“But you know as well as I that in the autopsy report of your own Dr. Prouty there was no mention of cancer! — not a breath of it. Don’t you think if Karen’d had an advanced cancer he would have found it in autopsy?”
“Exactly the point!” Ellery pounded the little table. “Karen Leith committed suicide thinking she had cancer when she didn’t have it at all! And her sister Esther thought the same thing!”
The doctor’s face was calm and grave now. He sat up a little in the chair. “I see,” he said quietly. “So now it’s out. So that’s what you had in mind.”
“Yes! Karen’s body showed no trace of cancer, yet she committed suicide thinking she had it. Then she was convinced beyond a doubt of an organic trouble that didn’t exist!” Ellery leaned forward. “Who do you suppose, Dr. MacClure, could have convinced her?”
The doctor said nothing.
“Let me quote you, ‘She never had another physician.’ ‘She followed instructions to the letter. Ideal patient.’ Yes, Doctor, you were her physician, you diagnosed her simple condition of neurasthenia and anaemia — loss of weight and appetite, perhaps malnutrition, probably indigestion, discomfort after eating — as cancer, and because you were her fiancé she believed you, and because you were the greatest authority on cancer in the world she didn’t dream of consulting another doctor, and you knew she would not!”
The doctor still said nothing.
“Oh, I don’t doubt you did a thorough job. You may even have shown her X-ray pictures purporting to be hers. You certainly told her she had a hopeless type of cancer — probably stomachic, spreading to the liver and abdomen, quite inoperable, too far gone for surgery. You did it so well, you were so convincing, that within a short time, without ever having said a direct word or made a direct suggestion, she was psychologically your victim, so that in her neurotic condition it was inevitable that she should give up the fight and plan suicide.”
“I see,” said the doctor, ‘that you’ve been asking questions.”
“Oh, I telephoned a doctor I knew well, asked him casually — discovered how simple it would be for an unscrupulous physician to convince a neurotic, anaemic patient that she had cancer!”
“In all this,” said the doctor pleasantly, “you have overlooked the possibility that a physician might, with the best intentions in the world, make a wrong diagnosis. I have known cases where every test and symptom indicated cancer — yes, including X-rays — and the truth was quite otherwise.”
“Most unlikely, Doctor, that you erred, in view of your knowledge and experience. But even if innocently it was a wrong diagnosis, why did you tell her? Just before your marriage? It would have been kinder to keep her in ignorance.”
“But an erring physician, sincerely thinking it was cancer, could not keep the patient in ignorance. He would have to treat the case, no matter how far gone.”
“And yet you did not, did you, Doctor? You abandoned your “patient”! You went off to Europe! No, Doctor, you weren’t feeling kind — quite the reverse. You deliberately told her she was suffering from an incurable cancer, you deliberately told her treatment was worse than useless. You did this to torture her, to take away the remnant of hope — in the light of what happened, to drive her to suicide.”
The doctor sighed.
“Now do you understand,” demanded Ellery softly, “how a man might kill a woman from a very great distance?”
The doctor shaded his face with his hand.
“Now do you understand what I meant when I said that, despite the fact that Karen Leith committed suicide, she was really murdered by you? It’s a queer sort of murder, Doctor, mental murder, murder by pure suggestion, but murder it is... as much murder as if you’d been in that room and driven that half-scissors into Karen Leith’s neck with your own hand, instead of being in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in a deckchair.”
Dr. MacClure looked thoughtful. “And what motive in all this fantastic theorizing,” he asked, “do you ascribe to my Machiavellian self?”
“Not Machiavellian,” murmured Ellery, “and the motive was human and understandable and even worthy. For somehow you found out — between Karen Leith’s garden-party and the time you sailed — that Esther Leith MacClure, whom you had loved long ago in Japan, had for all these years been occupying the attic above your fiancée’s head... a prisoner, crushed, lied to, exploited, used, the products of her genius stolen — all the rest of it. You may even have seen Esther yourself, and spoken to her, and kept quiet for Eva’s sake. But somehow you found out, and your affection for Karen turned into bitterness and a desire for vengeance — you saw the woman for the first time as she really was, a monster who didn’t deserve to live.”
“On that point,” said Dr. MacClure, “there is no argument.”
“It was even unnecessary for you to act,” continued Ellery gloomily, “when you were notified on shipboard that your fiancée had been murdered. You had gone away, certain that she meant to take her own life; but discovering that she was apparently murdered gave you a terrific shock. You never dreamed of that. You reacted normally. You were anxious about Eva — even conceived the possibility that she had discovered the secret, too, and murdered Karen herself. You were convinced Karen had been murdered until I proved her a suicide — and then you felt the stigma of murder on your own hands, and knew that you had killed her after all.”
And Dr. MacClure said: “May I have another cigaret?”
Silently Ellery offered him one, and for a long time they sat opposite each other, smoking like very good friends who feel such a communion of spirit that conversation is unnecessary.
And finally Dr. MacClure said: “I’ve been trying to think of what your father would say if he’d been present here tonight.” He smiled, shrugging. “Would he believe such a story? I wonder. For what proof exists? None at all.”
“What is proof?” asked Ellery. “It’s merely the clothing of what we already know to be true. Anybody can prove anything, given sufficient will to believe.”
“Nevertheless,” said the doctor, “our courts and our code of justiciary ethics perhaps unfortunately operate on a more tangible basis.”
“That,” admitted Ellery, “is true.”
“So let’s say we’ve had a pleasant evening of fiction,” said the doctor, “and stop this nonsense and go down to my club for that drink I promised you.” He rose, still smiling.
Ellery sighed. “I see I must show all my cards after all.”
“What do you mean?” asked Dr. MacClure slowly.
“Excuse me.” Ellery got up and went into his bedroom. Dr. MacClure dabbed his cigaret out in an ashtray, frowning a little. Then Ellery came back, and Dr. MacClure turned and saw that he was carrying an envelope.
“The police,” said Ellery at once, “know nothing of this letter.” He handed the envelope to the doctor. The big man turned it over in his strong, hair-backed fingers. It was a delicate envelope, very thin in texture, with a faint rose-on-ivory pattern of chrysanthemums. On its face, in Karen Leith’s neat hand, were the words: To John. The flap on the reverse side had been sealed in Karen’s gold wax with the odd little ideographic Japanese seal the doctor knew so well. Someone had slit the envelope open; between its frayed top edges the doctor saw a folded sheet of deckle-edged notepaper. The envelope was dirty and dew-stained, as if from long exposure to the weather.
“I found it,” said Ellery, watching the doctor, ‘this afternoon in the eaves-trough on Karen Leith’s roof. It was lying near the half-scissors. It was sealed, and I have opened it. And I haven’t told anyone about it — until now.”