“What... what rot!” Joanne cried, jumping to her mother’s side. “Mother loved Uncle Godfrey. You know what you are, Chief Newby? You’re a... you’re a nitwit! Isn’t he, Mr. Queen?”
“I would like to think about it,” said Mr. Queen, staring at the pad.
January 9
It is a fact that must be recorded, at whatever peril to his reputation, that Mr. Queen had achieved in Wrightsville the status of a professional house guest. In more than two decades he had proved a miserably meager source of revenue to the Hollis Hotel. No sooner did he check in, it seemed, than he was checking out again. Let it be said in his defense that this was not the result of parsimony. It was simply because of his flair for entangling himself in Wrightsville’s private lives and, as a consequence, being invited to Wrightsville’s relevant private homes.
The invitation to move over to the Mumfords’ was extended by an unhilarious Christopher at the iron plea of Joanne. Jo’s motive was transparent enough; Ellery was not sufficiently vain to suppose it had anything to do with moonlight and roses. With Chief Newby breathing down her mother’s neck, Jo had sensed an ally; she wanted Ellery not only on her side morally, but physically at hand.
Which explains why, on the morning of January ninth, Ellery settled his account at the checkout desk of the Hollis and, lugging his suitcases like ballast on either side, tacked briskly toward the northwest arc of the Square. Crossing Upper Dade Street, he luffed past the Wrightsville National Bank, Town Hall, and the Our Boys Memorial at the entrance to Memorial Park, and finally made the side entrance of the County Court House Building. In police headquarters he paused long enough to register his change of address with Chief Newby, who received the announcement with an unenthusiastic nod.
“Any luck with the fingerprinting, by the way?” Ellery asked.
“All kinds of it. We found everybody’s fingerprints in the bedroom. But not a one on the jackknife. Wiped clean, all right.” Newby scowled. “Who’d have thought a nice little housekeeper like Mum Caswell would have the know-how to remove her prints or wear gloves?”
“If you’re so certain she killed Mumford, why don’t you make the pinch?”
“On what evidence? That MUM message?” The Chief threw up his hands. “Imagine the corned-beef hash a defense lawyer would make of that in court. Ellery, find something for me in that house, will you?”
“I’ll do my best,” said Ellery. “Although it may not turn out to be for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m concerned with the truth, Anse. You’re merely concerned with the facts,” said Ellery.
And he left — before Newby could reply.
Ellery commandeered a taxicab driven, to his surprise, by someone he did not recognize, and was trundled off (after circling the Square) back up broad-bottomed State Street to the oldest part of town, where the houses were black-shuttered pre-Colonials well set back on rolling lawns in the shade of centuries-old trees. And soon he was ringing the chimes-doorbell of the Mumford mansion.
It was the day after Mumford’s funeral, and the big house was still haunted. The old man’s presence seemed to linger in the sight and scent of his precious chrysanthemums, which in lesser greenhouses bore their blooms from late August to December.
Joanne let him in with a glad little cry.
She established him in a tall-ceilinged bedroom upstairs with a tester bed and a beautiful Duncan Phyfe highboy that he instantaneously coveted. But he was made melancholy by the vase of two-headed mums that Jo had set on the night table, and he soon descended in search of fleshlier company.
He found Jo, Ellen, and Christopher in the library, and it became clear at once that the exercise of his peculiar gifts, at least as far as Ellen Nash was concerned, was her charge for his lodging.
“I’m not going to dignify for one moment the absurd conclusion that one of us murdered father,” Ellen said. “He was done in by some maniac, or tramp or something—”
“The snow,” her brother said damply.
“To hell with the snow! What I’m interested in is that father left a million dollars’ worth of pendant in his wall safe, and I want that safe opened.”
“Pendant?” said Ellery. “What pendant?”
So Christopher told him all about the New Year’s Eve party, and what Godfrey Mumford had told them, and how he had exhibited the Imperial Pendant to them and then returned it to the safe.
“And he also told us,” Christopher concluded, “that he was the only one who knew the safe combination. He said he was going to make a note of the combination for us. But we haven’t looked for it yet.”
“I have,” said Ellen, “and I can’t find it. So that your stay here won’t be a complete waste of time, Mr. Queen, why not show us how Superman detects? A little thing like finding a safe combination should barely test your reputation.”
“Do we have to worry about the pendant now?” asked Jo.
“It shouldn’t take too long, Miss Caswell,” said Ellery. To himself he was saying: maybe a million dollars’ worth of jewelry has something to do with where Godfrey’s boyhood knife had finally rested.
Searches were Ellery’s forte, but this one defeated him. Trailed by relatives of the deceased, he squandered the rest of the morning looking in obvious places. But unlike Poe’s purloined letter, the combination of the safe was nowhere to be found.
They took time out for lunch and an inventory of the unlikelier places, and the afternoon passed in exhausting this inventory. Then time out again, and over dinner a round-table discussion of other possibilities, however remote. Mr. Queen’s fame as a sleuth clearly underwent reappraisal by at least one conferee present. And Mr. Queen himself grew visibly more quiet.
After dinner Ellen returned to the search of the files she had already ransacked once. Ellery, reminding himself bravely in the face of his failure that there was, after all, more than one way to flay a kitty, took Christopher aside.
“I’m prompted,” Ellery announced, “to go directly to the source of the problem — namely, to the safe itself. Can you show me where the blamed thing is?”
“What do you have in mind?” asked Christopher. “Nitro?”
“Nothing so common. A bit of fiddling with the dial, a la Jimmy Valentine.”
“Who’s he?”
Ellery said sadly, “Never mind.”
Christopher led him to the drawing room and, turning on the lights, went to the chrysanthemum painting on the wall and pushed it aside. Ellery began to flex his fingers like a violin virtuoso before a recital.
He studied the thing. The safe door was about ten inches square and in the middle was a rotating dial about six inches in diameter. Etched into the circumference of the dial were 26 evenly spaced notches numbered in sequence from 1 to 26. Around the dial Ellery saw a narrow immovable ring or collar in the top of which was set a single unnumbered notch — the notch used for aligning the numbers of the combination when opening the safe.
In the center of the dial was a bulky knob, about half the diameter of the dial itself, and on the knob was etched the manufacturer’s trademark — an outline of the god of metal-working, Vulcan; around the rim of the knob appeared the manufacturer’s name and address: VULCAN SAFE & LOCK COMPANY, INC., NEW HAVEN, CONN.
The safe door was locked. Ellery duly fiddled with the dial, ear cocked a la Jimmy Valentine. Nothing happened — at least, to the safe door. What did happen was the entrance into the drawing room of Ellen, in a sort of half excitement, trailed by a disdainful Joanne.
“Ah, the ladies,” said Ellery, trying to cover up his chagrin. “And have you found the combination to this stubborn little brute?”