“Well, it suits me,” snapped Moley, nettled. “She thought she was safe, then. No clue left, the note was either destroyed or, if not, pointed to Rosa. Then she goes lookin’ for those letters of hers and those photos. Well, she can’t find them. In fact, she goes back with the idea of lookin’ again the next night — last night, when you caught her and this Munn doll and Mrs. Godfrey. Then she gets the call from the one who’s really got the proofs and sees she’s in for the whole damned business of blackmail all over again. She’s killed a man for nothing. This time she doesn’t even know who’s hitting her up. So the game’s up and she commits suicide. That’s all. Her suicide was a confession of guilt.”
“Just like that, eh?” murmured Judge Macklin.
“Just like that.”
The old gentleman shook his head. “Aside,” he said mildly, “from a number of inconsistencies in your theory, Inspector, surely you must see that the woman doesn’t fit as the criminal psychologically? She was petrified with fear from the moment of her arrival at Spanish Cape. She was a middle-aged woman of the bourgeois type — the family woman pure and simple; good clean stock, narrow in her moral viewpoint, attached to home, husband, and children. The Marco incident was an emotional explosion, over as soon as it was set off. Now a woman like that, Inspector, may commit murder on impulse when she’s pushed far enough, but not an ingenious murder deliberately planned in advance. Her mind couldn’t have been clear enough. Besides, I doubt whether she possessed sufficient intelligence.” He shook his fine old head. “No, no, Inspector, it doesn’t ring true.”
“If you gentlemen are through heckling each other,” drawled Ellery, “perhaps you, Inspector, will be kind enough to answer a few questions? You’ll have to answer them to the press eventually, you know; they’re sharp lads and lassies; and you don’t want to be caught, as they say in our robuster literature, with your pants down.”
“Shoot,” said Moley, no longer triumphant or annoyed. If anything, he was worried. He sat biting his fingernails, head cocked on one side as if he were fearful of losing the merest word.
“In the first place,” said Ellery abruptly, shifting on the rustic bench, “you say Mrs. Constable, unable to pay blackmail to Marco, planned to kill him. But in planning to kill him, you maintain, she hired Captain Kidd to do the dirty work! I rise to ask: Where did she get the money to pay Kidd?”
The Inspector was silent, fretting over his nails. Then he muttered: “Well, I admit that’s a sticker, but maybe she just promised to pay him when his job was done.”
The Judge smiled, and Ellery shook his head. “And run the risk of having Cyclops on her neck as a result of welching? I think not, Inspector. Besides, it doesn’t strike me that Kidd is the type of scoundrel who would commit murder without payment in advance. You see, there’s at least one weakness in your theory, and a very basic one. In the second place, how did Mrs. Constable know about the Marco-Rosa connection — so well as to be certain that the bait of the note would work?”
“That’s easy. She kept her eyes open and found out.”
“But Rosa,” smiled Ellery, “has apparently been very secretive about it. You see, if there’s anything in my objection, it’s weakness number two.”
Moley was silent. “But those things—” he began after a moment.
“And in the third place,” continued Ellery regretfully, “you haven’t explained that business of Marco’s nudity. Most important omission of all, Inspector.”
“Damn Marco’s nudity!” roared Moley, jumping to his feet.
Ellery rose, shrugging. “Unfortunately, we can’t dispose of this case so easily, Inspector. I tell you we shan’t have a satisfactory theory until we’ve discovered one that explains sanely why—”
“Hush,” said the Judge in a whisper.
They all heard it at the same instant. It was a woman’s voice, choked and faint, but she had screamed somewhere nearby in the gardens.
They made their way rapidly toward the source of the cry, running noiselessly on the thick grass. The cry was not repeated. But the sound of a queer feminine mumbling came to their ears, growing louder as they advanced. Instinctively they felt the need for stealth.
Then they were peering through a yew-hedge into a grove set in a circle of blue spruce. One look, and Inspector Moley set his muscles to spring through the hedge. Ellery’s hand tightened on the detective’s arm, and Moley sank back.
Mr. Joseph A. Munn, the South American millionaire with the poker face, stood tensed and furious in the girdle of trees, his big brown hand clamped over the mouth of his wife.
The hand covered most of her face; only her eyes, frantic with fear, showed. She was struggling in a mad panic, and it was from her mouth that the mumbling issued, choked and distorted by his hand. Her hands beat backward over her head at his face, and she was kicking him with her sharp heels.
He paid no more attention to her blows and kicks than he would have paid to the thrashings of a bug.
Mr. Joseph A. Munn looked neither like millionaire nor poker-faced gambler at the moment. The little veneer he had so carefully cultivated had curled off in a flash of passion, and the cold mask he wore had been dropped at last to reveal a terrifying rage. The muscles of his powerful jaws were drawn back in a brutish snarl. They could see the fierce humps of muscle on his shoulders and the iron bulk of his biceps through the taut coat.
“First lesson,” muttered Ellery, “in how to treat your wife. This is truly educational...”
The Judge poked a sharp elbow in his ribs.
“If you’ll shut that trap of yours,” rasped Munn, “I’ll let you go.”
She redoubled her efforts, the mumble mounting shrilly. His black eyes flashed; he lifted her from the ground. Her head snapped back and her breath was shut off. The mumble ceased.
He flung her from him to the grass, wiping his hands on his coat as if they were dirtied from the contact with her. She fell in a heap and began to cry in short, gasping sobs, almost inaudible.
“Now you listen to me,” said Munn in a tone so strangled that the words were blurred. “And you answer my questions straight. Don’t think that forked snake’s tongue o’ yours is going to get you out of this one.” He glared down at her balefully.
“Joe,” she moaned. “Joe, don’t. Don’t kill me. Joe—”
“Killings too good for you! You ought to be staked down on an ant-hill, you two-timing, rotten little bitch!”
“J-Joe...”
“Don’t ‘Joe’ me! Spill it! Quick!”
“What... I don’t know—” She was quaking with fear, looking up at him as if to ward off a blow, her bare arms raised.
He stooped suddenly, thrust his hand in one of her armpits, heaved effortlessly, and she flew backward to a bench, landing with a thud. He took one stride, raised his hand, and slapped her cheek three times in the same spot. The slaps sounded like revolver-shots. They jarred her to the spine, her head flying back and her blonde hair coming loose. She was too frightened to cry out, to protest. She slumped on the bench, holding her cheek and staring up at him out of her darting eyes as if she had never seen him before.
Both men were muttering in rebellion to either side of Ellery. He said: “No!” in a sharp whisper, and dug his fingers into their arms.
“Now talk, damn you,” said Munn evenly, stepping back. He jammed his big hands into the pockets of his sack-coat. “When did this happen between you and that crawling scum?”
Her teeth chattered, and for an instant she could not speak. Then she said in an unnatural voice: “When — you were — off on that business trip to Arizona. Right after we — got married.”