The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (24 page)

He took up the stick and went into the hut. It was empty.

He came out, broke the stick over his knee, pitched the pieces into the lake, and slowly followed the Gramatons down the path.

When Mimi returned from the village after seeing Gramaton off she was accompanied by Emilie Eames and Dr. Varrow.

“I spend more time with a paintbrush than a stethoscope,” explained the doctor to Ellery. “I find art catching. And people here are so depressingly healthy.”

“We'll swim and things,” announced Mimi, “and tonight we'll toast wieners and marshmallows outdoors. We do owe you something, Mr. Queen.” But she did not look at him. It seemed to Ellery that she was unnaturally animated; her cheeks were dark red.

While they played in the lake Mr. Borcca appeared on the beach and quietly sat down. Mimi stopped being gay. Later, when they came out of the lake, Mr. Borcca rose and went away.

After dinner Jeff built a fire. Mimi sat very close to Miss Eames, snuggling as if she were cold. Dr. Varrow unexpectedly produced a guitar and sang some obscure sailors' chanteys. It turned out that Mimi possessed a clear, sweet soprano voice; she sang, too, until she caught sight of a pair of iridescent eyes regarding her from the underbrush. Then she abruptly stopped, and Ellery observed to himself that at night Mr. Borcca might easily turn into a wolf. There was such a feral glare in those orbs that his muscles tightened.

A light rain began to fall; they scampered for the house gratefully, Jeff trampling out the fire.

“Do stay over,” urged Mimi. “With Mark away—”

“You couldn't drive me home,” said Dr. Varrow cheerfully. “I like your beds.”

“Do you want me to sleep with you, Mimi?” asked Miss Eames.

“No,” said Mimi slowly. “That won't be—necessary.”

Ellery was just removing his jacket when someone tapped on his door. “Mr. Queen,” whispered a voice.

Ellery opened the door. Mimi stood there in the semi-darkness clad in a gauzy backless negligee. She said nothing more, but her large eyes begged.

“Perhaps,” suggested Ellery, “it would be more discreet if we talked in your husband's studio.”

He retrieved his jacket and she led him in silence to the studio, turning on a single bulb. Details sprang up—the fourth Lord Gramaton glowering, the sheen of the unbroken north wall windows, the palette knife lying on the floor.

“I owe you an explanation,” whispered Mimi, sinking into a chair. “And such terribly important thanks that I can't ever—”

“You owe me nothing,” said Ellery gently. “But you owe yourself a good deal. How long do you think you can keep this up?”

“So you know, too!” She began to weep without sound into her hands. “That animal has been here since May, and … what am I to do?”

“Tell your husband.”

“No, oh, no! You don't know Mark. It's not myself, but Mark … he'd strangle Borcca slowly. He'd—he'd break his arms and legs and … He'd kill the creature! Don't you see I've got to protect Mark from that?”

Ellery was silent, for the excellent reason that he could think of nothing to say. Short of killing Borcca himself, he was helpless. Mimi sat collapsed in the chair, crying again.

“Please go,” she sobbed. “And I do thank you.”

“Do you think it's wise to stay here alone?”

She did not reply. Feeling a perfect fool, Ellery left. Outside the house the roly-poly figure of Jeff separated itself from a tree.

“It's all right, Mr. Queen,” said Jeff.

Ellery went to bed, reassured.

Gramaton was red-eyed and grayish the next morning, as if he had spent a sleepless night in the city. But he seemed cheerful enough.

“I promise you I shan't run off again,” he said, over the eggs. “What's the matter, Mimi—are you cold?”

It was an absurd thing to suggest, because the morning was hot, with every sign of growing hotter. And yet Mimi wore a heavy gown of some unflattering stuff and a long camel's-hair coat. Her face was oddly drawn.

“I don't feel awfully well,” she said with a pale smile. “Did you have a nice trip, Mark?”

He made a face. “There's been a change in the plans; the design must be altered. I'll have to pose your back all over again.”

“Oh … darling.” Mimi put down her toast. “Would you be terribly cross if … if I didn't pose for you?”

“Bother! Well, all right, dear. We'll begin tomorrow.”

“I mean,” murmured Mimi, picking up her fork, “I—I'd rather not pose at all … any more.”

Gramaton set his cup down very, very slowly, as if he had suddenly developed a griping ache in his arm. No one said anything.

“Of course, Mimi.”

Ellery felt the need of fresh air.

Emilie Eames said lightly: “You've done something to the man, Mimi. When he was my husband he'd have thrown something.”

It was all very confusing to Ellery. Gramaton smiled, and Mimi pecked at her omelet, and Dr. Varrow folded his napkin with absorption. When Jeff lumbered in, scratching his stubble, Ellery could have embraced him.

“Can't find the skunk nowheres,” Jeff growled. “He didn't sleep in his bed last night, Mr. Gramaton.”

“Who?” said Gramaton absently. “What?”

“Borrca. Didn't you want him for paintin'? He's gone.”

Gramaton drew his blond brows together, concentrating. Miss Eames exclaimed hopefully: “Do you suppose he fell into the lake and was drowned?”

“This seems to be my morning for disappointments,” said Gramaton, rising. “Would you care to come up to my shop, Queen? I'd be grateful if you'd allow me to sketch your head into the group.” He walked out without looking back.

“I think,” said Mimi faintly, “I have a headache.”

When Ellery reached the studio he found Gramaton standing wide-legged, hands clenched behind his back. The room was curiously disordered; two chairs were overturned, and canvases cluttered the floor. Gramaton was glaring at the portrait of his ancestor. A hot breeze ruffled his hair; one of the windows on the glass wall stood open.

“This,” said Gramaton in a gravelly voice, “is simply intolerable.” Then his voice swelled into a roar; he sounded like a lion in agony. “Varrow! Emilie! Jeff!”

Ellery went to the portrait and squinted into the shadow. He stared, unbelieving.

Sometime during the night, the fourth Lord Gramaton's heart had bled.

There was a smear of brownish stuff directly over the painted left breast. Some of it, while in a liquid state, had trickled in drops an inch or two. More of it was splattered down Lord Gramaton's waistcoat and over his belly. Whatever it was, there had been a good deal of it.

Gramaton made a whimpering noise, ripped the portrait from the wall, and flung it to the floor in the full light.

“Who did this?” he asked huskily.

Mimi covered her mouth. Dr. Varrow smiled. “Little boys have a habit of smearing filth on convenient walls, Mark.”

Gramaton looked at him, breathing heavily. “Don't act so tragic, Mark,” said Miss Eames. “It's just some moron's idea of a practical joke. Goodness knows there's enough paint lying around here.”

Ellery stooped over the prostrate, wounded nobleman and sniffed. Then he rose and said: “But it isn't paint.”

“Not paint?” echoed Miss Eames feebly. Gramaton paled, and Mimi closed her eyes and felt for a chair.

“I'm rather familiar with the concomitants of violence, and this looks remarkably like dry blood to me.”

“Blood!”

Gramaton laughed. He ground his heels very deliberately into Lord Gramaton's face. He jumped up and down on the frame, cracking it in a dozen places. He crumpled the canvas and kicked the remains into the fireplace. He ignited a whole packet of matches and carefully pushed it under the débris. Then he stumbled out.

Ellery smiled apologetically. He bent over and managed to rip away a sample of brown-stained canvas before Lord Gramaton suffered complete cremation. When he rose, only Dr. Varrow remained in the room.

“Borcca,” said Dr. Varrow thickly. “Borcca.”

“These English,” mumbled Ellery. “Old saws are true saws. No sense of humor at all. Could you test this for me at once, Dr. Varrow?”

When the doctor had gone Ellery, finding himself alone and the house wonderfully quiet, sat down in Gramaton's studio to think. While he thought, he looked. It seemed to him that something which had been on the studio floor the day before was no longer there. And then he remembered. It had been Gramaton's sharp-pointed palette knife.

He went over to the north wall and stuck his head out of the open section of the window.

“He ain't anywheres,” said Jeff, from behind him.

“Still looking for Borcca? Very sensible, Jeff.”

“Aw, he's just skipped. And good riddance, the dog.”

“Nevertheless, would you show me his room, please?”

The fat man blinked his shrewd eyes and scratched his hairy breast. Then he led the way to a room on the first floor of the same wing. The silence hummed.

“No,” decided Ellery after a while, “Mr. Borcca didn't just skip out, Jeff. Until the moment he vanished he had every intention of staying, to judge from the undisturbed condition of his belongings. Nervous, though—look at those cigarette butts.”

Closing Mr. Borcca's door softly, he left the house and tramped around until he stood below the north window of Gramaton's studio. There were flower beds here, and the soft loam was gay with pansies.

But someone or something had been very brutal with the pansies. Below Gramaton's studio window they lay crushed and broken, and imbedded in the earth, as if a considerable weight had landed heavily on them. Where the devastated area began, near the wall, there were two deep trenches in the loam, parallel and narrow scoops, with the impressions of a man's shoe at the lowest depth of each scoop.

The toes pointed away from the wall and were queerly turned inwards toward each other.

“Borcca wore shoes like that,” muttered Ellery. He sucked his lower lip, standing still. Beyond the pansy bed lay a gravel walk; snaking across the walk from the two trenches led a faint trail, rough and irregular, about the width of a human body.

Jeff flapped his arms suddenly, as if he wanted to fly away. But he merely clumped off, shoulders sagging.

Pearl Angers and Emilie Eames came hurrying around the house. The actress was very pale.

“I came over to be neighborly, and Emilie told me the frightful—”

“How,” asked Ellery absently, “is Mrs. Gramaton?”

“How would you think!” cried Miss Eames. “Oh, Mark's still the big stupid fool I know! Prowling his room like a bear thrashing up his temper. You'd think that, since it's his pet story, he'd appreciate the joke, anyway.”

“Blood,” said the Angers damply. “Blood, Emilie.”

“Mimi's simply prostrated,” said Miss Eames furiously. “Oh, Mark's an idiot! That cock-and-bull story! Joke!”

“I'm afraid,” said Ellery, “that it isn't as much a joke as you seem to think.” He pointed at the pansy bed.

“What,” faltered the Angers, shrinking against her friend and pointing to the dim trail, “is—that?”

Ellery did not reply. He turned and slowly began to follow the trail, bent over and peering.

Miss Eames moistened her lips and stared from the open window of Gramaton's studio two stories above to the crushed area in the pansy bed directly below.

The actress giggled hysterically, staring at the trail Ellery was pursuing. “Why, it looks,” she said in a stricken voice, “as if—someone—dragged a … body.…”

The two women joined hands like children and stumbled along behind.

The erratic trail meandered across the garden in zigzags and arcs; in its course it revealed a narrower track of thin parallel scrapings, as if shoes had dragged. When it entered the woods it became harder to follow, for the ground here was a confusion of leaf mold, roots and twigs.

The women followed Ellery like sleepwalkers, making no sound. Somewhere along the route Mark Gramaton caught up with them; he stalked behind on stiff iron legs.

It was very hot in the woods. Sweat dripped off their noses. And after a while Mimi, bundled up as if she were cold, crept up to her husband. He paid no attention. She dropped behind, whimpering.

As the underbrush grew more tangled the trail became even more difficult to trace. Ellery, leading the voiceless procession, had to skirt several places and skip over rotting logs. At one point the trail led under a tangle of bramble so wide and thick and impenetrable that it was impossible to accompany it, even on hands and knees. For a time Ellery lost the scent altogether. His eyes were unnaturally bright. Then, after a detour by way of a broad grove, he picked up the trail again.

Not long after, he stopped; they all stopped. In the center of the trail lay a gold cuff link. Ellery examined it—it was initialed exquisitely
B
—and dropped it in his pocket.

Gramaton's island pinched up near the middle. The pinched area was extensive, completely rock—a dangerous, boulder-strewn ankle-trap. The lake hemmed it in on two sides.

Here Ellery lost the trail again. He searched among the boulders for a while, but only a bloodhound could have retained hope there. So he stepped thoughtfully, with a curious lack of interest.

“Oh, look,” said Pearl Angers in a shocked voice.

Miss Eames had her arms about Mimi, holding her up. Gramaton stood alone, staring stonily. Ellery picked his way to the Angers, who was perched perilously on a jutting bone of the rocky neck, pointing with horror into the lake.

The water was shallow there. Gleaming on the sandy bottom, at arm's length, lay Gramaton's palette knife, patently hurled away.

Ellery seated himself on a boulder and lit a cigarette. He made no attempt to retrieve the knife; the lake had long since washed away any clues it might last night have betrayed.