A Fine and Private Place

by Ellery Queen

  * * *

  He read on, immersing himself in the flow of her thoughts and feelings, analyzing her narrative of that day’s events-her meeting with Ennis in the little undistinguished restaurant, Peter’s hammering away at her to divorce Nino Importuna… all the way through her dread of what “I glimpsed in Peter’s eyes… and if his parting shot to me meant what I think it meant, the embryo’s going to turn out to be a thalidomide baby, or worse.” And her final, unsteady “and to hell with you and you and you too Mrs. Calabash. I’d better totter off and tuck my lil ole self into beddy-snooky-bye.”

  He shut the leather-covered book and handed it back. Virginia inserted the key in the lock and turned the key, slipped its chain about her neck, dropped the key into the chasm between her breasts.

  The diary, locked, lay in her lap. “Do you mind if we don’t talk for a while?” Ellery rose without waiting for a response and began to stroll about, rubbing the back of his neck, fingering his ear, pulling at his nose, finally resting his forehead against the edge of the tall mantelpiece at the fireplace. Virginia’s eyes followed him. She seemed to have resigned herself to whatever fate had reserved for her, and to be waiting for it in confident patience. After some time this aura of self-confidence reached Ellery and penetrated his field of concentration. He came back from the fireplace and looked down at her.

  “Where do you hide your diaries, Mrs. Importuna?”

  “In a very safe place,” Virginia replied. “Don’t ask me where, because I won’t tell you.”

  “Does anyone know the hiding place?”

  “Not a soul in this world.” She added, “Or the next.”

  “Not even Peter Ennis?”

  “I just said, Mr. Queen, no one.”

  “There’s no possibility someone could have got his hands on this particular volume and read it?”

  “No possibility. That I’d stake my life on.” She smiled. “Or is that what I’m doing, Mr. Queen? No. There’s only one master key to all the years, the one you just saw me use, and I keep the chain around my neck always, even when I bathe. Even when I sleep.”

  “Your husband. Couldn’t he have…?”

  “I never slept with my husband,” Virginia said in a murderous voice. “Never! When he was finished with me I invariably went back to my own room. And locked the filthy door.”

  “Mrs. Importuna. I must ask you something-”

  “Don’t.”

  “Forgive me. Was Importuna fond of the use of a whip?”

  She shut her eyes as if to seek forgetfulness in the dark. But she opened them almost at once.

  “The answer to that happens to be no. But if what you want to know is what he was fond of, don’t bother to ask the question. I won’t answer it. No one-no one, Mr. Queen-will ever know that from me. And the only other one who could tell is dead.”

  Ellery took her hand; it lay in his trustfully, like a child’s. “You’re a very remarkable lady,” he said. “I’m in great danger of falling in love with you.” But then he let go of her hand and his tone changed. “I don’t know yet how this is all going to turn out. However it does, you haven’t seen the last of me.”

  * * *

  He was the perfect nonentity, a Chesterton’s postman of a somewhat higher order.

  Mr. E was neither tall nor short, fat nor thin, blond nor brunet, young nor old, shag-haired nor bald. His face might have been made of dough, or Plasticine. It possessed the property of accommodating itself to his immediate environment, so that he became part of it, like a face in a crowd.

  He was dressed, not sharply and not shabbily, in a suit of neutral gray showing signs of wear hardly-indeed, just-noticeable; under the jacket he had on a not quite new white shirt and a medium shade of gray necktie with tiny darker gray figures; on his feet were black English brogues with a dull shine, worn down a bit at the heels.

  He grasped a dark gray fedora in one hand and a well-used black attache case in the other.

  His obvious specialty, the only obvious thing about him, was self-effacement. Not the most knowing eye would ordinarily give him a second glance.

  This was not an ordinary occasion, however, and Inspector Queen looked Mr. E over with the closest attention to detail. Nino Importuna’s confidential agent had been accompanied to Centre Street by two detectives of the Inspector’s staff; they had picked him up deplaning from an El A1 jet at Kennedy. He stood up under the Inspector’s scrutiny with patience and equanimity, but also as if modestly aware of his worth; and he sat down at the Inspector’s invitation in an unobtrusive way, so that one moment he was on his feet and the next he was seated in the chair, leaving no recollection behind of how he had accomplished the transition. His neat hands were clasped on the attache case in his lap.

  And he waited.

  “You’re known at 99 East as Mr. E,” Inspector Queen began. “You traveled-on this last trip, anyway-under a cover name, Kempinski, and your real name, we’ve now found out, is Edward Lloyd Merkenthaler. What do I call

  “Take your choice.” Mr. E had a mild, soft voice, rather like a lady’s bath suds; it seemed to vanish discreetly down a drain the moment he produced it. If he was disturbed at having been taken off a plane by two New York City detectives and brought to Police Headquarters for questioning in a homicide he showed no sign of it. “In my business I’ve found it more convenient to use many names, Inspector. I don’t have a preference.”

  “Well, I do. So let’s use your real name. Mr. Merken-thaler, do you have any objections to answering some questions?”

  “None at all.”

  “Do you know your rights?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Would you rather have a lawyer present?”

  Mr. E’s lips rose in an appreciative smile, as if the Inspector had granted him a witticism. “That won’t be at all necessary.”

  “A moment ago you mentioned your business. Exactly what is your business, Mr. Merkenthaler?”

  “For a number of years I’ve been employed by Nino Importuna-not by Importuna Industries; Mr. Importuna paid me out of his personal funds-as what might be called a peripatetic industrial detective, or a white-collar prospector, or both.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I tracked down businesses Mr. Importuna was interested in absorbing, investigating them for soundness and commercial possibilities, that sort of thing. Or I hunted up new prospects for him. I hold graduate degrees in engineering, geology, and business administration and finance, among others. It’s been largely on my recommendations that Mr. Importuna bought most of his properties.”

  “Why all the mumbo jumbo and cloak-and-daggcr stuff?”

  “You mean the reason for the secrecy and anonymity, Inspector? Well, once it were to become known that Nino Importuna was after a property, there would be all sorts of opportunities for fraud and chicanery and doctoring of books; and even if not, the price was sure to be jacked up. It produced quicker and better results for me to operate under a cover for unnamed parties.”

  “You said you’ve been employed in this confidential work for Importuna for a number of years,” Inspector Queen said suddenly. “The number wouldn’t be 9, would it?”

  Mr. E elevated his brows. “I see you know about his superstition. No, Inspector, it’s been closer to 15.”

  The Inspector reddened, and his tone grew sharper than he intended. “We got your cable just a few hours ago. Where’ve you been all these weeks? Importuna’s death made headlines all over the world. How come you didn’t get in touch with someone at Importuna Industries long before this?”

  “I didn’t know Mr. Importuna was dead until my flight landed in Rome last night. I hadn’t seen a newspaper or a newscast or listened to the radio since early in September.”

  “That’s pretty hard to believe, Mr. Merkenthaler.”

  “Not really, when you know the circumstances,” Mr. E responded amiably. “I’ve been critically ill in a Tel Aviv hospital, to which I was brought in a state of unconsciousness from
deep in the Negev-a business matter I’m not at liberty to disclose at least until I’ve had a chance to report to whoever’s in charge now at 99 East, I suppose Mrs. Importuna. Lobar streptococcal pneumonia, involving both lungs. And complications set in. The Israeli doctors told me later that twice they gave me up for dead. Before the antibiotics, they said, I wouldn’t have had a chance.”

  “This will all be checked out, of course.”

  Mr. E seemed titillated. “Am I to understand that you’re considering me a suspect in the murder of Nino Importuna?”

  “Where were you, Mr. Merkenthaler, on the night of September 9th, around midnight?”

  “Ah. Excuse me.” The industrial agent produced a key with a sly flourish, like a magician, and unlocked his attache case. He raised the lid a very little way, as if reluctant to expose its contents to the eyes of strangers. From the case he took a 5-in-l-type traveler’s memorandum book, shut the case at once, and leafed through the book.

  “I assume, Inspector Queen, when you say the night of September 9th you’re referring to the date and time in New York City?”

  The Inspector looked puzzled. “Yes?”

  “Well, it makes a difference, you know, when you’re on the other side of the planet. Midnight on September 9th in New York City would be Eastern Daylight Saving Time. But when it was midnight of September 9th EDST in the United States I happened to be in Israel on business. Israel is seven hours later than New York in terms of standard times. I believe Israel’s on standard time; traveling as much as I do, it’s not easy to keep track of time differences the world over, and especially time manipulations. At any rate, whichever it is, you want to know where I was between, say, six and seven hours past New York EDST on midnight September 9th, or in other words between 6 and 7 a.m. Israeli time on September 10th.

  “At that hour, Inspector Queen,” Mr. E went on, tapping his memorandum book, “it’s noted here that I was aboard a private airplane owned by the Menachem-Lipsky-Negev Development Company, Ltd., en route to a certain location in the desert. I can’t disclose the whereabouts of the site or really anything about the project; I gave my word I would keep our negotiations in the strictest confidence, and my business, Inspector, rests on the integrity of my word.

  “At any rate, I came down ill immediately on landing in the desert and I was flown back to hospital in Tel Aviv that same morning, running a temperature, they said afterward, of over 106°. The company and hospital authorities will, of course, corroborate my statement.

  “Do you want the cable address or telephone number of the Menachem-Lipsky-Negev Development Company, and the names of the pilot, the employees who met me in the desert, and the doctors in Tel Aviv who saved my life? And oh, yes,” Mr. E added shyly. “When you check my story, be sure to inquire about me under the name of Mortimer C. Ginsberg. Otherwise they won’t know whom you’re talking about.”

  NOVEMBER 9, 1967

  Ellery selected the date and site of the confrontation to satisfy the esthetics of the case and the yearning for justice in his heart: the 9th of the month and Nino Importuna’s bedroom, where the industrialist had met his death.

  Inspector Queen consented with misgivings; he insisted on having a member of the district attorney’s staff present.

  “What can go wrong?” Ellery had said with none of his customary humility; he was positively euphoric. “You know me, dad. I’ve had a really hard time, but I’ve finally run it down. I never pull a drawstring till I know my quarry’s in the bag.”

  “Sure, son, sure,” his father had said through the gnawed-ragged fringe of his mustache. “But just supposing, I want to be covered.”

  “Have you no faith?”

  “This case has made an agnostic out of me!”

  The assistant D.A. was a young man named Rankin whom Ellery did not know. The lawyer stationed himself in a corner of the room, from where he had a panoramic view of the action. The expression on his foxy face said that, while he hoped for the best out of this unheard-of, if not illegal, proceeding, all he could realistically look forward to was the reverse. Ellery ignored him.

  The only others present, aside from the Queens, were Virginia Importuna and Peter Ennis. The widow was almost serenely expectant; she might have been taking her seat at an opening night. Ennis, however, was pallidly twitchy, a very nervous young man. Ellery smiled at both of them.

  “The secret of this offbeat case,” he began, “lies in its 9s. All along I’ve been convinced that the 9s in Nino Importuna’s murder constituted the crucial element-that if only we could fathom their real meaning we’d reach the treasure. But it remained unfound until you, dad, inadvertently provided the key. You referred to the 9s as red herrings.

  “Those words unlocked the door.

  “The 9s lying in heaps around the corpus of the case,” Ellery went on-”were some of them contrived? Deliberately invented? Red herring used to be used in training tracking dogs; the strong smell of smoked fish tended to throw them off the scent. Did the 9s in the Importuna case sei-ve an analogous purpose?

  “I explored the hypothesis. Assuming they did, which of the 9s had been dragged across the trail to make the job of tracking down the killer harder, if not impossible?”

  The assistant D.A. began to look interested. He dug out a pad and pencil.

  “I didn’t really get anywhere on this tack until I recalled G. K. Chesterton’s ‘The Sign of the Broken Sword,’ one of the short stories in The Innocence of Father Brown. At one point in this story Father Brown asks the reformed thief, Flambeau, ‘Where does a wise man hide a pebble?’ Flambeau answers, ‘On the beach.’ ‘Where,’ Father Brown goes on, ‘does a wise man hide a leaf?’ Flambeau replies, ‘In the forest.’ At which Flambeau asks, ‘Do you mean that when a wise man has to hide a real diamond he has been known to hide it among sham ones?’

  “This recollection furnished me with the key question I was groping for. I paraphrased Flambeau: ‘Do you mean that when a murderer has to hide a real clue he might hide it among sham ones?’

  “I immediately saw the murderer’s dilemma plain and his plan clear: There was a genuine 9-clue which pointed to him as the guilty party and which he could not wish out of existence. At the same time he could not afford, in self-defense, to leave it as it was. Therefore he would hide it, like Father Brown’s pebble, on a beach of 9-clues, all but one of which were false. In the confusion the only significant one, the legitimate one, would go unnoticed. At least, that was his thinking and his objective. In any event, he had nothing to lose and a great deal to gain-his safety-by drawing his red herrings across the trail.

  “The obvious counterploy was to check back on all the 9s, to take them one by one out of the net and see which were herrings. We came up with a strange catch.”

  Ellery turned to Virginia Importuna.

  “Your husband’s totem, the number 9, has its apparent inception in the date he claimed for his birth, September 9, 1899. I proceeded to question its validity, as I meant to question all the 9s in the case, by procuring a copy through an Italian inquiry agency of Importuna’s baptismal certificate. Sure enough, it turned out that he was born not in 1899 but in the year before, and not in the 9th month of that year but in the fifth, and not on the 9th day of that month but on the 16th. May 16, 1898 was a far cry from September 9, 1899; as a 9 totem, it failed completely. So he simply appropriated as his birth date the 9th day of the 9th month in the year that added up to 9 every which way.

  “In other words, the 9s in his professed birth date were, as Chesterton put it, a sham, satisfying not the truth but your husband’s superstition. A red herring.

  “His name, Importuna, composed of 9 letters? Sham: His real name was Importunato, 11 letters. His Christian name, Nino, its number values adding up to 9? Sham: His real Christian name was Tullio. The whole name Nino Importuna was a red herring.

  “This building, 99 East. My father had it checked. And found that 99 was not its original street number. Originally it was 97; there was no n
umber 99 on this street. To satisfy his need for surrounding himself with 9s, Importuna had the building renumbered 99 when he bought it; with his means and power it was no problem. And 9 floors? A more subtle sham. A 9-story building with a penthouse apartment can more properly be said to have, not 9 floors, but 10.”

  “I didn’t know about Nino’s real birth date, Mr. Queen, or the renumbering of the building,” Virginia said. “Did you, Peter?”

  Ennis started at being addressed and quickly removed from his mouth the knuckle he was gnawing on. “They’re both news to me.”

  “But these were not the important red herrings,” Ellery said. “Let’s dip into our net again.

  “The time of death: Your husband’s wristwatch, Mrs. Importuna, stopped by a blow, fixed the time of the murder attack at 9 minutes past 9 o’clock. Sham: The medical examiner placed death at shortly past midnight, about three hours later than the stopped watch indicated. The murderer must have set the watch back after the killing and then struck it to stop it, thereby giving us the 9th minute past the 9th hour of the evening, and two more red herrings to chew on. And, by the way, the M.E.’s postmortem report even exposed the date of death-September 9th-as a sham. A few minutes after midnight put the actual date of death at the next day, September 10th.

  “Now consider in this context the weapon used, that curvy abstraction in cast iron we-especially I-were so eager to see as a 9-shape, when the killer went out of his way to get hold of it for the commission of his crime. Can there be any doubt that its resemblance to a 9 was his reason for choosing it? Yet it’s really not a 9. To the sculptor, according to the title he gave it, it was Newborn Child Emerging.”

  “But it does look like a 9,” Peter protested.

  “Held in one position, yes. But turn it upside down-how can you ever be sure with an abstraction?-and it becomes a 6. Sham. Red herring.