Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012
- Автор: Макдермид Вэл, Манфредо Лу
- Год: 2012
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012». Краткое содержание книги:
“I thought we were done pretending.” But it seemed a question.
She looked down. Whichever way she went in answering — keeping in mind either the jewels or Nicky — she might guess wrong and offer him a new suspicion.
“You’re asking do I know the reason? I don’t,” she said. “But you’re not in Seattle to find me? You’re a strike-breaker for Mayor Hanson, I suppose.”
“Lord, no. I told you in Chicago, my candidate, Mitchell Palmer, is a good progressive. Worked hard for the ten-hour workday when he was in the House, and I’m sorry we didn’t win the fight. Blame the Senate, but never mind that. I work for no mayor.” A short laugh. “And whatever you may think, it would be no favor to Hanson to turn strikers into martyrs. On the contrary. If we can prevent vigilantes from—”
“Then why were you following that Teamster?”
“Beck, you mean? Help keep the hotheads off him. He believes your strike will backfire. A view he’ll be defending with his fists, I think.”
“If he voted nay, he deserves the trouble.”
“That may be — what’s idealism without the occasional Pyrrhic victory? But it doesn’t make him wrong. You’ll have a hundred and ten thousand striking, two-thirds in solidarity and not for their own sakes. With no quarrel of their own, they’ll soon go back to work. And to the world it will look—”
“We’ve heard it all before. It’ll look weak, and that only hurts the movement, and so there’ll never be another general strike. And so forth. And you may wish it, but it’s not so. This is just the beginning. Do you think idealists are babes in the woods? I’ll wager we’ve led harder lives than the likes of you.”
“The likes of me, eh?”
“What do you want?” Ella tried to calm down, to remember that her object was simple: to end up on a quieter street so Mario could distract Killy. (But he’d offered to kill the marshal. Did she truly trust him not to?)
“All right then, I’ll put my cards on the table.” The marshal glanced over her shoulder. Had he spotted Mario? “I was sent to fetch you from that train. Got a personal call from Mitchell Palmer because it involved a neighbor of his, John Kingston. Yes, your employer. Kingston arrived at a mass grave in Virginia — shrouded, as if the flu had killed him. But he wasn’t gone, he was just— Well, there the details grow fuzzy. In need, let’s say, of clarifying.”
“Mr. Kingston?” She couldn’t hide her shock. “I thought he must have died.”
“But not at home? You never saw him sick?”
“No.” There was danger here in the particulars. But it was accurate to say, “He never telephoned. Didn’t check if the children were— I thought certainly he was dead.”
“As I said, some points needed clarifying. We contacted Union Station. Found you’d bought a ticket using your own name.”
“You went looking for his servants? What ‘points’ could we... I... clarify? Mr. Kingston can’t think I had anything to do with... well, whatever happened to keep him away.”
“What he thinks is someone else’s concern.” His tone worried Ella. “I was there to learn what you had to say.”
“Why didn’t you just ask me? Immediately ask me?”
“By the time I knew you were the one to question, you’d lied to me. That concoction about Georgetown. I found it interesting. And,” he showed the dimple, “I had no objection to dinner.”
She recalled her terror, her confusion, all alone that night in Chicago. How close she’d come to being robbed, perhaps worse, before finding a pawn shop and getting money for a room. Because this marshal had no objection to dinner?
“You think I’m stupid because I’m young and female,” she said. “But I saw the two men outside with you. Three marshals to question one girl?” She could see she’d surprised him. “Why should it take—?”
“You ask this, after having eluded us?” Was that a hint of admiration on his face? “But reassure me, then. You don’t know how it came to be, your employer carried away for dead?”
“The last time I saw Mr. Kingston’s face,” she said, “he was ordering me put out for the death wagon.”
“Put out still living?”
“He thought I’d die before it came.” She was gratified by the flash of dismay on his face. “But I didn’t. Cook found me in the morning. She said Mrs. K. banished her husband to his club. In case the sickness got on him, from helping carry me down. She didn’t want the flu spreading to the children.”
“She sent her husband away at the height of a pandemic? You didn’t find that... cold?”
“Everything about the Kingstons was ‘cold.’” She would leave it at that. “But when the baby got sick, the maid phoned Mr. K.’s club. He hadn’t shown up. The next day, when the older children... I’d been told Mr. K. kept a girl. In an apartment close by.” She shifted as more people walked past, their gesticulations too close to her face. “I called the front desk there, but it was too late at night. I got no answer.”
“Kingston kept a girl? Young, like yourself?”
“You’re asking was I—?” She tried to pull away. “So what if Mr. K. came back? Why should I know anything about it? I was a servant, not a... a... Why question me?”
Kingston must have noticed the missing jewelry. His entire family dead, and still he’d noticed. His wife had boxes full, and Ella left most of it untouched. But the rich were like dragons, fierce in their instinct to protect treasure.
“Is he angry I didn’t leave a note? To say when the children died? The wagon men keep lists, don’t they? Which bodies are taken from which houses?”
Killy said nothing.
“Why did he set the police after me? Just please say it and stop stalking me.” Her voice cracked with frustration.
“Stalking?”
“Yes! Yes. It’s like Champawat. Where a tiger followed villagers for miles to—”
“I remember. Accounts of it filled the papers. A dozen years ago, was it?” He glanced over her shoulder again, his eyes narrowing. “She was a tigress, though, I think. Not a male.”
Ella tried again to squirm out of his grip.
“There was another story like it, turn of the century. It caught my fancy when I was a schoolboy. Did you ever hear of Tsavo?”
He kept looking beyond her. Had he spotted Mario?
“No. What does it have to do with—?”
“If you like stories of hunter and hunted. It’s about two man-eaters.”
He was playing with her. Dragging this out. Did he know what she and Mario had planned?
“Maneless lions, this pair. Males who hunted together, even drove prey toward each other. Males of the species don’t do that, you know. They’re solitary, uncooperative. But these even shared a lair full of human bones.”
“And did they pinion their prey too? To exasperate and demoralize it?”
“In a way.” He smiled as he loosened his grip on her shoulders. “The British were certainly demoralized. Trying to build a railroad bridge over the Tsavo river, in Africa. They laid hundreds of miles of line — useless to them if they couldn’t get the bridge done. But the beasts kept pulling workers from their tents, dragging them off. Raiding the camp hospital as if it were a pantry. The railway tried everything. Deep thorn fences. But these lions, unlike others, were willing to crawl through. They tried enormous bonfires, but they were a unique pair, no fear of fire. The railroad even brought in a tribe of fierce hunters. But they soon ran away, convinced the lions were devils.”
“Please,” Ella begged. “Whatever you need from me—”
“The workers abandoned the camp — what else could they do? They went on strike, you might say.” He showed his dimple again. “Finally the British sent in a crack shot, a young lieutenant colonel. He hired the best game hunter on the continent to help him. And they set off—”