Эллери Куин - Blow Hot, Blow Cold

“She’s dead,” he said.

It was not a statement that called for a reply, and Nancy was wordless. Then she looked up, and there, behind Jack Richmond, stood Lieutenant Masters. He had been there all the time.

But it was not the presence of Masters that made Nancy come to life and run blindly from the room. It was something Jack Richmond said.

Vera’s husband looked up at Nancy, and he said in the most chillingly courteous way, “I’m sure you will excuse us now?”

Afterward, when Masters came out of the study, he went over to where he had asked Nancy to sit and wait in the living room, and he said to her, “I’m sorry I asked you to wait, Mrs. Howell. You look like death yourself. I can take your statement later. Can you get home all right?” He was a little stooped in her direction, in an attitude of deference, or supplication, as if mutely pleading his innocence.

But Nancy said, “Is it true?”

“Is what true, Mrs. Howell?”

“That when you came here this morning you were really coming for Vera?”

“Yes,” Masters said.

Nancy was silent. Then she said, “How did you know?”

“It occurred to me that Larry Connor might have tried to commit suicide after all and that, having tried, he might have had a change of mind and attempted to get help — it’s a common reaction among many would-be suicides. I checked with the telephone company and located the operator he had dialed. She remembered putting the call through for him. It was to the Richmond residence, to Dr. Jack Richmond. Connor, of course, knew nothing of the emergency call that had taken Dr. Richmond to the hospital.

“The conclusion was obvious. Since Jack Richmond wasn’t home when the operator got the Richmond home for Connor, the phone must have been answered by Richmond’s wife. It was Vera Richmond, then, who had talked to Larry Connor, heard what he had done to himself, heard him plead for help. It was obviously an emergency, and she had been a trained nurse; she knew her husband was at the hospital for another emergency and time was important; it was logical to suppose that she responded to Larry Connor’s plea for help herself. If so, she was the one in Connor’s office, not her husband. She was the one who found Larry dead — or let him die, as we now know — and who manipulated everything afterward, including killing Lila Connor.”

Nancy found herself full of tremors, cold and trembling. She hugged her knees to her chest for warmth. But she was still cold.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “Vera... Vera is the last one I would have suspected.”

Masters said, “She’s the last one I suspected, Mrs. Howell.”

“Jack must have known what he would find here. He seemed to — to accept it.”

“He was afraid of something of the sort. For that matter, so was I. That was why I went looking for him.” Masters hesitated. “In a case like that, a husband has the right to be the first to know.”

“How understanding of you, Lieutenant.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Are you?” Nancy set her little jaw and cried, “I don’t believe you. You’re a — a scavenger ! Larry and Lila and Vera — all dead. I hope you’re satisfied!”

Masters did not protest the injustice of it.

He followed Nancy Howell through the hall and across the kitchen, and he stood in the Richmonds’ back door watching her run across the yards in the fierce sunlight. He continued to stand there after she disappeared in her own house. He felt drained, empty, a fat and ugly husk. Masters was not satisfied with many things in his life, and it was long past the time for trying to do anything about it, and she smelled so nice, and tomorrow might be better for him than today, but he doubted it.