by Ellery Queen
“Change which clothes? What were you wearing when you visited Julio last night?”
The lips clamped down. His hands were gripping the arms of the chair and his knuckles were yellow-white.
“Your yachting jacket, Mr. Importunato?” Ellery said. “The crepe-soled shoes?”
“I’m not answering any more questions. You’re through here, Mister whoever-the-hell-you-are. Get out of my apartment!”
“Oh?” Ellery said. “Why the sudden clam-up?”
“Because! I can see you’ve made up your minds I’m guilty. I ought to’ve taken Nino’s advice and not opened my yap. Anything else you want to find out, you can goddam well talk to my lawyer!”
Marco Importunato got to his feet and staggered over to the bar. His brother stepped in his way, and he brushed the older man violently aside, seized the whisky bottle, threw his head back, and began to glug. Importuna and Ennis closed in on him.
Under cover of the ensuing scuffle the Inspector, sotto, said, “What do you think, Ellery? The button could have fallen out of his pocket without his knowing. And the ashtray could have been shoved off the desk and Marco’s foot stepped on the ashes.”
“But the moving of the desk, dad. With Marco the killer it makes no sense. Suppose he’s lying and he did move it. Why? Well, its effect is to make the murder appear as if it could have been committed by a left-handed man. And Marco’s left-handed. So was he trying to implicate himself?” Ellery shook his head. “I feel like a yoyo. At the moment I’m inclined to believe him. Somebody else moved that desk. Unless… “
He stopped.
“Unless what, son?”
“I see,” Ellery said. “That is, I think I see… It’s certainly a possibility.”
“What is?”
“Dad, let’s go back to Julio’s library. And call for a man to meet us there on the double with a dusting kit.”
* * *
Nino Importuna and Peter Ennis rejoined the Queens in the dead man’s library not long after. They had remained behind in Marco’s apartment to quiet him. The Inspector was resting in an easy chair; he looked tired. Ellery stood at the desk.
“We finally got him into bed.” Ennis was evidently ruffled; he was brushing his clothes with unnecessarily powerful strokes. “I sincerely hope he stays there! Marco’s a bit of a handful when he’s loaded.”
“Tebaldo will take care of him,” the multimillionaire said brusquely. “Mr. Queen, is there an end to this day? I’m beginning to feel persecuted. What is it now?”
“This business of the desk, Mr. Importuna.” Ellery was staring at it; it was as they had left it, in the catercornered position. “With the desk catercornered, and on the assumption that Julio was sitting up in the swivel chair behind it facing his assailant, it wouldn’t have been possible for whoever killed him, as I pointed out earlier, to have delivered a left-hand blow to the side of Julio’s head where the wound is. Unless the killer struck a backhand blow, which is theoretically possible, I suppose, but I strongly question whether anyone outside a Mr. America contest could have used that poker backhandedly with sufficient force and certainly with such deadly aim as to have left that very deep and fatal wound--especially in view of the fact that the attack consisted of a single blow. No, we have to conclude that if Marco, say, had been at the striking end of the poker the wound would have been found on the opposite side of Julio’s head from where it actually landed. Unless”-and Ellery swung about suddenly-”unless our assumption is wrong and Julio was not facing his assailant at the instant of impact.’’’’
“I don’t see-” Importuna began.
“Hold it!” the Inspector yawped. “How exactly do you figure that, son?”
“Suppose Julio-while facing the other man in the natural vis-a-vis position-anticipated the blow. A split second before the poker came down, suppose he tried to dodge and succeeded only in swiveling his chair 180°. So that when the blow landed he was turned completely about, facing the corner, with the back of his head presented to the descending poker, instead of the front, as we’ve been assuming. Then the poker would have struck the opposite side of his head!” Ellery was striding irritably about. “Where the devil is that fingerprint man?”
“I’ll be damned,” his father breathed; and he repeated it. Then he shook his head. “And none of us saw it! But Ellery, why a fingerprint man?”
“To test a theory that grows out of the point I just made.
As the chair swiveled around with Julio trying to escape the poker, isn’t it likely that he’d have thrown his arms forward instinctively to keep from toppling from the chair? And, if that happened, I don’t see how Julio’s hands could have avoided making contact with those walls that meet in the corner.” Ellery squeezed behind the desk. “Just about here, I’d estimate-Ah, here he is! Over here, please-Maglie, isn’t it?”
“But we dusted everything, Mr. Queen.” The tech man was tieless, unshaven, and he was wearing a badly creased and grimy white shirt. His long face said he had been summoned from before his TV set and a bottle of beer. “What’s the problem, Inspector Queen?”
The old man waved a dragging hand. “In that corner, Maglie. On the walls. Ellery ‘11 show you.”
And several minutes later they were staring at two large, smudged palm prints, shoulder high to a seated man, each print about a foot from where the two walls met, and each tilted at the finger ends toward the other.
Nobody said a word until the fingerprint man packed up and left.
“Good as a photo,” the Inspector said; he had perked up considerably, and he was trying, not altogether successfully, to keep a chortle out of his voice. “That’s what happened, all right! With Julio’s back to the killer, the head wound is just where it would be if the strike had come from the killer’s left side. No ifs about it, Julio was killed by a left-handed man-not just possibly anymore, but positively. That, Mr. Importuna, I’m sorry to say, along with the gold button and the shoeprint, points to your brother Marco again, only this time a lot stronger than before.”
“Wait, wait,” Nino Importuna said thickly. “You don’t answer important questions. Why wasn’t Julio left that way-I mean the way he died, facing the corner? Why was his body turned around so that his face fell forward on the desk?”
“If you weren’t so upset, Mr. Importuna,” Ellery said, “you’d be able to answer that yourself. We’re hypothesizing now that, by the weight of the evidence, your brother Marco was Julio’s murderer. Marco’s just struck the lethal blow and he’s looking down at Julio’s unexpectedly reversed head, crushed in on the side that unmistakably betrays a left-hand blow. And he, Marco, is left-handed. Murderers don’t want to be caught, Mr. Importuno, at least not consciously. So Marco turns Julio’s body around to face him. In the face-to-face position, as indeed we’ve been assuming until now, a left-hand blow appears impossible. Isn’t that reason enough for Marco not to have left Julio to be found in the about-face position?”
“Yes, but then why would Marco move the desk?” Importuna argued. “If he had left it catercornered, but turned Julio around to the face-to-face position so that the blow would seem to have come from the opposite side, you’d have had to say: The killer was right-handed, not left-handed. If Marco killed Julio, he had every reason not to move the desk. So again I ask: Why did he move it and defeat his own purpose, Mr. Queen? You can’t have it both ways!”
“You know, Ellery,” the Inspector said, looking tired again, “he has a point there.”
Ellery was back at his nose-pulling exercise, and he was muttering, something he rarely did. “Yes… that’s so, isn’t it? If Marco was clear-headed enough to turn the body, he should have been clear-headed enough not to shift the desk. This is the queerest case… We’d better talk to Marco again. Maybe he can clear the point up.”
But they were not to talk to Marco Importunato again on that night, or indeed on any night short of the resurrection. They found him in the tall-ceilinged gymnasium hanging halfway down the climbing r
ope. He had fashioned a loop in the thick hemp, thrust his head into it, evidently shinnied with it to the ceiling, and then launched himself head first toward the floor. At the end of the dive the contention of gravity with the rope claimed his neck.
That sometime imperfect gentleman’s gentleman, Tebaldo, was stretched out on the trampoline like a martyr of the Inquisition, snoring with vigor and nuzzling a three-quarter-empty bottle of Italian barley brandy. Much later, on being resuscitated and approximately sobered, Tebaldo stated that his cugino Marco-he said he was a fifth cousin Marco had brought over from the old country at great expense in the spirit of famiglia, a virtue rarely to be found, alas, in this otherwise great America-had suddenly crawled forth from the bed and challenged him, Tebaldo, to a drinking competition, during which Tebaldo had attempted manfully to keep up, and about the outcome of which he, Tebaldo, remembered nothing but Cousin Marco’s inflamed eyes, which he insisted-crossing himself several times-had resembled nothing so much as two of the fires of hell.
* * *
“Son, son,” Inspector Queen was saying as they watched Marco’s body being taken down-the lab men were confiscating most of the climbing rope, including the noose, foi later examination-”anybody can get fouled up in a case like this. Don’t feel so bad. I’m as responsible as you are when you get down to it. I couldn’t believe all that evidence pointing straight to Marco, either. Yet it was pretty much open and shut from the start. Everything says it was Marco-the button dropped out of his pocket, the shoeprint in the ashes, that left-handed business, and now he commits suicide. Hanging himself is as good as a signed confession… What’s the matter, Ellery? Why the long puss again? You still aren’t satisfied?”
“Since you’re putting the direct question, I’ll have to answer you in kind,” Ellery said. “No.”
“No? Why not? What’s eating you now?”
“A number of things. For one, why Marco didn’t leave the desk catercornered. For another, the fact that his committing suicide doesn’t necessarily add up to a confession of murder, tempting as it is to think it does. Hanging himself might well have been the result of pouring that appalling quantity of alcohol into his system-and we saw how jittery and upset he was to start with-so much, in fact, that he may have gone temporarily psycho. In which condition a rope around his neck could seem the logical answer to his grief and guilt feelings about having quarreled with Julio. Not to mention-if he was innocent-panic over being framed.
“Also,” Ellery went on, “lest we forget, dad, cui bono? as a canny old gent named Cicero put it some time ago. For whose benefit? Who profits by the Importunato brothers’ deaths?”
“You know what I think?” the Inspector exploded. “I think you’re looking for any excuse not to get back to that book of yours! All right, we’ll go ask Importuna.”
“Let me do the talking, dad.”
The old man shrugged.
He had sent Importuna and Ennis into Marco’s bedroom while the technicians worked. They found the secretary drooping in a chair, but Importuna was standing lik statuary at the foot of his brother’s bed, a yard away from it; Ellery received the ludicrous impression that he might be perched on one leg, like a stork or a Far East religious fanatic. Otherwise, if the multimillionaire felt anything at the violent loss of his second brother in 24 hours, Ellery was unable to detect a sign of it. Those heavy features were modeled, beyond alteration, in bronze.
“Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Importuna?” Ellery asked. Distant as the man was, it was hard not to feel compassion for him. “We’re not insensitive to what this must mean to you.”
But Nino Importunato said, not stirring a muscle, “What do you want?” with great harshness. The espresso-colored eyes, the bitter eyes of the enemy, turned full on Ellery. Their expression, and his tone of voice, testified that something had sprung up between them, something frigid and deadly that bridged the gap and now held them fast to each other. Perhaps, Ellery thought, it’s been there all the time. Perhaps he recognized me as the adversary from the beginning.
“Who inherits your brother Julio’s estate, Mr. Importuna? And Marco’s? Since neither of them was married.”
“No one.”
“No one?”
“The conglomerate.”
“Of which you’re now sole owner?”
“Of course. I’m the last of the brothers. The last of our entire family.”
“I thought Tebaldo is a fifth cousin.”
“An old joke of Marco’s that by now Tebaldo half believes. On a visit to Italy Marco got Tebaldo’s sister pregnant. That was years ago. Marco hired Tebaldo as his valet to shut him up, at the same time that he made a settlement with the girl. The drunken fool isn’t of our blood. So if you’re asking who gains by the deaths of Julio and Marco, Mr. Queen,” Nino Importuna said, “the answer is that I do. No one else.”
Their eyes locked.
“Dad,” Ellery said, without looking at the Inspector, “at what time last night did you say Dr. Prouty thought Julio had died?”
“Around 10 o’clock, give or take a half hour. From the way he talked, I don’t think the M. E. thinks he’ll be able to narrow it down any finer.”
“Mr. Importuna,” Ellery asked politely, “would you tell us-if you don’t mind waiving your right to be silent, of course-just where you were last night between 9:30 and 10:30?”
The evenness of his voice in contrast to Importuna’s harshness gave Ellery an advantage that the multimillionaire was quick to sense. When he spoke again, it was in an equally quiet tone.
“Peter.”
Ennis had long since climbed to his feet, alerted by the sounds of battle under the exchange.
“Telephone upstairs and ask Mrs. Importuna to join us here right away. In view of the trend of the questioning, gentlemen, you won’t mind if I call my wife in on this.” He might have been referring to a trivial tidbit of gossip overheard at one of his clubs.
In no more than three minutes a chalky Tebaldo announced her arrival and rather waveringly vanished.
Virginia Whyte Importuna went directly to her husband and took her place by his side. Ellery noticed with sharp interest that she did not grope for his hand, or brush against him, or allow any part of her body to come in contact with his. She simply stood near, erect and attentive, like a soldier summoned into the commanding officer’s presence, an invisible gulf between them. Apparently she did not want for herself, or feel the need to give him, a physical reassurance. Or was it something else?
She was a natural very-light-cafe-au-lait blond with intelligent violet-blue eyes of great size, high northern European cheekbones, and a little straight nose passionately flared. Really exquisite, Ellery thought. Her beauty had an ethereal patina, almost a poetry, but he was sure that it covered a rustproof undercoating resistant to assault. What other kind of woman could cope with a man like Nino Importuna?
She wore a high-fashion dress of deceiving simplicity that set off her long legs and hourglass figure. She stood taller than her husband, even though he wore built-up shoes and she was in low heels, no doubt at his direction. Ellery judged her to be in her mid-20s. She could have passed for Importuna’s granddaughter.
“Virginia, this is Inspector Queen of police headquarters, and this is Inspector Queen’s son, Ellery Queen. Mr. Queen is an amateur criminologist who’s interested himself in our troubles. Oh, by the way, my dear, there’s been no opportunity to notify you. Marco just committed suicide.”
“Marco…?” Faintly. But that was all she said. She bounced back from her husband’s savage announcement with the speed of a rebound. Her only concession to shock was to sink into the nearest so-called chair, in the new pneumatic mode, a billowing transparent bladderlike creation inflated with air.
Importuna seemed proud of her fortitude. He moved toward her with a fond, bitter look.
“And now it seems,” he went on, “Mr. Queen’s nose is sniffing in my direction. He just asked me, Virginia, where I was last night between 9:30 a
nd 10:30. Will you tell him?”
Virginia Importuna said immediately, “My husband and I, with four guests, were at the opera.” Her very feminine voice was deadly in its control, a musical enigma. Ellery was enthralled. He had heard of Importuna’s devotion to his wife; he was beginning to understand why. She was the fitting lady to his lordship.
“In our season box, Mr. Queen,” Importuna said. “Parsifal,. This will shock you, no doubt, but I find Parsifal an interminable bore. Hard for an Italian peasant who enjoys Puccini and Rossini to sit through. But then Wagner has never been one of my enthusiasms, even ideologically, in spite of Mussolini’s love for the Germans. Although Virginia adores Wagner-don’t you, my dear?-naturally, being all woman. Nevertheless, I deserve a hero’s medal-I endured the entire performance. Didn’t I, my dear?”
“Yes, Nino.”
“So that at 10 o’clock, since that’s the hour you’re interested in, Mr. Queen, at 10 o’clock, give or take not a half hour but more like two hours, Mrs. Importuna and I were in the company of four other people. Constantly. None of us left the box except at intermissions, and then we left as a group. Isn’t that so, Virginia?”
“Yes, Nino.”
“You’ll want to know their names, of course. Senator and Mrs. Henry L. Factor-that’s United States Senator Factor, Mr. Queen. Oh, and Bishop Tumelty of the New York diocese and Rabbi Winkleman of the Park Avenue Reformed Temple. I think the rabbi enjoyed the Parsifal as much as the bishop! Didn’t you think so, too, my dear? Your father can, and I’m sure will, Mr. Queen, check up on our alibi with the senator and the two clergymen. Have I answered your question?”
“You’ve answered my question,” Ellery said.
“Is there anything else you’d like to ask me?”
