Inspector Queen’s Own Case

Jessie had to admit that she had been acting like a moony teenager ever since their meeting on the Humffrey beach. Thinking about a man of sixty-three! Hinting to him about Thursday being her day off... The burn in her cheeks smarted. She had even gone over to the public beach in Taugus on her next day off and sat on the sand under a rented beach umbrella all afternoon, hoping against hope and feeling silly at the same time. What if he had shown up? Her figure in a bathing suit wasn’t bad for her age, but she could hardly compete with those skinny brown three-quarters-naked young hussies flitting about the beach. So she had left that day relieved, angry at herself, and yet disappointed. He’d seemed so nice, so youthful-looking, and so troubled about his age and his retirement... Of course, he had stayed away. He must know plenty about women, having been a police officer all his life. Probably put her down right off as a coy old maid on the prowl for a victim.

Still, it was a pity. They could have found lots to talk about. Some of her more interesting cases, people of note she had nursed. And he must have had hundreds of exciting experiences. And actually she hadn’t looked half bad in her bathing suit. She had studied herself in the bathroom mirror very critically before making up her mind to go that day. At least she had some flesh on her bones. And her skin was really remarkably unlined for a woman of forty-nine. How old was Marlene Dietrich...?

Jessie Sherwood heaved over and buried her face in the pillow.

And in the silence that followed the groan of the bed she heard a sound that drove all other thoughts from her head.

It was the sound of a window being opened in the nursery.

She lay stiffly, listening.

The nursery was at the rear of the house, a corner room with two windows. One overlooked the driveway and gardens at the side, the other faced the sea. At the baby’s bedtime she had opened both windows wide, but when the breeze came up and she had had to get a quilt for herself, she had gone into the nursery to tuck an extra satin throw around the baby and shut the seaward window. The temperature had dropped so low that she had even removed the screen and pulled the driveway window most of the way down, leaving it open no more than three or four inches.

It seemed to her the sound had come from the driveway window.

There it was again.

Again!

They were short, soft, scrapy sounds, as if the window were being opened an inch or two at a time, little secretive upward nudges, with listening pauses between.

“Parents can’t be too careful about their children, especially if they’re rich...”

He had said that.

“A snatch case I investigated a few years...”

A kidnaper!

With a leap Jessie Sherwood was out of bed. She grabbed her robe, flung it over her cotton nightgown, and dashed through the communicating doorway into little Michael’s room.

In the faint glow of the baseboard nightlight she saw a man. He had one leg over the sill of the driveway window. The other was apparently braced against the top rung of a ladder. His head was cut off at the neck by the half-raised venetian blind. He was all flat and colorless. It was like seeing a lifesized cutout made of black paper.

Nurse Sherwood yelled and sprang to the crib. The figure in the window disappeared.

There was a great deal of confusion after that. Mr. Humffrey ran in buttoning his pajama coat over his gaunt, furry torso; Mrs. Humffrey flew by him, shrieking, to tear the baby from his nurse’s arms; Mrs. Lenihan, Mrs. Charbedeau, the two maids thronged the stairway from the third floor, pulling on assorted negligees and gasping questions; and the men’s quarters over the garage lit up. The baby wailed louder, Mrs. Humffrey shrieked harder, Mr. Humffrey roared demands for an explanation, and through the bedlam Jessie Sherwood tried to make herself heard. When she was finally able to communicate, and Alton Humffrey thrust his head out the window, the driveway was empty except for old Stallings and Henry Cullum, in pajamas and barefoot, looking up and asking wildly what was the matter.

A long ladder was leaning against the window.

“Search the grounds,” Alton Humffrey shouted to the two white-haired men below. “I’ll phone the gatehouse.”

When he came back he was fuming. “I don’t know what we pay those guards for. Either that imbecile Peterson was asleep or he’s drunk. Sarah, stop that, please. Give Michael to Miss Sherwood. You’re frightening him half to death.”

“Oh, Alton, suppose it was a kidnaper,” Sarah Humffrey said hysterically.

“Nonsense. It was some housebreaker, and Miss Sherwood scared him off. Here, let me have him.”

“I’ll take him, Mr. Humffrey,” Jessie Sherwood said. “Mrs. Lenihan, would you get me a bottle of formula from the refrigerator? I think, darlin’, we’ll make an exception tonight. But first let’s change this diaper...” She took the baby into the nursery bathroom and firmly shut the door.