Inspector Queen’s Own Case

Now don’t be a goop, Jessie told herself. This is the kind of thing he’s done all his life. He couldn’t have become a veteran police officer without learning how to handle violence. Anyway, there’s nothing to be afraid of. The fat man is certainly harmless; he’d run like a rabbit rather than risk his skin. The other... the others, whoever they are... they’re probably more scared right now than I am.

But her heart kept galloping.

He’d been so awkwardly high-spirited when he called for her at Gloria’s, and over lunch. Like a boy on a heavy date. And looking so spruce. He’d pressed his suit and his tan-and-white shoes gleamed. And he’d shown up with a corsage of mignonette for her.

“The florist thought I was crazy,” he had said, embarrassed. “Seems nobody buys mignonette for corsages any more. But I remember how my wife used to love it...”

She had not had the heart to tell him that the greenish mignonette was just the wrong thing for the green linen suit she was wearing. Or that a woman wasn’t necessarily thrilled by being given flowers loved by a dead wife, even one dead thirty years. She had exclaimed over the corsage while pinning it on, and then she had gone into Gloria’s bedroom and changed her hat, with which the mignonette clashed, too.

The trouble is, Jessie thought, it isn’t really me. It’s just that he’s rediscovered the world of women.

In the solitude of Gloria Sardella’s two disordered rooms yesterday, the dismal thought had come to her like a headache. Any woman could have done it. Any woman could still do it. Any other woman...

What was going on in there?

Jessie strained. But she could hear nothing except the tumult of the 49th Street traffic.

She had spent a miserable day and night examining herself. How could she have maneuvered herself into a sublet apartment in New York... New York, which she loathed!... into an adventure with a man she hardly knew? And that call from Belle Berman — “What’s this I hear about you and some man, Jessie?” Gloria, of course, who had met him Thursday after the visit to Finner’s office. And Gloria’s probing afterward... Endlessly Jessie had debated phoning him to say it was all a mistake, they were both too old for this sort of thing, let’s part good friends and I’ll go back to my bedpans and catheters and you to sunning yourself on a beach...

Oh, I oughtn’t to be here! Jessie told herself. I ought to be coming onto a maternity case, checking the chart, being oh so cheery to Mrs. Jones, wondering if my feet will hold out till the midnight relief while she yakkety-yaks about her nine hours of labor and how she’ll make that husband of hers pay through the nose for what she’s been through...

He was in the hall.

Jessie started. She hadn’t even heard the door of 622 open.

He was standing in the hall and he was beckoning to her.

Jessie hurried to him.

He was all tightened up, careful. His eyes had a tight careful look, too. He had the door open no more than an inch, his hand on the knob holding it that way.

“Yes, Richard?” Jessie whispered breathlessly. “It’s all right for me to go in?”

“That depends on you, Jessie.” Even his voice was on the alert. “On how much you can take.”

“What? Isn’t Finner in there?”

“He’s in there, all right. He’s dead.”

3 And Then the Lovers

The fat man looked different dead. He looked like a jumbo balloon with the air leaking out. He was wedged in the swivel chair, head flopped over, flippers dangling. The chair was half turned from the desk, as if he had been struggling to get up. His whole left side was soaked with blood.

The metal handle of a knife stuck out of his chest. Jessie recognized it as the handle of the steel letter-knife she had seen on his desk Thursday.

“Stay where you are, Jessie,” Inspector Queen said. He had shut the door. “And hold your purse with both hands. That’ll keep them out of trouble. You don’t have to look at him.”

“I’ve seen a homicide case or two in my time,” Jessie said. She was holding on to her purse for dear life.

“Good girl.”

He went around the desk, looked under it, rose, looked out the window.

“It’s a cinch nobody saw anything.” The vista from the window was a tall blank wall, the rear of a photoelectric plant on the next street.

“Key-ring on the floor behind the desk. Torn from loop on his pants. Key still in the lock of the filing cabinet. Somebody was in a hurry, Jessie. But careful, careful.”

“Maybe we ought to—”

“Don’t move from that spot.”