Ellery looked interested. “Mrs. Simms’ cat, Miss Brett? There’s a fascinating thought! Yes, it might very well be significant. Give us the gory details, Miss Brett.”
“Well, Mrs. Simms owns a shameless hussy of a cat. Tootsie, she’s called. Tootsie’s always poking her cold little nose into places where good little cats should not be poking their cold little noses. Er―you grasp the idea, Mr. Queen?” She saw an ominous glint in the Inspector’s eye, sighed and said penitently, “Really, Inspector, I’m―I’m not being a silly boor. I’m just―oh everything’s so higgledy-piggledy.” She was silent then, and they saw something―fear, nervousness, a suspicion of dread―in her charming blue eyes. “It’s my nerves, I suppose,” she said wearily. “And when I’m nervous, I become perverse, and I giggle like a callow baggage . . . . This is exactly what happened,” she said abruptly. “The unknown man, the man bundled up to the eyes, stepped into the foyer first when I opened the door. Grimshaw was a little behind and to one side of him. Mrs. Simms’ cat, which generally remains in Mrs. Simms’ bedroom upstairs, had, unnoticed by me, promenaded downstairs into the foyer and had laid down directly in the path of the front door. As I opened the door and the mysterious man started to step in, he stopped suddenly with one foot in mid-air, almost falling in his effort to avoid stepping on the cat, which lay quite cunningly on the rug washing its face, and without making a sound. It wasn’t really until I saw the man’s almost acrobatic effort to avoid stepping on little Tootsie―typically Simmsian name for a cat, don’t you think?―that I noticed Tootsie at all. Then, of course, I prodded her out of the way; Grimshaw stepped in, and he said: “Khalkis expects us,” and I led the way to the library. And that’s the incident of Mrs. Simms’ cat.”
“Not intensely productive,” confessed Ellery. “And this bundled man―did he say anything?”
“Do you know, he was the rudest person,” said Joan with a little frown. “Not only didn’t he say one solitary word―after all, he could have seen that I wasn’t a slavey―but when I led the way to the library door and was about to knock, he actually jostled me away from the door and opened it himself! He didn’t knock, and he and Grimshaw slipped inside and shut the door in my face. I was so angry I could have chewed a tea-cup.”
“Shocking,” murmured Ellery. “You’re sure, then, that he didn’t utter a word?”
“Positive, Mr. Queen. As I say, I was angry and began to go upstairs.” It was at this moment that Miss Joan Brett betrayed evidences of a very lively temper. Something in what she was about to say touched springs of rancour within her, for her brilliant eyes smouldered and she threw a glance of extreme bitterness in the direction of young Alan Cheney, who slouched against a wall not ten feet away, hands plunged in his pockets. “I heard a key fumbling and scratching against the vestibule door, which is always kept locked. I turned around on the stairs and, lo and behold! whom should I see tottering into the foyer but Mr. Alan Cheney, quite, quite muzzy.”
“Joan!” muttered Alan reproachfully.
“Muzzy?” repeated the Inspector in bewilderment.
Joan nodded emphatically. “Yes, Inspector, muzzy. I might say―squiffy. Or pot-valiant. Or maudlin. Obfuscated. I believe there are some three hundred English colloquialisms for the condition in which I saw Mr. Cheney that night. In a word, drunk as a lord!”
“Is this true, Cheney?” demanded the Inspector.
Alan grinned in a feeble way. “Shouldn’t be surprised, Inspector. When I’m on a bat I generally forget home and country. I don’t remember, but if Joan says it’s so―well, then, it’s so.”
“Oh, it’s true enough, Inspector,” snapped Joan, tossing her head. “He was foully, disgustingly drunk―slobbering all over himself.” She glared at him. “I was afraid that in his despicable condition he would raise a row. Mr. Khalkis had said he wanted no noise, no commotion, so I―well, I had very little choice, don’t you see? Mr. Cheney grinned at me in his characteristically muddled fashion, and I ran down, grasped his arm very firmly, and marched him upstairs before he could rouse the household.”
Delphina Sloane was sitting very haughtily on the edge of her chair, looking from her son to Joan. “Really, Miss Brett,” she said icily, “I see no excuse for this disgraceful . . . “
“Please!” The Inspector focused his sharp eyes on Mrs. Sloane and she promptly shut her mouth. “Go on, Miss Brett.” Alan, against the wall, seemed to be praying for the floor to give way and remove him peremptorily from the scene.
Joan twisted the fabric of her skirt. “Perhaps,” she said in a less impassioned voice, “I shouldn’t have . . . . At any rate,” she continued, raising her head and looking defiantly at the Inspector, “I took Mr. Cheney upstairs to his room and―and saw to it that he went to bed.”
“Joan Brett!” gasped Mrs. Sloane in an outraged whimper. “Alan Cheney! Do you two mean to admit―”
“I didn’t undress him, Mrs. Sloane,” said Joan coldly, “if that’s what you’re insinuating. I just scolded him”―her tone implied that this was more properly the province of a mother than of a mere secretary―”and he quieted down, to be sure, almost at once. He quieted down, that is to say, only to become―become very nastily sick after I tucked him in . . . “
“You’re straying from the point,” said the Inspector sharply. “Did you see anything more of the two visitors?”
Her voice was low now; she seemed absorbed in studying the design of the rug at her feet. “No. I went downstairs to fetch some―some raw eggs; I thought they might jog Mr. Cheney up a bit. On my way to the kitchen, I had to pass by the study here, and I noticed that there was no light from the crack under the door. I assumed that the visitors had left while I’d been upstairs and that Mr. Khalkis had gone to bed.”
“When you passed the door, as you say―how long a period had elapsed from the time when you admitted the two men?”
“Difficult to judge, Inspector. Perhaps a half-hour or more.”
“And you didn’t see the two men again?”
“No, Inspector.”
“And you’re certain this was last Friday night―that is, the night before Khalkis died?”
“Yes, Inspector Queen.”
There was complete silence then of an increasingly embarrassing depth. Joan sat biting her red lips, looking at no one. Alan Cheney, from the expression on his face, was in agony. Mrs. Sloane, her slight figure stiff as the Red Queen’s, tightened her faded unattractive features. Nacio Suiza, sprawled in a chair across the room, sighed with ennui; his dark Vandyke pointed accusingly at the floor. Gilbert Sloane sniffed his salts. Mrs. Vreeland stared Medusa-like at her husband’s rosy old cheeks. The atmosphere was anything but cheerful; and Dr. Wardes, buried in a study as deep and brown as his beard, seemed affected by the general moroseness. Even Woodruff looked depressed.
Ellery’s cool voice brought their eyes up. “Miss Brett, exactly who was in this house last Friday night?”
“I really can’t say, Mr. Queen. The two maids, of course, had been sent to bed, Mrs. Simms had retired, and Weekes was out―his night off, apparently. Aside from Mr―Mr. Cheney, I can’t account for any one else.”
“Well, we’ll find out soon enough,” grunted the Inspector. “Mr. Sloane!” He raised his voice, and Sloane almost let the tiny coloured bottle slip from his startled fingers. “Where were you last Friday night?”
“Oh, at the Galleries,” Sloane replied hastily. “Working late. I work there very often into the small hours.”
“Anybody with you?”
“No, no! I was quite alone!”