There Was an Old Woman (10 page)

“Mac, y-your face,” stammered his father. “It's all b-bloody!”

“His damned womanish fingernails,” panted Mac. “He doesn't even fight like a man, Pop.” He pushed Ellery away. “I'm all right, thanks.”

Thurlow uttered a peculiar sound. Where his face was not puffed and stained, it was deadly white. His fat cheeks sucked in and out nervously; he kept trying not to lick his cracked lips. There was intense pain on his face. Slowly Thurlow took a handkerchief from his hip pocket, slowly unfolded it, grasped it by one corner and walked over to his brother. He flicked the handkerchief across Mac's wounded cheek.

As in a dream, they heard his voice.

“You've insulted me for the last time, Maclyn. I'll kill you just the way I killed Robert. This can only be wiped out in blood. Meet me at the Shoe tomorrow at dawn. I'll get two more guns—they've taken all of mine. Mr. Queen, will you do me the honor of acting for me once again?”

And, before they could recover from their astonishment, Thurlow was gone.

“I'll meet you!” Mac was roaring. “Bring your guns, Thurlow! Bring 'em, you murdering coward!”

They were holding him down forcibly-Ellery, Charley, Major Gotch. Steve Potts had dropped into a chair, to look at his writhing son without hope.

“You don't know what you're saying, Mac. Stop it, now. Daddy, do something. Charley … Mr. Queen, you can't let this happen again. Oh God,” Sheila sobbed, “I'm going mad myself …”

Her terror brought Mac to his senses. He ceased struggling, shook off their arms. Then he twisted to lie prone on his bed, face in his hands.

Ellery and Charley half-carried Sheila into the hall. “That maniac—he'll kill my Mac,” she wept. “The way he killed Bobby. You've got to stop Thurlow Mr. Queen. Arrest him—something!”

“Stop your hysterics, Sheila. Nothing's going to happen. There won't be another duel. I promise you.”

When Charley had led Sheila off, still crying, Ellery stood for a moment outside Mac's room. Steve Potts was trying to soothe his son in an ineffectual murmur. Major Gotch's brassy voice was raised in a reminiscence half biography and half advice, and concerned a Borneo incident in which the artful use of knee and knife had saved his younger, more valuable life.

From Mac, silence.

Ellery ran his hand desperately through his hair and hurried downstairs to telephone to his father.

14 . . . Mac Solves the Mystery

The old woman suffered a heart attack that evening. For a few moments Ellery suspected malingering. But when Dr. Innis, hastily summoned, took over, and Ellery permitted himself an oral expression of his cynicism, without a word the physician handed him the stethoscope. What Ellery heard through those sensitive microphones banished all suspicions and gave him a respect for Dr. Innis he had not had before. If the Pasteur of Park Avenue had kept this wheezing, stopping, skipping, racing organ from ceasing to function altogether, then he was a very good man indeed.

Cornelia Potts lay gasping high on pillows. Her lips were cyanosed and her eyes, deeply socketed, in agony. With each breath she flung herself upward, as if to engulf the elusive air with her whole body.

Dr. Innis busied himself with hypodermics under Ellery's eye. After a few minutes, seeing the Old Woman's struggles for breath subside a little, he left on tiptoe. Outside the Old Woman's door he found Detective Flint.

“Old Woman kick the bucket?” Flint inquired with a hopeful inflection. When Ellery shook his head, Flint shook his. “Got a message for you from the Sarge. He's tailing Thurlow.”

“Thurlow's left the house?” Ellery said quickly.

“A couple of minutes ago. Sergeant Velie's hangin' on to his tail like a tick, though.”

“I suppose Thurlow's in quest of two more revolvers,” mused Ellery. “Let me know when he gets back, will you, Flint?” He went into Mac's room. Major Gotch had vanished for some hole of his own in the vast building, but Stephen Potts was hovering over his son's bed, and Sheila and Charley Paxton.

“I don't know what you're all hanging around me for,” Mac was saying listlessly as Ellery came in. The twin of dead Robert lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. “I'm fine. Don't treat me as if I were a baby. I'm all right, I tell you. Pop, go to bed. Let me alone. I want to sleep.”

“Mac, you're planning to do something foolish.” Sheila held tightly to her brother's hand.

“He wants a duel, he'll get a duel.”

Old Steve made washing motions with his gnarled hands.

Ellery said: “Did you people know that Mrs. Potts has had a heart attack?”

It was cruel, but informative. Perhaps not so cruel, considering the startled hope that sprang into those faces, and the slow turn of Mac's head.

Sheila and her father ran out.

It took Charley and Ellery until past midnight to get Mac Potts to sleep. By the time they left his room and shut the door softly, Cornelia Potts not far along the hall was also in a deep sleep. They met Sheila and her father coming wearily out of the Old Woman's apartment with Dr. Innis.

“Condition's improved,” said the doctor briefly. “I think she'll pull through this one. Amazing woman. But I'll stay here for another hour or so, anyway.” He waved and returned to his patient.

Ellery sent Sheila and Stephen Potts to bed. They were both exhausted. Charley, who looked in hardly better case, commandeered a spare room, recommended that Ellery do the same, and trudged off after Sheila.

Mr. Queen was left alone in the upper hall. He spent much time there, smoking cigarets and pacing before the silent row of doors.

At 1:10
A.M
. Thurlow Potts came home. Ellery heard him tottering upstairs. He dodged into the entrance to the turret staircase; Thurlow passed him, lurching. The elder Potts was toting a badly wrapped package. He meandered down the hall and finally wandered into his own rooms.

A moment later Sergeant Velie came upstairs, softly.

“Guns, Sergeant?”

“Yeah. Scared up some old bedbug in a hockshop down on West Street who sold 'em to him.” Velie kept his eye on Thurlow's door. “Two big babies. I couldn't go in and find out what they were or I would a lost
my
bedbug. They looked heavy enough to sink a sub.”

“Why so late?”

“He stopped into a row of gin mills on his way back. Got tanked to the eyeballs. For a little guy he sure can lap it up.” The Sergeant chuckled. “Mr. Thurlow Potts ain't doin' any dueling tonight. I can tell you that. This is one that gets slept off, brother, unless he's been kiddin' me.”

“Good work, Velie. Wait till he falls asleep. Then go in there and take that package away from him.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ten minutes later Sergeant Velie slipped out of Thurlow's apartment with the poorly tied package in his arms.

“Beddy-by,” grinned the Sergeant. “Flopped on his flop with his clothes on, and he's snorin' away like a water buffalo. What do I do now?”

“Give me the package for one thing,” replied Ellery, “and for another get some sleep. Tomorrow I think, will be a large fat day.”

Velie yawned and went downstairs. Ellery saw him stretch out in a plush chair in the foyer, tip his hat over his eyes, fold his hands on his hard stomach; heard him settle back with voluptuous sighs.

Ellery opened the package. It contained two colossal revolvers, single-action Colt .45's, the weapon that played so important a role in the winning of the West. “Six-shooters, by thunder!” He hefted one of the formidable guns and wondered how Thurlow had ever expected to handle it: its shape and the size of its grip were adapted for big brawny hands, not the pudgy little white hands of the Thurlow Pottses of this world. Both guns were loaded.

Ellery retied the package, placing it at his feet, and curled up on the top step of the spiral staircase.

At 2:30 Dr. Innis emerged from the Old Woman's apartment, yawning. “She'll sleep through the night now, Mr. Queen. This last hypo injection would put an elephant to sleep. ‘Night.”

“Good night, Doctor.”

“I'll be back first thing in the morning. She's in no danger.” Dr. Innis trudged downstairs and disappeared.

Ellery rose, clutching Thurlow's newest arsenal, and made a noiseless tour of the floor. When he had satisfied himself that everyone was asleep, or at least in his room, he hunted up an empty bedroom on the top floor, flung himself on the bed with his arms about Thurlow's package, and fell instantly asleep.

At six o'clock sharp, in the red-gold of a charming lawn, Thurlow Potts dashed out of the Potts Palace and paced down the steps to the Shoe. He stopped short. A delegation awaited him.

Inspector Queen, Sergeant Velie, Sheila and her father, Charles Hunter Paxton, a half-dozen plainclothes men, and Ellery Queen.

“My guns!” Thurlow saw the package in Ellery's hands, beaming with relief. “I was
so
alarmed,” he said, wiping his forehead with a silk handkerchief. “But I might have known as my second you'd take care of everything, Mr. Queen.”

Mr. Queen did not reply.

“Is everything ready for the duel, gentlemen?”

Inspector Queen spat out the end of his first cheroot of the day. “There's going to be no duel, Mr. Potts. Understand that? I'll repeat it for your benefit. There's going to be no duel. Your dueling days are over. And if you want to argue about it, there are plenty of judges available. Now how about it? Will you settle this fight with your brother sensibly or do I swear out a warrant for your arrest?”

Thurlow blinked.

“Ellery, get this boy Mac down here. You said last night over the phone he'd threatened to kill Thurlow. Get him down here and we'll settle this foolishness once and for all.”

Ellery nodded and went back into the house. It was quiet; no servants stirred as yet; Dr. Innis had arrived fifteen minutes before and gone into Cornelia Potts's room with the same heavy tread which had carried him out of the house a few hours earlier.

Ellery went to Mac's door. It was a silent door.

“Mac?”

There was no answer. He opened the door.

Mac was lying on his back in bed, covered to the chin, a very peaceful young man. His eyes were open.

But Mr. Queen's eyes were open, too—wide. He ran over to the bed and pulled back the cover.

Some time during the night Maclyn Potts had solved the mystery of his brother's death. For his brother's murderer had visited him here, and he had looked with those staring eyes upon that creature, and that creature had left behind a hard reflection of his nature—a bullet in Mac's heart.

Ellery stood still, his heart pounding. He felt himself growing enraged. And then a coldness settled down on him. His eyes narrowed. The pillow on which Mac's head rested showed powder burns and one bullet hole.

There were some strange marks on Mac's face—long thin blue marks. As if the second twin had been whipped.

On the empty bed of departed Robert there stood a bowl of gold-spotted liquid. Ellery sniffed it, touched its bland surface with a cautious finger tip. It was cold chicken broth.

He looked around. The door through which he had just come … A little behind it lay a crop, a crop such as horsemen use to whip their mounts. And, near it, a small revolver with a familiar look.

PART THREE

15 . . . And Whipped Them All Soundly and Put Them to Bed

Dr. Samuel Prouty, Assistant Medical Examiner of New York County, squinted past his fuming cigar at the body of Maclyn Potts and said through his stained teeth: “I've seen a lot of monkey business but the Potts madness passeth understanding. I can't even bellyache any more. It's too fascinating.”

“Spare me your fascinations, Prouty,” snarled Inspector Queen, glaring at Mac's corpse with bitterness.

“Those marks on his face,” said Dr. Prouty thoughtfully. “Very provocative. I tell you, boys, Freud's at the bottom of this.”

“Who?” asked Sergeant Velie.

“Perhaps,” remarked Ellery Queen, “perhaps Sigmund's dark land is, Prouty; but I do believe we can touch on nearer shores, if you're referring to the welts on poor Mac's face.”

“What d'ye mean, Ellery?” frowned Doc Prouty.

“Not very much, Doc.”

The Potts mansion was quiet. The mud had been roiled and beaten; now it settled into new patterns. Mac's body lay on his bed, as Ellery had found it. Nothing had been disturbed except the weapon, which had been taken downtown for ballistics examination.

The photographer, the fingerprint crew, had come and gone. These had been dutiful motions, for the sake of the record. The photographs preserved forever the visual memory of the scene; the fingerprints had no significance except to satisfy the undiscriminating appetite of routine and regulation. They told a story Inspector Queen already knew. Those who were known to have visited deceased's room since its last cleaning by the housemaids had left the marks of their hand there; of those who were not known to have visited the room, there was no fingerprint evidence. But this could have been because the murderer of Maclyn Potts wore a protective covering on the hands.

Ellery was inclined to this theory. “The fact that no prints at all have been found on the pistol, on the riding crop, or on the bowl of broth indicates gloves, or a very careful wiping off of prints afterwards.” In any event, the fingerprints that were present and those that were not had no clue or evidential value.

“When was the boy murdered, Doc?” asked the Inspector.

“Between three and four
A.M
.”

“Middle of the night, huh?” said the Sergeant, who had a passion for simplification.

“The shot was fired through the pillow.” Ellery pointed to the powder burns and the bullet hole.

“That's why no one heard it,” his father nodded.

“Probably,” reflected Ellery, “when the killer stole in here at three or four
A.M
. Mac's head had either slipped off the pillow in his sleep or was resting on one corner of it, so that his murderer easily slipped it from under his head. Certainly Mac didn't wake up until a second or two before the shot was fired, otherwise there'd be signs of a tussle, and there aren't.”

“Maybe the picking up of the pillow was what woke him,” suggested Velie.

Ellery nodded. “Quite possibly. But he had no time to do more than stare at the face bent over him. The next moment he was dead.”

Dr. Prouty shivered the least bit. “The things people do.”

Inspector Queen had no mind for moralizing; upon him lay the pressure. “Then after the shot was fired, this killer stuck the pillow back under Mac's head—”

“Neat soul,” murmured Mr. Queen. “Yes, the things people do . . .”

“And took that riding crop and smacked the boy over the face with it? Is that the way it happened, Doc?”

“Yes,” said Prouty, gazing at the thin blue welts, “the whipping was administered shortly after death, not before. I'd say within seconds. Yes, he dropped the gun and picked up the crop and whacked away. I'd say he whacked away even before he replaced the pillow, Dick.”

Inspector Queen shook his head. “It's beyond me.”

“But not beyond Mr. Queen,” boomed the Sergeant. “This is the kind of stuff you specialize in, ain't it, Mr. Queen?”

Mr. Queen did not react to this obvious sarcasm.

“And another thing,” grumbled the Inspector. “That bowl of soup. For Mike's sake, did this crazy killer bring up a midnight snack with him?”

“How d'ye know he brought it up for himself?” argued the Sergeant. “Maybe he was bringin' it up to this young guy. In case Mac woke up and said, ‘What the hell are you doin' in my bedroom at four o'clock in the morning, you so-an-so?' Then he could show the bowl of soup and say: ‘I figgered you might want some soup before the duel. Chicken broth is swell just before duels,' he could say. Get his confidence, see? Then—whammo! And he's killed another chicken.” The Sergeant flushed in the silence. “Anyway,” he said doggedly, “that's the way
I
look at it.”

“When I said ‘midnight snack,' Velie,” said the Inspector, softly savage, “I was just trying to express in my crude way the fact that this is a wacky kill, Velie—madness—lunacy. Ellery, what are some more synonyms? Velie, dry up!”

“Okay, okay.”

“The strange part of the Sergeant's theory,” murmured Ellery, “is not its wrongness, but its rightness.”

His father stared, and Velie looked amazed.

“Oh, it's not right,” Ellery hastened to add. “It's all wrong, in fact. But it's on the right track. I mean it's a reasonable theory—it attempts to put a reasonable construction on an absurdity. And that's definitely correct, Dad.”

“You're getting deluded, too, Ellery,” said Doc Prouty.

“Not at all. This bowl of chicken broth was brought up here by the killer—incidentally, it
was
the killer, because the soup wasn't here when I left Mac asleep in bed last night—and, what's more, the killer brought the soup up for a completely logical reason.”

“To eat it?” sneered the Inspector. “Or to have Maclyn Potts eat it?”

“No, it wasn't brought here to be eaten, Dad.”

“Then why?”

“For the same reason the crop was brought …
and used.
By the way, whose riding crop is it, Dad? Have you identified it yet?”

“It belonged to Mac himself,” replied the Inspector with a sort of frustrated satisfaction, as if to say: And see what you can make out of that little pearl of information!

“And the soup and bowl?”

“From the kitchen. That Mrs. Whatsis, the cook, says she always keeps chicken broth handy in the refrigerator. The Old Woman has to have it.”

“So this killer,” said Sergeant Velie, undaunted, “this killer, before he comes up to the future scene of his foul crime, this killer goes downstairs to the kitchen, takes a bowl, fills it up with cold soup from the icebox, and pussyfoots it upstairs here. There's even a splash or two on the staircase, where the soup slopped over as he carried it up. Cold soup,” he said thoughtfully. “I've heard of jellied soup,” he said, “and hot soup, but just plain cold soup …”

“Don't fret yourself into a breakdown over it, Velie,” yipped Inspector Queen. “Just check back with downtown and see if they've done a ballistics yet on that rod. Ellery, come on.”

Dr. Prouty left, reluctantly, saying to Mr. Queen that this was one case he wished he could follow through
ex officio,
you lucky dog, you. The body was to be picked up and carted down to the Morgue for routine autopsy, but nothing more could be expected in the way of discoveries: the mouth had shown no trace of soup, or poison, death resulted from one .38-caliber bullet in the heart, and so it was all dirty work from here on in, and he didn't even think he'd attend the funeral. (
Exit
D
R
. P
ROUTY
.)

Inspector Queen and his son made a grand tour of the mansion before retiring for further conversations.

These were dreary rounds. Sheila lay on a chaise longue in her boudoir without tears, staring at her ceiling. (Mr. Queen was uneasily reminded of her brother, who lay in a similar attitude a few doors down the hall, not breathing.) Charley Paxton kept chafing Sheila's hands, his swollen eyes fixed fearfully on her expressionless face. It was Stephen Brent Potts's voice which emerged, almost without stuttering, in loving reassurance.

“There's no sense in giving in, Sheila lambie,” he was saying as the Queens stole in. “Mac's dead. All right, he's dead. M-murdered. What are we supposed to do—commit suicide? Curl up and d-die? Sheila, we'll fight back. We're not alone, baby. The p-police are our friends. Charley's on our sis-side … Aren't you, Charley?” Old Steve dug Charley sharply in the ribs.

“I love you, darling,” was all Charley could say as he chafed Sheila's cold hands.

“Don't lie there that way, Sheila,” old Steve said desperately. “Do you want a doctor?”

“No.” Sheila's voice was faint.

“If you don't snap out of this, I'll call one. I'll call two. I'll make your life miserable. Sheila honey, don't go under. Talk to me!”

“Never would have believed it of the old duck,” muttered the Inspector as he and Ellery left, unobserved. “Of all these people, he's the one with guts. Where's that sucker Gotch?”

“Taking a nap in his room, Velie told me.” Ellery seemed pained by the memory of that white, frozen face.

“Taking a nap!”

“Steve sent him to bed. It seems,” growled Mr. Queen, “that the worm has turned and, coincidentally with the illness of his mate and the murder of his second son, has developed hair on his chest. I like that little man.”

“Like—dislike!” raved his father. “Who cares how wonderful they are? I want to see this case solved and get the kit and caboodle of 'em out of my hair! What did he send Gotch to bed for?” he asked suspiciously.

“Gotchie-boy has been ‘worrying' about him too much, it appears. Hasn't had his proper rest. Stephen Brent Potts version.”

“Gotchie-boy has been hitting the bottle too much, that's what Gotchie-boy's been doing,” rasped the Inspector. “If this ain't all a smoke screen. I don't get that old pirate at all.”

“It's very simple, Dad—he found snug harbor, and he's dug in like a barnacle. By the way, have you had a report on the Major yet?”

“Not yet.”

They hunted Louella in her ivory tower, they took wing and visited Horatio in his house in the clouds, they returned to the Palace and looked in on Thurlow. Louella was still creating sea slime in her porcelain pans. Horatio was still wielding a quill on the greater
Mother Goose
—wielding it even more zestfully. And Thurlow was sleeping like a just man who has offered to do the honorable thing and been absolved by forces beyond a chevalier's control. An aroma of alcohol hovered over his pillow, like angel's wings.

Nothing had changed except that, as Horatio Potts put it, looking up from his versifying, “One person less lives in the house.”

The Inspector crossed lances with Dr. Innis upstairs in Cornelia Potts's sitting room. The Inspector was determined to speak with mother of deceased; Dr. Innis was equally determined that the Inspector should not speak to mother of deceased.

“Unless,” said Dr. Innis stiffly, “you promise you won't mention this latest development, Inspector.”

“Promise your jaundiced liver,” said the Inspector. “What would I want to speak to her about if not this ‘latest development,' as you put it so delicately?”

“Then I'm sorry. She's a very sick woman. The shock of another murder—another son's death—would undoubtedly kill her on the spot.”

“I doubt it, Doctor,” said the Inspector grumpily; but he gave up the joust and took Ellery down to the study. “Sit down, son,” sighed the old gentleman. “You generally have a cockeyed slant on cockeyed cases. How about squinting at this one? I'm groggy.”

“I'm a little crocked myself,” admitted Ellery with a wry smile.

“Sure, but what are you thinking?”

“Of Bob. Of Mac. Of life and death and how ineffectual people really are. Of Sheila … What are
you
thinking?”

“I don't know what to think. In the past this family of drizzle-birds, while they've been mixed up in plenty of trouble, have always wound up in the civil courts. Little stuff, inflated big. But now murder! And two in a row … I'm thinking something's been smoking under the surface for a long time. I'm thinking the fire's broken through. And I'm thinking: Is it out, or isn't it?”

“You think there may be further attempts?”

The Inspector nodded. “It might be just the beginning of a plot to wipe out the lot of them. Not that that wouldn't be a good thing,” he added dourly. “Except that I wish they'd started on the nuts rather than those two nice young fellas.”

“Yes,” said Ellery grimly.

“Is that all you're going to say—‘yes?' Then there's this crazy lashing of Mac Potts's dead face. That looks to me like pure hate—psychopathic. The chicken broth certainly indicates an unbalanced mind, in spite of that fancy speechifying you made upstairs to Velie.”

“But the whipping and the leaving of a bowl of chicken broth are easy, Dad,” said Ellery patiently. “As I said, they were both introduced into the murder's stew for identical reasons.”

“Flog a corpse—leave soup around.” The Inspector shook his head. “You'll have to show me, son.”

“Certainly.” And Ellery paused a moment. Then he did the most absurd thing. He began to chant, with an expression of utter gravity, a nursery rhyme:

“There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,

She had so many children she didn't know what to do.

She gave them some broth without any bread,

And whipped them all soundly, and put them to bed.”

And Mr. Queen clasped his hands behind his head and gazed steadily at his father.

His father's eyes were like new quarters.

“The Old Woman,” continued Ellery quietly. “She lives in a Shoe—or rather a house that the Shoe built. And there's even a nice, literal Shoe on the front lawn. She has so many children . . . yes, indeed. Six! That she doesn't know what to do with them I should think is evident to anyone; all her eccentricity and cruelty are masks for her frustration and helplessness.”