Эллери Куин - The Door Between

“You can see something subtle in it if you want,” said the old man dryly. “To me it’s just the knife that killed her.”

Eva felt as if she must scream if the little man preserved his mild inscrutability one second longer. Oh, if only she’d remembered in time and they had wiped off her fingerprints!

“You’re sure that’s the weapon?” murmured Ellery.

“Sam Prouty says the wound is exactly the same width and thickness as that blade there. It could hardly be a coincidence.”

“No. But it could be something else.”

“Not the sheath!”

“What sheath?”

“We found a case upstairs in the attic-room that the Jap woman says always used to hold the scissors. But it’s not sharp.”

“The attic?” Ellery’s eyes were on the writing-desk, fixed on a stick of gold sealing-wax and a metal seal whose insignia was a Japanese ideogram; but he did not seem to see them.

The attic! Eva had completely forgotten about the attic. The attic she had never seen and that no one had ever been permitted to see. What was up there? But she didn’t really care. It made no difference...

“So the scissors came from up there,” said the Inspector. “That’s why nobody remembers it but this Kinumé. It’s been broken for years, she says. Seems to fit, all right. Killer got in through the attic window, picked up this half-scissors, came down, stabbed Miss Leith, wiped the blood off the blade, dropped it in the basket, and escaped the way he’d come. Yes, it does seem to fit.”

Was there the merest trace of mockery in his voice? Eva wondered wildly. What he said was impossible — the murderer couldn’t have come from the attic. Not with the door bolted from inside the bedroom. Did he really believe what he was saying?

“I think,” said Ellery thoughtfully, “I’ll have a look at that attic.”

The stairs were narrow, steep, and creaked; and after Ellery went Eva and her father together, feeling the need for proximity. For an instant Terry Ring contested with Inspector Queen for the curious right to trail the procession; and it was the brown man who, to the Inspector’s irritation, finally won. The old man disliked people behind him; he especially disliked people who mounted creaky stairs without the least noise.

They emerged into a cool, slope-ceilinged room, not at all the chamber of mysteries Eva’s aroused imagination had pictured it: after the climb in shadows it glowed with sun, an innocent, dainty, almost virginal room not even remotely sinister. Its two windows were dressed in blowy marquisette curtains and its bed, a four-poster of maple, was covered with the same cherry chintz that framed the curtains in flowers. But there were old Japanese water-colors on the walls and mats on the polished floor that could only have come from beyond the Pacific.

“What a pleasant room!” exclaimed Eva involuntarily. “No wonder Karen could write here.”

“I find it,” said Dr. MacClure in a choking voice, “stuffy.” He went to the open window and turned his back to them.

“And what a queer mixture of East and West,” remarked Ellery, glancing at the tiny teakwood desk with its ancient typewriter. “It’s an anomaly that doesn’t exist downstairs.”

In one angle of the room there was an electric refrigerator with a kitchen cabinet above it and a gas-range to its side. A tiny bathroom, quite modern in its fixtures, led off the bedroom; it had a small window and a skylight, but no other door. The little apartment looked as if it had been lived in by a woman of refined and lacy habits — a guarded haven, the door at the head of the attic stairs its sole exit to the world.

“That’s solitude with a vengeance,” said Ellery. “What did she do — divide her time between the rooms downstairs and this attic?”

“She wrote Eight - Cloud Rising here,” said Eva with tears in her eyes. “I never dreamed it was so... nice.”

“From what I’ve been able to find out,” said Inspector Queen, “she’d lock herself up here for a week or two at a time when she wanted to write something special.”

Ellery glanced at the tier of bamboo bookshelves crowding the walls — works of reference in half a dozen languages, books in Japanese, books by Lafcadio Hearn, Chamberlain, Aston, Okuma; translations of the Japanese poets into English and French and German — all in the midst of a library of classic Occidental literature catholic in range and aged with use. And on the desk and in its drawers, which Ellery proceeded calmly to go through, were more books, scraps of manuscript, whole sections of rather enigmatic notes neatly typed — the complete paraphernalia of the writer, fixed in time by the extinction of the writer’s life, arrested in the very process of creation. To Eva, repelled and fascinated, Ellery’s brusque inspection of the littered papers seemed a sacrilege.

He picked up, then, a slender scissors-sheath of walrus-tusk ivory, covered with relief carvings, with a silk cord attached at the end of which dangled a good-luck coin inscribed with a Japanese motto.

“The scissors-case,” nodded the Inspector.

“Have you found the other half of the scissors?”

“Not yet. It’s probably been lost for years.”

Ellery laid the case down, looked around, and went to an open closet door. The closet was hung with women’s things — a variety of rather faded-looking garments; on its floor were two shoes. There were no hats or coats. He looked in, looked down, shook his head, and went to the tiny maple dressing-table on which lay a comb and brush, a toilet set, and a lacquered box full of quite beautiful trinkets, hair-pins, manicuring implements. His eyes narrowed.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Inspector Queen.

Ellery took off his pince-nez , polished them, and put them back on the bridge of his nose. Then he went back to the closet. He lifted a print dress by its hanger, looked at it. He put it back and took out another, a black silk trimmed with écru lace. He put that one back, too, pulled his lower lip, stooped, regarded the two shoes on the floor. Then something caught his eye and he fished it out of the back of the closet, where it had been half-hidden by the hanging garments. It was an old violin-case.

A peculiar suspicion began to form in Eva’s mind. She wondered if he had noticed. The others didn’t seem—

Ellery opened the case. Inside lay a chocolate-colored violin, its four strings dangling from the peg-box, having snapped apparently from the heat of some past summer. He regarded it, a broken Muse, for a long time.

Then, carrying the case, he crossed to the bed and deposited it on the chintz. They were all staring at him now — even Dr. MacClure, who had been impelled to turn from the window by the palpable silence.

“Well,” sighed Ellery. “Well!”

“Well what? What’s the matter with you?” demanded the Inspector crossly.

Terry Ring said in a deep voice: “The eminent Mr. Queen is going into his dance. Made a find, Mr. Queen?”

Ellery lit a cigaret and stared at it thoughtfully. “Yes, I have. A rather remarkable one... Karen Leith did not live in this room!”

“Karen... didn’t—” began Dr. MacClure, goggling. Eva could have screamed. So Mr. Queen had seen it! Her brain was boiling with thoughts. If only — that one thing — maybe—

“No, Doctor,” said Ellery. “For years, I should say, and until very recently, this room has been occupied as permanent living-quarters by another woman altogether.”

Inspector Queen’s little mouth fell open, and the hairs of his gray mustache bristled with surprise and indignation.

“Oh, come now!” he cried. “What do you mean Karen Leith didn’t occupy this room? The boys have been over—”