Queen’s Bureau of Investigation (16 page)

Ghosts walked about Broadway and Wall Street that night, but by 1:00
A.M.
they had subsided behind various illustrious headstones in the churchyard, and the area grew quiet. Ellery insisted that his father share George Washington's old pew in the chapel with him, murmuring something about the long wintry wait and the Father of Truth.

But at 3:15 the Queens were skulking behind one of Mother Trinity's skirts, shivering with the rest of the ghouls.

At 3:30
A.M.
on the nose the slender shadow of Charles Van Wyne fell eagerly across the grave of Dominicus Pike. It deposited something on the frozen ground, slithered away, and was lost.

At 3:45 the black hulk of Cornelius Lewis appeared, dropped something, and fell off.

At the last stroke of 4:00
A.M.
the dumpy blur that was Gorman Fitch repeated the process, and then he too disappeared.

“Whichever he is, he's taking no chances,” chattered Inspector Queen. “If anything went wrong, he'd be one of the suckers depositing his twenty-five grand. Now he'll wait a while. Then he'll sneak back to pick up all three packages. I wonder which one it'll turn out to be.”

“Why, Dad,” said Ellery in an amazed undertone, “do you mean to say you don't
know?
”

“No, I don't,” whispered the Inspector malevolently. “And don't tell me you do!”

Ellery sighed. “X certainly didn't send any letters to himself—he didn't expect to have to enter the problem as a ‘victim' at all. When accident forced him into it yesterday morning, he was in a jam. Yes, he could lie to the other two and
say
he had also received the fourth letter, but I asked him to produce it—along with the envelope. To look genuine, the envelope he gave me had to have the same postmark as the other two—the postmark of the night before! But that was impossible—it was now the morning after.

“So X did the best he could. He looked through his legitimate morning mail and found a plain envelope addressed to him, with no return address, which bore the correct postmark of the previous night; and he sent that envelope along to me with the note he had hastily typed as an enclosure. The only trouble was, the envelope was
of a different size
from the ones he'd been sending his victims. He hoped, I suppose, that I wouldn't notice the discrepancy.”

“Van Wyne's envelope was long …”

“And Lewis's was identical with Van Wyne's. But the third envelope,” said Ellery, “was a
small
envelope, and since that was the one sent over to me by …”

A shout profaned the churchyard, lights popped, and in their beams a figure was caught squatting over three bundles on the grave like a boy in a melon patch—the pudgy little figure of Gorman Fitch.

DYING MESSAGE DEPT.

GI Story

Ellery swung off the Atlantic State Express in his favorite small town disguised by earlaps, muffler, and skis, resolved that this time nothing should thwart his winter holiday. But he had hardly dumped his gear in Bill York's Bald Mountain lodge when he was called to the phone. Sure enough, it was Wrightsville's chief of police, with a crime.

“I haven't even taken my hat off,” Ellery complained. “What do your criminals do, Dakin, watch the Arrivals column in the
Record?
”

“This one's real unorthodox,” said Chief Dakin, in the tone of one emotionally involved. “Can I send a car right up?”

The lean old Yank was waiting fretfully on State Street at the side entrance to the County Court House. He pulled himself into the police car with one hand and groped for Ellery with the other.

“I've been up most of the night,” croaked Dakin. “Remember Clint Fosdick?”

“Sure. Household Fixtures. Slocum near Upper Whistling. What's old Clint done?”

“Got himself murdered last night,” mumbled Dakin, “and I can tell you who did it, only I'm not goin' to.
I
want
you
to tell
me.
”

Ellery stared at the author of this extraordinary statement as the car slid across the icy Square and began to creep up Dade Street. “Why? Aren't you sure?”

“I wish I was as sure of a pew in Heaven,” cried Chief Dakin. “I'm not only sure who murdered Clint, I know
how
he murdered Clint, and what's more I've got him dead to rights with the evidence to convict.”

“Then what's the problem, Dakin?”

“GI,” said Wrightsville's chief of police.

“G-what?”

“GI. Those two letters mean anything to you, Mr. Queen?”

“Well, of course—”

“The only trouble is, it don't fit with my evidence,” said Dakin. “And if I can't make it fit with my evidence, a smart lawyer might befuddle a jury with it just enough to put a reasonable doubt in their little minds. So you listen to the facts without prejudice, Mr. Queen,” the chief said grimly, “and you make that GI fit. Remember the Smith boys—the brothers we've always called the Presidents?”

“Smith? Presidents?” Ellery looked bewildered.

“Their dad was Jeff Smith—Thomas Jefferson Smith, taught American History at Wrightsville High. Jeff married Martha Higgins and they had three sons. Wash, the eldest, was in the war and he's a lawyer now, when he works at it. Line was in the service, too, then he went to medical school—he's just finishin' his internship at Wrightsville General. And Woodie, the youngest, was drafted into the Army three months back.

“Well, Clint Fosdick was sweet on Martha Higgins since way before she married Jeff Smith. But Clint was eighteen years Martha's senior, he'd never got past fourth grade in school—never even learned to write Spencerian, just printed his letters—and with Jeff, a college man, in the picture Clint didn't stand a chance.

“But in '37 Jeff Smith drowned in Quetonokis Lake while he was counselin' at a boys' summer camp, Martha found herself a penniless widow with three hungry boys to rear, and there was old faithful Clint, still waitin'… Well, Martha married him,” growled Dakin, “and Clint bought that big house on Hill Drive—the one with those hundred-and-twenty-year-old shade trees—for them all to live in like he was standin' treat for the ice cream at a Sunday School picnic.”

And the chief's Adam's apple jiggled as the police car felt for the top of the ridge and began to skid along Hill Drive between the tombs of Wrightsville's fine old mansions.

“Clint did everything for those boys. He sent 'em to college in style. Gave 'em their own cars, pockets full of allowance money … When Martha died in the flu epidemic durin' the war, Clint became father
and
mother to them. He couldn't do enough.

“And you'd have said they reciprocated. They called him Dad. They always remembered his birthday and Father's Day and Christmas. Brought their problems to him—real pal stuff. Young Woodie, the one just went in the Army, ran wild as Ivor Crosby's Ayrshire bull for a while, but Clint kept sayin' he'd spoiled the boy; and it's a fact they were mighty close. Linc—the doctor—he's always been kind of studious and intense; Clint said no man had a finer son. As for Wash, the eldest, he was the easygoin' sort—too easygoin' for this world, Clint used to say; he had to bail Wash out of trouble every other Saturday night, a poker debt or a Low Village girl or somethin', or get him down to his law office on time; but Clint claimed there wasn't a mean bone in Wash's body.

“Well, he was wrong about one of them,” said the old police chief, glaring at Ellery, “because one of 'em's poisoned him, and I'll see the murderin' chuck sizzle like pork sausage in a dirty fryin' pan—if you'll tell me what GI means, Mr. Queen!”

“Glad to,” said Ellery patiently, “if you'll only explain—”

But they were drawing up before the snow-shrouded Fosdick lawns, and Dakin fell silent. They shook the snow from their overshoes in the stained-glass vestibule, and the police chief led the way through the gloom of the broad entrance hall past one of his young officers to Clint Fosdick's library.

“This is where Clint's housekeeper, Lettie Dowling, found him last night when she heard a chair crash and ran in.”

It was a wonderful old high-ceilinged, oak-paneled, darkish room, but Ellery found its present musty silence dispiriting. He saw at once where the body must have been lying—the leather-backed swivel chair behind the desk had fallen over on its side, and the Oriental rug beneath was badly wrinkled, as if it had been clawed in agony.

In a litter of papers on the desk lay an overturned cocktail glass. On a tray nearby stood a pitcher half full of an almost colorless liquid. Ellery stooped over the pitcher, sniffing.

“Yep, he got it in the cocktail,” nodded Chief Dakin. “Clint used to be a teetotaler, like me, but when Martha died he developed a hankerin' for martinis. He'd sit here in his library nights when he'd get to feelin' lonely for her, gulpin' 'em down.”

“Who mixed this?” asked Ellery sharply.

“That won't tell you anythin'. Clint did it himself. I'll cut some corners for you,” said Dakin in a deadly voice. “The housekeeper, old Lettie, has her room just off the kitchen. Yesterday momin', very early—quarter past six—Lettie, who's got a cold and 'd had a bad night, got out of bed for some aspirin. She heard clinky sounds from the pantry, where the liquor's kept, and she opened her door a crack. There was an almost full bottle of gin that Wash had brought home for Clint Wednesday night, and through the open kitchen door Lettie saw one of the Smith brothers monkeyin' with it. He had a little kind of medicine bottle, she says, in his hand. She saw his face plain.

“Then she heard Clint's voice. Clint was comin' down to the kitchen for his mornin' coffee—earlier than usual, but he knew Lettie was sick. She heard Clint ask the boy what he was doin', and the boy mumbled somethin' and went back upstairs. But Lettie'd seen him put the gin bottle back quick when he'd heard Clint comin' and jam the medicine bottle—empty, she says—in the pocket of his bathrobe. And, Mr. Queen, I've got that ‘medicine' bottle. Dug it out of the garbage pit in the back yard late last night where it wouldn't have been if the garbage truck had come yesterday afternoon the way it was scheduled to, only the heavy snow and icy roads held 'em up. That bottle contained poison—if it was full, the way Lettie says it was, there was enough to wipe out half of High Village. And it's the same poison, the Connhaven lab says, that's in the bottle of gin. Besides,
his prints are on the poison bottle
. I've got the devil cold.”

“Except, apparently,” said Ellery, “for GI. Which is—?”

Chief Dakin carefully removed an uncreased sheet of paper from his overcoat pocket. “Clint was makin' out his monthly store bills when he swallowed that cocktail. He must have known right off he was a goner; it's a quick-actin' poison. And the minute he realized he was poisoned he must have known who'd done it. He probably saw the same thing yesterday mornin' that Lettie saw when he was kitchen-bound for his coffee. It must have puzzled him at the time, but what he'd seen told him the answer in a flash when he felt what he'd swallowed. So before he died Clint got hold of his ballpoint pen and wrote on this letterhead in that schoolboy printin' style of his. Then he fell over with the chair and died on the floor, like a poisoned dog.”

“GI?” Ellery reached.

Chief Dakin handed Ellery the paper.

It was an ordinary business billhead. Below the
Clint Fosdick, Household Fixtures, High Village, Terms:
30 Days inscription appeared in shaky handprinting the two letters:

“GI,” Ellery repeated. “And they've
all
been in the Army, you say?”

“That's right.”

“And they were
all
home yesterday morning?”

“Line's had a few days off from the hospital. Young Woodie's on leave from Camp Hale. Wash lives here all the time.”

Ellery was silent, staring at Clint Fosdick's dying message. Then he said, “Does the guilty one know he's tagged for frying?”

“No. Lettie's told nobody but me what she saw, and I haven't let on because of this piece of paper. I've just made out like all three brothers are under suspicion.”

“Well,” said Ellery. “Could we have the—what did you call them, Dakin?—the Presidents in for a chat?”

The three tall pale young men brought in by their guards were badly in need of sleep and a shave. Their brotherhood was plain from their dark coloring, deep brown eyes, and the way they huddled.

One, a baby-faced variant of the other two in a rumpled U.S. Army uniform, would be Private Woodie Smith. Private Smith's brown eyes masked fear and confusion; his boyish lips quivered.

The second had the keen red-rimmed look of hospitals, and hands so scrubbed they looked bleached—obviously the intern, Dr. Line Smith. He was gaunt and sharpened down and very quiet. He had been, Ellery would have sworn, crying.