“Come on, Blackie, don’t be cute,” growled the Inspector.
“Well, mister,” sneered the coroner, “she did.”
“You don’t take kindly to the Socratic method, I see,” grinned Ellery; then his grin vanished and he said: “And just before she went over the cliff she was standing on the edge, wasn’t she? Quite so. It wouldn’t have taken much to make her lose her balance, would it? Of course not.”
“What are you driving at, Ellery?” asked the Judge.
“Inspector Moley, my dear Solon, believes with Caesar that fere libenter homines id, quod volunt, credunt. You find Mrs. Constable’s suicide very convenient, don’t you, Inspector?”
“What the devil do you mean?”
“Wish fathering the thought business, eh?”
“Listen here—”
“Now, now,” drawled Ellery, “I’m not saying she didn’t commit suicide. I merely wish to point out that it would have been possible even under the circumstances for Mrs. Constable to have been murdered.”
“How?” exploded Moley. “How? You can’t keep on pullin’ rabbits out of your hat! You tell me—”
“I was about to do so. Oh, by a very primitive method, to be sure, but in this case vastly to be preferred over some modern gimcrack. I suggest that it is theoretically possible some one stood in the brush nearby, out of sight of Miss Godfrey and ourselves, and merely threw a stone at Mrs. Constable’s back — a very broad target, if you will recall the general construction of her anatomy.”
They greeted this with dead silence. The coroner glared at him in a gnawed and defeated way. Moley sucked a fingernail.
Then Judge Macklin said: “Granted that Rosa would not have heard a sound nor seen the assailant. But she was looking straight at Mrs. Constable. Wouldn’t she have noticed the stone striking?”
“Yeah,” said Moley at once, his frown vanishing. “That’s right, Judge! Wouldn’t she have, Mr. Queen?”
“I don’t believe she would,” shrugged Ellery, “but then that’s only an opinion. Mind you, I’m not saying that’s what happened. I’m just pointing out the danger of leaping to conclusions.”
“Well!” said Moley, wiping his face with a limp handkerchief. “I guess there really can’t be any question about the suicide. This is all swell-soundin’ chatter, but it doesn’t get you anywhere. Besides, I’ve got this whole thing figured out in my mind now. It’s a theory you can’t blast, Mr. Queen.”
“A theory covering the entire set of facts?” murmured Ellery, visibly surprised. “If that’s true, Inspector, I owe you an apology, for you will have seen something that so far has escaped me.” There was no sarcasm in his tone. “Well, let’s have it!”
“You think you know who killed Marco?” said the Judge. “I sincerely hope you do. This is scarcely a vacation and, in all conscience, I’d as lief get away from here today as not!”
“Sure, I know,” said Inspector Moley, taking out a twisted cheroot and sticking it into his mouth. “Mrs. Constable.”
Ellery kept eying him during the entire time in which they left the bedroom, escorted the coroner downstairs and to his car, and strolled out through the patio into the moon-drenched gardens. The patio was deserted. Moley had a wrestler’s jaw, and he did not seem especially gifted in intellectual attainments; but Ellery had learned through hard-won experience never to judge a man on appearances or even superficial acquaintance. It was possible that Moley had struck something nutritious. Ellery had felt all along that his own thinking had been sterile in this case; and so he waited impatiently for Moley, who seemed to be enjoying himself, to explain.
The detective did not speak until they had reached a quiet spot under a dark roof of leaves. He devoted himself for a full minute to drawing upon his cheroot and watching the breeze whisk the acrid smoke away.
“Y’see,” he said at last, in a provocative drawl, “it’s open and shut, now that she’s dead by her own hand. I’ll admit,” he continued with magnificent modesty, “that I hadn’t specially thought of her before. But that’s the way it goes in this business. You’re in a fog, but you bide your time and then, whango! — something pops and it’s all over but the shouting. All you need is patience.”
“Which, as Syrus said,” sighed Ellery, “‘when too often outraged is converted into madness,’ Talk, man, talk!”
Moley chuckled. “Marco played his usual game with this Constable woman, made love to her, smashed down her defenses, became her lover. She was probably easy pickin’s — just at the age when a handsome phiz is something to moon at in the movies and dream about at home. Well, she soon woke up. Soon as he had his letters and photo and roll of film, he laid his cards on the table: Pay up, sweet sucker. She paid up, scared to death. She was sick at heart, I suppose, but she figured she’d pay him what he asked, get back the proofs, and bury the whole business. Just a fling that didn’t work out.”
“So far,” murmured Ellery, “nothing startling, to be sure, and probably correct. Proceed.”
“But we know from the conversation you yourself overheard this afternoon,” continued the Inspector equably, “that she was fooled. She paid and didn’t get back the proofs. And she paid again, and again, until... what?” He leaned forward, brandishing his cigar. “Until she was cleaned out; until she didn’t have any more dough to stuff into that skunk’s craw. What could she do? She was desperate. She couldn’t or wouldn’t go to her husband, she had no further sources of funds. And yet Marco didn’t believe her, because it was through Marco that she came up here. He wouldn’t have finagled it so that she’d be invited here unless he thought he could still squeeze a few grand out of her. Now, would he?”
“No, that’s perfectly true,” said Ellery with a nod.
“Now, Marco was settin’ the stage for one last clean-up. He figured it would be easier if he got all his victims together, cracked down on ’em at one time, collected, took Rosa away with him — maybe he did intend to marry her, for all I know — and in that way set himself up for life. Godfrey would have paid plenty to get rid of such a son-in-law and have his daughter back. What happens? Mrs. Constable comes up here, because he ordered her to and she can’t help herself, he demands more dough, she pleads poverty, he gets tough and says if she doesn’t quit stalling and come across he’ll either send his proofs to some tab or to her husband. But she is telling the truth; she’s got her back to the wall. What’s she do?”
“Oh,” said Ellery oddly, “I see.” He looked disappointed. “Well, what does she do?”
“She plans to kill him,” said Moley with triumph. “She plans to have him killed, rather; and on the chance that he’s got the letters and things with him, steal them back and destroy them. So she hunts up this Captain Kidd that she’s heard about while she’s here, hires him to bump Marco off, Kidd picks up Kummer by mistake, she finds out almost immediately, types the note off making the fake appointment with Marco that night on the terrace, goes down, picks up that bust of Columbus and socks Marco, then strangles him with the wire she’s brought with her, and—”
“Undresses the corpse?” asked Ellery quietly.
Moley looked annoyed. “That’s just pink candy!” he exploded. “Just smoke in our eyes. Doesn’t mean a thing. Or if it does, she just got a kick out of — well, you know what I mean.”
Judge Macklin shook his head. “My dear Inspector, I can’t say I agree with you on any specific count.”
“Go on,” said Ellery. “The Inspector isn’t finished, Judge. I want to hear this out to the bitter end.”