“I’m sorry,” she whimpered, hiding her face in the doctor’s coat.
“There, honey. It’s all right. It’s my fault for keeping it from you. Cry, honey—”
“He said... Then Karen was my aunt. You’re my uncle. She... she’s my mother!”
“I didn’t think you’d ever find out. And when I learned she was dead — how was I to know, honey? — it did seem wiser not to tell you.”
“Oh, dad! My own mother!”
Dr. MacClure was calmer than Ellery had seen him since Monday afternoon on the Panthia’s deck. And he held his shoulders straighter, as if they carried a lesser burden now.
“Take some water, honey.”
The Inspector said: “Very pretty, but I’m afraid I’ll have to ask—”
The big man looked at him, and the Inspector bit the end of his mustache and sat down.
“You’ll want to know about it now, Eva,” said the doctor, stroking her hair. “Yes, she’s your own mother — a beautiful and brilliant person. The sweetest woman I’ve ever known.”
“I want her. I want to see her,” sobbed Eva.
“We’re going to find her for you. Lie down, Eva.” He laid her back on the settee and rose to walk up and down, up and down. “I’ll never forget that cable — when you were born. It was from Floyd, and he was very proud. 1916 — the year your grandfather died... Hugh Leith. Two years later Floyd’s accident occurred, and your mother’s breakdown. Karen” — his face darkened — “Karen wrote me, and I went straight to Japan, dropping everything. This was at the end of 1918, right after the Armistice.”
Eva lay on the settee and saw her mother painted on the ceiling. It was funny, to find out a thing like that, just when... Tall, stately, with her ash-blonde, lovely hair; beautiful, of course, and with that pitiful dragging leg that invested her with a single touch of earth. The picture was so clear...
“Esther was in a sanatorium. Her nerves had completely collapsed as a result of Floyd’s death and the way it happened. For a time she was out of her mind. But she regained her sanity. In the process something happened to her. She lost something vital — I don’t quite know what.”
“Did she remember what had happened?” asked Ellery.
“She could think of nothing else. I saw that the fear that she had murdered Floyd would haunt her to the end of her life. She’s a sensitive creature, a bundle of delicate nerves — in those days a poet of great promise.”
“But why did she insist on harping on that one subject, Doctor? Did she really have a guilty conscience?”
“I tell you I investigated it! It had been sheer accident. But there was something I couldn’t put my finger on. I don’t know what it was. It held her back.”
“What do you mean?”
“I couldn’t do anything with her. It was just as if — well, as if another and inimical force was working outside her, hurting her, delaying her recovery, giving her no rest.”
Poor darling, thought Eva. Poor darling. She had always secretly envied her friends their mothers, even the ones who were cheap and vain and empty. All of them had something to give their daughters that seemed precious, that blotted out the cheapness and vanity and emptiness... Her eyes filled with tears again. And now that she almost had her mother back — what? Scandal. Arrest. Perhaps—
“I stayed in Japan as long as I could. Karen was — helpful. Now that her father was dead, she said, she had her own career to make, and besides she had to take care of Esther. Esther had no aim in life; she needed attention; she was hardly in a condition to bring up her child. Even then,” shouted the doctor, brandishing his fist, “I’ll bet Karen’d concocted her devilish scheme!” His voice sank. “But how was I to know?”
The Inspector stirred uneasily. Morel, he noticed, had taken advantage of the confusion to make his escape. Nothing was working out right, he thought. He pursed his lips.
Dr. MacClure said gently to Eva: “It was Karen who suggested I take you back with me, honey — adopt you. You were less than three then, a skinny little thing with long curls. Of course I knew you would never remember. Well, I did it. We had to do it legally, get Esther’s signature. To my surprise, she gave it. She even insisted on giving you up, and I took you back with me.” He paused. “And here we are.”
And here we are. Eva stared at the ceiling. For the first time the shame of it crept burning over her. Eva MacClure a murderess! Her mother a... They would say it was heredity. That murder, vengeance were in her blood, in Esther’s blood, that was Eva’s. How was she to face them? How was she to face — Dick?
She turned her head slowly. He was standing by the Inspector’s door, shifting from one foot to the other, looking as if he had a bad taste in his mouth and was trying to swallow it. It struck Eva suddenly that her fiancé had done nothing, nothing at all. He had been dumb and comfortless. He had been obsessed with thoughts of personal escape.
“Dick. Why don’t you go home? Your work — the hospital—”
She watched him as she had once seen Dr. MacClure watch the writhings of a guinea pig undergoing anaesthesia.
But he said stiffly, “Don’t be silly, Eva. With this insane charge hanging over you—” He came to her then and stooped to kiss her. His lips felt cold against her cheek.
And here we are, Eva thought. Here I am, stretched out like an animal on the dissecting table, under the eyes of men... She sat up suddenly, swinging her legs to the floor with a clatter.
“You’re not going to frighten me,” she said fiercely to the silent Inspector. “I’ve been acting like a scared child. But you won’t scare me! I did not kill Karen Leith. I did not know my mother is alive. I didn’t even know who my mother is! I’ve given you perfectly reasonable explanations for the fingerprints and the handkerchief. Why aren’t you fair?”
“That’s the stuff, baby!” said Terry Ring, grinning. “Tell the old baboon where the hell he gets off.”
“And you,” said Eva scornfully. “If you know where my mother is, why don’t you tell us? Take me to her this instant!”
Terry blinked. “Now listen, kid, take it easy. I didn’t say I knew positively. I only said—”
“Why don’t you make him tell?” cried Eva to the Inspector. “You’re awfully good at scaring a woman, but when a man stands up to you—”
Terry grabbed her arm. “Listen, kid—”
She shook it off, glaring at the old man. “You’d better find her! God knows what’s happened to her — alone in New York for the first time in her life, after spending nine years cooped up in an attic!”
Inspector Queen nodded at his stenographer. “All right, Mushie,” he sighed. “Send Thomas Velie in. We’ll want to book her.”
Eva relaxed very slowly. Very slowly she stared about her — at Dr. MacClure, pacing, pacing; at Dr. Scott — who was he? it seemed to Eva she had never seen him before — nibbling at a fingernail and studying the sky through the window; at Terry Ring lighting one cigaret from another and frowning deeply; at Ellery Queen, motionless and impotent as the onyx figurine on Inspector Queen’s desk.
The police stenographer said: “Yes, sir,” and rose.
But before he could get to the door it swung open and a tall, lanky, black-jowled man wearing an archaic derby and smoking a black cigar slouched in.
“Oh, company?” scowled Dr. Samuel Prouty, Assistant Medical Examiner of New York County. “Hello, Queen. Ah, Dr. MacClure! Sorry about all this... Listen, Q. I’ve got bad news for you.”
“Bad news for me?” said the Inspector.
“You know that half-scissors — the one you’ve got in your desk?”