Edith screamed, “How should I know, you old man?” and had a convulsion of tears. “Jerry Baxter, how can you sit there and—?”
But her husband was doubled over, holding his head.
“You received Nikki’s instructions, Edith,” said Ellery, “and when she turned off the light you left the living room and went to the kitchen. Or started for it. What did happen?”
“Don’t third-degree me, you detective!” screeched Mrs. Baxter. “I’d just passed under the archway, feeling my way, when somebody grabbed my nose and mouth from behind and I must have fainted because that’s all I knew till just now and Jerry Baxter, if you don’t get up on your two feet like a man and defend your own wife, I’ll... I’ll—”
“Slit his throat?” asked Sergeant Velie crossly, for the Sergeant had been attending his own Hallowe’en Party with the boys of his old precinct and was holding three queens full when the call to duty came.
“The murderer,” said Ellery glumly. “The real murderer, Dad. At the time Nikki first put out the lights, while Edith Baxter was still in the room getting Nikki’s final instructions, one of us lined up at that wall stole across the room, passed Nikki, passed Edith Baxter in the dark, and ambushed her—”
“Probably intended to slug her,” nodded the Inspector, “but Mrs. Baxter obliged by fainting first.”
“Then into the closet and away to do the foul deed?” asked the Sergeant poetically. He shook his head.
“It would mean,” mused Inspector Queen, “that after stowing Mrs. Baxter in the foyer closet, the real killer went into the kitchen, got the mask, flash, and knife, came back to the living room, tapped John Crombie, led him out to the kitchen, and carved him up. That part of it’s okay—Crombie must have thought he was playing the game—but how about the assault on Mrs. Baxter beforehand? Having to drag her unconscious body to the closet? Wasn’t there any noise, any sound?”
Ellery said apologetically: “I kept dozing off.”
But Nikki said: “There was no sound, Inspector. Then or at any other time. The first sound after I turned the light off was John screaming in the kitchen. The only other sound was the murderer throwing the flash into the middle of the room after he... she... whoever it was... got back to the wall.”
Jerry Baxter raised his sweating face and looked at his wife.
“Could be,” said the Inspector.
“Oh, my,” said Sergeant Velie. He was studying the old gentleman as if he couldn’t believe his eyes—or ears.
“It could be,” remarked Ellery, “or it couldn’t. Edith’s a very small woman. Unconscious, she could be carried noiselessly the few feet in the foyer to the closet... by a reasonably strong person.”
Immediately Ann Crombie and Lucy Trent and Jerry Baxter tried to look tiny and helpless, while Edith Baxter tried to look huge and heavy. But the sisters could not look less tall or soundly made than Nature had fashioned them, and Jerry’s proportions, even allowing for reflexive shrinkage, were elephantine.
“Nikki,” said Ellery in a very thoughtful way, “you’re sure Edith was the only one to step away from the wall while the light was still on?”
“Dead sure, Ellery.”
“And when the one you thought was Edith came back from the kitchen to pick a victim, that person had a full mask on?”
“You mean after I put the light out? Yes. I could see the mask in the glow the flash made.”
“Man or woman, Miss P?” interjected the Sergeant eagerly. “This could be a pipe. If it was a man—”
But Nikki shook her head. “The flash was pretty weak, Sergeant. And we were all in those Black Cat outfits.”
“Me, I’m no Fancy Dan,” murmured Inspector Queen unexpectedly. “A man’s been knocked off. What I want to know is not who was where when, but—who had it in for this character?”
It was a different sort of shrinkage this time, a shrinkage of four throats. Ellery thought: They all know.
“Whoever,” he began casually, “whoever knew that John Crombie and Edith Baxter were—”
“It’s a lie!” Edith was on her feet, swaying, clawing the air. “There was nothing between John and me. Nothing. Nothing! Jerry, don’t believe them!”
Jerry Baxter looked down at the floor again. “Between?” he mumbled. “I guess I got a head. I guess this has got me.” And, strangely, he looked not at his wife but at Ann Crombie. “Ann...?”
But Ann was jelly-lipped with fear.
“Nothing!” screamed Jerry’s wife.
“That’s not true.” And now it was Lucy’s turn, and they saw she had been shocked into a sort of suicidal courage. “John was a... a... John made love to every woman he met. John made love to me—”
“To you.” Ann blinked and blinked at her sister.
“Yes. He was... disgusting. I...” Lucy’s eyes flamed at Edith Baxter with scorn, with loathing, with contempt. “But you didn’t find him disgusting, Edith.”
Edith glared back, giving hate for hate.
“You spent four weekends with him. And the other night, at that dinner party, when you two stole off—you thought I didn’t hear—but you were both tight... You begged him to marry you.”
“You nasty little blabbermouth,” said Edith in a low voice.
“I heard you. You said you’d divorce Jerry if he’d divorce Ann. And John kind of laughed at you, didn’t he? — as if you were dirt. And I saw your eyes, Edith, I saw your eyes...”
And now they, too, saw Edith Baxter’s eyes—as they really were.
“I never told you, Ann. I couldn’t. I couldn’t...” Lucy began to sob into her hands.
Jerry Baxter got up.
“Here, where d’ye think you’re going?” asked the Sergeant, not unkindly.
Jerry Baxter sat down again.
“Mrs. Crombie, did you know what was going on?” asked Inspector Queen sympathetically.
It was queer how she would not look at Edith Baxter, who was sitting lumpily now, no threat to anyone—a soggy old woman.
And Ann said, stiff and tight: “Yes, I knew.” Then her mouth loosened again and she said wildly: “I knew, but I’m a coward. I couldn’t face him with it. I thought if I shut my eyes—”
“So do I,” said Ellery tiredly.
“What?” said Inspector Queen, turning around. “You what, son? I didn’t get you.”
“I know who cut Crombie’s throat.”
They were lined up facing the far wall of the living room—Ann Crombie, Lucy Trent, Edith Baxter, and Jerry Baxter—with a space the breadth of a man, and a little more, between the Baxters. Nikki stood at the light switch, the Inspector and Sergeant Velie blocked the archway, and Ellery sat on a hassock in the center of the room, his hands dangling listlessly between his knees.
“This is how we were arranged a couple of hours ago, Dad, except that I was at the wall, too, and so was John Crombie... in that vacant space.”
Inspector Queen said nothing.
“The light was still on, as it is now. Nikki had just asked Murderer to step away from the wall and cross the room—that is, towards where you are now. Do it, Edith.”
“You mean—”
“Please.”
Edith Baxter backed from the wall and turned and slowly picked her way around the overturned furniture. Near the archway, she paused, an arm’s length from the Inspector and the Sergeant.
“With Edith about where she is now Nikki, in the full light, instructed her about going to the kitchen, getting the mask, flash, and knife there, coming back in the dark with the flash, selecting a victim, and so on. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“Then you turned off the light, Nikki—didn’t you?”