“Now, Murderer, here’s what you do. On the kitchen table you’ll find a full-face mask, a flashlight, and a bread-knife. Wait! Don’t start for the kitchen yet—go when I switch off the light in here; that will be your signal to start. When you get to the kitchen, put on the mask, take the flashlight and knife, steal back into this room, and—pick a victim!”
“Oooh.”
“Ahhhh!”
“Ee!”
Mr. Queen banged his forehead lightly against the wall. How long, O Lord?
“Now remember, Murderer,” cried Nikki, “you pick anyone you want—except, of course, Ellery. He has to live long enough to solve the crime...”
If you don’t hurry, my love, I’ll be dead of natural causes.
“It’ll be dark, Murderer, except for your flash, so even I won’t know what victim you pick—”
“May the detective inquire the exact purpose of the knife?” asked the detective wearily of the wall. “Its utility in this divertissement escapes me.”
“Oh, the knife’s just a prop, goopy—atmosphere. Murderer, you tap your victim on the shoulder. Victim, whoever feels the tap, turn around and let Murderer lead you out of the living room to the kitchen.”
“The kitchen, I take it, is the scene of the crime,” said Mr. Queen gloomily.
“Uh-huh. And Victim, as soon as Murderer gets you into the kitchen, scream like all fury as if you’re being stabbed. Make it realistic! Everybody set? Ready?… All right, Murderer, soon’s I turn this light off go to the kitchen, get the mask and stuff, come back, and pick your victim. Here goes!”
Click! went the light switch. Being a man who checked his facts, Ellery automatically cheated and opened one eye. Dark, as advertised. He shut the eye, and then jumped.
“Stop!” Nikki had shrieked.
“What, what?” asked Ellery excitedly.
“Oh, I’m not talking to you, Ellery. Murderer, I forgot something! Where are you? Oh, never mind. Remember, after you’ve supposedly stabbed your victim in the kitchen, come back to this room and quickly take your former place against the wall. Don’t make a sound; don’t touch anyone. I want the room to be as quiet as it is this minute. Use the flash to help you see your way back, but as soon as you reach the wall turn the flash off and throw flash and mask into the middle of the living room—thus, darling, getting rid of the evidence. Do you see? But, of course, you can’t!’ You’re in rare form, old girl. “Now even though it’s dark, people, keep your eyes shut. All right, Murderer—get set — go!”
Ellery dozed...
It seemed a mere instant later that he heard Nikki’s voice saying with incredible energy: “Murderer’s tapping a victim—careful with that flashlight, Murderer!—we mustn’t tempt our Detective too much. All right, Victim? Now let Murderer lead you to your doom... the rest of you keep your eyes closed... don’t turn ar...”
Ellery dozed again.
He awoke with a start at a man’s scream.
“Here! What—”
“Ellery Queen, you asleep again? That was Victim being carved up in the kitchen. Now... yes!… here’s Murderer’s flash back... that’s it, to the wall quietly... now flash off! — fine! — toss it and your mask away... Boom. Tossed. Are you turned around, face to the wall, Murderer, like everybody else? Everybody ready? Llllllights!”
“Now—” began Ellery briskly.
“Why, it’s John who’s missing,” laughed Lucy.
“Pooooor John is daid,” sang Jerry.
“My poor husband,” wailed Ann. “Jo-hon, come back to me!”
“Ho, John!” shouted Nikki.
“Just a moment,” said Ellery. “Isn’t Edith Baxter missing, too?”
“My wiff?” shouted Jerry. “Hey, wiff! Come outa the woodwork!”
“Oh, darn,” said Lucy. “There mustn’t be two victims, Nikki. That spoils the game.”
“Let us repair to the scene of the crime,” proclaimed Miss Porter, “and see what gives.”
So, laughing and chattering and having a hell of a time, they all trooped through the archway, turned left, crossed the foyer, and went into the Crombie kitchen and found John Crombie on the floor with his throat cut.
When Ellery returned to the kitchen from his very interesting telephone chat with Inspector Queen, he found Ann Crombie being sick over the kitchen sink, her forehead supported by the greenish hand of a greenish Lucy Trent, and Nikki crouched quietly in a corner, as far away from the covered thing on the floor as the architect’s plans allowed, while Jerry Baxter raced up and down weeping: “Where’s my wife? Where’s Edith? We’ve got to get out of here.”
Ellery grabbed Baxter’s collar and said: “It’s going to be a long night, Jerry—relax. Nikki—”
“Yes, Ellery.” She was trembling and trying to stop it and not succeeding.
“You know who was supposed to be the murderer in that foul game—the one who drew the ace of spades—you saw him or her step away from the living-room wall while the lights were still on in there. Who was it?”
“Edith Baxter. Edith got the ace. Edith was supposed to be the murderer.”
Jerry Baxter jerked out of Ellery’s grasp. “You’re lying!” he yelled. “You’re not mixing my wife up in this stink! You’re lying—”
Ann crept away from the sink, avoiding the mound. She crept past them and went into the foyer and collapsed against the door of a closet just outside the kitchen. Lucy crept after Ann and cuddled against her, whimpering. Ann began to whimper, too.
“Edith Baxter was Murderer,” said Nikki drearily. “In the game, anyway.”
“You lie!... you lying—”
Ellery slapped his mouth without rancor and Baxter started to cry again. “Don’t let me come back and find any other throats cut,” said Ellery, and he went out of the kitchen.
It was tempting to assume the obvious, which was that Edith Baxter, having drawn the ace of spades, decided to play the role of murderer in earnest, and did so, and fled. Her malice-dipped triumph as she looked at John Crombie’s wife, her anger as she watched Crombie pursue Nikki through the evening, told a simple story; and it was really unkind of fate—if fate was the culprit—to place Edith Baxter’s hand on John Crombie’s shoulder in the victim-choosing phase of the game. In the kitchen, with a bread-knife at hand, who could blame a well-bourboned woman if she obeyed that impulse and separated Mr. Crombie’s neck from his careless collar?
But investigation muddled the obvious. The front door of the suite was locked—nay, even bolted—on the inside. Nikki proclaimed herself the authoress thereof, having performed the sealed-apartment act before the game began (she said) in a moment of “inspiration.”
Secondly, escape by one of the windows was out of the question, unless, like Pegasus, Edith Baxter possessed wings.
Thirdly, Edith Baxter had not attempted to escape at alclass="underline" Ellery found her in the foyer closet against which the widow and her sister whimpered. Mrs. Baxter had been jammed into the closet by a hasty hand, and she was unconscious.
Inspector Queen, Sergeant Velie & Co. arrived just as Edith Baxter, with the aid of ammonium carbonate, was shuddering back to life.
“Guy named Crombie’s throat slit?” bellowed Sergeant Velie, without guile.
Edith Baxter’s eyes rolled over and Nikki wielded the smelling salts once more, wearily.
“Murder games,” said Inspector Queen gently. “Hallowe’en,” said Inspector Queen. Ellery blushed. “Well, son?”
Ellery told his story humbly, in penitential detail.
“Well, we’ll soon find out,” grumbled his father, and he shook Mrs. Baxter until her chin waggled and her eyes flew open. “Come, come, Madam, we can’t afford these luxuries. What the hell were you doing in that closet?”