“Mathematical sign,” snapped the judge. “Multiplication symbol.”
“Then XX would be two multiplication signs? Obviously that means nothing. Is there still another meaning for the symbol X?”
“A cross,” cried the State. “Two X’s, two crosses—”
“In other words, gentlemen,” nodded Ellery, leaning forward across the desk, “Van Harrison, physically unable to talk; realizing he had no time to write out a message, reduced what he wanted me to know to its most economical form. He began to shape the common sign of the double-cross. Harrison was trying to tell me, with his expiring strength, that he had been double-crossed.”
The silence lasted for some time.
Then Darrell Irons crossed his fine legs and blew a cloud of smoke. “Double-crossed, Queen? How can that possibly have a bearing on the case?”
“I think you’ve known the answer to that, Mr. Irons,” said Ellery, “for some minutes now. Harrison had just fallen with three bullets in him, mortally wounded. I had witnessed the shooting, and he knew it. Knowing it, he tried to tell me that he had been double-crossed. What could he have meant but that the shooting I had just witnessed was not what it seemed? That, in being shot, he had been double-crossed?”
“I don’t understand,” said Judge Levy fretfully. “I really don’t.”
“I think Mr. Irons does,” said Ellery. “For why should Harrison have characterized his killing as a double-cross? A double-cross means a broken agreement. Logically, then, Harrison had had specific assurances that no such thing would ever happen. He had been promised that he ran no danger of reprisal, and that promise had been broken. Who could have made such a promise and broken it? Only one person — the man who had fired the shots, the presumably deceived husband. In other words, Van Harrison and Dirk Lawrence had been working together. The whole case is not what it has seemed to be — that of the unfaithful wife and the deceived husband. With the husband and the lover confederates, with the husband aiding and abetting the affair — it was the wife who was deceived. Martha Lawrence, gentlemen, was framed — framed by her own husband.”
Nikki got up. She looked ill.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” she said in a faint voice.
The men rose mechanically. When the door closed, they sat down the same way.
“Proof,” said Judge Levy. “Proof!”
“I’ll get to it,” Ellery promised. “Just let me work my way down the road without interruption — is that jury still out?”
“Yes, yes. Go on!”
“Once you accept the premise that the husband was behind the affair, that the wife was framed by him, with the lover his accomplice, every aspect of the case changes. If it is, no longer a genuine love affair, then Martha Lawrence did not give money to Van Harrison as other women had given it to him, out of sexual gratitude, as free gifts. She must have given him the money because she was forced to. When a woman is forced to give money to a man, whatever the man’s lever may be, you can be sure the word ‘blackmail’ is stamped on it. Harrison blackmailed Martha Lawrence into giving him frequent and very large sums.
“But Harrison was the tool of Dirk Lawrence. Was it Lawrence’s motive, then, to use Harrison as an instrument of blackmail? Yes, but only incidentally. Because what did Dirk Lawrence eventually do? He killed Van Harrison and he tried to kill Martha Lawrence. If Martha should die, Lawrence as her husband comes into her considerable fortune. That’s why I characterize the blackmail part of the plot, which Lawrence assigned to Harrison, as only incidental to Lawrence’s greater plan — a plan that Harrison, of course, knew nothing about.
“It was big money Lawrence was after, and he worked out a ruthless scheme to get it. Whatever his early feelings for Martha were, he must have tired of her and come to detest his marriage. On top of this, he failed miserably to make a financial success of his writing career. So there he was, tied to a woman he didn’t want but who had the money he did want. Freedom and security were Lawrence’s objectives — how could he get both? And then he saw the way.”
Irons examined the tip of his cigar; it had gone out. “By attempting to murder her, Mr. Queen? If freedom and security were my client’s objectives, as you say, I’d hardly recommend his method as a means of getting them.”
“Nor would I, Mr. Irons.” said Ellery, “but let’s not anticipate. Your client is full of surprises. May I go on, before that jury comes in?”
And Ellery continued even more rapidly: “A year or so ago Dirk Lawrence began to evince an abnormal jealousy — it was an obsession, almost a phobia. Let’s integrate it. Since nothing in this case so far has turned out what it seemed — since the deceived husband was in reality the scheming killer — we must question everything he did. Was his jealousy genuine, or was it not? The answer must be that it was not, for a man suffering from a genuine complex of jealousy would hardly conspire to entangle his wife in an affair with another man!
“The jealousy attacks were faked.
“But if we regard Lawrence’s jealousy attacks as faked, then his whole plan spreads before us in all its naked ugliness.
“He would pretend to be a jealous husband, establishing himself as ridden by morbid fears of his wife’s ‘infidelity.’ He would carefully develop this pretense over a great many months, creating an atmosphere of suspicion and inducing an attitude of acceptance on the part of his and his wife’s friends — with particular attention to Miss Porter and myself. Then he would unleash his accomplice to drag Martha into the appearance of a clandestine affair. This would be built up, by the accomplice at Lawrence’s direction, with the romantic trappings of the classic adultery — a ‘code,’ a book as the code-key, secret meetings all over town, with occasional ‘lapses’ of discretion on the part of the ‘lover’ so that they could be seen in public; and so on. Finally, the poor obsessed husband would be vindicated. He would actually overhear a telephone conversation naming an immediate rendezvous at the other man’s house. He would rush out in pursuit. He would surprise his wife and the other man in the other man’s bedroom... and, snatching up the other man’s gun in the shock and frenzy of the ‘discovery,’ he would kill them both — before witnesses, for he knew that Harrison’s man was there, and he knew that Nikki Porter was a spy in his own household and that I was in the case nose-down, hot on his trail.
“Yes, Mr. Irons, your client figured out a way to commit murder for profit and live to have his profit, too. For what has your defense been? Lawrence’s defense? The unwritten law, Mr. Irons — the law that’s not on the statute books but has nevertheless freed every defendant who was ever able to plead it under the facts!
“You, I, Judge Levy, the State’s Attorney here — and Dirk Lawrence — all know that the tradition of the unwritten law in this country and all over the Western world has been to free the wronged victim of the adultery. Juries just don’t convict husbands of murder who have caught their wives in adulterous relationships with other men before witnesses — as you so rightly pointed out to this jury, Mr. Irons. Your very real confidence as to the outcome of this case — up to a few minutes ago — is eloquent testimony to that fact. It’s a confidence, I’m sure, your client shares at this moment.
“Oh, yes, Dirk Lawrence was taking a chance. It was a gamble. But a very good gamble. His own father had committed the same kind of murder and had been found not guilty! — undoubtedly the source of Dirk’s inspiration. The record was all in his favor, and if it was a gamble, look at the stakes he was gambling for. A fortune of millions. Many a man has run the risk of the electric chair or scaffold or gas chamber for a great deal less.”