“Took off, eh?”
“Who labors best and so on,” said Ellery. “Or was it in line of duty, Jimmy?”
“Something like that.”
“You had a date with Celeste Phillips.”
Jimmy laughed. “And not just yesterday. It’s been one sweet journey through time. You give the most interesting assignments, dearie. You should have been a city editor.”
“I take it you two have been getting along.”
“We manage,” replied Jimmy, “to tolerate each other.”
“Nice girl,” nodded the Inspector. “Son, that tasted like a refill.”
“Ready to talk about it, Jimmy?”
“Say, it’s getting to be my favorite subject.”
“Let’s have another all around.” Ellery poured, amiably.
“I don’t know what you two witch doctors are up to,” said Jimmy, “but I’m happy to report that this is a wench of exceptional merit, and in my circles I’m known as Iconoclast McKell, Female Images a Specialty.” He fingered his cup. “All kidding aside, I feel like a heel.”
“Heeling is a hard profession,” said Ellery. “Would you mind itemizing the assignment’s virtues, as you found them?”
“Well, the gal has looks, brains, personality, guts, ambition—”
“Ambition?”
“Celeste wants to go back to college. You know she had to quit in her freshman year to take care of Simone. When Simone’s mother died back in—”
“Simone’s mother?” Ellery frowned. “You make it sound as if Simone’s mother wasn’t Celeste’s mother.”
“Didn’t you know that?”
“Know what?”
“That Celeste wasn’t the daughter of Mrs. Phillips?”
“You mean those two weren’t sisters?” The Inspector’s cup rattled.
Jimmy McKell looked from Queen to Queen. He pushed his chair back. “I don’t know that I’m fond of this,” he said. “In fact, I know damn well I’m not.”
“Why, what’s the matter, Jimmy?”
“You tell me!”
“But there’s nothing to tell,” said Ellery. “I asked you to find out what you could about Celeste. If we now have something new on her—”
“On her?”
“I mean about her, something we didn’t know, why, you’ve only justified my confidence in you.”
“May we dispense with the horse droppings, sleuth?”
“Jimmy, sit down.”
“I want to know what cooks!”
“Why all the heat?” growled Inspector Queen. “You’ll have me thinking in a minute...”
“Right.” Jimmy sat down suddenly. “There’s nothing to think. Simone was Celeste’s third cousin or something. Celeste’s parents were killed in a gas stove explosion when she was a baby. Mrs. Phillips was her only relative in New York and took her in. That’s all there is to it. When Mrs. Phillips died, Celeste naturally took care of Simone; they always considered each other sisters. I know a hell of a lot of real sisters who wouldn’t have done what Celeste did!”
“Even speaking not Delphically,” said Ellery, “so do I.”
“What?”
“Go on, Jimmy.”
“She’s crazy to get a college education — it half-killed her when she had to give it up at Mrs. Phillips’s death. The books that kid’s read! Deep stuff — philosophy, psychology — why, Celeste knows more right now than I do, and I’ve got a Princeton sheepskin acquired by sweat, toil, and grand larceny. Now that Simone’s gone, the kid’s free to live her own life again, go back to school and make something of herself. She’s going to enroll this week in Washington Square College for the fall semester. She wants a B.A., majoring in English and philosophy, and then she’ll go on to graduate work. Maybe teach.”
“She must want it a great deal to cut out a program like that for herself on a night school basis.”
“Night school? Who said anything about night school?”
“We still live in a competitive economy, Jimmy. Or,” said Ellery cheerfully, “were you thinking of taking that problem off her hands?”
“Maybe,” said the Inspector with a wink, “maybe that question is irrelevant, immaterial, and none of our business.”
Jimmy gripped the table. “Are you crumbums suggesting—?”
“No, no, Jimmy. With benefit of clergy, of course.”
“Oh. Well... let’s leave me out of it.” His homely face was angry and watchful.
“She can’t work as a model daytimes and go to day college too, Jimmy,” said Ellery.
“She’s giving up that job.”
“Really?” said the Inspector.
“Oh,” said Ellery, “she’s got herself a night job.”
“No job at all!”
“I’m afraid,” said Ellery mournfully, “I lost you somewhere back in the third canto. No job at all? How is she going to support herself?”
“With Simone’s nestegg!” Jimmy was shouting now.
“Nestegg?”
“What er... what nestegg would that be, Jimmy?” asked the Inspector.
“Look.” Jimmy inflated his chest. “You asked me to do a dirty chore and I’ve done it. I don’t understand this, any of it. But assuming you’re a big wheel in the gray cell department, Queen, and I’m just a little screw rattling around, will you tell me what the devil difference any of this makes?”
“No more difference than the truth ever makes.”
“Sounds profound, but I suspect a gimmick.”
“McKell.” Inspector Queen was grim. “I’ve had a lot of men working on this case and I’ve been in it myself up to my Adam’s apple. This is the first I’ve heard about Simone Phillip’s leaving anybody anything but a lower back ache. Why didn’t Celeste tell us?”
“Because she only found it last week! Because it’s got nothing to do with the murder!”
“Found it?” murmured Ellery. “Where?”
“She was cleaning out Simone’s junk. There was an old wooden table clock, a French deal that was a family heirloom or something — it hadn’t run for ten years and Simone would never let Celeste have it fixed, kept it on a shelf over her bed. Well, when Celeste took it down last week it slipped out of her hands and cracked open like an egg on the floor. There was a big roll of bills inside, bound with a rubber band.”
“Money? I thought Simone—”
“So did Celeste. The money had been left by Simone’s father. There was a note in his handwriting bound in with the bills. According to the note, written just before he committed suicide, from the date on it, he managed to save $10,000 out of the wreckage when he dropped his fortune in the ’29 market crash. He had left the ten grand to his wife.”
“And Celeste knew nothing about it?”
“Mrs. Phillips and Simone never mentioned it to her. Most of the dough is there, about $8600. Celeste thinks the missing $1400 went toward Simone’s doctors’ bills in the early days, when Mrs. Phillips still had hopes she could be cured. Certainly Simone knew all about it, because she had fits if Celeste went anywhere near the clock. Well, now the money is Celeste’s and it’s going to make life tolerable for her for a while. And that’s the great big mysterious story,” said Jimmy with outthrust jaw, “the moral of which — if you ask me — is that, invalid or no invalid, Simone was a firstclass drip. Imagine letting that poor kid nurse her in the Black Hole of Calcutta and shag her legs off trying to support both of them when all the time Simone had almost nine grand stashed away! What was she keeping it for, the junior prom?... What’s the matter? Why the steely looks?”
“What do you think, Dad?”
“Any way you slice it, Ellery, it’s a motive.”
“Motive?” said Jimmy.
“The first one we’ve found.” The Inspector went to a window, looking unhappy.
Jimmy McKell began to laugh. But then he stopped laughing.
“I wondered last week if there might be a motive,” said Ellery, thoughtfully. “When she came here.”