The French Powder Mystery
- Автор: Куин (Квин) Эллери
- Серия: Ellery Queen #2
- Год: 1930
- Язык: английский
- Год: Frederick A. Stokes
- Жанр: Классические детективы
Электронная книга - «The French Powder Mystery». Краткое содержание книги:
“Does this nervousness manifest itself in a noticeable way?”
“She smokes incessantly, Mr. Queen. And she never takes more than five or six puffs at a cigaret. She doesn’t seem by nature able to smoke calmly. A few puffs, and she grinds out the long stump of tobacco still remaining almost with — viciousness. The cigarets she leaves are always bent and twisted out of shape.”
“Thank you so much.” Ellery’s firm lips lifted in a smile of satisfaction.
“Miss French—” the Inspector took up the attack — “you left this house last night after dinner. You did not return until midnight. Where were you during those four hours?”
Silence. A frightened silence so suddenly fraught with hidden complications of emotion that it seemed almost of physical substance. It was a tableau created for a single moment’s duration: the slight Inspector, alert, controlled, leaning forward; the straight body of Ellery, muscles completely inanimate; the vague bulk of Velie, drawn and powerful; a petrified agony on Weaver’s mobile features — and the utter misery of Marion French’s slender, stricken figure.
It passed in the drawing of a breath. Marion sighed, and the four men relaxed stealthily.
“I was... walking in... the Park,” she said.
“Oh!” The Inspector smiled, bowed, smoothed his mustache. “Then there is nothing more to be said, Miss French. Good afternoon.”
It was simply said, and the Inspector, Ellery and Velie passed from the room, into the reception hall, out of the house without another word spoken.
But it left Marion and Weaver in a dejection and apprehension so profound that they stood in their places, exactly as they had been, eyes turned away from each other, long after the outer door had snicked cleanly shut.
24
The Queens Take Stock
Dusk was descending, on the city when Velie took leave of the Queens outside the French mansion to manipulate the official machinery already operating on the shadowy trial of the vanished Bernice Carmody.
After Velie had gone, the Inspector looked at the quiet river, looked at the darkening sky, looked at his son, who was energetically polishing his pince-nez and staring down at the pavement.
The Inspector sighed. “The air will do both of us a lot of good,” he said tiredly. “I need something to clear my addled brain, anyway... Ellery, let’s walk home.”
Ellery nodded, and side by side they sauntered down the Drive toward the corner. At the corner they turned east and settled down to a slow, thoughtful pace. They walked another block before the silence was broken.
“This is really the first chance,” remarked Ellery at last, grasping his father’s arm encouragingly at the elbow, “that I’ve had to mull over the multitude of factors that have arisen so far. Significant factors. Telling factors, dad! There are so many they give me mal à la tête.”
“Really?” The Inspector was depressed, morose. His shoulders sagged.
Ellery regarded him keenly. He tightened his grip on the old man’s arm. “Come, dad! Buck up. I know you’re at sea, but it’s because of the trouble and worry you’ve had on your mind recently. My brain has been more than usually free from occupation lately. It’s been clear enough to grasp the amazing fundamentals this case has spewed up today. Let me think aloud.”
“Go ahead, son.”
“One of the two most valuable clues this affair has given us is the fact that the corpse was found in the Fifth Avenue exhibition window.”
The Inspector snorted. “I suppose you’ll tell me now that you already know who did the job.”
“Yes.”
The Inspector was so taken aback that he stopped in his tracks and stared at Ellery with an expression of complete dismay and unbelief.
“Ellery! You’re joking. How could you?” he finally managed to splutter.
Ellery smiled gravely. “Don’t misunderstand me. I say I know who murdered Mrs. French. I should qualify that by saying that certain indications point with incredible consistency at one individual. I have no proof. I don’t grasp one-tenth of the implications. I am entirely ignorant of the motive, the undoubtedly sordid story behind the crime... Consequently, I shall not tell you whom I have in mind.”
“You wouldn’t,” growled the Inspector, as they walked on.
“Now, dad!” Ellery laughed a little. He tightened his hold on the small package of books from French’s library table, which he had carried stubbornly from the moment they had left the department store. “I have a good reason. In the first place, it’s quite conceivable that I’m being misled by a series of coincidences. In that case, I should merely be making an ass of myself if I accused some one and then had to eat crow... When I have proof — you’ll know, dad, the very first one... There are so many unexplained, seemingly inexplicable things. These books, for example... Well!”
He said no more for a few moments as they strode through the streets.
“I began,” he said at last, “with the suspicious fact that Mrs. French’s body was found in the exhibition-window. And it was suspicious, to say the least. For all the reasons that we went over before — the lack of blood, the missing key, the lipstick and the half-painted lips, the lack of illumination, the general preposterousness of the window as the scene of the crime.
“It was quite plain that Mrs. French had not been murdered in that window. Where had she been murdered, then? The watchman’s report that she had signified the apartment as her destination; the missing apartment key which she had when O’Flaherty saw her go toward the elevator — these suggested that the apartment should be examined at once. Which I immediately proceeded to do.”
“Go on — I know all that,” said Queen grumpily.
“Patience, Diogenes!” chuckled Ellery. “The apartment told the story quite graphically. Mrs. French’s presence seemed indubitable. The cards, the book-ends and the story they told...”
“I don’t know what story they told,” grunted the Inspector. “You mean that powder?”
“Not in this instance. Very well, let’s forget the bookends for the moment and go to — the lipstick which I found on the bedroom dressing-table. That belonged to Mrs. French. Its color matched the color on her half-painted lips. Women don’t stop fixing their lips unless something of a tremendously serious nature intervenes. The murder? Possibly. Certainly the events leading to the murder... So, for this reason and that, all of which you will know in greater detail tomorrow, I hope, I came to the conclusion that Mrs. French had been murdered in that apartment.”
“I shan’t argue with you, because it’s probably true, although your reasons are ludicrous right now. But go ahead — get down to more concrete things,” said the Inspector.
“You must grant me some premises,” laughed Ellery. “I’ll prove that apartment business, never fear. At this time, grant me that the apartment is the scene of the crime.”
“It’s granted — for the time.”
“Very well. If the apartment was the scene of the crime, and the window was not, then very simply the body was removed from the apartment to the window and crammed into that wall-bed.”
“In that case, yes.”
“But why? I asked myself. Why was the body removed to the window? Why wasn’t it left in the apartment?”
“To make it appear that the apartment wasn’t the scene of the murder? But that doesn’t make sense, because—”
“Yes, because no pains were taken to remove traces of Mrs. French’s presence, like the game of banque, the lipstick — although I’m inclined to think that leaving the lipstick was an oversight. It is evident, then, that the reason the body was removed was not to make it appear that the apartment was not the scene of the crime, but to delay the discovery of the body.”