But Ellery was already racing down the corridor toward the stairs.
They sped up the steep steps cut out of the naked rock wall, Ellery in the van, Inspector Moley puffing behind them, and old Judge Macklin laboring with stern features in the rear. The north segment of Spanish Cape presented the same flat surface, but here the trees and shrubbery were much sparser than on the southern side and the ground had a finished, smoothly grassed appearance that betrayed the workmanship of man. Judge Macklin pointed straight ahead of him as they reached the top of the stairs. They ran that way, thrashed through a clump of trees, burst into the open again — and stopped.
There was no one there.
“Strange,” said the Judge. “Perhaps she’s wandered off—”
“Separate,” said Ellery quickly. “We’ve got to find her.”
“But—”
“Do as I say!”
There were violet streaks in the sky; it was growing darker.
They beat their way separately through the middle of the northern segment, which was its most thickly wooded part. Occasionally one of them darted out into the open, looked about, and plunged back into the woods again.
Rosa Godfrey trudged seaward from the links, her golf-bag hanging from one shoulder. She was tired, and her hair was blowing about in a careless way.
She paused suddenly. It seemed to her that she had caught a glimpse of something glimmer-white in the distance, near the edge of the cliff. Without thinking she turned away and made for the shelter of the copse nearby. She felt like being alone. There was something about the evening sky and the approaching wrinkles of the sea that gave her a distaste for human company.
Earle Cort wandered over the sixth tee, his eyes roving.
Mrs. Constable sat on the grassy edge of the cliff, her thick legs hanging over space. Her head was low, her chin almost on her breast. She gazed with glassy eyes at what lay below her.
After a while she placed both her pudgy hands on the very edge and pushed toward the sea, wriggling backward. Her rump scraped against the rubble in the roots of the grass; she almost tumbled in a sidewise fall. Then she drew her legs up and on the very verge of the abyss got to her feet.
Her eyes still looked out to sea.
She stood facing the ruffled water, the tips of her slippers an inch past the edge. The skirt of her gown whipped about in the wind. She did not move, did not stir. Only her gown fluttered about in the wind. She stood black and still against the sky.
Mr. Ellery Queen slipped out of the woods for the tenth time. His eyes were weary with strained looking. And his heart was beginning to feel heavier, with the leaden feeling that seems to drag it into the pit of the stomach. He quickened his pace.
One moment Mrs. Constable was standing on the edge of the cliff, staring out to sea. The next she was gone.
It was difficult to say what had happened. She had flung up her arms and something hoarse and elemental had pushed past the clogged muscles in her throat and split the evening air. Then she was gone without a trace, as if the earth itself had swallowed her.
In the half-light of dusk there was something magical about it. Magical and dreadful. If the sun had come speeding up again from below the horizon and the sea had vanished in a twinkling it could not have been more dreadful. To vanish like a puff of smoke...
Ellery pushed out of the woods. And he stopped.
A woman lay in the grass almost at the edge of the cliff, prone. Her hands were cupped under her face and her shoulders were shaking. A man in knickerbockers stood a foot from the edge, hands clenched at his sides. A bag filled with golf clubs lay nearby.
There was a rustle behind him, and Ellery turned to see Inspector Moley burst out of the woods.
“Did you hear that?” cried Moley hoarsely. “That scream?”
“I heard it,” said Ellery with a curious sigh.
“Who—” Moley caught sight of the man and woman, frowned, and began a bull-like charge. “Hey!” he shouted. The man did not turn, nor did the woman look up.
“Too late?” asked a shaking voice. Judge Macklin touched Ellery’s shoulder. “What’s happened?”
“Poor fool,” said Ellery softly, and without replying made his way toward the edge of the cliff.
Moley was staring down at the woman; it was Rosa Godfrey. The man’s head was blond and bare; it was Earle Cort.
“Who was that screamed?”
Neither gave any sign of recognition.
“Where’s Mrs. Constable?” asked Moley in a hacking croak.
Cort shivered suddenly and turned about. His face was gray and wet with perspiration. He sank to his knees beside Rosa and patted her dark hair. “All right, Rosa,” he said dully, over and over. “All right, Rosa.”
The three older men stepped to the edge of the cliff. Something white swayed gently about sixty feet below; they could just make out one side of it. Ellery fell on his stomach and wriggled forward, thrusting his face over the verge.
Mrs. Constable lay spread-eagled in the churning water at the foot of the cliff, face up, on one of the knife-like rocks sprouting from the base. Her long hair had come loose and trailed in the water, with her gown and legs. The water was tinted red around her. She looked for all the world like a fat oyster which has been dropped from a height to split itself upon a rock.
Chapter Twelve
In Which a Blackmailer Encounters Difficulties
The privilege of dying quietly is reserved to nonentities. Death by violence automatically turns a peu de chose into a torn figure of importance, making a vital symbol out of the commonplace. In death Laura Constable found the very notoriety she had tried so hard to escape in life. Her broken body became a focal point for all the prying eyes of authority. In one brief swoop through space from grass-grown clifftop to gray rock in blackened water she achieved the significance that passes for immortality in the modern world of news.
Men came. Women came. Camera lenses stared at her unlovely shape, rendered infinitely unlovelier by the impaling it had gone through in the process of extinction. Pencils scribbled smoking words. Telephones jarred to monosyllabic messages. The bony coroner violated her fat blued flesh with impersonal, faintly bored fingers. Mysteriously a scrap of her gown disappeared, torn away by some one whose hunger transcended the ethics of special privilege.
In all this madness of activity Inspector Moley stalked silently, his lowering visage masking his thoughts. He let the reporters have their way with the corpse and the northern slice of Spanish Cape and the bloodstained rock. His men scurried about like headless chickens, plainly bewildered by the turn of events. The Godfreys, Cort, the Munns huddled together in the patio, posed in a daze for the avid photographers, answered questions mechanically. One of Moley’s men had already discovered Mrs. Constable’s city address and had wired to her son; it was Ellery who, with a poignant recollection of the dead woman’s voice, advised against tracing her husband. Everything happened, and nothing happened. It was a nightmare.
The scribblers surrounded Moley. “What’s the dope, Inspector?” He grunted. “Who did it? Think it was this Cort guy? Suicide or murder, Chief? What’s the connection between this Constable dame and Marco? Somebody says she was his mistress; is that right, Inspector? Come on, give us a break. You haven’t told us a thing in this merry-go-round!”