There Was an Old Woman (9 page)

“But what motive, Inspector?”

“Strangely enough,” said Ellery slowly, “Mac had a sounder theoretical motive to seek Bob's death than any other.”

“How do you figure that out?” said Charley belligerently.

“Don't get sore, Charley,” grinned Mr. Queen. “These are speculations only. Both twins were active vice-presidents of the Potts Shoe Company, weren't they?” Charley nodded. “When the Old Woman dies—an event that, according to Dr. Innis, is imminent—who'd be most likely to take full charge of the business? The twins, of course, who seem to have been the only practical businessmen of the family.” Ellery shrugged. “I toss it out for what it's worth. The death of his twin brother gives Mac a clear field when his mother yields the reluctant ghost.”

“You mean,” said Charley incredulously, “Mac might have been jealous enough of Bob to murder him so he could become head of the company?”

“Now that,” the Inspector snapped, “is a motive that appeals to me.”

Ellery opened his mouth to say something, but at this moment Sergeant Velie came plowing up the stairs, so he refrained.

“I give up,” said the Sergeant in disgust. “I and the boys've turned this joint upside down and we can't find those two missing pieces of artillery. We even been in the Old Woman's rooms. She gave us hail Columbia, but we stuck it out.
I
dunno where they are.”

“Did you check with Cornwall & Ritchey about what kind of guns those two missing ones were?” asked the Inspector.

Velie looked about cautiously, but the upper hall was deserted. “Get this. The thirteenth rod was a Colt Pocket Model Automatic—
a .25 caliber
—”

“But that's precisely the type of weapon Thurlow used in the duel this morning,” Ellery said sharply.

“And the fourteenth was an S. & W. .38/32 with a two-inch barrel—a .38 caliber,” Velie nodded.

“Like the one Bob Potts carried!” The Inspector stiffened.

“Yes, sir,” said the Sergeant, shaking his head lugubriously, “it's a funny thing, but the two guns missin' are exact duplicates of the two guns used in the duel this mornin'!”

12 . . . The Importance of Being Dead

Mac was a puzzle. For the most part he shut himself up in the room he and Robert had shared since their birth, staring at nothing. He was not dazed; he was not grim; he was simply empty, as if the vital fluid in him had drained off. At such times as he quit his room, he wandered about the house with a restless air, as if he were looking for something. Sheila spent hours with him, talking, holding his cold hand. He would only shake his head: “Go to the old man, Sheila. He needs you. I don't.”

“But Mac honey—”

“You don't understand, sis.”

“No, I don't! You're fretting yourself into a nervous breakdown—”

“I'm not fretting myself into anything.” Mac would pat her burnished hair. “Go on to Pop, Sheila. Let me alone.”

Once Sheila, herself confused and conflicted, sprang to her feet with the cry: “Don't you realize what's happened? Of all the people, Mac I thought
you
—your own twin . . .”

Mac raised his blue eyes. When Sheila glimpsed the fires raging there, she burst into tears and fled.

It was true: her father needed her more than her brother. Steve Potts crept about the house more timidly than ever, stuttering apologies, getting into everyone's way, and through it all with head cocked, as if he were listening for a distant voice. Sheila walked him in the garden, supervised his feeding, read the
National Geographic
to him, dialed radio programs for him, tucked him into bed. He had taken to sleeping in one of the spare rooms on the top floor; without explanation he had refused any longer to share Cornelia Potts's regal bedchamber.

Major Gotch made overtures in a clumsy way. But for once the little man found no comfort in his bulky friend. He would shake his head at sight of the worn checker-board, squeeze his lips, squeeze and blink and, wiping his nose with an oversized handkerchief, putter off. Major Gotch spent more and more time alone in the downstairs study, raiding the cigar humidor and the liquor cabinet and brooding over the vacant board.

Then Robert Potts's body was released by the Medical Examiner's office, and it was buried in the earth of Manhattan, which is an odd story in itself, and after that neither his brother Maclyn nor his father Stephen listened for anything, since there is no finality more final than interment, not even death itself.

After that they listened for livelier voices—especially Mac.

Dr. Samuel Prouty, the peppery Assistant Medical Examiner, had known a unique intimacy with thousands of dead men. “A stiff is a stiff,” he would say as he sat on the abdomen of a corpse to brace himself for a
rigor mortis
tussle, or struck a match on the sole of a mortified foot. Nevertheless, Doc Prouty showed up in a new derby at Robert Potts's funeral.

Inspector Queen was flabbergasted. “What are
you
doing here, Doc?”

“I thought you was only too glad to get rid of 'em,” exclaimed Sergeant Velie, who wore a hunted look these days. “How come you're startin' to follow 'em around?”

“It's a funny thing,” said Doc Prouty bashfully. “I don't usually go soft on a cadaver. But this boy's sort of taken my fancy. Nice-looking youngster, and didn't fight me one bit—”

Ellery was startled. “Didn't
fight
you, Doc?”

“Well, sure. Any undertaker'll tell you. Some corpses fight right back, and some co-operate. Most of 'em you can't get to do a blame thing you want. But this Potts boy—he co-operated every inch of the way. I suppose you might say I took a shine to him.” Dr. Prouty blushed for the first time within memory of the oldest pensioner. “Least I could do was see him decently buried.”

Sergeant Velie backed away, muttering.

As an afterthought, Dr. Prouty said that the autopsy had revealed nothing they did not already know about the cause of Robert Potts's death.

The other interesting element was the burial ground itself. There was a statute on the New York books which forbids interment of the dead within the confines of Manhattan. A few old city churchyards, however, predating the statute, may still inter fresh dead under certain tiresome restrictions. Usually these interments are restricted to “first families” who have owned plots from time beyond memory.

St. Praxed's had such a yard—that sunken, cramped little cloister off Riverside Drive, a few blocks north of the Potts mansion, where scattered yellow teeth of old graves still protrude from the gums of the earth, and the rest are crypts invisible. How Cornelia Potts muscled into St. Praxed's must ever remain a mystery. It was said that a branch of her New England family had burial rights there, and that she inherited them. Whatever mumbo jumbo the Old Woman performed, the fact was she had legal papers to prove her rights, and so her son Robert Potts was buried there.

Police reserves attended.

Charles Hunter Paxton was beginning to thin out. Mr. Ellery Queen was in an excellent position to observe the progressive attenuation, for the young man had taken to seeking refuge in the Queen apartment, which he roamed like the vanishing buffalo.

“If she'd only listen to reason, Ellery.”

“Well, she won't, so be a man and have another drink.”

“Why not?”

“Isn't your practice suffering these days, Charley?”

“What practice? Thurlow has no suits to be pressed, and I'm not speaking sartorially. My staff is taking care of the routine Potts work. Wrestling with tax and state problems. The hell with them. I want Sheila.”

“Have another drink.”

“Don't mind if I do.”

The two men filled the Queen apartment with smoke, Scotch bouquet, and endless chatter about the Robert Potts murder. It was maddening how few facts led anywhere. Robert was dead. Someone had stolen into his brother Thurlow's unoccupied room during the eve of the duel and had slipped a live cartridge into Thurlow's Colt .25, removing the blank. Probably the cartridge had been filched from one of the ammunition boxes from Thurlow's bedroom cache; even this was uncertain, for laboratory tests had failed to educe an unarguable conclusion. What had happened to the replaced blank cartridge was any man's guess.

“Anything,” said Charley. “Down the toilet drain, or flung into the Hudson.”

Ellery looked sour. “Has it occurred to you, Charley, to ask how it came about that somebody made a substitution of bullets at all?”

“Huh?”

“Well, as far as the household knew, that Colt automatic in Thurlow's bedroom the night before the duel was
already
loaded with a live cartridge.
We
know it wasn't, because I'd taken the gun downtown secretly and had Dad slip a blank into it in place of the live ammunition.
We
know that;
how did the murderer know it
? Know it he certainly did, for he subsequently stole into that room, removed the blank Dad had slipped into the magazine, and put a live shell in its place. Any ideas?”

“I can't imagine. Unless you and Sheila and the twins and I were overheard by someone when we discussed the plan in the dining room.”

“An eavesdropper?” Ellery shrugged. “Let's drive over to the Potts place, Charley—my head's useless today, and Dad may have turned up something. I haven't heard from him all day.”

They found Sheila and her father at the Shoe on the front lawn, old Steve slumped against the pedestal in an attitude of dejection, while Sheila talked fiercely to him. When she spied Ellery and Charley Paxton, she stopped talking. Her father hurriedly swiped at his red eyes.

“Well,” smiled Mr. Queen. “Out for an airing?”

“H-hello,” stuttered Steve Potts. “Anything n-new?”

“I'm afraid not, Mr. Potts.”

The old man's eyes flickered for an instant. “Don't c-call me that, please. My name is Brent.” His lips tightened. “Never should have let C-Cornelia talk me into changing it.”

“Hello,” said Sheila stiffly. Charley glared at her with the hunger of advanced malnutrition. “If you'll excuse my father and me now—”

“Certainly,” said Ellery. “By the way, is
my
father in the house?”

“He left a few minutes ago to go back to Police Headquarters.”

“Sheila?” said Charley hoarsely.

“No, Charley. Go way.”

“Sheila, you're acting like a ch-child,” said Steve Potts fretfully. “Charley, I've been t-trying to get Sheila to forget this s-silliness about not marrying you—”

“Thanks, Mr. Pot—Mr. Brent! Sheila, hear that? Even your own father—”

“Let's not discuss it,” said Sheila.

“Sheila, I love you! Let me marry you and take you out of here!”

“I'm staying with Daddy.”

“I w-won't have it!” said old Steve excitedly. “I won't have you w-wasting your young life on me, Sheila. You marry Charley and get out of this house.”

“No, Daddy.”

Ellery sat down on the grass and plucked a blade, examining it studiously.

“No. You and Mac and I have to stick together now—we
have
to. I won't ruin Charley's life by mixing him up in our troubles. I've made my mind up.” Sheila whirled on Charley. “I wish Mother'd discharge you, get another lawyer, or something!”

“Sheila, you're not going to get rid of me this way,” said young Paxton in a bitter tone. “I know you love me. That's all I give a hoot about. I'll stick around, I'll hound you, I'll climb ladders to your window, I'll send you love letters by carrier pigeon… I won't give up, darling.”

Sheila threw her arms around him, sobbing. “I do love you, Charley—I do, I do!”

Charles, the Unhappy, was so surprised he lost his opportunity to kiss her.

Sheila put her hands on his chest and pushed, and ran to her father and took his arm and almost dragged him off to the house.

Charley gaped.

Ellery rose from the grass, flinging the dissected blade away. “Don't try to understand it, Charley. Now let's scout around and see if we can't come up with something.”

13 . . . Thurlow Potts, Terror of the Plains

Something caught their eye, and they paused in the downstairs study doorway. There was the familiar game table in the center of the study, flanked by the two inevitable chairs; on the table lay the checkerboard; a fierce game was in progress. Major Gotch sat crouched in one of the chairs, his broad black chin on a fist, studying the board with aggressive eyes. The other chair, however, was unoccupied.

Suddenly the old pirate moved a red checker toward the center of the board. He sat back and smacked his thigh, exulting. But then he jumped from his chair, dodged round the table, and sat down in the opposite chair to fall into the same dark brown study over the board. He shook his head angrily, moved a black checker, jumped up, rounded the table again, sat down in the original chair, and with every indication of triumph jumped three black checkers, his red coming to rest with a bang on the black king row. The Major leaned back and folded his thick arms across his chest majestically.

At this point Mr. Queen coughed.

Gotch's arms dropped as he looked around, his ruddy cheeks turning very dark. “Now, I don't like that,” he roared. “That's spying. That's a sneaky Maori trick, that is. I mind mine, Mister—mind yours!”

“Sorry,” said Ellery humbly. “Come in, Charley—we may as well have a chat with Major Gotch.”

“Oh, is that you, Charley?” growled Major Gotch, mollified. “Eyes ain't so good any more. That's different. That's a technical difference, that is.”

“Mr. Queen,” explained Charley mystified, “is helping to find out who killed Bob, Major.”

“Oh, that. Thurlow killed him.” The Major spat through one of the French doors onto the terrace, contemptuously.

“Thurlow merely pressed the trigger,” sighed Ellery. “There was supposed to be a blank in that Colt, Major Gotch. But there wasn't. Someone substituted a live cartridge during the night.”

Major Gotch scraped his jaws. “Well, now,” he said. “Wondered what all the boilin' and bubblin' was. But Thurlow thinks he killed Bobby fair and square in that shenanigan.”

“I'm afraid Thurlow's still a bit confused,” said Ellery sadly. “Major, did you kill Bob?”

“Me? Hell, no.” Gotch spat again, calmly. “Too old, Mister. Did my killin' forty, forty-five year ago, round and about.” He chuckled suddenly. “We did plenty of it, Steve and me, in our day.”

“Steve?” Paxton looked skeptical.

“Well, Steve never had too much pepper for killin', I'll admit that. Sort of took after me, though. Looked up to me like a big brother. Many a time I saved his life from a brownskin's knife. Never could stomach knives, Steve. Too much blood made him sick. Hankered after guns, though.”

“Uh … where did all this manslaughter take place, Major?” asked Ellery courteously.

“Nicaragua. Solomons. Java. One hitch down in Oorgawy.”

“Soldiers of fortune, eh?”

The Major shrugged. “Seems to me I told you already.”

“Didn't you two gentlemen spend most of your early days in the South Seas and Malaysia?”

“Oh, sure. We were all over. Raised plenty of hell, Steve and me. I remember once in Batavia—”

“Yes, yes,” said Ellery hurriedly. “By the way, Major, where were you the other evening? The night before the duel?”

“Bed. Sleepin'. Charley, how about a game of checkers?”

Charley muttered something discouraging.

“And Major.” Ellery lit a cigaret scrupulously. “Have you ever been married?”

The old man's jaw dropped. “Me? Hitched? Jipers, no.”

“Any idea who might have murdered Robert Potts?”

“Same question that old albatross was askin' me. Nope, not a notion. I'm a man minds his own business,
Tuan.
Live an' let live, that's how I figger it. Sure you won't play a game o' checkers, Charley?”

Charley knocked on the tower door. Louella's bony face appeared behind the glass-protected grille and grinned at them. She unlocked her laboratory door quickly and welcomed them into her den of retorts with a frenetic eagerness that raised lumps on Ellery's scalp. “Come in! So glad you've come to visit me. The most wonderful thing's happened! See—here—” She kept chattering as she bustled them over to her workbench and exhibited a large porcelain pan heaped with some viscid stuff of a green-gray, dead color, like sea slime. It had a peculiarly pervasive and unavoidable stench.

“What is it, Miss Potts?”

“My plastic.” Louella lowered her voice, looking about. “I think I'm very near my goal. Mr. Mulqueen—I really do. Of course, I put you on your honor not to mention this to
anyone
—even the police. I don't trust police, you know. They're all in the pay of the corporations, and armed with authority as they are, they can come in here and steal my plastic and I wouldn't be able to do a
thing
about it. I know your father is that little man, the Inspector, but Charley's assured me you have no connection with the police department, and—”

Ellery comforted her. “But, Miss Potts, I understood that you needed more funds to carry on your work. I heard your mother refuse you the other evening—”

Louella's dry face twisted with rage. “She'll feel sorry!” she spat. “Oh, that's always the way—the great unselfish ones of science have to accomplish their miracles despite
every
hardship and obstacle! Well, Mother's avarice won't stop
me.
Some day she'll regret it—some day when the name of Louella Potts …”

So Louella's tortured strivings in her smelly laboratory were run by the same dark generator that moved Cornelia Potts, and Thurlow Potts, and even Horatio Potts, to glorification and defense of the Name. The Name … Mr. Queen could wish it were lovelier.

He asked Louella several offhand questions, calculated not to alarm her. No, she had been in her laboratory, working on her plastic, the night before the duel. Yes, all night. Yes, alone.

“I
like
to be alone, Mr. Mulqueen,” she said, her bony face glowing. And, as if her own statement had brought in its train a whole retinue of old black moods, she lost her enthusiasm, her eagerness palled, her face grew sullen, and she said: “I've wasted enough time. Please. If there's nothing else—I have my Work to do.”

“Of course, Miss Potts.” Ellery moved toward the door; Charley was already there, nibbling his fingernails. “Oh, incidentally,” said Ellery lightly, turning around, “do you keep any guns up here? We're trying to round up all the guns in the house, Miss Potts, after that terrible accident to your brother Robert—”

“I hate guns,” said Louella, shivering.

“No bullets, either?”

“Certainly not.” Her eyes wandered to the dingy mess in the porcelain pan. “Oh,
guns,”
she said suddenly. “Yes, they've been inquiring about that. That large man—Sergeant Something-or-other—he forced his way in here and turned my laboratory upside down. I had to hide my plastic under my gown . . .” Her voice became vague.

They fled, depressed.

Dr. Innis was just striding out of Cornelia Potts's apartment when the two men came down from Louella's tower.

“Oh, Doctor. How's Mrs. Potts?”

“Not good, not good, Mr. Queen,” said Innis fretfully. “Marked cardiac deterioration. We're doing what we can, which isn't much. I just administered a hypo.”

“Maybe we ought to have a consultant in, Dr. Innis,” suggested Charley.

Dr. Innis stared as if Charley had struck him. “Of course,” he said icily. “If you wish it. But Mr. Thurlow Potts has every confidence in me. I suggest you discuss it with him, and—”

“Oh, come down, Doc,” said Charley irritably. “I know you're doing what you can. I just don't want anyone saying we haven't gone through the motions. How about a nurse?”

Dr. Innis was slightly appeased. “You know how she is about nurses. Goes into tantrums. I really feel it would be bad to cross her in that. That old woman in the house—”

“Bridget?”

“Yes, yes. She's adequate.” Dr. Innis shook his head. “These heart conditions, Mr. Paxton—we know so little about the heart, there's so little we can do. She's an old lady, and she's driven herself hard. Now this excitement of the past few days has dangerously weakened her, and I'm very much afraid her heart won't hold out much longer.”

“Too bad,” said Ellery thoughtfully.

Dr. Innis glanced at him in amazement, as if it had never occurred to him that anyone could rue the possible passing of Cornelia Potts. “Yes, certainly,” the physician said. “Now if you gentlemen will excuse me—I must phone the pharmacy for some more digitalis.” He hurried off with his elegant strides.

They made their way downstairs through the foyer to the French doors leading to the terrace and court. Ellery barely glanced into the study as they passed. He knew that Major Gotch was still hopping from chair to chair, playing checkers with himself.

“Horatio?” sighed Charley Paxton.

“None other.”

“You won't get any more out of him than you got out of Louella. Ellery, we're wasting our time.”

“I'm beginning to think so. Dad's been all through this, anyway, and he said he'd got exactly nowhere.” They paused in the doorway, looking out across the gardens to the multi-colored cottage. “I must have been born under a very subtle curse. I live in hope always that some rationale can be applied to even the most haphazard human set-up. This time I think I'm licked …
Voici
Horatio.”

The burly figure of Horatio Potts appeared from behind the little house, carrying a long ladder, his red bristles a halo in the sun. He wore filthy ducks tied about his joggled paunch with a piece of frayed rope, and tattered sandals on his broad feet. Perspiration stained his blouse darkly.

“What the devil's he
doing?”

“Watch.”

Horatio padded to the nearest tree, a patriarchal sycamore, and set the ladder against the trunk. Then he began to climb, the ladder protesting clearly all the way across the garden. He disappeared among some lower branches, his fat calves struggling upward, disembodied.

The two men waited, wondering.

Suddenly the legs began to dangle; Horatio appeared again, blowing in triumph. One hand firmly clasped the crosspiece of a kite. Carefully the fat man descended from the tree; then he ran out into the open, busily tying the broken end of the kite cord to a large ball of twine from one of his bulging pockets. In a few moments he had his kite whole again, and Messrs. Queen and Paxton stood some yards away, in a doorway, enjoying the spectacle of an elephantine red-haired man racing with whoops through the gardens to let the wind catch a Mickey Mouse kite and lift it bravely into the air above Riverside Drive, New York City, the United States of America, Planet Earth.

“But I thought you wanted—” began Charley, as Ellery turned back into the house.

“No,” growled Ellery. “It wouldn't do any good. Leave Horatio alone with his kites and his picaresque books and his gingerbread house. He's too immersed in the fairy tale he's living to be of any terrestrial use in the investigation of such a grown-up everyday business of murder.

“Strangest case I've ever seen,” complained Ellery as they strolled back to the foyer. “Usually you get
somewhere
in questioning the people in an investigation. If they don't tell the truth, at least they tell lies, which are often more revealing than truths. But in this Potts fantasy—nothing! They don't even know what you're talking about. Their answers sound like Esperanto. First time in my life I've felt completely disheartened in such an early stage.”

Now you know why I want to get Sheila out of here,” said Charley quietly.

“I certainly do.” Ellery stopped short. “Now what's
that?”

They were at the foot of the spiral staircase. Somewhere beyond the upper landing raged a bedlam of thumpings, yells and cracking furniture. There was nothing playful in these sounds. If murder was not being committed upstairs, it was at the very least assault and battery with murderous intent.

Ellery took the staircase in rejuvenated bounds: violence was an act, and acts are measurable; something had broken out into the open at last. … A little way down the foyer, Major Gotch thrust a startled head out of the study. Seeing the two young men speed upstairs, and hearing the noise, the Major thundered out, tightening his belt.

Ellery followed his ears; they led him to Maclyn Potts's room.

Mac and his eldest brother were rolling over and over on the bedroom floor, bumping into the twin beds, in the debris of the overturned and splintered night table and its lamp. Mac's shirt was torn and there were four angry parallel gouges on his right cheek all bleeding. Thurlow's cheeks were gory, already turning purple in splotches. Both were screaming curses as they wrestled; and each was quite simply trying to kill the other with his bare hands. Mac, being younger, hard, and quicker, was closer to his objective. Thurlow looked forlorn.

Ellery plucked the younger man from the floor and held him fast; Charley pounced on Thurlow. Thurlow's little eyes were shooting jets of hate across the disordered bedroom through swollen blackening lids.

“You killed my brother!” shouted Mac, struggling in Ellery's arms. “You killed him in cold blood and I'll make you pay for it, Thurlow, if I have to go to the Chair!”

Thurlow deliberately rolled over, avoiding Charley Paxton's frantic clutch, and scrambled to his feet. He began to paw his baggy tweeds with blind, bleeding strokes.

Sheila and her father ran in, brushing Major Gotch aside. The Major had chosen to remain a spectator.

“Mac, what's happening?” Her eyes widened. “Did he—” Then Sheila sprang at Thurlow, and he cringed. “Did you try to kill my brother Mac, too?” she shrieked.
“Did
you?”