“No,” Lutetia said slowly. “Somehow, I never went back there.”
In Robert O’Brien’s unavailability, and on his recommendation, Ashton McKell engaged the services of Henry Calder Barton, a well-known criminal lawyer of the old school. Barton, assisted and advised by Heaton, indicated his line of defense.
“They can certainly show that Mrs. McKell could have done it,” Barton said. He was a heavy-set old man with a crop of white hair above a turkey-red face. “But they just as certainly can’t prove that she did do it. We’ll play the unknown-prowler bit for all it’s worth.”
“And how much, Mr. Barton,” asked Ashton bleakly, “is that?”
“Quite a lot. After all, Sheila Grey was no frightened little old lady seeing burglars under her bed at the shifting of every shadow. As I understand it, she was a shrewd, clearheaded businesswoman, a woman of spirit and action. If a woman like that became suddenly afraid to be alone, it’s a reasonable assumption that she had cause, or thought she had. There has been a rash of cases of forcible nocturnal entry in Park Avenue apartments this past year, many of them unsolved, and some very near your building. A prowler might well have got into the penthouse apartment, found a gun while rummaging in the drawers, and used it on being surprised by the occupant. If he was wearing gloves, his prints would not be found. Prints are rarely found on guns, anyway, even when they’re handled without gloves on. Yes, I think we can play up the prowler theory very effectively.”
Ashton McKell nodded, but his attention seemed elsewhere. Dane doubted that his father was thinking of prowlers, real or imagined, or of Sheila Grey as merely a “shrewd, clearheaded businesswoman.” Dane himself knew her as far more than that; what must his father know of her? And now she was dead, and no one’s guilt or innocence, no argument or theory, could change the fact for Ashton McKell.
As for Barton, Dane thought he was whistling in the dark. His mother’s fingerprints on the blank shells and on two of the live ones would alone outweigh the heaviest prowler structure Barton could build up in argument.
He took Barton aside. “I think my mother is mentally unstable,” he said quietly. “Isn’t that a better line of defense?”
The lawyer looked at him sharply. “What makes you think your mother is of unsound mind?”
“That story she tells about why she loaded the gun with live ammunition. That wasn’t an act, Mr. Barton, though I know you think it was — I was watching your face... I realize now that this has been coming on for a long time.”
Barton shook his head. “I don’t see how we can effectively use it. It isn’t as if she admits having pulled the trigger... I think we have a better chance with the prowler line. Let the burden of proof rest on De Angelus. He hasn’t got as good a case as he apparently thinks he has. At least in my opinion. There’s a long, long step between proving that she loaded the gun and proving that she pulled the trigger, Mr. McKell. Now don’t worry. We can always pull in the psychiatrists as a secondary line of defense...”
Dane remained unconvinced.
For all the ease with which Dane had accepted her in his arms at the climax of his father’s trial, Judy found their relations becoming more distant. She could not read his mind, but there was no mistaking the coldness of his manner. That moment in the courtroom began to appear an unguarded outpost in time, along with their previous embrace in her apartment. Could his mother’s predicament account for his increasing withdrawal? Judy wondered painfully. That could not be the only reason, even if it was a reason. Something else was bothering him. But what?
Judy phoned him one night after a strained dinner at the McKells’. Dane had driven her home in almost total silence and left her abruptly.
“Dane, this is Judy.”
“Judy?”
She waited. He waited. “Dane, I must know. What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?”
“Something is. You seem so...”
He laughed. “My father’s been tried for murder, my mother is under arrest on the same charge — what could be wrong?”
While Judy angrily blinked back the tears, she heard the connection broken. So she stumbled to bed.
She did not phone him again, and when finally he phoned her she assumed a coldness to match his.
“Yes, Dane.”
“I’m just transmitting a message,” he said dully. “Dad and I talked to Ellery Queen a while ago, and he wants us to visit him tomorrow. Dad wants you along. Will you come?”
“Of course.”
She waited, but he said nothing more, and after a moment she hung up. His voice had never sounded so lifeless. The crazy thought struck her that they were all dead — Dane, his parents, Ellery Queen, herself — and that the only living entity in the universe was Sheila Grey. It made her hate Sheila Grey... That was when Judy gave way to her tears.
“Do you own shares in this hospital,” Dane asked, “or are they holding you prisoner?”
Ellery was in the same room at the Swedish-Norwegian Hospital; he was in the same chair, his hockey goalie’s legs propped up. The casts looked new.
“The legs weren’t knitting properly. They’ve had to monkey around with them.” Ellery seemed tired, restless. “It’s a good thing I have no serious psychological problems, or I’m sure I’d be thinking of myself as Toulouse-Lautrec.”
“You poor man.” Lutetia stooped and kissed him on the brow.
“Thank you, Mrs. McKell,” Ellery said. “That hasn’t been done to me for a very long time.”
Dane was wondering what direction her behavior would take next when she said, “Well, I felt I hadn’t thanked you properly for what you did for my husband.”
There was a silence. Then Ellery said, “We’ll have to do the same for you, won’t we? How do matters stand, Mr. McKell?”
There was little to report and, of that little, little that was new. Barton was still talking cheerfully.
“I don’t doubt an acquittal,” Ashton McKell said, convincing no one, perhaps, but his wife. “However, I’d like something better, Mr. Queen, than the equivalent of the Scotch verdict of Not Proven. I don’t want any loose ends.”
“In this business, Mr. McKell,” Ellery said dryly — perhaps he was piqued by a certain commanding-officer quality in the McKell voice — “we generally take what we can get.”
He began to talk to Lutetia of inconsequential things — the deadly sameness of hospital life, her taste in flowers (did she like the ones in the vase? would she take one and pin it on her dress?) — nothing, at first, to remind her that today was Friday, and that in three days she would be going on trial for murder.
Gently and step by step (did he suspect? Dane thought) the invalid led Lutetia to describe once more the events of September 14th.
“So after the servants left for the night, you were completely alone, Mrs. McKell?”
“Completely.”
“You didn’t leave the apartment, even for a few minutes? For a stroll? Some air?”
No, she had not left the apartment for so much as thirty seconds. Of that she was positive. She had not even gone to the door, because no one had rung or knocked.
“How about the telephone? Did you speak to anyone on the phone?”
She hesitated. “Oh, dear.”
“Then you did?”
“I think I did.”
“To whom?”
“I can’t remember. Some man, I think it was.”
“About what?”
She smiled uncertainly. “I feel an utter fool. I just don’t recall. The only reason I remember a call at all is that I was half expecting my husband to phone from Washington.”
“This man called you?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure of that.”
“I think I’m sure. I’d probably remember if I made a call to anyone.”