“Well, I have a strong stomach.”
“You must have. Of course I’ve always hated the idea of having sleeping pills around, especially those strong ones Roger takes. They could knock out an elephant in no time at all. I think they’re an absolute menace.”
“A menace,” repeated Mrs. Rhodes absently.
Across the room Ellen signaled to me. I excused myself and joined her at the backgammon table.
“Are you really going to be a sleuth?” she asked, setting up the board.
“I suppose so.”
“What fun! You take the greens; I’ll take the whites.”
“For chastity?”
“Don’t be rude.” We set up our boards. I watched Mrs. Rhodes across the room; she seemed distracted. Her hands nervously touched objects: silver, china, the jewels at her throat, as though she were trying to satisfy herself that the world was real, that this was not all a dream.
Langdon sat talking quietly to Ledbetter, discussing politics, no doubt. Every now and then Langdon looked over at us, at me; if he was anxious he did not betray it. Verbena Pruitt sat like a colossus between the Pomeroys who chattered loudly across her, talking of Talisman City. She ignored them, as though they were chattering birds come to rest upon her monumental self. Her eyes had a vacant, faraway look. Soon. Soon. Soon.
Ellen was off to a good start with double sixes.
We played in silence for several minutes. I watched the room, aware that Winters had a man at each door and another out on the street by the windows. Winters himself pretended to read a magazine.
“Well, it’ll soon be over,” said Ellen, shaking her dice.
“Will you be glad?”
“Lord yes! Though I’ve missed Bess Pringle’s party because of your silly sleeping pills.”
“Bess Pringle gives a lot of parties.”
“I know but I wanted particularly to go to this one.”
I picked up one of her men. She swore softly. She rolled but couldn’t come in. “Peter dear, who did it? Tell me. I’m dying to know.”
“You did, my love.”
She rolled her dice and came in on a four and picked up my man. Her face had not changed expression. “What a horrid thing to say, even as a joke.”
“What a horrid thing to do, even as a joke. It’s all right with me if you want to kill your father and Rufus but I think it ever so unfriendly to try and knock off your fiancé. It shows a lack of sensitivity.”
Ellen smiled, her old dazzling smile. “You’re going to have a hard time proving it, my lamb,” she said, her voice pitched so that only I could hear.
“It’s already proven. I spent the day getting evidence.”
“And?”
All my men were in homeplace; I began to take them off. “When you were a small and wicked girl you were engaged to be married to Verbena’s nephew. At the last minute that passion of yours for forbidden vice made you run off with a gymnast. Your father caught you and brought you back home. He had the marriage annulled and you hated him for it. When you were old enough, you left home for good.”
“Ancient history,” said Ellen, unperturbed.
“Ancient, yes, but we must construct a motive carefully. There is a great deal of proof that you hated your father for other reasons; this particular interference is good enough for a start. About a year ago he tried to get you to go into a sanitarium for observation. When you refused, he reduced your allowance; he also threatened to have you committed. You came down here a month ago to talk to him about it. While you were here you learned, probably by accident, about his business dealings with Hollister. The first thought which went through your head was to blackmail your father into giving you more money. It is possible that you did get something out of him … we’ll find that out by checking your bank. In any case, you were aware of the papers that he had drawn up, implicating Rufus in the company scandal and clearing himself …”
“There’s an awful lot of guesswork in this,” said Ellen.
“There has to be when it comes to a complicated motive. Fortunately, there is no guesswork in what happened afterwards. On the spur of the moment you came to Washington, full of a desperate plan. I’m sure that you didn’t arrive with any intention of killing your father: talk, however, of the new Pomeroy explosive did the trick. It looked like a perfect setup: your father is killed and his enemy Pomeroy is suspected, all very convenient.
“The first part worked beautifully but then the complications began, proving no doubt that murders should not be committed on such short notice. Verbena Pruitt told you and your mother that Pomeroy had a perfect alibi, that he could be proven motiveless at a moment’s notice. So you had to act quickly. Rufus Hollister seemed like the next best possibility. You had access to the papers which implicated him in the business tangle; all you had to do was, strategically and while the heat was still on Pomeroy, direct suspicion toward Rufus … and it was here that your troubles really began. In the last few hours I have tried to figure how you might have done it differently; you will be pleased to know that your method was about the best I could think of, though of course it wasn’t good enough.”
“I think I’d like a drink,” she said, thoughtfully, rolling two and one.
“Later. You wrote me a very whimsical note which, if I’d been quicker, I should have spotted as being vintage Ellen. You directed my attention to Rufus Hollister, knowing that I would follow the lead, that I would also pass it on to the police. You were also in possession of the papers, having the night before assaulted a plain-clothes man, looted the library and sent me, on the return visit to your room, hurtling through space, a bit of predatory behavior I find in the worst taste.”
“I’ll have Scotch,” said Ellen.
“You are deliberately trying to diminish my one great moment,” I said irritably.
“Well, if this proves to be your one great moment all I can say is …”
“Shut up. You went, the night before I got the letter, to the study and took down a copy of the Congressional Record in which you, or perhaps your father in your presence, had hidden documents which, if certain affairs came to light, would be executed, absolving the Senator of guilt. You then made a mistake. You left the copy of the Record in your bedroom where I saw it and, though I must admit I didn’t quite get the point the first time I saw it, I realized later that it could only have come from your father’s study and since you had not the faintest interest in politics and since all the papers had been cleared out of the study, this volume must, in some way then, be connected with the Hollister papers.”
She grunted; she kept on playing, though, rolling the dice and moving her men mechanically. I continued to take mine off as I talked.
“So, then, you had the papers and suspicion was cast, rather cleverly, on Rufus even before the Pomeroy alibi was known to either me or the police. I suggest if you had left it at that, you might have got off. I suppose you lost your head. The case against Pomeroy was due to fall apart any minute. Even though you had cast suspicion on Hollister, you weren’t satisfied that that would be enough. So, instead of letting me chase the papers you sent the papers to chase me … and, incidentally, it was that phrase which first set me moving in the right direction. Do you know why?”