“Two whole days,” groaned Macgowan. He gulped what was left in his glass.
“It’s my fault, Mac,” said Laurel miserably. But then she perked up. “Well, it’s all experience. Next time we’ll know better.”
“Next time he won’t use frogs!”
“Mac.” Ellery was tapping his teeth with the bit of his pipe. “I’ve been thinking about your grandfather.”
“Is that good?” Mac immediately looked bellicose.
“Interesting man.”
“You said it. And a swell egg. Keeps pretty much to himself, but that’s because he doesn’t want to get in anybody’s way.”
“How long has he been living with you people?”
“A few years. He knocked around all his life and when he got too old for it he came back to live with Delia. Why this interest in my grandfather?”
“Is he very much attached to your mother?”
“Well, I’ll put it this way,” said Crowe, squinting through his empty glass. “If Delia was God, Gramp would go to church. He’s gone on her and she’s the only reason he stays in Roger’s vicinity. And I’m not gone on these questions,” said Crowe, looking at Ellery, “so let’s talk about somebody else, shall we?”
“Don’t you like your grandfather, Mac?”
“I love him! Will you change the subject?”
“He collects stamps,” Ellery went on reflectively. “And he’s just taken to hunting and mounting butterflies. A man of Mr. Collier’s age, who has no business or profession and takes up hobbies, Mac, usually doesn’t stop at one or two. What other interests has he?”
Crowe set his glass down with a smack. “Damned if I’m going to say another word about him. Laurel, you coming?”
“Why the heat, Mac?” asked Ellery mildly.
“Why the questions about Gramp!”
“Because all I do is sit here and think, and my thoughts have been covering a lot of territory. Mac, I’m feeling around.”
“Feel in some other direction!”
“No,” said Ellery, “you feel in all directions. That’s the first lesson you learn in this business. Your grandfather knew the scientific name of those spring peepers. It suggests that he may have gone into the subject. So I’d like to know: In those long tramps he takes in the foothill woods, has he been collecting tree frogs?”
Macgowan had gone rather pale and his handsome face looked pained and baffled. “I don’t know.”
“He has a rabbit hutch somewhere near the house, Mac,” said Laurel in a low voice. “We could look.”
“We could, but we’re not going to! I’m not going to! What do you think I am?” His fists were whistling over their heads. “Anyway, suppose he did? It’s a free country, and you said yourself there’s lots of these peepers around!”
“True, true,” Ellery soothed him. “Have another drink. I’ve fallen in love with the old gent myself. Oh, by the way, Laurel.”
“Do I brace myself?” murmured Laurel.
“Well,” grinned Ellery, “I’ll admit my thoughts have sauntered in your direction too, Laurel. The first day you came to me you said you were Leander Hill’s daughter by adoption.”
“Yes.”
“And you said something about not remembering your mother. Don’t you know anything at all about your real parents, where you came from?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry if this distresses you―”
“You know what you are?” yelled Macgowan from the sideboard.
“You’re equally divided between a bottom and a nose!”
“It doesn’t distress me, Ellery,” said Laurel with a rather unsuccessful smile. “I don’t know a thing about where I came from. I was one of those storybook babies ― really left on a doorstep. Of course, Daddy had no right to keep me ― a bachelor and all. But he hired a reliable woman and kept me for about a year before he even reported me. Then he had a lot of trouble. They took me away from him and there was a long court squabble. But in the end they couldn’t find out a thing about me, nobody claimed me, and he won out in court and was allowed to make it a legal adoption. I don’t remember any of that, of course. He tried for years afterwards to trace my parents, because he was always afraid somebody would pop up and want me back and he wanted to settle the matter once and for all. But,” Laurel made a face, “he never got anywhere and nobody ever did pop up.”
Ellery nodded. “The reason I asked, Laurel, was that it occurred to me that this whole business... the circumstances surrounding your foster father’s death, the threats to Roger Priam... may somehow tie in with your past.”
Laurel stared.
“Now there,” said Macgowan, “there is a triumph of the detectival science. How would that be, Chief? Elucidate.”
“I toss it into the pot for what it’s worth,” shrugged Ellery, “admitting as I toss that it’s probably worth little or nothing. But Laurel,” he said, “whether that’s a cockeyed theory or not, your past may enter this problem. In another way. I’ve been a little bothered by you in this thing. Your drive to get to the bottom of this, your wanting revenge―”
“What’s wrong with that?” Laurel sounded sharp.
“What’s wrong with it is that it doesn’t seem altogether normal. No, wait, Laurel. The drive is overintense, the wish for revenge almost neurotic. I don’t get the feeling that it’s like you ― like the you I think you are.”
“I never lost my father before.”
“Of course, but―”
“You don’t know me.” Laurel laughed.
“No, I don’t.” Ellery tamped his pipe absently. “But one possible explanation is that the underlying motivation of your drive is not revenge on a murderer at all, but the desire to find yourself. It could be that you’re nursing a subconscious hope that finding this killer will somehow clear up the mystery of your own background.”
“I never thought of that.” Laurel cupped her chin and was silent for some time. Then she shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I’d like to find out who I am, where I came from, what kind of people and all that, but it wouldn’t mean very much to me. They’d be strangers and the background would be... not home. No, I loved him as if he were my father. He was my father. And I want to see the one who drove him into that fatal heart attack get paid back for it.”
When they had gone, Ellery opened his bedroom door and said, “All right, Delia.”
“I thought they’d never go.”
“I’m afraid it was my fault. I kept them.”
“You wanted to punish me for hiding.”
“Maybe.” He waited.
“I like it here,” she said slowly, looking around at the pedestrian blond furniture.
She was seated on his bed, hands gripping the spread. She had not taken her hat off, or her gloves.
She must have sat that way all during the time they were in the other room, Ellery thought. Hanging in midair. Like her probable excuse for leaving the Priam house. A visit somewhere in town. Among the people who wore hats and gloves.
“Why do you feel you have to hide, Delia?”
“It’s not so messy that way. No explanations to give. No lies to make up. No scenes. I hate scenes.” She seemed much more interested in the house than in him. “A man who lives alone. I can hardly imagine it.”
“Why did you come again?”
“I don’t know. I just wanted to.” She laughed. “You don’t sound any more hospitable this time than you did the last. I’m not very quick, but I’m beginning to think you don’t like me.”
He said brutally, “When did you get the idea that I did?”
“Oh, the first couple of times we met.”
“That was barnyard stuff, Delia. You make every man feel like a rooster.”