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There Was an Old Woman [= The Quick And the Dead]
- Автор: Куин (Квин) Эллери
- Год: 1943
- Язык: английский
- Год: Little, Brown and Company
- Жанр: Классические детективы
Электронная книга - «There Was an Old Woman [= The Quick And the Dead]». Краткое содержание книги:
“Not yet.”
“Worried. All legal and aboveboard, but — worrisome, too, Dad. I think you’d better locate Mr. Thurlow’s armory and appropriate it with dispatch. The stuff’s a menace.”
“It’s a cinch he’s cached it somewhere cute, like the squirrel he is,” growled the Inspector, “and nobody but he knows where. The boys are keeping an eye on Mr. Thurlow, so it’ll hold for a few minutes. What about this opportunity business, Ellery? Let’s go over the ground to make sure. Just what did you do last night after you left Headquarters with the Colt and S. & W.?”
“I returned to the house here immediately, slipped back into Thurlow’s bedroom, replaced the blank-loaded Colt automatic on the highboy exactly where I’d found it earlier in the evening, then I went to the twins’ room and gave Bob Potts the blank-loaded Smith & Wesson.”
“Anybody spot you entering or leaving Thurlow’s room?”
“I can’t swear, but I’m convinced no one did.”
“The twins knew about it, though, didn’t they?”
“Naturally.”
“Who else?”
“Charley Paxton and Sheila Potts. All the others had left by the time we discussed the plan to substitute blanks for the live cartridges in the two guns.”
“All right,” grunted his father, “you left the Colt right where you found it, in Thurlow’s bedroom, you gave Robert his doctored revolver, and then what?”
“I left the twins in their room and went downstairs to the library. Charley and Sheila still had Thurlow cornered down there, as I had instructed. Thurlow was in a gay mood — Sheila’d fed him some drinks in an effort to restore his sanity. He insisted on our all going out on a tear, which we did, just as we were — the four of us. We left the house in a group, from the library, cabbed downtown, and spent the entire night at Club Bongo, on East 55th Street. We didn’t get back to the Palace—”
“The what?”
“Forgive me. I’m only using the family’s own terminology. We got back here about a quarter of six this morning.”
“Was Thurlow, Paxton, or Sheila in a position to get to that Colt automatic in Thurlow’s room at any time during the night, after you left it there?”
“That’s what makes this part of it so beautiful,” declared Ellery. “No, those three were with me, within sight and touch, from the moment I stepped into the library until we got out of the cab at dawn this morning.”
“How about when you got back? What happened?”
“I left Thurlow, Charley, and Sheila on the lawn, right over there, as you saw. Thurlow’d sent me into the house to fetch his gun. I went up and—” He stopped.
“What’s the matter?” asked his father quickly.
“I just remembered,” muttered Ellery. “It seemed to me as I went up that spiral staircase to the landing that I... not exactly heard, but felt someone or something moving in the hall outside the bedrooms.”
“Yes?” said the Inspector sharply. “What? Who?”
“I don’t know. I even had the feeling it came from around the area of Thurlow’s door. But that may have been an excited imagination. I was thinking of Thurlow’s apartment.”
“Well, was it or wasn’t it, son? For the love of Peter’s pants! Did somebody come out of Thurlow’s rooms around six A.M.?”
“I can’t say yes, and I can’t say no.”
“Very helpful,” groaned the Inspector. “You got the gun and came right back down here to the lawn? No stops?”
“Exactly. And handed the gun to Thurlow. He dropped it in the right-hand outside pocket of his tweed jacket the moment I handed it to him.” The Inspector nodded; he had observed the same action. “He didn’t touch it again until he was ordered to during the duel. I had my eyes on him every second. Nor did anyone approach near enough to him to have done any funny work.”
“Right. I was watching him, too. Then the only possible time the blank could have been removed and the live cartridge substituted in the Colt was during the night — between the time you left it on Thurlow’s highboy last night and the time he sent you up there at six this morning to get it for the duel. But where does that take us? Nowhere!” The Inspector waved his spindly arms. “Anybody in this rummy’s nightmare could have sneaked into Thurlow’s room during those ten hours or so and made the switch of bullets!”
“Not anybody,” said Ellery.
“What? What’s that?”
“Not anybody. Anybody,” said Ellery patiently, “minus three.”
“Talk so that my simple mind can understand, Mr. Queen,” said the Inspector testily.
“Well, Thurlow couldn’t have sneaked into his bedroom during those hours,” murmured Mr. Queen. “Nor Charley Paxton. Nor Sheila Potts. Couldn’t possibly. Those three are eliminated beyond the least shadow of the least doubt.”
“Well, of course. I meant one of the others.”
“Yes,” mused Ellery, “here’s a case in which we can actually delimit and define the suspects. The rest of the Potts menagerie were in the house during the period of opportunity, and so any one of them could have made the switch from blank to lethal bullet. Aside from the servants, there are: the Old Woman herself, her husband Steve, that old parasite Major Gotch, Louella the ‘scientist,’ Mac the twin, and Horatio.”
“That’s the son you told me sleeps in some kind of — what did you call it, Ellery?”
“Fairy-tale cottage. Yes,” replied the great man crossly. “Yes, the Philosopher of Escapism could have done it, too, even though he sleeps in his dream cottage. Horatio could have slipped into the main house through the inner court, patio, and French doors, and slipped out again via the same route, without necessarily being seen.”
“Six likely suspects,” mumbled the Inspector. “Not so bad. Let’s see how they stand on motive. As far as the old hell-cat’s concerned...”
Ellery yawned. “Not now, Dad. I’m not Superman — I need sleep occasionally, and last night was heigh-de-ho. Ditto Sheila and Charley. Let us all sleep it off.”
“Well, you ring me here from home when you wake up.”
“When I wake up,” announced his son, “I shall be practically at my father’s elbow.”
“Now what’s that mean?”
“I’m requisitioning a bed in the Potts Palladium. And if you don’t think,” added the Inspector’s pride and joy, “that I’ll investigate it microscopically before I climb in to make sure it isn’t the bed of Procrustes...”
“Who’s that?”
“A Greek robber who occasionally whittled his victims down to size,” said Ellery with another yawn.
“You won’t need his bed to do that,” said the Inspector grimly. “I have a hunch this case’ll do it for you, my son.”
“Making any bets?” Ellery drifted off toward the house.
9
The Narrow Escape of Sergeant Velie
Ellery fell asleep like a cat and awoke like a man. As his senses unfolded he became conscious of unnatural quiet and unnatural noise. The house, which should have been filled with the sounds of people, was not; the front lawn, which had been empty, was filled with the sounds of people.
He leaped from his borrowed bed and ran to one of the windows overlooking the front lawn. The sun was high now, in a hot blue sky, and it glared down upon a swarm of men. They surrounded the Shoe, near the base of which the inspector stood at Day. There was a great deal of shouting.
Ellery threw on his clothes and raced downstairs. “Dad! What’s the trouble?” he cried, on the run.
But the Inspector was too busy to reply.
Then Ellery saw that this was not a mob, but a group of reporters and newspaper photographers engaged — if a trifle zealously — in the underpaid exercise of their duty.