There Was an Old Woman (6 page)

7 . . . Pistols at Dawn

They got back to the Potts grounds on the drive at a quarter of six. The dawn was dripping and jellyfish-gray, not cheerful. The thing was beyond reason, but there it was. A duel was to be fought in this clammy dawn, with pistols, on a sward, and with trees as sentinels.

The three were exhausted; but not baggy-pantsed, tweed-coated Thurlow. He egged them on in his high-pitched voice, made higher than ordinary by a sort of ecstasy. Sheila and Charley and Ellery could scarcely keep step with him.

They went directly from the sidewalk before the front gates across the grass to the obscene bronze bulk of the Shoe, above which the neon inscription,
THE POTTS SHOE
, $3.99
EVERYWHERE
, still glowed faintly against the early morning sky.

Thurlow glanced up at the silent windows of his mother's mansion beyond the Shoe. “Mr. Queen,” he said formally, “you will find my pistol on the highboy in my bedroom.”

Ellery hesitated; then he bowed and hurried off to the house. In every story Ellery had ever read about a duel, the seconds bowed.

As he rounded the Shoe, the Inspector's voice came to him in a low and wondering snarl. “He's going through with it, Velie!”

“They'll never believe this downtown,” whispered the Sergeant with hoarse awe. “Never, Inspector.”

The two men nodded tensely to Ellery as he strode by, and he nodded back. It wasn't so bad, he thought, as he vaulted up the front steps. In fact, it was rather fun. He realized how gay life had been for those old boys of the romantic age, and felt almost thankful to Providence for having brought Thurlow Potts into the world a century or two late.

He realized, too, that part of his enjoyment derived from a certain giddiness of the brain, which in turn came from having tried to set Thurlow a Scotch example all night. Things were a little hazy as he tiptoed into the house, having used his magic on the lock of the front door.

Where was everybody? Wonderful household! Two brothers are to duel to the death, and of their blood none cares sufficiently to let off snoring and be miserable. Or perhaps the Old Woman was awake, peering through the curtains of her bedroom window at the scene in miniature to be enacted on the grass before her Moloch. What could she be thinking, that extraordinary mother? And where was Steve Brent Potts? Probably drunk in his bed.

Ellery stopped very suddenly halfway up the main staircase leading from the foyer to the bedroom floor. The house was silent, with that eeriest of silences which pervades a house at dawn, the silence of gray light.

Not a sound. Not even a shadow. But—something?

It seemed to be on the bedroom floor, and it seemed to pass the door of Thurlow Potts's apartment. Was it …
someone coming out of those two rooms?

Ellery sped up the remaining steps and stopped catlike on the landing to survey the hall, both ways. No one. And the silence again.

Man? Woman? Imagination? He listened very hard.

But that deep, deep silence.

He went into Thurlow's apartment, shut the door behind him, and began to search for more palpable clues. He spared neither time, eyesight, nor his clothes. But crawl and peer and pry as he might, he could detect no least sign that anyone had been there since he himself had left the premises the night before on his last visit. The tiny Colt lay exactly where he had placed it with his own hand after his trip to Police Headquarters for the blank cartridges—on Thurlow's highboy.

Ellery seized Thurlow's automatic and left the apartment.

Robert and Maclyn Potts appeared promptly at six. They marched from the house shoulder to shoulder, appeared not to notice Inspector Queen and Sergeant Velie in the shadows at the base of the Shoe's pedestal, rounded the Shoe, and stopped.

The two parties stared solemnly at each other.

Then Thurlow bowed to his brothers.

Bob hesitated, glanced at Ellery, then bowed back. Behind Thurlow, Charley grinned and clasped his hands above his head. Bob's left eyelid drooped ever so little in reply.

But Mac's expression was serious. “Look here, Thurl,” he said, “hasn't this fool farce gone far enough? Let's shake hands all around and—”

Thurlow glared disapprovingly at his adversary's twin. “You will please inform the gentleman's second,” he said to Ellery, “that conversation with the principals is not considered good form, Mr. Queen.”

“I so inform him,” replied Mr. Queen frigidly. “Now what do I do, Mr. Potts?”

“I should be obliged if you would act as Master of Ceremonies as well as my second. It's a little irregular, but then I'm sure we can take a few liberties with the code.”

“Oh, of course,” said Ellery hastily. Improvise, Brother Queen, improvise. Must be some sense in the code of duello somewhere, or was. “Mr. Thurlow Potts, your weapon,” said Ellery in a grave voice. He handed the Colt, walnut stock forward, to his man.

Mr. Thurlow Potts dropped the automatic into the right pocket of his coat. Then he turned and walked off a few paces, to stand there stiffly, a man alone with his Maker. Or so his back said.

“I believe,” continued Ellery, turning to Maclyn Potts, “that as your principal's second you should be addressed. The Master of Ceremonies should ask somebody if the duelists won't call the whole thing off. What say?”

Before Mac could reply, Thurlow's voice came, annoyed. “No, no, Mr. Queen. As the offended party, the option is mine.” It didn't sound right to Mr. Queen; more like a business conference. “And I insist: Honor satisfied.”

“But isn't there something in the code,” the Master of Ceremonies asked respectfully, “about the duel being called off if the offender apologizes, Mr. Potts?”

“I'll apologize. I'll do any blasted thing,” snapped Bob, “to get off this damp grass.”

“No,
no
!
”
screamed. “I won't have it that way. Honor satisfied, Mr. Queen, honor satisfied!”

“Very well, honor satisfied,” replied Mr. Queen hastily. “I think, then, that the principals should stand back to back. Right here, gentlemen. Mac, is your man ready?”

Mac nodded disgustedly, and Robert took from his pocket the Smith & Wesson Ellery had returned to him the night before. Robert and Thurlow now approached each other, Thurlow producing from his pocket the Colt Ellery had just handed him and gripping it nervously. Thurlow was pale.

“Back to back, gentlemen.”

The brothers executed the
volte-face.

“I shall count to ten. With each number of the count,” continued Ellery with stern relish, “you gentlemen will walk one pace forward. At the end of the count you will be twenty paces from each other, facing in opposite directions. Is that clear?”

Thurlow Potts said in a strained voice: “Yes.” Robert Potts yawned.

“At the end of the count, I shall say ‘Turn!' You will then turn and face each other, raise your weapons, and take aim. I will thereupon count to three, and at three you each fire just one shot. Understand?” Sheila giggled.

“Very well, then. Start pacing off. One. Two. Three . . .” Ellery counted solemnly. When he said “Ten,” the two men obediently stopped pacing. “Turn!” They turned.

Thurlow's chubby face gleamed wet in the gray light. But his mouth was set in a stubborn line, and he scowled fiercely at his brother. He raised his Colt shoulder high, aiming it. Robert shrugged and aimed too.

“One,” said Ellery. This is all wrong, he thought testily. I should have read up on it. Maybe when Thurlow finds out how I've messed up his duel, he'll insist on a retake.

“Two.” And what were the Inspector and Velie thinking behind that horrible statue? He'd never hear the end of this. He spied the two men's heads peeping cautiously from behind the pedestal.

“Three!”

There was one cracking report. Smoke drifted from the muzzle of Thurlow's little weapon.

Ellery became aware of a leaden silence, and of a curious look on Thurlow Potts's face. He whirled. Behind him Sheila gurgled, and Charley Paxton said: “What the—” and Maclyn Potts stared at the grass. And Inspector Queen and Sergeant Velie were racing around the pedestal, waving their arms frantically.

For Robert Potts lay on the grass, on his face, the undischarged Smith & Wesson still in his hand.

“Bob, Bob, get off the grass,” Mac kept saying. “Stop clowning. Get the hell up off the grass. You'll catch cold—”

Somebody—it was Charley—took Mac's arm and steered him, still prattling, off to one side.

“Well?” asked the Inspector in an unreal voice.

Ellery rose, mechanically brushing at grass stains on his trouser knees which would not come off. “The man's dead.”

Sheila Potts ran blindly for the house. She made a wide, horrified detour around Thurlow, who was still standing there, gun in hand, looking at them all with a bewildered expression.

“Smack in the pump,” breathed Sergeant Velie, pointing. Ellery had turned Bob Potts over: there was a dark spot on his clothing, from which an uneven bloodstain had spread, like the solar corona.

Thurlow threw down his automatic as if it burned his hand. He walked off unsteadily.

“Hey—!” began Sergeant Velie, taking a step toward him. But then the Sergeant stopped and scratched his head.

“But—how?” howled the Inspector, finding his normal voice. “Ellery, I thought you said—”

“You'll find the blank cartridge you yourself placed in Robert's Smith & Wesson still in the chamber,” Ellery said in a stiff tone. “He never even fired. There
was
a corresponding blank in Thurlow's Colt too—when I deposited it on Thurlow's highboy last night after my trip to Headquarters. But someone—
someone in this house,
Dad—substituted a
real
bullet for the blank you'd put in Thurlow's gun last night!”

“Murder,” said the Inspector. He was white.

“Yes,” mumbled Ellery. “Murder to which we were all eyewitnesses-yet none of us lifted a finger to stop it … in fact, we aided and abetted it.
We saw the man who fired the shot, but we don't know who the murderer is
!
”

PART TWO

8 . . . The Paramount Question of Opportunity

A premeditated murder is not unlike a child. First it must be conceived, second gestated; only then can it be born. These three steps in the fruition of the homicide are usually unwitnessed; when this occurs, there is a Mystery, and the function of the Detective is to go back along its blood line, for only in this way can be established the paternity of the crime—which is to say, solve the mystery.

Ellery Queen had never before been privileged to attend the delivery, as it were; and the fact that, having attended it, he knew as little about its parentage as if he had not neither irritated nor angered him, for if a murder had to be committed and could not be averted, then Ellery preferred it to be a mystery at the beginning, just so that he could dig into it and trace it backward and explain it to himself at the end.

He stood by himself, deep in thought, in the lightening morning under one of the Old Woman's pedigreed blue spruces, watching his father and Sergeant Velie go to work. He stood by, musing, as Hesse, and Flint, and Piggott, and Johnson, and others of the Inspector's staff arrived, as radio patrol cars gathered on the Drive outside the high wall, as the police photographer came, the fingerprint men, and Dr. Samuel Prouty, Assistant Medical Examiner of New York County—petulant at having had to leave spouse, progeny, and couch so early of a summer morning. As of old, Doc Prouty and Inspector Queen set about snarling at each other over Robert Potts's sprawled corpse, like two fierce old dogs over a bone. As always Sergeant Velie, the Great Dane, chuckled and growled between them. Eventually the body was lifted to an improvised stretcher, under the fussy superintendence of Doc Prouty; a moment later Dr. Waggoner Innis's big sedan roared up under police motorcycle escort, and the doctor's long legs carried him in almost eager strides after the cortege, to confer with the assistant Medical Examiner over the technical details of the homicide. The whole party disappeared into the house, leaving Inspector Queen and his son, alone, at the pedestal of the bronze Shoe.

The air was chill, and the Inspector shivered a little. “Well?” he said.

“Well,” said Ellery.

“We'd better talk fast,” said the Inspector after a pause. “The newspapers will be here soon, and we'd better figure out what to say to them. At the moment, my mind's a blank.”

Ellery frowned over his cigaret.

“A duel,” the Inspector continued with bitterness. “I let myself be talked into a duel! And this happens. What'll I say to the boss? What'll I say to anybody?”

Ellery sighed and flipped his butt into the damp grass. The sun was struggling to wipe the clouds from its eye; the feeble glance that escaped flung the ugly shadow of the Shoe toward the Hudson. “Why,” complained Mr. Ellery Queen, “does the sun invariably stay hidden when you want it, and come out when it doesn't matter any more?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, I mean,” smiled Ellery, “that if the light had been better we might have been able to see something.”

“Oh. But what, Ellery? The dirty work was done during the night.”

“Yes. But—a glance, a change of expression. You never know. Little things are so important. And the light was dismal and gray, and details likewise.” And the great man sank into silence again.

The Inspector shook his head impatiently. “Light or no light, the point is: Who could have substituted a live bullet for the blank I put in Thurlow's automatic at Headquarters last night?”

“Opportunity,” murmured Ellery. “Dat ol' debil. Yes. In a moment, Dad. But tell me—you've examined the shell?”

“Of course.”

“Anything unusual about it?”

“Nope. The cartridge used was ordinary Peters ‘rustless.' M.C. type of bullet for a .25 automatic, 2-inch barrel. Ballistics penetration of three inches, figured on the usual seven-eighths pine board. Exactly the ammunition that was in the automatic when you handed it to me at Headquarters.”

“Really?”

“Don't get excited,” scowled the Inspector. “That ammunition can be bought any place.”

“I know, but it's also the ammunition Thurlow used, Dad. Have you checked with Thurlow's supply? He must have got some at Cornwall & Ritchey's when he bought the guns yesterday.”

“I told Velie to root around.”

And indeed at this moment Sergeant Velie swung out of the house and came rocking across the lawn to the Shoe. “What kind of buggery is this, anyway?” he exploded. “Here's a guy dead, murdered, and most of his folks don't even seem to care. What am I saying? Care? They're not even payin' attention!”

“You'll find them a rather unorthodox family, Sergeant,” said Ellery dryly. “Have you checked back on Thurlow's ammunition?”

“I ain't had a chance yet to look at it myself, but Little Napoleon says he bought a lot of ammunition yesterday, and the box of .25 automatic cartridges has got some missing out of it, he says. A handful. Says
he'd
only took out one last night—the one he put into the Colt automatic. Can't understand what all the fuss is about, he says. ‘It was a duel, wasn't it?' he grouses to me. ‘All right, so my brother got laid out,' he says. ‘So what's the cops here for?' he says. ‘It's all legal and aboveboard!'” And the Sergeant shook his head and stamped back to the mansion.

“The big point is, Thurlow's already checked back on his ammunition supply,” murmured Ellery. “Then he doesn't know about the blanks, does he, Dad?”

“Not yet.”

“Worried. All legal and aboveboard, but—worrisome, too, Dad. I think you'd better locate Mr. Thurlow's armory and appropriate it with dispatch. The stuff's a menace.”

“It's a cinch he's cached it somewhere cute, like the squirrel he is,” growled the Inspector, “and nobody but he knows where. The boys are keeping an eye on Mr. Thurlow, so it'll hold for a few minutes. What about this opportunity business, Ellery? Let's go over the ground to make sure. Just what did you do last night after you left Headquarters with the Colt and S. & W.?”

“I returned to the house here immediately, slipped back into Thurlow's bedroom, replaced the blank-loaded Colt automatic on the highboy exactly where I'd found it earlier in the evening, then I went to the twins' room and gave Bob Potts the blank-loaded Smith & Wesson.”

“Anybody spot you entering or leaving Thurlow's room?”

“I can't swear, but I'm convinced no one did.”

“The twins knew about it, though, didn't they?”

“Naturally.”

“Who else?”

“Charley Paxton and Sheila Potts. All the others had left by the time we discussed the plan to substitute blanks for the live cartridges in the two guns.”

“All right,” grunted his father, “you left the Colt right where you found it, in Thurlow's bedroom, you gave Robert his doctored revolver, and then what?”

“I left the twins in their room and went downstairs to the library. Charley and Sheila still had Thurlow cornered down there, as I had instructed. Thurlow was in a gay mood—Sheila'd fed him some drinks in an effort to restore his sanity. He insisted on our all going out on a tear, which we did, just as we were—the four of us. We left the house in a group, from the library, cabbed downtown, and spent the entire night at Club Bongo, on East 55th Street. We didn't get back to the Palace—”

“The what?”

“Forgive me. I'm only using the family's own terminology. We got back here about a quarter of six this morning.”

“Was Thurlow, Paxton, or Sheila in a position to get to that Colt automatic in Thurlow's room at any time during the night, after you left it there?”

“That's what makes this part of it so beautiful,” declared Ellery. “No, those three were with me, within sight and touch, from the moment I stepped into the library until we got out of the cab at dawn this morning.”

“How about when you got back? What happened?”

“I left Thurlow, Charley, and Sheila on the lawn, right over there, as you saw. Thurlow'd sent me into the house to fetch his gun. I went up and—” He stopped.

“What's the matter?” asked his father quickly.

“I just remembered,” muttered Ellery. “It seemed to me as I went up that spiral staircase to the landing that I … not exactly
heard,
but
felt
someone or something moving in the hall outside the bedrooms.”

“Yes?” said the Inspector sharply. “What? Who?”

“I don't know. I even had the feeling it came from around the area of Thurlow's door. But that may have been an excited imagination. I was
thinking
of Thurlow's apartment.”

“Well, was it or wasn't it, son? For the love of Peter's pants!
Did
somebody come out of Thurlow's rooms around six
A.M
.?”

“I can't say yes, and I can't say no.”

“Very helpful,” groaned the Inspector. “You got the gun and came right back down here to the lawn? No stops?”

“Exactly. And handed the gun to Thurlow. He dropped it in the right-hand outside pocket of his tweed jacket the moment I handed it to him.” The Inspector nodded; he had observed the same action. “He didn't touch it again until he was ordered to during the duel. I had my eyes on him every second. Nor did anyone approach near enough to him to have done any funny work.”

“Right. I was watching him, too. Then the only possible time the blank could have been removed and the live cartridge substituted in the Colt was during the night—between the time you left it on Thurlow's highboy last night and the time he sent you up there at six this morning to get it for the duel. But where does that take us? Nowhere!” The Inspector waved his spindly arms. “Anybody in this rummy's nightmare could have sneaked into Thurlow's room during those ten hours or so and made the switch of bullets!”

“Not anybody,” said Ellery.

“What? What's that?”

“Not anybody. Anybody,” said Ellery patiently, “minus three.”

“Talk so that my simple mind can understand, Mr. Queen,” said the Inspector testily.

“Well, Thurlow couldn't have sneaked into his bedroom during those hours,” murmured Mr. Queen. “Nor Charley Paxton. Nor Sheila Potts. Couldn't possibly. Those three are eliminated beyond the least shadow of the least doubt.”

“Well, of course. I meant one of the others.”

“Yes,” mused Ellery, “here's a case in which we can actually delimit and define the suspects. The rest of the Potts menagerie were in the house during the period of opportunity, and so any one of them could have made the switch from blank to lethal bullet. Aside from the servants, there are: the Old Woman herself, her husband Steve, that old parasite Major Gotch, Louella the ‘scientist,' Mac the twin, and Horatio.”

“That's the son you told me sleeps in some kind of—what did you call it, Ellery?”

“Fairy-tale cottage. Yes,” replied the great man crossly. “Yes, the Philosopher of Escapism could have done it, too, even though he sleeps in his dream cottage. Horatio could have slipped into the main house through the inner court, patio, and French doors, and slipped out again via the same route, without necessarily being seen.”

“Six likely suspects,” mumbled the Inspector. “Not so bad. Let's see how they stand on motive. As far as the old hell-cat's concerned . . .”

Ellery yawned. “Not now, Dad. I'm not Superman—I need sleep occasionally, and last night was heigh-de-ho. Ditto Sheila and Charley. Let us all sleep it off.”

“Well, you ring me here from home when you wake up.”

“When I wake up,” announced his son, “I shall be practically at my father's elbow.”

“Now what's
that
mean?”

“I'm requisitioning a bed in the Potts Palladium. And if you don't think,” added the Inspector's pride and joy, “that I'll investigate it microscopically before I climb in to make sure it isn't the bed of Procrustes …”

“Who's that?”

“A Greek robber who occasionally whittled his victims down to size,” said Ellery with another yawn.

“You won't need his bed to do that,” said the Inspector grimly. “I have a hunch this case'll do it for you, my son.”

“Making any bets?” Ellery drifted off toward the house.