watch or wrist, period. That was a proper medical observation. Anything beyond that is somebody else’s job.”
“I’m losing my miggies,” Ellery muttered, smiting his brow. “Why didn’t I insist on reading your autopsy report?”
And he departed on the run, leaving the medical examiner with his dentures sunk to their foundations in the dead body of an apple.
Virginia Whyte Importuna received him in the sitting room of her private quarters in the penthouse. He was surprised to find the room done in early Colonial American, like hundreds of thousands of American homes; he had rather expected the Grand Style of
But what he had at first thought were good reproductions he soon recognized as originals in priceless condition. There was a 17th century press cupboard of oak, pine, and maple, for example, which he could have sworn was stolen from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and even earlier Brewster-type chairs that looked as if they might have belonged to Governor William Bradford. Every piece in the young widow’s sitting room was an antique of great rarity.
“I see you’re admiring my antiques, Mr. Queen,” Virginia said.
“Admiring is scarcely the word, Mrs. Importuna. I’m overcome.”
“I had these rooms done over-my private apartment-the first year I was married. My husband gave me free rein. I’m New England on my father’s side going way, way back, and I’ve always doted on the furniture and artifacts and things of pre-Revolutionary America. But it was the first time in my life I had the means to collect them.”
“Your husband was very generous with you, I take it.”
“Oh, yes,” she said quickly. Too quickly? He was interested by the way she immediately changed the subject, as if she were reluctant to discuss Nino Importuna. “I’m sorry you had such a hard time getting up to see me, Mr. Queen. Sometimes I feel like the princess in the fairy tale who’s kept locked in the tower and guarded by dragons. I own I don’t know how many homes all over the world, they tell me, most of which I’ve never visited, and they won’t even let me stick my little toe out of this building. I’m beginning to hate 99 East. How long does this have to go on?”
“Until there’s a significant break in the case, I imagine,” Ellery said. “Well. I don’t want to take up too much of your time-”
“Heavens, I have more of it than I know what to do with.” Virginia sighed and looked down at the hands in her lap. The instant she did, they stopped wriggling. “Aside from having to sign thousands of papers the lawyers push in front of me, I don’t get to do very much of anything these days. It’s a pleasure to be able to talk to somebody who isn’t a policeman.”
“Then I’m afraid I’m going to be a disappointment to you,” Ellery said, smiling. Why was she so nervous? Surely by this time she must be hardened to such encounters. “Even though I’m not a policeman, Mrs. Importuna, I’m here to ask you some policemanlike questions.”
“Oh.”
He thought it disingenuous of her, the little note of surprise and regret. She must know that he had not sought her out to discuss antiques.
“Do you mind?”
She shrugged. “I should be used to it, but I’m not. Of course I mind, Mr. Queen. I mind very much. However, it’s not going to do me much good, is it?”
And that was clever of her.
Ellery felt the familiar flow of adrenalin at the prospect of a battle of wits.
“Since we’re being so candid with each other, Mrs. Importuna-no, it’s not. You can always refuse to answer, naturally. But I don’t see why you should, unless you have something to hide.”
“What is it you want to know?” she asked abruptly.
“That cast-iron sculpture the murderer used to kill your husband. Was it usually kept in Mr. Importuna’s bed- room:
“It was never kept in his bedroom. He didn’t like it.”
“Oh? Where was it kept, then?”
“In the master living room.”
“I don’t understand, Mrs. Importuna. That could be an important piece of information. I’ve read the transcripts of most if not all of your interrogations, and I don’t recall your revealing that fact before. Why didn’t you?”
“Nobody ever asked me the question before, that’s why!” The ethereal blue of her eyes showed flashes now, like water struck by the sun; there was warm color on her cheekbones, giving her the look of a doll. “I assumed… Well, I suppose I just didn’t think about it.”
“Unfortunate. Because you see where this leads us, Mrs. Importuna. Whoever it was, while on his way to your husband’s bedroom to commit tbe murder, paused in the living room long enough to select the weapon with which to commit it. Apparently he didn’t bring one with him, a gun or a knife; or, if he did come armed, he deliberately chose the sculpture in the living room instead. Which raises the interesting corollary question, Why that sculpture? I’ve seen a dozen objects in the master living room-and in Mr. Importuna’s bedroom, for that matter-that could have served the killer’s purpose just as well. Come to think of it, he didn’t have to go through the master living room to get to your husband’s room. Meaning that he went out of his way to get his hands on that sculpture. Why would he do that? What was so important about the cast-iron abstract?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Not even a theory, Mrs. Importuna?”
“No.”
“Did the shape of that sculpture ever strike you particularly? Remind you of anything?”
She shook her head.
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Ellery said, smiling again. “Tell me about it, Mrs. Importuna.”
“I don’t know what there is to tell… “
“I believe you said that it wasn’t kept in Mr. Importuna’s bedroom because he didn’t like it-”
“That’s not what I said at all. I made two separate statements, Mr. Queen. One: It wasn’t kept in my husband’s room. Two: He didn’t like it. There’s no because in between.”
“Oh, I see. Where did it come from?”
“It was a gift.”
“To Mr. Importuna?”
“No.”
“To you?”
“Yes.”
“And it usually stood in the living room, you said.”
“Yes, fitted into an ebony stand.”
“May I ask what the occasion for the gift was? And who gave it to you?”
“It was a birthday gift. Two years ago. As for who gave it to me, Mr. Queen, I don’t see that that has the least bearing on anything we’re discussing.”
“It’s been my experience,” Ellery said chattily, “that you never quite know in advance what’s going to turn out to be important and what isn’t. Although I grant the odds are usually that any given fact is of no importance whatever. But I sense resistance, Mrs. Importuna. This arouses my curiosity-I’ve got a lot of cat in me. If you won’t tell me who presented you with the sculpture, I assure you I can find out. And I intend to do so. As the saying goes, I have my methods.”
“Peter Ennis.” It was a flat statement, wrung out of her, juiceless.
“Thank you,” Ellery murmured. “I can see why you preferred not to reveal the source of the gift. Ennis has been virtually living here in his capacity of confidential secretary to your husband and your husband’s brothers. He’s a personable, virile, attractive young man, tall, Nordic, the perfect male counterpart, in fact, of the young and very beautiful lady of the house. Who was married to a squat, ugly old man. If it became known that the young secretary was giving the young wife valuable gifts, people might talk. Servants certainly would. And Mr. Importuna? Did the
