Эллери Куин - The Door Between

“No, dad, you can’t escape it. The rock that broke Karen Leith’s window wasn’t meant to break Karen Leith’s window. It got past the bars and into the room only by accident. That rock wasn’t thrown at Karen Leith’s window at all! ”

They all looked so puzzled Ellery smiled. “If the rock wasn’t thrown at the window, what was it thrown at? Surely at something near the window, in that approximate area? What could that something have been? Well, we know that just before she died Karen Leith released her Loo-choo jay through that window. Then the Loo-choo jay was on the outside, probably somewhere in the vicinity; it had lived too long in that house to leave it. Suppose the bird had flown to a gable just above the oriel windows — that is, to the edge of the roof — and perched there? Just suppose? Can’t you conceive of someone hurling a stone at the bird from the garden and of the cast falling short and of the stone entering the room by merest accident?”

“But what could that have to do—” began Dr. MacClure in frank amazement.

“We’re supposing,” said Ellery whimsically. “Now we know that a few weeks ago the jay escaped through the carelessness of Miss O’Mara. We also know that Miss Leith bawled the hell out of Miss O’Mara for that carelessness. Now let’s suppose again. Let’s suppose Miss O’Mara was in the garden late Monday afternoon and suddenly saw that very bird perched on the gable or on the top of the oriel window outside. Mightn’t Miss O’Mara instantly think that Karen Leith would hold her responsible for what she pardonably thought was a second escape of the bird? Wouldn’t it be natural for Miss O’Mara to try to catch the bird and return it to its cage in the sunroom before the ogrish Miss Leith found out? But the pesky creature was high up, quite beyond her reach; and so isn’t it easy to suppose that Miss O’Mara picked up a rock from the border of the path and threw it up at the bird to scare it into flying down?”

The Irish girl looked so frightened as their eyes turned on her that they knew Ellery had supposed with remarkable point.

She retorted with a defiant toss of her head: “All right. What about it? There’s nothing wrong in that, is there? What are you all looking at me that way for?”

“And then when the window crashed you grew frightened and ducked out of sight around the house, eh?” asked Ellery softly.

“Yeah!”

“And when you thought the coast was clear you came out again and found the bird peaceably pecking about the garden and caught and restored it to its cage in the sunroom?”

“Yeah,” she said sullenly.

“You see,” sighed Ellery, ‘that was the only reconstruction which accounted for two things: the disappearance of the Loo-choo jay from its bedroom cage upstairs just before the crime and its appearance in the sunroom cage downstairs just after the crime. And it was all ably assisted into crystallization by the curious incident of the rock.”

The inspector frowned. “But what has all this to do with the missing half-scissors?”

“Well,” said Ellery dryly, “it establishes the bird at the top of the house, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t get you!”

“I mean that this bird of Karen Leith’s is a jay. I mean that all jays are notoriously thievish. I mean that like all jays the Loo-choo must be instinctively attracted by brightly colored objects. And I say that after Karen Leith gave the jay its unwanted freedom it felt unaccustomed to its new estate and tried to return to its mistress. I say that it alighted on the window ledge, folded its wings, strutted through two of the iron bars — the window was open from the bottom, remember — and flew down to the floor of the dais where Karen Leith lay dying in her own blood. And I say that half-scissors with its broken point was lying there by her hand, steeped in her blood. And I say that, attracted by the glitter of the semiprecious jewels which stud the shank and bow, the jay picked up the weapon with its beak, a strong one (and a light weapon), flew up to the window sill, and walked out between the bars. Let me point out that the half-scissors is only five inches long and the space between the bars is six inches. Outside what did the Loo-choo bird do? With the instincts of its jayish, magpie-ish blood, it looked for a place to hide its attractive find. But where did we leave the jay? Perched on or near the roof of the house.”

Ellery chuckled. “You searched in the house, around the house, even under the house, so to speak, but you didn’t search on top of the house. So it all ties in very neatly, and if you find that missing half-scissors lying on the gable or in the eaves-trough on the roof, then I’m right and you’re wrong.”

So that was the gamble, Dr. MacClure thought grimly; and he saw now with clarity what a gamble it was. The whole thread of Ellery’s reasoning was fine and gossamer; it seemed real — but was it? Only the roof could tell. And if the roof disappointed them... He pressed Eva’s hand, and Eva returned the pressure convulsively. None of them was capable of a word, and all of them were painfully aware on what a slender thread Eva’s safety hung.

The Inspector frowned. “I’ll admit it’ll look different if we find it where you say it is. But even so, why couldn’t this girl still have murdered her aunt, then released the bird from the cage herself, and sent it flying away through the bars with the half-scissors? Tell me that!”

It was such a startling thought that the three huddled together stiffened with a single movement.

But Ellery shook his head. “What would Miss MacClure’s motive have been?”

“To get rid of the weapon!”

“Ah, but if she murdered Karen Leith the best illusion she could hope to create would be that of suicide! Yet by disposing of the weapon she would accomplish what? That which actually happened — to make the crime look like murder and herself like the only possible murderess. No, dad, that doesn’t wash.”

The Inspector grunted, defeated.

“I’m hoping,” continued Ellery quietly, “that we’re lucky. There’s one thing in our favor. It hasn’t rained since the crime. If the half-scissors was dropped by the jay in a protected spot, like the eaves-trough, it should still show fingerprints. The worst we have to contend with is the effect of the dew. But if the weapon hasn’t rusted, you’ll have absolute proof of Miss MacClure’s innocence.”

“It’ll show the Leith woman’s prints!” shouted Terry.

“Yes, and hers only. And if you find that, dad, even you will have to admit that the last doubt of Karen Leith’s suicide will have been removed.”

Gloomily the Inspector put in a call to Police Headquarters; and gloomily he commandeered two cabs and had the party driven downtown to the Leith house in Washington Square.

Two men from Headquarters were waiting for them when they arrived — fingerprint experts.

Sergeant Velie scoured the neighborhood for a long ladder. Then Ellery clambered from the garden up to the sloping roof, and the first thing he saw was the glitter of the missing half-scissors with its broken point lying in a semi-protected position in the eaves-trough almost directly over Karen Leith’s oriel windows.

As Ellery straightened up, waving the blood-tipped weapon, Terry sent up a shout from below that almost tumbled Ellery into the garden; and from where they stood in a group, craning, there was a cry of hysterical joy from Eva as she threw her arms about Dr. MacClure.

The fingerprint men found clear, unmistakable impressions of Karen Leith’s fingers all over the rust-proof metal. And the fingerprints of no one else. And, as a last proof, one of them fitted the tiny triangular sliver of steel from Karen Leith’s throat to the broken end of the half-scissors, and it matched exactly.