Gary Alexander - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 86, No. 6. Whole No. 511, December 1985

“Do you believe him?”

“Don’t start again.”

She laughed softly. “I knew it. Plausible Reginald Packer, the man everybody accepts at face value.” Her voice hardened. “What the hell did you expect him to say?”

Valerie Land wound the clock, set the alarm, and turned out the bedside light. She settled back her head mostly on Logan’s pillow, an arm across his bare chest. He turned his face into the fragrant veil of her hair. “All the more reason,” Val said, “for you to forget this crowd and come to New York with me. I know Reg Packer from editorial meetings. He can be dangerous.”

“Has he given you trouble?”

“I keep out of his way. Listen, my boss took me to lunch today. They love my work here but the magazine is not making it. There will have to be cuts in staff before the winter. They sure as hell aren’t going to drop Brits and keep a Yank.”

“I suppose.”

“They have a place for me in New York. But it won’t remain open forever. In the next few weeks, I’m going to have to sing or get off the stage.”

“I’m not sure I can make it without you.” Then, because he felt like it, Logan let loose with a tavern baritone. “Val, Val, dear old pal...”

She shut him up with a breasty headlock and then they were engaged in that most beautiful of human activities, laughing in bed. .

Ernie Colman appeared on the building site at half past eight with a bottle of milk, a bag of sweet buns, and a copy of one of the morning tabloids. Logan was standing in a daze staring at the wreckage of the house they were converting. Someday it would be reorganized into four smart apartments, everything neat and polished, tenants in place paying astronomical rents. Today it was impossible to see how that could ever happen.

With the kettle plugged in and beginning to murmur, Colman shook open the newspaper. “How about this then,” he said. “We’ve lost our best marathon runner.”

“Whittaker?”

“He shot himself. Left a note saying his injury was not responding to treatment. I guess he thought he could never run competitively again.”

Logan looked at the photograph of a jubilant Martin Whittaker accepting the trophy last year for winning the London Marathon. “This is fishy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nora Packer took me to see this guy last night. He seemed confident to me, working out to get in shape for next month.”

Colman was puzzled. He wanted to know what Nora had to do with the famous athlete and how Logan had come to meet him.

“After you left the pub with your family last night, she told me who got her pregnant. It was him — Whittaker. They were living together before she met Reg Packer. I wanted to help Nora, do something to bring her together with her baby. This guy hadn’t even been told he was the father. I said let’s bring him in on it, maybe he’ll want to help.”

“How did he react?”

“Less than enthusiastic. Not even willing to concede the baby was his. All he could think about was winning the marathon two years in a row.” Logan returned the paper. “Now this so-called suicide.”

They made their early tea and used it to wash down sweet buns as they stood in the ruins of the kitchen. “How do you read it, then?” Colman asked.

Logan said, “We went on to see Packer himself. Lucky me, I got inside Metro Radio where he was doing some recording. He told me none of what Nora says is true. There were only false pregnancies, never any baby. Her amnesia comes from this hysteria of hers.”

“Who do you believe?”

“Last night I was ready to believe Packer. A busy man with a neglected wife whose system will try anything to claim his attention. Now I’m not so sure. Whittaker said Packer gave him lots of money to leave Nora alone. He accepted it and the boat sailed on. Last night we made waves. Now it isn’t just a quiet arrangement between three people, the Packers and Martin Whittaker. Now I know about it, maybe others as well. Whittaker becomes more than a receiver of hush-money. He becomes a witness to the fact that Nora is not a hysteric, that she really had a baby, that the estimable Reg Packer sent her away and had the infant kidnaped.” Logan kicked the paper. “How the tabloids would love to get hold of that one.”

“Sounds horribly plausible,” Colman said.

“And I’m involved.”

They went outside and resumed yesterday’s work on the front wall. Sometime after ten o’clock, Colman tapped a brick in place with the end of his trowel and said, “Don’t be involved, Tony.”

“Nora has nobody else.”

“Falling in love again. .” The big builder crooned the line out of tune, the way Dietrich used to do it.

“Not really. But I got her to tell her story. I made her take me to see the marathoner. Without that, Whittaker would probably be clocking ten miles around Hyde Park this morning.”

“Then go to the police.”

“With a flimsy story like this? Against a solid citizen like Packer? They’d show me the door.”

As he went on working, Colman said, “There’s one thing you’re forgetting. Let’s assume Packer did kill Whittaker because he knew too much.” He held his trowel like a pistol and aimed it at his friend. “You know as much as Whittaker did. What’s going to happen to you?”

Two days later, Logan’s telephone rang in the early evening. It was Nora. “I hope you don’t mind this call.”

“I’m glad to hear from you. I was wondering what was happening.”

“A few things. Can you come out and meet me?”

She was in the hotel bar in Euston when he got there, at the same table where Packer had bought them his elaborate cocktails. Now they drank whiskey and water. “It’s such a relief to be with you again.” Her hand covered his. “I think he wants to kill me.”

“Your husband?”

“Or have me put away.” Her eyes emptied and she stared vacantly at the glass in her hand. “I’d rather be dead.”

“Are you sleeping all right? Have you seen a doctor?”

“Don’t say doctor. That’s part of what’s happening. But let me tell you first about Martin. The police think he shot himself with a gun that was found in his hand. They haven’t been able to trace the gun. And the so-called suicide note was typed. Anybody could have done that — and put the gun in his hand after he was dead.”

“Where are you getting these details? I didn’t see them in the newspaper.”

“The police came to us because of Reg backing Martin financially. It was only a formality. They don’t know Martin was the father of my child.”

“Could they connect your husband with Whittaker’s death?”

“The gun. For years Reg has kept a pistol in the bottom drawer of his desk. He got it somewhere illegally — it could never be traced. I looked the other day. The gun is gone.”

“It would be your word against your husband’s that it existed.”

“That’s why I’ve kept quiet so far. Anyway, the police seem convinced Martin killed himself. They say a physiotherapist confirms his back was not responding to treatment.”

The waiter brought another round, for which Nora insisted on paying. “I haven’t told you the worst,” she said. “Dr. Monteith is in London.”

“Who’s he?”

“Clifford Monteith, the Montreal doctor who delivered my baby and then stole her from me.”

“Is he a problem?”

“Monteith has been in my husband’s pocket for years. That’s how Reg was able to get him to go along with the plot. He has files on my behavior in Montreal after I gave birth. And he knows about my blackouts. I think he’s going to certify me and have me put away.”

“Can he do that?”

“You don’t know Reginald Packer.”