“End of Scene I. Thank you; you may sit down now.” She obeyed. “Andrea realizes that she is an hour early; she goes out, gets into the roadster, drives off toward Camden, probably onto Duck Island, for what she has testified was an hour’s spin. The criminal,” said Ellery curtly, “arrives at eight-fifteen.” He paused, and the silence was unbearable. Their features might have been carved out of the living rock of an age-old convulsion of nature. The night, the sullen lowly room, the grisly whispers of outdoors, were twisted about their consciousness, not to be shaken off.
“The criminal has driven up at eight-fifteen from the direction of Camden in the Ford coupé she has stolen from Lucy Wilson’s garage in Fairmount Park — no matter when. She is outside now. She steps carefully onto the stone ledge outside the door. She opens it, comes in swiftly, closes it again, whirls about, prepared for—”
He was at the door now, acting out his recital. They followed him, fascinated. “She sees the place is empty, however. She relaxes, pushes back her veil. For a moment she is puzzled; she has expected to find her victim here. Then she realizes that he has gone off somewhere, but that he has been here: the Packard is outside, the lamp inside is lit; Gimball must be nearby. She will wait. She expects no interference; this is an isolated spot and she believes that no one in the world except herself and Gimball are aware of its relationship to Gimball. She prowls, restless. She sees the package on the mantelpiece.” He strode to the fireplace, reached up, tore away the wrappings of the package ruthlessly. The gift-set lay revealed. Ellery took the bundle to the table, bent over it. “Needless to say,” he murmured, “she wore protecting gloves.” He lifted out the still blood-stained paper-cutter, the little card, stained now by the many fingers that had handled it.
“Observe what chance has thrown into the path of this woman,” he said sharply, straightening up. “She finds the card, indicating that the desk-set is a gift from Lucy Wilson and Joseph Wilson. She has stolen Lucy Wilson’s car to frame her for the crime, but here, at hand, is something even better: a weapon identifiable with Lucy Wilson! Whatever weapon the criminal has intended to use, she discards it at once. She will use the paper-cutter. It will be another and stronger link to Lucy Wilson. She does not know, of course, how fortunate she is, for it is quite impossible that she should have known that Lucy Wilson’s fingerprints were on the knife. At any rate, she puts the package back on the mantel. But the knife is not with it; the knife is in her hand.”
The society woman made a moaning sound through stiff lips. She was evidently unconscious of what she had done, for she continued to glare at Ellery with an unwavering glassiness. Ellery grasped the bloody knife firmly, stole toward the side door. “She hears footsteps, coming from the river-side. It must be her victim. She stands behind this door, knife raised. The door opens, concealing her figure. Joseph Kent Gimball stands there, back from his sail on the river; he scrapes the mud off his shoes on the doorsill; he closes the door and walks in, unconscious of the menace at his back. The time is a little past eight-thirty, a matter of seconds or minutes.” Ellery suddenly lunged. “She makes a sound in moving. Gimball, behind the table, whirls. For an instant they see each other; she has turned down her veil again, but he sees her figure, her clothes. Then the knife plunges into his heart and he falls — apparently dead.”
Amazingly, Andrea’s mother began to sob. Still glaring at Ellery. The tears rolled slowly down her faintly lined cheeks. She sobbed almost indignantly.
“What happens?” Ellery whispered. “The knife is in Gimball’s heart. Only flight is necessary to complete the crime. Then—”
“I came back,” said Andrea in a low voice.
“Good God,” croaked Finch. “I thought you said, Andrea—”
“Please!” snapped Ellery. “Never mind what you thought. There has been a great deal of misrepresentation going on through which we’ve had to stumble to reach the truth. Andrea! Go through it for us.”
He ran toward the front door, took up his stand beside it.
“The criminal hears the sound of the returning car. Someone is coming. A miscalculation! She hopes the car will pass; instead, it stops outside door. She still has time to escape by way of the side door. But she wants to drive that Ford back to Philadelphia. She can handle herself. She crouches behind the door...”
Andrea was at the door now. She moved like a somnambulist, slowly, across the fawn rug toward the table, eyes fixed on the patch of rug behind it.
“Only the legs are visible,” said Ellery softly.
Andrea stopped by the table, looked at it, hesitated. Then Ellery sprang at her and his arm descended toward her head. Andrea drew in her breath.
“The criminal attacks Andrea from behind, knocks her unconscious. Andrea slips to the floor. The woman works swiftly. She sees now whom she has assaulted. It is necessary to leave a note of warning. She has no writing implements herself; she searches Andrea’s bag; none there. She searches the house; no pen or pencil. The pen on Gimball’s body has run dry. There is no ink in the desk-set. What to do?
“Then she sees the cork which came from the tip of the paper-knife, has an inspiration. She tears off a piece of wrapping-paper, goes to the table with the cork, takes the knife out of the dead man’s body, sticks the cork on its tip again, begins to char the cork with paper-matches. She chars, writes, chars, writes, dropping the burnt matches on the plate. Finally the note is finished — a warning to Andrea to say nothing whatever about what she has seen this night, or her mother’s life will be forfeit.”
“Andrea. Darling,” moaned Jessica feebly.
Ellery gestured with one hand. “The woman thrusts the note into Andrea’s limp hand. She drops the knife with the burnt cork on it on the table. She leaves, drives off in the Ford. Andrea comes to about nine. She reads the note, sees the body, recognizes her stepfather, thinks he is dead, screams, and flees. Then Bill Angell arrives, talks to the dying man. That,” said Ellery with a peculiar intonation, “is the script as it has been related to me.”
Again the dreaded silence fell. Then Senator Frueh said slowly, quite without anger or rancor, “What do you mean, Queen?”
“I mean,” said Ellery in a cold voice, “that a page of the script is missing. Something has been omitted. Andrea!”
She raised her eyes. There was something very strange in the air. She was wary, tense, sitting forward. “Yes?”
“What did you see when you came in here the second time, before you were struck on the head? What did you see on this table?”
She moistened her lips. “The lamp. The plate. With — with—”
“Yes?”
“With six match-stubs on it.”
“How interesting.” Ellery leaned toward them, his eyes narrow and completely dangerous. “Did you hear that? Six match-stubs. Well, let me go into this a little more scientifically. Andrea says that before she was struck, while the murderess was still here, she saw six half-burnt match-stubs on the plate. An obviously significant fact. It changes everything, doesn’t it?” There was such an odd quality in his tone that they searched one another’s faces for a confirmation of their own confused, timid, and terrible thought. His voice pulled them up again. “But this was before the cork was charred. Therefore those six matches had not been used for charring the cork, the deduction I made when I thought that all twenty matches had been ignited after the crime. No, no, six of them were used for a different purpose altogether. Well, if they weren’t employed in charring the cork, why were they struck?”