The Door Between (13 page)

Ellery lit a cigaret and stared at it thoughtfully. “Yes, I have. A rather remarkable one … Karen Leith did not live in this room!”

“Karen – didn’t –” began Dr. MacClure, goggling. Eva could have screamed. So Mr. Queen
had
seen it! Her brain was boiling with thoughts. If only – that one thing – maybe –

“No, Doctor,” said Ellery. “For years, I should say, and until very recently, this room has been occupied as permanent living-quarters by another woman altogether.”

Inspector Queen’s little mouth fell open, and the hairs of his gray mustache bristled with surprise and indignation.

“Oh, come now!” he cried. “What do you mean Karen Leith didn’t occupy this room? The boys have been over –”

“Let’s say,” shrugged Ellery, “that the boys weren’t functioning at par. There’s really no question about it.”

“But it’s not possible!” spluttered Dr. MacClure.

“My dear Doctor! Am I justified in believing that Miss Leith was right-handed?”

“Of course she was!”

“Yes, I seemed to recall that she mixed her Japanese tea on the evening of the garden-party with her right hand. So that fits. Isn’t it also true that your
fiancée
was at most five feet one or two inches tall and weighed no more than a hundred and five pounds?”

“That’s right, Mr. Queen,” said Eva breathlessly. “She was five-one-and-a-half and weighed a hundred and three!”

“And she was a pronounced brunette, of course – quite the blackest hair I’ve ever seen. With a dark, sallow complexion.”

“Well, well?” said the Inspector impatiently.

“Well! She was right-handed – yet I saw at a glance that this violin was used by a left-handed person. Most unusual.” He picked up the violin, fingered the dangling strings. “Look at these strings. The usual order, from left to right as you face the instrument, is G, D, A, E. These run, as you can tell by the thickness of each string, E, A, D, G. Reversed. Left-handed.”

Ellery put the violin back in its case and went to the closet. He lifted out the print dress again.

“How about it, Miss MacClure? Would you say this dress could be properly worn by a woman as short and light as Miss Leith?”

“Oh, goodness no,” said Eva. “I saw that the moment you took it out of the closet. Karen wore a size twelve – awfully small. That’s at least a thirty-eight. And so is the black silk you looked at!”

He hung the print back, went to the dressing-table. “And would you say,” he asked, taking up the hairbrush, “that these strands of hair came from Karen Leith’s head?”

They were crowded about him now. They saw several ash-blonde wisps of hair caught in the tufts of the brush.

“Or,” Ellery went on, picking up the powder box of the toilet set, “that this very light shade of powder would have been used by a woman as dark-complexioned as Karen Leith?”

Dr. MacClure dropped on to the bed. Eva pulled his huge, shaggy head to her breast. Now there
was
someone! Someone for that terrible little Inspector to think about! A woman had lived up here, a strange woman … Inspector Queen would think this woman had killed Karen. He would have to. She was glad, glad! She refused to think at all about the fact that the woman
couldn’t
have killed Karen – not with that bolted door. Not with that bolted door. Bolted door. Bolted door …

“I’ll have someone’s hide for this,” said the Inspector angrily.

Ellery restored the powder box and hairbrush to their places on the dressing-table. He said rather abruptly: “The picture is quite clear. The woman who occupied this room can be reconstructed. Did your men find any fingerprints here?”

“Nary one,” snapped the old man. “The room must have had a thorough cleaning recently. The Jap woman won’t talk.”

“Let’s see,” mused Ellery. “From the dresses – I should say she’s about five feet seven or eight inches tall. She must weigh between a hundred and thirty and a hundred and forty. She has naturally light blonde hair and a fair complexion. From the type of garment in the closet – not a young woman. Do you agree with me, Miss MacClure?”

“Yes, they’re the sort of things a woman in her forties might wear. Quite old-fashioned, too.”

“And she plays, or used to play, the violin. And there’s a secret – some important secret – bound up with her. Otherwise why Miss Leith’s deception? Why didn’t she ever reveal the existence of this woman? Why did she go to such pains to conceal any hints of her? – the ironclad rule that no one was to come up here, for example; the frequent changing of white servants; the soundproof walls – if you’ll just examine them. … A secret!” He whirled on Dr. MacClure. “Doctor, doesn’t my description fit any one you know?”

Dr. MacClure rubbed his face slowly. “I don’t recall –”

“Think. It’s probably no one from the American chapter in her life. This thing has the earmark of age. Japan, Japan!” He leaned forward eagerly. “Come, Doctor, think! You knew her in Tokyo – her family …” He unbent very slowly. “Her family. Yes, that sounds – Wait!”

He ran to the closet and returned with the two shoes. “Here’s something else; I almost forgot. Two shoes. Two
right
shoes. And that’s all. No left. Don’t you
see
?”

“Good for you, Sherlock,” muttered Terry Ring.

“They’re brand-new. They’ve never been worn.” Ellery smacked them together in his impatience. ‘It suggests one of two things – either a woman with her right leg gone, or something so wrong with it she wears a specially built shoe – either possibility making the normal right shoe of no utility. Well, Doctor?”

Dr. MacClure looked as if he were striking an attitude. But his voice came queerly strained. “No. It’s impossible.”

“Daddy!” cried Eva. She shook him. “What? Tell us!”

Terry Ring drawled: “Of course, it would be easy enough to find out. Just a matter of time, Doc.”

“I say it’s impossible!” roared the big man. Then his shoulders sagged and he went to the window again. This time his voice came hard and flat, without the least intonation. They could see his hands, however, crushing the chintz drapes.

“There was one woman in Karen’s life who fitted your description. When I knew her she was blonde, fair, about the same height and weight as you’ve pictured the occupant of this room, was left-handed, and played the violin. But that was over twenty years ago. She was twenty-two … She wore a specially built right shoe, for she’d had a short right leg from birth. It – dragged.”

“Who was it, Doctor?” asked Ellery gently.

“Karen’s sister. Karen’s elder sister Esther.”

Eva, who was on her feet, groped blindly for the bed behind her. This was too much, really too much. She knew about Esther Leith. She knew why Dr. MacClure had said it was impossible for Esther Leith to have lived in this attic room …

“That couldn’t be a coincidence,” said the Inspector slowly. “That must be the woman.”

“Do you think so?” Then Dr. MacClure turned around and they saw his face. Eva made a little whimpering sound. “Do you think so? Then what will you say when I tell you that Esther Leith never left Japan? That Esther Leith is still in Japan?”

“Oh, come,” snapped the old man, “You can’t be sure of that.”

“I’m quite sure of that,” said Dr. MacClure grimly. “Esther Leith died in Tokyo in 1924 – over twelve years ago.”

“Did you see Esther Leith die, Doctor?” asked Inspector Queen quietly.

“Don’t pay any attention to this nonsense, Eva,” growled the big man. “It’s just some damned fantastic coincidence.”

‘But, daddy,” cried Eva, “her own sister! It’s – it’s horrible.”

“I say don’t believe it! Do you hear me?”

“Now don’t fly off the handle,” said the Inspector. “We won’t get anywhere that way.”

“It’s preposterous!” stormed the doctor. “Esther committed suicide – threw herself into the Pacific during a holiday outing!”

“Was that,” asked Ellery, “the tragedy you were so reluctant to discuss on the
Panthia
Monday afternoon, Doctor?”

“Yes.” The doctor scowled. “Naturally I didn’t like to discuss it. I was in New England at the time, and Karen wrote me all about it. In fact, there was even a piece in the Boston papers, where Dr. Leith originally came from, about it.”

“Funny,” mused the Inspector.

“It
is
true, Inspector!” cried Eva inconsistently. “Karen once told me about it. She didn’t like to discuss it, either, but she told me about it.”

“Excuse me a minute,” said Inspector Queen.

He brushed past Ellery and they heard him descending the attic stairs. Terry Ring shifted his weight from one foot to the other, as if he had been awaiting his opportunity to do so.

“All right, Thomas,” they heard the Inspector call out in the bedroom below. “Keep a sharp eye out,” and then they heard him coming up again. When he appeared at the head of the stairs they saw he was carrying a small bundle of letters, tied with a length of thin red ribbon.

“What’s that?” demanded Ellery. “I didn’t see that.”

“Of course you didn’t,” retorted the Inspector in an amiable tone. “We put it away the very first thing. It didn’t mean much then – but it does now.”

Dr. MacClure was staring at the bundle and the last vestige of color left his rocky cheeks.

“You see we know,” said the Inspector kindly. “It’s a bunch of letters Miss Leith kept – found it in the bottom of that old teak chest in the cellar. Most of them are dated 1913, but there are two from 1918, and the 1918 ones were written by you, Doctor, to Esther … Leith …
MacClure
.”

Dr. MacClure sat suddenly down in the chair by the desk. “I suppose the others are correspondence between Esther and Floyd?” he groaned. “I see how foolish it was to hope –”

“Daddy,” frowned Eva. “What
is
this all about?”

“I should have told you long ago,” said the big man wearily. “Esther Leith was my sister-in-law. In 1914 she married my brother Floyd in Tokyo.”

The doctor told his story in a lifeless voice. When in 1913 he had crossed the ocean westward in search of the cancer clue that never materialized, his younger brother Floyd, also a medical doctor, had accompanied him. He told something about his brother – an irresponsible youngster, gay, harmless, easily influenced, who had worshipped his elder brother and had studied medicine more in emulation of an idol than from personal desire.

“We met the Leith girls in Tokyo,” said Dr. MacClure, staring at the floor, “through old Professor Matsudo, the man I’d come to Japan to see. He taught pathology at the Imperial University, and of course he knew Hugh Leith, the American teacher of literature. Leith rather liked us – he didn’t see many Americans in those days – and the result was we spent a lot of time at his home. Well, Esther and Floyd fell in love, and they were married in 1914, in the summer – a few weeks before Japan declared war on Germany.”

Eva went to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

“But you loved her, too,” said the Inspector. He tapped the bundle of letters. “It wasn’t hard to see, Doctor.”

He flushed. “Damn those letters! Well, I won’t deny it. I was a pretty serious young man in those days, though, and I could see Floyd had the inner track. I don’t think he ever knew – how I felt.”

“Darling,” whispered Eva.

“When they were married the war was already talked about and … Everything had gone wrong – my search was a failure – well, I went back to the States, leaving Floyd in Japan. He fell into his new life easily – he loved the country, and he wanted to stay there with his wife. I never saw him alive again.”

He was silet for a while. The Inspector said encouragingly: “Go on, Doctor. He was killed, wasn’t he – in an accident? One of your 1918 letters to Karen Leith refers to it.”

“Yes. Karen wrote me all about it. Floyd had one hobby – guns. He’d always been an enthusiast, and he set up a shooting-range in the garden of his Tokyo home after his marriage to Esther. He’d tried to teach her to shoot even before.”

“She shot him?” asked Ellery sharply.

They could barely hear his voice. “Oh, it was one of those cursed accidents – there have been thousands of them. She was aiming at the target and he was standing dangerously near. And she was nervous. The bullet went through his brain. He died instantly. Never knew what hit him.”

He paused again. But the Inspector said: “That isn’t all, is it, Doctor? There’s a reference to another woman –”

“So you know that, too! I never dreamed those letters were still …” Dr. MacClure got to his feet and began pacing. “Yes. There was another woman. It was never proved, and I can’t be sure now. Even if there was, I know Floyd didn’t mean anything by it. He was handsome and weak, and women were attracted to him. I’d swear he loved Esther, and Esther only. But – apparently there was gossip. Somehow it got to Esther’s ears.”

“Oh,” said Eva pityingly.

“You’d have to know Esther. She was a magnificent woman, really beautiful, sensitive, intelligent, a writer … but her physical deformity preyed on her mind, and I suppose any whisper of a defection by Floyd would have given her agony. So when she shot Floyd, she came to believe” – his face darkened – “that subconsciously she had
wanted
to kill him, that it hadn’t been an accident at all, that it had been murder. And after a while she even talked herself into believing that it had been conscious and deliberate murder.”

“Was that why she committed suicide?” asked Ellery.

“Yes. After the inquiry, which completely exonerated her, she had a nervous breakdown and went temporarily insane.” The doctor’s face was wet with perspiration. “The accident occurred in 1918. I went out there when I heard about it, saw I couldn’t do anything, and returned to the States. That was early in 1919.” He paused for no apparent reason, then went on. “Dr. Leith had died in 1916, during the War, so Karen was left alone with Esther. Then in 1924 I learned that Esther had drowned herself and in 1927 Karen pulled up roots and came to New York. I didn’t even know she was coming – the first I learned of it was mention of her name in the literary column of a Boston newspaper. Naturally I looked her up and … everything followed.” He wiped his face slowly. “So you see why I say it’s nonsense about Esther being the woman who lived in this room.”