. I'm through investigating crimes. What I write from now on is going to come out of here' — he tapped his temple — ‘entirely. Something new, something different. I don't know what yet, but it'll come.'

‘No more cases,' his father said after a contemplative time.

‘No more cases.'

‘Too bad.'

Ellery pursued a fugitive thought.

After a while he looked up. His father was staring at him in the most peculiar way. In spite of himself, Ellery began to feel his way back along the past quarter-hour, like a man crossing a muddy stream on invisible stepping stones.

‘Too bad?' Ellery said. ‘Dad, did you say “too bad”?'

‘That's what I said.'

‘Yes, and before that all you said was “He did?” … “You were?” … “You do?” … “What?” —'

‘I did?' the Inspector said sheepishly.

Ellery chewed on his lower lip for a moment. ‘Dad.'

‘Hmm?'

‘What is it?'

‘What is what?'

Ellery exploded. ‘
Balls
of fire! The other night you chewed me out for waiting for a case to happen so I could start writing again. You know why you dumped your ill-temper on me? Because you were feeling guilty over not having a case to bring home to me! Tonight, when I announce I'm giving up case work as a basis for my novels, you start acting bashful and coy. Remember me, Dad? I'm the child of your loins and I'm starving! What nourishment have you brought me from downtown?'

Inexplicably, each began to laugh. Their laughter did not last long, but it sufficed. Where that laughter came from, words could not reach.

The Inspector shifted his wiry body a little and reached into a side pocket. ‘Fellow got himself slaughtered the other night. Person or persons as yet unknown. In fact, everything as yet unknown.'

‘So?'

‘So. This came in the mail for him just before he was clobbered.' The Inspector produced something from the pocket he had been exploring and rose and went over to the coffee table and dropped his find before Ellery.

Ellery leaned forward at the waist. His eyebrows drew ever so lightly toward each other as he studied what the Inspector had produced for his inspection.

It was a five-sided white card of peculiar proportions, with a capital J stamped on it in what seemed to be black stamping-pad ink.

The Inspector said, ‘That was the first one.'

9

Y's Gambit Accepted

‘Never saw anything like it,' Inspector Queen was saying. ‘That house, I mean. It's laid out like a surgeon's tray. Chair in a corner had to be checked with a draftsman's triangle for exact placement. Big picture mathematically centered on the wall, with two little pictures the same size flanking it exactly the same distance away. Just so much floor could show at each end of the carpet. Whole house is like that except the secretary's room — I don't mean his room's grubby, just that it looks as if someone lives there, which the rest of the house doesn't. You'll see for yourself, Ellery.'

Ellery made no commitment. He was staring at the card.

‘But he — the lord and master of all this … this exactitude — he was the godawfulest mess you ever saw,
I
ever saw,' the old man went on. ‘I've seen accident cases spread out over half a block didn't look as messy as that patio. I s'pose that's what gave me the feeling right off that this case is going to be a wrongo — your kind of wrongo, Ellery. He was lying on a steel-framed chaise on the patio just outside his impeccable dining room. Except for his head, I mean. That was scattered to hell and gone. Someone'd shoved a two-hundred-pound granite block off the top of the tower forty feet above him … onto his head.'

‘This is Robert York you're talking about,' Ellery said suddenly. ‘Of York Square.'

‘How did you know that? Oh, the papers. Yump,' the Inspector said, ‘it's the Robert York case, all right.'

‘May I handle the card?'

‘Yes.'

Ellery picked up the white card, turned it over, turned it back. ‘What's this J?'

‘You tell me, son. There isn't a John, Jack, Jim, Joan or Jehoshaphat in all of York Square. Or a Johnson, Jackson, or Jimson, either.'

Ellery replaced the card on the coffee table and began to hypnotize it. ‘Go on. It couldn't have been an accident?'

‘Not unless somebody accidently chipped away all the mortar around the stone, accidently cracked it loose with a pinch bar and then accidently swept up all the stone dust. Velie got up there like lightning, and I wasn't far behind. Nobody'd have had time to do that thorough a clean-up job after the push off. So it had to have been done beforehand — maybe days before, weeks. And that makes it premeditated murder.'

‘How was the granite block tipped off the tower?'

‘By a good hard push. That stone wasn't teetering in the balance up there, Ellery. It was a solid block with a dead-flat seat under it. Even without the mortar it would have stayed put during a hundred years of hurricanes.'

‘So all the block-buster had to do was wait until York happened to be directly underneath —?'

‘That's the beauty part. This Robert York “happened” to be directly underneath on every mild evening from May fifteenth to October first at half-past seven, give or take ten seconds — you heard me, ten
seconds
— and there he'd stay until half-past eight on the dot. Rainy or chilly evenings he'd lie down on the settee in his study. But he always napped exactly one hour after dinner.'

‘Which of course, everyone in the place knew?'

‘And more people outside it than I care to think about trying to track down. He liked to brag about the to-the-second regularity of his habits. And how he could fall asleep on a dime and wake himself up the same way.'

‘Built-in alarm clock.' Ellery nodded. ‘Who had access to the tower, Dad?'

‘Everybody,' grunted the old man. ‘There's an outside door that opens directly to the tower stairs, also an inside door in the downstairs hall that runs between the front rooms and the kitchen.'

‘Doors kept locked?'

‘Only the outside door, but the lock is an old relic you could undo with your front teeth without leaving a mark.'

‘Who was in the house at the time the granite block fell?'

‘Nobody. The handyman was in the garage, changing the oil in one of the cars.'

‘Didn't he hear or see anything?'

‘He says no. Could be, too. The garage is pretty far from the terrace, and the block was — well — cushioned some when it landed.'

Ellery made a face. ‘Who cooked York's dinner?'

‘Housekeeper, a sleep-out name of Mrs. Schriver. She always had his meal ready at a quarter of seven, he was always finished at five after. Then she'd carry the dishes out to the kitchen and go home.'

‘Didn't wash them before leaving? Oh, of course. Don't disturb the master at his nap.'

‘Right.'

Ellery pulled at his lower lip until it stretched like a Ubangi's. ‘Think of asking anyone how sound a sleeper he was?'

‘Didn't I. Consensus is that you couldn't have waked York with a fire hose till he chose to wake himself.'

Ellery frowned. ‘Then what's this nonsense about the housekeeper's not doing the dishes because it would disturb His Majesty's nap?'

‘I asked her. She says it's a habit she got into when she went to work there three years ago and first found out about Robert York's after-dinner snooze. She just never bothered to change her routine.'

‘Big strong woman, is she?'

The Inspector showed his dentures in what might have been laughter. ‘
Little
strong woman.'

Ellery communed with some invisible entity in midair. Suddenly he said, ‘What about this handyman?'

‘Walt? Oh, he's a dandy little suspect. Up on the tower that day, too, trimming the ivy. Says even if the mortar under the block had been loosened by that time he'd likely not have noticed. I can believe that, by the way. The cracks are thin and deep-set; you can hardly see the mortar on or under the other blocks. Sure, Walt could have done the whole job, then skinned on down and out to the garage. But so could everybody else. Everybody.'

‘Ugh,' Ellery said mildly. ‘All right — who found the headless paragon?'

‘His secretary. Young guy named Thomas Archer. Archer is remounting York's stamp collections or something — been putting in a lot of night work.'

‘Did Archer have dinner with York?'

‘No. He used to all the time, but Mrs. Schriver tells me he's eaten most of his meals out lately.'

‘Out where?'

‘That night? At Myra York's house — the one in the south-east corner of the Square.'

‘How come?'

‘Myra has a paid companion, a girl named Ann Drew, who's apparently stirred young Archer's blood. He had dinner with the girl in Myra York's kitchen. Myra was upstairs in bed, sick.'

‘So the girl alibis this Archer fellow?'

‘They alibi each
other
,' said the old man with a grimace, ‘which I hate. By the way, if this Drew number doesn't bubble
your
blood a little, son —'

Ellery interrupted. ‘And the other denizens of York Square?'

‘Well, Cousin Emily claims she was alone in her house writing letters. Cousin Percival says he was alone in
his
house washing down a hangover so he'd feel up to building another one.'

‘And that accounts for the lot? Including the help?'

The old man nodded grimly. ‘That's it. Any one of 'em could have done it.'

‘Including the man from Dubuque,' Ellery said thoughtfully.

‘Theoretically, sure. But I don't think this was the work of a passing stranger. Strangers don't get to hang around York Square for days — or even hours — ahead of time chipping out mortar on one of the towers.'

Ellery stared down at the inked J on the card. ‘The newspaper accounts say that Robert York's death means an extra million or so to each of his cousins when the whole bundle comes due. When is that, by the way?'

‘According to the will, in about six months. Equal shares to all surviving heirs at the time the estate is distributed.'

‘The old tontine foolishness,' Ellery said in disgust. ‘This is Nathaniel York, Senior's, will you're talking about?'

‘Yes. Robert's will left everything
he
has to the joint estate, too. It doesn't amount to much — I mean, compared to the sheer mass of the principal estate — although of course to you and me it would be a fortune.'

They were silent for a while.

‘Emily York's some sort of ascetic, isn't she?' Ellery murmured, looking up. ‘And Myra's an invalid? I can't see either of them going out of her way to jack up the big pot by cutting down on the number of heirs. Which would seem to leave Percival.'

The Inspector's face took on a look of deep warning. ‘Just between you and me, son, I'd like for it to come out that way. There's a walking, talking pimple if ever I saw one!'

‘So I gather. But what would even a no-goodnik like Percival, who'll soon have three million dollars to spend, want with a fourth?'

‘Are you kidding?'

‘Enough to commit murder for, I mean.'

‘Oh, stop, Ellery. Next you'll be saying that babies really are delivered by storks. Besides which, I haven't counted out the lady cousins by a long shot.'

‘You think Emily or Myra could have pushed over two hundred pounds of stone?'

‘They could have paid some muscle to do the pushing, couldn't they? — after chipping away the mortar themselves.'

‘Any indication of that?'

‘Give me a chance, will you?' the Inspector grumbled. ‘But talking about motive. Take this Emily. Sure
is
an ascetic — a millionaire ascetic, the most fanatical kind. She uses only two rooms of that castle of hers, works for a settlement house, lives mostly on her settlement-house pay, and donates the bulk of her income from the estate
to
the settlement house. And she's got big plans for when she comes into her share of the millions, I understand, plans involving her work. She's a funny old gal, and if something happened to threaten the distribution of those millions in any way — I wouldn't put
anything
past her.'

‘And Myra?' Ellery asked.

The old man said slowly, ‘She looks harmless —
looks
harmless. Maybe she's what she seems to be. But … I don't know. Myra's some kind of nut. Trouble is, I can't figure out what kind. Vague. Unpredictable …' He shook his head. ‘You'll see, Ellery.'

‘Now I haven't said —' began Ellery.

‘Oh, sure. Excuse me,' his father said, ‘
If
you'll join me in this head-breaker, you'll see.'

Ellery grunted and subsided. ‘Is there anyone else who might feel better off in a Robert Yorkless world?'

The old man shrugged. ‘Far as I can tell, nobody loved him, nobody hated him. Young Archer, his secretary, tells me Robert always tried to be absolutely fair. According to Robert's lights, of course, which I gather very few people but Archer appreciated.'

‘Oh, so? How come? What about this Archer?'

‘Bright, on the bookish side. We're interested in him because of that stamp collection of Robert York's he's remounting and re-cataloguing. He's been told by Emily and Percival to go on with the stamp work, because of course it goes to the joint estate along with Robert's other personal property —'