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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:
Work was begun in the studio of a Coney Island waxworks museum on a tableau, showing Maclyn Potts lying agonized in a bed weltering in thick red stuff, while the chubby figure of his mother, clad in voluminous black garments and wearing a black shawl and bonnet tied under the chin, gloated over the corpse like some demonized little Queen Victoria.
Several eggs, coming over the wall from Riverside Drive, splashed against the Shoe the afternoon the newspapers announced the discovery of the Old Woman’s confession.
A stone broke Thurlow Potts’s bedroom window, sending him into a white-lipped oration on the Preservation of Law and Order; a charge of criminal mischief went begging only because of Thurlow’s failure to identify the miscreant.
Various detectives of Inspector Queen’s staff went home for the first time in days to visit with their children. Sergeant Velie’s wife prepared a mustard bath for his large feet and tucked him into bed full of aspirin and love.
Only in the apartment of the Queens were there signs that all was not well. Usually at the conclusion of a case Inspector Queen made jokes and ordered two-inch steaks which he devoured with the gusto of one who has labored well and merits appropriate reward. Now he scarcely ate at all, glowering when spoken to, was grumpy with Ellery, and fell back into the routine of his office without enjoyment.
As for Ellery Queen, it could not be said that his spirits soared above sea level. There was no taste in anything, matter or music. He went back to a detective novel he had been composing when the case of the Old Woman and her six children had thrown it into eclipse; but the shadow was still there, hanging heavily over the puppets of his imagination and making the words seem just words. He went over the Potts case in his mind endlessly; he fell asleep to the scudding of far-fetched theories.
But the days came and went, the house on Riverside Drive gradually became just a house, the newspapers turned to fresh sensations, and it began to appear that the Potts case had already passed into criminal history, to be no more than a footnote or a paragraph in some morbid reference book of the future.
One morning, three weeks after the disclosures in Cornelia Potts’s confession had officially closed the dossier on the case, Inspector Queen was about to leave for Police Headquarters — he had already grunted “Toodle-oo” to his son, who was still at breakfast — when suddenly he turned back from the door and said: “By the way, Ellery, I got a cable yesterday afternoon from the Dutch East Indies.”
“Dutch East Indies?” Ellery absently looked up from his eggs.
“Batavia. The prefect or commissioner of police there, or whatever they call him. You know, in reply to my cable about Major Gotch.”
“Oh,” said Ellery. He set down his spoon.
“The cable says Gotch has no record down there. I thought you’d like to know... just to clear up a point.”
“No record? You mean they haven’t anything on him?”
“Not a thing. Never even heard of the old windbag.”
The Inspector sucked his mustache. “Doesn’t mean much. All I could give them was the name and description of a man forty years older than he’d been if he’d ever been there, and what’s in a name? Or else Gotch is just a liar — a lot of these old-timers are — even though he swore he’d raised Cain in the Dutch East Indies in his time.”
Ellery lit a cigaret, frowning over the match. “Thanks.”
The Inspector hesitated. Then he came back and sat down, tipping his hat over his eyes as if in shame. “The Potts case is a closed book and all that, son, but I’ve been meaning to ask you—”
“What, Dad?”
“When we were talking over motives, you said you’d figured out that this old Major had a possible motive, too. Not that it’s of any importance now—”
“I also said, I believe, that it was impossibly fantastic.”
“Never mind knocking yourself out,” snapped his father. “What did you have in mind?”
Ellery shrugged. “Remember the day we went over to the Potts house to ask the Old Woman to use her authority to stop the killings, and found her lying dead in bed?”
“Yes?” The Inspector licked his lips.
“Remember on the way upstairs I said to Dr. Innis that there was one question I’d been meaning to ask Mrs. Potts?”
“I sure do. What was the question?”
“I was going to ask her,” said Ellery deliberately, “whether she’d ever seen her first husband again.”
Inspector Queen gaped. “Her first husband? You mean this Bacchus Potts?”
“Who else?”
“But he’s dead.”
“Dead in law, Dad. That’s quite another thing from being dead in fact. It struck me at one point in the case that Bacchus Potts might be very much alive still.”
“Hunh.” The Inspector was silent. Then he said: “That hadn’t occurred to me. But you haven’t answered my question. What did you have in mind when you said Major Gotch had a possible motive, too?”
“But I have answered your question, Dad.”
“You... mean... Bacchus... Potts... Major Gotch—” The Inspector began to laugh, and soon he was wiping away the merry tears. “I’m glad the case is over,” he choked. “Another week and you’d have been measured for a restraining sheet yourself!”
“Amuse yourself,” murmured his son, unruffled. “I told you it was fantastic. But on the other hand, why not? Gotch might be Potts the First.”
“And I might be Richard the Second,” chuckled his father.
“Fascinating speculation at the time, as I recall it,” murmured Ellery. “Cornelia Potts has her husband declared dead after he’s been absent seven years. She marries Steve Brent. He has a companion, ‘Major Gotch.’ Many years have passed since she last saw hubby number one, and the tropics change physiognomies wonderfully. Suddenly Cornelia discovers that Major Gotch is none other than Bacchus Potts! Makes her a bigamist or does it? Anyway, it’s embarrassing. Situation.”
“Rave on.”
“And the worst of it is, ‘Major Gotch’ has found himself a comfortable nest. Sees no point in waving farewell. Pals with the new husband, and all that. New husband defends him. Cornelia’s trapped... That theory appealed to me, Dad, wild as it was. Charley Paxton, in telling me the story of the Old Woman’s life, had been vague — as well he might be! — about Cornelia’s reason for permitting Gotch to live in her household. Mightn’t that have been the reason? A hold Gotch had on her? That she wasn’t legally married to Brent and therefore her children — her reputation — her business—?”
“Hold it,” said the Inspector testily. “I’m an idiot for listening to this fairy tale, but suppose Gotch is Potts the First. What motive for murdering the twins would that give him?”
“The two husbands, inseparable companions,” said Ellery dreamily, “living in the same house, playing endless checker tournaments with each other... What? Oh, his possible motive. Well, Dad, we agreed at the time that the Potts clan may have been going through a process of liquidation, one member at a time. And who were liquidated? Sheila Brent spotted it immediately. Only the sane ones were dying. The Brents.”