A Fine and Private Place (19 page)

“And the same 9 words. Well, hardly the same,” Ellery said rapidly. “You know, dad, this could be an interesting development. If your correspondent is a crackpot, he certainly seems to be a crackpot with inside information.”

“You mean like Nino was a semipro ballplayer, and had a golf course, and all those other interesting developments that developed to be opium dreams?”

“Just the same, I wonder whom Virginia did lunch with on December 9, 1966. Any information on that in the file?”

“I can't tell you where
I
was on December 9, 1966,” his father said, exasperated. “How should I know where she was?”

“Then I suggest you find out.”

“
You
find out. This bird's wasted enough of the city's money.”

“Then it's all right if I go on a fishing trip vis-à-vis Virginia Importuna? While you mosey on over to the D.A.'s office and get him to hold off a bit on his great big prosecutional plans? Thanks, dad!”

Ellery dashed.

“What's on your mind this time, Mr. Queen?” Then Virginia smiled a little. “I mean, I know what's on your mind—it's always the same thing, isn't it?—but there must be some new angle you're working on.”

“It's not what I'm working on that should be concerning you, Mrs. Importuna,” Ellery said in his most Delphic tones. “It's what the district attorney and Centre Street are working on.”

The stunning eyes grew huge. “What do you mean?”

“I'm going to tell you something that could get me into a great deal of trouble if it became known downtown that I'd tipped you off, Mrs. Importuna. The D.A. is preparing at this moment to haul you before a grand jury with the hope of getting an indictment against you on a murder-conspiracy charge.”

“Conspiracy …”

“You see, they know what's been going on behind your husband's back, Mrs. Importuna, between Peter Ennis and you.”

She was quiet for so long that he began to think she had turned her ears off in shock. That, and her pallor, were the only signs of recoil from his thunderclap.

“Mrs. Importuna?”

A bit of pink came back to her cheeks. “Pardon me, I was thinking over my sinful life,” she said. “I suppose I can't blame them for building up all sorts of wickednesses against me. But I didn't kill Nino, Mr. Queen, and that's the truth. I suppose it would be naïve of me to expect that you'd believe me.”

“Oh, I don't know. I was born with a sort of openwork mind. Full of holes, as my detractors have been known to say.” Ellery smiled at her. “But then I don't have the obligation of the authorities to produce results for various Pooh-Bahs, up to and including the biggest Pooh-Bah of them all, the public. So don't be too hard on the poor fellows. You must admit that the appearances, at least, favor the theory they're working on.”

“Why are you telling me this, Mr. Queen?”

“Let's say I'm not satisfied with the official theory. I'm not satisfied at all, Mrs. Importuna. Oh, I don't doubt you and Peter have been having an affair—I'd decided that quite independently from the police. But I'm not convinced you could kill anyone in cold blood, and this was a cold-blooded homicide. Of course, I could be dead wrong about you; I've been wrong before, and more than once. This time, though, I confess I'd like to be right.”

“Thank you.” Virginia's murmur held a glissando of surprise.

“Now as to why I'm here. Whether you answer my question or not depends on whether you decide to trust me or not. I hope you'll decide to trust me. On December 9th last, Mrs. Importuna, you had lunch with somebody. Who was it?”

She actually giggled. “What a freaky question after that buildup! Do you really expect me to remember something as trivial as a lunch date 10 months ago?”

“Try, please. It may turn out to be the reverse of trivial. It may, in fact, be vital to you.”

His solemnity seemed to impress her. For some time her eyes went away, somewhere. Finally they came back to him. “I suppose I'm an idiot, but I've decided you're not trying to trick me.” Ellery chose to remain quiet. “It happens that there is a way to answer your question, Mr. Queen. For a great many years I've kept a diary. I haven't missed a day since I was 14 years old. It's always been for me—I hope you won't laugh—an Emily Dickinson kind of thing to do. I was once absolutely convinced I was going to be the latter-day Emily, dressing only in white, and spending practically all my time in my room writing poems that would never die .… Well, you're not interested in my girlish dreams. But I do have a record of day-to-day events as they concerned me.”

“Yes,” Ellery said, “yes, that would certainly do it.”

He rose as she rose. He was holding his breath.

“I'll be right back,” Virginia said.

She was gone for a century.

When she returned it was with an oversize diary in gold-tooled black morocco leather. It had a latch-flap-lock arrangement. Ellery had to command himself like a squad leader to keep from grabbing.

“This is my diary for 1966.”

“That's the one, yes.”

“Do sit down again, Mr. Queen.”

She sank onto her sofa, a Duncan Phyfe, he thought, from its lyre motif; and he seated himself opposite her, trying to concentrate on the sofa to avoid being caught coveting the diary. She turned a gold key in the lock. The little key was on a gold chain.

“Let's see, now. December what did you say, Mr. Queen?”

“The 9th.”

“9th, 9th … Here it is … Oh,” she said. “
That
day.”

“Yes?” Ellery said lightly. “Something special about that day, Mrs. Importuna?”

“You might say so! It was the first time I had that naughty thing the Victorians used to call a tryst with Peter. A public one, at that. I seem to recall Nino was off in Europe or somewhere on business. It was a stupidly dangerous thing for us to do, but it was a little hideaway place nobody I knew patronized.…”

He almost said, May I have a look at that, Mrs. Importuna? but he stopped himself on the cliff edge of importunity, aware how vulnerable she must be feeling, wondering how she had dared even to admit the existence of her diary, let alone produce it. Its contents in the wrong hands … His hands?

To his stupefaction he heard her say, “But why tell you about it, Mr. Queen? Read it for yourself.”

And there it was, being placed in his hands.

“Mrs. Importuna,” Ellery said. “Do you realize what you're proposing to do? You're offering me information that, if it turns out to be pertinent, I'm in conscience bound to pass along to my father. My father is one of the officers investigating this case. The only reason I'm given the run of these premises by the officers on duty downstairs is because of my father. And, in any event, I shan't be able to prevent your being charged and arraigned—or in all probability even to delay matters. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“And you're still willing to let me read your entry for the day in question?”

There were delicate little butterfly bruises of worry and tension under her eyes. But the eyes themselves were unclouded.

“I didn't kill my husband, Mr. Queen. I didn't plot with anyone to kill him. I did fall in love with Peter Ennis, who's a kind as well as a beautiful man. But since you already know we're in love, how can my diary hurt us?”

He opened it gently.

And read:

December 9, 1966. I wonder why I keep adding to this, oh,
construction
. This higgledy-piggledy, slam-bang architecture of feelings … hopes, disappointments, terrors, joys, the lot. Is it because of the joys? The few I have? And the almost addictive need to express them? Then why do I keep dwelling on the bad scenes? Sometimes I think this isn't worth the risk. If N. were ever to find you, Diary …

He read on, immersing himself in the flow of her thoughts and feelings, analyzing her narrative of that day's events—her meeting with Ennis in the little undistinguished restaurant, Peter's hammering away at her to divorce Nino Importuna … all the way through her dread of what “I glimpsed in Peter's eyes … and if his parting shot to me meant what I think it meant, the embryo's going to turn out to be a thalidomide baby, or worse.” And her final, unsteady “and to hell with you and you and you too Mrs. Calabash. I'd better totter off and tuck my lil ole self into beddy-snooky-bye.”

He shut the leather-covered book and handed it back. Virginia inserted the key in the lock and turned the key, slipped its chain about her neck, dropped the key into the chasm between her breasts.

The diary, locked, lay in her lap.

“Do you mind if we don't talk for a while?”

Ellery rose without waiting for a response and began to stroll about, rubbing the back of his neck, fingering his ear, pulling at his nose, finally resting his forehead against the edge of the tall mantelpiece at the fireplace. Virginia's eyes followed him. She seemed to have resigned herself to whatever fate had reserved for her, and to be waiting for it in confident patience. After some time this aura of self-confidence reached Ellery and penetrated his field of concentration. He came back from the fireplace and looked down at her.

“Where do you hide your diaries, Mrs. Importuna?”

“In a very safe place,” Virginia replied. “Don't ask me where, because I won't tell you.”

“Does anyone know the hiding place?”

“Not a soul in this world.” She added, “Or the next.”

“Not even Peter Ennis?”

“I just said, Mr. Queen, no one.”

“There's no possibility someone could have got his hands on this particular volume and read it?”

“No possibility. That I'd stake my life on.” She smiled. “Or is that what I'm doing, Mr. Queen? No. There's only one master key to all the years, the one you just saw me use, and I keep the chain around my neck always, even when I bathe. Even when I sleep.”

“Your husband. Couldn't he have …?”

“I never slept with my husband,” Virginia said in a murderous voice. “Never! When he was finished with me I invariably went back to my own room. And locked the filthy door.”

“Mrs. Importuna. I must ask you something—”

“Don't.”

“Forgive me. Was Importuna fond of the use of a whip?”

She shut her eyes as if to seek forgetfulness in the dark. But she opened them almost at once.

“The answer to that happens to be no. But if what you want to know is what he
was
fond of, don't bother to ask the question. I won't answer it. No one—no one, Mr. Queen—will ever know that from me. And the only other one who could tell is dead.”

Ellery took her hand; it lay in his trustfully, like a child's. “You're a very remarkable lady,” he said. “I'm in great danger of falling in love with you.” But then he let go of her hand and his tone changed. “I don't know yet how this is all going to turn out. However it does, you haven't seen the last of me.”

He was the perfect nonentity, a Chesterton's postman of a somewhat higher order.

Mr. E was neither tall nor short, fat nor thin, blond nor brunet, young nor old, shag-haired nor bald. His face might have been made of dough, or Plasticine. It possessed the property of accommodating itself to his immediate environment, so that he became part of it, like a face in a crowd.

He was dressed, not sharply and not shabbily, in a suit of neutral gray showing signs of wear hardly—indeed, just—noticeable; under the jacket he had on a not quite new white shirt and a medium shade of gray necktie with tiny darker gray figures; on his feet were black English brogues with a dull shine, worn down a bit at the heels.

He grasped a dark gray fedora in one hand and a well-used black attaché case in the other.

His obvious specialty, the only obvious thing about him, was self-effacement. Not the most knowing eye would ordinarily give him a second glance.

This was not an ordinary occasion, however, and Inspector Queen looked Mr. E over with the closest attention to detail. Nino Importuna's confidential agent had been accompanied to Centre Street by two detectives of the Inspector's staff; they had picked him up deplaning from an El Al jet at Kennedy. He stood up under the Inspector's scrutiny with patience and equanimity, but also as if modestly aware of his worth; and he sat down at the Inspector's invitation in an unobtrusive way, so that one moment he was on his feet and the next he was seated in the chair, leaving no recollection behind of how he had accomplished the transition. His neat hands were clasped on the attaché case in his lap.

And he waited.

“You're known at 99 East as Mr. E,” Inspector Queen began. “You traveled—on this last trip, anyway—under a cover name, Kempinski, and your real name, we've now found out, is Edward Lloyd Merkenthaler. What do I call you?”

“Take your choice.” Mr. E had a mild, soft voice, rather like a lady's bath suds; it seemed to vanish discreetly down a drain the moment he produced it. If he was disturbed at having been taken off a plane by two New York City detectives and brought to Police Headquarters for questioning in a homicide he showed no sign of it. “In my business I've found it more convenient to use many names, Inspector. I don't have a preference.”

“Well, I do. So let's use your real name. Mr. Merkenthaler, do you have any objections to answering some questions?”

“None at all.”

“Do you know your rights?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Would you rather have a lawyer present?”

Mr. E's lips rose in an appreciative smile, as if the Inspector had granted him a witticism. “That won't be at all necessary.”

“A moment ago you mentioned your business. Exactly what is your business, Mr. Merkenthaler?”

“For a number of years I've been employed by Nino Importuna—not by Importuna Industries; Mr. Importuna paid me out of his personal funds—as what might be called a peripatetic industrial detective, or a white-collar prospector, or both.”