Queens Full (16 page)

“Meet anyone you know?”

“I've told you. No.”

“What time was it when you got back home?”

“I don't remember. All I know is, it was still dark.”

“Was it also still foggy?” the voice from the corner said.

Carroll jumped. “No. No, it wasn't.”

Ellery said, “The fog lifted about two
A
.
M
., Mr. Carroll.”

“You're sure you can't recall the time even approximately?” Inspector Queen's tone was patience itself. “I mean the time you got home?”

Carroll began to look stubborn. “I just didn't notice.”

“Maybe Mrs. Carroll did?”

“My wife was asleep. I didn't wake her.”

“Item three,” the Inspector remarked. “No alibi. And item four: fingerprints.”

“Fingerprints?” Carroll said feebly.

“John's? Where, Inspector?” Tully West asked in a sharp tone. “You realize they wouldn't mean anything if you found them on the pistol?”

“We hardly ever find fingerprints on automatics, Mr. West. No, in Hunt's car.”

Through the roaring in his ears John Carroll thought: So that's why they fingerprinted me Monday … He blinked as he heard the old amusement in his partner's voice.

“Surely you found other prints in the car besides John's and, I assume, Hunt's?”

The old man looked interested. “Whose, for instance?”

“There must be at least one set traceable to the attendant in the public garage where Hunt kept his car.”

“Well?”

“And, of course,” West said with a smile, “a few of mine.”

“Yours, Mr. West?”

“I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist that you take my prints, too. Hunt drove John and me home from the office in the Thunderbird Thursday night—the night before the murder.”

Inspector Queen snapped, “Of course, Mr. West, we'll oblige you,” and glanced over at the leather chair.

“I have a naïve question for you, Carroll.” Ellery was studying the smoke-curl of his cigaret. “Did you kill Meredith Hunt?”

“Hell, no,” John Carroll said. “I haven't killed anybody since Leyte.”

“I think I'm going to advise you not to say any more, John!” Tully West rose. “Is that all, Inspector?”

“For now. And, Mr. Carroll.”

“Yes?”

“You're not to leave town. Understand?”

John Carroll nodded slowly. “I guess I do.”

Through the lobby of Police Headquarters, down the worn steps to the sidewalk, neither partner said anything. But when they were in a taxi speeding uptown, Carroll kicked the jump-seat and muttered, “Tully, there's something I've got to know.”

“What's that?”

“Do you think I murdered Meredith?”

“Not a chance.”

“Do you really mean that?”

West's monkish face crinkled. “We Wests haven't stuck our necks out since Great-grandfather West had his head blown off at Chancellorsville.”

Carroll sank back. The older man glanced out the cab window at Fourth Avenue.

“On the other hand, you don't lean your weight on a lily pad when a nice big rock is handy. My knowledge of corporation and tax law—or yours, John—isn't going to do much good if that smart old coot decides to jump. You may need a top-flight criminal lawyer soon. To tell the truth, I've been thinking of Sam Rayfield

“I see. All right, Tully, whatever you say.” Carroll studied an inflamed carbuncle on their driver's neck. “Tully, what's the effect of this thing going to be on Helena? And on Breckie, Louanne? My God.”

He turned to the other window, lips trembling.

A detective from the 17th Precinct made the arrest that afternoon. He and his partner appeared at the Madison Avenue offices of Hunt, West & Carroll just before five o'clock. Carroll recognized them as the men who had questioned him the previous Saturday afternoon; they were apparently the local detectives “carrying” the case.

Miss Mallowan fainted out of season. Tully West's secretary dragged her away.

“I'd like to call my wife,” Carroll said.

“Sure, but make it snappy.”

“Listen, sweetheart,” Carroll said into the phone. He was amazed at the steadiness of his voice. “I'm being arrested. You're not to come running down to the Tombs, do you hear? I want you to stay home and take care of the kids. Understand, Helena?”

“You listen to me.” Helena's voice was as steady as his. “You're to let Tully handle everything. I'll tell the children you've had to go off on business. And I'll see you as soon as they'll let me. Do
you
understand, darling?”

Carroll licked his lips. “Yes.”

Tully West came running out as they waited for the elevator. “I'm getting Rayfield on this right away. And I'll keep an eye on Helena and the brats. You all right, John?”

“Oh, wonderful,” Carroll said wryly.

West gripped his hand and dashed off.

The hard gray-and-green face of the Criminal Courts Building, the night in the cell, the march across the bridge from the prison wing the next morning, his arraignment in one of the chill two-story courtrooms, Helena's strained face as she labored up to kiss him, Tully West's droopy look, the soft impressive voice of Samuel Rayfield, the trap of the judge's gray mouth as he fixed bail at fifty thousand dollars … to John Carroll, all of it jumbled into an indigestible mass. He was relieved to find himself back in the cell, and he dozed off at once.

Friday morning the pain caught up with him. Everything hurt sharply. When he was taken into the office of the court clerk, he could not bear to look at the two lawyers, or at his wife. He felt as if his clothing had been taken away.

He heard only dimly the colloquy with the clerk. It had something to do with the bail … Suddenly Carroll realized that it was his wife who was putting up the bail bond, paying the ransom for his freedom out of Vanowen money.

“Helena, no!”

But he voiced the cry only in his head. The next thing he knew they were marching out of the court clerk's office.

“Am I free?” Carroll asked foolishly.

“You're free, darling,” Helena whispered.

“But fifty thousand,” he muttered. “Your money …”

“Oh, for heaven's sake, John,” West said. “The bail is returnable on the first day of the trial, when you resubmit to the custody of the court. You know that.”

“John dear, it's only money.”

“Helena, I didn't do it …”

“I know, darling.”

Rayfield interposed his genial bulk between them and the lurking photographers and reporters. Somehow, he got them through the barrage of cameras and questions.

As the elevator doors were closing, Carroll noticed a tall man lounging in the corridor, a youngish man with bright eyes. A shock of recognition, rather unpleasant, ran through him. It was that police inspector's son, Ellery Queen. What was he doing here?

The question needled him all the way home.

Then he was safe behind the gray front on Fifth Avenue. In the Tombs, Carroll had coddled the thought of that safety, wrapping himself in it against the cold steel and antiseptic smell. But they were still with him. When Mrs. Poole took the children tactfully off to the Park, Carroll shivered and gave himself up to the martini West handed him.

“What was it Meredith used to say about your martinis, Tully? Something about having to be a fifth-generation American to know how to mix one properly?”

“Meredith was a middle-class snob.” West raised his glass. “Here's to him. May he never know what hit him.”

They sipped in silence.

Then Helena set her glass down. “Tully. Just what does Mr. Rayfield think?”

“The trial won't come up until October.”

“That's not what I asked.”

“Translation,” Carroll murmured. “What are defendant's chances?”

“Rayfield hasn't said.” West downed the rest of his drink in a gulp, something he never did.

Helena's silky brows drew the slightest bit toward each other. She said suddenly, “John, you have some enemy you don't know about. Someone who hates you enough to commit murder with your gun. Who is it? Think, darling!”

Carroll shook his head.

“I don't believe it's that at all, Helena,” West said, pouring a refill. “Taking John's pistol might have been an act of sheer opportunism. Whoever it was might have lifted mine if I'd left it around. Seems to me the question properly is, Who had it in for Meredith?”

“That's junior, remember?” Carroll said. “Ask the police. Ask that lip-smacking little assistant district attorney.”

They were all quiet again.

“But it's true,” John Carroll mumbled at last. “It's true I've got to do something …”

Tully West's eyes met Helena Carroll's briefly.

“‘Here, John. Have another martini.”

Carroll spent the weekend in seclusion. The telephone and doorbell kept ringing, but Helena refused to let him be disturbed.

By Sunday night he had made up his mind. Helena heard him typing away on the portable, but when she tried to go in to him, she found the bedroom door locked.

“John! Are you all right?”

“I'll be out in a minute.”

When he unlocked the door he was tucking an envelope into his inside breast pocket. He looked calmer, as if he had won a battle with himself.

He helped her over to the chaise. “There's something I've never told anyone, Helena, not even you. I gave my word not to.”

“What are you talking about, darling?”

“I've had a big decision to make. Helena, I'm going to come out of this all right. All I ask you to do is stop worrying and trust me. No matter what happens, will you trust me?”

“Oh, John!”

He stooped to kiss her. “I'll be back in a few minutes.”

He walked over to Madison Avenue and went into a deserted delicatessen store. In the telephone booth he dialed Meredith Hunt's number.

“Serafina? Mr. Carroll. Let me talk to Mrs. Hunt.”

Felicia Hunt's accent vibrated in his ear without its usual charm. “John, are you mad? Suppose they have my telephone tapped? You know what Meredith wrote them!”

“I also know he got it all cross-eyed,” Carroll said. “Felicia, I want to see you. Tomorrow I'm going into the office to start helping Tully salvage something from the wreckage, but on my way home I'm stopping in at your place with somebody about six-thirty. Will you be there?”

She sounded exasperated. “I can't go anywhere so soon after the funeral, you know that. Whom are you bringing?”

“No one you know.”

“John, I wish you wouldn't—”

He hung up.

When the maid with the Indian face opened the door Carroll said, “After you, Rudin,” and the man with him stepped nervously into the Hunt house. He was a chubby citizen with a wet pink scalp and rimless eyeglasses. He carried a small leather case.

“The
Señora
waits upstairs,” Serafina said sullenly.

“Get Mr. Rudin a magazine or something,” Carroll said. “This won't take long, Rudin.”

The man seated himself on the edge of a foyer chair. Carroll vaulted up the stairs, taking his briefcase with him.

Felicia Hunt was all in black. Even her stockings were black. She gave Carroll a turn; it was rather like walking in on a character drawn by Charles Addams. She wore no make-up and, for the first time since Carroll had known her, no jewelry, not even her pendant. The brilliant fingernails she affected were now colorless. Her fingers kept exploring her bosom petulantly.

“Meaning no disrespect to an old Spanish custom,” Carroll said, “is this mourning-in-depth absolutely necessary, Felicia? You look like a ghost.”

“Thank you,” Felicia said spitefully. “Always the
caballero
. Where I come from, John, you do certain things in certain ways. Not that I would dare show my face in the street! Reporters … may they all
rot!
What do you want?”

Carroll set his briefcase down by the escritoire, went to the door, and carefully closed it. She watched him with sudden interest. He glanced about, nodded at the drawn drapes.

“How mysterious,” the widow said in a new tone. “Are you going to kill me or kiss me?”

Carroll laughed. “You're a nourishing dish, Felicia, but if I didn't have an appetite for you a year ago I'd hardly be likely to drool over you now.”

She flung herself on the divan. “Go away,” she said sulkily. “I loathe you.”

“Why? Because it took you too long to realize what it would mean to
Señor
the Ambassador, your father, if your passes at me ever got into the newspapers? You didn't loathe me when you were throwing yourself at me all over town, waylaying me in restaurants, making Meredith suspect I was fouling his nest. Have you forgotten those steaming
billets-doux
you kept sending me, Felicia?”

“And how you nobly protected me by saying nothing about them.” She spat at him, “Get out!”

“Yes, I protected you,” Carroll said slowly, “but it begins to look as if I can't protect you any longer. I've told everyone—the police, the D.A., Helena, Tully, Samuel Rayfield—that I walked the streets in the rain most of the night that Meredith was shot. As far as they're concerned, right now I have no alibi for the two-hour stretch between two and four
A
.
M
., when they say he was murdered.”

She was beginning to look apprehensive.

“But now I'm afraid I'm going to have to tell them that between one o'clock and four-thirty that morning you and I were alone in this room, Felicia. That the fact is, I've had an alibi all along—you—and that I kept my mouth shut about it because of how it would look if the story came out.”

She said hoarsely, “You wouldn't.”

“Not if I can help it.” Carroll shrugged. “For one thing, I'm quite aware that nobody, not even Helena, would believe I spent three and a half hours alone with you that night just trying to get you to talk Meredith out of ruining my life. Especially if it also came out, as might very well happen, how you'd run after me, written me those uninhibited Latin love letters.”