The Siamese Twin Mystery (10 page)

“One
A.M.
,” frowned Ellery. “It must have been a little past eleven when we retired last night. I see. … You omitted something, dad. No slightest sign of a struggle. That means he probably knew his murderer and didn’t suspect foul play until it was too late.”

“Fat lot of good that does us,” grunted the Inspector. “Sure he knew who bumped him. He knew everybody on this mountainside.”

“You mean to say, of course,” said Dr. Holmes in a strained voice, “in this house?”

“You got me the first time, Doc.”

The corridor door opened and Mrs. Wheary’s neat gray head poked in. “Breakfast—” she began, and then her eyes widened and her jaw sagged ludicrously. She screamed once and almost fell through the doorway. The emaciated figure of Bones sprang into view from behind her, throwing out his long arms to catch her fat body. Then he, too, caught sight of Dr. Xavier’s still figure and his gray wrinkled cheeks became grayer. He almost dropped the housekeeper’s figure.

Ellery leaped forward and caught the woman in his arms. She had fainted. Ann Forrest stepped gingerly into the study, hesitated, swallowed hard, and ran forward to help. Between them they managed to drag the heavy old woman into the library. Neither Mark Xavier nor the widow moved.

Leaving the housekeeper in the young woman’s charge, Ellery strode back into the study. The Inspector was scrutinizing the haggard old man with impersonal minuteness. Bones was gaping at his employer’s dead body, and he looked more like a corpse than the corpse itself. Snags of yellow teeth showed against the black of his open mouth. His eyes were glassy, goggling. Then sense came back into them, and a curious mounting rage. He worked his lips soundlessly for several moments until he forced a hoarse animal cry out of his wrinkled throat. Then he turned and plunged through the doorway. They heard him blundering along the cross-hall, repeating the senseless cry like a man stricken insane.

The Inspector sighed. “He takes it pretty, pretty,” he muttered. “Attention, everybody!”

He stalked to the library door and looked out at them. They looked back at him. Mrs. Wheary, revived, was sobbing quietly in a chair beside her mistress.

“Before we go ahead with a more thorough examination,” said the Inspector coldly, “there are a few things need clearing up. I want the truth, mind. Miss Forrest, you and Dr. Holmes left the gameroom last night just before we did. Did you go right up to your room?”

“Yes,” said the girl in a low voice.

“Right to sleep?”

“Yes, Inspector.”

“You, Dr. Holmes?”

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Xavier, did you go right to your room last night when we left you on the landing, and did you stay there all night?”

The widow raised her extraordinary eyes; they were dazed. “I—yes.”

“Did
you
go right to bed?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you discover during the night that your husband hadn’t come up to sleep?”

“No,” she said slowly. “I did not. I slept through until morning.”

“Mrs. Wheary?”

The housekeeper sobbed: “I don’t know anything at all about this, sir, as God is my judge. I just went to bed.”

“How about you, Xavier?”

The man licked his lips before replying. When he spoke his voice was cracked. “I didn’t stir from my bedroom all night.”

“Well, I might have expected it,” sighed the Inspector. “So nobody here saw the doctor after Mr. Queen, Mrs. Xavier and I left him in the gameroom last night, hey?”

They shook their heads almost eagerly.

“How about the shots? Anybody hear them?”

Blank stares.

“It must be the mountain air,” said the Inspector sarcastically. “Although at that maybe I’m a little harsh. I didn’t hear them myself.”

“These are soundproof walls,” said Dr. Holmes lifelessly. “Specially constructed—the study and laboratory. We did a lot of experimenting with animals, Inspector. The noise, you know—”

“I see. These doors down here are always unlocked, I suppose?” Mrs. Wheary and Mrs. Xavier nodded simultaneously. “Now how about the gun? Anybody here who didn’t know there was a weapon and ammunition in that little cabinet in the study?”

Miss Forrest said quickly: “I didn’t, Inspector.”

The old gentleman grunted. Ellery smoked reflectively in the study, scarcely listening.

The Inspector eyed them for a moment, then he said briefly: “That’s all for now. No,” he added in a caustic tone, “don’t move. There’s a lot more. Dr. Holmes, you stay with us; we may need you.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” began Mrs. Xavier, half rising. She looked haggard and old. “Can’t we—?”

“Stay where you are, please, Madam. There are a lot of things that have to be done. One of them,” said the Inspector grimly, “is to get that hidden guest of yours, Mrs. Carreau, down for a little chin-chin.” And he began to shut the door in their gaping, stricken faces.

“And,” said Ellery gravely, “the crab. Please don’t forget the crab, dad.”

But they were too stupefied for speech.

“Now, Doctor,” continued Ellery briskly, when the door was closed, “how about
rigor mortis?
He looks stiff as a board to me. I’ve had some experience examining dead bodies, and this one looks remarkably well advanced.”

“Yes,” muttered Dr. Holmes. “
Rigor
is complete. In fact,
rigor
has been complete for nine hours.”

“Here, here,” frowned the Inspector. “Are you sure of that, Doctor? It doesn’t sound kosher—”

“I assure you it’s so, Inspector. You see, Dr. Xavier was—” he licked his lips—“badly diabetic.”

“Ah,” said Ellery softly. “We meet the diabetic corpse once more. Remember Mrs. Doom in the
Dutch Memorial Hospital,
dad? Go on, Doctor.”

“It’s quite the usual thing,” said the young Englishman with a weary shrug. “Diabetics may go into
rigor
as early as three minutes after death. Special blood condition, of course.”

“I remember now.” The Inspector took a pinch of snuff, inhaled deeply, sighed, and put the box away. “Well, it’s interesting but not helpful. Just park yourself on that couch, Dr. Holmes, and try to forget this business for a while. … Now, El, let’s see all this queer stuff you were gabbling about.”

Ellery flung his half-smoked cigaret out the open window and went around the desk to stand beside the swivel chair in which Dr. Xavier’s body sat.

“Look at that,” he said, pointing toward the floor.

The Inspector looked; and then, with a rather startled expression, squatted on his hams and grasped the hanging right arm of the dead man. It seemed made out of steel; he had the greatest difficulty moving it. He grasped the dead hand.

The hand was clenched. Three fingers—middle finger, ring finger, and little finger—were curled tightly into the palm. Between the extended forefinger and the thumb the dead surgeon held a ragged fragment of stiff paper.

“What’s this?” muttered the Inspector, and he tried to pull the fragment from between the two dead digits. The fingers held tenaciously. Grunting, the old gentleman grasped the thumb in one hand and the forefinger in the other and exerted all his wiry strength. After a struggle he managed to loosen the grip to the extent of perhaps a sixteen of an inch. The stiff paper fluttered to the rug.

He picked it up and rose.

“Why, it’s a torn piece of card!” he exclaimed, a note of disappointment in his voice.

“So it is,” said Ellery mildly. “You sound fearfully disgruntled, dad. Needn’t be. I’ve the feeling that it’s considerably more significant than it looks.”

It was half a six of spades.

The Inspector turned it over; the back was a gaudy red design of intertwined fleurs-de-lis. He glanced at the cards on the desk; their backs were of the same design.

He looked inquiringly at Ellery, and Ellery nodded. They stepped forward and tugged at the dead man. Managing to raise him a little from the surface of the desk, they pushed the swivel chair back a few inches and lowered the body again, so that only the head rested on the edge. Virtually the entire spread of cards was revealed.

“The six of spades came from this desk,” murmured Ellery, “as you can see.” He pointed to a row of cards. Dr. Xavier had apparently been playing, before his murder, the common type of solitaire in which thirteen cards are stacked in a pile as a source from which the player may draw, and then four cards are place face up in a row, with a fifth card placed face up on a line by itself. The game was well advanced. The second card of the group of four was a ten of clubs. Beneath it, covering most of the ten, lay a nine of hearts; beneath the nine, similarly placed, lay an eight of spades; then a seven of diamonds; then a considerable space; and finally a five of diamonds.

“The six was between the seven of diamonds and the five of diamonds,” muttered the Inspector. “All right. So he picked it out of that row. I don’t see. … Where’s the rest of this six of spades?” he demanded suddenly.

“On the floor behind the desk,” said Ellery. He circled the desk and stooped. When he stood up he held in his hand a crumpled ball of card. He smoothed it out and fitted it to the fragment from the dead man’s right hand. It matched perfectly, beyond the remotest possibility of duplication.

As on the fragment from the dead man’s hand, there was an oval finger smudge on the crumpled piece. It was obviously the smudge of a thumb, like the other. When the halves were fitted together the two smudges faced each other, each pointing diagonally upward to the line of tearing.

“Smudges are from his fingers when he tore the card, of course,” went on the Inspector thoughtfully. He examined the dead man’s thumbs. “Yes, they’re dirty. That damned soot, I guess, from the fire; it’s all over everything. Well, El, I see now what you mean.”

Ellery shrugged and turned to the window to stare out. Dr. Holmes was bent almost double on the black couch, holding his head between his hands.

“He was shot twice and the murderer beat it, leaving him for dead,” continued the Inspector slowly. “But he wasn’t dead. In his last conscious moments he picked that six of spades out of the solitaire game he’d been playing, deliberately tore off half the card, crumpled the other half and threw it away, and then passed out. Why the devil did he do that, now?”

“You’re asking an academic question,” said Ellery without turning. “You know as well as I do. You’ve observed, of course, that there’s no paper or writing implements on the desk.”

“How about in the top drawer there?”

“I looked. The cards came from there—the usual clutter of games inside. Paper, but no pen or pencil.”

“None in his clothes?”

“No. It’s a sports suit.”

“And the other drawers?”

“They’re locked. He hasn’t a key on his person. I suppose it’s in another suit, or if it’s somewhere about he didn’t have the strength to get up and look for it.”

“Well, then,” snapped the Inspector, “it’s plain enough. He didn’t have the means of writing the name of his murderer. So he left the card—the uncrumpled half of the card—instead.”

“Exactly,” murmured Ellery.

Dr. Holmes’s head came up; his eyelids were angry red. “Eh? He left—?”

“That’s it, Doc. By the way, I take it Dr. Xavier was right-handed?”

Dr. Holmes stared stupidly. Ellery sighed. “Oh, yes. I checked on that the very first thing.”

“You
checked
—?” began the old gentleman, astonished. “But how—”

“There are more ways,” said Ellery wearily, “of killing a cat than one, as any exterminator will tell you. I looked through the pockets of his discarded coat there on the armchair. His pipe and tobacco pouch are in the right-hand pocket. I patted his trouser pockets, too; there’s change in the right pocket, and the left one is empty.”

“Oh, he was right-handed, right enough,” muttered Dr. Holmes.

“Well, that’s good, that’s good. Checks with the card found in his right hand and the direction of the smudge on the corner. Swell! So we’re as well advanced as we were before—not a jot more. What in the name of all that’s holy did he mean by that piece of card? Doc, do you know whom he might have had in mind, leaving a six of spades that way?”

Dr. Holmes, still staring, started. “I? No, no. I couldn’t say, really I couldn’t.”

The Inspector strode to the library door and flung it open. Mrs. Wheary, Mrs. Xavier, the dead man’s brother—they were exactly as he had left them. But Miss Forrest had disappeared.

“Where’s the young woman?” said the Inspector harshly.

Mrs. Wheary shuddered and Mrs. Xavier apparently did not hear; she was rocking to and fro with a staccato motion.

But Mark Xavier said: “She went out.”

“To warn Mrs. Carreau, I suppose,” snapped the Inspector. “Well, let her. None of you can get away, glory be! Xavier, come on in here, will you?”

The man got slowly out of position, straightened, squared his shoulders, and followed the Inspector into the study. There he avoided looking at his dead brother, swallowing hard and shifting his gaze from side to side.

“We’ve an ugly job here, Xavier,” said the old gentleman crisply. “You’ll have to help. Dr. Holmes!”

The Englishman blinked.

“You ought to be able to answer this. You know that we’re all stuck up here until the sheriff of Osquewa can get through to us, and there’s no telling when that will be. In the meantime, in the case of a capital crime although I’ve been deputized by the sheriff to conduct an investigation I’ve no authority to bury the body of the victim. That must be held for the usual inquest and legal release. Do you understand?”

“You mean,” said Mark Xavier hoarsely, “he—he’s got to be
kept
this way? Good God, man—”

Dr. Holmes rose. “Fortunately,” he said in a stiff tone, “we—there’s a refrigerator in the laboratory. Used for experimental broths requiring frigid temperatures. I think,” he said with an effort, “we—can make it.”

“Good.” The Inspector clapped the young man on the back. “You’re doing fine, Doc. Once the body’s out of sight I know you’ll all feel better. … Now lend a hand, Xavier; and you, Ellery. This is going to be a job.”

When they returned to the study from the laboratory, a vast irregularly shaped room crammed with electrical apparatus and a fantastic growth of weirdly shaped glass vessels, they were all pale and perspiring. The sun was very high now and the room was insufferably hot and stuffy. Ellery threw the windows up as far as they would go.