“If you’ll allow me to finish, Peter,” he said, “you’ll find it’s rather more than a hint.”
“You don’t have to hint, old boy. What you’re doing or are about to do is accuse me of having plotted to kill Virginia’s husband beginning 9 months before the actual murder and, during those 9 months, of having got rid of Julio and Marco in order to triple Virginia’s inheritance when she should come into it. Right? And I’m supposed to have done all this in the expectation of marrying her and so getting control of the Importuna fortune?”
“Very well put, Peter,” Ellery said. “That’s just what I’m accusing you of.”
Peter grinned. He glanced at Virginia, whose smile became a tittery sort of giggle.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Queen,” she said, “this is so rude of me. And you
“What do you mean?” Ellery demanded, reddening. “Have I said something funny?”
“You sure have,” Peter said. “Hilarious. I take it if I can prove I couldn’t have killed Nino Importuna I’m off your stupid hook?”
“Peter, now, really,” Virginia chided him. “That’s not a nice way to talk to Mr. Queen. I’m sure he’s done the very best anyone could expect.”
“So did the snake in the Garden of Eden! I don’t exactly enjoy being suspected of murder, darlin’. Well, Queen, do you want the proof?”
“Of course.” Ellery was standing there looking like a small boy who has just awakened from a delicious dream to find himself soaked to the skin.
“Inspector Queen, when exactly was Nino murdered?” Peter Ennis demanded. “Lay it out for us again. What time of night?”
“Just past midnight of September 9th-10th.” The Inspector avoided Ellery’s piteous glance. “About 12:15 a.m. of, technically, the 10th of September.”
“Be sure to take this all down, Mr. Rankin. It’s the stopper to that arrest order you’ve probably got burning a hole in your pocket.
“Nino Importuna, Virginia, and I had dinner together in the penthouse that evening-the evening of the 9th-as we told you people long ago. Toward the end of the dinner Nino complained of not feeling well, as you know, and he went to his room after telling us to eat the chef’s special dessert without him. Virginia and I did so, and I immediately left. What I didn’t testify to was that when I drove to my apartment I changed my clothes, threw a toothbrush and pajamas into my briefcase, and drove back to the vicinity of 99 East. Virginia was waiting for me at our prearranged spot-”
“How did she do that without being seen leaving the building?” Ellery jeered.
“Let me, Peter,” Virginia said, “since it’s me Mr. Queen’s talking about. It was really quite simple, Mr. Queen. The building next door is flush against ours, and just one story lower. There’s a steel ladder on our roof that can be lowered to theirs in an emergency. I’d purposely dressed in a dark slack suit. I lowered the ladder, climbed down to the other roof, got into their elevator, which is self-service, and simply rode down to the street. They don’t have a night doorman or a security guard. I got back to the penthouse later the same way, just pulling the ladder back up when I was on our roof.”
Ellery sat down on Importuna’s bed. It was less a sitting down than a collapse.
Peter Ennis said with some satisfaction, “We drove up to Connecticut-New Milford, Queen. Registered there in a motel under the names of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Angelo-Virginia thought that sounded romantic. The trip up took two hours of fast driving-I don’t see how anyone could make it in less time in a car. We checked into the motel just about 11 p.m.-their records should show the time to the minute, because they use a time-and-dating machine on the slips. Even if we’d left the place immediately and driven back to the city, we couldn’t possibly have reached 99 East before 1 a.m., which would have made it almost an hour after Nino was murdered. As it is, we didn’t actually check out until around 1:30 a.m.-you’ll find the exact time recorded up there. I dropped Virginia off at the building next door at 3:30 a.m. and drove on to my apartment.
“I should make the point, I suppose,” Peter went on, looking them in the eyes, “that the reason we didn’t tell the truth about that night until you just made it impossible for us not to, Queen, was that we didn’t expect anyone really to understand how much we’ve been in love for so long, that it’s been the real thing for both of us, that we couldn’t face having it cheapened further-it was cheapened enough in our own eyes by the circumstances.
“Now that I’ve said it,” Peter said, “you’ll want to know the name of the motel-”
“We know the name of the motel,” Inspector Queen said. “It’s been checked out, Ellery-not only the registration and departure times, but also positive IDs of Ennis and Mrs. Importuna from photos we showed the night clerk who saw them come and go. I didn’t get the chance to tell you, son, in the rush today.”
“But you must have known what I had in mind when I set this up, dad,” Ellery said wildly. He was clutching the edge of Importuna’s bed with both hands as if it were the edge of a precipice.
“Not really, son. You were pretty mysterious about what you had in mind. I thought you’d be pulling the rabbit out of your hat as usual, one of your magic tricks that turn a case upside down the way you’ve done so often. Ellery, if you can’t disprove the alibi, these people are in the clear. And you can’t. Why do you think those subpoenas weren’t served? On the evidence, neither Mrs. Importuna nor Ennis could physically have been here at the time Importuna was attacked and murdered.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Queen, I really am,” Virginia murmured again, as if she would happily have confessed to the crime if only to save Ellery from further embarrassment.
“I’m sure you’ll figure out the real answer one of these days.”
Mercifully, Ellery was not listening. He was mumbling to himself. He was mumbling, “Those 9s. Those damn 9s. They’ve got to be the key to this nightmare. But what?”
“Where you went wrong, son,” the Inspector said later that night, over Ellery’s favorite pastrami sandwiches and celery tonic from the kosher delicatessen around the corner, “was in not spotting the big hole in your argument.”
“Hole?” He was chewing away at the Rumanian delicacy, but only out of respect for tradition. “What hole?”
“If Peter Ennis had been the killer, then he sent that final anonymous letter, number 10. But if he was the guilty party that’s the last thing he’d have done. The message instructed us to find out who’d had lunch with Virginia on that certain date… the date that, according to you, began the 9-month waiting period till Virginia could come into Importuna’s estate. Well, that’s the one thing the killer couldn’t possibly have wanted us to find out-the one thing he was trying his damnedest to hide by throwing all those 9s at us! You didn’t think it through far enough, Ellery. As I said, about the only one in the world who
“You’re right, you’re right,” Ellery muttered. “How could I have made a slip like that? It’s ridiculous… But dad, there’s something Virginia recorded Peter as having said to her that afternoon-I think while he was putting her into a cab right after lunch-something that’s stuck in my craw ever since she let me read her diary.”
“What was that?”
“She wrote that he said, ‘There’s only one thing for me to do and, by God, when the time is ripe I’m going to do it.’ Certainly Virginia made no bones about what she thought Peter meant. And I interpreted it the same way: That when the 9 months were up and Virginia’s inheritance was safely hers by will or however, Peter was going to put Importuna out of the way.”
“Son, all that young fellow probably meant was that one of those days he was going to screw up his courage and have a talk with the old guy-stand up like a man to the hubby of the woman he loved and admit what had been going on, and try to convince him to give Virginia her freedom. She let her imagination run away with her, and so did you.”
Ellery made a face, as if he had found a German roach scuttling across his plate. It was not impossible, even the best of New York apartments being what they were, although in this case it happened not to be so.
He set the unfinished pastrami sandwich on the plate and said, “I don’t know what I’m eating this for. I’m not hungry. I’ll clean up, dad.”
The sandwich, like his theory, wound up in the garbage.
