“We can talk sensibly for a change,” said the Inspector, pausing at the bench. “Now that the truth’s out.”
“The awful truth, eh?” smiled Dr. MacClure; and it was an awful smile.
“I’m sorry, Doctor. This must be a pretty bad blow to you.” The old man seated himself and took a pinch of snuff. “Did you make a positive identification this morning?”
“It’s Esther. I haven’t seen her for seventeen years, but it’s Esther. I’d know her — under any conditions.”
“I didn’t think there was much doubt about it. Hello, Terry! You see, the Philadelphia police couldn’t identify the body at first. When she was found dead Monday night of cyanide poisoning—”
“Monday night,” repeated Eva in a faint voice.
“—there wasn’t a direct clue to her identity. She had given the landlady a false name and address. They tried to locate someone who knew her under that name and at that address, but they found out right away both were phony. She’d given a local street — Philadelphia — and there wasn’t even a street by that name.”
“How late Monday night?” frowned Ellery. “That blasted bureaucrat in Philadelphia wouldn’t give me any information at all.”
“After midnight. The landlady’d got suspicious or something — I haven’t any details myself. Well, when the New York description went out — fair, blonde, around forty-seven, five feet seven or eight inches tall, weight between one-thirty and one-forty, and with a crippled right leg — they finally checked their morgue records and tied up our description with the rooming-house suicide. Notified us late last night.” The Inspector sighed. “I’ve got my man Velie down there now to get the original of her suicide note.”
“Suicide note!” exclaimed Dr. MacClure.
Ellery stiffened. “What suicide note?”
“They found a note crumpled in her hand under the bedclothes.”
“She wrote a note?” muttered Terry incredulously. No one heard him but Ellery.
Inspector Queen stroked his mustache with embarrassment. “Look here, Miss MacClure, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I know what this is going to mean to you.” Eva turned slowly. “Every bad thing has something good about it. The good thing — for you — is that the Leith murder is solved.”
Dr. MacClure jumped up from the bench. “The Leith murder—”
“Sorry, Doctor. In this note she left before committing suicide, Esther MacClure confessed to the murder of her sister.”
“I don’t believe it!” cried Eva.
He took a folded sheet from his pocket and spread it flat. “They dictated the note to me over the ’phone last night. Would you like to read it?”
Eva’s hand went out in a groping gesture; and Dr. MacClure took the paper from her fingers as they grew nerveless and slack. They read the message together, in pale silence; and then the doctor handed it futilely to Ellery.
Terry Ring scanned it eagerly over Ellery’s shoulder.
Even through the Headquarters stationery and the mechanical perfection of Inspector Queen’s deskman, some of the profound fatigue and depression of its author emerged.
To Whoever Finds Me:
I cannot leave this world without a word.
I have been my own judge. Now I am my own executioner. I have taken a life; I take my own.
Dear daughter, forgive me. Believe me, my darling you have given me secret happiness. It is more than I have given you. Your mother is a monster; thank God the monster was human enough to keep her shameful secret from you. Bless you, dearest.
Dear John, I have poisoned your life. I know you loved me long ago. And now that you love my sister, our lightning destiny strikes once more. I have seen it coming and I have been powerless against it. And so I have done what in my monstrous helplessness I must do... If only you had not gone away! If only you had taken her with you! For you are the only one in the world who might have saved my sister’s life. But with your leaving went her last protection against our insensate fate, her last hope.
May God have mercy on both our souls — my sister’s and mine. Good-bye, John. Take care of my sweet girl.
Bury this, you who find me, with my body.
Ellery felt Terry gripping his arm. “Come here!”
They moved aside. “Look,” said Terry fiercely. “Something’s all cockeyed!”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, she wrote it all right. But she never killed her sister!”
“How do you know?” Ellery was re-reading the letter.
“I tell you I know! She couldn’t have, anyway. How did she get out of Karen’s bedroom if she did? Even if she came back from Philadelphia to pull the job and then returned to take poison in that West Philly hole!”
“Well,” murmured Ellery, “Somebody killed Karen Leith, and therefore somebody got out of that room. Why not she?”
Terry stared at him. “Where do you stand? Your old man thinks the case is solved. Are you going to tell him about that bolted door?”
Ellery did not reply; he read the letter through a third time. Terry kept staring at him with a calculating coldness.
Then the Inspector said from behind them: “What are you crackpots jawing about?”
“Oh, we’ve been discussing this note,” said Ellery instantly. He slipped it into his pocket.
“It’s a funny thing,” said the Inspector thoughtfully. “After letting herself be shut up like a prisoner by this Leith woman for nine years, she suddenly goes haywire. Why did she wait so long? I guess she went completely crazy.”
“That’s it,” said Terry. “Something snapped all of a sudden. That’s it, pop.”
“You know,” frowned the Inspector, “I’ve been thinking over this business. You get the queerest notions. Why do you suppose this Japanese woman, Kinumé, had to bring Karen Leith a sheet of stationery from downstairs? You’d think the Leith woman would have gone up to the attic — there was plenty of writing-paper up there.”
The brown man’s face settled like hardening plaster. But he said smoothly, with a laugh: “Leave it to pop, here, to think of something fancy! What’s the difference? You’ve got your killer for the books, haven’t you?”
“I don’t know,” said the Inspector in a troubled way. “I’ve just realized it’s been bothering me... Well, its easy enough to find out. We’ll ask her.”
“Dad—” began Ellery.
But the Inspector was already on his way back to the bench. Terry said swiftly: “I’m going.”
“Where?”
“Leith house. I’ll see that Jap first. Let go of me!”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort, said Ellery. “Terry, don’t be an ass. You’re liable to stir up something that would never have come out at all.”
“Let go of me!”
“No.” They glared into each other’s eyes.
“What’s the matter with you two?” demanded the Inspector. They turned and found the old man, Eva, and Dr. MacClure behind them.
“I’ll pop this half-baked son of yours on the nose!” said Terry coldly; but he managed to grimace at Ellery. “Telling me—”