Michael Arlen - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine #097v018 (1951-12)

Roger nodded. “Yes, she wrote me about it. For the last year of her life she lived upstairs alone. Everybody knows that. So what?”

Whipple resumed: “She says that one night she answered a knock at the door and her own image walked in. The image said, ‘You’re Caroline, I suppose. I’m Evelyn Blythe.’ ”

Again Roger nodded. “My wife’s maiden name was Blythe. But she never mentioned an Evelyn.”

“What members of the Blythe family did you know?” Whipple asked.

“None but Caroline herself. She was twenty-three when I met her, and a salesgirl in a New York department store. When I got to know her better she told me her mother had died when she was fourteen, that she’d been making her own living ever since and that she couldn’t remember her father at all. She said her mother would never talk about her father. She knew of no living relatives.”

“Bear in mind, what I’m telling you is Eva Lang’s story, not mine,” Whipple cautioned. “It goes on like this: Evelyn told Caroline that they were identical twins; that their father and mother had separated when they were small children, each taking a twin. The father took Evelyn, the mother Caroline. But the father had a photograph of his wife. At his death Evelyn acquired it. She showed it to Caroline and Caroline definitely recognized her own mother. That, plus the testimony of a mirror, convinced Caroline that they were twin sisters. Eva Lang says now, ‘I’d always hungered for a blood relative; so I, Caroline Blythe Marsh, took Evelyn to my heart.’ ”

Roger listened, tense and incredulous. Dr. Cawfield snorted: “It’s preposterous!”

“I can accept the fact of twins,” Whipple asserted, “because you all admit that this photograph looks like Caroline. But I don’t believe that Eva Lang is Caroline. For my money, she’s Evelyn.”

Roger protested, “It won’t stand up, Inspector. Even if we concede that Caroline could have had a twin sister without knowing it, it still won’t stand up. Because my wife would have presented this sister to her friends. She would have written me all about it.”

“According to Eva Lang,” Whipple countered, “that was her first and natural impulse. But Evelyn begged her not to. She said she was in trouble. Some men were looking for her and she mustn’t let them find her. If Evelyn could just hide here till the men hunting for her gave up and left town—”

The pain on Roger’s face stopped Whipple. Cawfield and Effie Foster were hardly less shocked. Again Whipple reminded them, “It’s Eva Lang’s story, not mine.”

“Go on,” Roger said.

“It took a lot of pleading by Evelyn. But Caroline, naturally sympathetic and warmhearted, finally agreed to let her stay in hiding. Evelyn said a few weeks would belong enough; then everything would be safe and she would go away. Actually Evelyn stayed at least two months. She wore Caroline’s clothes and fixed her hair like Caroline’s. That’s why you, Mrs. Foster, were fooled when you popped in unannounced on a day Caroline was out shopping and you chatted ten minutes with Evelyn, thinking she was Caroline.”

“I?” Effie exclaimed. “Of course I didn’t. I’d have known she wasn’t Caroline.”

“You were rounding up some old clothes,” Whipple suggested, “for a rummage sale. Eva Lang says Evelyn told her about it when she got home. Evelyn was afraid to turn you down. So she took a few outmoded things from Caroline’s closet and gave them to you. You remember the incident, Mrs. Foster?”

“I did come here,” Effie admitted, “and Caroline gave me a bundle of clothes. But it was Caroline herself.”

“Take a look at this.” Whipple produced a latchkey from his pocket. “We found it in Eva Lang’s purse. See if it fits the front door.”

Roger took the key to the door and tried it in the lock. The key was a perfect fit.

“If you showed me a hundred keys,” he muttered, “you still couldn’t convince me.”

“I’m not trying to convince you, Mr. Marsh. I’m just showing you what you’re up against with this Lang woman. It’s pretty clear the real story is this: After two or three months here, Evelyn made good on her promise and slipped away. No doubt she’d just been hiding out so the police wouldn’t grab her for the Detroit murder. When things cooled off she drifted back to the underworld she came from. Then she read in the papers about Caroline’s death and got an idea for defense if she was ever picked up. She’d swear she was Caroline and that it was Evelyn who had died in Baltimore. Preparing for it, she took a hot iron and burned the third knuckle of her right hand. But that, of course, isn’t the way Eva Lang tells it.”

“How does Eva Lang tell it?” Roger asked.

“She claims that she, Caroline, was wakened one night by coughing. Evelyn had caught a bad cold. So Caroline walked two blocks to a drugstore to get a cough remedy for Evelyn. On the way home two toughies stopped her. ‘So it’s little Eva,’ they said. ‘We been lookin’ all over for you, Eva. We can’t risk lettin’ cops pick you up. They’d put on the heat and you might talk. So we’re takin’ you home.’ The next thing she knew she was riding in a closed car.”

“And she didn’t call out to the first passer-by?” Dr. Cawfield scoffed.

“She says she was taped up, hands, feet and mouth. The men drove only by night. A week of nights took them to an isolated farm in the State of Washington. Two other men were there, one of them a forger named Duke Smedley. He’d been Evelyn’s sweetheart. He walked up to her and took her in his arms. ‘Hello, Eva,’ he said and kissed her. She slapped him, crying, ‘I’m not Eva.’ He looked more closely at her. ‘Damn it, you’re not Eva,’ he said. He turned in fury on the two men. ‘You stupid fools got the wrong girl.’

“Three of them still thought she was Eva; only Duke Smedley was sure she wasn’t. But they had her. They didn’t set her free. It meant their necks if they did. So they held her.”

“For four years?” Cawfield said derisively.

“The woman says they didn’t mean to. Three of them wanted to kill her right away. But Duke Smedley wouldn’t let ’em because she looked so much like Eva. Pretty soon they saw the notice of Mrs. Marsh’s death in the Baltimore papers. Smedley got the Baltimore papers to see if Caroline’s disappearance would be discovered. His argument then was: ‘We don’t need to do away with her; she’s dead already. Nobody’s looking for her.’ Too, there was the idea of holding her as a hostage, an ace in the hole if it ever came to a showdown with the police. So the stalemate dragged on, month after month.”

“I don’t believe it,” Roger said.

“Nor I. The police theory is that Eva Lang went there of her own free will and was part of the mob.”

Roger rose and crossed the room to stand before the portrait of his great-grandfather. His face, more than ever like pale granite, was brooding and bitter. Nothing like this had ever before happened to the Marshes.

“She ought to know that she hasn’t a chance in the world to put this over.”

“I think she does know it,” Whipple agreed. “I don’t think she has the least idea of being accepted and taken back into your home. But she can get an acquittal if just one juror out of twelve feels a reasonable doubt. Eleven can be as sure as you are that she’s an impostor. But if only one juror thinks, well, maybe she is Mrs. Marsh, that would be enough. And that, I figure, is all she wants.”

“The devil it is!” Dr. Cawfield growled. “She’ll be after money too, once she’s free. She’ll pester Roger, parading as his poor disowned wife, till he makes a settlement.”

“Cheer up,” Effie Foster urged breezily. “It’s a headache, of course, but it mustn’t get us down. We’ll go to Seattle and ask her questions. ‘If you’re Caroline, what did I give you for your birthday five years ago?’ ”