“Why, then, was Blythe Stuart, against whom the crime was originally and exclusively directed, marked for death? We agree there must have been a motive in so deeply premeditated a crime. But what?
“This raises,” said Ellery slowly, “one of the most extraordinary questions in my experience. The question being: How is it possible for a murder-motive to exist and yet elude the most searching analysis? It’s there; we know it’s there; and yet we can’t see it, we can’t even glimpse its ghost; it lies in pure darkness, in the vacuum of the void.
“Well,” said Ellery, “maybe we can’t see the motive for the simplest reason imaginable. Maybe we can’t see it because it doesn’t exist... yet.”
He paused, and Inspector Glücke said with an exasperation which flicked the hide from his words: “You just said there must be a motive, that Blythe Stuart was murdered because of that motive, that all we have to do is find that motive. And now you say we can’t find the motive because it doesn’t exist yet! But if it didn’t exist when the murderer planned his crime, why the devil did he plan it? Do you know what you’re talking about?”
“This fascinating discussion,” drawled Ellery, “shows the limitations of language. Glücke, it’s so simple it’s absurd. It’s merely a question of time — I used the word ‘yet,’ you’ll recall.”
“Time?” repeated Bonnie, bewildered.
“Time — you know, that invisible thing made visible by your wrist-watch. The background of The Magic Mountain and Albert Einstein’s mathematical researches. Time — what time is it? Have you the time? I’m having a great time.”
He laughed. “Look. Whatever the great intellects may call time, mankind has divided it for practical purposes into three classifications: the past, the present, and the future. All living is motivated by one, two, or all of these classifications. The businessman pays a sum of money to his bank because he took a loan in the past, certainly his current headaches are directly attributable to a past event. I am smoking this cigaret because I have the impulse to satisfy a craving for tobacco in the present. But isn’t the future just as important in our lives? In many ways, more important? A man scrimps to provide against the rainy day — our way of nominating the future. A woman buys a steak at the butcher’s in the morning because she knows her husband will be hungry in the evening. Magna plans a football picture in May because they know that in October people will be excited about football. Future, future, future; it dictates ninety percent of our actions.”
He said sharply: “In the same way, it struck me that crime — murder — is dictated by time just as inexorably as any other human activity. A man might murder his wife because she was unfaithful to him yesterday. Or a man might murder his wife if he catches her in the act of being unfaithful to him — which means the present. But mightn’t a man also murder his wife because he overhears her planning to be unfaithful to him tomorrow?”
And Ellery cried: “So not having found a past event to account for Blythe Stuart’s murder; not having found a present event, one contemporaneous with the crime, to account for it — it struck me with force that Blythe Stuart might have been murdered because of an event which was destined to happen in the future!”
Inspector Glücke said queerly: “You mean...” He did not finish. But after that he kept his gaze riveted on one person in the room with a vague curiosity that was half suspicion.
“But what event,” Ellery went on swiftly, “was destined to happen in the future which could have provided a strong motive for the murder of Blythe Stuart? Of all the factors which made up Blythe Stuart — the woman, the actress, the member of a social unit we call ‘family’ — one factor stood out. Some day... in the future... some day Blythe Stuart’s father would die. And when Blythe Stuart’s father died she would inherit a large fortune. She was not yet an heiress, but she was destined to be.”
The old man in the bed sank deeper into his swathings, fixing his eyes bitterly on Bonnie.
And Bonnie grew paler and said: “But that means... If mother died, I would inherit...”
“Queen, are you crazy?” cried Ty.
“Not at all; your hands are clean, Bonnie. For after your mother’s death wasn’t it apparent that you, too, were marked for death? Those threatening messages? The ace of spades?
“No,” said Ellery, “you were the only one who would directly gain by your mother’s death, from the standpoint of a future inheritance. But, equally as restrictive, there was only one person who would gain by the deaths of both your mother and you, the only one who stood in the direct line after you two women should have died.
“And that was how I knew that the sole living relation of Tolland Stuart, once you and your mother were dead, must be the driving force behind the entire plot. That was how I knew the murderer was Lew Bascom.”
Chapter 22
Beginning of the End
And there was an interval in time in which the only sound was the asthmatic breathing of the old man in the bed.
And then he muttered: “Lew? My cousin Lew Bascom?”
And Dr. Junius kept blinking, saying nothing.
But Ellery said: “Yes, Mr. Stuart, your cousin Lew Bascom, who conceived and was well on his way to executing a brilliant reversal of the usual procedure in murdering to-gain-a-fortune. A strange creature, Lew. Always broke, too erratic to settle down and put his undeniable talents to a humdrum and sustained economic use, Lew planned murder as the easy way. Of course it was the hard way, but you could never have convinced a man like Lew of that.
“Lew was no sentimentalist, and naturally he was cracked. All deliberate killers are out of plumb somewhere. But the rift in his psychological make-up did not prevent him from seeing that a man stood a much better chance of getting away with murder if he concealed the motive. Usually, in murders for gain through inheritance, the rich man is killed first, to insure the passing of the estate. Then the heir or heirs are eliminated, the estate passing legally from one to the other until finally, with no one left but the last legal heir, it becomes his property. There are numerous cases on record of such crimes. But the trouble with them, as many murderers have discovered to their sorrow, is that the method leaves a plain motive trail.
“It was too plain for Lew. If your daughter Blythe were killed while her father Tolland Stuart remained alive, he saw that the real motive for her murder would be a hopeless enigma to the police. Originally, of course, he hoped the frame-up of Jack Royle would provide an instant motive to the police. But even when he had to kill Jack and destroy the force of his own frame-up, he still felt safe; Tolland Stuart was still alive. Then he planned to kill Bonnie, and again it would seem as if Bonnie’s death had been a result of the Royle-Stuart feud; the whole childish business of the card-messages had only this purpose — to lay a trail which led back to the Royles. And all the while Tolland Stuart would live, not suspecting that it was his death, and not the deaths of his daughter and granddaughter, that was the ultimate goal of the murderer.”