“But there was no other woman in the house,” the Inspector protested.
“Exactly.”
Pauses have shades, like colors. This pause was unrelieved black.
The Inspector fumbled for some light. “But Ellery, there was only one other person there.”
“Exactly.”
“Al Marsh...”
“Exactly.”
And there was the pause again, less dark, more like a lightning-struck sky.
“Do you mean to say,” Inspector Queen yipped, “do you mean to say it was Marsh — Al Marsh — who went to Benedict’s bedroom that night all rigged out in a woman’s evening gown, wearing a woman’s wig and a woman’s gloves...”
“It’s where the argument led us.”
“But that would mean,” Newby fretted, “that would mean—”
“—that we’re investigating a case,” Ellery said in a somber voice, “the real nature of which we didn’t suspect until now.
“Al Marsh went to Johnny’s bedroom that night in full drag, and what happened there forced him to leave the feminine clothing behind. He put on Johnny’s suit to get safely back to his own room. Johnny’s brown suit... when we find it, well have him.”
“Find it?” the Inspector mumbled. “Fat chance. He’ll have got rid of it long ago.”
“I don’t think so,” Ellery said. “No, there’s a good chance he may not have. Shall we go see?”
There was no flight out at that hour, and Ellery would not wait. Newby said grimly, “Take my car. I wish I could go with you.”
The Queens drove all night, alternating at the wheel. They had breakfast in an all-night cafeteria on 1st Avenue and were at the door of Marsh’s duplex a few minutes past eight o’clock in the morning.
“Mr. Marsh he’s asleep, Mr. Queen,” the houseman said, blinking in the entrance hall. “No can wake him up—”
“Is Mrs. Marsh with him?”
“She no move in here yet.”
“Then you go on about your business, Estéban,” Ellery said. “I’ll take the responsibility of waking Mr. Marsh.”
They barged into Marsh’s bedroom without knocking. It was a spacious place of massive woods, hand-hewn and masculine. An eight-foot reproduction in marble of Michelangelo’s David graced the room.
The lawyer turned over in bed suddenly and opened his eyes.
“Easy, Marsh,” Inspector Queen said.
Marsh remained that way, in a half twisted posture, arrested in mid-movement. He looked formidable. His torso was naked and full of muscles and, surprisingly, hairless, as if he used a depilatory.
“What do you want?”
He sat up then. But he made no move to get out of bed. He drew his legs up under the red silk sheet and folded his heavy forearms over them, as if to hold them in check.
“What do you want?” he asked again.
“Johnny’s suit,” Ellery said gently. “You know, Al. The brown one he was wearing the night he was schlogged.”
“You must be insane.”
“Is it what I am, Al? Or what you are?”
Marsh shut his eyes for the briefest moment, like a child. When he opened them Ellery saw that they were old, bitter, and retreating.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said in a mechanical way. “I have nothing of Johnny’s here. Go ahead and look. And be damned to you.”
His wardrobe closet was a roomy walk-in, like Benedict’s in Wrightsville. Among the many garments on the racks they found two suits that, to Ellery’s recollection, were approximately the same shade of brown as the missing Benedict suit.
“What size do you wear, Marsh?” Inspector Queen asked. “Never mind. According to the labels these are forty-four longs, Ellery. Benedict couldn’t have worn more than a thirty-eight regular — maybe even a thirty-six. So these are Marsh’s.” None of the other suits was the color of Benedict’s. “Any other suits in the apartment, Marsh?”
“This is your party.” Marsh’s throat sounded dry. He licked his lips. “I don’t have to tell you, incidentally, Inspector, that I’ve seen no sign of a search warrant.”
“There’s one on the way,” the Inspector said. “Sorry we jumped the gun a bit, Marsh. Would you rather we held up till the warrant gets here?”
The lawyer shrugged his heavy shoulders.
“I won’t make an issue of it. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
The Inspector looked the least bit worried. He glanced at Ellery. But if Ellery felt misgivings he did not betray them. He was going through the suitcases that were piled up in a corner of the wardrobe room. The cases were empty.
Ellery straightened up suddenly and stepped out of the closet. “I’m still partly in shock,” he said, and drew his father aside, out of earshot of Marsh. “Of course it wouldn’t be out in the open. He’s hidden it in his clothes-hiding place.”
“His what?”
“Marsh leads a secret life, doesn’t he? That follows from what we’ve found out about him. During the day he acts the part of a normal man. But nights — some nights — and weekends — some weekends — he lives his other life. That means he has to have a hiding place for the clothes he wears when he’s on the prowl.”
The Inspector sprang back into the closet. He found the nearly invisible seam in the panel and the concealed spring in less than three minutes. Half the rear wall of the closet slid open.
Marsh had got out of bed and joined them in the closet. His pajama pants were shocking pink. His eyes were wild.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “Please don’t go in there. I beg of you.”
“Sorry, Al.”
They were all there — street dresses, smart women’s suits, cocktail gowns, evening gowns, high-heeled shoes, nylon stockings, hip huggers, an assortment of panty hose, panty girdles, silk panties, brassieres, slips. And at least a dozen wigs, in various styles and colors. And a vanity table loaded with a full freight of makeup materials. And a pile of gaudy magazines featuring handsome and muscular young male nudes.
And, among the gowns, the lone intruder, a man’s suit, a brown suit, the brown suit John Levering Benedict III had worn on the last night of his life.
Under the law I have to warn you, Inspector Queen began.
Never mind, I know my rights, but I want to explain, it’s important, Marsh said. Moved by an obscure emotion, Ellery had tossed him a robe from the closet; he was very Marlboro striding about the bedroom, and it deepened Ellery’s somberness. His father had died in an accident when he was very little, he explained; his mother, who never remarried, had been his evil genius.
She ruined me. I was her only child and she had had her heart set on a daughter. So she rejected my sex — not consciously, I’m sure; she was a Victorian throwback. Believe it or not she kept me in dresses, long hair, and dolls almost until I reached school age. And she’d had me christened Aubrey. I hated the name. You can imagine what boys made of it. At school I fought and licked every boy who made fun of me. I was big and strong enough to do it. I kept at them till they called me Al. Al it’s been ever since.
But the damage was done. With no male figure to counterbalance my mother’s influence — ours was a completely female household — whatever causes these things took hold and dominated me. I found out the truth about myself in my freshman year at Harvard. I’d long since wondered why I felt no particular yen for girls, like my friends, and had to fake interest; now I came to the realization that what I was feeling for Johnny couldn’t be palmed off as ordinary man-to-man friendship... I never let Johnny know. The concealment, the need to watch myself, to pretend, cost me dear. It had to find an outlet somewhere. Inevitably there was an episode in a bar, well away from the Yard... then another, and another. It became an addiction, like heroin. I fought it with all my strength, feeling such shame and guilt afterward that I threw myself into college sports, especially wrestling. Until I realized why I had gone into contact sports. And gave them up.