“Good. And let me have their reports as they come in.”
At last he was alone, and in the way he had of letting himself go mentally — like an athlete deliberately relaxing his muscles, muscle by muscle, on a training table — Ellery sank himself deeper and deeper into thought. There was something here... something... He fanned the air to dissipate Winterson’s smog trail, and as he did so his eye fell on the fanning card, and he saw that it was the personal card Winterson had handed him on departing. Idly, he read it.
And Ellery’s face went white as the card itself.
Was it possible that...?
As his color returned, he kept mumbling to himself something about a fool and his folly.
After that, he could hardly wait for the reports.
As the reports came in from the detective agency, Ashton McKell sent them to Ellery, who arranged them in piles on his writing desk: Winterson, Foster, Hurt, Van Vester, Odonnell.
He analyzed.
On the night of September 14th:
— Winterson had been in an Air France plane en route to Rome. The French press at Orly had interviewed him on his opinions of current fashion, recorded his polite platitudes, photographed him getting on the plane. The Italian press had performed a similar task when he got off in Rome.
— Foster had been in Chicago. He had changed jobs shortly after his breakup with Sheila Grey and moved, with his wife and two children, to the Windy City, where he had been living ever since. At the time of the murder he had been attending a meeting of a bra and foundation garment high command, representing his advertising agency, in the company of a roomful of vice-presidents.
— John F. “Jack” Hurt III was no longer among the automobile-fancying population. In 1961, in a stock-car race in Florida, his machine had hurtled out of control on a turn; when he was removed from the flaming wreckage he was dead.
— Van Vester was also dead. He had been drowned the previous year in a boating accident off the Florida Keys.
— Eddwin “Hamlet” Odonnell had been in England, playing the role he was most noted for in repertory. At the moment of the murder in New York he was giving an imitation of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra at an all-night party in London, in the presence of several dozen more or less sober stars of British stage and screen. Dame Vesta Morisey herself vouched for him.
Then whoever had shot Sheila Grey to death, it had not been one of these five former lovers.
But by this time Ellery knew it could not have been one of them, anyway.
When Dane visited the hospital on the morning of December 31st, he found Ellery’s room in confusion. Clothes and books were everywhere, suitcases lay open, flower vases were being emptied, and Ellery was hopping around on his aluminum crutches in a sort of joyous grouch.
“Are you checking out after all?” Dane asked. “I thought you said the doctor had changed his mind.”
“I changed his mind back,” Ellery snarled. “I’m damned if I’m going to stay in this lazaret for another year. I think they’re secretly burning punk in thanksgiving for getting rid of me. If I could only maneuver gracefully on these cursed hobblesticks! Oops! — sorry, Kirsten.”
He almost knocked the resplendent Swedish nurse over, and in trying to catch her he all but fell himself. Dane sprang in to avert further broken bones.
“Mr. Queen,” the lovely nurse said. “You must not the crutches use so! This way...”
“I’m tired,” Ellery said. And sat down. “By the way, Dane, tonight being what the Scotch call hogmanay, I’m throwing a little party at the apartment—”
“Whose?”
“Mine. Kirsten, do you remember what I said about the time when they cut the concrete pants off me?”
“Oh, so bad, I cannot come,” the nurse said, blushing. “Sture, his ship comes in. We go together tonight, you see.”
“Who’s Sture?” demanded Ellery.
She murmured a word in Swedish. “Oh, my boy friend — no, yes, my fiancé. He is second mate. Now we go back to Sweden and he gets yob in ship company office. We will marry.” And, scarlet, she fled.
“And a good thing, too,” Ellery said gloomily. “Having to occupy the same living space with that goddess day after day without being able to touch her has been almost too much for me to bear. Sture! The Swedes have all the luck. Anyway, I wasn’t going to invite Kirsten to my New Year’s Eve party. That’s strictly for our little in-group. I can count on you-all? Good. Now how about helping me pack?”
The Christmas tree which Ellery had not been able to see on its day of glory was still there when the three McKells and Judy Walsh got to the Queen apartment at 9:30 that night. Partly because of Ellery’s delayed Yuletide, partly in the old Knickerbocker tradition of New Year’s Day, the McKells had brought gifts. Ramon’s arms were full of them.
Inspector Queen was there, too, not altogether gracefully. (“What do you think you’re doing?” he had demanded of Ellery. “It isn’t bad enough having the parents here, after my part in getting up a case against them, but this son of theirs I arrested! It isn’t exactly the setup for good social relations.” “Dad, trust me.” “Trust you?” the Inspector had said scathingly. So Ellery had explained; and after that the Inspector helped Ellery ready the apartment; and he was johnny-on-the-spot, dentures grinning, when the McKell party arrived, playing the role of mine host’s aging parent like the hardened trouper he was.)
“All these gifts,” Ellery said, glowing. “Well, I’ll be having a New Year’s gift for the McKell family myself later tonight. Do you suppose I could borrow Ramon?”
“Of course,” said Ashton McKell.
Lutetia said, “How thoughtful of you, Mr. Queen,” her anxiety tempered by her supreme confidence that everything would come out right in the end. Sooner or later the law would release her son, as it had released her and her husband. Ashton would see to that. Or Ellery Queen, or both.
“The gift isn’t ready, but if Ramon can get back a little after eleven o’clock and run an errand for me...”
“Certainly,” Ashton said. “Ramon, be back here at, say, 11.15.”
The chauffeur said, “Yes, sir,” and left.
The presence of the Inspector was something of a damper. Ellery worked hard at playing host. He had put some Elizabethan music on the hi-fi, and he presided like a pitchman over the punch bowl, in which he had prepared a Swedish punch after a convivial recipe given him by one of the hospital doctors. Judy helped him serve the food, which boxed the compass from Peking duck to tiny buckwheat cakes. “There’s something of a rite involved in handling the duck,” he said. “Mr. McKell, would you be kind enough to carve?” (at which the Inspector growled a very low growl that only his son heard)... “Thank you... First we take one of these thin little pancakes, or knishes — almost like tortillas, aren’t they?... spread them with slices of duck... green onions... the soy sauce, the other sauces... roll ’em up... tuck in the ends so that the sauce doesn’t drip, and fall to. Dane, some more of that hot punch, and skoal to the lot o’ yez!”
He told them the story of the very young student nurse who had rushed from a patient’s room screaming that his pulse had dropped to 22. The staff had come running, the resident took the pulse over again, laughed, and said, “What did you do, take a fifteen-second count? His pulse is 88.” The poor girl had forgotten to multiply by four.
Ellery labored to keep the party going, but the Inspector noticed that he kept glancing at the foyer. Only when the buzzer sounded, and Inspector Queen went to answer the door, did Ellery’s anxiety turn to confidence.