“We don’t seem to be getting anywhere,” the old gentleman remarked at last.
“Because there’s no place to get.” Ashton McKell rose. “My wife stayed home, Inspector. How can she remember the details of an evening in which nothing happened, and during which she was alone? On what ground are you questioning her? Why are you holding her?”
“Sit down, Mr. McKell,” said Inspector Queen. “This is not a desperate detention — we would hardly take a step like this without a basis in hard fact. Will you sit down? Please?”
Ashton sat down.
“Let’s begin with the fundamentals again — motive, opportunity, means. I hate to poke around old sores, but Mrs. McKell certainly had motive against Sheila Grey, in view of the circumstances — the woman her husband was seeing on the sly.” Ashton reddened; Lutetia reached over and patted his hand, turning him redder. “She also had opportunity, very good opportunity — living in the same building, able to get up to the penthouse any time she wanted without being spotted, and by her own admission just now, all alone all evening until after midnight, when your son came home. There are only four apartments in the building — the Clementses are on a cruise, no one is occupying the Dill apartment at present, Mr. Dill’s will being contested, with the apartment one of the assets his heirs are wrangling about. And the elevator is self-service.
“As for means.” The Inspector paused. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t tell you this, Mr. McKell, but considering that you were acquitted today in the same case, you people are entitled to know just why we’ve made this arrest. You see, today we found new evidence.”
“Evidence?” Dane echoed. “What evidence?”
The old man took from the bowels of his desk a dainty lace handkerchief, bunched together as if it were wrapped around something. The monogram in the corner lay exposed.
“ALDeWMcK,” he said, pointing to it. “It would be a pretty remarkable coincidence if anybody else in any way involved with Sheila Grey had this monogram. Anyway, there won’t be any trouble identifying the handkerchief. This is your property, Mrs. McKell, isn’t it?”
She swallowed and nodded.
The Inspector opened the handkerchief as if it held some sacred relic. Inside nestled five brass-cased .38 cartridges.
Ashton McKell gaped at them. “Where did you find those?”
“In the same place as the handkerchief — in the bottom of a dressing-table drawer in your wife’s dressing room. We did it legally,” he added gently, “with a search warrant.” Yes, thought Dane, and you did it damned fast — after that bartender’s testimony gave you some second thoughts. “Along with the handkerchief and these five cartridges,” and Inspector Queen reached into his drawer again and brought out a small box, “we found this ammo box, which according to the label should contain twenty .38 cartridges. Do you want to count how many are in the box?” He removed the lid; some were missing. “I’ll save you the trouble. It contains fifteen cartridges.
“But the five missing cartridges,” the Inspector went on, “are not the five cartridges we found wrapped up in the handkerchief. The missing ones, like these left in the box, were live ammunition. These five in the handkerchief are blanks.”
“What?” Ashton said feebly.
“Miss Grey was killed with a Smith and Wesson .38 Terrier revolver. An S. & W. 38 Terrier holds only five bullets. — Were you going to say something, Mr. McKell?”
“Are you trying to tell us,” the elder McKell asked out of stiff lips, “that the five blanks in that handkerchief are the same blanks I put into the revolver?”
“Exactly. Somebody removed the five blanks you put into the gun and substituted five live shells — the five missing from this box. And the question is: Who was that somebody?”
There was a long pause. Lutetia’s eyes were shut again. Judy’s lips had turned pearly. In the silence the old clock on the Inspector’s wall ticked noisily.
Finally Inspector Queen asked in a very kind voice, “Would you care to answer that question, Mrs. McKell?”
Lutetia opened her eyes. Her little tongue-tip flicked into view and vanished.
Ashton said hoarsely, “Don’t answer another question, Lu. Not one more!”
But Lutetia said, “Why, no, Inspector Queen, I... don’t know that I can.”
It was a painful moment. Dane wished he were a thousand miles away. Judy seemed about to be sick. Ashton’s hand groped for his wife’s and engulfed it.
“Motive,” said the Inspector. “Opportunity. No alibi. And here are the means. You’ll recall we took a set of everyone’s fingerprints for comparison purposes after your arrest, Mr. McKell. So we had Mrs. McKell’s on file. Well, right after we found these blanks today, we examined them for prints. We found a partial print of Mrs. McKell’s right forefinger and thumb on the jackets of three of these five blanks. And nobody else’s. That means that you, Mrs. McKell, and you alone, handled those blanks. You removed them from the gun that subsequently killed Miss Grey.”
Lutetia nodded a very little, like an old woman in her dotage. Even the Inspector seemed to realize that it was not a nod of acquiescence so much as an uncontrollable tremor.
“Hold on,” said Ashton McKell hoarsely. “Did you find any fingerprints on the cases of the live shells in the gun at the time Sheila Grey’s body was found?”
“We did,” Inspector Queen replied, “and if the D.A. knew I’d told you that I’d face departmental charges. Well, I’ve stuck my neck out before. I suppose I want you people to know we’re not making wild charges out of pique. Yes, we found unmistakable prints of Mrs. McKell’s fingers on two of the five live cartridges. Now you know what this is all about. You, you alone, Mrs. McKell, substituted the live shells for the blank ones in the gun that killed Sheila Grey. You, and you alone, Mrs. McKell, turned that harmless gun into a murder weapon. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t come to the conclusion that you did so for the purpose of committing murder with it.
“So let’s try it again, Mrs. McKell. Do you have anything to tell me?”
“No, you don’t!” shouted Ashton. He actually clapped his hand over his wife’s mouth. “Don’t breathe another syllable, Lu! You don’t have to say a word till you’ve had a chance to talk to O’Brien. That’s my wife’s right, Inspector!”
“It certainly is.” The old policeman was on his feet now. “But I’m going to ask you one more question anyway. Mrs. McKell, did you shoot Sheila Grey to death?”
“She’s not going to answer,” Ashton said furiously.
The Inspector shrugged. “Get the wheels rolling, Velie,” he said. “Drop the suspicion-of-murder charge. I’ve already talked to the district attorney, and he agrees that without satisfactory answers — and they’re not satisfactory — Mrs. McKell is to be formally charged with the murder of Sheila Grey.”
Bail was speedily arranged. Ashton McKell had said, “Let’s have no nonsense about not accepting bond. One fool in the family is enough.”
Lutetia was submissive. Had her husband advised it, she would have marched with equal submissiveness to jail, to make her bed with the prostitutes, drug addicts, shoplifters, and drunks in the euphemistically named House of Detention for Women in Greenwich Village.
Robert O’Brien was hors de combat — this combat, at any rate. The legal warrior was occupied with another case, also a murder indictment, for the trial of which he had exhausted his last legal delay. “The guy is a professional hood,” he told Ashton. “I’m positive he’s committed at least two gangland executions with which he’s never even been charged, and he’ll sure as hell commit more if he gets the opportunity. But he didn’t commit this one, and this is the one I’m concerned with. Of course, as soon as we get Falconetti’s trial out of the way I’ll be back with you, Mr. McKell. But I can’t predict just when that will be. You’d better get another lawyer.”