A Fine and Private Place

“Yes, but then why would Marco move the desk?” Importuna argued. “If he had left it catercornered, but turned Julio around to the face-to-face position so that the blow would seem to have come from the opposite side, you’d have had to say: The killer was right-handed, not left-handed. If Marco killed Julio, he had every reason not to move the desk. So again I ask: Why did he move it and defeat his own purpose, Mr. Queen? You can’t have it both ways!”

“You know, Ellery,” the Inspector said, looking tired again, “he has a point there.”

Ellery was back at his nose-pulling exercise, and he was muttering, something he rarely did. “Yes… that’s so, isn’t it? If Marco was clear-headed enough to turn the body, he should have been clear-headed enough not to shift the desk. This is the queerest case… We’d better talk to Marco again. Maybe he can clear the point up.”

But they were not to talk to Marco Importunato again on that night, or indeed on any night short of the resurrection. They found him in the tall-ceilinged gymnasium hanging halfway down the climbing rope. He had fashioned a loop in the thick hemp, thrust his head into it, evidently shinnied with it to the ceiling, and then launched himself head first toward the floor. At the end of the dive the contention of gravity with the rope claimed his neck.

That sometime imperfect gentleman’s gentleman, Tebaldo, was stretched out on the trampoline like a martyr of the Inquisition, snoring with vigor and nuzzling a three-quarter-empty bottle of Italian barley brandy. Much later, on being resuscitated and approximately sobered, Tebaldo stated that his cugino Marco- he said he was a fifth cousin Marco had brought over from the old country at great expense in the spirit of famiglia, a virtue rarely to be found, alas, in this otherwise great America-had suddenly crawled forth from the bed and challenged him, Tebaldo, to a drinking competition, during which Tebaldo had attempted manfully to keep up, and about the outcome of which he, Tebaldo, remembered nothing but Cousin Marco’s inflamed eyes, which he insisted-crossing himself several times-had resembled nothing so much as two of the fires of hell.

* * *

“Son, son,” Inspector Queen was saying as they watched Marco’s body being taken down-the lab men were confiscating most of the climbing rope, including the noose, foi later examination-”anybody can get fouled up in a case like this. Don’t feel so bad. I’m as responsible as you are when you get down to it. I couldn’t believe all that evidence pointing straight to Marco, either. Yet it was pretty much open and shut from the start. Everything says it was Marco-the button dropped out of his pocket, the shoeprint in the ashes, that left-handed business, and now he commits suicide. Hanging himself is as good as a signed confession… What’s the matter, Ellery? Why the long puss again? You still aren’t satisfied?”

“Since you’re putting the direct question, I’ll have to answer you in kind,” Ellery said. “No.”

“No? Why not? What’s eating you now?”

“A number of things. For one, why Marco didn’t leave the desk catercornered. For another, the fact that his committing suicide doesn’t necessarily add up to a confession of murder, tempting as it is to think it does. Hanging himself might well have been the result of pouring that appalling quantity of alcohol into his system-and we saw how jittery and upset he was to start with-so much, in fact, that he may have gone temporarily psycho. In which condition a rope around his neck could seem the logical answer to his grief and guilt feelings about having quarreled with Julio. Not to mention-if he was innocent-panic over being framed.

“Also,” Ellery went on, “lest we forget, dad, cui bono? as a canny old gent named Cicero put it some time ago. For whose benefit? Who profits by the Importunato brothers’ deaths?”

“You know what I think?” the Inspector exploded. “I think you’re looking for any excuse not to get back to that book of yours! All right, we’ll go ask Importuna.”

“Let me do the talking, dad.”

The old man shrugged.

He had sent Importuna and Ennis into Marco’s bedroom while the technicians worked. They found the secretary drooping in a chair, but Importuna was standing lik statuary at the foot of his brother’s bed, a yard away from it; Ellery received the ludicrous impression that he might be perched on one leg, like a stork or a Far East religious fanatic. Otherwise, if the multimillionaire felt anything at the violent loss of his second brother in 24 hours, Ellery was unable to detect a sign of it. Those heavy features were modeled, beyond alteration, in bronze.

“Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Importuna?” Ellery asked. Distant as the man was, it was hard not to feel compassion for him. “We’re not insensitive to what this must mean to you.”

But Nino Importunato said, not stirring a muscle, “What do you want?” with great harshness. The espresso- colored eyes, the bitter eyes of the enemy, turned full on Ellery. Their expression, and his tone of voice, testified that something had sprung up between them, something frigid and deadly that bridged the gap and now held them fast to each other. Perhaps, Ellery thought, it’s been there all the time. Perhaps he recognized me as the adversary from the beginning.

“Who inherits your brother Julio’s estate, Mr. Importuna? And Marco’s? Since neither of them was married.”

“No one.”

“No one?”

“The conglomerate.”

“Of which you’re now sole owner?”

“Of course. I’m the last of the brothers. The last of our entire family.”

“I thought Tebaldo is a fifth cousin.”

“An old joke of Marco’s that by now Tebaldo half believes. On a visit to Italy Marco got Tebaldo’s sister pregnant. That was years ago. Marco hired Tebaldo as his valet to shut him up, at the same time that he made a settlement with the girl. The drunken fool isn’t of our blood. So if you’re asking who gains by the deaths of Julio and Marco, Mr. Queen,” Nino Importuna said, “the answer is that I do. No one else.”

Their eyes locked.

“Dad,” Ellery said, without looking at the Inspector, “at what time last night did you say Dr. Prouty thought Julio had died?”

“Around 10 o’clock, give or take a half hour. From the way he talked, I don’t think the M. E. thinks he’ll be able to narrow it down any finer.”

“Mr. Importuna,” Ellery asked politely, “would you tell us-if you don’t mind waiving your right to be silent, of course-just where you were last night between 9:30 and 10:30?”

The evenness of his voice in contrast to Importuna’s harshness gave Ellery an advantage that the multimillionaire was quick to sense. When he spoke again, it was in an equally quiet tone.

“Peter.”

Ennis had long since climbed to his feet, alerted by the sounds of battle under the exchange.

“Telephone upstairs and ask Mrs. Importuna to join us here right away. In view of the trend of the questioning, gentlemen, you won’t mind if I call my wife in on this.” He might have been referring to a trivial tidbit of gossip overheard at one of his clubs.

In no more than three minutes a chalky Tebaldo announced her arrival and rather waveringly vanished.

Virginia Whyte Importuna went directly to her husband and took her place by his side. Ellery noticed with sharp interest that she did not grope for his hand, or brush against him, or allow any part of her body to come in contact with his. She simply stood near, erect and attentive, like a soldier summoned into the commanding officer’s presence, an invisible gulf between them. Apparently she did not want for herself, or feel the need to give him, a physical reassurance. Or was it something else?

She was a natural very-light-cafe-au-lait blond with intelligent violet-blue eyes of great size, high northern European cheekbones, and a little straight nose passionately flared. Really exquisite, Ellery thought. Her beauty had an ethereal patina, almost a poetry, but he was sure that it covered a rustproof undercoating resistant to assault. What other kind of woman could cope with a man like Nino Importuna?

She wore a high-fashion dress of deceiving simplicity that set off her long legs and hourglass figure. She stood taller than her husband, even though he wore built-up shoes and she was in low heels, no doubt at his direction. Ellery judged her to be in her mid-20s. She could have passed for Importuna’s granddaughter.