Calendar of Crime

The Adventure of The Dead Cat

The square-cut envelope was a creation of orange ink on black notepaper; by which Ellery instantly divined its horrid authorship. Behind it leered a bouncy hostess, all teeth and enthusiastic ideas, who spent large sums of some embarrassed man’s money to build a better mousetrap.

Having too often been one of the mice, he was grateful that the envelope was addressed to “Miss Nikki Porter.”

“But why to me at your apartment?” wondered Nikki, turning the black envelope over and finding nothing.

“Studied insult,” Ellery assured her. “One of those acid-sweet women who destroy an honest girl’s reputation at a stroke. Don’t even open it. Hurl it into the fire, and let’s get on with the work.”

So Nikki opened it and drew out an enclosure cut in the shape of a cat.

“I am a master of metaphor,” muttered Ellery.

“What?” said Nikki, unfolding the feline.

“It doesn’t matter. But if you insist on playing the mouse, go ahead and read it.” The truth was, he was a little curious himself.

“Fellow Spook,” began Nikki, frowning.

“Read no more. The hideous details are already clear—”

“Oh, shut up,” said Nikki. “There is a secret meeting of The Charmed Circle of Black Cats in Suite 1313, Hotel Chancellor, City, Oct. 31.”

“Of course,” said Ellery glumly. “That follows logically.”

“You must come in full costume as a Black Cat, including domino mask. Time your arrival for 9.05 P.M. promptly. Till the Witching Hour. Signed — G. Host. How darling!”

“No clue to the criminal?”

“No. I don’t recognize the handwriting...”

“Of course you’re not going.”

“Of course I am!”

“Having performed my moral duty as friend, protector, and employer, I now suggest you put the foul thing away and get back to our typewriter.”

“What’s more,” said Nikki, “you’re going, too.”

Ellery smiled his Number Three smile—the toothy one. “Am I?”

“There’s a postscript on the cat’s—on the reverse side. Be sure to drag your boss-cat along, also costumed.”

Ellery could see himself as a sort of overgrown Puss-in-Boots plying the sjambok over a houseful of bounding tabbies all swilling Scotch. The vision was tiring.

“I decline with the usual thanks.”

“You’re a stuffed shirt.”

“I’m an intelligent man.”

“You don’t know how to have fun.”

“These brawls inevitably wind up with someone’s husband taking a poke at a tall, dark, handsome stranger.”

“Coward.”

“Heavens, I wasn’t referring to myself—!”

Whence it is obvious he had already lost the engagement.

Ellery stood before a door on the thirteenth floor of the Hotel Chancellor, cursing the Druids.

For it was Saman at whose mossy feet must be laid the origins of our recurrent October silliness. True, the lighting of ceremonial bonfires in a Gaelic glade must have seemed natural and proper at the time, and a Gaelic grove fitting rendezvous for an annual convention of ghosts and witches; but the responsibility of even pagan deities must surely be held to extend beyond temporal bounds, and the Druid lord of death should have foreseen that a bonfire would be out of place in a Manhattan hotel suite, not to mention disembodied souls, however wicked. Then Ellery recalled that Pomona, goddess of fruits, had contributed nuts and apples to the burgeoning Hallowe’en legend, and he cursed the Romans, too.

There had been Inspector Queen at home, who had intolerably chosen to ignore the whole thing; the taxi driver, who had asked amiably: “Fraternity initiation?”; the dread chorus of miaows during the long, long trek across the Chancellor lobby; and, finally, the reeking wag in the elevator who had tried to swing Ellery around by his tail, puss-pussying obscenely as he did so.

Cried Ellery out of the agony of his mortification: “Never, never, never again will I—”

“Stop grousing and look at this,” said Nikki, peering through her domino mask.

“What is it? I can’t see through this damned thing.”

“A sign on the door. If You Are a Black Cat, Walk In!!!!! With five exclamation points.”

“All right, all right. Let’s go in and get it over with.”

And, of course, when they opened the unlocked door of 1313, Darkness.

And Silence.

“Now what do we do?” giggled Nikki, and jumped at the snick of the door behind them.

“I’ll tell you now what,” said Ellery enthusiastically. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

But Nikki was already a yard away, black in blackness.

“Wait! Give me your hand, Nikki.”

“Mister Queen. That’s not my hand.”

“Beg your pardon,” muttered Ellery. “We seem to be trapped in a hallway...”

“There’s a red light down there! Must be at the end of the hall — eee!”

“Think of the soup this would make for the starving.” Ellery disentangled her from the embrace of some articulated bones.

“Ellery! I don’t think that’s funny at all.”

“I don’t think any of this is funny.”

They groped toward the red light. It was not so much a light as a rosy shade of darkness which faintly blushed above a small plinth of the raven variety. “The woman’s cornered the Black Paper Market,” Ellery thought disagreeably as he read the runes of yellow fire on the plinth:

“And into, I take it,” he growled, “the great unknown.” And, indeed, having explored to the left, his hand encountered outer space; whereupon, intrepidly, and with a large yearning to master the mystery and come to grips with its diabolical authoress, Ellery plunged through the invisible archway, Nikki bravely clinging to his tail.

“Ouch!”

“What’s the matter?” gasped Nikki.

“Bumped into a chair. Skinned my shin. What would a chair be doing—?”

“Pooooor Ellery,” said Nikki, laughing. “Did the dreat bid mad hurt his — Ow!”

“Blast this—Ooo!”

“Ellery, where are you? Ooch!”

“Ow, my foot,” bellowed Ellery from somewhere. “What is this—a tank-trap? Floor cluttered with pillows, hassocks—”

“Something cold and wet over here. Feels like an ice bucket... Owwwww!” There was a wild clatter of metal, a soggy crash, and silence again.

“Nikki! What happened?”

“I fell over a rack of fire tongs, I think,” Nikki’s voice came clearly from floor level. “Yes. Fire tongs.”

“Of all the stupid, childish, unfunny—”

“Oop.”

“Lost in a madhouse. Why is the furniture scattered every which way?”

“How should I know? Ellery, where are you?”

“In Bedlam. Keep your head now, Nikki, and stay where you are. Sooner or later a St. Bernard will find you and bring—”

Nikki screamed.

“Thank God,” said Ellery, shutting his eyes.

The room was full of blessed Consolidated Edison light, and various adult figures in black-cat costumes and masks were leaping and laughing and shouting: “Surpriiiiiise!” like idiot phantoms at the crisis of a delirium.

O Hallowe’en.

“Ann! Ann Trent!” Nikki was squealing. “Oh, Ann, you fool, how ever did you find me?”

“Nikki, you’re looking wonderful. Oh, but you’re famous, darling. The great E. Q.’s secretary...”

Nuts to you, sister. Even bouncier than predicted. With that lazy, hippy strut. And chic, glossy chic. Lugs her sex around like a sample case. Kind of female who would be baffled by an egg. Looks five years older than she is, Antoine notwithstanding.

“But it’s not Trent any more, Nikki—Mrs. John Crombie. Johnnnny!”

“Ann, you’re married? And didn’t invite me to the wedding!”

“Spliced in dear old Lunnon. John’s British—or was. Johnny, stop flirting with Edith Baxter and come here!”

“Ann darlin’ — this exquisite girl! Scotch or bourbon, Nikki? Scotch if you’re the careful type—but bourbon works faster.”

John Crombie, Gent. Eyes of artificial blue, slimy smile, sunlamp complexion, Olivier chin. British Club and Fox and Hounds—he posts even in a living room. He will say in a moment that he loathés Americah. Exactly. Ann Trent Crombie must have large amounts of the filthy. He despises her and patronizes her friends. He will fix me with the superior Mayfair smile and flap a limp brown hand... Quod erat demonstrandum.

“I warn you, Nikki,” Ann Crombie was saying, “I’m hitched to a man who tries to jockey every new female he meets.” Blush hard, prim Nikki. Friends grow in unforeseen directions. “Oh, Lucy! Nikki, do you remember my kid sister Lu—?”

Squeal, squeal. “Lucy Trent! This isn’t you?”

“Am I grown up, Nikki?”

“Heavens!”

“Lucy’s done all the party decorating, darling—spent the whole sordid day up here alone fixing things up. Hasn’t she done an inspired job? But then I’m so useless.”

“Ann means she wouldn’t help, Nikki. Just a lout.”

Uncertain laugh. Poor Lucy. Embarrassed by her flowering youth, trying hard to be New York... There she goes refilling a glass—emptying an ashtray—running out to the kitchen—for a tray of fresh hot pigs-in-blankets? — bong!… the unwanted and gauche hiding confusion by making herself useful. Keep away from your brother-in-law, dear; that’s an upstanding little bosom under the Black Cat’s hide.

“Oh, Ellery, do come here and meet the Baxters. Mrs. Baxter—Edith—Ellery Queen...”

What’s this? A worm who’s turned, surely! The faded-fair type, hard-used by wedlock. Very small, a bit on the spready side—she’d let herself go—but now she’s back in harness again, all curried and combed, with a triumphant lift to her pale head, like an old thoroughbred proudly prancing in a paddock she had never hoped to enter again. And that glitter of secret pleasure in her blinky brown eyes, almost malice, whenever she looked at Ann Crombie...

“Jerry Baxter, Edith’s husband. Ellery Queen.”

“Hiya, son!”

“Hi yourself, Jerry.”

Salesman, or advertising-agency man, or Broadway agent. The life of the party. Three drinks and he’s off to the races. He will be the first to fall in the apple tub, the first to pin the tail on Lucy or Nikki instead of on the donkey, the first to be sick and the first to pass out. Skitter, stagger, sweat, and whoop. Why do you whoop, Jerry Baxter?

Ellery shook hot palms, smiled with what he hoped was charm, said affably: “Yes, isn’t it?” “Haven’t we met somewhere?” “Here, here, that’s fine for now,” and things like that, wondering what he was doing in a hotel living-room festooned with apples, marshmallows, nuts, and crisscrossing crêpe-paper twists, hung with grinning pumpkins and fancy black-and-orange cardboard cats, skeletons, and witches, and choked with bourbon fumes, tobacco smoke, and Chanel No. 5. Some Chinese lanterns were reeking, the noise was maddening, and merely to cross the room required the preparations of an expedition, for the overturned furniture and other impedimenta on the floor—cunningly plotted to trap groping Black Cats on their arrival—had been left where they were.

So Ellery, highball in hand, wedged himself in a safe corner and mentally added Nikki to the Druids and the Romans.

Ellery accepted the murder game without a murmur. He knew the futility of protest. Wherever he went, people at once suggested a murder game, apparently on the theory that a busman enjoys nothing so much as a bus. And, of course, he was to be the detective.

“Well, well, let’s get started,” he said gaily, for all the traditional Hallowe’en games had been played, Nikki had slapped Jerry Baxter laughingly once and British Johnny—not laughingly—twice, the house detective had made a courtesy call, and it was obvious the delightful evening had all but run its course. He hoped Nikki would have sense enough to cut the pièce de résistance short, so that a man might go home and give his thanks to God; but no, there she was in a whispery, giggly huddle with Ann Crombie and Lucy Trent, while John Crombie rested his limp hand on her shoulder and Edith Baxter splashed some angry bourbon into her glass.

Jerry was on all fours, being a cat.

“In just a minute,” called Nikki, and she tripped through the archway—kitchen-bound, to judge from certain subsequent cutlery sounds—leaving Crombie’s hand momentarily suspended.

Edith Baxter said: “Jerry, get up off that floor and stop making a darned fool of yourself!” —furiously.

“Now we’re all set,” announced Nikki, reappearing. “Everybody around in a circle. First I’ll deal out these cards, and whoever gets the ace of spades don’t let on! — because you’re the Murderer.”

“Ooh!”

“Ann, you stop peeking.”

“Who’s peeking?”

“A tenner says I draw the fatal pasteboard,” laughed Crombie. “I’m the killer type.”

“I’m the killer type!” shouted Jerry Baxter. “Gack-gack-gack-gack!”

Ellery closed his eyes.

“Ellery! Wake up.”

“Huh?”

Nikki was shaking him. The rest of the company were lined up on the far side of the room from the archway, facing the wall. For a panicky moment he thought of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

“You go on over there with the others, smartypants. You musn’t see who the murderer is, either, so you close your eyes, too.”

“Fits in perfectly with my plans,” said Ellery, and he dutifully joined the five people at the wall.

“Spread out a little there—I don’t want anyone touching anyone else. That’s it. Eyes all shut? Good. Now I want the person who drew the ace of spades—Murderer—to step quietly away from the wall—”

“Not cricket,” came John Crombie’s annoying alto. “You’ll see who it is, dear heart.”

“Yes,” said Edith Baxter nastily. “The light’s on.”

“But I’m running this assassination! Now stop talking, eyes closed. Step out, Murderer—that’s it... quietly! No talking there at the wall! Mr. Queen is very bright and he’d get the answer in a shot just by eliminating voices—”

“Oh, come, Nikki,” said Mr. Queen modestly.

“Now, Murderer, here’s what you do. On the kitchen table you’ll find a full-face mask, a flashlight, and a bread-knife. Wait! Don’t start for the kitchen yet—go when I switch off the light in here; that will be your signal to start. When you get to the kitchen, put on the mask, take the flashlight and knife, steal back into this room, and—pick a victim!”

“Oooh.”

“Ahhhh!”

“Ee!”

Mr. Queen banged his forehead lightly against the wall. How long, O Lord?

“Now remember, Murderer,” cried Nikki, “you pick anyone you want—except, of course, Ellery. He has to live long enough to solve the crime...”

If you don’t hurry, my love, I’ll be dead of natural causes.

“It’ll be dark, Murderer, except for your flash, so even I won’t know what victim you pick—”

“May the detective inquire the exact purpose of the knife?” asked the detective wearily of the wall. “Its utility in this divertissement escapes me.”

“Oh, the knife’s just a prop, goopy—atmosphere. Murderer, you tap your victim on the shoulder. Victim, whoever feels the tap, turn around and let Murderer lead you out of the living room to the kitchen.”

“The kitchen, I take it, is the scene of the crime,” said Mr. Queen gloomily.

“Uh-huh. And Victim, as soon as Murderer gets you into the kitchen, scream like all fury as if you’re being stabbed. Make it realistic! Everybody set? Ready?… All right, Murderer, soon’s I turn this light off go to the kitchen, get the mask and stuff, come back, and pick your victim. Here goes!”

Click! went the light switch. Being a man who checked his facts, Ellery automatically cheated and opened one eye. Dark, as advertised. He shut the eye, and then jumped.

“Stop!” Nikki had shrieked.

“What, what?” asked Ellery excitedly.

“Oh, I’m not talking to you, Ellery. Murderer, I forgot something! Where are you? Oh, never mind. Remember, after you’ve supposedly stabbed your victim in the kitchen, come back to this room and quickly take your former place against the wall. Don’t make a sound; don’t touch anyone. I want the room to be as quiet as it is this minute. Use the flash to help you see your way back, but as soon as you reach the wall turn the flash off and throw flash and mask into the middle of the living room—thus, darling, getting rid of the evidence. Do you see? But, of course, you can’t!’ You’re in rare form, old girl. “Now even though it’s dark, people, keep your eyes shut. All right, Murderer—get set — go!”

Ellery dozed...

It seemed a mere instant later that he heard Nikki’s voice saying with incredible energy: “Murderer’s tapping a victim—careful with that flashlight, Murderer!—we mustn’t tempt our Detective too much. All right, Victim? Now let Murderer lead you to your doom... the rest of you keep your eyes closed... don’t turn ar...”

Ellery dozed again.

He awoke with a start at a man’s scream.

“Here! What—”

“Ellery Queen, you asleep again? That was Victim being carved up in the kitchen. Now... yes!… here’s Murderer’s flash back... that’s it, to the wall quietly... now flash off! — fine! — toss it and your mask away... Boom. Tossed. Are you turned around, face to the wall, Murderer, like everybody else? Everybody ready? Llllllights!”

“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 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 cry 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—nay, even bolted—on the inside. Nikki proclaimed herself the authoress thereof, having performed the sealed-apartment act before the game began (she said) in 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. “Hallowe’en,” 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 the hell were you doing in that closet?”

Edith screamed, “How should I know, you old man?” 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 Hallowe’en 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 lined up at 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. He shook his head.

“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 those Black Cat outfits.”

“Me, I’m no Fancy Dan,” murmured Inspector 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 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, I saw your eyes...”

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 between his knees.

“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’s during dais 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 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 this room 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. We scraped. 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 the Sergeant pathetically.

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

She sounded nauseated. “Oh, no,” she said. “No.”

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Baxter. 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 up—”

“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, and—”

“Dad,” sighed Ellery.

“Huh?” And because the old gentleman’s memory of similar moments—many 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.”

“You see?” moaned Edith. They could hear her panting.

“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 in a great release.

“Then who did?” barked the Inspector. His tone said he was tired of this fancy stuff and give him a killer so he could book the rat and go home and get to sleep.

“The one,” replied Ellery in those weary tones, “who was able to cross the room in the dark without making any noise. For if Edith is innocent, only one of those at the wall could have been guilty. And that one had to cross the room.”

There is a maddening unarguability about Ellery’s sermons.

“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 tones 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, breathing a bit harder than usual, “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 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, my dear, 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.”