Эллери Куин - The Devil's Cook

“Yes. A couple. They parked. I scared them off.”

“They were stopped at the other end.”

“What do suppose went wrong?”

“Who knows? Maybe the whole thing was a rehearsal. For whatever reason, we’ve been stood up.”

“Well, I’m tired, and I’m freezing, and I twisted an ankle. Do you need me any longer?”

“No, Mr. Moran, you did fine. There’s a police car over there. The driver will take you home.”

Bartholdi continued to stand there, thinking. An officer stepped out of the darkness.

“Dry run?” the officer said.

“Dry run.”

“What about the car that went in?”

“A couple making out.”

“In my day, we called it necking.”

“In your day, that’s all it was. Today...” Bartholdi sighed.

Bartholdi knew that he would not sleep. Instead of going home, he went to headquarters and sat alone in his office in a darkness that was compromised by a finger of light prying through a crack in his door from the hall outside.

His brain was as jumpy as if it had been injected with a cerebral aphrodisiac. It had happened before, and he always preferred on such occasions to sit in the dark. He indulged himself at these times in a harmless fantasy. His thoughts, he would imagine, were irrepressible imps that wriggled out at his head and scampered around with an abandon that was often embarrassing. Consequently, in order to secure a decent privacy for their performance, it was only proper to release them after dark, and when he was alone.

Now his liberated imps were uneasy and angry. He was convinced that a murderer was at that moment having a grim laugh at his expense. He was certain, indeed, of a number of things. He was certain that his quarry knew the police knew Terry Miles was dead; he knew, in spite of this, why they had been put through the antics of this dreary night.

His imps figured it out this way:

The kidnapper allegedly knew that Jay Miles had gone to the police. If so, why didn’t he also know that the body of Terry Miles had been found? Having Jay under such close observation, apparently following him from home to headquarters, would he have abandoned the tail just in time to remain in ignorance of their subsequent visit to the old Skully place? Is was conceivable, granting an egomaniac with delusions of grandeur and immunity, but it was not probable. No, it was not.

In the second place, the kidnapper himself was merely a theory. Evidence of his existence was hearsay. Bartholdi had only Jay Miles’s word that a kidnapper had made himself known. There had been no witnesses to the telephone contact.

It had been necessary to take the whole thing on blind faith, and Bartholdi did not count himself among the faithful blind. Yet he believed in a kidnapping of a sort.

He knew who the murderer was. He would have bet his pension and his sacred soul that he knew. But he could not, knowing, prove what he knew. He needed confirmation on a critical point.

From among his antic imps he culled the three that had directed his mind to its present state. Sternly, like a drill sergeant, he brought them to attention in rank and inspected them:

One newspaper too many.

A girl who slept too soundly.

Most important of all, a ragout with too many onions.

Later that day, which was a Wednesday, the story of Terry Miles was issued by Captain Bartholdi to the press. Too late for the morning edition of the Journal , it was lavishly treated in the evening edition — illustrated with garish photographs of the old Skully house and the bleak little room where the body was found, and of Terry and Jay, which were dug up from somewhere. And it was annotated with comment from the authorities in high places, and from young Vernon and Charles, who gave free rein to imaginations loosened at last from the threat of police displeasure. Vernon in particular revealed a talent for narrative embroidery.

Bartholdi, peppered by snipers from all sides, remained committed to his task. Early in the day he telephoned Jay to warn him of coming events; Jay, on the captain’s advice, arranged for the removal of Terry’s remains to a private mortuary from which, as soon as arrangements could be completed, they would be transferred to the west coast. Thereafter, still following Bartholdi’s advice, he locked his door and took his telephone out of its cradle. Even Fanny, who made two attempts, was unable to rouse him.

After dark, when he was at last on his way home, Bartholdi — having greater authority — was admitted. He remained with Jay behind a locked door for half an hour.

It was the following afternoon when Jay, expecting Bartholdi again, opened to find Brian O’Hara on his threshold. The gambler was meticulously dressed, from burnished black shoes to gray homburg, which he held at his side in a black-gloved hand. His face gave the impression of having been as carefully selected and donned for the occasion as his attire. Jay had the feeling that O’Hara, in rage and grief, had deliberately applied himself to the minutiae of his appearance as a sort of emotional camouflage.

“Oh,” said Jay. “I was expecting someone else.”

O’Hara voice had come out of the closet with his face and tie. “I tried your phone, but it was dead. May I come in?”

“If you must.”

Jay stepped aside, and O’Hara walked three steps into the room and stopped. He stripped off his gloves and held them with his homburg in his right hand.

“What I have to say will only take a minute,” he said. “It won’t be an expression of sympathy, I assure you.”

“Good. I’m relieved that you’re so sensitive to the situation.”

“There’s nothing to be gained by our being cute with each other. We know what the situation was last week. But now it’s changed, and what it is is something to be settled between us. Terry’s dead. I’ve been telling myself that — it’s hard to accept, but it’s true. She’s dead, and someone knocked her off. If it was you, I’ll find out. And if I find out before the police do, I’ll settle with you. I’m not making a threat. It’s a promise.”

“Is that all you came to say, O’Hara?”

“That’s all.”

“You might be surprised to know how little difference it makes to me. To me, Terry’s been dead for a long time. She was killed piecemeal, by you and others like you; and whoever killed her in the end, for whatever reason, was only finishing what the rest of you started. Now, if you have nothing more to say, I must ask to be excused. I’m expecting someone.”

O’Hara drew on his gloves and moved to the door, where he stopped. “Let’s hope — for your sake — I never have to see you or speak to you again.”

He opened the door and stood face to face with Bartholdi.

“How are you, O’Hara?” Bartholdi said. “I was about to knock.”

“And I was about to leave.”

“Don’t hurry because of me. My business isn’t private.”

“Mine was. And it’s finished, so I’ll be off.”

“I’d rather you wouldn’t, if you don’t mind. The business of all of us is substantially the same right now. We may as well settle it together.”

Bartholdi walked past O’Hara, followed by a short thin man with a golfer’s tan and gray hair so tightly curled on his head that it looked like raw wool. Jay, seeing Bartholdi’s companion, stepped forward and extended a hand.

“Hello, Mr. Feldman,” he said. “I’m glad to see you.”

The Los Angeles attorney took the hand and let it go. “I’m dreadfully sorry about all this, Jay. If there’s anything I can do—”

“There’s nothing.”

“You’re wrong,” Bartholdi said. “There’s a killer to talk about, and now is the time to do it. Did you invite the other tenants, Mr. Miles, as I asked?”