The Finishing Stroke (23 page)

18 The Next Day

In Which, As Briefly As Possible, Some Long Histories Are Unfolded of Persons Living and Dead, and Ellery Plans a Journey

In the regular course of author-publisher relations, Ellery had seen Dan Z. Freeman with reasonable frequency for almost three decades, but today, as the publisher rose from his desk in greeting, it struck Ellery that he had not been seeing Freeman at all. It's like the Einsteinian illustration of relativity, he thought: two trains running along on parallel tracks in the same direction at the same speed, and a passenger in either would swear that both were standing still. There was no frame of reference until one looked out the opposite window and saw the landscape flying by.

The old diary had given him a frame of reference in its twenty- seven-year-old impressions about the people of the house party, including Freeman. He now saw an elderly man with a few fine straws of grey clinging to the rim of his scalp; the brown eyes that had been beautiful were still beautiful, but they lay imbedded in worn showcases of flesh like old jewels in a museum; there was a stoop to the slender shoulders, a settling of shape, a slowdown of gesture that were almost painful to observe.

Ellery wondered uneasily how he must look to Freeman.

‘No, it's not about our mutual interest in best sellers, Dan,' Ellery said with a smile. ‘Not this time. First, because the new book is crawling on its hands and knees through a burning desert; second, because I've had a rather remarkable experience. Remember our stay in Arthur Craig's house over the Christmas-New Year holiday in the winter of 'Twenty-nine-Thirty?'

The publisher sat still. It was a momentary freezing, like the stoppage of a film; then motion was restored, and he murmured, ‘What on earth reminded you of that, Ellery? I haven't thought about it in years.'

‘Neither had I, really,' Ellery said. ‘But something happened yesterday that recalled those two weeks to me forcibly, and I began wondering. You know my mind, Dan. Let a question creep into it, and I start thrashing about. I suddenly find myself with a great curiosity about the people who were with us in the Craig house over that holiday. Silly, I suppose, but I'll be fairly useless until my curiosity is appeased. Have you any idea what's happened to them?'

His publisher gave him a searching look. Then Freeman depressed one of the levers of his interoffice communicator, murmured. ‘No calls or interruptions, Harriet,' and talked for over an hour.

John Sebastian had waited only until the legal formalities were satisfied and he took possession of his legacy, then he had quit the United States. The young millionaire had bought a villa in the south of France, near Cannes, and he had never returned. In the beginning there were stories of princely parties, fabulous women, unsavoury escapades; but apparently this had been a passing phase. He settled down to a quiet life, entertaining a few friends on rare occasions, for the most part writing poetry, raising finches and building an art collection through agents in Paris, London and New York. So far as Freeman knew, John had never married.

‘Yes, he published his poetry,' Freeman said, ‘but not through me. Not in this country at all, in fact, but in Paris. Three or four slim volumes in French. After the war I heard that John was still living in his villa, unscathed. I've been told he collaborated with the Nazis, but how true that is I can't say. Certainly he hasn't been molested by the French since the war. As far as I know, he's still there. I haven't had a word from him for ten years or more.'

Ellen Craig?

‘At the time, I thought you two were working up to something,' the publisher laughed. ‘You didn't keep in touch?'

Ellery had reddened. ‘For a few months. After Ellen graduated from Wellesley we lost sight of each other. I did hear somewhere that she'd married –'

‘Ellen married a bright young fellow in the State Department,' Freeman said. ‘You know that life – from one embassy to another at two or three year intervals, tight little islands of home in a sea of unfamiliar people and surroundings. She has five children, all grown. The last I heard she and her husband were somewhere in Africa. I saw her two years ago, when her husband was back in the States brushing up on African affairs preparatory to his transfer. She's very stout and discreet, a typical diplomat's wife.'

That's that, Ellery thought; and he asked about Rusty Brown. According to Freeman, Rusty had closed her Madison Avenue shop during the depression, her ‘Rusty Brown's Creations' vogue over. He had had no idea what had happened to her until, years afterward, on a visit to Hollywood in connexion with some literary properties, he had run into her at a Beverly Hills party. She was a very successful interior decorator in Los Angeles. She had gone through four husbands, had never had any children, and had struck Freeman as a desperately unhappy woman. As far as he knew, she was still on the Coast. He had no idea what had happened to her mother. Rusty had not mentioned her, and Freeman had not asked.

‘She doesn't call herself Rusty any more, by the way,' the publisher said with a smile. ‘It's Yolanda, period.'

The Reverend Mr. Gardiner was another of the group Freeman had no information about. ‘It's hardly likely he's still alive. He'd have to be over a hundred.'

Dr. Samson Dark had died of coronary thrombosis in 1935.

Roland Payn was dead, too. He had committed suicide in the late '30's, for a reason no one had been able to determine. He had left no note, and only a few minutes before he shot himself at his desk he had been discussing a will case with a client with his usual suavity.

‘I remember talking over Payn's death years later with his son, the literary critic. Wendell had no faintest idea of his father's reason for taking his life. The subject was painful to him, and I dropped it.'

‘But you knew why,' Ellery said.

‘I didn't
know.
'

‘A woman, of course.'

Freeman shrugged. ‘It's not unlikely. Payn was one of those plausible hypocrites who lead an impeccable life in broad daylight, but who at night crawl into the woodwork. It was probably a sex mess of some sort. He couldn't face exposure and took the easy way out.'

Valentina Warren had married Marius Carlo. It had been a stormy marriage, and it wound up in a noisy divorce suit. Neither had remarried, and neither had got anywhere professionally. Valentina had graduated from ingénue parts to character roles; the mainstay of her income was still summer stock; occasionally she appeared on Broadway in a small role, or played a TV dramatic show. Marius ran a shabby music school in Chicago. He was living with an aged ballet dancer to whom he was quite devoted. Freeman had visited them only the winter before in connexion with a book on music Carlo had been trying to get him to publish.

‘Need I mention that his title was “Unisonorous Chants in the Eight Church Modes”?' Freeman said sadly. ‘The text was equally formidable. They live in a barnlike studio apartment in the Loop that looks like something Dali threw together at the end of an extended binge. Positively the dirtiest place I've ever been in, too.'

Incredibly, Arthur Craig was still alive.

‘But he must be ninety or more,' Ellery protested.

‘He's a tenacious old fellow. Clings to life like a barnacle.'

Shortly before John Sebastian decamped from the United States, Craig had decided to go out of business and had offered his press to Freeman for sale. Freeman had purchased it for his elder son, who at the time was an apprentice at Craig's press. For some years the printing establishment was run for the Freemans by an old employee of Craig's until the time when young Freeman should be qualified to take over. Now, with Freeman's son in full charge, and the publisher keeping a sentimental eye on it, it was still the fine press Craig had made it, turning out limited and gift editions of standard works with imagination, craftsmanship and taste.

At the same time that he sold his press, Craig had sold his Alderwood estate, liquidated his other holdings, and left the East. He had settled in San Francisco and was still living there. Freeman wrote him an occasional letter, and for old times' sake sent him samples of the press's output, but Craig never answered the letters or acknowledged the books.

‘He's become rather odd in his old age,' the publisher said. ‘Lives in a horrible shack, cooks his own meals, dresses like a hermit and so on, even though he must have a considerable income from what he realized when he sold out here in the East. In fact, he's become a miser; the last time I saw Ellen she told me he writes her dunning letters regularly, and she's actually been sending him money for years! I used to drop in on him when business took me to San Francisco, but the last time I visited him he so distressed me that, frankly, I've stopped doing it.'

Ellery said abruptly, ‘Then you have his address.'

‘Certainly. I still write him.'

‘May I have it?'

Freeman looked surprised. He spoke to his secretary, and she came in a moment later with an address.

‘You're going to write him, too, Ellery?'

‘I'm going to pay him a visit.'

‘What on earth for?' Freeman cried.

‘I owe the old gent an explanation that's some twenty-seven years overdue.' Ellery rose. ‘Thanks, Dan.'

He took the 11.30 plane for San Francisco that same night.

19 The Day After That …

In Which Mr. Queen, to Make His Point, Journeys Through Space More Than 2500 Miles and Through Time More Than 3000 Years

Arthur Craig's house was not far from the waterfront – a scabby yellow-brown frame cottage on a scrubby little elevation scored with broken steps, and squeezed in between two monster warehouses. It could only have been a relic of the days when these were mud flats and there had been an unobstructed view of the Bay. How it had escaped being demolished, how it had managed to survive the growth of the city – how it had got into Craig's possession – Ellery never found out.

Still, if you accepted its shabbiness, it had its points. The crustacean smell of the Embarcadero was in the old man's nostrils night and day, and if he descended his broken steps and got clear of the over-protective warehouses he had a view of Telegraph Hill. The cry of distant gulls was pleasant, and ships of all sizes and descriptions were to be seen at their wharves for the price of a short walk. A man who asked for little in the way of material things might live his old age out here in something like content.

There was a crazy little porch before the cottage which had long since lost its railing, and on this precarious perch – a pipe dangling from his toothless jaws, moving himself gently back and forth in a lopsided strawback chair – sat Arthur Benjamin Craig.

Physically, he was quite unrecognizable. The great frame Ellery remembered had melted and run into itself, to harden again as a knobby and misshapen smaller mass. The hand reaching for the bulldog pipe was now a shrivelled claw, blotched brown where it was not purple-grey; the jaws clamping together when the claw came away with the pipe settled into the likeness of a bird's bill. Even the face was birdlike, its skin feathered and ruffled by time out of which two lidless eyes peered brightly. The skull was a shining old bone. The lusty beard was no more.

As Ellery mounted the ankletrap steps he found himself recasting his impressions with rapidity. Dilapidated derelicts do not shave. At first glance the old man's garment might seem a collection of rags; but it was simply an ancient suit from the prime of his life which had been torn and mended and retorn and mended again, and it was quite respectably clean. Had his body not shrunken so, had he filled the suit out, it would not have seemed the costume of a hermit at all.

Ellery paused before the porch. It had once had an approach of three steps, judging by its height above the ground, but the steps were missing. He must be agile enough still, Ellery thought, to be able to get on and off his porch without snapping a leg.

‘Mr. Craig?' Ellery said.

The bright eyes took him in very calmly, from head to toe.

‘I know you,' Arthur Craig said suddenly. Ellery was astonished at the quality of the voice. It was brittle, but sharply aware, without a note of senility.

‘Yes, you do, Mr. Craig,' Ellery said with a smile. ‘But it was a very long time ago.'

‘When?' The question crackled.

‘Christmas of 1929.'

The old man's face broke into myriad wrinkles, he slapped his thigh, he began to crackle.

‘You're Ellery Queen,' he gasped, wiping his eyes.

‘That's right, sir. May I come up?'

‘Yes, yes!' The nonagenarian jumped out of the rocker like a bird, shaking off Ellery's protests. ‘No, you sit down here. I'll squat on the edge of the porch.' He proceeded to do so. ‘I used to do this when I was a boy, dangling my legs over my father's porch, which didn't have steps any more than this one. I didn't mind it then, and I don't mind it now. So you've come all this way to see old Craig? I take it you flew? Don't care for flying myself. Too chancy. I knew you'd look me up some day. I don't see anybody from the old days. I used to see Dan Freeman, but he's stopped coming – doesn't approve of my way of life,' and the old man slapped his thigh again. He did not ask Ellery into his house, and Ellery gathered that his garrulousness was at least partly deliberate, to cover up his failure to do so. ‘It was Dan gave you my address, I suppose?'

‘Yes, Mr. Craig. Why do you say you knew I'd look you up some day?'

The old man swivelled to rest his back against the cracked pillar, drawing his left leg up and swinging the other over the edge of the porch. He reached for a box of stove matches, selected one carefully, scratched it on the porch floor, applied it to his pipe, and puffed with great deliberation until he was seated in a shroud of smoke, like some ancient Indian.

‘Because you never finished that business back in Alderwood,' he mumbled, puffing vigorously, ‘that's why. You're like me. Hate a shoddy job. Can't stand slovenly craftsmanship. Especially your own.' He snatched the pipe from his lips and cocked an inquisitive eye at Ellery. ‘Seems to me you took an almighty long time to solve that problem.'

‘Well, I haven't been working on it continuously,' Ellery said with a grin. He was beginning to enjoy himself; it had turned out quite differently from what he had anticipated. ‘In fact, I gave it hardly a thought for over a quarter of a century. But yesterday …'

So Ellery told Arthur B. Craig how he had happened to come back to the case.

‘There it was, all spread out on my study floor. The twelve cards, the twenty gifts.' He paused to light a cigarette. ‘You know, Mr. Craig, I discovered the meaning of the gifts back in Alderwood.'

‘You did, hey?' The old man seemed surprised. ‘As I recollect, you didn't say anything about
that
.'

‘No,' Ellery said. ‘No, I didn't.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because I was expected to say something about it. Someone was trying to frame someone else for John's murder, and I was supposed to fall for the frame. But let's begin at alpha instead of omega, shall we, Mr. Craig?'

‘Neatly put.' The toothless mouth curved in a grin. ‘So it was all a frame-up, was it? You go right ahead, Mr. Queen. I've been waiting for this twenty-eight years come Epiphany.'

Ellery smiled at the sly sally. ‘For a long time I tangled myself up in numerical speculations. The number twelve gave me a really bad time. Twelve people in the house party, the twelve days and nights of Christmas, the twelve signs of the zodiac, the twelve nightly gifts, and so on – some of them clearly coincidences, others clearly planned. I was certain the number twelve was significant. Of course, I was meant to be held up by that. It was the obstacle placed in my path to make the winning of the goal sweeter. And, of course, the number twelve was nothing but a red herring. A whale of a red herring, you might say.

‘But the number twenty was a different school of fish.' Ellery leaned over to tap his ash on to the ground. ‘It was the number of the individual
gifts
, or at least of the emphasized words in the verses. That number was associated with concrete concepts – an aggregation of twenty
things
, ox, house, camel, whip, what have you. Could it be a series? In what sort of context did twenty things appear serially? Series meant
order
, a first followed by a second followed by a third, and so on. I studied the objects. Ox – first. House – second. Camel – third. Door – fourth … right through to a twentieth
different
object. I almost grasped it a number of times, but always I stumbled over that number twenty. I couldn't think of an orderly series of twenty consecutive different things. When I did crack it, I saw why I'd been frustrated. The number twenty was another red herring. It had its meaning, but not for our time. In our time – in the culture dictating my thought processes – it's a different number altogether.'

‘Is it, now!' the old man said in a kind of glee.

‘The discovery came by accident, on the night of January fifth. I went upstairs to my room, taking with me my gift copy of John's book of poems. I happened to open to the title page. And there it was. The key, the key that unlocked the door. And beyond that door lay the answer.'

‘What answer?' the old man demanded.

‘The alphabet,' Ellery said.

‘The alphabet.' The old man shaped the syllables almost with affection. ‘How basic.'

‘Yes, the exact word, Mr. Craig,' Ellery said. ‘For the alphabet as the ancient Phoenicians bequeathed it to us
began as a collection of pictures of concrete familiar objects
, objects basic to the lives of primitive people – food, shelter, transportation, parts of the human body and so forth. All I had to do was think of the concept “alphabet” to realize instantly that that was what the concrete familiar objects of the gift packages were intended to convey. And to hell with numbers. We think of the alphabet as consisting of twenty-six letters. Well, it does, but it wasn't twenty-six in thirteen hundred to one thousand
BC
, when the Phoenician alphabet was in the process of formulation. It consisted then of twenty-two ‘pictures', twenty of which have come down to us, the other six stemming from later sources.

‘Was it actually the basic Phoenician alphabet I was being teased with? It most certainly was. The ox – or more strictly speaking the ox head, which has come to us upside down – was the basic food-object the Phoenicians chose for the first letter of their alphabet,
alef,
or
A.
The second gift was a house; a house –
beth
, meaning
B
– is the original picturization of the second letter of our alphabet. The third gift was a camel – and the Phoenician camel,
gimel
or
gamel,
became our letter
C
.
D
came from door,
E
from window,
F
from hook or nail. There was no
G
as a separate letter until the third century
BC
– until then the
C
character served for the
G
sound, too. Our
H
came from the Phoenician
cheth,
meaning fence – and it was a fence that John received immediately after the nail or hook.
I
, hand;
J,
which was a Roman elongation of I to give it a consonant instead of a vowel value, didn't become a separate letter until the sixteenth century – so John received no
J
-object;
K,
palm;
L,
whip;
M
, water;
N,
fish;
O
, eye;
P
, mouth;
Q,
monkey;
R,
head;
S,
tooth;
T
, mark or cross;
U, V
and
W
came later;
X,
post;
Y
we got from the Greeks; and finally
Z
, derived – grimly enough – from
zayin,
meaning dagger … the “finishing stroke” that finished the life of John's triplet. Twenty objects, coinciding precisely with the twenty basic sources of the Phoenician alphabet.'

‘Yes?' the old man said eagerly. ‘And this meant to you –?'

‘Obviously,' Ellery said, ‘that the mind that had conceived the whole macabre stunt had a working knowledge of alphabet sources. Other events had indicated that the gift-leaver must have been one of the people in the house; and what were they? A dilettante poet, a jewellery and textile designer, an amateur student of the occult, a Protestant minister, a lawyer, a medical doctor, an actress, a musician, a young college girl – and a book publisher and a printer … I omit Mrs. Janssen, Mabel and Felton as too absurd for serious consideration.

‘It was clear at once that the choice lay between Mr. Freeman and yourself. And that really wasn't a choice. A publisher is connected with language editorially and commercially. But a printer is connected with it technically. And you weren't merely a printer; you were a book designer, a craftsman in superb press-work, necessarily with a broad working knowledge of typography and the typographic art. There was no doubt in my mind that the Phoenician-alphabet basis of the gift series pointed the finger at you, Mr. Craig, as the sender of the gifts and the planner of John's murder.'

‘I see,' the old man said thoughtfully. ‘And you didn't believe that.'

‘No, because I was equally certain that no man would devise a series of elaborate clues whose only effect was to point to himself as the villain of the piece. So I chose not to name you to the police, John, or your guests, Mr. Craig. If you were being framed, I wasn't going to play the framer's game.

‘The big question,' Ellery said, ‘the question that confronted me that January night in 1930, and that has bothered me on and off during the more than twenty-seven years since, was: Who framed you, Mr. Craig?'

The old man squinted at him through the tobacco smoke. ‘And now you know, eh?'

Ellery nodded.

‘And now I know.'