Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

The defense excused me abruptly.

Paul’s lawyers had only a few forlorn little points to play with, and one powerful fact.

They tried first to play on the point that Anne’s estate was not hers to will, that her father had entailed it. On her death, they reminded the court, the money would go to some woman in the States, a distant cousin of Anne’s. (The will had been read droningly aloud, and then droningly translated. I had noted bitterly that the woman in the States inherited directly. Either she was well over thirty-five or Anne’s father’s enmity had not stretched to her.) Now, said the defense, what man would commit murder without even bothering to find out that he wouldn’t inherit? — And the answer was too obvious to avoid: Paul had admittedly married for money that was untouchable, and he hadn’t bothered to find that out He was simply a foolish man.

Who would drop someone overboard and then say she swam away?... He was simply a foolish man.

All right they said, where’s the body?

That one caused the usual fuss. The corpus-delicti business is often tossed around, but it has never really been resolved. Men have been found guilty of murder although no body was produced, and anyway, the term is misunderstood. “Corpus delicti” does not, in law, mean the physical body of the victim of a murder. It means the fundamental facts necessary to the commission of a crime. The prosecution claimed they had that and then some.

But they weren’t stuck with it because in mid-trial a part of the body showed up.

Doctors were then paraded to and from the witness stand. Those called by the defense said the body was too long dead to be the body of the Baroness. Those called by the prosecution said the body was too long in the water to be able to say how long it was dead.

And the prosecution simply pointed out that the pathetic remnants were clothed in shreds of Anne’s bathing suit. And nobody — the defense, the prosecution, Paul, or me — denied that that bit of silvery green was not from Anne’s bathing suit.

The Baron Paul was hanged.

The Chief of Police nodded at me. “And you came home,” he said, “and then you got married and had two sons and remembered the young lady in the green suit with the light eyes. It’s a very interesting tale, Mr. Dentelle. Sad. But — forgive me — so what?”

“So,” I said, “an hour ago, as I was walking from the hotel toward that roadside place where they serve the charcoal-grilled steaks—”

“The Bluebell Inn. On Long Lane.”

“Yes. As I was walking along, before I reached the end of the main street that has the two traffic lights, a plum-colored Mercedes-Benz, chauffeur-driven, drew up beside me to wait for the light—”

“I know the car.” He nodded. “Naturally. Only thing like it in town. Belongs to the people who own the mill.”

Why didn’t he put a name to the main street, I wondered impatiently, since he was such a glutton for detail? But... “Own the mill?” I repeated. “I’ve dealt with it for years but never thought of it as being ‘owned.’ It’s a monster of an operation. Isn’t it a public stock company?”

“Uh-huh. Family held. But he isn’t an executive type. They travel. Rarely here. Some say he’s a nice boss, and some say he’s just a bad businessman and has the sense to know it... As I said, so what?”

“So in the back seat of that plum-colored car was Anne.”

The chief took his weight off his elbows. “You,” he said slowly, “ are nuts. Most likely, the lady in the back was Mrs. Frauenfeld.”

“It was Anne. The brown hair is silvery now — it can’t be hex age, but however false, it looks good. She is very beautiful and very cold-looking.”

He was still looking at me as if I were totally insane. He said, “Thirty-five? Thirty-six?”

“She is thirty-seven now, but she looks older.”

“Mrs. Frauenfeld does give an impression of being — well, ‘beautifully preserved.’ Odd, since she’s pretty young.”

“Frauenfeld?”

“I told you—”

“Frauenfeld. Wait.” I frowned, and then it came. “That was the name of the distant cousin. It was read out in court. That was the name of the distant cousin who inherited. But — it was a woman.”

“His first name is Marion.”

“Ah. Yes, that was it.”

“Something is funny, Mr. Dentelle?”

“Was I smiling? Well, it depends on one’s sense of humor. I was wondering if Anne took that feminine-sounding name into her careful account, and I decided it was not impossible. Because I also was remembering that unusual but not very suitable bathing suit. Only thing I ever saw on her that wasn’t understated. Cost her several months’ clothes, she told me.”

He stared at me for one of his long minutes. Then he said, “You are sure, Mr. Dentelle?”

“Absolutely sure. Older, colder, more beautiful. Same eyes.”

He said slowly, “I noticed Mrs. Frauenfeld’s eyes at a charity affair once. She handed me a cup of punch. She was very charming, very gracious. But I wondered if she took dope.”

“I don’t think so. Pinpointed with total determination, that’s all. That may make medical nonsense, but it’s what I always thought.”

He looked at the clock behind me on the wall. He looked at the telephone on his table. Then he looked at me. He said, without expression, “Not a heck of a lot is known about the Frauenfelds. Perhaps because there is no one of their social level in town. There is a rumor — women’s gossip, I’m sure — that she is ‘no better than she should be,’ as my mother would have said. Lives her own life, the ladies suggest. Doesn’t respect her husband. But then he isn’t a strong man. Has a weak chin. Pointy. One thing I do know — he is a mining engineer. Like you.”

“Like me and the man she loved — who was no businessman and would never be rich, who was ’weak, but somehow suitable.’ Has a pointed chin, huh? Like his wife and cousin?... Dynasty,’ she said. Maybe she had some idea that to marry the only relative she had would make for a kind of dynasty, and keep the money in the family.”

His hand moved slowly toward the telephone, arrived, and stayed there, motionless. He said, apparently to himself, “Not only her, but him. Accessory... So what you’re saying is this: she couldn’t inherit for thirteen years. But if she ‘died,’ her cousin — the man she was in love with — would inherit. So she arranges ‘to be murdered,’ her cousin inherits, she marries him, and has the money right away... There are details to check, to confirm — wills, birth certificates, marriage certificates, that part of a body in shreds of the green bathing suit. And” — he looked at me — “slowness, sureness, silence — until we reach certainty. Will you join me in these precautions, Mr. Dentelle?”

“Yes.”

“The state’s attorney,” he said musingly. “Too big for me.” He still held the phone, thinking it out. “Will you come back when we need you, Mr. Dentelle?”

“I’ll wait around.”

He looked dubious. “At least two weeks. Might be much more”

“I waited on the Riviera for two months.”

He looked at me curiously. “You feel — vengeful?”

Did I? I said slowly, “Less so every minute. At first I felt sorry for the weeks of agony suffered by the young William Dentelle, and then for his years of pain-filled, regret-filled nights. But now I am thinking only of simple justice. I feel that you and I must ride off and see justice done. For Paul’s sake. As I told Anne, he was really a likeable guy, and honest according to his peculiar lights.”

“Um. Well, you know, so was she. And I think you might also experience some thankfulness.”