Mike looked doubtful. “Well, all my cases are what you might call confidential—”
“Mike, I’m willing to bet your tax against mine that you have at least one client who’s extremely wealthy, who came to you under a pledge of absolute secrecy... and whose records, or a record of whose case, were in your brief case yesterday.”
“Mrs. Van Dome,” said Magoon, gaping.
“Mrs. Van Dome,” said Ellery briskly. “Sounds as if I’ve hit the jack-pot, Mike. Nikki—notes!”
And Michael Magoon told the story of his very best client, Mrs. Clementa Van Swicken Van Dome.
Mrs. Clementa Van Swicken Van Dome, had she been either a Van Swicken or a Van Dome, would have occupied a position of high altitude on the social pyramid. Being both a Van Swicken and a Van Dome, she reigned alone at the very apex, surrounded by the stratosphere and God. She was so far out of sight of mere earthlings that Nikki, who was Ellery’s Almanach de Gotha, had never heard of her, whereas Ellery had. She considered Park Avenue gauche, and the D.A.R. upstarts. A Van Swicken had helped build Fort Amsterdam in ye Manhatas, and a Van Dome had led the trek to Gowanus Bay nine years before he became restless and moved on to establish a settlement which was named Breuckelen. The measure of Mrs. Clementa Van Swicken Van Dome’s social standing was that she was invited to all the most exclusive functions in New York and never went to any. She herself gave one party each year; her guest-list was more carefully scrutinized than the personnel at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and only those were invited whose forefathers had settled in the New World before 1651 and whose fortunes had not been tainted by trade for at least six generations.
Mrs. Van Dome was a widow, and she had one child, a daughter.
“You ought to see this Margreta,” said Mike Magoon. “Skinny as a pretzel-stick, pimples all over her map, forty-five if she’s a day, and she’s a poetess.”
“A what?” said Nikki.
“She writes poetry,” said Mike firmly.
“Under the name of Hollandia,” nodded Ellery. “Brutal stuff. I take it, Mike, mama consulted you about Margreta?”
“That’s it.”
“Just because she writes bad poetry?” said Nikki.
“Because she’s a klep, Miss Porter.”
Nikki looked excited. “What’s that? It sounds—”
“Relax, Nikki,” said Ellery. “Mike means a kleptomaniac. It all begins to be too, too clear, Michael. Stop me if I’m wrong. If there’s one thing Mrs. Van Dome fears, it’s scandal. The unlovely Margreta does not merely commit the crime of writing bad poetry, she also develops a yearning to take things belonging to other people. There have been polite complaints, perhaps, discreetly made to mama. Mama pays, but begins to worry. Margreta shows no signs of reform. The habit grows. It will soon be in the papers. Mama comes to a relatively unknown private detective—no doubt after checking your personal reputation, Mike, with your old pals at Headquarters—and puts Margreta into your hands on a one-hundred-percent hush-hush basis.”
“That’s it, that’s it,” said Mike. “My job is to protect Margreta from arrest and publicity. I trail her whenever she hits the street. When I see her take somethin’, I quietly pay for it after she drifts on. Mrs. Van Dome gives me an expense account—which, believe me, she looks over with an eagle eye! I get an annual retainer—not a heck of a lot, but it’s good steady dough.”
“And among your income tax records,” nodded Ellery, “were the various accounts, receipted bills, et cetera, pertaining to the misadventures of Margreta.”
“Somebody,” cried Nikki, “trailed Mr. Magoon or something, saw what was going on, then stole his income tax records to...” Nikki stopped. “To what?”
“To make use of them,” said Ellery dryly. “Obviously.”
“Blackmail!” roared Mike, jumping up as if he had just been given the hot-foot. “By cripes, Ellery, with those receipted bills, and correspondence, and stuff—whoever it was could blackmail old lady Van Dome till she was... black in the face! She’d pay anything to keep that yarn from gettin’ out! That’s it!”
“Somebody,” said Nikki. “Who’s somebody?”
Mike sat down.
But Ellery, knocking his pipe out on the fire screen, said: “Mrs. Carson.”
“Mrs. Carson?” said Mike, blinking.
“But Ellery, Mr. Magoon says she couldn’t possibly—”
“Nikki. A fire starts in a wastebasket which ignites an office settee which sends Mrs. Carson running into Mike’s office yelling for him to... what? Run out—with her. Mike does so. And Mrs. Carson sticks with him.” Ellery shrugged. “By the same token, Mike sticks with Mrs. Carson... while Mrs. Garson’s accomplice slips into Mike’s office and, having no time to winnow the Van Dome papers from the rest, lifts the entire contents of Mike’s brief case, puts a newspaper stuffing in their place, and slips out. Mike,” said Ellery, setting his pipe into the mantel-piece rack, “let’s go down to your office and give that public stenographer a little dictation.”
So Collector of Internal Revenue v. Magoon was a simple business after all.
Only, it wasn’t.
When they opened Mrs. Carson’s door they found Mrs. Carson taking dictation from a higher Authority.
“Feeling better now?” asked Ellery, drinking the rest of the bourbon in the paper cup.
“Oh, Ellery,” moaned Nikki. “That dead woman.”
“Is a dead woman.”
“But a dead woman without a face!”
“I should think you’d be used to that sort of thing by now, Nikki.”
“I suppose that’s why you finished my drink.”
“I was thirsty,” said Ellery with dignity; and he strolled through Mrs. Carson’s doorway waging a heroic battle with his stomach.
They were standing around the typewriter desk staring down at Mrs. Carson’s ruins. Nobody was saying anything.
“Oh, Ellery.”
“Dad.”
“Six inches,” said Inspector Queen in a wondering voice. “The rod was fired not more than six inches from her pan.”
“There’s no question but that it’s Mrs. Carson?”
“It’s her, all right.” Mike was slugging it out, too.
“Mrs.,” said Ellery, looking at her left hand. “Where’s Mr.?”
“In Montefiore Cemetery,” said Mike, still swallowing powerfully. “He kicked off six years ago, she told me.”
“How old was she, Mike?” Funny how hard it was to tell a woman’s age when her face was not there for reference.
“I’d have said around thirty-six, thirty-eight.”
“Ever mention a boy friend?” asked the Inspector.
“Nope. And she never seemed to have a date, Inspector. Always workin’ in here late.”
“Michael, Michael,” said Inspector Queen. “That’s why she worked in here late. Only she wasn’t working. Not at a typewriter, anyway.”
Through the greenish overcast, Mike looked puzzled.
The old gentleman said impatiently: “We know she decoyed you with that fire she set herself; we know somebody lifted the Van Dome stuff from your brief case during the fire. And who was here at the time? The other two tenants. So one of them was the Carson woman’s accomplice. Does it fit? Sure, Mike. When she was ‘working late,’ she was playing hoopla with either Leonardo Vince or Jack Ziggy right here in the office.”
“But then,” muttered Mike Magoon, “who plugged her last night? You mean Vince, or Ziggy...?”
The Inspector nodded.
“But why, Inspector!”
“Michael, Michael.”
“The double-cross, Dad?” asked Ellery, not skeptically—just asking.
“What else? She helps him swipe the documents he can blackmail Mrs. Van Dome with, so then he rubs the girl friend out. He’s got it all to himself, and no blabbermouth to worry about besides. Ellery, why are you looking as if you smell something?”