“I hung it in my closet when I went to bed last night, and I noticed it hanging there this morning when I dressed. But when I came up from brunch to change my outfit the evening gown wasn’t hanging there any more. I ransacked the room, but it was gone.”
“Who else is staying at the house?”
“Al Marsh, Johnny, of course, and the two other exes, that Kemp tramp and Miss Yokel from Wrightsville here, Alice Tierney, and what he ever saw in her—! Oh, and two characters from town who make like a maid and a butler, but they went home last night after they cleaned up. They were back this morning and I asked both of them about my gown. They looked at me as if I were out of my everloving mind.”
If one of them is Morris Hunker, baby, Ellery chuckled to himself, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
“Did you ask any of the others?”
“Where do you think I’m from, Dumbsville? What good would that have done, dahling? The one who lifted it would only deny it, and the others... oh, it’s just too embarrassing! Do you suppose I could impose on you to, well, find it for me without raising a fuss? I’d go poking around Marcia’s and Alice’s bedrooms, but I’d be sure to get caught, and I don’t want Johnny getting, I mean thinking, well, you know what I mean, Mr. Queen.”
For the sake of the amenities he was willing to concede that he did, although in truth he did not. As for the Inspector, he was watching Ellery like a psychiatrist observing if the patient would curl up in a fetal position or spring to the attack.
“Nothing else of yours was taken?”
“No, that was it. Just the gown.”
“Seems to me,” Inspector Queen said, “either Miss Kemp or Miss Tierney borrowed it for some reason, and if you’d just ask them—”
“I can see you don’t know anything about Paris-type gowns, Inspector,” the model-actress drawled. “They’re like Rembrandts or something. They couldn’t wear it without giving themselves away. So why take it? Y’know? That’s why it’s such a mystery.”
“How about the maid?” Ellery asked.
“That tub? She’s five-foot-two and must weigh two hundred.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Miss Weston,” he said.
She played her exit scene seductively and with much emotion, sweeping out at last after half a dozen more “dahlings” and a long trailing goodbye arm, and leaving him with the scent of Madame Rochas Perfume for Ladies. The moment she was gone the Inspector barked, “Ellery, you’re not going to start poking around for some stupid evening gown and spoil your vacation — and mine!”
“But I just promised—”
“So you’re unreliable,” the Inspector snorted, settling down with the Wrightsville Record Ellery had picked up in High Village.
“I thought you were going to take a nap.”
“Who could sleep now? That phony knocked it all out of me. Now that’s that, Ellery. Understand?”
But that was not that. At thirteen minutes past one the door called again, and Ellery opened to a vision in flesh, curves, and genuine red hair — a rather large vision, to be sure. She was almost as tall as Ellery, with the build of a back-row showgirclass="underline" long-muscled legs, long dancer’s thighs, and a bust of Mansfieldian proportions. She was dressed for the greatest effect, in briefs and a halter, with a coat loosely open over all; it showed a great deal of her. Her flaming hair was modestly bound in a scarf.
“Marcia Kemp,” Ellery said.
“Now how in Christ’s name did you know that?” The redhead had a deep, coarse, New York voice — from the heart of the Bronx, Ellery guessed. Her green eyes were glittery with anger.
“I’ve had an advance description, Miss Kemp,” Ellery said with a grin. “Come in. Meet my father, Inspector Queen of the New York City police department.”
“Grandpa, fuzz is just what I need,” the Kemp woman exclaimed. “You’ll never guess what’s happened to me. In Johnny-B’s own house, mind you!”
“What was that?” Ellery asked, ignoring his father’s look.
“Some creep heisted my wig.”
“Your wig?” the Inspector repeated involuntarily.
“My green one! That piece of shrubbery set me back a whole hundred and fifty bucks. I go down to breakfast this morning, or lunch, or whatever the hell it was, and when I get back... no wig! Can you tie that? It left me so goddam uptight... I need a shot. Straight bourbon, Queenie baby, and lean on it.”
He poured her enough bourbon to make a Kentucky colonel stagger. She tossed it down as if it were a milk shake and held the glass out for more. He refilled it. This one she nursed in her powerful hands.
“You last saw this wig of yours when, Miss Kemp?”
“I wore it last night to dinner along with my green lamé evening gown. Johnny likes his women to do the dress-up bit. It was still on my dressing table when I went downstairs this morning. When I come back it’s gone with the wind. If I didn’t know how Johnny hates a rumble I’d tear those bitches’ luggage limb from limb! Could you find it for me, Ellery? Hush-hush, like? Without Johnny knowing?”
“There’s no chance you mislaid it?” The Inspector, hopefully.
“Gramps, I ask you. How do you mislay a green wig?”
“A dress and a wig,” Ellery yapped after he got rid of the redhead. “Something missing from each of the first two ex-wives. Is it possible that the third—?”
“Son, son,” his father said in not entirely convincing reproof. “You promised.”
“Yes, dad, but you’ll have to admit...”
And indeed Ellery was looking more like his old self, with a near-jaunty bounce to his step and at least a half sparkle in his eye that for some time had been missing altogether. The Inspector consoled himself with the thought that it was likely one of those pesky little problems, with the simplest of explanations, that would keep Ellery harmlessly occupied while time and river washed away the stains left by the Glory Guild case.
So when at midafternoon Ellery suddenly said, “Look, dad, if there’s any logic in all this, the third one ought to be missing something, too. I think I’ll stroll over...,” the Inspector said simply, “I’ll be down at the brook with a rod, son.”
Benedict had had a sixty-foot swimming pool built behind the main house. It was still covered by a winter tarpaulin; but summer furniture had been set out on the flagstoned terrace at the rear of the old farmhouse that he had had laid down in the reconstruction, and there Ellery found Alice Tierney stretched out in a lounging chair, sunning herself. The spring afternoon was warm, with a gusty little breeze, and her cheeks were reddened as if she had been lying there for some time.
The moment he laid eyes on her Ellery recognized her. During one of his trips to Wrightsville he had had to visit the hospital. On that occasion, attending the object of his visit, she had been in a nurse’s cap and uniform — a large girl with a healthy butt, a torso of noble dimensions, and features as plain as Low Village’s cobbles and as agreeable to the eye.
“Miss Tierney. I don’t suppose you remember me.”
“Don’t I just!” she cried, sitting up. “You’re the great Ellery Queen, God’s gift to Wrightsville.”
“You don’t have to be nasty about it,” Ellery said, slipping into a wrought-iron chair.
“Oh, but I mean it.”
“You do? Who calls me that?”
“Lots of people around here.” Her cool blue eyes shimmered in the sun. “Of course, I’ve heard some say the gift comes from the devil, but you’ll find sourpusses everywhere.”
“That’s probably because of the rise in the crime rate since I began coming here. Smoke, Miss Tierney?”
“Certainly not. And you oughtn’t to, either. Oh, futz! There I go again. I can never forget my training.”
She was in mousy slacks and jacket that did nothing for her, and he thought her long straight hair style was exactly wrong for her face and size. But it all tended to dwindle away against her general air of niceness, which he suspected she cultivated with great care. He could understand what Johnny Benedict, with his superficial view of women, had found so appealing about her.