Ellery Queen's Eyewitnesses

by Ellery Queen

  “Now—” began Ellery briskly.

  “Why, it’s John who’s missing,” laughed Lucy.

  “Pooooor John is daid,” sang Jerry.

  “My poor husband,” wailed Ann. “Jo-hon, come back to me!”

  “Ho, John!” shouted Nikki.

  “Just a moment,” said Ellery. “Isn’t Edith Baxter missing, too?”

  “My wiff?” shouted Jerry. “Hey, wiff! Come outa the woodwork!”

  “Oh, darn,” said Lucy. “There mustn’t be two victims, Nikki. That spoils the game.”

  “Let us repair to the scene of the crime,” proclaimed Miss Porter, “and see what gives.”

  So, laughing and chattering and having a hell of a time, they all trooped through the archway, turned left, crossed the foyer, and went into the Crombie kitchen and found John Crombie dead on the floor with his throat cut.

  When Ellery returned to the kitchen from his very interesting telephone chat with Inspector Queen, he found Ann Crombie being sick over the kitchen sink, her forehead supported by the greenish hand of a greenish Lucy Trent, and Nikki crouched quietly in a corner, as far away from the covered thing on the floor as the architect’s plans allowed, while Jerry Baxter raced up and down weeping, “Where’s my wife? Where’s Edith? We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Ellery grabbed Baxter’s collar and said, “It’s going to be a long night, Jerry—relax. Nikki—”

  “Yes, Ellery.” She was trembling and trying to stop it and not succeeding.

  “You know who was supposed to be the murderer in that foul game—the one who drew the ace of spades—you saw him or her step away from the living-room wall while the lights were still on in there. Who was it?”

  “Edith Baxter. Edith got the ace. Edith was supposed to be the murderer.”

  Jerry Baxter jerked out of Ellery’s grasp. “You’re lying!” he yelled. “You’re not mixing my wife up in this stink! You’re lying—”

  Ann crept away from the sink, avoiding the mound. She crept past them and went into the foyer and collapsed against the door of a closet just outside the kitchen. Lucy crept after Ann and cuddled against her, whimpering. Ann began to whimper, too.

  “Edith Baxter was Murderer,” said Nikki drearily. “In the game, anyway.”

  “You lie!—you lying—”

  Ellery slapped his mouth without rancor and Baxter started to weep again. “Don’t let me come back and find any other throats cut,” said Ellery, and he went out of the kitchen.

  It was tempting to assume the obvious, which was that Edith Baxter, having drawn the ace of spades, decided to play the role of murderer in earnest, and did so, and fled. Her malice-dipped triumph as she looked at John Crombie’s wife, her anger as she watched Crombie pursue Nikki through the evening, told a simple story; and it was really unkind of fate—if fate was the culprit—to place Edith Baxter’s hand on John Crombie’s shoulder in the victim-choosing phase of the game. In the kitchen, with a bread knife at hand, who could blame a well-bourboned woman if she obeyed that impulse and separated Mr. Crombie’s neck from his careless collar?

  But investigation muddled the obvious. The front door of the suite was locked—even bolted—on the inside. Nikki proclaimed herself the authoress thereof, having performed the sealed-apartment act before the game began in (she said) a moment of “inspiration.”

  Secondly, escape by one of the windows was out of the question, unless, like Pegasus, Edith Baxter possessed wings.

  Thirdly, Edith Baxter had not attempted to escape at all: Ellery found her in the foyer closet against which the widow and her sister whimpered. Mrs. Baxter had been jammed into the closet by a hasty hand, and she was unconscious.

  Inspector Queen, Sergeant Velie & Co. arrived just as Edith Baxter, with the aid of ammonium carbonate, was shuddering back to life.

  “Guy named Crombie’s throat slit?” bellowed Sergeant Velie, without guile.

  Edith Baxter’s eyes rolled over and Nikki wielded the smelling salts once more, wearily.

  “Murder games,” said Inspector Queen gently. “Halloween,” said Inspector Queen. Ellery blushed. “Well, son?”

  Ellery told his story humbly, in penitential detail.

  “Well, we’ll soon find out,” grumbled his father, and he shook Mrs. Baxter until her chin waggled and her eyes flew open. “Come, come, madam, we can’t afford these luxuries. What were you doing in that closet?”

  Edith screamed, “How should I know?” and had a convulsion of tears. “Jerry Baxter, how can you sit there and—?”

  But her husband was doubled over, holding his head.

  “You received Nikki’s instructions, Edith,” said Ellery, “and when she turned off the light you left the living room and went to the kitchen. Or started for it. What did happen?”

  “Don’t third-degree me, you detective!” screeched Mrs. Baxter. “I’d just passed under the archway, feeling my way, when somebody grabbed my nose and mouth from behind and I must have fainted because that’s all I knew till just now and Jerry Baxter, if you don’t get up on your two feet like a man and defend your own wife, I’ll—I’ll—”

  “Slit his throat?” asked Sergeant Velie crossly, for the Sergeant had been attending his own Halloween Party with the boys of his old precinct and was holding three queens full when the call to duty came.

  “The murderer,” said Ellery glumly. “The real murderer, Dad. At the time Nikki first put out the lights, while Edith Baxter was still in the room getting Nikki’s final instructions, one of us against that wall stole across the room, passed Nikki, passed Edith Baxter in the dark, and ambushed her—”

  “Probably intended to slug her,” nodded the Inspector, “but Mrs. Baxter obliged by fainting first.”

  “Then into the closet and away to do the foul deed?” asked the Sergeant poetically.

  “It would mean,” mused Inspector Queen, “that after stowing Mrs. Baxter in the foyer closet, the real killer went into the kitchen, got the mask, flash, and knife, came back to the living room, tapped John Crombie, led him out to the kitchen, and carved him up. That part of it’s okay—Crombie must have thought he was playing the game—but how about the assault on Mrs. Baxter beforehand? Having to drag her unconscious body to the closet? Wasn’t there any noise, any sound?”

  Ellery said apologetically, “I kept dozing off.”

  But Nikki said. “There was no sound, Inspector. Then or at any other time. The first sound after I turned the light off was John screaming in the kitchen. The only other sound was the murderer throwing the flash into the middle of the room after he. . .she. . .whoever it was. . .got back to the wall.”

  Jerry Baxter raised his sweating face and looked at his wife.

  “Could be,” said the Inspector.

  “Oh, my,” said Sergeant Velie. He was studying the old gentleman as if he couldn’t believe his eyes—or ears.

  “It could be,” remarked Ellery, “or it couldn’t. Edith’s a very small woman. Unconscious, she could be carried noiselessly the few feet in the foyer to the closet. . .by a reasonably strong person.”

  Immediately Ann Crombie and Lucy Trent and Jerry Baxter tried to look tiny and helpless, while Edith Baxter tried to look huge and heavy. But the sisters could not look less tall or soundly made than Nature had fashioned them, and Jerry’s proportions, even allowing for reflexive shrinkage, were elephantine.

  “Nikki,” said Ellery in a very thoughtful way, “you’re sure Edith was the only one to step away from the wall while the light was still on?”

  “Dead sure, Ellery.”

  “And when the one you thought was Edith came back from the kitchen to pick a victim, that person had a full mask on?”

  “You mean after I put the light out? Yes. I could see the mask in the glow the flash made.”

  “Man or woman, Miss P?” interjected the Sergeant eagerly. “This could be a pipe. If it was a man—”

  But Nikki shook her head. “The flash was pretty weak, Sergeant. And we were all in t
hose Black Cat outfits.”

  “Me, I’m no Fancy Dan,” murmured Queen unexpectedly. “A man’s been knocked off. What I want to know is not who was where when, but—who had it in for this character?”

  It was a different sort of shrinkage this time, a shrinkage of four throats. Ellery thought: They all know.

  “Whoever,” he began casually, “whoever knew that John Crombie and Edith Baxter were—”

  “It’s a lie!” Edith was on her feet, swaying, clawing the air. “There was nothing between John and me. Nothing. Nothing! Jerry, don’t believe them!”

  Jerry Baxter looked down at the floor again. “Between?” he mumbled. “I guess I got a head. I guess this has got me.” And, strangely, he looked not at his wife but at Ann Crombie. “Ann. . .?”

  But Ann was jelly-lipped with fear.

  “Nothing!” screamed Jerry’s wife.

  “That’s not true.” And now it was Lucy’s turn, and they saw that she had been shocked into a sort of suicidal courage. “John was a. . .a. . .John made love to every woman he met. John made love to me—”

  “To you?” Ann blinked and blinked at her sister.

  “Yes. He was. . .disgusting. I. . .” Lucy’s eyes flamed at Edith Baxter with scorn, with loathing, with contempt. “But you didn’t find him disgusting, Edith.”

  Edith glared back, giving hate for hate.

  “You spent four weekends with him, And the other night, at that dinner party, when you two stole off—you thought I didn’t hear—but you were both tight. . .You begged him to marry you.”

  “You nasty little blabbermouth,” said Edith in a low voice.

  “I heard you. You said you’d divorce Jerry if he’d divorce Ann. And John kind of laughed at you, didn’t he?—as if you were dirt. And I saw your eyes, Edith. . .”

  And now they, too, saw Edith Baxter’s eyes—as they really were.

  “I never told you, Ann. I couldn’t. I couldn’t. . .” Lucy began to sob into her hands.

  Jerry Baxter got up.

  “Here, where d’ye think you’re going?” asked the Sergeant, not unkindly.

  Jerry Baxter sat down again.

  “Mrs. Crombie, did you know what was going on?” asked Inspector Queen sympathetically.

  It was queer how she would not look at Edith Baxter, who was sitting lumpily now, no threat to anyone—a soggy old woman.

  And Ann said, stiff and tight, “Yes, I knew.” Then her mouth loosened again and she said wildly, “I knew, but I’m a coward. I couldn’t face him with it. I thought if I shut my eyes—”

  “So do I,” said Ellery tiredly.

  “What?” said Inspector Queen, turning around. “You what, son? I didn’t get you.”

  “I know who cut Crombie’s throat. . .”

  They were lined up facing the far wall of the living room—Ann Crombie, Lucy Trent, Edith Baxter, and Jerry Baxter—with a space the breadth of a man, and a little more, between the Baxters. Nikki stood at the light switch, the Inspector and Sergeant Velie blocked the archway, and Ellery sat on a hassock in the center of the room, his hands dangling listlessly.

  “This is how we were arranged a couple of hours ago, Dad, except that I was at the wall, too, and so was John Crombie. . .in that vacant space.”

  Inspector Queen said nothing.

  “The light was still on, as it is now. Nikki had just asked Murderer to step away from the wall and cross the room—that is, towards where you are now. Do it, Edith.”

  “You mean—”

  “Please.”

  Edith Baxter backed from the wall and turned and slowly picked her way around the overturned furniture. Near the archway she paused, an arm’s length from the Inspector and the Sergeant.

  “With Edith about where she is now, Nikki, in the full light, instructed her about going to the kitchen, getting the mask, flash, and knife there, coming back in the dark with the flash, selecting a victim, and so on. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you turned off the light, Nikki—didn’t you?”

  “Yes. . .”

  “Do it.”

  “D-do it, Ellery?”

  “Do it, Nikki.”

  When the darkness closed down, someone at the wall gasped. And then the silence closed down, too.

  And after a moment Ellery’s voice came tiredly, “It was at this point, Nikki, that you said ‘Stop!’ to Edith Baxter and gave her a few additional instructions. About what to do after the ‘crime.’ As I pointed out a few minutes ago, Dad—it was during this interval, with Edith standing in the archway getting Nikki’s afterthoughts, and the room in darkness, that the real murderer must have stolen across the living room from the wall, got past Nikki and Edith and into the foyer, and waited there to ambush Edith.”

  “Sure, son,” said the Inspector. “So what?”

  “How did the murderer manage to cross this room in pitch-darkness without making any noise?”

  At the wall Jerry Baxter said hoarsely, “Look, I don’t have to stand here. I don’t have to!”

  “Because, you know,” said Ellery reflectively, “there wasn’t any noise. None at all. In fact, Nikki, you actually remarked in that interval, ‘I want the room to be as quiet as it is this minute.’ And only a few moments ago you corroborated yourself when you told Dad that the first sound after you turned off the light was John screaming in the kitchen. You said that the only other sound was the sound of the flashlight landing in the middle of the room after the murderer got back to the wall. So I repeat: How did the murderer cross in darkness without making a sound?”

  Sergeant Velie’s disembodied bass complained from the archway that he didn’t get it at all, at all.

  “Well, Sergeant, you’ve seen this room—it’s cluttered crazily with overturned furniture, pillows, hassocks, miscellaneous objects. Do you think you could cross it in darkness without sounding like the bull in the china shop? Nikki, when you and I first got here and blundered into the living room—”

  “In the dark,” cried Nikki. “We bumped. I actually fell—”

  “Why didn’t the murderer?”

  “I’ll tell you why,” said Inspector Queen suddenly. “Because no one did cross this room in the dark. It can’t be done without making a racket, or without a light—and there was no light at that time or Nikki’d have seen it.”

  “Then how’s it add up, Inspector?” asked Velie.

  “There’s only one person we know who crossed this room, the one Nikki saw cross while the light was on, the one they found in the closet in a Taint,’ Velie. Edith Baxter!”

  She sounded nauseated. “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes, Mrs. Baxter,” the Inspector went on. “It’s been you all the time. You did get to the kitchen. You got the mask, the flash, the knife. You came back and tapped John Crombie. You led him out to the kitchen and there you sliced him—”

  “No!”

  “Then you quietly got into that closet and pulled a phony faint, and waited for them to find you so you could tell that cock-and-bull story of being ambushed in the foyer—”

  “Dad,” sighed Ellery.

  “Huh?” And because the old man’s memory of similar moments was very green, his tone became truculent. “Now tell me I’m wrong, Ellery!”

  “Edith Baxter is the one person present tonight who couldn’t have killed John Crombie.”

  Edith moaned.

  “Nikki actually saw somebody with a flash return to the living room after Crombie’s death scream, go to the wall, turn off the flash, and she heard that person hurl it into the middle of the room. Who was it Nikki saw and heard? We’ve deduced that already—the actual murderer. Immediately after that, Nikki turned up the lights.

  “If Edith Baxter were the murderer, wouldn’t we have found her at the wall with the rest of us when the lights went on? But she wasn’t. She wasn’t in the living room at all. We found her in the foyer closet. So she had been attacked. She did faint. She didn’t kill Crombie.”—They could hear
her sobbing.

  “Then who did?” barked the Inspector.

  “The one who was able to cross the room in the dark without making any noise. For if Edith is innocent, one of those at the wall must be guilty. And that one had to cross the room.”

  “But how, son, how?” bellowed his father. “It couldn’t be done without knocking something over—making some noise!”

  “Only one possible explanation,” said Ellery tiredly; and then he said, not tiredly at all, but swiftly and with the slashing finality of a knife, “I thought you’d try that. That’s why I sat on the hassock, so very tired. That’s why I staged this whole. . .silly. . .scene.”

  Velie was roaring, “Where the hell are the lights? Miss Porter, turn that switch on, will you?”

  “I can’t find the—the damned thing!” wept Nikki.

  “The rest of you stay where you are!” shouted the Inspector.

  “Now drop the knife,” said Ellery, in the slightly gritty tone of one who is exerting pressure. “Drop it. . .” There was a little clatter, and then a whimper. “The only one who could have passed through this jumbled maze in the dark without stumbling over anything,” Ellery went on, “would be someone who’d plotted a route through this maze in advance of the party. . .someone, in fact, who’d plotted the maze. In other words, the clutter in this room is not chance confusion, but a deliberate plant. It would require photographing the details of the obstacle course on the memory, and practice, plenty of practice—but we were told you spent the entire day in this suite alone, fixing it up for the party.”

  “Here!” sobbed Nikki, and she jabbed the light switch.

  “I imagine,” said Ellery gently to the girl in his grip, “you felt someone had to avenge the honor of the Trents, Lucy.”

  ABOUT ELLERY QUEEN

  Ellery Queen is the pseudonym of Frederic Dannay and his cousin the late Manfred B. Lee, both of whom were born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1905. In 1928, attracted by a $7,500 prize in a mystery-novel contest sponsored by McClure’s magazine, they worked nights and weekends for six months, producing the novel which won the contest.