Margery Allingham - Ellery Queen’s Anthology. 1960

“At 2:30 A.M.?”

“It may have been,” Joan said. “I wasn’t concerned with the time.”

“You got to the hotel and went up in the elevator. You didn’t announce yourself?”

“No.”

“What made you think Layne would be in?”

“If he... he hadn’t been I’d have waited for him upstairs.”

“But he was?”

Joan’s eyes closed for an instant, and then opened in that fixed stare. “His door was half open. I knocked. When he didn’t answer I looked in and... and I saw him, lying on the floor.”

“You went in to the room?”

“No. I... I ran,” Joan said.

“You didn’t even stop to see if he was alive, if he needed help?”

“I didn’t think he was alive.”

“Why?”

“I... I don’t know. I just didn’t think so.”

“So you ran away and left him?”

“Yes.”

“Then what?” McCuller asked, as if he didn’t believe a word she’d said.

“I ran down the service stairs and out into the street.”

“You didn’t want to be found there?”

“No.”

“You loved this man,” McCuller said, his voice rising, “but you ran away, without making sure he was dead, without trying to get help for him?”

“About a block from the hotel I found a drugstore that was open,” Joan said. “I called the hotel from the coin box and told them something was wrong with Waldo.”

“And then?”

“I came home,” Joan said. McCuller paced back and forth for a moment. “Were you having an affair with this man while he was still married to your sister?”

“No!”

“It began after they were separated?”

“Yes.”

“And now he was tired of you?”

“I... I suppose so,” Joan said.

I felt sick at my stomach. I wanted to get out of there, but I couldn’t move. Joan, carrying on with that louse Waldo, and we’d never even dreamed of it.

McCuller went over it in earnest now. He made her describe the hotel lobby, the clerk, the old elevator guy, the color of the rug in Waldo’s room. It was as though he wanted to shake her story, but she had every detail of it cold. She didn’t miss up on a thing. And all the time Mike stood with his back to her, staring out the window. Finally McCuller came to the point I’d been waiting for and dreading:

“Do you own a .22 caliber revolver, Miss Malvern?”

“Yes.”

“Where is it?”

“In my bureau — in my bedroom upstairs.”

“Did you carry it with you last night?”

“I’ve never carried it,” Joan said. “My father gave it to me some months ago when we’d received threatening letters, but I never carried it.”

“You didn’t have it with you last night and you didn’t shoot Waldo Layne?”

“No!”

McCuller let his breath out slowly. “Let’s go look at it.”

Mike didn’t move. I hesitated, and then followed Joan and McCuller upstairs. McCuller didn’t seem to notice I was there. Joan went straight to the bureau and opened the top right-hand drawer. She reached into it, seemed surprised, pulled the drawer out farther and really searched. Then she turned to McCuller.

“It... it doesn’t seem to be here,” she said.

“It seems open and shut, Miss Malvern. Woman scorned — that’s the motive. You were there. You own the right kind of gun, which has disappeared. I don’t have any choice.”

“I... I can see that,” Joan said.

“For heaven’s sake, Joan, if you took the gun last night—!” I started to say.

“I didn’t take it, Vance,” she said. “I don’t know what’s become of it.”

“Joan,” I said, and I guess my voice cracked a little.

“I’m sorry, Vance,” she said.

After that McCuller took her away. As he said, he had no choice...

Mike never showed. He never came out of his study when McCuller left with Joan. I warned Joan not to do any more talking till we got our lawyer to her, and then I went to find Mike.

He was back at his desk when I went into the study, and he looked at me as though I were a stranger.

“McCuller’s taken her downtown,” I said. “Her gun is missing. You’d better call Charley Carson and get him down to her at once.”

“I’m through with her,” he said, slowly and distinctly.

“That’s no way to talk, Mike! She’s your daughter.”

“I’m through with her,” he said again. He got up and walked over to the window. He started to talk, with his back to me. “She killed her mother getting born,” he said, in a voice I’d never heard. “She has never brought me anything but tragedy. Now this! Waldo Layne! Sneaking out at night to see him! Loving him! Wasn’t what he did to Erika enough? So she killed him, because he got tired of her! Well, let her pay the price for it.”

I was so shocked I couldn’t speak for a minute. “No matter how you feel,” I said, “she’s your daughter and you can’t let her go undefended. Call Carson.”

“The courts supply lawyers,” he said.

“If you don’t call Carson, I will.”

He turned back from the window. “Let me remind you, Vance, you are an employee here. You’ll do as I say or you’ll go out the front door so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

“Are you going to call Carson?” I asked. I could feel the blood pounding in my temples.

“No,” he said.

“Good-by, Mike,” I said. “It was nice knowing you — up until tonight!”

I ran out of the room, and almost collided with Kathy, who was just outside the study door. I could tell by the look on her face that she’d heard. She didn’t say anything, but she took hold of my arm and walked out through the library with me into the entrance hall.

“Take it easy, Vance,” she said. “I’ve already called Carson.”

“Then you better go pack your trunk,” I said.

“A good secretary anticipates her boss’s wishes,” she said. “I assumed he’d want Carson on the job. He didn’t tell me not to call him.”

“What’s the matter with Mike?” I said. “He talks like a crazy man.”

“Find Erika,” she said, “and he’ll come back to normal. How much can a man take in one day?”

“I walked out on him,” I said. “That’s that.”

“Don’t be foolish,” Kathy said. “He’ll have forgotten it, and so will you in a couple of hours.”

“That he should hate Joan so much—” I said.

She looked up into my eyes. “Love and hate are back to back on a coin, Vance,” she said. “You haven’t been kidding me, buster. I know how you’ve felt about Joan. What do you feel about her now?”

“I guess that’s the $64 question,” I said. “Right now I don’t feel anything — about anything.”

“Go somewhere and cool off,” Kathy said. “Be on the job tomorrow morning. I’ll fight out the Carson thing with him.” She turned her head, that little frown between her eyes, to glance at the study door.

“Since you just let down my back hair,” I said, “how about I let down yours? You’ve been in love with Mike ever since you went to work for him.”

“Sure, I have,” she said quietly. “He’s the most wonderful guy in the world. But it doesn’t do me any good.” She patted my shoulder and then started off for the study...

I suppose every man who has ever gotten a sock in the teeth from the woman he loves has reacted foolishly about it, all the way from getting drunk to punching the wrong guy in the nose. I thought I would be smart and do neither of those things. I would keep busy. It was important, if anybody was going to act sanely, to find Erika. I knew all of Mike’s contacts in the city. I set out to check on who’d seen Erika last night and whom she’d been with. And it was at the sixth place that I came across my first lead. There was a young playwright around town named Austin Graves who had been giving Erika quite a rush, and I heard that they’d been having cocktails together in the bar in the Bijou Club around 7 o’clock.