Which explains why, in an early hour of Friday, April 24 — “estimated as on or about 2:00 A.M.,” was the way a detective noted it later in his report — Bernie Faulks Walked into Central Park (East) by the Fifth Avenue entrance immediately south of the Museum of Art, and made his way with confidence to a certain clump of bushes behind the building, where he settled himself in the tallest one and at once merged with the shrubbery and the night.
If Marcia Kemp’s husband felt any fears, they were certainly not of the dark or of nightmarish things like switchblades at his throat; that side of the street had been thoroughly explored territory to him since his boyhood.
Still, there was tension in the way he stood and waited.
The moon was well down in the overcast sky; there was little light in the shadow of the museum; the air insinuated a sneaky chill.
Faulks wore no topcoat. He began to shiver.
And wait.
He shivered and waited for what seemed to him an hour. It was really ten minutes later that he saw something take shape on the lamplit walk he was watching. It held its form for a moment, then glided into the shadow of the museum and headed his way. Faulks stood quite still now.
“You there?” its voice whispered.
The tension left him at once. “You bring the bread?”
“Yes. Where are you? It’s so dark—”
Faulks stepped unhesitatingly out of his bush. “Give it to me.”
He extended his hand.
There are soundless shrieks in the darkness of such moments, a dread implosion of more than mortal swiftness, that inform and alarm. Faulks experienced these even as the newcomer did indeed give it to him — a bulbous envelope, and immediately something else. For the Fox made as if to turn and run.
But he was too late, the knife had already sunk into his belly, blade up.
Faulks groaned, his knees collapsed.
The knifer held the weapon steady as the dying man fell. The weight of his body helped it slice down on the blade.
With the other hand Faulks’s assailant took back the envelope.
The knife landed almost carelessly on the body.
The murderer of Marcia’s husband stripped off rubber gloves, thrust gloves and envelope deeply away, then fled in a stroll northward toward an exit different from the place of entry... to a hurrisome eye just another foolhardy New Yorker defying the statistics of Central Park’s nighttime crime.
“Ellery? I’m over here.”
Ellery went through the police line, blinking in the spotlights, to where his father was talking to a uniformed man. The man saluted and left to join the group of technicians, scooter men, and other officers around the body.
“That was the Park patrolman who found the body,” the Inspector said. “You took your time getting here.”
“I’m not exactly full of zap at four o’clock in the morning. Anything?”
“Not yet.” And the Inspector went into a song and dance — a song of profanity and a dance of rage — and it was as if he had been saving it all up for his son’s arrival, preferring the thickness of blood to the thin edge of bureaucratic protocol. “Somebody’s going to catch it for this! I gave orders Bernie Faulks was to be staked out around the clock!”
“How did he get away from his tail, and when?”
“Who knows when if we don’t know how? Probably over the roofs of next-door apartment buildings. Velie had men posted back and front. Roof — nobody. I’ll have his hide!”
“Aren’t you the one who’s always beefing about the manpower shortage in your department?” Ellery said. “Velie’s too old a hand to slip up on a routine thing like that unless he simply had no one to assign to the roof.”
The Inspector confided in his mustache. So all right. That was the case. Helping that cow-pasture chief out. And at half-rations personnelwise. The truth was — he almost said it in audible accusation — it was all Ellery’s fault. For dragging him up to Wrightsville in the first place.
“What?” the Inspector said.
“I said,” Ellery repeated, “that this could be a coincidence.”
“How’s that again?”
“Faulks was one of the bad guys from puberty. Who knows what enemies he’s made? I’m betting you’ll find them crawling back under every second rock. My point is, dad, his murder tonight could have nothing to do with the Benedict case.”
“That’s right.”
“But you don’t buy it.”
“That’s right,” the Inspector said again. “Any more than you.”
There was a flurry of sorts just beyond the lighted area. The bulk of Sergeant Velie emerged suddenly into the glare with his right hand decorously anchored on Marcia Kemp Faulks’s left elbow. She made the sergeant look like a normal-sized man.
The Inspector hurried over, followed at a 4 A.M. pace by Ellery.
“Has Sergeant Velie told you what’s happened, Mrs. Faulks?”
“Just that Bern is dead.” She was inner-directed rather than shattered by grief, Ellery thought; or she was in shock. He did not think she was in shock. She had got into wide-bottomed slacks and a nautical shirt and thrown a short leather coat over her shoulders. She had not stopped to make up. There were traces of cream on her cheeks and a towel was wrapped turban-fashion about her head. She was trying not to look over toward the group of officers. “How did it happen, Inspector Queen?”
“He was knifed.”
“Knifed.” The redhead blinked. “Murdered?... Murdered.”
“It could be hara-kiri,” the Inspector said flatly. “If he was Japanese, that is. Yes, Mrs. Faulks, murdered, with a switchblade his killer had the nerve to drop on the body, it’s so common and untraceable. And you can bet without fingerprints. Are you up to identifying your husband?”
“Yes.” It was almost as if Marcia had said, Of course, what a silly question.
They walked over to the group — detectives from Homicide, Manhattan North, the Park precinct — the officers stepped back, and the widow looked down at her late spouse without hesitation or fear or anguish or revulsion or anything else visibly human, so far as Ellery and his father could determine. Perhaps it was because she was emotionally disciplined, or the victim was not gruesome. The doctor from the Medical Examiner’s office, who was off to one side packing up, had covered everything but the head, and he had closed the eyes and mouth after the photographer took his pictures.
“That’s Bern, that’s my husband,” Marcia said, and did not turn immediately away, which was odd, because they almost always did — one look and let me out — but not Marcia Kemp, apparently she was made of crushed rock; she looked down at him for a full thirty seconds more, almost with curiosity, then turned abruptly and finally away. “Do I go now, Inspector Queen?”
“Are you up to answering a couple of questions, Mrs. Faulks?” he asked, very kindly.
“Not really. I’m pooped, if you don’t mind.”
“Just a couple.”
She shrugged.
“When did you see your husband last?”
“We had dinner around seven thirty, eight o’clock. At home. I wasn’t feeling well, so I went right to bed—”
“Oh? Didn’t have to call a doctor?”
“It isn’t that kind of unwell, Inspector. I get clobbered once a month.”
“So you didn’t see him again?”
“That’s right. I dropped off to sleep. I’d taken a pill.”
“Did you happen to hear him leave your apartment?”
“No.”
“So you have no idea what time he left?”
“No. Please, Inspector. That’s more than a couple, and I’ve got cramps.”
“Just a couple more, and you’re through. Did Bern say anything to you last night about having to meet somebody, or having to go out, anything like that?”