But this is a long hard tale, and how Mr. Ellery Queen became involved in it is another. Certainly, as a laboratory microscopist peering at the phenomena curiosa of the human mind, he had cause in the end to feel grateful for Captain Kidd’s grotesque mistake. For when the light came, as it did after those wild and astonishing days, he saw with etching clarity how essential to his solution the gigantic seaman’s error really was. In a sense, the whole fabric of Ellery’s thinking came to depend upon it. And yet, in the beginning, it merely muddled things.
The blunder would never have occurred, in all probability, had it not been for David Kummer’s dislike of crowds, on the one hand — it was a personal distaste rather than a pathological dread — and his affection for Rosa, his niece, on the other. Both were characteristic of him. Kummer had never cared for people; they either bored or irritated him. And yet, a social anchorite, he was admired and even liked.
At this time he was in his late thirties, a tall strong well-preserved man.
He was irrevocably set in his ways and almost as self-sufficient as Walter Godfrey, his famous brother-in-law. For most of the year Kummer maintained a bachelor’s eyrie in Murray Hill; in the summer he resided on Spanish Cape with the Godfreys. His brother-in-law, a bitter cynic, often suspected that it was not so much the proximity of his sister and niece that drew Kummer to the Cape as the peculiar grandeur of the place itself — a rather unfair suspicion. But the two did have something in common: both were solitary, quiet, and in their own way somehow magnificent.
Occasionally Kummer tramped off in boots and disappeared for a week’s shooting somewhere, or sailed one of the Godfrey sloops or the big launch along the coast. He had long since mastered the intricacies of the nine-hole golf-course which lay on the western hemisphere of Spanish Cape; he rarely played, calling golf “an old man’s game.” He might be induced to play a few sets of tennis if the competition were keen enough; but generally his sports were those which permitted solitary enjoyment. Naturally, he possessed an independent income. And he wrote a little, chiefly on outdoor subjects.
He was not a romantic; life had taught him certain hard lessons, he liked to say, and he believed firmly in the realities. A man primarily of action, he was constantly “facing the facts.” His life was not complicated by the sex-problem; except for his sister Stella and her daughter Rosa, women meant less than nothing to him. It was whispered in Mrs. Godfrey’s circle that he had had an unfortunate love-affair in his early twenties; none of the Godfreys ever discussed it and he, of course, was perennially silent.
So much for David Kummer, the victim, the tall dark athletic man who was hauled by Captain Kidd into oblivion.
Rosa Godfrey was a Kummer, with the slashing black brows of the clan, the strong straight nose, level eyes, and slim tough body; side by side, she and her mother might have been sisters, and Kummer an older brother of both. Intellectually she was serene, like her uncle; she had nothing of Stella’s nervous agility or social restlessness or essential shallowness of mind. And there was nothing, of course, between Rosa and her tall uncle — nothing in the malicious sense. Their affection respected the tie of blood; both of them would have been outraged by any other suggestion; besides, their ages were almost twenty years apart. Yet it was not to her mother that Rosa crept when she was in trouble, nor to her father, who pottered quietly about by himself and asked no greater boon than that he be let alone; but to Kummer. It had been that way since her pigtail days. Any other father but Walter Godfrey would have resented this usurpation of his emotional rights; but Walter Godfrey was as much an enigma to his family as to the blatting lambs from whose shearing he had amassed his heavy fortune.
The house was full of people; at least it seemed full of people to Kummer. His sister Stella’s penchant for the socializing influences had resulted, as he remarked grimly to his silent brother-in-law on Saturday afternoon, in a particularly slimy group of guests.
The season was drawing to a close; its passing had brought an irritating visitation of nondescripts. Marco, of course, had been there, suavely indifferent to black looks from the male relations of his hostess, for many weeks; trust Marco for that. He had been one of Stella Godfrey’s less happy inspirations, as her husband grunted on one rare occasion. Handsome John Marco... who had not a male friend in the world, was not a man to stand upon the little ceremonies; once invited, he hung on — as Kummer said, “with the bland persistence of a crab-louse.” Marco had quite spoiled the better part of the summer even for Walter Godfrey, who normally trotted about his rock-gardens in dirty ancient overalls frankly oblivious to the creatures brought into his house by his wife. The others spoiled what was left of the season: Laura Constable, “fat, frenetic, and forty,” as Rosa characterized her with a giggle; the Munns, husband and wife, of whom it was patent that nothing civilized could be said; and blond Earle Cort, an unhappy young man who haunted Spanish Cape on weekends, languishing after Rosa. They were not many, but — with the possible exception of Cort, whom he rather contemptuously liked — to Kummer they constituted a veritable battalion.
It was after a late dinner Saturday night that the big man drew Rosa from the cool patio into the still warm gardens sloping down from the huge Spanish house. In the flagged inner court Stella conversed with her guests; while Cort, entangled in Mrs. Munn’s arch web, could only hurl a furiously yearning glance after uncle and niece. It was already dusk, and Marco’s really extraordinary profile was silhouetted against the sky as he perched gracefully on the arm of Mrs. Constable’s chair, presumably posing for the benefit of all the females within range. But he was always posing, so there was nothing remarkable in that. The chatter in the court, dominated by Marco, was shrill and empty; utterly without distinction, like the cackling of fowl.
Kummer sighed with relief as they strolled down the stone steps. “God, what a crew! I tell you, Rosa, that blessed mother of yours is becoming a problem. With the bugs she brings here, she’s becoming positively a menace to decent society. I don’t know how Walter stands it. Those howling baboons!” Then he chuckled and took her arm. “My dear, you look very charming tonight.”
Rosa was dressed in something white and cool and billowy that swept to the stone. “Thank you, sir. It’s really very simple,” she said with a grin. “A combination of organdie and the black art of Miss Whitaker. You’re the most naive creature, David — and also the most anti-social. But you do notice. More,” she added, the grin fading, “than most people.”
Kummer lit a bulldog pipe and puffed thankfully, looking at the pink-flecked sky. “Most people?”
Rosa bit her lip, and they reached the bottom of the stairs. With tacit accord they turned toward the beach terrace, deserted at this hour and quite out of sight and hearing of the house above. It was a small cosy place, beautiful in the dusk; there were colored flags underfoot, and white beams formed an open roof overhead. Steps led down to the terrace from the walk, and steps led down from the terrace to the half-moon of beach below. Rosa seated herself rather petulantly in a basketwork chair under a large gay beach umbrella and folded her hands to stare with pursed lips out over the small beach and the waves lapping the sand in the Cove. Through the narrow mouth of the Cove white-bellied sails could be made out, far off, on the swelling blue expanse.