The Scarlet Letters (18 page)

Irons also called Tama Mayuko, who testified to at least five separate occasions on which he had admitted Martha Lawrence to Harrison's house and witnessed her retirement with the actor to his bedroom.

The second part of Darrell Irons's defense was devoted lovingly to Harrison. The lawyer called a parade of witnesses–in some cases the courtroom was cleared of spectators, in others testimony was given in chambers–who testified to Harrison's numerous amours with married women preceding his affair with Mrs. Lawrence. Irons put into evidence the figures of Harrison's meager earnings from his profession during recent years; he put into evidence Harrison's savings bank accounts and the contents of several safedeposit boxes, showing large accumulations of cash unaccounted for by his legitimate earnings and unreported in his income tax returns. And the lawyer connected Martha's withdrawals of cash with identical sums deposited in Harrison's numerous accounts …

At the close of Friday's session, Dirk's lawyer had still not finished painting the dead actor in his full gigolo colors. He promised more–much more–for Monday.

Dirk was taken back to his cell in the county jail on Bridgeport's North Avenue, and Ellery and Nikki drove to Norwalk Hospital. Martha's condition was unchanged; she was alive under heavy sedation, and that was all. They were allowed to peep into her room for five seconds. Her eyes were open, but she seemed not to recognize them. Her doctors had refused pointblank both Irons's and the State's Attorney's formal requests to take a statement from her.

Ellery persuaded Nikki to return with him to New York for the weekend.

Saturday began badly. The phone rang, the buzzer buzzed, all morning. Ellery, who had planned a quiet day for Nikki, spirited her away from West 87th Street and they went to Central Park.

They drifted for sweltering hours with no conversation. When Nikki's step lagged, Ellery found a place for her under a shade tree, and she dozed with her head in his lap. Occasionally she moaned.

XY
…

He could not get it out of his mind.

Nothing had been made of it in court, by either side. It had been put into the record and dismissed as the irrelevant meandering of a dying brain.

But Ellery remembered the incredible effort, worthy of a meaning. It was relevant. Of this he was certain.

What could Harrison have meant to convey?

When Nikki woke up, they strolled across the park, and in late afternoon they found themselves among the beautiful little buildings of the park zoo. They found a table on the terrace overlooking the seal pool, and Ellery went into the cafeteria and came back with sandwiches and milk, and they sat there munching and sipping and watching the scampering children and the crowds about the tall monkey cages and the seals.

And finally Nikki said with a sigh, “I'm glad we came, Ellery. It's always so restful at the zoo.”

“What?” said Ellery.

“The zoo,” Nikki repeated. “I love that word, don't you? There's no other word like it in the English language. It's a fun-word, but to me a quiet fun-word. Even when I was growing up in Kansas City and Papa took me sometimes to the zoo in Swope Park, it didn't mean racing-around-fun so much as looking-with-your-mouth-open-fun, and dreaming about zebras and monkeys for days afterward … What did you say?”

“Zoo,” Ellery muttered again.
“Zoo.”

He was sitting straight.

Nikki looked at him, astonished. “Well, of course,” she began. “That's what I just–”

“Zoo … I'd forgotten about that!”

“Forgotten about what, Ellery?”

“Z. The last code-letter indicated in Harrison's book.”

The look of pleasure left Nikki's face, and she turned away.

But Ellery went on, raptly. “Harrison wrote the letters
X
and
Y
. And then he died. Suppose, Nikki …
suppose he hadn't finished?”

And now Nikki frowned. “You mean he meant to add
Z
, but died before he could?”

“Why not?”

“Well, I guess that could be …”

“It has to be! As
XY
, it makes no sense.”

“
XYZ
… I can't see that
XYZ
makes any more sense than
XY.”

“It's an ending,” said Ellery, waving his arms.
“The
ending. The ending of Harrison's code … the ending of Harrison.”

“What,” sighed Nikki, “are you talking about?”

Ellery glanced at his watch. “It's too late to get up there today–”

“Get up
where
today, Ellery?”

“To the zoo.”

“You're
in
the zoo!”

“Not Harrison's zoo,” said Ellery. “Harrison's zoo in his code book was the zoo in Bronx Park. And that, Nikki, is just where I'm going first thing tomorrow morning.”

“But what on earth do you expect to find there?”

Ellery looked blank. “I haven't any idea.”

Some friends took Nikki away to Long Island for a day's boating, the Inspector had to be at Headquarters on a hot homicide, so on Sunday Ellery drove off alone. He was rather glad it had worked out that way.

It was a dreary day with heavy gray skies and an advance guard of thunderheads over the Palisades. It matched his mood, although he worried about Nikki. Portents seemed in the air.

He squirmed behind the wheel as he inched along the West Side Highway. His skin itched.

XYZ
… It was possible. It was even likely.

But then what?

Ellery felt dogged.
Z
was the end. It completed the circle. So you hooked onto the merry-go-round and went along for the ride. Maybe there was a ring–?

He had never felt so foolish.

He left the express highway at Dyckman Street and drove north on Broadway to 207th Street. There was little traffic on the streets. He turned east on 207th and followed Fordham Road into Pelham Parkway and the Concourse Gate of the Bronx Zoo.

He left his car in the parking circle beyond the entrance and began his aimless odyssey. He felt a little more like Jurgen than Odysseus–searching for he knew not what. But Odysseus had adventured with swine; and because one objective was as good as another, Ellery set a leisurely course for the southwest corner of the park, where the wild swine rooted. He was that desperate.

On the way he paused at the Lion House to admire the big tankfuls of tropical fish in the Aquarium. He passed the Children's Zoo and the camels and elephants and rhinos. He almost went into the Question House at the solicitation of the sign. Would they know, he wondered, what Van Harrison had meant by his
X
and his
Y
and his probable Z? He decided they would not, and he went on.

The wild swine depressed him. Pigs with tusks. They gave him nothing.

He went on, bearing east.

And there were the kangeroos and the giraffes and the cavies, the bongos and the okapi, the great apes and the wild goats and the thrilling spread of the African Plains, where lions roamed apparently free.

And he wondered what he was doing there.

And so he turned north by west, and he visited with the panting polar bears and the biggest carnivores in the entire known universe, according to the description of the Alaska brown bears. And they gave him less than nothing, unless it was a feeling of relief at the steel bars that stood between him and them. And he viewed the moose and Père David's Deer and the Heads and Horns Museum, and the Monkey House and the sea lions and the Administration Building–and there he was, back at the parking space, having gone the great circle from nothing to nothing.

Ellery got into his car angrily and drove toward the main gate.

A line of cars waited to swing into Pelham Parkway. He crawled along, simmering as he stopped and started.

A park workman was busy at the gate, and because there was nothing else to do Ellery watched him. The workman was wielding a paint-brush on the faded lettering of the entranceway sign. NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL-something, it said. The painter was working over the first
L
.

Ellery sat up. But then he slumped again.

He wondered what was holding up the line, and he stuck his head out. Two cars had locked bumpers.

He settled back for another wait, and his glance returned to the sign painter.

L. O
…

The painter started on the
G
.

And there came a stroke, as of lightning, and the heavens proclaimed alarums and excursions, and the rains came …

The painter shook his head, gathered his buckets and his brushes, and went away.

Ellery became aware of a great honking and beeping behind him. He looked up, blankly. There was nothing before him. He drove into Pelham Parkway.

Lightning again. And sweet thunder.

He drove in a daze, circling until he approached the entrance again, and driving slowly past the unfinished sign to gaze with wonder at the running paint. And he drove back to the parking circle, and he got out, and he walked reverently in the pelting rain back to the entrance–back to stare up at the sign and admire how the heavens opened and emptied.

A sign, a sign.

Ellery came to at a tap on his arm.

“You the owner of that car in the parking circle?” It was a park attendant. “It's past closing.”

Ellery looked at his watch. It was almost seven o'clock. He had been standing at the entrance in the rain for almost two hours.

“We've been laying bets on you, Mister,” said the attendant, matching strides with him. “Anybody stands in the rain like he was under a shower on a hot day is either waiting for a date or he's doping the horses for tomorrow's races. Or is something wrong?”

“Yes.”

“Something wrong?”

“Well, yes and no. It's wrong and it's right.”

The attendant shook his head. He said disconsolately, “Then I guess all bets are off,” and he stared after Ellery until Ellery got into his car and drove out of the park.

It was wrong and it was right.

Exactly.

Ellery drove by habit, unconscious of direction or destination. And as he drove he went over the ground for the tenth time, from the beginning.

Yes, it was right. It was wrong, too, but now the important thing was the rightness.

All I need now, he was thinking, is evidence. Evidence that will stand up in court. Evidence to satisfy the State's Attorney and the judge and the jury.

If it exists.

If it can be found.

If it can be found in time.

He began to feel depressed again.

The fact that he now knew what Van Harrison had meant by his bloody printing no longer seemed important.

The important thing was: Could he prove it?

Z …

At a few minutes before ten on Monday morning, Ellery stood at bay in Judge Levy's chambers off the courtroom. Before him sat the judge, the prosecutor, and Dirk's attorney.

“I'm given to understand, Mr. Queen,” said Judge Levy, “that you have something of importance to impart before court convenes this morning.”

“What is it?” asked Darrell Irons coldly. He did not care for the introduction of something of importance at a time when he was expecting a quick wrap-up and a quicker favorable verdict.

The State merely looked receptive.

Ellery chose his words. “There is the possibility of new evidence in the case, Your Honor. If this new evidence can be found, it will have a significant bearing on the trial. Would it be possible for you to declare a recess of … say …”–he tried to read the judge's expression, failed, and decided in favor of conservatism– “twenty-four hours?”

“New evidence?” frowned Irons. “Of what, Queen?”

“Yes, Mr. Queen,” asked the judge, “what is the nature of this evidence?”

“I'd prefer not to say.”

“My dear sir,” exclaimed Judge Levy, “you can't expect me to recess a murder trial on your mere say-so.”

“I have no choice,” said Ellery quickly. “It's the sort of thing no legal mind would swallow for a moment without the evidence to wash it down. I'm not even sure evidence sufficient to bring into court exists. I can only plead my qualifications and experience in these matters. I give you my word, Judge Levy, there is no trick involved, I have no ax to grind, I'm acting for no one, and I'm aiming toward nothing but simple justice. All I ask is one day.”

Irons shook his head, smiling, as if in all his years at the bar he had never heard such a childish request.

“Of course,” began the State, “Mr. Queen does have unique standing, Sam–”

The judge rose. “No, I'm sorry. I can't delay the trial on any such basis. If you're ready, gentlemen?”

Ellery touched the prosecutor's sleeve and he lingered a moment.

“What the devil do you have, Queen?” he asked in a low voice.

Ellery shrugged. “Right now, nothing but a web spun in thin air. What are the chances of the trial's going to the jury today?”

“Not very good, I should say. It depends principally on Irons at this point. He seems determined to convict Van Harrison of multiple adultery.”

Ellery looked relieved. “Then would you cooperate to this extent? I'd appreciate your doing two things for me: Have one of the exhibits in the case submitted to a lab for analysis, and lend me for a few hours' study all the records of Harrison's various bank accounts.”

“I suppose it could be done with the Court's permission and under the proper supervision,” said the State doubtfully. “Which exhibit?”

Ellery told him.

The prosecutor looked puzzled. “Why that one?”

“I'd rather not say now. If what I suspect is demonstrably true, you'll hear plenty before the day is out.”

“I'm being paged. I may not be able to get to Judge Levy on this before the noon recess … Coming!” He dashed into the courtroom.

But he spoke to the jurist immediately. Judge Levy conferred with Irons, who threw up his hands and glanced heavenward. Ellery hurried out after the exhibit.

An officer took him to an empty courtroom. Ellery spread out the records of Harrison's bank accounts on the bench and set to work. The exhibit he had asked for was already on its way to the laboratory.

Forty-five minutes later he looked up. “Officer, do you know Miss Porter by sight–Nikki Porter, one of the witnesses in this case?”

“Redheaded babe? Yes,
sir,”
said the officer enthusiastically. Ellery scribbled on a scratch pad, tore off the sheet. “Would you take this note to her and ask her to write the answer below? She's in the courtroom.”

“I'm not supposed to leave these things–”

“I'll guard them with my life. I have a far greater interest in them just now than the State of Connecticut. Hurry, officer, will you?”

When the policeman returned, Ellery read Nikki's scribble, and he nodded with satisfaction. “I'll be right back, officer.”

He found a phone booth and put in a call to his father at New York Police Headquarters.

“Oh, Ellery. Is it all over?” asked the Inspector.

“Not yet. Look, Dad, can you arrange for permission to examine a certain account at the Equity Savings Bank, Fifth Avenue branch?”

“What's up, son?”

“I haven't time to explain. Can you do it yourself? I can leave here and meet you in two hours, with luck.”

“Get on your wagon.”

Ellery sped back to the empty room. “I've got to drive down to New York, officer. You can take these back to the courtroom.”

When Ellery returned to the county courthouse, it was late afternoon. He dashed to a phone booth and called the laboratory to which the other exhibit had been sent.

“There's no question about that?”

“No, Mr. Queen. A minimum of four years, most likely five.”

“Thank you!”

Ellery hurried up to the courtroom, glancing confidently at his watch.

The corridor was thronged. People milled, talking noisily.

“Ellery?”

“Nikki! What's all this? Session over for the day?”

“Don't you know? Haven't you been here?”

“Obviously not,” said Ellery, a frost settling over his bones. “What's happened?”

“The case just went to the jury.”

“No!”

“For some reason,” said Nikki, eying him curiously, “Mr. Irons rested for the defense shortly before noon. After the noon recess, they had a short recross-examination and went right into the summations. The jury went out about fifteen minutes ago. Where you going?”

“To see Judge Levy!”

Ellery faced the judge, the prosecutor, and a poker-faced defense counsel in the judge's chambers. Nikki sat in a corner, searching Ellery's face.

“I'm not going to waste time in recriminations, Mr. Irons,” Ellery began rapidly. “You pulled a fast one in the interests of your client. But from what I know about you, you're concerned with justice as well as doing a smart legal job.

“About the feeling of the State's Attorney's office and you, Judge Levy, I have no doubts.

“So we all want to see justice done. The only question is: Is there time? For all I know, with the jury already out, it may be too late. No–please. We haven't time to go into the legal technicalities.

“Listen to me. Very carefully.”

Ellery leaned over the judge's desk. “I've spent the day trying to find proof of a theory that came to me late yesterday. As I said this morning, it's a theory I couldn't expect anyone of legal training to accept without the corroboration of evidence. I've found that evidence. It puts an entirely new construction on this case.

“The theory hinges on a proper interpretation of Van Harrison's dying message to me, which everyone has ignored so far because it seemed meaningless.

“The truth is, it had the most pertinent meaning.

“I myself have held three different views about what Harrison wrote on that wall in his own blood.

“The first was that the letters
XY
constituted the complete message he intended to convey to me. This one I finally discarded, for the simple reason that no explanation offered itself. As
XY
, the message bore no significant relevance to the situation, its background, or its climax.

“My second view necessarily jumped off from the failure of the first. If
XY
meant nothing, then perhaps the message wasn't complete. Harrison died just as he finished the short left-hand crosspiece of the
Y
.
Suppose he had intended to go on?”

The three men looked startled.

“If that was so, what could he have meant to add? He'd written an
X
, and he'd written a
Y
. It seemed to me that the only logical extension of
X
and
Y
was
Z
. Was this message to have been
XYZ?
But just as
X
and
Y
individually led nowhere, so with
Z
. And they meant nothing in combination, as
XYZ.
I was stumped again.”

“Wait, wait,” said Judge Levy. “I've never been very quick at puzzles. Do you mean that if Harrison had finished his message, the element he meant to add would not have been
Z
, but something else?”

“That's right, Your Honor. The failure of
Z
forced me to an entirely different speculation.”

“And you know, Mr. Queen, what Harrison intended to add?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Just a moment,” said the State.

He jumped up and went to the door. He came back hurriedly.

“Nothing from the jury room yet. Go on, Queen!”

Darrell Irons shifted in his chair.

“May I borrow a soft pencil and a sheet of paper, Judge?” asked Ellery.

The judge produced them. Ellery bent over the desk.

“I'll repeat the demonstration I gave on the stand. This is exactly the way Harrison scrawled his message. First he drew a diagonal, from upper right to lower left, like this.”

Ellery drew a line:

/

“Then, starting at upper left, he drew a crossing diagonal, like this.

X

“His third stroke duplicated his first stroke, but a little beyond the
X
he had already drawn.

X /

“And finally, beginning again at upper left, as in the second stroke of the first
X
, Harrison drew a short diagonal which just touched the long diagonal, like this.

X Y

“At this point, he died,” said Ellery. “Now, gentlemen, there is more than one way in which Harrison could have left his message unfinished. I learned that at the Bronx Zoo yesterday. I saw a park workman start painting a letter of the alphabet on a sign. The letter was the
G
of ZOOLOGICAL. But it started to rain while he was doing it, and so he stopped, leaving the
G
uncompleted. And it didn't look like a
G
at all; it looked like a
C
, because he never got to add the crossbar … Suppose,” said Ellery,
“suppose it was the last stroke–the short one–which Harrison didn't live long enough to finish?”

With a frown, Judge Levy began: “You mean–”

“I mean, Your Honor: Suppose Harrison meant to carry that last stroke
all the way down?
As, in fact, he had done in the case of the second stroke of the first
X,
Then the letter following the
X
would not have been
Y
, but …”

And Ellery completed the stroke.

X X

“X,”
exclaimed the State. “Another one. Not
XY
, but
XX.”

Irons kept staring at the paper. As he stared, his great gray brows drew slowly together.

“XX,”
repeated the judge. “I can't see, Mr. Queen, that you've advanced an iota. It's the new evidence you claim to have turned up that I'm interested in. Would you get on to that?”

Ellery came back from the door. The jury was still out.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I'm getting to it step by step because there's a road to the truth and the evidence lies at the end of it. Let me put it this way: What else is an
X
, Your Honor, besides being a letter of the alphabet?”

“A Roman numeral. Signifying ten.”

“Then
XX–two
X
's–in this interpretation would signify twenty. Does the number twenty suggest a connection with any phase of this case?”

“Not to me,” said His Honor. He changed his position in his leather swivel chair, glancing impatiently at the clock.

“Twenty?” The State shook his head.

Defense counsel leaned back and lit a cigar. He devoted himself with concentration to the removal of the band and the clipping of the tip.

“Then if as a Roman numeral the two
X
's get us nowhere,” continued Ellery, “we must look for still another interpretation. What else is an
X?”

“Mathematical sign,” snapped the judge. “Multiplication symbol.”

“Then
XX
would be two multiplication signs? Obviously that means nothing. Is there still another meaning for the symbol
X?”

“A cross,” cried the State. “Two
X's
, two crosses–”

“In other words, gentlemen,” nodded Ellery, leaning forward across the desk, “Van Harrison, physically unable to talk; realizing he had no time to write out a message, reduced what he wanted me to know to its most economical form. He began to shape the common sign of the double-cross. Harrison was trying to tell me, with his expiring strength, that he had been double-crossed.”

The silence lasted for some time.

Then Darrell Irons crossed his fine legs and blew a cloud of smoke. “Double-crossed, Queen? How can that possibly have a bearing on the case?”

“I think you've known the answer to that, Mr. Irons,” said Ellery, “for some minutes now. Harrison had just fallen with three bullets in him, mortally wounded. I had witnessed the shooting, and he knew it. Knowing it, he tried to tell me that he had been double-crossed. What could he have meant but that the shooting I had just witnessed was not what it seemed?
That, in being shot, he had been double-crossed?”

“I don't understand,” said Judge Levy fretfully. “I really don't.”

“I think Mr. Irons does,” said Ellery. “For why should Harrison have characterized his killing as a double-cross? A double-cross means a broken agreement. Logically, then,
Harrison had had specific assurances that no such thing would ever happen.
He had been promised that he ran no danger of reprisal, and that promise had been broken. Who could have made such a promise and broken it? Only one person–the man who had fired the shots, the presumably deceived husband.
In other words, Van Harrison and Dirk Lawrence had been working together.
The whole case is not what it has seemed to be–that of the unfaithful wife and the deceived husband. With the husband and the lover confederates, with the husband aiding and abetting the affair–
it was the wife who was deceived. Martha Lawrence, gentlemen, was framed–framed by her own husband.”