Inspector Queen’s Own Case (9 page)

“Remembered it was your day off, and decided to walk off Beck Pearl's breakfast in your direction. I've been waiting for you. Going anywhere in particular?”

“No.”

“How about going there together?”

“I'd love it.”

He's got something on his mind, Jessie thought as he got in. She drove slowly north, conscious of the intentness under his smile.

Signs of hurricane damage were everywhere. Between Norwalk and Westport the shore road was still under water in places. Jessie had to detour.

“A sailboat would have been more practical!” Jessie said. “What have you been doing with yourself, Inspector Queen?”

“This and that. You know,” he said suddenly, “when you let your face relax, Jessie, you get pretty as a picture.”

“Do I, now,” Jessie laughed. She was laughing! She scaled her black straw behind her and threw her head back. “Isn't this breeze scrumptious?”

“Lovely,” he agreed, looking at her.

“It's making a mess of my hair, but I don't care.”

“You have beautiful hair, Jessie. I'm glad you keep it long.”

“You like it that way?” Jessie said, pleased.

“My mother's hair reached to her knees. Of course, in those days no women bobbed their hair but suffragettes and prostitutes. I guess I'm old-fashioned. I still prefer long hair in a woman.”

“I'm glad,” Jessie murmured. She was beginning to feel glad about everything today.

“How about lunch? I'm getting hungry.”

“So am I!” Jessie cried. “Where shall we go?”

They found an artfully bleached seafood place overlooking an inlet of the Sound. They sat behind glass and watched the spray from the still-agitated water trying to get up at them, hurtling from the pilings and dashing against the big storm window almost in their faces. They dipped steamed clams into hot butter, mounds of them, and did noble archeological work on broiled lobster, and Jessie was happy.

But with the mugs of black coffee he said abruptly, “You know, Jessie, I spent a whole day this week in Stamford. Part of it at the Stamford Hospital.”

“Oh.” Jessie sighed. “You saw Ronald Frost?”

“Also his hospital admission card, and the doctor who operated on him. Even talked to the people he was visiting when he got the appendix attack. I wanted to check Frost's alibi for myself.”

“It stands up, of course.”

“Yes. It was a legitimate emergency appendectomy, and from the times involved, Frost couldn't physically have been on Nair Island when the baby died.”

“Lucky emergency.” Jessie frowned out the window. “For him, I mean.”

“Very,” Richard Queen said dryly. “Because he
was
the one who made that first attempt on the night of July 4th.”

“He admitted it?” Jessie cried.

“Not in so many words—why should he?—but I'm convinced from what he said and how he said it that he was the man that night, all right. God knows what he thought he was trying to do—I don't think he knew, or knows, himself. He was drunk as a lord. Anyway, Jessie, that's that. As far as the murder is concerned, Frost is out.”

Jessie picked up her coffee mug, set it down again. “Are you trying to tell me you don't think it was murder after all, Inspector Queen?”

He stirred his coffee carefully. “How about dropping this Inspector Queen stuff, Jessie? If you and I are going to see a lot of each other——”

“I didn't know we were,” Jessie murmured. I'll really have to go into the ladies' room and fix my hair, she thought. I must look like the Wild Woman of Borneo. “But of course, if you'd like … Richard …”

“Make it Dick.” He beamed. “That's what my friends call me.”

“Oh, but I like Richard ever so much better.”

His beam died. “I guess Dick sounds pretty young at that.”

“I didn't mean
that
. It has nothing to do with age. Goodness!” Jessie prodded her hair. “And don't change the subject. Was it or wasn't it murder? And don't tell me the coroner's jury called it an accident!”

“Well, look at it from their viewpoint,” he said mildly. “Your testimony about that dim night-light, for instance. Those couple of seconds you'd mentioned as being the maximum period you had the handprint in view, for another. And on top of that, Jessie, your detailed description of the print. You'll have to admit, with the pillowslip not produced, it takes a bit of believing.”

Jessie felt tired suddenly.

“I could only testify to what I saw. What
happened
to that pillowslip?”

“Probably destroyed. Or disposed of in some way.”

“But by whom?”

“By somebody in the house.”

“But that's ridiculous!” Jessie was appalled.

“If you start from the existence of the handprint, it's the logical conclusion.”

“But who in the Humffrey house would do a thing like that, Richard?”

He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Jessie said, “You do believe me, don't you? Somebody has to …”

“Of course I believe you, Jessie,” he said gently. “And that's where I'm jumping off from.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had a talk with Abe Pearl last night. Abe's the salt of the earth, and he was a good big-city cop, but maybe he isn't as good a judge of character as I am.” He grinned. “Your character, anyway.”

But Jessie did not smile back. “In other words, Chief Pearl has made up his mind not to believe my story, either.”

“Abe's not prepared to kick up a fuss about a murder when there's nothing concrete to back it up. And then, of course, the inquest jury did bring in a verdict of accidental death. Put that together with Frost's alibi for last Thursday night, and you see the spot Abe's in.”

“What you're trying to tell me,” Jessie said bitterly, “is that he's dropping the case.”

“Yes.” Richard Queen rubbed his jaw. “That's why I informed the Pearls last night that they'd soon be losing their star boarder.”

“You're going to leave?” And suddenly the spray on the window made an empty sound, and the lobster began to weigh heavily. “Where are you going?”

“Back to New York.”

“Oh.” Jessie was silent. “But I thought you said——”

He nodded wryly. “I've been doing a lot of thinking about the case and I've decided New York is the place to start an investigation. Somebody has to do something about this business. Abe can't, the Humffreys won't—who else is there but me? I have nothing to do with myself, anyway.”

Tears sprang into Jessie's eyes. “I'm so glad. So glad, Richard.”

“In fact …” He was looking at her across the table with the oddest expression. “I was hoping you'd go with me.”

“
Me?”

“You could help in lots of ways,” he said awkwardly. He fumbled with his cup.

Jessie's heart beat faster. Now don't be foolish, she kept saying to herself. He's just being kind. Or … after all, what do I really know about him? Maybe …

“I think I'd have to know in what ways, Richard,” she said slowly. “For one thing, I've promised to stay on at Nair Island for a while to keep an eye on Mrs. Humffrey——”

“Let Humffrey get another nurse.”

“No, I gave my word.”

“But how long——?”

“Let's talk about it in the car,” Jessie said abruptly. “If I'm getting into something, I want to know just what it is. Do you mind?”

He leaned forward suddenly and took her hand. “You're quite a woman, Jessie. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

“And none of your blarney!” Jessie laughed as she withdrew her hand and rose. “I'll meet you in the car.”

Richard Queen watched her make her way among the empty tables toward the rest rooms. She walks like a young girl, he thought. A young girl …

He signaled the waitress and caught himself staring at his hand.

He pulled it quickly down and out of sight.

In the end, it was Alton Humffrey's wife who made up Jessie's mind. The following Tuesday—it was the 16th of August—Sarah Humffrey slipped out of her bedroom while Jessie was in the kitchen fixing a tray, ran down to the Humffrey beach in her nightgown, waded out into the Sound, and tried to drown herself. She might have succeeded if Henry Cullum had not been on the dock tinkering with the engine of the Humffrey cruiser. The white-haired chauffeur jumped in and pulled the hysterical woman out. She was screaming that she wanted to die.

Dr. Wicks put her under deep sedation and spoke to her husband grimly.

“I'm afraid you're going to have to face it, Mr. Humffrey. Your wife is a damned sick woman, and I'm not the doctor for her. She needs specialized help. This obsession of hers that she killed the baby, these hysterical feelings of guilt about the pillow, now an attempt at suicide—I'm over my depth.”

Alton Humffrey seemed all loosened, as if the binder that held him together was crumbling away. Jessie had never seen him so pale and depressed.

“Your wife is on the edge of a mental collapse,” Dr. Wicks went on, blotting the freckles on his bald spot. “In her unstable condition, in view of what happened here, this house is the last place in the world she ought to be. If you'll take my advice——”

“What you're trying to tell me, I believe, is that I ought to put Mrs. Humffrey in a sanitarium?”

“Er, yes. I know a very good one up in Massachusetts. In Great Barrington. The psychiatrist in charge has an excellent reputation——”

“And can he keep his mouth shut?” the millionaire said. “This running down into the water business … if the newspapers should get wind of it——”

Dr. Wicks's lips flattened. “I wouldn't recommend him otherwise, Mr. Humffrey. I know how you feel about publicity.”

“A psychiatrist, you say?”

“One of the soundest.”

“I'll have to think about it.” And Humffrey rose with an imperious gesture of dismissal.

The physician was red-faced when he came into the adjoining bedroom for a final look at his patient. He snapped some instructions to Jessie and left.

It was Dr. Wicks's last visit to Sarah Humffrey.

On Wednesday afternoon Jessie heard the door open and looked up from her patient's bedside to see Alton Humffrey crooking a bony forefinger at her.

“Can you leave her for a few minutes, Miss Sherwood?”

“I've just had to give her another hypo.”

“Come into my study, please.”

She followed him across the hall to the study. He indicated an armchair, and Jessie sat down. He went to the picture window and stood there, his back to her.

“Miss Sherwood, I'm closing this house.”

“Oh?” Jessie said.

“I've been considering the move for some time. Stallings will stay on as caretaker. Henry and Mrs. Lenihan will go along with me to the New York apartment. I'm sending Mrs. Charbedeau and the maids back to the Concord house. The best part of the summer is gone, anyway.”

“You're intending to spend most of your time in New York?”

“All winter, I should think.”

“The change ought to be good for Mrs. Humffrey.”

“Mrs. Humffrey is not coming with me.” His voice was nasally casual. “I'm sending her to a sanitarium.”

“I'm glad,” Jessie said. “She needs sanitarium care badly. I heard Dr. Wicks telling you yesterday about a place in Great Barrington——”

“Wicks.” The narrow shoulders twitched. “In matters as important as this, Miss Sherwood, one doesn't rely on the Wickses of this world. No, she's not going to Great Barrington.”

It's the psychiatry that's scared you off, Jessie thought. “May I ask which sanitarium you've picked out, Mr. Humffrey?” She tried to keep her voice as casual as his.

She thought his long body gathered itself in. But then she decided she had been mistaken. When he turned he was smiling faintly.

“It's a convalescent home, really—that's all nonsense about her need for psychiatric treatment. Mrs. Humffrey is in a highly nervous state, that's all. What she requires is complete rest and privacy in secluded surroundings, and I'm told there's no better place in the East for that than the Duane Sanitarium in New Haven.”

Jessie nodded. She knew several nurses who had worked there—one, Elizabeth Currie, had been on Dr. Samuel Duane's nursing staff for eight years. The sanitarium was an elaborate closet for distinguished skeletons, restricted to a rigidly classified clientele at exclusive rates. It was surrounded by a tall brick wall topped with four-foot pickets ending in lance points, and it was patrolled by a private police force.

Exactly the sort of place Alton Humffrey would choose! Jessie thought. Once Sarah Humffrey was safely inside Dr. Duane's luxurious prison, her husband could relax. Dr. Duane's guards could smell a reporter miles away.

“When is Mrs. Humffrey leaving?” Jessie asked.

“This evening. Dr. Duane is calling for her personally in a sanitarium limousine, with a nurse in attendance.”

“Has Mrs. Humffrey been told?” At the millionaire's frown, Jessie added hastily, “The reason I ask, Mr. Humffrey, is that I've got to know just how to handle preparing her to go away——”

“I haven't told her, no. Dr. Duane prefers that I break the news when he's present.”

“You'll be going out with her?”

“I don't know. That will depend entirely on Duane.” His wedge of face lengthened. “You'll keep all this confidential, of course, Miss Sherwood.”

“Of course.”

He went over to his desk, sat down, and began to write a check. She watched his long white fingers at their deliberate work, the little finger curled in hiding, as secretive as the rest of him.

“I suppose this means,” Jessie said, “that you want me to leave as soon as possible.”