A Fine and Private Place

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 number 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.

“And again. The number of the killer’s blows with the sculpture as his not-so-blunt instrument. We kept saying he struck 9 blows. We were wrong. The killer struck 10 blows. The blow to the wrist, to stop the watch at the phony time, according to Dr. Prouty was not a glance-off from one of the 9 blows to the head but a separate blow, in his opinion not even delivered by the same weapon. Red herring again.”

Inspector Queen muttered, “There were lots more 9s,” and then he looked about him guiltily.

“It’s all right, dad, there’s no point in still keeping it a secret. So we come to the anonymous letters, with their contents.”

“Hold on there, Queen!” the assistant D.A. said. He was standing behind Virginia and Peter, and he jabbed his forefingers meaningly in their direction.

“I said it’s all right, Mr. Rankin. I should explain,” Ellery continued, turning to Virginia and Peter, “that my father was in receipt of a series of anonymous messages at Police Headquarters which were kept secret from all but a handful of officials.”

“Now you’ve tied it,” Rankin said angrily. “I was against this from the start, and I told the D.A. so!”

Ellery paid no attention to him.

“Some of the envelopes from the killer-the 9-signifi-cance of some of the messages made it obvious that they were sent by the Importuna killer-some of them contained playing cards, one whole card or one-half card to a message. Clearly they were intended to convey a meaning. Meanings are conveyed by playing cards, of course, in fortune-telling. I chose to interpret the cards according to a popular fortune-telling system. But the fact is there are a number of fortune-telling systems, in each of which individual cards can have entirely different meanings. The sender of the cards never specified or even hinted at which interpretive system was to be used. So the meanings I ascribed to them were purely arbitrary and for that reason not necessarily relevant. Red herrings, like the zip code numbers of the post offices he picked to mail the envelopes from, which added up to 9s.

“Even the quantity of messages was a sham. True, 9 were received. But then a 10th arrived, compromising the magic number. Red herrings.

“In five of the envelopes there were verbal messages. One stated that a boyhood friend of Importuna’s had grown up to become a justice of the Supreme Court. The 9-significance of the United States Supreme Court is known to every schoolchild. The trouble was, an exhaustive inquiry failed to turn up such a boyhood friend-or any such friend-of Nino’s. The message was simply false. Or, in Chesterton’s word, sham. In your words, dad, red herring.

“The same proved true of the other four worded messages. One stated that in his youth Nino Importuna had played semiprofessional baseball for the Binghamton, New York, team. Only it wasn’t so. Another said that his Palm Springs estate included a golf course-another connotation of 9, from either a 9-hole course or an 18-hole, a multiple of 9. Only neither proved to be true. There was no golf course at all on the Importuna Palm Springs property.

“Another message-forgive me for mentioning it, Mrs. Importuna-alleged Importuna’s fondness for a cat-o’-nine-tails. Mrs. Importuna assured me that it wasn’t true, and no evidence of any sexual aberration could be found.

“Then there was the message about Importuna’s having commissioned the sculpting of the 9 Muses for his villa in Lugano. You, Peter, emphatically denied this, telling me it was just the sort of assignment it was your job to oversee, yet you knew nothing about any such commission. There would have been no point in your lying about it, because the simplest investigation would turn up the sculptor of such a project if the message were telling the truth. The official investigation, in fact, found no trace of such a person.

“So the 9 messages were either irrelevant or false. I was trying to eliminate the sham clues, remember, to discover which 9-clue was not a sham, was not a red herring. And here I was faced with the dismaying conclusion that all the 9s were red herrings!-certainly all that had the least smack of importance. Nino could sign contracts on the 9th, the 18th, or the 27th of the month, or refuse to close a deal except on such dates, or arrange to be married on the 9th day of the 9th month for luck, or falsify his birth date to make it drip 9s, but the 9-isms like these were not really clues. They were things that Importuna, not his killer, had elected to do. I had set out to find a legitimate 9-ism relating to the killer, and here I was with nothing left in the net. Until suddenly that was no longer true. I had eliminated every 9-clue, I then saw,” Ellery said, “except one.”

This was the climax of his carefully plotted scene, and Ellery played it as he had played similar scenes at similar climaxes, holding them with a glittering eye, using his voice as if it were a foil, dominating them with his presence, threatening them with a stabbing forefinger.

“Except one,” he repeated. “One 9 was real. One 9 was not a red herring.

“It was the last 9-ism of the series, emerging as a result of message number 10.

“This unexpected, 9-total-breaking final message, Mrs. Importuna, was the basis of the question I asked you about your luncheon date with Peter Ennis on December 9, 1966.” Virginia flinched, then braced herself with a scornful look. “I’m sorry, but I have no choice. I told you that I couldn’t promise to keep your diary in confidence from the authorities if I found it contained information pertinent to the case.”

“Information? What information?” Inspector Queen was bristling. And Assistant District Attorney Rankin was jotting away at a tremendous pace.

“Mrs. Importuna has kept a diary from girlhood, dad. She was kind enough to let me read her entry for December 9, 1966. From that entry I learned that in the course of her lunch that day-it was with Ennis-a 9-ism cropped up. It was this.” Ellery leaned forward. “That Virginia’s and Nino’s prenuptial agreement had exactly 9 more months to run-9 months from that day, December 9, 1966, to September 9, 1967, which was the cutoff date specified in the agreement for Mrs. Importuna to become her husband’s sole heir.

“Now that 9-month-to-the-day period was no invention of somebody’s, no sham, no red herring. That 9 months was a fact. And it was a significant fact. Because if someone wanted Virginia to inherit her husband’s half-billion-dollar estate, he had to wait 9 months before her claim to it became a legal, if potential, reality.

“In a grimly real sense this whole unavoidable 9-month waiting period resembles a pregnancy. Conception occurs on December 9, 1966. There are 9 months of gestation. Then on September 9, 1967, the child is born, the monstrous child, and its name is murder. Why, even the forceps used in its delivery bears the label Newborn Child Emerging.”

Ellery paused for breath, and they hitched forward, even Rankin in his corner, to urge him on.

“Let’s consider the occasion of what I’ve called the conception, that lunch in a hideaway restaurant on December 9th of last year. I was looking for a clue, remember, that in some way involved the killer. I had to ask myself, was there anything about that lunch the killer might have reason to dread? Well, what about the fact of the meeting itself? Suppose Virginia’s and Peter’s appearance in public, their only indiscretion as far as the outside world was concerned, were to become known? Suppose they had been seen and their conversation overheard? For if it became known that Virginia Importuna and Peter Ennis, her husband’s confidential secretary, were having an affair, if it became known that because of her prenuptial agreement Virginia couldn’t leave or divorce her husband without losing everything, if it became known that Peter had to wait 9 months for Virginia to become Importuna’s heir-from these simple facts all the rest… the conception of Importuna’s murder, the gestation of the murder plot, and the birth, the fruition, of the crime… could be deduced by anyone with an IQ of 100. And that was a mortal danger to the plotter. That was the 9-fact he tried to bury in that barrage of sham 9s he bombarded us with after the rr.urder was born.”

Inspector Queen had begun to develop a pinched and greenish expression about the mouth, as if he were trying without success to ignore an extremely bad taste.

“To wrap this up,” Ellery continued with an encouraging smile at his father-Courage! Fear not!-”let me explain what I mean by the period of gestation. The plotter, as I said, had to wait 9 months before Virginia could come into Importuna’s estate, after which he would kill Importuna. Why not use that 9-month waiting period to the best possible advantage? After all, on December 9th of last year Nino Importuna owned only a third of the family fortune. But if Nino’s two brothers were to die in the meantime… So he murdered Julio and framed Marco for it, thus counting on being rid of both.

“The frame-up wasn’t quite successful, but Marco was so obliging as to commit suicide, the police concluded that this constituted in effect a confession that Marco had killed Julio and hanged himself in remorse; the net effect to the plotter was perfectly satisfactory. Both younger brothers were dead, he-the plotter-killer-was unsuspected, and Nino’s fortune was tripled. So that when that September day rolled around on which Virginia became Nino’s legal heir, the final act-the killing of Nino-would bring the killer a half-billion-dollar fortune. Not directly, of course, but through his tie with you, Virginia. Because I’m positive you and he have long since made plans to marry-”

“Not directly? Marry?” Peter Ennis was on his feet, looking suddenly formidable. “What in hell are you hinting at, Queen?”

Ellery frowned. Virginia was smiling.

“If you’ll allow me to finish, Peter,” he said, “you’ll find it’s rather more than a hint.”

“You don’t have to hint, old boy. What you’re doing or are about to do is accuse me of having plotted to kill Virginia’s husband beginning 9 months before the actual murder and, during those 9 months, of having got rid of Julio and Marco in order to triple Virginia’s inheritance when she should come into it. Right? And I’m supposed to have done all this in the expectation of marrying her and so getting control of the Importuna fortune?”

“Very well put, Peter,” Ellery said. “That’s just what I’m accusing you of.”

Peter grinned. He glanced at Virginia, whose smile became a tittery sort of giggle.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Queen,” she said, “this is so rude of me. And you are doing your best.”

“What do you mean?” Ellery demanded, reddening. “Have I said something funny?”

“You sure have,” Peter said. “Hilarious. I take it if I can prove I couldn’t have killed Nino Importuna I’m off your stupid hook?”

“Peter, now, really,” Virginia chided him. “That’s not a nice way to talk to Mr. Queen. I’m sure he’s done the very best anyone could expect.”

“So did the snake in the Garden of Eden! I don’t exactly enjoy being suspected of murder, darlin’. Well, Queen, do you want the proof?”

“Of course.” Ellery was standing there looking like a small boy who has just awakened from a delicious dream to find himself soaked to the skin.

“Inspector Queen, when exactly was Nino murdered?” Peter Ennis demanded. “Lay it out for us again. What time of night?”

“Just past midnight of September 9th-10th.” The Inspector avoided Ellery’s piteous glance. “About 12:15 a.m. of, technically, the 10th of September.”

“Be sure to take this all down, Mr. Rankin. It’s the stopper to that arrest order you’ve probably got burning a hole in your pocket.

“Nino Importuna, Virginia, and I had dinner together in the penthouse that evening-the evening of the 9th-as we told you people long ago. Toward the end of the dinner Nino complained of not feeling well, as you know, and he went to his room after telling us to eat the chef’s special dessert without him. Virginia and I did so, and I immediately left. What I didn’t testify to was that when I drove to my apartment I changed my clothes, threw a toothbrush and pajamas into my briefcase, and drove back to the vicinity of 99 East. Virginia was waiting for me at our prearranged spot-”

“How did she do that without being seen leaving the building?” Ellery jeered.

“Let me, Peter,” Virginia said, “since it’s me Mr. Queen’s talking about. It was really quite simple, Mr. Queen. The building next door is flush against ours, and just one story lower. There’s a steel ladder on our roof that can be lowered to theirs in an emergency. I’d purposely dressed in a dark slack suit. I lowered the ladder, climbed down to the other roof, got into their elevator, which is self-service, and simply rode down to the street. They don’t have a night doorman or a security guard. I got back to the penthouse later the same way, just pulling the ladder back up when I was on our roof.”

Ellery sat down on Importuna’s bed. It was less a sitting down than a collapse.

Peter Ennis said with some satisfaction, “We drove up to Connecticut-New Milford, Queen. Registered there in a motel under the names of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Angelo-Virginia thought that sounded romantic. The trip up took two hours of fast driving-I don’t see how anyone could make it in less time in a car. We checked into the motel just about 11 p.m.-their records should show the time to the minute, because they use a time-and-dating machine on the slips. Even if we’d left the place immediately and driven back to the city, we couldn’t possibly have reached 99 East before 1 a.m., which would have made it almost an hour after Nino was murdered. As it is, we didn’t actually check out until around 1:30 a.m.-you’ll find the exact time recorded up there. I dropped Virginia off at the building next door at 3:30 a.m. and drove on to my apartment.

“I should make the point, I suppose,” Peter went on, looking them in the eyes, “that the reason we didn’t tell the truth about that night until you just made it impossible for us not to, Queen, was that we didn’t expect anyone really to understand how much we’ve been in love for so long, that it’s been the real thing for both of us, that we couldn’t face having it cheapened further-it was cheapened enough in our own eyes by the circumstances.

“Now that I’ve said it,” Peter said, “you’ll want to know the name of the motel-”

“We know the name of the motel,” Inspector Queen said. “It’s been checked out, Ellery-not only the registration and departure times, but also positive IDs of Ennis and Mrs. Importuna from photos we showed the night clerk who saw them come and go. I didn’t get the chance to tell you, son, in the rush today.”

“But you must have known what I had in mind when I set this up, dad,” Ellery said wildly. He was clutching the edge of Importuna’s bed with both hands as if it were the edge of a precipice.

“Not really, son. You were pretty mysterious about what you had in mind. I thought you’d be pulling the rabbit out of your hat as usual, one of your magic tricks that turn a case upside down the way you’ve done so often. Ellery, if you can’t disprove the alibi, these people are in the clear. And you can’t. Why do you think those subpoenas weren’t served? On the evidence, neither Mrs. Importuna nor Ennis could physically have been here at the time Importuna was attacked and murdered.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Queen, I really am,” Virginia murmured again, as if she would happily have confessed to the crime if only to save Ellery from further embarrassment.

“I’m sure you’ll figure out the real answer one of these days.”

Mercifully, Ellery was not listening. He was mumbling to himself. He was mumbling, “Those 9s. Those damn 9s. They’ve got to be the key to this nightmare. But what?”

“Where you went wrong, son,” the Inspector said later that night, over Ellery’s favorite pastrami sandwiches and celery tonic from the kosher delicatessen around the corner, “was in not spotting the big hole in your argument.”

“Hole?” He was chewing away at the Rumanian delicacy, but only out of respect for tradition. “What hole?”

“If Peter Ennis had been the killer, then he sent that final anonymous letter, number 10. But if he was the guilty party that’s the last thing he’d have done. The message instructed us to find out who’d had lunch with Virginia on that certain date… the date that, according to you, began the 9-month waiting period till Virginia could come into Importuna’s estate. Well, that’s the one thing the killer couldn’t possibly have wanted us to find out-the one thing he was trying his damnedest to hide by throwing all those 9s at us! You didn’t think it through far enough, Ellery. As I said, about the only one in the world who wouldn’t have sent that 10th message was Peter Ennis, if he’d been guilty.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” Ellery muttered. “How could I have made a slip like that? It’s ridiculous… But dad, there’s something Virginia recorded Peter as having said to her that afternoon-I think while he was putting her into a cab right after lunch-something that’s stuck in my craw ever since she let me read her diary.”

“What was that?”

“She wrote that he said, ‘There’s only one thing for me to do and, by God, when the time is ripe I’m going to do it.’ Certainly Virginia made no bones about what she thought Peter meant. And I interpreted it the same way: That when the 9 months were up and Virginia’s inheritance was safely hers by will or however, Peter was going to put Importuna out of the way.”

“Son, all that young fellow probably meant was that one of those days he was going to screw up his courage and have a talk with the old guy-stand up like a man to the hubby of the woman he loved and admit what had been going on, and try to convince him to give Virginia her freedom. She let her imagination run away with her, and so did you.”

Ellery made a face, as if he had found a German roach scuttling across his plate. It was not impossible, even the best of New York apartments being what they were, although in this case it happened not to be so.

He set the unfinished pastrami sandwich on the plate and said, “I don’t know what I’m eating this for. I’m not hungry. I’ll clean up, dad.”

The sandwich, like his theory, wound up in the garbage.