Inspector Queen’s Own Case (28 page)

He shook his head. “There's only one possible candidate for the baby's murder, Jessie. It's Sarah Humffrey's handprint on this pillowcase.”

Chief Pearl stuck his big head into the room. “Hi, Jessie. You okay now? Dick, he's fully conscious and ready to make a statement. You'd better come.”

Jessie went as far as the doorway of the master bedroom. The room was full of men. Taugus police. The State's Attorney's man, Merrick, tieless again. Dr. Wicks. A lot of state troopers. Wes Polonsky and Johnny Kripps.

And Alton Humffrey.

Humffrey was lying on the great bed, propped on pillows, his right arm swathed in bandages. His skin was not sallow now. It was colorless. The narrow wedge of face was without expression or movement, a face in a coffin. Only the eyes were alive, two prisoners struggling to escape.

Jessie said faintly, “I'll wait with Beck Pearl, Richard,” and she stumbled away.

“That,” Richard Queen remarked, leaning back in happy surfeit, “was the best darned Sunday dinner I've ever surrounded.”

“Delicious, Jessie!” Beck Pearl said, not without a slight mental reservation about the wine in the sauce. “She's really a wonderful cook, Dick. Imagine being a trained nurse and having a talent like this, too!”

“It's just a veal roast,” Jessie said deprecatingly, as if she were in the habit of standing over a hot oven every Sunday for hours and hours basting with an experimental sauce of garlic salad dressing, lemon juice, sauterne, bouillon, and Parmesan cheese, and praying that the result would be edible.

“But as I was saying,” Abe Pearl said, and he belched.

“Abe!” his wife said.

“Beg pardon,” Abe Pearl said.

It was Sunday, October 9th, a brisk and winy day, a day for being alive. Jessie had planned and slaved for this day, when Richard Queen's two friends should sit in her little dining alcove in Rowayton and tell her—and him—what a marvelous cook she was. Only Abe Pearl insisted on talking about what Jessie had hoped and hoped would not be talked about.

“Wonderful,” Richard Queen beamed. “Just wonderful, Jessie.”

“Thank you,” Jessie murmured.

“—she's as cold turkey as any killer I ever heard of,” Abe Pearl went on. “Match that big mitt of hers to the handprint on the pillowcase—a perfect fit. Analyze her perspiration—it gives the same lab result as the sweat traces in the slip. Analyze her blood—it's just like the blood in the stain on the back of the slip, which got on there when she scratched her hand on the ladder. Dust on ladder same as dust on slip. And, by God, when they work over the slip and bring out some fingerprints left by the mixed dust and perspiration, they're her prints!” Chief Pearl pressed his paws to his abdomen to discourage another belch. “And yet,” he thundered solemnly, “I tell you Sarah Humffrey will never go to the Chair. If she wasn't as nutty as a fruit cake—I mean after they got the baby, when she overheard Humffrey talking to Finner over the phone and realized her saintly husband had palmed off his own bastard on her—if she wasn't as nutty as a fruit cake then, she sure is now. She'll get sent to a bughouse on an insanity verdict, and I don't see how the State can stop it.”

“Abe,” Beck Pearl said.

“What?”

“Wouldn't you like to walk off your dinner?”

So finally they were alone in Jessie's little garden. Abe Pearl was wandering in Coventry somewhere along the waterfront, and his wife was in Jessie's kitchen banging dishes around to show that she wasn't listening through the kitchen window.

And now that they were alone together, there seemed to be nothing to say. That same peculiar silence dropped between them.

So Jessie picked some dwarf zinnias, and Richard Queen sat in the white basket chair under the dogwood tree watching the sun on her hair.

If he doesn't say something soon I'll shriek, Jessie thought. I can't go on picking zinnias forever.

But he kept saying absolutely nothing.

So then the flowers were tumbling to the ground, and Jessie heard herself crying, “Richard, what in heaven's name is the matter with you?”

“Matter?” he said with a start. “With me, Jessie?”

“Do
I
have to propose to
you?”

“Prop …” The sound came out of his mouth like a bite of hot potato. “
Propose?”

“Yes!” Jessie wept. “I've waited and waited, and all you ever do is pull a grim face and feel sorry for yourself. I'm a woman, Richard, don't you know that? And you're a man—though you don't seem to know that either—and we're both lonely, and I think we l-love each other …”

He was on his feet, clutching his collar and looking dazed. “You mean … you'd
marry
me, Jessie? Marry
me?”

“What do you think I'm proposing, Richard Queen, a game of Scrabble?”

He took a step toward her.

And stopped, swallowing hard. “But Jessie, I'm an old man——”

“Oh, fish! You're an old fool!”

So he came to her.

A long time later—the sun was going down, and the Pearls had long since vanished—Richard Queen's arm shifted from Jessie Sherwood's shoulders to her waist, and he muttered blissfully, “I wonder what Ellery's going to say.”

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1956 by Ellery Queen

Copyright renewed by Ellery Queen

Cover design by Kat Lee

ISBN: 978-1-5040-1705-3

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