A Fine and Private Place (21 page)

“Even the quantity of messages was a sham. True, 9 were received. But then a 10th arrived, compromising the magic number. Red herrings.

“In five of the envelopes there were verbal messages. One stated that a boyhood friend of Importuna's had grown up to become a justice of the Supreme Court. The 9-significance of the United States Supreme Court is known to every schoolchild. The trouble was, an exhaustive inquiry failed to turn up such a boyhood friend—or any such friend—of Nino's. The message was simply false. Or, in Chesterton's word, sham. In your words, dad, red herring.

“The same proved true of the other four worded messages. One stated that in his youth Nino Importuna had played semiprofessional baseball for the Binghamton, New York, team. Only it wasn't so. Another said that his Palm Springs estate included a golf course—another connotation of 9, from either a 9-hole course or an 18-hole, a multiple of 9. Only neither proved to be true. There was no golf course at all on the Importuna Palm Springs property.

“Another message—forgive me for mentioning it, Mrs. Importuna—alleged Importuna's fondness for a cat-o'-nine-tails. Mrs. Importuna assured me that it wasn't true, and no evidence of any sexual aberration could be found.

“Then there was the message about Importuna's having commissioned the sculpting of the 9 Muses for his villa in Lugano. You, Peter, emphatically denied this, telling me it was just the sort of assignment it was your job to oversee, yet you knew nothing about any such commission. There would have been no point in your lying about it, because the simplest investigation would turn up the sculptor of such a project if the message were telling the truth. The official investigation, in fact, found no trace of such a person.

“So the 9 messages were either irrelevant or false. I was trying to eliminate the sham clues, remember, to discover which 9-clue was
not
a sham, was
not
a red herring. And here I was faced with the dismaying conclusion that
all
the 9s were red herrings!—certainly all that had the least smack of importance. Nino could sign contracts on the 9th, the 18th, or the 27th of the month, or refuse to close a deal except on such dates, or arrange to be married on the 9th day of the 9th month for luck, or falsify his birth date to make it drip 9s, but the 9-isms like these were not really clues. They were things that Importuna, not his killer, had elected to do. I had set out to find a legitimate 9-ism relating to the killer, and here I was with nothing left in the net. Until suddenly that was no longer true. I had eliminated every 9-clue, I then saw,” Ellery said, “except one.”

This was the climax of his carefully plotted scene, and Ellery played it as he had played similar scenes at similar climaxes, holding them with a glittering eye, using his voice as if it were a foil, dominating them with his presence, threatening them with a stabbing forefinger.

“
Except one
,” he repeated. “One 9 was real. One 9 was
not
a red herring.

“It was the last 9-ism of the series, emerging as a result of message number 10.

“This unexpected, 9-total-breaking final message, Mrs. Importuna, was the basis of the question I asked you about your luncheon date with Peter Ennis on December 9, 1966.” Virginia flinched, then braced herself with a scornful look. “I'm sorry, but I have no choice. I told you that I couldn't promise to keep your diary in confidence from the authorities if I found it contained information pertinent to the case.”

“Information? What information?” Inspector Queen was bristling. And Assistant District Attorney Rankin was jotting away at a tremendous pace.

“Mrs. Importuna has kept a diary from girlhood, dad. She was kind enough to let me read her entry for December 9, 1966. From that entry I learned that in the course of her lunch that day—it was with Ennis—a 9-ism cropped up. It was this.” Ellery leaned forward. “That Virginia's and Nino's prenuptial agreement had exactly 9 more months to run—9 months from that day, December 9, 1966, to September 9, 1967, which was the cutoff date specified in the agreement for Mrs. Importuna to become her husband's sole heir.

“Now that 9-month-to-the-day period was no invention of somebody's, no sham, no red herring. That 9 months was a fact. And it was a significant fact. Because if someone wanted Virginia to inherit her husband's half-billion-dollar estate, he
had
to wait 9 months before her claim to it became a legal, if potential, reality.

“In a grimly real sense this whole unavoidable 9-month waiting period resembles a pregnancy. Conception occurs on December 9, 1966. There are 9 months of gestation. Then on September 9, 1967, the child is born, the monstrous child, and its name is murder. Why, even the forceps used in its delivery bears the label
Newborn Child Emerging
.”

Ellery paused for breath, and they hitched forward, even Rankin in his corner, to urge him on.

“Let's consider the occasion of what I've called the conception, that lunch in a hideaway restaurant on December 9th of last year. I was looking for a clue, remember, that in some way involved the killer. I had to ask myself, was there anything about that lunch the killer might have reason to dread? Well,
what about the fact of the meeting itself
? Suppose Virginia's and Peter's appearance in public, their only indiscretion as far as the outside world was concerned, were to become known? Suppose they had been seen and their conversation overheard? For if it became known that Virginia Importuna and Peter Ennis, her husband's confidential secretary, were having an affair, if it became known that because of her prenuptial agreement Virginia couldn't leave or divorce her husband without losing everything, if it became known that Peter had to wait 9 months for Virginia to become Importuna's heir—from these simple facts all the rest … the conception of Importuna's murder, the gestation of the murder plot, and the birth, the fruition, of the crime … could be deduced by anyone with an IQ of 100. And that was a mortal danger to the plotter. That was the 9-fact he tried to bury in that barrage of sham 9s he bombarded us with after the murder was born.”

Inspector Queen had begun to develop a pinched and greenish expression about the mouth, as if he were trying without success to ignore an extremely bad taste.

“To wrap this up,” Ellery continued with an encouraging smile at his father—Courage! Fear not!—“let me explain what I mean by the period of gestation. The plotter, as I said, had to wait 9 months before Virginia could come into Importuna's estate, after which he would kill Importuna. Why not use that 9-month waiting period to the best possible advantage? After all, on December 9th of last year Nino Importuna owned only a third of the family fortune. But if Nino's two brothers were to die in the meantime … So he murdered Julio and framed Marco for it, thus counting on being rid of both.

“The frame-up wasn't quite successful, but Marco was so obliging as to commit suicide, the police concluded that this constituted in effect a confession that Marco had killed Julio and hanged himself in remorse; the net effect to the plotter was perfectly satisfactory. Both younger brothers were dead, he—the plotter-killer—was unsuspected, and Nino's fortune was tripled. So that when that September day rolled around on which Virginia became Nino's legal heir, the final act—the killing of Nino—would bring the killer a half-billion-dollar fortune. Not directly, of course, but through his tie with you, Virginia. Because I'm positive you and he have long since made plans to marry—”

“Not directly? Marry?” Peter Ennis was on his feet, looking suddenly formidable. “What in hell are you hinting at, Queen?”

Ellery frowned. Virginia was smiling.

“If you'll allow me to finish, Peter,” he said, “you'll find it's rather more than a hint.”

“You don't have to hint, old boy. What you're doing or are about to do is accuse me of having plotted to kill Virginia's husband beginning 9 months before the actual murder and, during those 9 months, of having got rid of Julio and Marco in order to triple Virginia's inheritance when she should come into it. Right? And I'm supposed to have done all this in the expectation of marrying her and so getting control of the Importuna fortune?”

“Very well put, Peter,” Ellery said. “That's just what I'm accusing you of.”

Peter grinned. He glanced at Virginia, whose smile became a tittery sort of giggle.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Queen,” she said, “this is so rude of me. And you
are
doing your best.”

“What do you mean?” Ellery demanded, reddening. “Have I said something funny?”

“You sure have,” Peter said. “Hilarious. I take it if I can prove I couldn't have killed Nino Importuna I'm off your stupid hook?”

“Peter, now, really,” Virginia chided him. “That's not a nice way to talk to Mr. Queen. I'm sure he's done the very best anyone could expect.”

“So did the snake in the Garden of Eden! I don't exactly enjoy being suspected of murder, darlin'. Well, Queen, do you want the proof?”

“Of course.” Ellery was standing there looking like a small boy who has just awakened from a delicious dream to find himself soaked to the skin.

“Inspector Queen, when exactly was Nino murdered?” Peter Ennis demanded. “Lay it out for us again. What time of night?”

“Just past midnight of September 9th–10th.” The Inspector avoided Ellery's piteous glance. “About 12:15
A
.
M
. of, technically, the 10th of September.”

“Be sure to take this all down, Mr. Rankin. It's the stopper to that arrest order you've probably got burning a hole in your pocket.

“Nino Importuna, Virginia, and I had dinner together in the penthouse that evening—the evening of the 9th—as we told you people long ago. Toward the end of the dinner Nino complained of not feeling well, as you know, and he went to his room after telling us to eat the chef's special dessert without him. Virginia and I did so, and I immediately left. What I didn't testify to was that when I drove to my apartment I changed my clothes, threw a toothbrush and pajamas into my briefcase, and drove back to the vicinity of 99 East. Virginia was waiting for me at our prearranged spot—”

“How did she do that without being seen leaving the building?” Ellery jeered.

“Let me, Peter,” Virginia said, “since it's me Mr. Queen's talking about. It was really quite simple, Mr. Queen. The building next door is flush against ours, and just one story lower. There's a steel ladder on our roof that can be lowered to theirs in an emergency. I'd purposely dressed in a dark slack suit. I lowered the ladder, climbed down to the other roof, got into their elevator, which is self-service, and simply rode down to the street. They don't have a night doorman or a security guard. I got back to the penthouse later the same way, just pulling the ladder back up when I was on our roof.”

Ellery sat down on Importuna's bed. It was less a sitting down than a collapse.

Peter Ennis said with some satisfaction, “We drove up to Connecticut—New Milford, Queen. Registered there in a motel under the names of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Angelo—Virginia thought that sounded romantic. The trip up took two hours of fast driving—I don't see how anyone could make it in less time in a car. We checked into the motel just about 11
P
.
M
.—their records should show the time to the minute, because they use a time-and-dating machine on the slips. Even if we'd left the place immediately and driven back to the city, we couldn't possibly have reached 99 East before 1
A
.
M
., which would have made it almost an hour after Nino was murdered. As it is, we didn't actually check out until around 1:30
A
.
M
.—you'll find the exact time recorded up there. I dropped Virginia off at the building next door at 3:30
A
.
M
. and drove on to my apartment.

“I should make the point, I suppose,” Peter went on, looking them in the eyes, “that the reason we didn't tell the truth about that night until you just made it impossible for us not to, Queen, was that we didn't expect anyone really to understand how much we've been in love for so long, that it's been the real thing for both of us, that we couldn't face having it cheapened further—it was cheapened enough in our own eyes by the circumstances.

“Now that I've said it,” Peter said, “you'll want to know the name of the motel—”

“We know the name of the motel,” Inspector Queen said. “It's been checked out, Ellery—not only the registration and departure times, but also positive IDs of Ennis and Mrs. Importuna from photos we showed the night clerk who saw them come and go. I didn't get the chance to tell you, son, in the rush today.”

“But you must have known what I had in mind when I set this up, dad,” Ellery said wildly. He was clutching the edge of Importuna's bed with both hands as if it were the edge of a precipice.

“Not really, son. You were pretty mysterious about what you had in mind. I thought you'd be pulling the rabbit out of your hat as usual, one of your magic tricks that turn a case upside down the way you've done so often. Ellery, if you can't disprove the alibi, these people are in the clear. And you can't. Why do you think those subpoenas weren't served? On the evidence, neither Mrs. Importuna nor Ennis could physically have been here at the time Importuna was attacked and murdered.”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Queen, I really am,” Virginia murmured again, as if she would happily have confessed to the crime if only to save Ellery from further embarrassment. “I'm sure you'll figure out the real answer one of these days.”

Mercifully, Ellery was not listening. He was mumbling to himself. He was mumbling, “Those 9s. Those damn 9s. They've got to be the key to this nightmare. But what?”