Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

Thomas Walsh The Sacrificial Goat

They met one bright August afternoon in one of the elegant red and gold Hotel Versailles elevators, and since it was a bit crowded at the moment they had to stand close together, though without touching. Yet even on that first occasion, in the way that such people instinctively recognize each other’s morality and inclinations, there was something communicated between them. They touched eyes for only a brief instant, yet even so the man knew the woman from then on, and the woman the man.

They were very careful, however. Mistakes were always possible. So it was mid-October before the man rented a small furnished apartment on East 78th Street under the name of Robinson, after which the woman came over there to spend a few hours in the afternoon with him about twice a week. They were both experienced in such matters, the man very experienced, and after he had made sure there was an automatic elevator in the building and no doorman, everything could be managed with the most admirable discretion.

Nobody knew about them. Nobody suspected about them. But something unforeseen happened. Little by little the thing got more serious, or perhaps only more passionate, and by January it had become very serious. That was when they began to think with increasing hatred of the one person who stood in their way. Without that one person they would have more money than they could use. Without him they could have everything they wanted and enjoy a long happy life together.

At first, however, they only considered the thing silently, in their thoughts. But one afternoon the man remarked as if jokingly how fortunate it would be if only some sort of accident occurred, and the woman responded in the same manner. But an accident, the man pointed out, might be very dangerous for them. Details could go wrong; mistakes could be made; everyone concerned, husband or wife, son or daughter, would be thoroughly checked out, even down to the hotel staff — unless, of course, someone else could be found who obviously had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to eliminate that one person.

After that, no longer jokingly, they began to discuss who the someone might be. First, there must be no question as to his identity. And second, the police must be made to realize at once who had done the thing and the reason for it. If that part could be set up, only one very simple question remained. Who would the tool of murder be? Whom would they pick as the sacrificial goat?

Finally the solution presented itself and they both immediately understood it was the perfect solution. Soon a pleasantly conspiratorial excitement carried them ahead faster and faster, and by the last week in January, with every possible difficulty taken care of, they arranged the whole thing from beginning to end.

The Versailles was an old but still extremely elegant New York hotel. It had been designed by a famous architect many years ago, and though by now its quiet but luxurious high-society tone had perhaps faded a little, it still was considered by all the right people as far superior to the newer and more commercial establishments. It had a famous Garden Room, several expensive restaurants much too costly for the common herd, and half a dozen exclusive shops — jewelry, interior decorating, gentlemen’s furnishings, and three French couturiers all just off the main lobby.

It was no longer, however, as in its first haughty years, restricted as to all minorities, and although its employees were screened much more carefully than the patrons upstairs, a few blacks and Puerto Ricans were beginning to be accepted. It had twenty-odd floors, and on the north side a magnificent view over Central Park. Every floor had a desk clerk and a page boy, and the page boy on the 17th floor was named Ramon Rodriquez.

One day he was on duty from seven in the morning until twelve noon, and again from six until nine in the evening. On the following day, conversely, he worked from twelve noon until six. He was a slim undersized boy with black hair and cheerfully glistening black eyes, only fifteen years old — but the Versailles, needing a page boy, had not bothered to make sure that he was old enough to work full time according to the laws of New York State. Interviewed only by the bell captain, he was paid no more than the minimum wage — one reason perhaps that the Versailles needed a page boy — and out of that, the bell captain said, the Versailles would deduct $5 a month to keep his uniform cleaned and pressed. But in addition, it was also explained to Ramon, there would be a great many tips from all the rich society people who patronized the Versailles and those tips would be entirely Ramon’s.

So Ramon expected great things for himself on his first job, although he soon discovered that the tips were more a promise than an actuality. Most of the better suites on the 17th floor were reserved for permanent guests, and all had maids who answered the door. It happened, consequently, that when Ramon delivered a package to one of the suites, or ran an errand for the occupant, the only thanks he got, if that, was a nod from the maid.

There were no more than a few generous exceptions. A rich mining man named Mr. Lahrheim in 1734 gave Ramon a dollar for anything he did, and a Mrs. McLeod in 1748 gave him a crisp five-dollar bill every Saturday morning, although she required less service from him than anyone on the whole floor. But most of the other permanent guests, in sharp distinction, must have thought that what Ramon did for them was well covered by the exorbitant rent they paid the Versailles, and that there was no need of further largess.

And Ramon did a great many things for them which most never even thought about. On early mornings, for instance, he delivered newspapers to their doors, which they could read while having breakfast comfortably in bed; and on Sunday mornings, when the papers were five or six times the daily size, he had to go downstairs on the service elevator three or four times, pile the papers onto a cart, then wheel the cart from Suite 1701 at the northwest corner of the Versailles to Suite 1794 at the southwest corner. He ran all their errands, brought all their packages, since no outside delivery boy was ever admitted into the Versailles corridors, and twenty or thirty times a day, when a guest was out, he took a telephone message from Miss Riley, the floor clerk, and then hung it on the proper doorknob for the guest’s return.

In between times he had to sit on a small straight-backed chair by Miss Riley’s desk, and when a guest appeared, was required to jump up, ring for the elevator, and then stand as rigidly at attention as a West Point cadet until the guest had been wafted down. On Christmas morning, when he also had to work, he did that for old Mrs. Terwilliger in 1707.

“Oh, yes,” old Mrs. Terwilliger beamed, toddling into the floor clerk’s office with a nurse supporting her on one side and a uniformed chauffeur on the other — on her way, probably, at that time of the morning, to one of the more exclusive Park Avenue churches.

“Christmas Day. We mustn’t forget the boy, must we? Now let me see.”

And Ramon had great expectations at that moment. For month after month he had done chore after chore for Mrs. Terwilliger, but never yet had he been given so much as a five-cent piece for any of them. His expectations proved much too optimistic, however. Mrs. Terwilliger rummaged through her purse, then rummaged again.

“Oh, dear,” she exclaimed. “It appears that I — would you have change for a dollar, Miss Riley?”

And Miss Riley, who liked Ramon very much, made a great show of examining her desk drawer.

“No,” she said. “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Terwilliger. But no, I haven’t.”

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Terwilliger repeated, hesitating with anxious distress for a moment, then reluctantly extending the dollar bill. “Then I suppose — well, Christmas Day, after all. Here you are, boy.”

Then the elevator went down and Miss Riley violently slammed in her desk drawer.

“Mean, miserable old bitch,” she said. “Change for a dollar! It’s a wonder she didn’t want change for a dime, Ramon.”

But still Ramon liked his job very much. The long and quiet Versailles halls, finished with subdued elegance in gold and green, were a great change for him from Spanish Harlem, and on his early morning shifts there were always wheeled breakfast trays outside many of the guest suites. Then Arturo the waiter would allow him to help himself to a leftover sausage or some buttered toast, and whatever remained in the silver coffee pots. In that way Ramon could have a fine breakfast for himself, leaving a little more at home for his four smaller brothers and sisters, although he had to be careful that none of the guests came along and caught him. They would probably have been very indignant at such low-class vulgarity in the Versailles and in all likelihood have reported it at the main desk on their way out.

Ramon even liked his gray and blue Versailles uniform. He always kept it immaculately neat — and of course his shoes polished, his hair brushed, and his fingernails cleaned, as the bell captain had impressed on him. But then Ramon had a certain ambition. He hoped, by hard and painstaking attention to duty, to become in time a bellhop down in the main lobby where he had heard that the tips amounted to more than $100 a week. And the sum would make a vast difference at home where Ramon was the only breadwinner. Therefore he was always quickly and cheerfully responsive to a guest’s need, tip or no tip, and off like a flash to get them toothpaste or cigars from the drug store downstairs, or Fortune magazine or a Paris newspaper from the hotel newsstand.

There was an electric signboard on the wall over Miss Riley’s desk, and on that, when a guest pressed the bell in his room, the corresponding number would appear — 1714, 1729, 1765. Then Ramon, after pushing up the release disk so that the number dropped back into place, would be up and away on the instant. And every night at home, when he had to crowd into a rickety daybed with his two little brothers, he would first pray fervently for the bellhop’s job, so that in his first months at the Versailles there was never any kind of mark against him.

Only a bare year out of San Juan, Ramon was a very good boy, and a very innocent boy, with almost no experience in the world. The man and the woman had chosen him out of sure instinct. Ramon had no money, no influential friends, and no way to get himself even half-competent legal help. And early in February it developed that if Arturo and Miss Riley liked him, there were other members of the Versailles staff who did not like him at all.

That proved itself one night when two security men appeared in the hall and beckoned him out silently from Miss Riley’s desk. Each of them look him by an arm, gripping him painfully, and the blond, very good-looking one even twisted his arm painfully. They marched him down to the service stairway and there, with the hall door closed behind them, the blond security man immediately slapped him across the mouth.

“Know what we got here?” he remarked to the other one. “A real smart little operator. Walter. Okay. I guess what we have to do now is to show him pretty damned quick just how smart he is to try and pull something like this.”

“Guess we will,” Walter said, and smashed Ramon’s head into the wall. “Now tell me something, you little punk. You deliver a package to 1727 about six thirty tonight?”

Ramon was frightened and in much pain. He backed against the wall, shaking his head. It was not to deny that he had delivered the package to Mr. Curtis in Suite 1727. It was to show that in his pain and confusion he did not quite understand what they were asking him.

“No?” Walter said, smacking him again. “You mean you didn’t? You mean the maid never left you all alone in the living room when she went inside to get the receipt signed, and that you weren’t standing right beside old man Curtis’ coin case when she came out with it? You better own up, punk, or me and Harry are going to knock the hell out of you. Where did you hide that coin you stole? What did you do with it? Take a look in his pockets, Harry.”

But in Ramon’s pockets there were only the few tips he had made, a subway token, and his locker key. That Harry handed to Walter.

“Probably stashed it away down there,” he said. “Check it out. Walter. I’d bet on the thing.”

Then, all alone, Harry twisted Ramon’s arm even more viciously and kept on slapping his face. He also said things, but Ramon — fifteen years old, after all — was in no condition to understand what they were. He did not want to cry, but he had to. He crouched lower against the wall, shielding his face.

Walter came back.

“Nope,” he said. “Nothing at all. Only his overcoat ain’t there. Nothing but a crummy old sweater.”

“Ees all I have to wear,” Ramon whispered to them. “Ees all I have.”

“That right?” Harry said. Crisply curling, reddish-gold hair; coldly sharp blue eyes with thick lashes; hard, hatingly contemptuous grin. “Then maybe they’ll give you one up the river, because that’s where you’re going straight from here, cutie. You got just one chance before we take you around to the precinct house. What did you do with that coin you took? Where did you hide it?”

“No coin,” Ramon whispered. “No, no. I bring the package, yes. I wait for the maid to come back. But—”

They led him out into the hall and down to Suite 1727, where Mr. Curtis and Mr. and Mrs. Purnell, his daughter and son-in-law from 1739, were talking together in front of the door.

“Well, here’s your answer,” Harry said, brutally slapping Ramon’s head forward. “He’s the one stole it, Mr. Curtis, sir. We checked it all out for you. Walter and me, and the maid said he’s the only one she left into your suite tonight. So it’s got to be him. It’s the only answer. No one else could have taken it.”

Mr. Curtis glanced in helplessly at a glass-topped case, just like a museum case, that stood against one wall of the foyer. Each coin in there was nestled in a circle of red velvet that fitted exactly around it. One circle was empty. Mr. Curtis was a coin collector.

“Well, I know it was there,” he said. “And now it isn’t. And I paid over $15,000 for it in London last year. I’m sure you’re right, men. But why you employ boys of this type—”

Mrs. Curtis came out of Suite 1727. She was a slim platinum-blonde, much younger than her husband, and had the aloof, haughtily disinterested expression of the fashion model she had been before Mr. Curtis married her. There was a coin in her right hand.

“Is this what you’re so concerned about?” she asked calmly. “Really. Charles. I said that you only mislaid it somewhere. I found it under some letters on your desk inside. And you yourself put it down there last night after showing it to Ted Bannister and his wife. I saw you do it.”

Mr. Curtis’ mouth gaped.

“But I put it back in the case,” he cried. “I did, Adele. I remember coming out into the living room after the Bannisters left and—”

“Oh, Daddy,” Mrs. Purnell said, making an impatient gesture. “You remember so many things lately that you don’t do at all. You forgot your dinner appointment with us only last Saturday. And you forgot about that Charity Ball at the Waldorf. I don’t know what’s getting into you.”

“But I only made a mistake in the dates,” he insisted feebly. “That’s all, Barbara. I just—”

There was a pause. Mrs. Curtis and Mrs. Purnell murmured together. Mr. Purnell shook his head sadly. Harry and Walter glanced slyly at each other, grinning. But nobody looked at Ramon or appeared to notice the tears on his face. It was just as if Ramon were not present.

“Well, I guess it’s all right,” Mr. Curtis said finally to Harry and Walter. “I’m so sorry, so sorry, men. But I could have sworn—”

After that, rubbing the back of his gray head wearily, he went into 1727, with the other members of his family following him. The door closed, and after it had, Harry uttered a curt, jeering laugh.

“ ‘I’m so sorry,’ ” he mimicked. “ ‘So sorry, men.’ But not a damn dime for us, Walter, not even after I told him all the trouble we went to. Only the best people here, hah? But all I hope is that they come up here some night and clean out the whole damn suite on him.”

And Ramon was left all alone in the hall, with not one word of regret or apology having been spoken to him. It was at least five minutes before he could go back to the office again and face Miss Riley. His head hurt. His eyes felt hot and dry. But worst of all he felt deeply ashamed. It was as if no one had realized that Ramon was a human being. It was as if he had been, not only to Harry and Walter, just nothing at all.

About a week after that, a few minutes before nine in the evening and just as Ramon was preparing to go off duty, they found Curtis’ body sprawled in front of the coin case in Suite 1727. It was Harry, making one of his regular house rounds, who saw the door to 1727 half open and discovered Mr. Curtis with blood all over his white evening shirt, and the one coin again missing from its place in the glass-topped museum case.

After that many things happened. Policemen came up by way of the service elevator, first two in uniform, then several more in ordinary civilian clothes. There was a great deal of feverish but subdued excitement in the 17th floor corridor, and even Mr. Lenormand the manager appeared, wringing his hands and whispering in agitated low tones to Walter and Harry by the side of Miss Riley’s desk. But soon Mr. Lenormand, very distinguished-looking in a tail coat and white tie, nodded as if distractedly at Harry, and Ramon was again marched down to Suite 1727 where he had to close his eyes and swallow three times at the way Mr. Curtis looked.

By that time there were a great many other men in the suite. Some measured things; some took pictures; and some spoke to the maid, then to Mrs. Curtis, who looked very pale and shaky, though without tears. But Mrs. Purnell sobbed quietly in one corner, while Mr. Purnell stared out of the window at Central Park.

It was all very frightening to Ramon, the way all the policemen kept whispering to Harry and then looking around at him, and it was only a little better when a tall slim man with hard eyes and a saturnine face had Ramon sit down on the couch with him — the only time Ramon had ever been permitted to sit in Suite 1727.

But the man had a calm quiet voice, almost a friendly voice, and could speak Spanish to Ramon. At first he asked very simple questions — how old Ramon was, whether he went to church, and how long he had been working at the Versailles. But Ramon hardly knew what he answered, having to close his eyes when they lifted Mr. Curtis’ body onto a stretcher, covered it with a gray blanket, and carried it off in the direction of the service elevator so that none of the other guests would see it. Then only the slim man was left, and Harry and Mr. Lenormand, until another man came in from the hall holding something that was wrapped carefully in a white cloth.

Then all the men turned around to look at Ramon again, and the tall slim one, who had been called Lieutenant Da Costa by the others, walked across the room holding the white cloth in his hand.

He put his other hand under Ramon’s chin and made him look straight into his eyes. Then he opened the cloth very suddenly, without even the least warning, and Ramon saw all the blood that had been wiped off on it, and under the blood a razor-sharp knife with a wood handle. It was done so suddenly that Ramon started to shake all over, and then he closed his eyes from the knife. But Da Costa forced his head back and turned over the knife.

“R.R.,” he said, pointing a forefinger at two initials on the handle. “You see that, Ramon? And you just told me what your name is — Ramon Rodriquez. How about those initials, then? Is this your knife? Did you ever see it before?”

“I do not know it,” Ramon whispered. “I swear, senor. I never see it before.”

Harry came over to them.

“What the hell are you wasting time for?” he demanded angrily. “Just slap it out of him, Lieutenant. What else do you want? Mr. Curtis mislaid that same coin last week and this little jerk heard how much it was worth — about $15,000. We heard Mr. Curtis say that himself, all of us. So this little punk snuck in here to grab it tonight and Mr. Curtis caught him. And all of these people are the same kind, aren’t they? Ain’t one of them that doesn’t have a knife handy, just in case.”

“One of these people myself,” Da Costa murmured, still looking down at Ramon. “But I never owned or used a knife in my life. And you know what, Hannegan? A lot of us don’t.”

“Well, of course,” Hannegan said, coloring a bit. “Didn’t mean anything like that, Lieutenant. Only trying to say—”

“Yes, I know,” Da Costa put in. “How about the coin, O’Brien? Anybody find it yet?”

“Not yet,” O’Brien said. “But it’s around somewhere, Lieutenant. Got to be. Miss Riley says the kid ain’t been off the floor since about 8:15. The last call he answered was at eight o’clock when somebody wanted him in 1735. Right down the hall.”

“How long did the call take him?”

“Not long at all, Miss Riley says. He was always quick as a shot, according to her. She’s sure he was back again in about two minutes. All he had to do for 1735 was take some letters and drop them down the mail chute in Miss Riley’s office.”

“So all in two minutes,” Da Costa murmured, “he goes down to 1735, passes 1727 here on the way back, finds the door open or at least unlocked, comes in and opens the coin case, takes the right coin out, stabs Curtis when he’s caught doing it, then walks back to the floor office cool as a cucumber, after dropping the knife behind that hall radiator where you found it, and sits down again just like nothing has happened. Not excited at all; not in any kind of crazy panic — and only fifteen years old, he tells me. All he says to Miss Riley is about the money he’s saving up for his little sister’s birthday next week. How about that, Hannegan? He sure knew how to handle himself, didn’t he? All in two minutes?”

“Well, like I said,” Hannegan said, shrugging insolently. “Them people. Maybe Miss Riley got a degree in child psychology, Lieutenant. You ought to ask her.”

“Maybe I ought to start asking a lot of people,” Da Costa said. “Starting with you. Were you up on this floor any time tonight before you discovered the body in here?”

“Yeah, flew up,” Harry Hannegan said, and laughed jeeringly. “Why, none of the elevator operators saw me. Go ahead. Ask them.”

“Stairs,” Da Costa murmured. “Service stairs. And deserted, I should imagine, about nine-tenths of the time.”

“I was up here a bit earlier,” Mr. Lenormand said, wiping his face harriedly with the flowing linen handkerchief that he took out of his breast pocket. “Mr. Curtis wanted to discuss the menu for a dinner he was giving for a few friends tomorrow night in the Garden Room. Then when I came out, I passed Mr. Purnell in the hall. I believe he can verify that, if you think it’s necessary.”

“We will,” Da Costa said. “Although it looks like the boy, all right. He made a very serious mistake talking to me, even if he doesn’t realize that he did. All we need to prove on him now is that he stole the coin and we have him dead to rights.”

“Lost his nerve,” Harry suggested, “and got rid of it. Probably threw it down one of the toilets.”

“Or better yet,” Da Costa thought, “dropped it down the mail chute with those letters from 1735. What’s your first mail pickup in the morning, Hannegan?”

“I think eight o’clock,” Hannegan said. “That right, Mr. Lenormand?”

“I believe so,” Mr. Lenormand said, still wiping his face. “But a thing like this to happen at the Versailles! My God!”

“Then have somebody here when the mailman comes around,” Da Costa ordered. “If we find the coin down there, we got Ramon. Once we face him with that, we’ll give him half an hour downtown with Frank Sandstrum and we’ll have the whole story.”

But still the man and the woman were very careful, even after it became known the next morning that the coin had been found right where Da Costa had suggested it would be. They arranged a meeting only two weeks later at the East 78th Street apartment. The man got there first and the woman had just taken off her coat when the hall door opened. Da Costa and O’Brien walked in.

“Nice little place,” Da Costa said, glancing around casually. “Not so high-toned as the Versailles, of course — but fair enough for what you needed. How long you been meeting here?”

The woman sat down as suddenly as if her legs had given way under her, but the man had better control of himself.

“Now just a minute,” he blustered. “You have nothing against us. What we’re doing here is our own personal business.”

Da Costa cuffed him across the mouth with hard knuckles.

“From a kid named Ramon,” he said. “Keep your mouth shut. I don’t have to ask what you did because I know it already. You got damned cozy at the Versailles first, meeting each other nearly every day there, and then you got even more cozy in this place. You—” he glanced contemptuously at the woman “—had to set up the first scene. I mean how the old man forgot the coin, or apparently forgot it, leaving it on his desk when he hadn’t left it there at all. You also made out that he had begun forgetting a lot of things, giving him the wrong dates for appointments and so on till he began to believe it himself. In addition, you made sure that he said right in Ramon’s hearing how much the coin was worth, and if he hadn’t said it you’d have slipped it in yourself. Following me so far?”

Neither one answered. The man sat silently. The woman, shaking her head time after time, had become pale as death.

“Then we might as well proceed,” Da Costa went on. “I had to prepare the ground too, because I know kids like Ramon, and I knew by the way he acted that he didn’t even understand what was happening to him. So I told you” — glancing down contemptuously at the man — “how important the coin was and how Ramon made a very serious mistake when he was talking to me. Well, the coin was important, important as all hell, because whoever took it out of the case obviously killed the old man. Where to find it, though? It could have been hidden in any place at all in the Versailles, if Ramon hadn’t taken it.

“So I made another suggestion while we were all in the same room. I suggested that maybe Ramon dropped it down the mail chute, and asked what time the first pickup was the next morning. Only before that I had O’Brien get in touch with the post office and they sent a man up here to open the chute right away, take the letters out, and close it up again, empty.

“And what do you know? The letters from 1735 were in there already, just like Ramon said — but the coin wasn’t. Next morning, though, with a lot of other letters, there it was. Which meant that whoever dropped it into the chute, it wasn’t Ramon. It couldn’t have been. He was in our hands already. See what I mean?”

There was still dead silence. The man had put his head in his hands. The woman had begun to weep brokenly.

“Guess you do,” Da Costa said, his lips curled. “You figured that coin would be the last thing to damn the kid, only it turned out to be the one thing that nailed you. So if it couldn’t be Ramon, it had to be somebody else. Who? That was the poser.

“Well, it was quite a little trouble for us, but from then on everybody involved was given a good careful tail wherever he went.

“So what do you think happens? Our hero here leaves the Versailles at two o’clock this afternoon, and his dear lady fifteen minutes later. Then where do you suppose they both come? Right here. And then where do you suppose we come? Right here too. All we have to do then is talk to the superintendent downstairs, get his passkey — and here we are. We know how long ago you rented the place; we know how long you’ve been coming here; and so all we have to do is to leave it to a jury as to what the reason might be.

“Slap the cuffs on them, O’Brien. I want them to feel it just the way a little Puerto Rican kid did when I had to do it to him, even if it was only for show that time. Now come on. Up on your feet, both of you. You get one phone call apiece to any lawyer you want, but I’ll lay fifty to one that no lawyer can help you. Anybody talking?”

There did not appear to be. Mrs. Curtis, her face stony-hard under the tears, stood up like a sleepwalker. Across from her, his head still in his hands but his eyes open and staring down with savage hopelessness at the brilliantly polished tips of his black shoes, sat the Versailles manager, Mr. Lenormand.