Queen’s Bureau of Investigation (7 page)

They were true talking mynas from southern India—pert, hoppy little creatures amusingly yellow-wattled, with iridescent black wings and bass voices. Some of them had vocabularies of almost a hundred words. Mrs. Andrus found them a great comfort—far more satisfactory companions, she thought, than Miss Baggott. Her dependents, she called them; and, quite as if they were, the old lady worried over their fate when she should be gone.

From this it was a logical step to securing their future. Mrs. Andrus directed Attorney De Rose immediately to place the bulk of her property into a fund earmarked for her birds' support, maintenance, and loving care. Mr. De Rose and Dr. Cooke consented to administer the fund, and Miss Baggott was specified as permanent curator. When the last myna should have passed away, the fund was to be administered for the benefit of designated charities.

In the interim, Mrs. Andrus asked little for herself. The attorney paid her bills, she and the mynas were company for each other, and she was content.

Her pets' one failing, Mrs. Andrus sometimes felt, was their inability to play contract bridge, the only other interest of her declining years. For this diversion she had to depend on Dr. Cooke and Mr. De Rose, with Miss Baggott making the fourth. On such evenings as the gentlemen could spare for her entertainment, the old lady would be ensconced in her wheelchair at the bridge table, playing a remarkably shrewd game for a tenth of a cent a point. Her bridge nights completed her happiness.

But on the last night of her life, Mrs. Andrus was not happy. Her usually pleasant face, as she wheeled herself into her living room, was positively menacing. Miss Baggott, who had set up the bridge table and chairs, glanced quickly at the physician and the lawyer.

“Nothing wrong, I hope, Mrs. Andrus?” asked Dr. Cooke genially, waving his cigar. “We're not feeling that nasty pain again tonight, are we?”

“It's nothing a grand slam won't cure—eh, Mrs. Andrus?” roared De Rose. “Well, well, the usual partners?”

“The game,” said Mrs. Andrus, not stirring from her doorway, “is over.” Behind her, in the bedroom, thirty-eight pairs of unwinking eyes looked on attentively.

“Over?” Miss Baggott half rose.

Hello, funnyface!
said a bass voice suddenly from somewhere behind Mrs. Andrus.

“Hush, Minnie,” said the old lady, without turning. “You thought I was asleep at my naptime today, Miss Baggott, but you were quite mistaken. I overheard what you said on the phone to Mr. De Rose and Dr. Cooke. Don't you trust your confederates, Miss Baggott? Or have they been cheating their own kind, too?”

“Confederates? Cheating?” said Attorney De Rose heartily.

“I'm sure I don't know what you think you overheard, Mrs. Andrus—” began Dr. Cooke with a smile.

“I overheard enough, Doctor, to realize why you brought Mr. De Rose and Miss Baggott into my life. I'm being systematically robbed by the three of you. I've been an old fool, but not any more! First,” said the old lady in the same hard voice, “you're to put back what you've taken. You have ten minutes to give me an accounting of the stolen funds.”

“Ten minutes?” said the doctor incredulously.

“Ten minutes, Dr. Cooke. Then we'll go on from there.”

Say ah!
said another bass voice.

Mrs. Andrus backed her wheelchair swiftly into her bedroom and slammed the door.

The three at the card table were silent for some time. Then Dr. Cooke said pleasantly, “Well, Baggie, you messed it up. Suppose you fix it.”

“That's right, blame me,” shrilled Miss Baggott. “I warned you two not to be so greedy—to wait till she kicked off! Put the money back. Maybe she won't prosecute—”

“Academic,” murmured the doctor. “The bookies have my share. And from the way you've been painting the town, De Rose, I gather you're in the same stable. Any suggestions from our legal department?”

The lawyer extinguished his cigaret in the ashtray before him with a brutal thumb; under his tan, he was livid. “The way I'd fixed it, we could have gone on working this gold mine for years. Who'd squawk—the birds?”

“There's an old bird in that bedroom who's going to squawk. To the D.A.!” said Miss Baggott venomously.

“And suppose she doesn't.”

“What?”

“Suppose she doesn't,” said the lawyer, squeezing the deck of cards. “Suppose tonight we had to cut our bridge game short because, say, Miss Baggott wasn't feeling well. And suppose Dr. Cooke gave her some sleeping pills, and Miss Baggott retired to her room and went out like a light, and the doctor and Mr. De Rose left. And suppose, as soon as they were gone, that slippery apartment burglar who's been working the West Side lately broke in here. And suppose,” said the lawyer, looking up at them, “suppose the old woman surprised him and he lost his stupid head. And suppose, since he's known to carry a knife—”

“No,” whispered Miss Baggott. “No.”

“Yes,” mocked the lawyer. “Unless you want to go to jail for ten years. I don't. Do you, Doctor?”

“Your diagnosis,” said Dr. Cooke slowly, “convinces me.” Then he said quickly, “Let's agree on the
modus operandi
before she comes back …”

Ellery and Inspector Queen broke into the Andrus apartment thirty-five seconds too late. Ellery stopped in the living room to bend over the still bleeding body in the wheelchair while his father, pistol drawn, kicked open the bedroom door to be buffeted by a storm of black wings and bass bird cries. But the Inspector beat his way through in time to catch Dr. Cooke, Attorney De Rose, and Miss Baggott all trying to pile through the same window to get to the fire escape.

The interruption had come so suddenly on the heels of the murder that, while the knife had been wiped clean, there had been no time even to replace it in the kitchen drawer.

Later, when the assistant medical examiner wheeled the frail corpse into the bedroom for his examination, the myna birds swooped and hopped and chattered about the closed door as if they knew what had happened.

Cut!
boomed one bird, a particularly large fellow.
Cut, cut!

“Yes, Blackie, yes.” Ellery picked him up and, stroking his throat feathers, faced the pale manacled trio with cold anger. “Whatever phony plant you animals had in mind, it was doomed to failure before it was even hatched. Mrs. Andrus phoned me early this evening after sending Miss Baggott out on an errand. She told me all about what she'd found out today, and about calling you three together for a showdown tonight. I warned her not to show her hand till we got here, but apparently she was too outraged to wait. And you killed her.”

Cut!
said the myna bird again.

“Correction noted, birdie,” rasped Inspector Queen. “Which one of you did the actual cutting?”

“You've got us all wrong, gentlemen.” De Rose's lips were stiff. “The doctor and I arrived late, and Miss Baggott was just coming back from a walk. We all saw a masked man duck out the window. Then you pounded on the door, and we panicked—”

“You don't say, Counselor!”

“There must be some way of telling,” mumbled Ellery, walking over to the bridge table. “They came here tonight ostensibly for a bridge game—”

“Hold it, son.” The assistant medical examiner was coming out of the bedroom. “Well, Prouty?”

“Four knife wounds, left chest.” Dr. Prouty examined the silent trio with the enthusiasm of a funeral director. “No one wound sufficient to cause instant death, but at her age and condition they were cumulatively fatal.… What did he say?”

Cut, cut, cut!
the big myna was squawking. He struggled, and Ellery let him go. The bird hopped onto the bridge table and began vindictively to peck at a card. After a moment he lost interest and flew off.

“He said ‘cut,'” said Dr. Prouty wonderingly. “Why, he must have been an eyewitness to the murder!” He went out, shaking his head.

“Thirty-eight eyewitnesses,” said Ellery, gnawing a nail. “Maybe, Dad, we ought to question them.”

“I'd almost settle for that,” snapped the Inspector. “Only, as it happens, even they weren't here.”

“They weren't?” frowned Ellery.

“Not in the living room here, where she got it. I guess you didn't notice. They flew in from the bedroom when I kicked the door open and grabbed these lice.… What's the matter with
you?
”

“But if Blackie wasn't on the scene of the crime, why does he keep saying ‘Cut'?”

“How should I know?” said the Inspector, exasperated. “It's one of the words he's picked up. Look, son—”

“No, Dad, wait.” Then Ellery said softly, “You're right. It's one of the words he picked up because Mrs. Andrus was so fond of bridge … she told me herself she played cards with these people regularly—
The cards!
”

And a few minutes later Ellery rose from one of the three chairs at the bridge table, and his voice made Dr. Cooke, Attorney De Rose, and Miss Baggott even paler. “At one point tonight you three sat in these chairs—Mrs. Andrus would have had to use her wheelchair. What were you doing? These cards tell the story. The closed deck in the middle of the table contains forty-nine cards. The three other cards are distributed about the table—one at each of your seats, face up. The three of hearts. The king of spades. The nine of hearts.”

“
They cut the cards
,” said the Inspector. “Butchers. Cutting to see which one was going to stick the old lady!”

“This card setup, which you had no time to put away,” growled Ellery, “even tells us who drew what. From the cigars in your breast pocket and that cold cigar butt in the ashtray beside the spade king, Dr. Cooke, it was you who drew the king of spades. The cigaret butt in the tray beside the nine of hearts indicates your seat, De Rose, because if it had been smoked by this woman it would be tipped with her lipstick. So you, Miss Baggott, drew the heart three.”

“Three, nine, king,” rapped the Inspector. “That does it!”

Ellery nodded. “It does indeed.”

“It was the skunk who drew the king of spades, of course,” said the Inspector. “You,
Cooke.
”

“No,” said the doctor urgently.

“No,” agreed Ellery. His father wheeled. “No one with medical training, Dad, would stab four times in the area of the heart and fail to hit a vital spot. Dr. Cooke would have finished her in one surgical stroke.”

“But Cooke drew the high card,” protested the Inspector.

“Then they were cutting for loser, not winner,” said Ellery. “So it wasn't the high card that drew the murder assignment,
it was low card
. And since we know De Rose drew the heart nine and you the heart three,” he said to the rigid woman, “that lays this miserable killing right in your lap, Miss Baggott.”

The big myna made a sudden landing on Miss Baggott's head. She cowered, shrieking.

Down
one!
rumbled the bird.

“Now that, Blackie, is your first mistake,” said Ellery. “Under the laws of this state, it's going to be … down three!”

SUICIDE DEPT.

A Question of Honor

It wasn't every day that Ellery found himself meeting a policeman who was a minor authority on Shakespeare, and he shook the hand of Inspector Queen's British visitor with interest. It was a hard hand attached to a squared-off torso, satisfying the professional requirements; but above the neck Inspector Burke of New Scotland Yard took an unexpected turn—broad forehead, pale skin, and the bright, sad eyes of a scholar.

“Over here on a case, Inspector Burke?”

“Yes, and then again no,” said the Scotland Yard man dourly. “‘All hoods make not monks,' as Katherine points out in
Henry VIII
. I'm here hunting a bad one, right enough; but the thing is, he's waiting for me—and, what's more, when I catch the blighter I'm going to have to let him go.”

“Why?” asked Ellery, astonished.

“Seems like a long trip, Burke,” grinned Inspector Queen, “for mere exercise.”

“‘Necessity's sharp pinch,' gentlemen.” The Englishman's sad eyes turned sharp. “It's rather a yarn. A certain young woman in London—daughter of someone very highly placed—is shortly to announce her betrothal to a man very much in the international eye. The principals are so distinguished that—well, the match couldn't have been made without the consent of Whitehall, which is all I'm free to say about it at this time.

“A year or so ago this girl, who is charming but headstrong and overromantic,” continued the British policeman, “wrote seven highly indiscreet letters to a man with whom she was then infatuated.

“Now the position of the girl's fiancé is such that, should those letters get to him or become public knowledge, he would be forced to break the engagement, and the resulting scandal would almost certainly create a nasty diplomatic situation in an extremely sensitive political area. ‘Great floods from simple sources,' you know!

“When the girl's … family learned about the letters, they took immediate steps to retrieve them. But there was the rub. The man to whom they'd been written no longer had them. They had just been stolen from him.”

“Hm,” said Ellery's father.

“No, no, Queen, he's above suspicion. Besides, we know the identity of the thief. Or rather,” said Inspector Burke gloomily, “we're positive he's one of three men.”

“Parties of our acquaintance?” asked Ellery.

“Undoubtedly, Mr. Queen, if you've browsed through your Rogues' Gallery recently. They're all Americans. One is the international jewel thief and society impersonator, William Ackley, Jr., alias Lord Rogers, alias le Comte de Crécy; another is the confidence man, J. Phillip Benson, alias John Hammerschmidt, alias Phil the Penman; the third is Walter Chase, the transatlantic cardsharp.”