“So it still may come down to those three women and the will,” Newby grunted, emerging from his cloud.
“You don’t sound satisfied.”
“With that theory? It’s too — now don’t laugh, Ellery! — too damned easy.”
“Who’s laughing?”
“You sure you didn’t run up here on something you’re keeping back from me?”
“Anse,” Ellery said, and rose. “May I have the key now?”
“Then why do you want to go back to Benedict’s place?”
“You’re not the only one with uneasy feelings. The key, Anse?”
“If you don’t mind,” the chief said, rising also, “I think I’ll keep you company.”
Newby drove Ellery over to the Benedict property in his 1967 unmarked Dodge (to avoid notice, he claimed); he unlocked the front door and waved Ellery in before him, following on the visitor’s heels. Ellery galloped upstairs and into Johnny-B’s bedroom as if he expected to be greeted there by a miracle, or the answer, which his whole air announced would have been the same thing.
“You act like you forgot something, Ellery,” the Wrightsville police chief said. “What?”
“I wish I could tell you.” He was looking about the room as if he had never laid eyes on it.
“You mean you won’t tell me?” Newby cried.
“I mean I don’t know.”
“Damn it, stop answering me in riddles!” the exasperated man said. “You remind me of that Sam Lloyd puzzle book my mama used to keep in her parlor.”
“I’m not being coy, Anse. I really don’t know. It’s simply a feeling, like yours that the three women and the will as an answer is too easy.”
“But what kind of a feeling is it?”
“I’ve had it before,” Ellery said slowly, touring the room. “Often on a case, in fact.” He avoided the chalked outline of Benedict’s body on the floor. “A feeling that I’ve missed something.”
“Missed something?” Newby swung about suddenly as if he had heard a door creak open. “What?”
“That,” Ellery intoned, “is the question. What? I’ve keel-hauled my brain, couldn’t come up with it, and decided that a return to the scene might be what the doctor ordered.” He paused at the bed. “Here?” Glanced at the nightstand. “There?” Into the clothes closet. “There?” At the windows. Into the bathroom.
“You’re putting me on,” Newby muttered. “By God, you’ve got me creepier than a kid in a haunted house!”
“I wish it were that ordinary,” Ellery said with a sigh. “No, Anse, it’s not a put-on, it’s a hangup. There’s something here, something I saw — something I’m seeing, damn it all! — and for the life of me I can’t latch onto it.” He addressed the chalk outline on the floor. “Well, it was a long shot, Johnny, and like most long shots it didn’t come in.” He nodded disgustedly at Newby. “I’m through here, Anse, if you are.”
The first break in the case came, as breaks usually do, out of the drudgery of plodding police work.
The concentration of effort on the part of Inspector Queen’s staff had been on the three ex-wives, notwithstanding Chief Newby’s failure of enthusiasm. Several interesting reports on the women noted that, with the cutoff on Benedict’s death of their $1000 weekly incomes, and with their cash settlements held up if not gone forever by the holograph will, two of them at least were in financial difficulties. Audrey Weston and Marcia Kemp had been living up to their alimony incomes. (Alice Tierney, Newby reported, had on the contrary been living frugally in frugal Wrightsville and had saved a considerable sum, although the settlement outlook had turned her sullen and uncommunicative.) In fact, both the blonde and the redhead had been compelled to go back to work, if any. The Weston girl was making the rounds off-Broadway, so far without success; the ex-Vegas chorine was hawking the Manhattan nightclubs through her agent for a “starring” turn somewhere. But no one was snapping up the Kemp girl, either. Apparently times had changed. The notoriety they had been enjoying as a result of the Wrightsville murder was no longer the kind of open-sesame that used to break down golden doors in the days of the New York Mirror.
The discovery about Marcia Kemp turned up during the routine investigation of her present and past, and the development appeared significant.
Ellery learned about it on Sunday, April 19. On arising that morning he had found himself alone in the Queen apartment, and a note from his father saying that the Inspector had had to go down to Centre Street and suggesting that Ellery follow. Which he did so precipitously that he did not even stop for his cherished Sunday breakfast of Nova Scotia salmon, sweet butter and cream cheese, cum generous slice of sweet Spanish onion, all on toasted bagel and accompanied by freshly brewed coffee in copious quantity.
He found Sergeant Velie with the Inspector.
“Tell him, Velie,” the Inspector said.
“I think we got something, Maestro,” the very large sergeant said. “Ever hear of Bernie Faulks?”
“No.”
“He’s a punk in the rackets, a small wheel the pigeons call The Fox, or Foxy, because he’s got a genius for beating the rap. He’s been collared I don’t know how many times on charges that didn’t stick — armed robbery, B. and E., A.D.W., burglary, you name it; his one big rap, a charge of murder during an attempted felony — armed holdup — he beat when he was acquitted through the failure of a key witness to come through for the D.A. This shtunk Faulks is a miracle man. He’s never served a day behind bars.”
“What’s the point, Velie?” Ellery asked. “I passed up my lox and bagel for this.”
“The point is,” Sergeant Velie said, “we been digging into Marcia Kemp like we had advance information, which we didn’t, and by God we struck oil. You know what, Maestro?”
“Stop milking it, Velie,” the Inspector said; he looked tired.
“No,” Ellery said, “what?”
“The Kemp babe and Foxy Faulks — they’re married.”
“I see,” Ellery said, and he sat down in the cracked black leather armchair he had forbidden his father to throw out. “Since when?”
“I’m way ahead of you,” his father said. “I’d like nothing better than to be able to hold her on a charge of bigamy, but the fact is she didn’t marry Faulks till after the divorce from Benedict.”
“How accurate is your information, Velie?”
“We got a copy of the marriage license.”
“Well.” Ellery pulled his nose, by which the Inspector knew he was cerebrating furiously. “That does put a new light on Miss Kemp. And raises all sorts of interesting questions about Mr. Faulks. When can the happy couple be interrogated?”
“I wanted them here today,” the Inspector said, “but Foxy is out of town. He’ll be back late tonight, you sure, Velie?”
“That’s what my source says,” the sergeant said, adding less grandly, “My prize pidge.”
“Well, I want Mr. and Mrs. Foxy Faulks here in my office at nine on the nose tomorrow morning.”
At nine-five Monday morning Ellery strolled into his father’s office to find the Inspector, Sergeant Velie (looking vindicated), Marsh (in his capacity of executor for the Benedict estate), an edgy Marcia Kemp (in a purple minidress and mod hat that emphasized her Amazonian proportions), and a man Ellery naturally took to be Bernie the Fox Faulks. Faulks was younger than Ellery had expected him to be, or he had the knack of looking younger; his was the sort of baby face that maintains its bloom into the fifties, then sags into old age overnight. He was undeniably handsome; Ellery thought it quite reasonable that a girl of Marcia’s background and outlook should have fallen for him. The pretty hood reminded him of a young Rock Hudson — tall, lean, and on the boyish-faced side. He was just the least bit overdressed.