“Bitch,” said Keats pleasantly. He took a cigaret out of his pocket and jammed it between his lips. The end tore and he spat it out, turning away.
Ellery looked around.
The room was overpowering, with dark Spanish furniture and wallpaper and drapes which flaunted masses of great tropical flowers. The rug was a sullen Polynesian red with a two-inch pile. There were cushions and hassocks of unusual shapes and colors. Huge majolicas stood about filled with lilies. On the wall hung heroic Gauguin reproductions and above the bed a large black iron crucifix that looked very old. Niches were crowded with ceramics, woodcarvings, metal sculptures of exotic subjects, chiefly modern in style and many of them male nudes. There was an odd book-shelf hanging by an iron chain, and Ellery strolled over to it, his legs brushing the bed. Thomas Aquinas, Kinsey, Bishop Berkeley, Pierre Loti, Havelock Ellis. Lives of the Saints and Fanny Hill in a Paris edition. The rest were mystery stories; there was one of his, his latest. The bed was a wide and herculean piece set low to the floor, covered with a cloth-of-gold spread appliqued, in brilliant colors of metallic thread, with a vast tree of life. In the ceiling, directly above the bed and of identical dimensions, glittered a mirror framed in fluorescent tubing.
“For some reason,” remarked Lieutenant Keats in the silence, “this reminds me of that movie actor, What’s-His-Name, of the old silent days. In the wall next to his john he had a perforated roll of rabbit fur.” The dressing room door opened and Keats said, “Now that’s a relief, Mrs. Priam. Thanks a lot. Where’s this box?”
She went to a trunk-sized teak chest covered with brasswork chased intricately in the East Indian manner, which stood at the foot of the bed, and she opened it. She had put on a severe brown linen dress and stockings as well as flat-heeled shoes; she had combed her hair back in a knot. She was pale and frigid, and she looked at neither man.
She took out of the chest a white cardboard box about five inches by nine and an inch deep, bound with ordinary white string, and handed it to Keats.
“Have you opened this, Mrs. Priam?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know what’s in it?”
“No.”
“You found it exactly where and how, again?”
“In our mailbox near the road. I’d gone down to pick some flowers for the dinner table and I noticed it was open. I looked in and saw this. I took it upstairs, locked it in my chest, and phoned.” The box was of cheap quality. It bore no imprint. To the string was attached a plain Manila shipping tag. The name “Roger Priam” was lettered on the tag in black crayon, in carefully characterless capitals.
“Dime store stock,” said Keats, tapping the box with a fingernail. He examined the tag. “And so is this.”
“Delia.” At the sound of his voice she turned, but when she saw his expression she looked away. “You saw the box your husband received the morning Hill got the dead dog. Was it like this? In quality, kind of string, tag?”
“Yes. The box was bigger, that’s all.” There was a torn edge to the furry voice.
“No dealer’s imprint?”
“No.”
“Does the lettering on this tag look anything like the lettering on the other tag?”
“It looks just like it.” She put her hand on his arm suddenly, but she was looking at Keats. “Lieutenant, I’d like to speak to Mr. Queen privately for a minute.”
“I don’t have any secrets from Keats.” Ellery was glancing down at his arm.
“Please?”
Keats walked over to one of the windows with the box. He lifted the blind, squinting along the slick surface of the box.
“Ellery, is it what happened the other night?” Her voice was at its throatiest, very low.
“Nothing happened the other night.”
“Maybe that’s the trouble.” She laughed.
“But a great deal has happened since.”
She stopped laughing. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged.
“Ellery. Who’s been telling you lies about me?”
Ellery glanced again at her hand. “It’s my experience, Delia, that to label something a lie before you’ve heard it expressed is to admit it’s all too true.”
He took her hand between his thumb and forefinger as if it were something sticky, and he dropped it.
Then he turned his back on her.
Keats had the box to his ear and he was shaking it with absorption. Something inside rustled slightly. He hefted the box.
“Nothing loose. Sounds like a solid object wrapped in tissue paper. And not much weight.” He glanced at the woman. “I don’t have any right to open this, Mrs. Priam. But there’s nothing in the statutes to stop you... here and now.”
“I wouldn’t untie that string, Lieutenant Keats,” said Delia Priam in a trembling voice, “for all the filth in your mind.”
“What did I do?” Keats raised his reddish brows as he handed the box to Ellery. “That puts it up to you, Mr. Queen. What do you want to do?”
“You can both get out of my bedroom!”
Ellery said, “I’ll open it, Keats, but not here. And not now. I think this ought to be opened before Roger Priam, with Mrs. Priam there, and Laurel Hill, too.”
“You can get along without me,” she whispered. “Get out.”
“It’s important for you to be there,” Ellery said to her.
“You can’t tell me what to do.”
“In that case I’ll have to ask the assistance of someone who can.”
“No one can.”
“Not Wallace?” smiled Ellery. “Or one of his numerous predecessors?” Delia Priam sank to the chest, staring.
“Come on, Keats. We’ve wasted enough time in this stud pasture.”
Laurel was over in ten minutes, looking intensely curious. Padding after her into the cavelike gloom of the house came the man of the future. Young Macgowan had returned to the Post-Atomic Age.
“What’s the matter now?” he inquired plaintively.
No one replied.
By a sort of instinct, he put a long arm about his mother and kissed her. Delia smiled up at him anxiously, and when he straightened she kept her grasp on his big hand. Macgowan seemed puzzled by the atmosphere. He fixed on Keats as the cause, and he glared murderously from the detective to the unopened box.
“Loosen up, boy,” said Keats. “Tree life is getting you. Okay, Mr. Queen?”
“Yes.”
Young Macgowan didn’t know. Laurel knew ― Laurel had known for a long time ― but Delia’s son was wrapped in the lamb’s wool of mother-adoration. I’d hate to be the first one, Ellery thought, to tell him.
As for Laurel, she had glanced once at Delia and once at Ellery, and she had become mousy.
Ellery, waited on the threshold to the hall as Keats explained about the box.
“It’s the same kind of tag, same kind of crayon lettering, as on the dead dog,” Laurel said. She eyed the box grimly. “What’s inside?”
“We’re going to find that out right now.” Ellery took the box from Keats and they all followed him up the hall to Priam’s door.
“Furl your mains’l,” said a voice. It was old Mr. Collier, in the doorway across the hall.
“Mr. Collier. Would you care to join us? There’s something new.”
“I’ll sit up in the rigging,” said Delia’s father. “Hasn’t there been enough trouble?”
“We’re trying to prevent trouble,” said Keats mildly.
“So you go looking for it. Doesn’t make sense to me,” said the old man, shaking his head. “Live and let live. Or die and let die. If it’s right one way, it’s right the other.” He stepped back and shut the library door emphatically.
Ellery tried Priam’s door. It was locked. He rapped loudly.