Halfway House (6 page)

Ellery slowly straightened up. Across the body of Joseph Wilson he looked at his friend, and for an instant teetered on the thin edge of a mad impulse. Then he looked down at the dead man again, and this time both the uncertainty and annoyance were gone from his face, leaving wonder, conviction, and pity behind. “Excuse me,” he said in a flat voice. “I’m going out for a breath of air. This stuffy room…”

De Jong, Bill stared at him. He smiled faintly and hastened out of the shack as if it had become intolerable to him. The sky was shiny black, like jet damp under an indirect light, and flecked with polka-dot stars; the air felt cool and bracing against his perspiring cheeks. Detectives stood aside to let him pass. He hurried down the muddy side-lane over the loose protecting boards with long strides.

It was hard, he thought, damned hard. And yet it was bound to come out. If it were in his power alone… As he turned into Lamberton Road a group of dark figures smoking in the shadows of the many cars now parked there fell on him, pressing forward, chattering questions. “I’m sorry, boys. I can’t talk now.”

He managed finally to shake them off. He fancied that he had seen Ella Amity’s tall figure seated on a man’s lap in one of the parked cars, and that she had calmly smiled at him as he passed. When he reached the little frame house across the road from the Marine Terminal he went inside, said something to the old man there, pressed a bill into his hand, and picked up the telephone. The old man stared at him with curiosity. He called Information, gave her a name in New York City; and while he waited he looked impatiently at his wristwatch. It was ten minutes past eleven.

It was a quarter of twelve when he returned to the shack in his Duesenberg, which he had parked near the Marine Terminal. Something seemed to have happened inside the tumbledown house, for the newspapermen were storming it, held back with curses by police and detectives. The Amity woman clutched imploringly at his arm as he slipped through the cordon, but he shook her off and quickened his pace.

Nothing had changed in the shack except the people who had invaded it. The detectives were gone. De Jong was still there, coldly and rather cynically pleased, talking in low tones to a short nondescript man with a brown face. Bill was there… and Lucy Wilson, née Angell.

Ellery recognized her instantly, after almost eleven years. She did not see him as he watched from the doorway; she was standing by the table, one slim hand on Bill’s shoulder, staring down at the floor with an expression of glazed horror. Her plain black-and-white dress was crawling with wrinkles, as strained as her face. A light coat was hung crazily over the overstuffed armchair. Her shoes were a little muddy…

She was still the handsome, vigorous creature he had known—almost as tall as her brother, with the same sound chin and black eyes, and a body as strong and pliant as a spring. Her figure had burgeoned with the years; it had grace and sap in it, and sexual beauty. Mr. Ellery Queen was no sentimentalist where women were concerned, but he felt now—as he had always felt in the past when in her presence—the pull of her sheer animal attractiveness. She had always been a woman, he recalled, who drew men to her with an easy unconscious lure that refreshed even as it eluded the grasp. There was nothing small or wantonly delicate about her; her charm was the charm of moist and generous white skin, sweet lips and eyes, and a large and undulant grace of movement. … It was all fixed now, tapered to the horror in her eyes as she looked at the cold body of her husband. The contour of her breast as she leaned on Bill’s shoulder was unsteady, like a round pool shivered by a stone.

Ellery said in a low troubled voice, “Lucy Angell.”

Her head came about slowly, and for a moment her black eyes reflected nothing but the dreadful reality of the thing on the floor. Then suddenly they flashed. “Ellery Queen. I’m so glad.” She extended her free hand and he went to her and took it.

“There’s nothing I can say, of course—”

“I’m so glad you’re here. It’s so horribly, horribly… unexpected.” A tremor shook her. “My Joe dead—in this awful place. Ellery, how can that be?”

“It can’t, but it is. You must learn to face that.”

“Bill told me how you happen to be here. Ellery—stay.” He pressed her hand. She managed the ghost of a smile. Then she turned back to look down again.

Bill said coldly, “De Jong played a dirty trick. He knew I’d sent Lucy a wire. Yet he sneaked this detective of his off in a department car to Philly to wait for her, and when she got home from the movies had her hauled back here as if—as if——”

“Bill,” said Lucy gently. Ellery felt her hand warm in his own, the plain thin gold wedding-band on her fourth finger strong and unyielding against his palm. The hand on Bill’s shoulder was white with pain and as unadorned as a pine crucifix.

“I know my job, Angell,” said De Jong without rancor. “I see you’re acquainted with Mrs. Wilson, Mr. Queen. Old friends, eh?” Ellery flushed and released the warm hand. “I suppose you want to know what she says?”

Bill growled deep in his throat. But Lucy said in a steady voice without turning, “I want him to know. There’s nothing, Ellery, no explanation I can give… I’ve answered all this man’s questions. Perhaps you can convince him that I’ve told the truth.”

“My dear woman,” said De Jong, “don’t get me wrong. I know my job.” He seemed offended. “All right, Sellers; good work. Stick around.” A glance of secret understanding passed between him and the short brown man; the detective nodded without expression and went out. “Here’s the story. Mrs. Wilson says her husband left their house this morning in his Packard on one of his regular business trips. That’s the last, she says, that she saw or heard of him. He seemed all right, she says; maybe a little absent-minded, but she put it down to some business worry or other. Is that right, Mrs. Wilson?”

“Yes,” Her eyes refused to leave the dead man’s face.

“She left her house in Fairmount Park about seven tonight, just after the rain stopped—she’d had dinner at home alone—took a trolley into town, and went to the Fox to see a movie. Then she trolleyed home. My man was waiting for her, and brought her out.”

“You forgot to explain,” said Bill in a dangerous voice, “that my sister always goes to a movie on Saturday night when her husband is away.”

“That’s right,” said De Jong. “So I did. Got that, Mr. Queen? Now as to the crime.” He tapped his points off on his fingers. “She never heard of or saw this shack before—she says. Wilson never breathed a word about it to her. I mean, she says. She’s never known of any real trouble he’s been in. He’s always been good to her, and as far as she knows,” De Jong smiled, “faithful…”

“Please,” whispered Lucy. “I know what you men must think in a—in a case like this. But he
was
faithful to me, he was! He loved me. He loved
me!
”

“She doesn’t know much about his business affairs, because he was kind of secretive about them and she didn’t want to pry. She’s thirty-one, he was thirty-eight. Married ten years this past March. No children.”

“No children,” muttered Ellery, and there was the most extraordinary gladness in his eyes.

De Jong continued imperturbably: “She never knew he could sail a boat, though she knows he was good with engines and things. She never knew he had rich friends; their friends—the few they have in Philly, she says—are poor people like themselves. Wilson had no vices, she says—didn’t drink, smoke, gamble, or take dope. They’d go picnicking when he was home—
when
he was home—or drive out to Willow Grove of a Sunday, or stay home”—his eyes were mocking as he glanced at her sidewise—“making love. That right, Mrs. Wilson?”

Bill whispered, “You damned—”

Ellery seized his arm. “Now, look here, De Jong. What have you up your sleeve? I see no point in innuendo.”

Lucy did not move. Her eyes were infinitely remote now, deep with tears. De Jong chuckled. He went to the door and shouted: “Let those newspaper bastards in!”

Time passed, and they were buffeted about in a sea of noise. In many ways it was nightmare: the air in the low-ceilinged cabin was soon thick and foul with cigaret smoke, blazing occasionally to the lightning of photographers’ flashlamps; the walls re-echoed with laughter and shouted conversation. Every few minutes someone jerked the newspaper De Jong had placed there off the dead man’s face and photographed it from a new angle… Ella Amity flew from group to group like a red-haired harpy, but she always returned to the black-eyed woman enthroned like an unwilling queen in the armchair. She hovered over Lucy in a proprietary way, whispering to her, holding her hand, smoothing her hair tenderly. Bill watched from behind, raging in silence.

Eventually the room cleared. “All right folks,” said De Jong as the sound of the last departing motor died away. “That’s all for tonight. You’ll keep available, of course, Mrs. Wilson. We’ve got to take your husband’s body to the morgue—”

“De Jong,” said Ellery from the corner. “Wait.”

“Wait? For what?”

“It’s inconceivably important.” Ellery’s voice was grave. “Wait.”

Ella Amity gurgled from the doorway: “Always play hunches. Something up your sleeve, Mr. Queen? Nobody puts anything over on Little Ella.” Her red hair was wild and her teeth gleamed. She leaned against the wall, watchful as a cobra. They were still for so long that the random sounds of the river began to creep into the shack again, after hours of being drowned out.

Then De Jong said, “All right,” with a peculiar irritation, and went out. Lucy sighed. And Bill shut his mouth tight. After a long time De Jong came back, accompanied by two uniformed men carrying a stretcher. They dumped it by the corpse.

“No,” said Ellery. “Not yet. Let the body alone, please.”

De Jong snapped, “Wait outside,” and eyed him hostilely, chewing at a cigar. Eventually he stopped pacing and sat down. Nobody moved. They sat stupefied by inaction, too weary to speak or protest.

And then, at two o’clock in the morning, as if by prearrangement, a motor came roaring down Lamberton Road. Ellery flexed his arms a little. “Come outside, De Jong,” he said in a flat tone, and went to the door. De Jong followed, lips drawn back. And Ella Amity’s red-tipped fingers curved in triumph… Bill Angell hesitated, glanced at his sister, and quietly went out, too.

Three people stepped out of a long chauffeur-driven limousine onto the tarry road. Conducted by detectives, they walked slowly along the boards placed over the main driveway, their feet curiously reluctant. All three were of a height, tall and somehow, despite everything, poised—a middle-aged woman, a young woman, and a middle-aged man. They were in evening clothes: the older woman in a sable coat over a white sequined gown, the younger in a short ermine wrap over a flaming chiffon that swept the ground, the man carrying a silk hat in his hand. The women had been weeping; the man’s stern, rugged face was set in hard and angry lines.

Ellery said soberly in the driveway, “Mrs. Gimball?”

The older woman raised eyes underscored with leaden sacs, brittle blue eyes whose self-assurance had recently been shattered. “And you, I suppose, are the gentleman who ’phoned my father. Yes. This is my daughter Andrea. And this is a very dear friend, Mr. Grosvenor Finch. Where—?”

“So what?” said De Jong softly.

Bill drifted away from the lighted doorway into a deep shadow. His eyes, narrowed a little, were on the slender fingers of the young woman’s beautiful left hand. He stood so close to her that he could have touched her ermine wrap. To his ears the deep suspicious tones of De Jong, the silk-hatted man’s cultured voice, the older woman’s harassed quaver were blurred and half-unheard. In his shadow he hesitated, and his eyes went from the young woman’s hand to her face.

Andrea Gimball, he thought. So that was her name. And he saw that her face was young and unspoiled, not at all like the faces of the young women he knew, not remotely resembling the faces of the young women who were habitually pictured on society pages. It was a good face, delicate, soft, and somehow it touched a responsive chord. Singularly, he wanted to talk to her. A sharp corner of his brain buzzed warning, but he ignored it. He extended his hand from the shadow and touched her bare arm.

She turned her head slowly toward him, and he saw that her blue eyes were deep with alarm. Under his fingers her skin felt suddenly cold. He knew that he should not be touching her; he felt her instinctive withdrawal. And yet something made his hand tighten about her arm and draw her, quiet and only half-resisting, into his shadow.

“You—you—” she said and stopped, straining to search his face. She could only dimly make it out, but it seemed to reassure her, for her skin warmed against his fingers and the alarm became simply fatigue in her eyes. With a guilty feeling he released her. “Miss Gimball,” he whispered. “I have only a moment. Please listen to me…”

“Who are you?” she asked softly.

“It doesn’t matter. Bill Angell. It might have been anyone.” But he knew that to be untrue as he said it. “Miss Gimball, for a moment I meant to expose you. I thought—Now, I don’t know.”

“Expose me?” she faltered. “What do you mean?”

He came closer in the shadow, so close that he could smell the faint aroma in her hair and skin. And he lifted her left hand suddenly and said, “Look at your ring.”

From the start she gave, from the odd way in which she jerked her hand to the level of her eyes and stared, he knew he had been right. And curiously, he wished now that he had not been right. She was so different from the woman he had visualized.

“My ring,” she said with difficulty. “My ring. The—the stone’s gone.”

The ring was on the fourth finger of her left hand, an incredibly delicate circlet of platinum with naked uplifted prongs, two of them a little bent. Where the stone had been there was a hole.

“I found the stone,” whispered Bill, “in there.” And he nodded in the direction of the shack. Suddenly he looked around, and she caught something of the caution in his manner, for the alarm came back into her eyes and she crept a little closer to him. “Quickly,” he whispered. “Tell me the truth. You were the woman in the Cadillac?”