“There was one woman in Karen’s life who fitted your description. When I knew her she was blonde, fair, about the same height and weight as you’ve pictured the occupant of this room, was left-handed, and played the violin. But that was over twenty years ago. She was twenty-two... She wore a specially built right shoe, for she’d had a short right leg from birth. It... dragged.”
“Who was it, Doctor?” asked Ellery gently.
“Karen’s sister. Karen’s elder sister Esther.”
Eva, who was on her feet, groped blindly for the bed behind her. This was too much, really too much. She knew about Esther Leith. She knew why Dr. MacClure had said it was impossible for Esther Leith to have lived in this attic room...
“That couldn’t be a coincidence,” said the Inspector slowly. “That must be the woman.”
“Do you think so?” Then Dr. MacClure turned around and they saw his face. Eva made a little whimpering sound. “Do you think so? Then what will you say when I tell you that Esther Leith never left Japan? That Esther Leith is still in Japan?”
“Oh, come,” snapped the old man, “You can’t be sure of that.”
“I’m quite sure of that,” said Dr. MacClure grimly. “Esther Leith died in Tokyo in 1924 — over twelve years ago.”
Part Three
12
“Did you see Esther Leith die, Doctor?” asked Inspector Queen quietly.
“Don’t pay any attention to this nonsense, Eva,” growled the big man. “It’s just some damned fantastic coincidence.”
‘But, daddy,” cried Eva, “her own sister! It’s... it’s horrible.”
“I say don’t believe it! Do you hear me?”
“Now don’t fly off the handle,” said the Inspector. “We won’t get anywhere that way.”
“It’s preposterous!” stormed the doctor. “Esther committed suicide — threw herself into the Pacific during a holiday outing!”
“Was that,” asked Ellery, “the tragedy you were so reluctant to discuss on the Panthia Monday afternoon, Doctor?”
“Yes.” The doctor scowled. “Naturally I didn’t like to discuss it. I was in New England at the time, and Karen wrote me all about it. In fact, there was even a piece in the Boston papers, where Dr. Leith originally came from, about it.”
“Funny,” mused the Inspector.
“It is true, Inspector!” cried Eva inconsistently. “Karen once told me about it. She didn’t like to discuss it, either, but she told me about it.”
“Excuse me a minute,” said Inspector Queen.
He brushed past Ellery and they heard him descending the attic stairs. Terry Ring shifted his weight from one foot to the other, as if he had been awaiting his opportunity to do so.
“All right, Thomas,” they heard the Inspector call out in the bedroom below. “Keep a sharp eye out,” and then they heard him coming up again. When he appeared at the head of the stairs they saw he was carrying a small bundle of letters, tied with a length of thin red ribbon.
“What’s that?” demanded Ellery. “I didn’t see that.”
“Of course you didn’t,” retorted the Inspector in an amiable tone. “We put it away the very first thing. It didn’t mean much then — but it does now.”
Dr. MacClure was staring at the bundle and the last vestige of color left his rocky cheeks.
“You see we know,” said the Inspector kindly. “It’s a bunch of letters Miss Leith kept — found it in the bottom of that old teak chest in the cellar. Most of them are dated 1913, but there are two from 1918, and the 1918 ones were written by you, Doctor, to Esther... Leith... MacClure.”
Dr. MacClure sat suddenly down in the chair by the desk. “I suppose the others are correspondence between Esther and Floyd?” he groaned. “I see how foolish it was to hope—”
“Daddy,” frowned Eva. “What is this all about?”
“I should have told you long ago,” said the big man wearily. “Esther Leith was my sister-in-law. In 1914 she married my brother Floyd in Tokyo.”
The doctor told his story in a lifeless voice. When in 1913 he had crossed the ocean westward in search of the cancer clue that never materialized, his younger brother Floyd, also a medical doctor, had accompanied him. He told something about his brother — an irresponsible youngster, gay, harmless, easily influenced, who had worshipped his elder brother and had studied medicine more in emulation of an idol than from personal desire.
“We met the Leith girls in Tokyo,” said Dr. MacClure, staring at the floor, “through old Professor Matsudo, the man I’d come to Japan to see. He taught pathology at the Imperial University, and of course he knew Hugh Leith, the American teacher of literature. Leith rather liked us — he didn’t see many Americans in those days — and the result was we spent a lot of time at his home. Well, Esther and Floyd fell in love, and they were married in 1914, in the summer — a few weeks before Japan declared war on Germany.”
Eva went to him and put her hand on his shoulder.
“But you loved her, too,” said the Inspector. He tapped the bundle of letters. “It wasn’t hard to see, Doctor.”
He flushed. “Damn those letters! Well, I won’t deny it. I was a pretty serious young man in those days, though, and I could see Floyd had the inner track. I don’t think he ever knew — how I felt.”
“Darling,” whispered Eva.
“When they were married the war was already talked about and... Everything had gone wrong — my search was a failure — well, I went back to the States, leaving Floyd in Japan. He fell into his new life easily — he loved the country, and he wanted to stay there with his wife. I never saw him alive again.”
He was silet for a while. The Inspector said encouragingly: “Go on, Doctor. He was killed, wasn’t he — in an accident? One of your 1918 letters to Karen Leith refers to it.”
“Yes. Karen wrote me all about it. Floyd had one hobby — guns. He’d always been an enthusiast, and he set up a shooting-range in the garden of his Tokyo home after his marriage to Esther. He’d tried to teach her to shoot even before.”
“She shot him?” asked Ellery sharply.
They could barely hear his voice. “Oh, it was one of those cursed accidents — there have been thousands of them. She was aiming at the target and he was standing dangerously near. And she was nervous. The bullet went through his brain. He died instantly. Never knew what hit him.”
He paused again. But the Inspector said: “That isn’t all, is it, Doctor? There’s a reference to another woman—”
“So you know that, too! I never dreamed those letters were still...” Dr. MacClure got to his feet and began pacing. “Yes. There was another woman. It was never proved, and I can’t be sure now. Even if there was, I know Floyd didn’t mean anything by it. He was handsome and weak, and women were attracted to him. I’d swear he loved Esther, and Esther only. But — apparently there was gossip. Somehow it got to Esther’s ears.”
“Oh,” said Eva pityingly.
“You’d have to know Esther. She was a magnificent woman, really beautiful, sensitive, intelligent, a writer... but her physical deformity preyed on her mind, and I suppose any whisper of a defection by Floyd would have given her agony. So when she shot Floyd, she came to believe” — his face darkened — “that subconsciously she had wanted to kill him, that it hadn’t been an accident at all, that it had been murder. And after a while she even talked herself into believing that it had been conscious and deliberate murder.”