Inspector Queen’s Own Case

The coffin had been white and woefully tiny. They had tried to keep the time and place secret, but of course there had been a leak, and the pushing, craning crowds... the shouting reporters... that hideous scene in the Taugus cemetery when Sarah Humffrey screamed like an animal and tried to jump into the grave after the little flower-covered coffin...

Jessie shuddered and leaned on the horn. Monty Burns came out of the gatehouse, hastily buttoning his tunic.

She got over the workman-cluttered causeway at last, and she was about to kick the gas pedal when a familiar gray-mustached figure stepped out from under a maple tree into the road, holding up his hand and smiling.

“Morning!”

“What are you doing here?” Jessie asked confusedly.

“Remembered it was your day off, and decided to walk off Beck Pearl’s breakfast in your direction. I’ve been waiting for you. Going anywhere in particular?”

“No.”

“How about going there together?”

“I’d love it.”

He’s got something on his mind, Jessie thought as he got in. She drove slowly north, conscious of the intentness under his smile.

Signs of hurricane damage were everywhere. Between Norwalk and Westport the shore road was still under water in places. Jessie had to detour.

“A sailboat would have been more practical!” Jessie said. “What have you been doing with yourself, Inspector Queen?”

“This and that. You know,” he said suddenly, “when you let your face relax, Jessie, you get pretty as a picture.”

“Do I, now,” Jessie laughed. She was laughing! She scaled her black straw behind her and threw her head back. “Isn’t this breeze scrumptious?”

“Lovely,” he agreed, looking at her.

“It’s making a mess of my hair, but I don’t care.”

“You have beautiful hair, Jessie. I’m glad you keep it long.”

“You like it that way?” Jessie said, pleased.

“My mother’s hair reached to her knees. Of course, in those days no women bobbed their hair but suffragettes and prostitutes. I guess I’m old-fashioned. I still prefer long hair in a woman.”

“I’m glad,” Jessie murmured. She was beginning to feel glad about everything today.

“How about lunch? I’m getting hungry.”

“So am I!” Jessie cried. “Where shall we go?”

They found an artfully bleached seafood place overlooking an inlet of the Sound. They sat behind glass and watched the spray from the still-agitated water trying to get up at them, hurtling from the pilings and dashing against the big storm window almost in their faces. They dipped steamed clams into hot butter, mounds of them, and did noble archeological work on broiled lobster, and Jessie was happy.

But with the mugs of black coffee he said abruptly, “You know, Jessie, I spent a whole day this week in Stamford. Part of it at the Stamford Hospital.”

“Stamford?”

“Part of it at the Stamford Hospital.”

“Oh.” Jessie sighed. “You saw Ronald Frost?”

“Also his hospital admission card, and the doctor who operated on him. Even talked to the people he was visiting when he got the appendix attack. I wanted to check Frost’s alibi for myself.”

“It stands up, of course.”

“Yes. It was a legitimate emergency appendectomy, and from the times involved, Frost couldn’t physically have been on Nair Island when the baby died.”

“Lucky emergency.” Jessie frowned out the window. “For him, I mean.”

“Very,” Richard Queen said dryly. “Because he was the one who made that first attempt on the night of July 4th.”

“He admitted it?” Jessie cried.

“Not in so many words — why should he? — but I’m convinced from what he said and how he said it that he was the man that night, all right. God knows what he thought he was trying to do — I don’t think he knew, or knows, himself. He was drunk as a lord. Anyway, Jessie, that’s that. As far as the murder is concerned, Frost is out.”

Jessie picked up her coffee mug, set it down again. “Are you trying to tell me you don’t think it was murder after all, Inspector Queen?”

He stirred his coffee carefully. “How about dropping this Inspector Queen stuff, Jessie? If you and I are going to see a lot of each other—”

“I didn’t know we were,” Jessie murmured. I’ll really have to go into the ladies’ room and fix my hair, she thought. I must look like the Wild Woman of Borneo. “But of course, if you’d like... Richard...”

“Make it Dick.” He beamed. “That’s what my friends call me.”

“Oh, but I like Richard ever so much better.”

His beam died. “I guess Dick sounds pretty young at that.”

“I didn’t mean that. It has nothing to do with age. Goodness!” Jessie prodded her hair. “And don’t change the subject. Was it or wasn’t it murder? And don’t tell me the coroner’s jury called it an accident!”

“Well, look at it from their viewpoint,” he said mildly. “Your testimony about that dim night-light, for instance. Those couple of seconds you’d mentioned as being the maximum period you had the handprint in view, for another. And on top of that, Jessie, your detailed description of the print. You’ll have to admit, with the pillowslip not produced, it takes a bit of believing.”

Jessie felt tired suddenly.