Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 50, No. 1. Whole No. 284, July 1967

The President Regrets by Ellery Queen

Shortly after Ellery became the sixth member of The Puzzle Club, the President of the United States was proposed for membership...

The Puzzle Club is a congeries of very important people drawn together by unimportant purpose but common passion — to wit, to mystify one another. Their pleasure, in short, is puzzles.

Application is by invitation only, and membership must be won, the applicant having to submit to the Ordeal by Puzzle. If he survives the test, it earns him automatic admission.

Shortly after Ellery became The Puzzle Club’s sixth regular member, it was proposed and unanimously voted to invite the President of the United States to apply for membership.

This was no frivolous motion; the members took their puzzles seriously, and the President was known to be a devotee of mysteries in all lawful forms. Besides, the Club’s founder and First Member, multimillionaire oil man Syres, had been buddy-buddy with the occupant of the White House since their youthful days as riggers in the Texas oilfields.

The invitation went to Washington, and rather to Ellery’s surprise the President promptly accepted the challenge. In deference to affairs of state, he was urged to designate his own date, which he did; but when Ellery arrived at Syres’s Park Avenue penthouse on the appointed evening to find the membership assembled, he was greeted with gloomy news. The President regretted that he could not make it after all. A Secret Service man, just departed, had brought the message that a crisis in Asia had caused a last-minute cancellation of the President’s flight to New York.

“What shall we do now?” asked Darnell, the famous criminal lawyer.

“There’s no point in wasting the puzzle we’ve prepared for the President,” said Dr. Vreeland, the well-known psychiatrist. “Let’s save it for whenever he can get here.”

“It’s too bad Dr. Arkavy is still attending that symposium in Moscow,” said wispy little Emmy Wandermere, the poet. Dr. Arkavy was the Nobel Prize-winning biochemist. “He has such a fertile mind, he can always come up with something on the spur of the moment.”

“Maybe our newest member can help us out,” said their Texan host. “What do you say, Queen? You must have a hundred problems at your fingers’ ends, from your long experience as a writer and a detective.”

“Let me think.” Ellery cogitated. Then he chuckled. “All right. Give me a few minutes to work out the details...” It took him far less. “I’m ready. I suggest we engage in some collective improvisation, to begin with. Since this is going to be a murder mystery, we will obviously require a victim. Any suggestions?”

“A woman, of course,” the lady poet said at once.

“Reeking of glamor,” said the psychiatrist.

“That,” said the criminal lawyer, “would seem to call for a Hollywood movie star.”

“Good enough,” Ellery said. “And a glamor girl of the screen calls for a glamorous name. Let’s call her... oh, Valetta Van Buren. Agreed?”

“Valetta Van Buren.” Miss Wandermere considered. “Yes. She personifies sex in her roles — a smoky witch with enormous cold, full-moon eyes. Does that follow, Mr. Queen?”

“Perfectly. Well, Valetta is in New York to attend the premiere of her latest picture and to do the circuit of TV appearances in promotion of it,” Ellery went on. “But this hasn’t proved an ordinary publicity tour. In fact, Valetta has had a frightening experience. It so shook her up that she wrote me an agitated letter about it which, by the magic of coincidence, I received just this morning.”

“In which,” Dr. Vreeland pressed, “she said—”

“That during this New York visit she permitted herself to be squired about town by four men—”

“Who are all, naturally, in love with her?” asked the lady poet.

“You guessed it, Miss Wander-mere. She identified the four in her letter. One is that notorious man-about-town and playboy, John Thrushbottom Taylor the Third — and if you haven’t heard of Mr. Taylor, it’s because I just made him up. The second is that wolf — in both senses — of Wall Street, named... well, let’s call him A. Palmer Harrison. The third, of course, is the latest rage among society portrait painters, Leonardo Price. And the last of the quartet is — let’s see — Biff Wilson, the professional football player.”

“A likely story,” grinned Oil Man Syres.

“Now.” Ellery made a professional bridge of his fingers. “Having named the four men for me, Valetta went on to say that yesterday all four proposed marriage to her — each of them, on the same day. Unhappily, our ineffable Valetta felt nothing for any of them — nothing permanent, at any rate. She rejected all four impartially. It was a busy day for Miss Van Buren, and she would have enjoyed it except for one thing.”

“One of them,” said the criminal lawyer, “turned ugly.”

“Exactly, Darnell. Valetta wrote me that three of them took their turndowns with approximate grace. But the fourth flew into a homicidal rage and threatened to kill her. She was terrified that he would try to carry out his threat and asked me to get in touch with her at once. She felt reluctant to go to the police, she wrote, because of the bad publicity it would bring her.”

“What happened then?” asked Syres.

“I phoned, of course,” Ellery replied, “as soon as I finished reading her letter. Would you believe it? I was too late. She was murdered last night, a short time after she must have mailed the letter. So the screen has lost its sexiest pot, and millions of red-blooded Americans at this very moment are mourning the sheer waste of it all.”

“How,” asked Darnell, “was the foul deed done?”

“I could tell you,” Ellery said, “that she was done in by a Tasmanian yoyo, but I won’t be unfair — the nature of the weapon is irrelevant. However, I will say this, to avoid complications: Valetta was murdered by the suitor who threatened her life.”

“And is that all?” asked the tycoon.

“No, I’ve saved the kicker for last, Mr. Syres. Valetta’s letter gave me one clue. In writing about the four men, she said that she’d noticed she had something in common with three of the four, and that the fourth was the one who had threatened her.”

“Oh,” said Dr. Vreeland. “Then all we have to establish is the nature of the common denominator. The three sharing it with Valetta would be innocent. By elimination, therefore, the one left over has to be the guilty man.”

Ellery nodded. “And now — if my initiation at the last meeting was a criterion — the floor is open. Any questions?”

“I take it,” the lady poet murmured, “that we may disregard the obvious possibilities of connection — that Valetta and three of the men were of the same age, or had the same color hair, or the same religious affiliation, or came from the same town or state, or attended the same college, or were investors or board members in the same corporation — that sort of thing?”

Ellery laughed. “Yes, you may disregard those.”

“Social position?” the multimillionaire ventured. “Three of the men you described — Playboy John Something Taylor, Wall Street man A. Palmer Harrison, Portrait Painter Price — did they all come from high society? That probably wouldn’t be true of the pro football player, What’s-His-Name.”

“It just happened,” Ellery mourned, “that Portrait Painter Price was born in a Greenwich Village pad. And Valetta, of course, hailed from the slums of Chicago.”

They pondered.

“Had three of the four men ever served with Valetta,” asked Darnell suddenly, “on the same jury?”

“No.”

“On a TV panel show?” asked the poet quickly.

“No, Miss Wandermere.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Dr. Vreeland, smiling, “that Valetta Van Buren and three of her suitors at one juncture in their lives shared the same psychiatrist’s couch?”

“That’s a good solution, Doctor. But it’s not the solution I have in mind.”

“Politics,” the oil man said. “Valetta and three of the suitors are registered in the same party.”

“My information, Mr. Syres,” said Ellery, “is that Valetta was an incorrigible Democrat, the playboy and the Wall Street men are conservative Republicans, and Price and Biff Wilson never voted in their lives.”

Miss Wandermere suddenly said, “It isn’t anything like that. Am I right, Mr. Queen, in assuming that all the relevant facts were given to us in the body of your story?”

“I wondered when someone was going to ask that.” Ellery chuckled. “That’s exactly so, Miss Wandermere. There’s really no need to ask questions at all.”

“Then I for one need more time,” said the tycoon. “What about the rest of you?” At their abstracted nods their host rose. “Then let’s make an exception tonight and eat Chariot’s exquisite dinner before we crack Queen’s puzzle.”

Miss Wandermere’s shocking blue eyes sparkled with enlightenment during Chariot’s moussaline de saumon. Darnell’s mustache-sized brows lifted with elation over the suprêmes de volaille aux huîtres. Dr. Vreeland uttered his self-congratulatory exclamation at the serving of the selle de veau à l’Orientale. And their host, Syres, achieved sweet victory over his charlotte Chantilly. But no one uttered a word until they were seated about the drawing room again over espresso and brandy.

“I detect from this and that,” Ellery said, “that none of you encountered any real difficulty with my little puzzle.”

“It’s too bad the President had to miss this,” Syres roared. “It was made to order, Queen, for his type of mind! Are you all quite ready?”

There was a universal nod.

“In that case,” Ellery said, with resignation, “which of Valetta’s four swains murdered her?”

“Females first, always,” said Dr. Vreeland with a gallant nod to Miss Wandermere.

“The key to the answer,” said the lady poet promptly, “consists in the fact, Mr. Queen, that you really told us just one thing about Valetta and her four suitors. It follows that whatever she and three of the four men had in common must relate to that thing.”

“A logic I can’t dispute,” murmured Ellery. “And that thing was?”

Darnell grinned. “What the anticipation of the President’s visit here tonight suggested to you when we asked for an impromptu puzzle. Their names.”

“You named the movie star Valetta Van Buren,” said Syres. “Van Buren — the name of a President of the United States.”

“Then Playboy John Thrushbottom Taylor the Third,” said the psychiatrist. “You buried that one, Queen! But of course Taylor is the name of a President of the United States, too — Zachary Taylor.”

“And the Wall Street man, A. Palmer Harrison,” the lawyer said. “Harrison — William Henry. Also Benjamin.”

“And professional football player Biff Wilson.” Miss Wandermere twinkled. “That ‘Biff’ was masterly, Mr. Queen. But — of course, Wilson, for Woodrow Wilson.”

“And that leaves one character whose name,” said the oil man, “bears no cross-reference to a President’s name — Leonardo Price. So Price, the portrait painter, murdered Valetta. You almost had me fooled, Queen. Taylor, Van Buren, Harrison! That was tricky, picking the more obscure Presidents.”

“You could hardly expect me to name one of my characters Eisenhower,” Ellery grinned. “Which reminds me.” He raised his brandy snifter. “Here’s to our absent President — and may he turn out to be the next member of The Puzzle Club!”