A Fine and Private Place

by Ellery Queen

  “Now the brothers share the services of a confidential secretary, a fellow named Ennis, Peter Ennis, good-looking guy who’s got to be mighty sharp or he wouldn’t be holding down a job like that-”

  “Confidential secretary could covei a lot of territory. Just what does Ennis handle for the brothers?”

  “Their personal affairs mostly, he says, although of course, with the brothers operating so much from their homes I don’t see how Ennis could fail to get in on some of the business shenanigans, too. Anyway, this morning, early-”

  “Are all the brothers married?”

  “Nino. The other two are single. Do you want me to get to the murder or don’t you?”

  “I’m nothing but ears.”

  “When Ennis showed up for work this morning, he made his rounds of the three apartments, he says, the way he always does, to get squared away for the day. He found Julio, who’s the youngest brother, dead. Bloody dead-a real mess.”

  “Where did he find him?”

  “In Julio’s apartment, the library there. Importunato had his head beaten in. I mean he was zonked. Just one sock, but it was a beaut-clobbered his brains into mush. On that side, anyway. It’s a nasty homicide, Ellery, and considering the murderee is one of the ruling dynasty of the Importuna empire, it’s a sizzler. The shock waves… “ Inspector Queen gulped generously.

  “What shock waves?”

  “Didn’t you listen to the six o’clock news?”

  “I haven’t turned the radio on all week. What happened?”

  “Julio Importunato’s murder rocked the stock market. Not only Wall Street-the money markets of Europe, too. That was the first aftereffect. The second came down from the commissioner. He’s putting the squeeze on, son-so is the mayor-and I’m one of those caught between the nutcrackers.”

  “Damn.” Ellery shafted a malevolent glance at his stubborn typewriter. “And? Well?”

  “On second thought, what’s the point? It’s no use, Ellery. You go on back to your work.” The Inspector made a rather theatrical move to rise. “I’ll manage. Somehow.”

  “You know, you can be an exasperating old man?” Ellery exclaimed. “What do you mean, it’s no use? There’s always a ‘use’! But I can’t be of use if you keep me in ignorance. What are the facts? Are there any clues?”

  “Oh. Well, yes. At least two.” He stopped.

  “And?” Ellery snapped after a while. “Specify!”

  “In fact,” the Inspector replied joylessly, “they both point straight at the killer.”

  “They do? At whom?”

  “Marco.”

  “His brother?”

  “Right.”

  “Then what’s the problem? I don’t understand, dad. You’re acting as if you’re stumped, and in the same breath you say you have a couple of clues that link the victim’s brother directly to the crime!”

  “That’s correct.”

  “But… For heaven’s sake, what kind of clues are they?”

  “The open-and-shut kind. The real old-fashioned variety, you’d have to call ‘em. The kind,” Inspector Queen said, shaking his mustache, “you mystery writers wouldn’t be caught dead putting in one of your stories in this day and age.”

  “All right, you’ve whipped my interest to a bloody froth,” Ellery said in a grim voice. “Now let’s get down to cases. What-precisely-are these open-and-shut, old-fashioned, downright corny clues?”

  “From the condition in which we found Julio’s library, there’d been a fight, a violent struggle. Real donnybrook. Well, we found on the scene a button-”

  “What kind of button?”

  “Solid gold. Monogram MI on it.”

  “Identified as Marco Importunato’s?”

  “Identified as Marco Importunato’s. Threads still hanging from it. That’s clue the first.”

  “Button,” Ellery repeated. “Buttons-found-on-scene-of-crime went out with spats and Hoover collars. And the other clue?”

  “Went out with zoot suits.”

  “But what is it?”

  Inspector Queen said, “A footprint.”

  “Footprint! You mean of a naked foot?”

  “Of a shoe. A man’s shoe.”

  “Where was it found?”

  “Dead man’s library. Scene of the homicide.”

  “But… And you tied the print into Marco?”

  “We sure did.”

  “A button and a footprint,” Ellery said, marveling. “In the year 1967! Well, I suppose anything’s possible. A time warp, or something. But if it’s that pat, dad, what’s bothering you?”

  “It isn’t that pat.”

  “But I thought you said-”

  “I told you. It’s very complicated.”

  “Complicated how? By what?”

  The old man set his empty glass on the floor, where presumably it could be more conveniently kicked. Ellery watched him with sharpening suspicion.

  “I’m sincerely sorry I told you anything about it,” his father said sincerely, and rose. “Let’s forget it, son. I mean, you forget it.”

  “Thanks a heap! How do I do that? It’s apparently one of those lovely deceptive ones that only appears to be a simple case. Therefore… “

  The “Yes?” came out of the Inspector’s birdy face like an impatient twitter.

  “I’ve suddenly come down with a recurrence of my old enteric fever. You know, dad, the aftermath of the jezail bullet that grazed my subclavian artery and shattered my shoulder at the battle of Maiwand?”

  “Shattered your shoulder?” his father cried. “What bullet grazed your artery? At which battle?”

  “I’ll consequently have to notify my publisher that there will be a slight delay in the delivery of my next book. After all, what difference can it make to anyone there? It’s probably wandering around somewhere on their schedule, hopelessly lost. Nobody in the publishing profession pays any attention whatever to a mystery writer except when banking the profits from his mean endeavors. We’re the ditchdiggers of literature.”

  “Ellery, I don’t want to be the cause of-”

  “You’ve already said that. Of course you do, or you’d have swallowed a few mouthfuls of Fabby’s well-meant swill and crept into bed without my being aware you’d even come home. And why not? There are heavyweight VIPs involved, the crunch is on downtown, you’re not getting any younger, and did I ever leave you in the lurch? Now let’s get to it.”

  “You really want to, son?”

  “I thought I’d just said so.”

  A beautiful change came over Inspector Queen. The relief map of his face turned into a map of relief.

  “In that case,” he cried, “you get your jacket!”

  Ellery rose to oblige. “Where to?”

  “Lab.”

  * * *

  A sergeant, Joe Voytershack, one of the Technical Services Bureau’s most reliable men, was/ on overtime duty tonight, by which Ellery gauged the importance of the case in the eyes of the budget-conscious brass. Sergeant Voytershack was studying a button under his loupe. The button was of gold, and a clump of navy blue threads protruded from it.

  “What’s the problem, Joe?” Inspector Queen asked. “I thought you’d finished with the button.”

  “I had.”

  “Then why are you examining it again?”

  “Because,” Sergeant Voytershack said sourly, “I’m goddam unhappy about it. Because I don’t like this button. Because I don’t like it from bupkes. And I don’t see you leaping for joy, either, Inspector.”

  “Ellery wants a look.”

  “Hello, Joe,” Ellery said.

  “Be my guest.” The sergeant handed him the loupe and the button.

  Ellery peered.

  “I thought, dad, you said this button was torn off during a struggle.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Not exactly. But I naturally assumed-”

  “I think you’re going to find out, my son,” Inspector Queen said, “that in this case as
sumptions are kind of risky. What I said was that there were indications of a violent struggle, which there are, and that we found a gold button on the scene, which we did. I didn’t say one necessarily had to do with the other. Just for ducks, Ellery: What do you see?”

  “I see a clump of threads of identical length, with very sharp, clean ends. If the button had been yanked off during a struggle-that is, by hand-the lengths of the threads would vary and the ends, instead of being sharp and clean, would be ragged. This button was snipped off whatever it was attached to by a sharp-edged instrument, a scissors or knife, more likely a scissors.”

  “Right,” said Sergeant Voytershack.

  “Right,” said Inspector Queen.

  “Was it found in the dead man’s hand?”

  “It was found on the dead man’s floor.”

  Ellery shrugged. “Not that it would change the picture if you’d found it in his hand. The fact is, someone cut this button off something belonging to Marco Importunato. Since it was found on the scene of the murder, the indicated conclusion is that it was planted there for the benefit of you gents of the fuzz. Somebody doesn’t care for Brother Marco, either.”

  “Yes, sir, you just hit a couple of nails,” his father said. “Turning what looked at first like a nice clean clue against Marco into a dirty frame-up of Marco. See? Simple into not so simple.”

  Ellery scowled. He picked the button up by its rim and turned it over. The relief design on its face formed a conventional frame of crossed anchors and hawsers, with the initials MI in an elaborate intertwine engraved within the frame.

  He set the button down and turned to the technical man. “Was a cast made from the shoeprint, sergeant? I’d like to see it.”

  Voytershack shook his grizzled head. “Didn’t the Inspector describe it to you?”

  “Didn’t tell him a bloody thing about it,” the old man said. “I don’t want to influence his impressions.”

  The sergeant handed Ellery a number of photographs. They were largely close-ups, from various angles, of the same object, which was lying on what appeared to be a short-piled rug.

  “What is that material the shoeprint shows up on?” Ellery asked. “Looks like ashes.”

  “It is ashes,” Voytershack said.

  “What kind?”

  “Cigar.”

  There was a great deal of it. In one picture, taken at slightly longer range, a large glass ashtray in what seemed to be an ebony holder was visible on the rug a foot or so from the ash deposit. The ashtray lay face down.

  “Whose cigars?” Ellery asked. “Do you have a make on that?”

  “They’re from the same cigars the boys found in a humidor on the murdered guy’s desk,” the sergeant said. “Prime Cuban. The finest.”

  “The tray must have been piled pretty high to have dumped this much ash when it overturned.”

  “They all claim Julio was a cigar chain-smoker,” Inspector Queen said. “And the maid hadn’t yet cleaned up his library this morning from yesterday.”

  “So presumably the tray was knocked off the desk in the struggle?”

  “That’s the way it figures. Joe’ll show you the series of photos of the room. Chairs and lamps knocked over, a 200-year old Chinese vase smashed to bits, a rack of fire tools upset-one of them, a hefty three-foot trident-type poker, was the murder weapon-an antique taboret squashed to kindling wood where somebody must have fallen on it-as I told you back home, a donnybrook. What do you make of the shoeprint, Ellery?”

  “Man’s right shoe, smallish size-I’d estimate no more than an eight, could even be a seven. The sole is rippled. Might be of crepe. Certainly a sports shoe of some type. Also, diagonally down the length of the sole there’s something that looks like a deep cut in the crepe. It’s definitely not part of the design of the sole. The cut crosses four consecutive ripples of the crepe at an acute angle. Dad, this should have made identification a kindergarten exercise. That is, if you found the shoe.”

  “Oh, it was, and we did,” the Inspector said. “The shoe-a yachting shoe, by the way, and crepe-soled, as you say-was found on the 9th floor of 99 East, in a shoe rack of the east apartment’s dressing room adjoining the master bedroom. Size about 71/oC. Fits the imprint in the ashes like a glove. And with a cut in the sole positioned exactly as in the ashes, crossing the same four ripples at the same angle.”

  “Marco Importunato’s apartment. His shoe.”

  “Marco’s apartment, his shoe. Right.”

  “Joe, do you have the shoe here?”

  Sergeant Voytershack produced it. It was a common navy blue sports oxford with the characteristic thick crepe sole. Ellery studied the crosscut.

  “May I have a caliper or a tongs, Joe-something to pry the edges of the cut apart?”

  Voytershack handed him a tool and a magnifying glass. The two officers watched without expression. Ellery separated the lips of the cut and peered into its vitals through the glass.

  He looked up with a nod. “Can’t be much doubt. The cut down the sole looks fresh-definitely not an old cut; in fact, it was made very recently. And I don’t see how a slash of this length and uniform depth could have been the result of stepping on something, unless the wearer of the shoe was doing a balancing act on an ax blade. So the cut across these ripples in the crepe was made deliberately. And since this is a mass-produced sports shoe obtainable almost anywhere, making it hard to trace, the purpose of the cut can only have been for identification-to connect the distinctive print the shoe left in the cigar ashes with the specific shoe belonging to Marco Importunato. In other words-again-to frame Marco for his brother Julio’s murder. Has Marco been questioned yet?”

  “Very delicately,” Inspector Queen said. “Sort of in passing. In this case, we decided, haste makes headaches. We’re sort of feeling our way around.”

  Ellery set Marco Importunato’s shoe down. Sergeant Voytershack carefully stowed it away.

  “And that’s the extent of the case against Marco?” Ellery asked. “The gold button? The shoeprint?”

  His father said, “He’s also left-handed.”

  “Left-handed? Impossible. Nobody stoops to using left-handed murderers anymore.’”

  “In mystery stories.”

  “There’s a clue to left-handedness?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The crime could have been committed by a left-handed man.”

  “And I suppose all the other suspects are right-handed?”

  “I don’t know about all the suspects-’all’ covers a lot of ground, and we haven’t even scratched the surface of the potentials. For what it’s worth, Marco’s brothers, Julio who was the victim and Nino who heads the whole shebang, were… are… whatever the devil it is!-both right-handed.”

  “Why do you say the crime could have been committed by a southpaw? Where’s the clue to that?”

  Inspector Queen’s chin jerked at the sergeant. In silence Voytershack handed Ellery a portfolio of photographs.

  The Inspector tapped the uppermost photo. “You tell me.”

  It showed a corner of a room.

  The picture was not a sample of the lensman’s art by any criterion of esthetics. There was a long desk, heavy-looking, with an oak grain in a feudal finish, extensively carved. A man, or what had been a man, was seated in what appeared to be a swivel chair, midway behind the desk. The view was from across the desk, facing the dead man. The upper torso and head lay fallen forward on the desk top, and one side of the head was caved in.

  The large desk blotter and some papers scattered on the desk-fortuitously, one of them on the squashed side was a newspaper-had sopped up most of the blood and brain matter. That entire side-of the head, the shoulder, the desk-was a continuous ruin.

  “From the wound,” Ellery said, making a face, “a single blow, a crusher; had to have been full arm. A home run in any park.” He snapped a fingertip at the color print. “Question: If there was a battle royal bet
ween Julio and his killer of sufficient violence to shatter vases and break furniture, how come Julio was found seated more or less peaceably behind the desk?”

  “We have to figure he lost the fight,” the Inspector said with a shrug. “Killer then forced him to sit down behind the desk, or conned him into it, on what excuse or threat or sweet talk is anybody’s guess. Maybe to talk over their differences, whatever they were… I mean why they fought in the first place. However the killer managed it, it led to his crowning Julio with the poker. It’s the only theory that makes sense to us. If any of this makes sense.”

  “Any fix on the time of the murder? Did Prouty’s man say?”

  “Prouty’s man? Are you kidding? This one was important enough to bring the eminent Dr. Prouty trotting out in the flesh. Last night around 10 p.m. is Doc’s preliminary estimate.”

  “Didn’t anyone hear the fight?”

  “The servants’ quarters are way to hell and gone at the other end of Julio’s apartment, which goes on forever. And as far as overhearing is concerned, you could stage a kid gang rumble in one of those rooms and nobody’d know it. They built walls that were walls in the days when 99 East was put up, not the cardboard partitions they use today. No, nobody heard the fight.”

  Ellery set the photograph down. Sergeant Voytershack reached for it. But Ellery had already picked it up again. “And Prouty couldn’t be more exact about the time?”

  “Restless, my son?” his father asked. “Doesn’t this case come up to your usual standard? No, Doc couldn’t-not today, anyway. He says he’ll give us, quote, ‘a more accurate stab in the dark,’ unquote, as soon as he can. If he can.”

  “You don’t seem to have much confidence in anything about the case.”

  “And you,” Inspector Queen retorted, “don’t seem in much of a hurry to hold forth on the left-handedness business.”

  Ellery scowled and squinted at the photograph. One of the short ends of the desk met the side wall. The desk’s long dimension was therefore parallel with the rear wall, the one behind the dead man’s chair.