“No sign of a struggle,” the Inspector nodded. “It’s as if the killer didn’t want to spoil the neatness of the room.”
“You’re getting whimsical, dad.”
“No, I mean it. No clothes thrown about, chair as naked as a jaybird, and I’ll bet if you look in that hamper you’ll find...” Inspector Queen darted into the bathroom and yanked up the cover of the laundry hamper, which was just visible from the foot of Benedict’s bed. He exclaimed in triumph, “What did I tell you? Shirt, socks, underwear — neatly deposited before he went to bed.”
The Inspector came out and looked about. “He must have been left for dead, Ellery — on the bed or floor — and when the killer was gone, Benedict somehow found the moxie to crawl to the phone and call you.”
“Agreed,” Ellery said. “Also, from the absence of a struggle I’m tempted to conclude that Johnny knew his assailant. Although, of course, it could have been a housebreaker or other stranger who jumped him and got in an incapacitating blow just after Johnny got out of bed and put his robe and slippers on. That’s one of those alternatives you never quite eliminate.”
“But what did he kill him for?” The Inspector was going through the elephant-ear wallet lying on the nightstand. The wallet was fat, like the craw of a Strasbourg goose. The Rolex watch with the matching bracelet beside the wallet was an 18-carat gold, 30-jewel affair that must have set Benedict back over a thousand dollars.
“For money, that’s what for,” Ellery said. “But not the kind of goose feed you tote around. I went to bed worrying about exactly that. What’s this?”
“This” was a walk-in wardrobe closet. The Queens walked in and routinely took inventory. Hanging on racks, with the neatness of a tailor’s shop, were a dozen or so custom-made suits in fabulous fabrics and numerous shades of blue and gray; two summer dinner jackets, one white, the other burgundy; a variety of pastel-hued slacks and sports jackets; a white yachting uniform, hound’s-tooth golf togs, a brown plaid hunting and fishing outfit; four topcoats, in charcoal gray, light gray, gabardine tan, and chocolate; three overcoats, one black with a velvet collar, another navy blue double-breasted, the third a casual tan cashmere. The shoe racks held dozens of pairs of shoes — conventionals, cordovans, alligators, suèdes, two-tones; an assortment of boots and athletic shoes; blacks and browns and grays and tans and oxbloods. On an upper shelf lay ten hats and caps, from a black homburg to a severe dark brown fedora, through the well-dressed man’s Alpine, woodsman, and other sporty styles. An enormous revolving rack offered a selection of four-in-hand neckties, ascots, bow ties, and scarves in all the basic solid colors, in combinations, and in a range of materials and designs that would not have disgraced Sulka’s.
The Inspector marveled. “Why in God’s name did he need all these duds? In Wrightsville, of all places?”
“And this is just a hideaway,” Ellery pointed out, “where he apparently did little entertaining and no visiting. Imagine what the closets in his New York, Paris, and other apartments must look like.”
The bureau was a built-in affair with haberdasher’s drawers stacked with custom-made shirts of every description: broadcloths, Pimas, silks, synthetics; in whites, blues, browns, tans, grays, greens, pinks, even lavenders, in solids and in pinstripes; with button cuffs and French cuffs; with dress collars and buttoned-down collars; including a collection of plaids and flannels and other outdoorsy items, and another of frilled and lacy as well as conventional summer dress shirts. Several drawers turned up a selection of knitwear. Others held T-shirts and shorts by the dozens, chiefly of silk, and handkerchiefs functional and ornamental. And in one lay a shop-sized stock of hose, in woolens, lisles, nylons, silks; in blacks, browns, grays, blues; in solids and in combinations. And, of course, a jewelry drawer for a collection of tie clasps, tackpins, cufflinks, and other essentials of the bureau.
The Inspector kept shaking his head. Ellery’s remained at rest, all but his eyes, which reflected a puzzle of some sort.
It was as if he had mislaid something, but could remember neither what it was nor where he had mislaid it.
Waiting for Chief Newby, the Queens went about rousing Benedict’s guests. The reason for the undisturbed sleep of the ex-wives and Marsh was detectable at once by anyone with less than a severe cold. The air in the bedrooms was sour with alcohol; evidently the three divorcees and the lawyer had done some serious extracurricular drinking after Ellery’s departure from his eavesdropping post on the terrace. They were a little stubborn about waking up.
As for Miss Smith, Marsh’s secretary, she had locked her bedroom door, and Ellery had to pound for several minutes before she responded. There were no fumes in her room. “I sleep like the dead,” Miss Smith said — a figure of speech she clearly regretted a moment later when he told her why he had roused her. From the noises immediately emanating from her bathroom, Miss Smith was paying the price the three other women should have paid but had not. Ellery left her to fortify her rebellious stomach.
As far as he and his father could make out, Marcia Kemp, Audrey Weston, and Alice Tierney greeted the news of Benedict’s violent death with stupefaction. They seemed too stunned to grasp the implications; there were no hysterics and very few questions. As for Marsh, he gaped at the Queens from a graying face, his big hands trembling. “Are the police here yet?” he asked; and Ellery said, “On their way, Al,” whereupon the lawyer sat down on the bed mumbling, “Poor old Johnny, what a stinking deal,” and asked if he might have a drink. Ellery brought him a bottle and a glass; Inspector Queen warned the quintet to remain where they were, each in his own room, and took up a sentry post at the door of Benedict’s bedroom; and that was all.
Ellery was downstairs waiting for Newby when the chief — tieless, a topcoat thrown over his uniform — stalked into the house.
Anselm Newby had succeeded Chief Dakin, who personified law and order in Wrightsville for so long that only the thinning ranks of oldtimers remembered his predecessor, a fat, spittoon-targeting ex-farmer named Horace Swayne. Dakin, who always reminded Ellery of Abe Lincoln, had been the old-fashioned small-town incorruptible policeman; Anse Newby was of the new breed, young, aggressive, and scientifically trained on a city-sized police force. He was a ball of fire where Dakin had been a plodder, yet he had had to prove himself a dozen times over before the town would grudgingly grant that he might be able to fill part of old Dakin’s size-13 shoes. Newby’s fate it was to be a small, delicate-appearing man in a community where any suspicion of effeminacy was hated rather than despised, and in a police chief was considered a crime in itself. He soon disabused the town on this score. When the rumors reached his ears he tracked them to their source, shucked his uniform jacket, and administered a scientific beating to the offender — who had a six-inch height and thirty-five-pound weight advantage — that was the talk of Wrightsville’s bars for many years. With this demonstration of his masculinity Newby had no further trouble with rumormongers. And with his stinging voice and eyes of inorganic blue, unwinking as mineral, he tended to grow on people, not always pleasantly.
“Sorry about this, Chief—” Ellery began, not altogether humorously.
“You’re always sorry about this,” Newby snapped. “I’m suggesting to the First Selectman that he haul arse on up to the capital and see if he can’t talk our assemblyman into pushing a bill through the legislature putting Wrightsville off limits to anybody named Queen. Can’t you set foot in this town without causing a homicide? I didn’t know you were visiting, or I’d have put out an A.P.B. on you! How are you, Ellery?”