Ellery Queen - There Was an Old Woman

He learned the answer as they drove west to the Drive, the three of them crowded into the front seat of the roadster.

“My mother’s against our marriage,” said Sheila simply. “You’d have to know Mother to know just how horrible that can be, Mr. Queen.”

“What’s her reason?”

“She won’t give one,” complained Charley.

“I think I know her reason,” said Sheila so quietly Ellery almost missed the bitterness. “It’s my sister Louella.”

“The inventor?”

“Yes. Mother makes no bones about her sympathies, Mr. Queen. She’s always been kinder to the children of her first marriage than to Bob and Mac and me. Maybe it’s because she never did love my father, and by being cold to us she’s getting back at him, or something. Whatever it is, I do know that Mother loves poor Louella passionately and loathes me.” Sheila sucked in her lower lip, as if to hide it.

“It’s a fact, Ellery,” growled Paxton. “You’d think it was Sheila’s fault that Louella’s a skinny old zombie, swooping around her smelly chem lab with an inhuman light in her eye.”

“It’s very simple, Mr. Queen. Rather than see me married while Louella stays an old maid, Mother’s perfectly willing to sacrifice my happiness. She’s quite a monster about it.”

Ellery Queen, who knew odd things, thought he saw wherein the monster dwelt. The children of the Old Woman’s union with Bacchus Potts were off normal. On these, the weaklings, the misfits, the helpless ones, Cornelia Potts expended the passion of her maternity. To the offspring of her marriage with Stephen Potts, né Brent, therefore, she could give only her acid anger. The twin boys and Sheila were what she had always wanted fussy little Thurlow, spinster-inventor Louella, and the still-unglimpsed Horatio to be. This much was clear. But there was that which was not.

“Why do you two stand for it?” Ellery asked.

Before Charley could answer, Sheila said quickly: “Mother threatens to disinherit me if I marry Charley.”

“I see,” said Ellery, not liking Sheila’s reply at all.

She read the disapproval in his tone. “It’s not of myself I’m thinking! It’s Charley. You don’t know what he’s gone through. I don’t care a double darn whether I get any of Mother’s money or not.”

“Well, I don’t either,” snapped Charley, flushing. “Don’t give Ellery the impression — The hours I’ve spent arguing with you, sweetie-pie!”

“But darling—”

“Ellery, she’s as stubborn as her mother. She gets an idea in her head, you can’t dislodge it with an ax.”

“Peace,” smiled Ellery. “This is all new to me, remember. Is this it? If you two were to marry against your mother’s wishes, Sheila, she’d not only cut you off but she’d fire Charley, too?” Sheila nodded grimly. “And then, Charley, you’d be out of a job. Didn’t I understand that your whole practice consists in taking care of the Potts account?”

“Yes,” said Charley unhappily. “Between Thurlow’s endless lawsuits and the legitimate legal work of an umpteen-million-dollar shoe business, I keep a large staff busy. There’s no doubt Sheila’s mother would take all her legal work elsewhere if we defied her. I’d be left pretty much out on a limb. I’d have to start building a practice from scratch. But I’d do it in a shot to get Sheila. Only — she won’t.”

“No, I won’t,” said Sheila. “I won’t ruin your life, Charley. Or mine for that matter.” Her lips flattened, and Charley looked miserable. “You’ll hate me for this, Mr. Queen. My mother’s an old woman, a sick old woman. Dr. Innis can’t help that awful heart of hers, and she won’t obey him, or take care of herself, and we can’t make her... Mother will die very soon, Mr. Queen. In weeks. Maybe days. Dr. Innis says so. How can I feel anything but relief at the prospect?” And Sheila’s eyes, so blue and young, filled with tears.

Ellery saw again that life is not all caramel candy and rose petals, and that the great and hardy souls of this earth are women, not men.

“Sometimes,” said Sheila, sniffing, “I think men don’t know what love really is.” She smiled at Charley and ruffled his hair. “You’re a jerk,” she said.

The roadster nosed along in traffic, and for some time none of them spoke.

“When Mother dies, Charley and I — and my dad, and the twins — we’ll all be free. We’ve lived in a jail all our lives — a sort of bedlam. You’ll see what I mean tonight... We’ll be free, and we’ll change our names back to Brent, and we’ll become folks again, not animals in a zoo. Thurlow’s furious about the name of Brent — he hates it.”

“Does your mother know all this, Sheila?” frowned Ellery.

“I imagine she suspects.” Sheila seized her young man’s arm. “Charley, stop here and let me out.”

“What for?” demanded Charley suspiciously.

“Let me out, you droogler! There’s no point in making Mother madder than she is already. I’ll cab home from here, while you drive Mr. Queen into the grounds — then Mother can only suspect I’ve been seeing you on the side!”

“What in the name of the seven thousand miracles,” demanded Ellery as he got out of his host’s roadster, “is that?”

The mansion lay far back from the tall Moorish gates and iron-spiked walls which embraced the precious Potts property. The building faced Riverside Drive and the Hudson River beyond; between gates and house lay an impressive circle of grass and trees, girded as by a stone belt with the driveway which arched from the gates to the mansion and back to the gates again. Ellery was pointing an accusing finger at the center of this circle of greenery. For among the prim city trees stood a remarkable object — a piece of bronze statuary as tall as two acrobats and as wide as an elephant. It stood upon a pedestal and twinkled and leered in the setting sun. It was the statue of an Oxford shoe. A shoe with trailing laces in bronze.

Above it traced elegantly in neon tubing were the words —

“It’s a little early for dinner,” said Charley, his robust voice echoing in the foyer. “Do you want to absorb the atmosphere first, or what? I’m your man.”

Ellery blinked at the scene. This was surely the most wonderful house in New York. It had no style; or rather, it partook of many styles, borrowing rather heavily from the Moorish, with Gothic subdominant. It was large, large; and its furnishings were heavy, heavy. There was a wealth of alfresco work on the walls, and sullen, unbeautiful hangings. Knights of Byzantium stood beside doorways stiffly on guard against threats as empty as themselves. A gilded staircase spiraled from the foyer into the heaven of this ponderous dream.

“Let me take the atmosphere in bits, please,” said Ellery. He half-expected Afghan hounds to come loping out of hidden lairs, bits of rush clinging to their hides, and Quasimodos in nut-brown sacking and tonsured pates to serve his shuddering pleasure. But the only servant he had seen, an oozy prig of a man in butler’s livery, had been conventional enough. “In fact, Charley, if you could give me a glimpse of the various Pottses before dinner in their native habitat I should be ever so much obliged.”

“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to meet them except through necessity, but I suppose that’s what distinguishes you from all other men. This way, Professor. Let’s see which Potts we can scare up first.”

At the top of the staircase stood a landing, most specious and hushed, and long halls leading away. Charley turned a corner, and there yawned the entrance to what looked like a narrow tower. “That’s just what it is,” nodded Charley. “Up wi’ ye!”